1 20 118 https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/4bfb74e09e3035f83db139219e5dbb49.pdf 25fd991f25af3833984d681218bfd313 PDF Text Text ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE LIBRARY l\ l~\ \l\ \ l fl~lilfi(il\ ~f\ [ ~ \1\ l\ \1\ l\ \ \1 The St. ] ohn's 3 1696 01138 2114 I VOLUME 21, ISSUE 2 ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND, AND SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO WINTER 1995 I ANNAPOLIS EDITION Honoring the Decade of the Forties Homecoming in Annapolis, with memories of Stringfellow Barr, Scott Buchanan, and the early days of the New Program ............... page 8 WHEN JOHNNIES· CAME HOME How the passage of the G.I. Bill, which guaranteed education benefits to those who had served in World War II, changed college.......... page 6 A report from Santa Fe by a Graduate Institute participant......... page 12 News from Annapolis & Santa Fe, alumni, students, faculty, Graduate Institute, parents, staff, and friends ................ page 2 News from the classes, ............ ~. . . . . . . . profiles ............ page 13 ............................. 1 1 ' """t-""'"'' l'.AJI., .......... The latest efforts graduates find jobs .... page 16 g, ................ Preceptorial offerings in Santa Fe and Annapolis, plus recommended readings ........... page 19 1-"rnn-r"ll ·rn ~CllOlctrsrup: Profiles of tutors Michael Dink in Annapolis and Charles Bell in Santa Fe .................. page 20 St. John's students on campuses volunteer in their local communities ............. page 22 The Arts: Concerts and art exhibits in Santa Fe and Annapolis ...... page 24 At Homecoming in Annapolis, tutor Chester Burke, a graduate of the class of '74, shares a quiet moment of conversation with Sally Greppin DeKorne (AB4) on the quad. Photo by Keith Harvey. ~NSIDE: 1993-94 ANNUAL REPORT! �l What might Socrates have said about the Internet? Johnnies now have the opportunity to explore this form of global dialogue. Thanks to generous donations from the late James Connor, a former board member, and Santa Fe tutor Grant Franks, the Santa Fe campus went on-line this October. According to Catalog/Systems Librarian Patrick Emerson, the wizard behind the hook-up, the Meem Library is to be connected to the Internet through Checsnet. Students with computers and phone lines can now dial in directly from their dorm rooms. Computers in the library also provide access. College librarian Inga Waite said access to the Internet has been a dream of many students and faculty for the past three years. "It's a form of communication that's sweeping the academic world and people at St. John's are really interested," she said. The Internet offers a wide range of resources and opportunities for students, faculty, and staff. While one advantage is that it is less expensive to send a message via E-mail to somebody in Annapolis (or even Europe) than it would be to call or write to them, the Internet is far more than an electronic postal system. "I see it as a way for the college to be able to communicate its approach to education on a global scale, more than the college has been able to do before now," Waite said. "For instance, students and faculty will be participating in dialogues with people all over the world through newsgroups and mailing lists." In addition, the Placement Office hopes to use the Internet to fmd jobs for graduating seniors and to allow students to correspond directly with graduate schools and professors. "One of the things that's made both campuses excited is the idea ofbeing able to communicate," Waite said. "We think it will bring the campuses closer together." Library services also will be expanded through the net. "We can search virtually any library catalogue in the world," Emerson said. "It should help us improve our own service and give us more options." Waite said professional networking is yet another major advantage to being online. "Ifl want information about a library security system, I can send out a message asking for information about the system and I can get feedback from fellow librarians before I make a decision." While Internet access can be costly, St. John's received a relatively low-cost rate on the hookup. According to Emerson, this is because St. John's has fewer users than most colleges and universities and therefore can use a slower line. (For the present, access will be limited to current students, faculty, and In aa<Imon, -th ....n.n.-rh Higher Education Comrmt1ng consortium of New academic computing services, St. John's can take advantage of lower prices on equipment and software.According to Emerson, Mosaic, FTP (File Transfer Protocal), and E-mail will be available from the start. For those who can only visualize the Internet as a giant spiderweb from space, help is available. Emerson said training and even classes are being provided. by Lesli Allison 2 THE,R£PORTER Hassan Ali Abu-Jarad, a professor from Al-Azhar University in Gaza, attended the Graduate Institute in Annapolis this fall on a Fulbright scholarship. Although Hassan enrolled in the literature segment, the true focus of his studies was discussion itself. Hassan, who leads his university's workshops for school teachers, decided to attend St. John's to find solutions to recurring difficulties he faces in his classes. Many times, students in his classes stray from the texts, he says, and the discussions turn into general, unfocused conversations. When papers are assigned, the very students who are comfortable voicing their own thoughts in class revert to writing about ideas only as the authors present them. During his semester at St. John's, Hassan studied the techniques tutors used to bring students back to the texts, encourage gentle criticism among classmates, and try to understand the larger questions posed by a work, rather than simply make sense of the text. The great books workshops at Al-Azhar University started in 1978. Hassan, whose field is linguistics, was immediately enthusiastic. The text ofhis first class was the story Hay !ben Yaqathan by Iben Tufeil, which was written during the A bas sad period, a time of peace and freedom from 775-1050 a.d. During this time, known as the golden age of Islamic history, educational custom was similar to that practiced at St. John's. People joined together to study and discuss texts. Students whose parents could afford to, set up labs in which they reproduced the landmark experiments of science. Now, although the Abassad period is long past, Hassan hopes a new golden age will come to his part of the world. He has plans to help usher it in. During his stay in Annapolis, Hassan wrote a book, Leading Discussion: An Introduction To Arab t l Educators, and translated Touchstones texts into Arabic. When he returns to Gaza, he plans to start seminar groups for children, modeled after the Touchstones program developed by St. John's tutors. As he introduces this method of learning into his community, he will search for Israeli and Arab-Israeli partners to conduct corresponding seminars with Israeli and Arab- Israeli children. Slowly, he plans to move the groups together, so they can read important texts and discuss important matters together as groups that are already familiar with the techniques of critical, thoughtful, but peaceful discussion. How will he seek these partners? "Very quietly," he says, answering in a whisper even in the safe and crowded Coffee Shop. Although most people starting such an enterprise would seek publicity, Hassan must do the opposite. He fears that a fanatic ("from either side," he stresses) might target him or his groups. Hassan's dream is to see St. John's style campuses, concentrating on the great works of the Middle East, eventually take over Arab and Israeli military bases. "The aim of this program," Hassan says, "is to transform fanatics from all sides into human beings by offering them discussion, ALL-COLLEGE SEMINAR ON MOVIE IN ANNAPOLIS The Annapolis campus held an all-college seminar on the movie "High Noon" (1952) one Friday evening in November. Twice a year, an all-college seminar replaces the weekly lecture; the Student Committee on Instruction chooses the seminar topics. "High Noon" won several Oscars, including best picture. (It also happens to be one of Dean Brann's favorites; she claims she's seen it eight and a halftimes.) It is a western whose little action comes in the last 20 minutes of the film. Gary Cooper plays a small town marshall who marries a Quaker, played by Grace Kelly, and gives up his job out of love for her. Just as marry, he receives news that the man had once terrorized the town and who had been convicted of murder has been pardoned and is returning on the noon train. Waiting at the station are three members of his old gang. The marshall must decide whether to leave with his pacifist wife or stay and fight. The people of the town-for a variety of reasonsrefuse to help him. The college showed the movie twice, and turnout was good for both showings. Students, faculty, staff, and visitors broke into several student volunteer-led groups of 18 to discuss the film and its themes of courage, duty, private vision, and morality. The discussions went well, and many seminar readings were brought into them, including Achilles' actions in the Iliad, Odysseus and Penelope's relationship in the Odyssey, Plato's inner journey of recollection, and Aristotle's Poetics. Many participants hoped there would be more film-based all-college seminars, including some on recent films, such as "The Unforgiven" or "Pulp Fiction." by Michael Christian (A98) The Reporter is published in July and January by the Rublic Relations Office, St. John's College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404, and in October and April by the Public Relations Office, St. John's College, 1160 Camino de la Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87501. Annapolis: Barbara Goyette, editor; Sus3an Borden, writer,; Betsy Blume, Eva Brann, John Christensen, Pamela Kraus, Benjamin Milner, Brother Robert Smith, and Elliott Zuckerman, advisory board; Marcia Baldwin, tech support. Santa Fe: Lesli Allison, editor. USPS 018-750 l, t Hassan Ali Abu-Jarad shares insights on discussion with Gl Director John Verdi. Photo by John Bildahl one of the most important things that people do. It's time to start a new era of peace, coexistence, and understanding. That is the core of what we plan to do." by Sus3an Borden BOARD ACTS TO CHANGE MANAGEMENT OF ENDOWMENT FUND At the October Board of Visitors and Governors meeting in Santa Fe, the board voted to switch the management of the St. John's endowment funds to the Common Fund. The Annapolis endowment had two managers prior to the change, Manning and Napier in Rochester, New York, and Mercantile-Safe Deposit and Trust Co. in Baltimore. Santa Fe used Fayez Sarofim and Co. in Houston. The Common Fund is a non-profit organization, the only one of its kind in the country, s-et up solely to manage college and university endowments. Founded in 1971 and headquartered in Westport, Connecticut, the Common Fund now manages over $17 billion for 1300 member institutions. It is the largest pool of educational endowment and operating funds in the world. A committee of the board studied the investment question for many months before recommending the switch. treaAccording to Fred "Bud" advansurer at the Annapolis campus, the Common Fund are that outstarldUlg t1Jnanc1a1 mana~~ers with expertise make decisions on how the college's money is to be invested. Investments will be diversified, with money going into international markets, venture capital, and real estate as well as the traditional U.S. stocks and bonds. "By diversifying , we reduce our overall risk and further enhance our capability to get a better overall return on our investment... The track record of the Common Fund is excellent," said Mr. Billups. �faculty, Graduate Institute, parents, staff, friends CARITAS SOCIETY: 25 YEARS OF HELPING GREAT ISSUES: KIRKPATRICK ON PEACEKEEPING Speaking at the Great Issues forum in Annapolis in December, former U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick warned that the cost of world peacekeeping is high, and that we should tread carefully when intervening in troublespots around the world. Almost 400 people, including local citizens and high school students, prominent state and national politicians, and St. John's students, tutors, and staff, attended the program. Dr. Kirkpatrick discussed the U.N. peacekeeping roles in Bosnia, Somalia, Haiti, and Kuwait. In clear terms, she laid out the history of U.N. peacekeeping, explaining how that mission relates to the overall aims of the international union. "The U.N. embodies a dream of a world without war, and a world without power," she said. The founders of the United Nations were interested in protecting the sovereign rights of states, and wanted to prevent intervention in the internal affairs of individual countries. "This is one of the most clearly stated ideas in the U.N. charter; in article 51 they [the founders] recognized the irreducible right of states to self-defense," said Dr. Kirkpatrick. "Nothing in the charter provides for pe:Iceket~Plltlg--n was a later invention." In 1956 Dag HaJrnrr-Larsk10lel drew up rules for a U.N. role. A pe<:tce.kee~pulg force should be teiJtlP<)raJry arran!~enaeiJLts have gone on uc;•..;;::aJLt;;;::;. u~.., ......... ,,A. Dr. Kirkpatrick with the con- War and unof Boutros Boutros Nations has to pe(lCe.kee:prrtg forces to turn agatt~::m]pt to restore order to the internal affairs states. Dr. KJJrkpatrLck ""'"'''"''~""''~"~ out that in side a "will to peace" and yet U.N. forces are there; peacekeeping is not peacemaking, she said, noting that "there are no philosopher kings operating out of the Secretary General's office." In another reference to Plato, Dr. Kirkpatrick said that governments grow out of the customs and natures of the ... .., ........ ..,,,.., ........ 1-' JL.l'V._. ............. Founded in Annapolis in 1969 with the aim of helping St. John's students who were in financial trouble, the Caritas Society has fulfilled its goal for twenty five years now-and helped countless Johnnies by giving out over $100,000 in emergency aid. At a gala dinner and concert in November the group, now grown to more than 125 members, celebrated its silver anniversary. The celebration included a short piano and cello concert in the Great Hall by Elliott Zuckerman, tutor, and Eric Stoltzfus, music librarian. Then the guests enjoyed wine and socializing before the banquet, served in Randall Hall. Two hundred guests attended, including founders and past presidents of the society, college alumni, and college officials. Chairing the event were Anna E. Greenberg and Lillian B. Wray. Other committee members included Joy Shaver, Caritas Society president, and Trudi Barris, Martha Breed, Cynthia Jartman, Maryanne Spencer, Margot Hammill, Sandy Altherr, Elaine Reed, Veronica Meneely, and Joan Davis. Robert Goldwin (A50) and Ray Cave (A49) returned to Annapolis to thelp lead Great Issues seminars (above). Former U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick is greeted by President Chris Nelson and Maryland State Senaror John Astle (right) . Photos by John Bildahl. people ("constitutions do not come from sticks and stones but from the nature of men") and thus you can't send in troops and have them change a society, as was the hope in Somalia. Dr. Kirkpatrick said. she it was not a mistake to try to feed in Somalia, but the U.N. effort at nmlont-otmamg was bound to be a failure because of the way Somali sociwas structured-"War do not to ate, that is the nature lords," she said. She forsees the same problems in Haiti, where the traditions of violence aJtld one-man rule, plus the country's weak institutions and poor economy, meaJtl that democracy is not likely to succeed. After the lecture, the audience attended seminars to discuss Dr. Kirkpatrick's comments as well as two readings, selections from the U.N. charter and selections Joining the staff of the pus' Public Relations office Borden, a 1988 She replacj~s Donna who continues her freelance career as a writer and teacher. Sus3aJtl freelances as a for a local malrkt~tirLg For the past two years, Sus3an has been director of residence at the.~. lis campus. Students know her as the one to turn to for advice with a dorm room problem; because she is also in charge of the college's writing assistance program, she guides students through the thickets of paper-writing as well. Writing stories for the Reporter, she says, is the perfect job for her, as it will capitalize on her love of gossip, an interest she developed at St. John's. The "3" in her name is not a typo; she adopted it in elementary school where there were myriad other Susans. JLU.L.I.U.L'"' from Hugo Grotius 's De Jure Belli Ac Pacis Libri Tres. St. John's tutors co-led theseminars with local and national figures who have an interest or expertise in foreign affairs. by Barbara Goyette When Annapolis tutor emeritus Curtis Wilson gave a lecture on the subject of dynamical chaos this fall, he didn't have to rely on words alone to explain his ideas: He used a model, dubbed the "Loony Machine" that was built by lab technicians AI Toft and Otto Friedrich. Built according to a description in the American Journal ofPhysics (1992), the pair of double pendulums in tandem illustrates chaos. Each of the double pendulums is made up of an upper and a lower part which turn on bearings, thus minimizing friction. When the pendulums are displaced in a small oscillation, they travel together very nearly. However, when there is a large initial displacement, the pendulums go "loony." As described by Mr. Wilson, dynamical chaos-the behavior first called chaos by James Yorke in 1975-is "order and apparent randomness intertwined." When, in the double pendulum demonstration, the upper and lower pendulums perturb each other, the result is "circular causation." In the photograph Director of Laboratories Mark Daly, in the center, checks out the chaos with Jeff Burger, a junior, on the left, and Peter Rispin, also a junior, on the right. Photo by John Bildahl WINTER1995 3 �From the Bell Tower BOYD OPENS NEW CHUTE OVER TRAGIC BATTLE SITE People have different ways of commemorating things. Santa Fe tutor emeritus Stuart Boyd recently dropped 8,000 feet out of a plane to commemorate one of the most tragic battles of World War II. OperationMarket Garden, the largest airborne attack of the war, was executed on September 17,1944. Mr. Boyd was among thousands of paratroopers under the British First Airborne who dropped to what eventually became known as "the bridge too far." Cut off from British military support and surrounded by German panzer and infantry divisions, roughly 2,000 paratroopers were killed. Some of those who survived escaped across the Rhine. The remainder, including Mr. Boyd at the age of22, were captured. "In effect, it led to the destruction of the British First Airborne and the destruction of the town of Arnhem where the brave and trusting citizens who met us and helped us, thinking that they were to be liberated, found themselves instead with a destroyed city and still in the grasp of the German army," Mr. Boyd said. For nine months following his capture, Mr. Boyd, a native of Scotland, remained a prisoner of war. "I was in a prison camp near Hanover, and then was transported by train to the Polish border to another camp," he said. "From there we were marched back in the worst winter of the war because of the approaching Russian onslaught. Then, in May ofl945, the British Seventh Armor Division, the famous Desert Rats, broke through into the prison camp and I was released and returned to hospital in Scotland." On September 18, 1994, Mr. Boyd made the jump again, this time to commemorate with his colleagues the 50th anniversary of the ill-fated battle. "It was a very emotional experience because the last time I jumped there it had such a tragic outcome for so many friends," he said. "This return was a kind of salute to their memory. It was also an opportunity to see whether I could still do it. Dropping in freefall for 8,000 feet and reaching terminal velocity and not knowing whether the chute is going to open is, to say the least, an exhilarating experience. It's quite different from the wartime operation jumps, which were from 1,000 feet-the object being to get on the ground as soon as possible because there was a good chance you would be a target and be shot at." The commemorative jump not only allowed survivors to revisit the site and the memories of friends lost, but it also raised funds to benefit the Charity for the British Airborne. The fund helps to support families who have suffered casualties. "I managed to collect $5,000, a considerable portion of which came from faculty, staff, and friends of St. John's College," Mr. Boyd said. Today Mr. Boyd is retired and "nursing sore knees" at home with his wife and his dog in the north of Scotland. "I paint a little, write a little, think a lot, swim, walk and potter in my garden," he said. by Lesli Allison Santa Fe tutor Stuart Boyd re-enacted a parachute drop he originally made in World War II (right). During the war he was taken prisoner (top left), along with others from his unit (left). ANNAPOLIS CAMPUS BREAKS WITH TRADITION, SERVES GOOD FOOD IN COFFEE SHOP It's a little disconcerting, the first few times it happens. You walk into the Coffee Shop in Annapolis and there's that ... smell. Not the traditional institutional smell of canned food overcooking, or the comforting, slightly acrid smell of coffee going stale. No, this smell is unsettlingly unfamiliar to long-time Coffee Shop patrons. It's the smell of hot pizza in the oven, fresh cookies baking, and newly brewed coffee. Community members now accustomed to these smells advise their colleagues to take a deep breath, relax, and get used to them, because if the St. John's community has its way, these smells, and those responsible for them, will be with us for a long time. The responsible party is a father and son team sharing the name Ray Sears, who made the Coffee Shop a satellite of their Pizza Express shop when school opened this past August. They expanded the menu, extended the hours, and began cooking a lot of food for a lot of happy customers. In fact, they're cooking far more food than they ever would have guessed. "When we started, Marriott [who had been running the coffee shop] told us we would do fourteen or fifteen hundred dollars of business a week," says Sears the Younger. "Now, we do that on a Monday." Sears credits the addition of pizza to the menu for the increased sales. "Pizza is our most popular item by far," he says. "We do about sixty percent pizza. One 4 THE REPORTER guy comes in here for pizza four times a day, every day." Students credit the responsive nature ofPizza Express management. From the start, the team has asked for and quickly responded to requests for new and different products. A recent survey further encouraged community input by rewarding respondents with a free soft drink or candy bar. Pizza Express heard Pizza anyone? Chris Gillen, Shon Cook, and Ray Sears Senior can really dish it out. Photo by John Bildahl. from about 180 people, who voiced almost unanimously positive responses. Almost thirty of the comments were along the lines of ''wish you ran the dining hall." When asked ifhe would consider bidding for the food service contract, Sears says. "That's already come up several times. To tell you the truth, I would be the first in line." Graduate Institute students in particular have benefited from the new Coffee Shop's extended hours. In the past, with only one hour to eat between classes, they had two choices: they could dash off campus, or pay full price for the dining hall's all-you-can-eat meal, which they had to consume in the twenty minutes between the end of their class and the dining hall's closing time. Now they can go to the Coffee Shop. John Verdi, director of the Graduate Institute, has already noticed the effect this has on Gis. "Whenever you go down there between 6:30 and 7:30, it's just packed with Gls. Before the Coffee Shop was open at these hours, they had to go off campus to eat, so they'd all disperse. Now they're here in groups, talking before seminar. I think it's even had an impact academically." But not all are so happy with the new Coffee Shop. College horticulturist Blythe Woods resents the tempting smells and flavorful offerings of Pizza Express and pines for the days when the lunch hour was never a challenge to her dietary resolve. "When I step on the scale in the morning," Woods says, "I kind of wish the Coffee Shop had never changed." by Sus3an Borden �CAPITAL CAMPAIGN ON TARGET FOR . . . . . . .,.."" .... As of January 1, 1995, we have 550 days to the conclusion of the Campaign For Our Fourth Century. We have in hand pledges of $24.5 million toward the $30 million goal. Chairman Ray Cave (A49) is optimistic that the college will successfully complete the campaign on time and on goal. What that means is 5 50 days, $5.5 million, or $10,000 every day! For the remainder of the campaign the focus will be on giving every alumnus the opportunity to participate and on fundthe two physical facility needs: the conversion of the Hall of Records buildinto a new library in and creation of a student building in Santa Fe. of any asset are welGifts of all comed and needed. To help secure the independence of St. John's College, call Jeff Bishop (410-626-2505) or Jeff Morgan (505-984-6101). The Annapolis campus experienced a taste of Hollywood when portions of the up1cornmtg movie "Boys" were filmed in September. Produced by PF Productions and distributed by Disney, the film is directed by Stacy Cochran ("My New and stars Winona Ryder ("Age of Innocence," "Little Women") and Lukas Haas ("Witness," "Rambling Rose"). The plot has something to do with Winona failing off a horse and being rescued by boys from a nearby prep schoola place with green lawns, towering trees, historic-looking brick buildings, in short, St. John's College. Scenes were shot in the Coffee Shop (which was re-done in orange and ocher and subsequently returned to its original form), in Randall Hall, in the kitchen, in a Mellon classroom, and on back campus. Few students saw Winona; most discussions seemed to focus on whether this whole movie thing was a giant hassle or sort of interesting. The money the college received was put to good use immediately, with some going for a new sound system in FSK Auditorium (hooray! no more dead zones) and some earmarked for dorm renovations. $30 MILLION Gifts received to date 1 at $5,000,000 ............................................. . 2 at $2,500,000 .......................................... . 5 at $1,000,00 ...................................... . 7 at $500,000 ................................. . 11 at $250,000 ............................ . 12 at $100,000 ...................... . 15 at $50,000 ................. . 20 at $25,000 ............. . 30 at $10,000 ........ . Many less than $10,000 The relationship between philosophy and public affairs will be explored in a new conference and lecture series recently initiated on the Santa Fe campus. The "Tocqueville Lectures" will serve as a forum to engage students, public figures, and local citizens in exploring the character of citizenship, leadership, and education in contemporary American life. The program was created in response to students who have expressed an interest in fmding ways to bring what they know from their studies into the arena of public policy. The series, which will focus on a different topic each year, is funded through a grant from the John M. Olin Foundation. Speakers in the 1994-95 "Citizenship and Democracy" series will examine the complementary duties and responsibilities of democratic citizenship. "They will not only raise the policy questions-what do we do to increase or cultivate a sense of responsible citizenship in a society based on rights- but also the major historical and philosophical questions as well, like why are republican virtues difficult to sustain in liberal societies?" said President Agresto. "We hope these lectures will help to illuminate the difficulties that a liberal and democratic society has in striving for self-excellence and moderating self-interest in the service of public good." Robert Goldwin (ASO), American Enterprise Institute Fellow, former Annapolis dean, and former member of the St. John's College Board of Visitors and Governors, inaugurated the series with a lecture titled, "Civic Rights vs. Civic Duties: An Unfair Fight." Ira Glasser of the American Civil Liberties Union is scheduled to speak on Tuesday, February 7, 1995. His lecture is titled, "To Secure These Rights: What Are Traditional American Values?" In addition to the lecture series, a conference will be held March 31 - April 1 to address in greater detail the issues raised under the lecture topic for the year. Wednesday, November 9, 1994 Robert Goldwin American Enterprise Institute, Washington, D.C. Tuesday, February 7, 1995 Ira Glasser American Civil Liberties Union, New York February 28, 1995 Michael Novak Crisis Magazine, Washington, D.C. Friday, March 31, 1995 James Q. Wilson University of California, Los Angeles by Lesli Allison ADLER AT SANTA FE'S 30TH ANNIVERSARY Mortimer J. Adler spoke to students in Santa Fe on the occasion of the colleges 30th anniversary earlier this year. Mr. Adler later was honored during Founders Day for his contributions to St. Johns College and education. Photo by Joshua Goldberg. EVA BRANN REAPPOINTED DEAN IN ANNAPOLIS The Board ofVisitors and Governors has approved the reappointment ofEva Brann as dean. Miss Brann, the college's first woman dean, has held the position since 1990. She agreed to serve an additional two years of a second term; the usual term is five years. Miss Brann has been a tutor at the college since 1957. She graduated from Brooklyn College and received her master's degree in classics and her doctoral degree in archaeology, both from Yale University. Before coming to St. John's, she was an instructor in archaeology at Stanford University. She has received many academic honors and has been visiting professor at Whitman College and Visiting Honors Scholar at the University of Delaware. Miss Brann is the author of three books and of numerous journal articles. Her most recent book is The World of the Imagination. BASKETBALL RIVALRY? WHAT BASKETBALL RIVALRY? While the Santa Fe campus awaits a gym, its b-ball hounds practice in the parking lot, at the hoops set up there. Meanwhile, in Annapolis, teams that run like proverbial well-oiled machines practice on full courts and play regularly in competitions. What will happen when Johnnies from the two campuses meet to play hoops? The St. John's College Men's Basketball Team from Santa Fe will play an All-Star Men's Team from Annnapolis on March 22 at 7:30 p.m. in Annapolis. Santa Fe students are still on spring break when Annapolis re-opens, so some Western Johnnies can visit the Annapolis campus to play. All alumni, students, and interested parties are invited to attend the big game. WINTER 1995 5 �WHEN JOHNNIES CAME MARCHING HOME early 1940s young men age to war instead Enrollment fohn's *** During thelow. But following Worldofcollegewithwentpassage ofthe G.ofschoolveterans filledat St.classes. *** IL the I Bill the remained ~r by Barbara Goyette "I wasn't planning on going to college because it was just not part of my vocabulary, not something that anyone in my family ever did," says Jack Ladd Carr (A50). "All I wanted after high school was to be in the war." But Mr. Carr had read the article about St.John's College that appeared in Life magazine in February, 1940. And when he was in the Army in the Philippines, he thought more about the school as he read an article about it in the Saturday Evening Post. After he was discharged in Mr. Carr could think about colhad before, lege, as no one in his because ofthe passage of the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of known as the G.I. Bill of Rights. Fifty years ago, the G.I. Bill changed the course ofhigher education in America. Before the war, going to college was the privilege of the few; in 1939, approximately 160,000 students graduated from four-year schools. But in 1950 the number increased to 500,000-mainly because the G.I. Bill money for veterans to go to college or to receive advanced trm"mnlg. Nearly eight million World War II veterans took of the "'"~'""a-.+" with two million attt~ndmg ... v .... ...,Jo:.""'· At St. John's the war had a continual with low enrollment. Scott Buchanan and ~trmgtelJlovv established the New u ...,..,,,.,...,..,.,..., in the tract faculty and interested .:nuu...,!.u,:,, Life article brought the innovations of the program to the public's attention. But after the war broke out, many students enlisted in the service. High school graduates went straight off to Europe or the Pacific. Of the 90 who started as freshmen at St. John's in 1940, only seven graduated in 1944. Numbers remained low during the course of the war. However, when the war was finally over, the good guys having won and the country bouncing back from the Depression and a war-time economy, the millions of veterans who flooded the nation's colleges brought hope and vitality. At St. John's, students who had left their studies to fight returned. And others, many of whom would not otherwise have considered college, came to try out the "Great Books school." Education interrupted by war At St. John's, the drought in numbers of students was over by the fall term of 1946 when the veterans arrived. According to the 1946-47 yearbook, "the anxiety of the preceding three years was non-existent. The student body had increased and our academic interests had become more intense." Many seniors were returning vets, who were much older than the other seniors who had not left. Those returning had to pass an enabling exam, but otherwise there was no provision for refreshing memories of past studies. Of the 56 juniors in 194647, 39 were veterans. Some veterans re-took a quarter of 6 THE REPORTER ary of 1947. The founders of the Program, the rescuers ofthe tiny liberal arts school, they were tired and frustrated by the conflict with the Navy over the possibility of the Naval Academy taking over the campus. When the veterans returned, the college had a new president, John Kieffer, and a new Jack Neustadt. Students thought of the time between 1937 and 1945 as a sort of golden age at St. John's. After the war, "it was traumatic" without Barr and says but the in those days Mr. Van was very was well ...,....,.~ ............. established to run with different Tutors like were and Simon in their These same men would with the college for twenty years or more, several generations of students. In the of the war, St. John's tried to attract and students in order mto survive. Under the Freshman schoolers who demcould do the work were admitted as freshmen. Classes ran trn·ou!Zh~:::mt the summers so that those at age 16 could several years of before old to the ser:.:. describes himself as a and successful student at the Gilman School in Baltimore. His father thought that the war would continue for a long time and advised him to try to start out at St. John's rather than finish at the prep school. "There were a number of other 16-year-olds let in, and we did rather well," said Mr. Atterbury. "My disciplined high school background helped, but I was not mature enough to realize the full implication of what I was exposed to." Mr. VanSant also enrolled early, entering with a state senatorial scholarship. "But there weren't many students here ++~~·l..n.~T Two scenes from the 1947 yearbook illustrate what happened at St. John's as a result of the passage of the G./. Bill. The top photo shows the junior class, many of whom left college to serve in the armed forces and then returned. The huge (for St. John's) freshman class, the class of 1950, also had many veteran members; some of these students would not have considered college if they had not received the stipend for education that was part of the veterans' benefits package. study; George VanSant (A47), for example, had started as a freshman in the summer of 1943, left for the service in June of 1945, and re-entered in January of 1947. "We were on the quarter system, so I took the last term over and then began," he explains. "I was only gone really a year and half," says Mr. Van Sant. "I was in north China and when the war ended we went on occupation duty. I was in the Marine Corps, and we served as support for Chiang Kai-Shek. There were some pretty hairy times." Gerald Atterbury (A46), who enrolled at St. John's when he was 16 and had not yet finished high school, enlisted in the Army Air Corps when he was 18, then came back to St. John's several years later under the G .I. Bill. "I thought the break between my sophomore and junior years was felicitous," he says. "When I came back I was quite a different person. I had been a sheltered rich man's son, but I learned a lot about people in the service. It was a real maturation process I wouldn't have missed." The returning veterans did not identify themselves as a group, nor did they segregate on the basis of officers and enlisted men. They tried to blend in with the other students as much as possible both in class and outside of class. And yet, their age and the experience of having lived through a war inevitably changed the way they viewed their studies. '~ter the war, there was a vitality; everyone worked hard, there was a real seriousness, an aliveness and optimism." "Having been in the service did focus my attention on what the Great Books were saying in a much more intense way. I would have liked to repeat the first two years to see what I missed," admits Mr. Atterbury. Mr. Van Sant says that he thinks being in the war changed the tenor of discussions at the college. "When I came back I lived in the dorm. My roommate and I had cocktails every afternoon, then we went to dinner. When we came back to the room we studied and never talked until 11 p.m. We were quite disciplined," he says. In another important respect the college was a different place before and after World War II. Scott Buchanan and Stringfellow Barr had both left by Janu- because of the war. It slowly dribbled down, and by the time I left in June of 1945, the student body was at about 78. It was forlorn," he says. When he returned a year and a half later, with his tuition, fees, and a stipend provided by the G.I. Bill, the college was transformed; "there was a vitality, everyone worked hard, there was a real seriousness, an aliveness and optimism." Veterans try the Great Books The veterans' optimism sprang not only from their faith in the future but also from the support, both economic and emotional, that the G.I. Bill represented. When President Roosevelt signed the bill in June, 1944, he said, "This ... gives em- �phatic notice to the men and women in our armed forces that the American people do not intend to let them down." Citizen groups like the American Legion had been lobbying hard for educational and other benefits for the returning vets, and federal government committees had been studying various proposals for a benefit program. There were concerns about the potential for political trouble when thousands of G.I.s came back and entered the workforce. The Servicemen's "Having been in the service did focus my attention on the Great Books in an . Intense way. " Readjustment Act benefit package that was guaranteed to veterans allowed for retraining, college education, unemployment benefits, and help with home mortgages. Veterans could receive $500 for tuition and books, plus a monthly stipend of $25 (more for those with families). This was sufficient for almost any college in the country. The class of 1950 was the first one to start at St. John's after the war. It contained a number of veterans, some of whom were married. When Robert Goldwin enrolled as a freshman, he came to Annapolis with his wife, Daisy, and baby daughter. He had been stationed at Fort Meade near Annapolis after serving in the Philippines. After reading several articles about St. John's-one about a garbage scow captain who read philosophy in his long hours at sea and had been invited to lecture and then teach at the college-he decided he was interested. "I was 24 when I came, nearly the same age as some of the tutors, and some of the upperclassmen were very young because they had started early," says Mr. Goldwin. "I had no way of knowing what to expect, but within a few weeks I was completely out of this world and back in third century B.C. Athens." Mr. Goldwin and his family soon moved into the veterans housing that was constructed on back campus, where the Mellon offices are now. There were four long wooden buildings, each divided into three small apartments, with a living room, a bathroom, a kitchen, and two bedrooms. Twelve families lived in the housing, and those with children had priority. Disabled veterans like Mr. Goldwin received their benefits from Public Law 16, rather than the G.I. Bill, but the provisions were similar. For all of the veteran families, he says, lack of money was a problem. "There was no keeping up with the Joneses, though, because we were all in the same boat." One problem was that the veterans' benefits only ran for nine months; everyone had to scramble for money during· the summer. "But rent was low on the barracks, and my wife was renowned for having many hamburger recipes." The 1949 yearbook comments on life in the barracks: "This bourgeois domesticity, blooming in the rarefied air of dialectic and logic, nevertheless provided the closest approach to the much bewailed community of minds that St. John's intended to offer. The genuineness of this way of life and study reached not only through the network of little homes, but up to the dormitories and out to the other married students living in town." While the new students who were veterans attempted to assimilate into the life of the college, they were on the average older than the other students on campus. With having been away from school for several years and preoccupied with other concerns in the service, some of them were ill-prepared for the rigors of the program and had to work very hard just to keep up. Jack Carr, a high school graduate who joined the Army straight out of school and came to St. John's as a freshman in 1946, took some courses in geometry and algebra at a veterans high school in Philadelphia. The attrition rate at St. John's was high; of the 80 members of the class of 1950 who started in 1946, 28 graduated. "What I remember most of all was how small the seminars were getting by the time I was a senior," says Mr. Carr. Mr. Goldwin remembers the long hours spent in class and studying. "There was some feeling among the wives that the Many veterans who came to St. John's after the war were married, and the presence of their families added a touch of hominess to the campus. A group of wives and children enjoy the shade on front campus in this picture from the 1950 yearbook (top). Some veterans joined the American Veterans Committee, which recruited members on campus. The AVC (which distinguished itself from the Veterans of Foreign Wars) held functions in Annapolis and Baltimore (right). college was the great rival. As time went on the wives organized seminars for themselves," he says. A spirit of optimism The veterans at St. John's surely brought diversity to the campus and to the program. They were older; some were married and fathers; they had been in combat or involved in dangerous situations; many had not grown up with the expectation of going to college. They participated fully in the life of St. John's, from study groups to dances to basketball. The college itself had been through tough times-extremely small numbers of students, faculty who left to fight in the war, a risky experimental curriculum that was evolving even as it was being taught, two leaders who had to deal not only with serious financial problems but also with the possibility that their campus would be taken over by the military. Even with the assurance of adequate numbers of students who came under the G.I.Bill, financial and administrative difficulties remained. The veteran students, though, felt optimistic, even if they were aware of the college's problems. Mr. Carr says he doesn't remember ever worrying about getting a job with his St. John's background- "I walked out and there were jobs to pick from." "We really thought we could do anything, " says Mr. Van Sant. ~ Postscript: Of the many veterans who attended St. Johns, we interViewed four. Gerald Atterbury and George Van Sant both enrolled before joining the service and then returned under the G.!. ]Jjll. .•, Robert Goldwin and Jack Ladd Cafr Families with children had priority for the veterans' housing that was built on back campus in 1946. Although small and at times uncomfortable, the barracks proved a welcome alternative to town housing for the young families (above). started as freshmen after the war. Mr. Goldwin, fascinated from the start by the political works of Plato and Aristotle, went to graduate school at the University ofChicago. He s served in the White House, was dean of the Annapolis campus during the early 1970s, and is now a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. George Van Sant came from an academic background (his father, a Princeton grad, taught at Penn State) and went to graduate school in philosophy at the University of Virginia. He taught philosophy at Mary Washington College for 32 years. Mr. Atterbury studied engineering at Johns Hopkins, then workedfor IBM, Gould, and Martin Marietta. Jack Ladd Carr earned his masters in city planning from the University of Pennsylvania and went on to serve in planning positions for the cities of Charleston and Annapolis, andfor the state of Maryland. WINTER 1995 7 �• events were lined up to honor .._,...,...,.......... of the '40s under the ""~""""".,.'"rr' committee of David Dobreer (A44)), Sinkey,(A46), George Van Sant (A47), Jonathan Brooks (A49), and Allan Hoffinan There were reminiscences of Barr and Buchanan at the Alumni Association meetnu! (see pages 10-11), a luncheon with more reminiscences (some spontaneous, some rehearsed), a seminar on Scott Buchanan's Res Publica with tutors Curtis Wilson and Hugh McGrath, an elotoast at the banquet by George Van Sant (A47), and several awards (see beclass of 1939, celebrating its 55th reunion, hosted a discussion on St. John's during the transition from the old program to the new program. Chaired by James Boyle and Les Medford, the discussion drew participants from many eras, including alumni from the 1930s, present students, new programers from the '60s, '70s, and '80s, and President Christopher Nelson (SF70). One of the questions under debate was who turned out the lights on Mortimer Adler in one of his early lee- tures at the college-no definitive answer was discovered. Alumni remembered when students would commandeer the local milk horses, and ing scraps of wood to build the annual bonfire. According to one version of the story, the students carted off an outhouse. Various other pranks were remembered with fondness; the spirit of a St. John's community continuing from old program to new seemed to the participants. Several classes celebrated reunions with luncheons, dinners, parties, and/or seminars. The class of'59 marked its 35th (chaired by Goldstein) with a seminar on Kenneth Clarke's "The Nude", led by Malcolm Wyatt. Plato's "Meno" was the reading for the class of 1969's seminar with Eva Brann; steering committee members were Maya Hasegawa and Andy Garrison. The class of 1979-with steering committee members Marjorie Allison, Lisa Simeone, Carol Katrina Plaut, Marjorie Hutter, and Carol Colatrella-had a family picnic on back campus under the sycamore trees, a seminar on Toni Morrison's Beloved led by Michael Comenetz and George Doskow, and a classic Rock Party in the Boat House with Robert George (A85) as DJ. Celebrating their 1Oth reunion, the class of 1984 attended the waltz party in the Great Hall and then a rock party in the coffee shop, participated in the was born in 1926; after serving in the Army Air Corps during World War II, he attended St. John's, graduating in 1949. He went on to Yale Law School. Some of his corporate clients included Smith Barney, E.F. Hutton, Continental Can, Paine Webber, and Prudential. He retired in 1991. Mr. Rea was unable to attend Homecoming because of ill health; the Alumni Award of Merit was presented to him in absentia by Allan Hoffman (A49). The Alumni Association granted Awards of Merit to Henry Clay Smith (A34 ), David Rea (A49), Ahmet Ertegun Tutor and former dean Thomas Slakey was made an the Class Clay Smith: Man ofa Million Words Henry Clay Smith, born in Catonsville, came to St. John's in 1930 on a scholarship. He was given a Senior Fellowship in 1933, which meant he could study what he wanted. After graduating from St. John's, he received his Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins, served as Director of Training at Western Electric, and then was made a professor of psychology at Michigan State University. He retired in 1983 after 34 years. Some of the books he's written are: Industrial Behavior, Personality Development, and Ten Keys to Un- 8 THE REPORTER family picnic on back campus (with a miniseminar convened of babies and toddlers in strollers and on blankets), attended a seminar on the Phaedrus led by Brother Robert, Peter Kalkavage, Nicholas Maistrellis, and Jon Tuck, and hosted a couple of sporting events (tug of war, croquet). Ahmet Ertegun: Master ofjazz Alumni Association president Sharon Bishop (A65) presents an Award of Merit to Henry Clay Smith at the Annapolis Homecoming. derstanding People. In introducing him, Roland Bailey (A35) noted that Henry Clay Smith has written over a million words. In his address to the Alumni Association, Mr.. Smith paid tribute to his St. John's education, and especially to teachers like Ford K. Brown and Richard Scofield. "I wanted to live in a place like St. John's, be a teacher like Brown and Scofield, and have friends like my frater- nity brothers," he said. Mr. Smith explained that he was thankful to St. John's for providing the ideals he has followed in his teaching and writing. David Rea: Lawyer A corporate lawyer at one of the country's most prestigious law firms, David Rea served on the St. John's Board of Visitors and Governors. He Ahmet Ertegun turned his avocation-a love of jazz-into his vocation when he founded Atlantic Records, a company that showcased the music of artists like Joe Turner, Ray Charles, the Coasters, Aretha Franklin, and more recently, Twisted Sister and Pete Townshend. In his introduction, John Hedeman (A43) told about Mr. Ertegun's earliest encounter with jazz when his father, a diplomat from Turkey, took him to London to hear Duke Ellington. After finishing at St. John's in 1944, Mr. Ertegun received a degree in music from Georgetown. With a borrowed sum of $1 0, 000 he started Atlantic Recording Company. Many consider him to be one of the founders of rhythm and blues music; the Award of Merit is in honor of his contribution to popular music as a composer and producer �Oopposite page: A group of '84s, including Pierre and Nancy Mease Gagnier and their baby, meet up on back campus during the picnic. This page, clockwise from top: Annapolis Dean Eva Brann catches up with some friends (top left). Santha Bundy Farah (AGI93) strikes the typical SJC 'thinker'' pose (top right). Lenore Parens (A84) and Joshua Parens (A83) try to convince their future Johnnie that the food is OK (right). James Boyle (A39), Frank White (A39), Norton Schwartz (A39), and Harry Hamilton (A39) look at pictures from the Old Program era (center). At the luncheon for the Decade of the '40s, Frederick Davis (A43) and Stephen Bergen (A47) reminisce (above). All Homecoming photos by Keith Harvey. to the best college in America." He continued, "My mother insisted that the chauffeur bring my prayer rug into the dormitory room. I was the only Moslem in the college at the time; I was also the only Moslem who went on to study St. Thomas in graduate school...St. John's taught me to learn logic, to think out problems; it gave me the ethical instruction that kept me out of trouble, and most important, it taught me to be a good person." Thomas Slakey: Honorary Alumnus Ahmet Ertegun (A44) addresses the Homecoming Banquet crowd as he accepts his award. and also for his service on the Board of Visitors and Governors. In reminiscing about his time at St. John's Mr. Ertegun said that when he arrived on campus at the age of 16, "I came Tutor and former dean Thomas Slakey was made an honorary member of the class of 1994 and member of the Alumni Association. George Bingham (S68) presented the honor, citing Mr. Slakey's devoted service to the college, his exemplary promotion of the liberal arts in programs established elsewhere, and his friendship and mentoring of many students and colleagues over the years. Mr. Bingham related how Mr. Slakey induced him, when he (Mr. Thomas S/akey (right), tutor and former dean, with his wife Marion (center) and George Bingham (;eft). Bingham) was a student, into an "out of body experience" by drawing out thoughts he did not know he had. Mr. Slakey was one of the first to bring to the Santa Fe campus the true spirit of St. John's. Mr. Bingham also recognized Mr. Slakey's "sorties into the real world," when he participated in sit-ins in Annapolis in the 1960s and when he spoke out on the moral dangers of the McCarthy era in the 1950s. WINTER 1995 9 �ANNAPOLIS H 0 m e In honor of the decade of the forties, Charles Nelson and John Van Doren spoke at the Alumni Association meeting about their memories of Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan. Those first exciting years of the New Program-when Stringellow Barr as president and Scott Buchanan as dean shaped the course of study and the methods of teaching and learning, chose the Great Books, found a faculty, and welcomed pioneering students-is indeed a time to remember. Here are excerpts of remarks by two who do remember. REMEMBERING WINKlE by Charles Nelson, A45 This gathering includes many, I am happy to note, who remember Winkie well. There are others not present, living and dead, who also know Winkie and who have had pertinent things to say about him. Since I have the unmerited honor to speak somehow on behalf of both, I have were often ignored or forgotten. He had, like Jefferson, an enormous sense ofthe importance of roots. Yet he outgrew local prejudices and regional biases. He led the way towards racial equality long before the Civil Rights movementofthe '60s ...Hehadthecour~ age to oppose publicly the atmosphere ofsuspicion and distrust engendered by the Joseph McCarthy investigations in the early '50s, and in a true sense 'defended our ancient liberties.' " Allan Hoffman in his remarks at the memorial service recollected a quintessential Winkie Barr story. Charles Nelson (A45) addresses the Alumni Association at Homecoming Allan had gone to with Barr And Buchanan looking on. Photo by Keith Harvey. visit with him at Goodwin House in decided that these remarks should conAlexandria (his last residence; he was sist largely of selections from the carethen in his eighties). "Winkie told me: fully chosen words of these friends and I was in the back of the elevator waitadmirers of Stringfellow Barr. I draw in ing for the doors to close when two large part on the remarks of speakers at elderly gentlemen stepped in. One said his memorial service in the Great Hall on to the other, 'I don't know what February 26, 1982,23 days after his death Goodwin House is coming to; now at age 85 ... they are letting in all kinds. There's a When Wmfree Smith spoke at the mefellow on the second floor who thinks morial service he recalled his experience he's Napoleon, and now we have a new resident on the fourth floor who as a student of Barr's at the University of Vrrginia. Yet (strangely enough) I think is going around and actually telling evthe most compelling reference in his triberybody that he is Stringfellow Barr.'" ute was to the words of Douglas Steve Benedict, on the same occasion, said: "No one isolated Winkie's Buchanan, class of '43 (Douglas, of They made St. John's a place for explorers. It would never be as good a place for those who have the answers as for those who are trying to find their way. course, knew Winkie better than any of us here): "Whenever I think of Wmkie, and I do this often, I think ofhis gallantry, his good humor, and his courage ...His loyalty and his old-fashioned friendship for my father, whom he often gave up home, comforts, and even his work to be with, were very touching. "He, like Thomas Jefferson, operated by a code of honor in his relations with others in an era when loyalty, discretion, and 'virtue' (in the ancient Greek sense) 10 THE REPORTER center more accurately than Mark Van Doren in remarks he made on a windswept hilltop in 195 8 at a party for him and Scott Buchanan. "[He said that] both of them are incendiary; both are burning; they have always burned. Scott burns slowly and smokelessly. Winkie burns with a blaze, bright and red and always there, always at the top of his intensity. He can be loving and he can be angry, and his anger presents itself in spontane- c 0 m • z n g ous fashion. He can lay all areas waste." SCOTT BUCHANAN It is very hard to understand, lookby John Van Doren, A47 ing back, how this college survived those first ten years of theNew Program. Just as Barr and Buchanan were turnWe all knew him, of course-had had ing up the lights on this campus in the encounters with him, if only at the openlate '30s, the lights were going out all ing ceremony of the year when as freshover Europe. . .My freshman class armen we were formally taken into the colrived here exactly two months before lege community. Sometimes he appeared Pearl Harbor...Within two years 60 of before us, as at college meetings or lecthe 65 members were scattered all over tures. Always he presided over the questhe world. tion period after the lecture, and at least Yet, for me at least, the memories of in the first years of the program he was the college from the fall of '41 to the often to be found sitting in the Coffee spring of '43 when I left, and from 1945 Shop, smoking cigarettes and drinking when I returned through 1946 when endless. cups of coffee while some disWmkie left-those memories are not of cussion went on. Later he was less vishardship and struggle but of exuberance, ible save as we happened to catch sight spirited conversation, and laughter. The of him coming on one of the campus tone and style and mood were set by walks in the dark coat and familiar black Winkie. Without his lively presence, hat he always wore, striding in his cuthose would have been grim days inriously stiff-armed way. deed. He didn't tell us, and we didn't If we thought of him it was mostly need to know, the terrible daily struggle as a presence in the dean's office, then in which he and Scott and the faculty in McDowell Hall, where underneath were engaged to keep this place alive. the creaking staircase he did the work No sooner had the veterans begun to he had to, protected from interruption return to the campus than another war by Miss Strange. Some of us were erupted: St. John's battle with the Navy. called to that office for academic failSince Winkie and Scott had suggested ure or disciplinary reasons, and the exupon my return in '45 that my student aid job should be to serve as Wmkie 's assistant, I had a close-up view of those events. My most memorable duties consisted of carrying messages from our two leaders to the Washington apartment of Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon, an ally in the battle, and serving as chauffeur, in Winkie's lovely bottle-green Buick, for those who went to the Congressional hearings ... The John Van Doren remembering Scott Buchanan. Photo by Keith Harvey. passage of the years has simplified those events in my memory: Wmkie got out his slingperience could be unpleasant. Most of shot and slew Goliath, whose name was us went by the door, thinking-! know Admiral Ben Moreen. I thought-that within was the dark According to Wmfree's account there center of things that one didn't apwas a long period of vacillation before proach carelessly. The dean was a man of moods, a brooding figure, of whom Winkie decided to place that smooth stone in his slingshot. And so it is that we were most of us afraid, and yet whom the lives of our heroes always prove to we respected-whom we revered. be more complex, more ambiguous, Whether we understood how much more human than our memories allow... the college was his creation, I am not Wmkie and Scott were voyagers tosure. Even I, who took it as an article gether. They made St. John's a place for of faith, hardly grasped the truth. We explorers. It would never be as good a owed to him the statement of the frrst place for those who have the answers college catalogue, which did so much as for those who are trying to fmd their to defme the program. We owed-we way. On that theme Wmkie left us all a still owe-the inclusion of the mathfond, thoughtful farewell message. It apematical and scientific works that are pears as the last words of what I think is unique to it. We owed its whole delivhis best book, The Will of Zeus: "And ery system, the mix of seminars, tutonow, my reader, if you choose to emrials, laboratories, and lectures that bark, or re-embark, on these Greek seas, turned out to be the heart of it and has may you, like Odysseus, see the cities not changed essentially in nearly 60 years. We owed the lack of rank among and learn the minds of many men before you fmd home."• the tutors, whose lowly title turned out �to be, like Roman citizenship, the highest honor of our state, needing no more. Mr. Buchanan did not teach much after 1943, when I started at the college-he had no time ... Yet he was frequently enough seen standing among a group of students who had cornered him with a question-standing characteristically with his hands in the back pockets ofhis trousers, his legs crossed at the ankles, grinning and nodding at what was said, fixing those piercing blue eyes on someone who raised some new point and coming back with a remark that had a sort of transcendence about it, so that the discussion was suddenly taken to a higher plane-we were made to hear the overtones in what we had been saying. Now and then, when someone said something he hadn't thought of, he'd laugh in his peculiar silent way. He was the best kind of teacher, the kind who makes you realize not how little you know, but how much-who indeed drew out of you stuff (he liked that word, "stuff") you didn't know you had in you, so that you staggered about afterwards in a sort of daze, wondering how you had managed to say that, won- dering if you understood what presumably you meant. I recall a memorable oral exam in which I found myself saying things I had no idea I knew. Perhaps I didn't know then. Indeed I think I realized afterwards how imperfectly I'd grasped my argument. Yet the book had been opened to me, and I never forgot the new way in which I had been invited to examine it. By 1946, when he resigned, Mr. Buchanan was exhausted, having carried on his shoulders for so long not the college he conceived, but the juryrigged affair, the collection of children and retreads with which the war had forced him to make do. Even at best it had had some air of wild improvisation about it, which could not have been sustained, which disappeared when it became Mr. Klein's college, and which is hard now to remember. Something of its flavor returns when I recollect one question period at which Mortimer said a good argument was like a tennis game in which you batted the ball across the net until some shot was a winner or went out. Scott said that was a good figure, except he thought it was best when you didn't have a net. Winkie and Scott were young men, barely into their forties, when they started at St.John's. Bob Hutchins and Moritmer Adler were even younger when they took over at Chicago. They were all buccaneers, boarding academic ships in distress, saving what they wanted and throwing overboard the rest. None of them could now be dean or president of any institution. We may be glad that we were among the seized, that our hearts and minds were caught by their fantastic schemes, that we were set upon new courses. It has not been easy for us since, some of us, sometimes. St. John's is a college of misfits, or should be, partly-of people who are not quite at home in respectable places. When Scott retired we gave hime the Loeb Odyssey as a parting gift, the book for a man whose home is hard to reach and who leaves it when he gets there. We knew he was a wanderer. Nor did he ever return except to make a speech or two, was buried elsewhere when his time came. This place, though, is where in essence he remains, and will as long as the books are read, and the conversation he had said that we would find in them is carried on.~ 1995 HOMECOMING IN SANTA FE The classes of 1970, 1975, 1980, 1985, and 1990 will celebrate their class reunions this year. All alumni are welcome to join in the festivities of the Homecoming Weekend and the Alumni Program sessions. The Summer Alumni Program will take place from July 16 through July 28 (the weeks before and after the Homecoming weekend). Week 1 (July 16-21) will focus on the fine arts. This week will give alumni a look at what happens in the senior fme arts segment in Santa Fe, as well as including other varied material. There will be seminars on paintings, tutorials on readings by artists, and practicum sessions. Week 2 (July 23-28) will include readings in political philosophy and international relations. Both classical and contemporary texts/issues will be explored. Further information will be mailed to all alumni this spring. Class of 1975: Recession following the conferring of degrees. Members of the class of 1970 give downtown Santa a taste of "Reality." Members of the class of 1980 are doing something, but we're not sure what. Members of the class of 1990 perform a balancing act. WINTER1995__ 11 �F CULT¥, STUDE INAF I DISE LAND A look at how the the Eastern Classics program is going in Santa Fe by Sara Harris, EC95 With equal parts humility and enthusiasm, students and faculty in Santa Fe have completed the first official semester of study in Eastern thought. Two years ago a pilot program confirmed the feasibility of such an undertaking. Last year the board and faculty of both campuses approved the program, which offers a master's degree. This fall, with a class of 21 students (nine of whom are SJC alumni), St. John's opened the Graduate Program in Eastern Classics. While some at the college have expressed concern that Eastern material may not lend itself well to the St. John's semi" nar table, students reviewing their first semester said the program, in fact, offers a solid introduction to the writings, arguments, images, and textures of Eastern thought. "It's certainly been a question here at St. John's for a long time," said student and Graduate Council co-chair Derrick Miller. "I think we've finally come up with a good solution." At the same time, students interviewed said they did not believe the undergraduate program should be altered to accommodate Eastern works, a perennial debate within the college community. Some said they thought it necessary first to know intimately the roots of American or Western civilization. Others said they would be concerned with factors such as the limited time available within the program, potential conflicts with the demands of learning Sanskrit or Chinese language, or difficulties accommodating Eastern and Western perspectives in the same curriculum. "It's only natural that the Eastern program should be somewhat separate in that it has its own language[ s]. To mix the two would not be entirely beneficial; you wouldn't really get as much out of it," said student Scott Geib. Difficult content inspires study Motivation for joining the program varies widely, as does the experience brought to it. In fact, students said the program benefits greatly from the varied backgrounds of its participants. For instance, Virginia Tierney spent several years teaching in China before entering the program. "While we were there we made very dear friendships," said Ms. Tierney, "[but then] the political situation became so disturbing to me that I started really wanting to know what was Chinese culture and what was Western culture. I wanted to start making some distinctions because the Chinese would often say that \ their way was not the Western way, and yet many of the things they were doing seemed to me to be very Machiavellian." Students said the level of enthusiasm, commitment, and preparation among their classmat,es enhances the quality of the 12 THE REPORTER classroom experience. Comparing his Sanskrit class with undergraduate study Mr. Miller at St. ing a fairly similar method I think the fervor with which the students approach it is much different." "I think we have a really enthusiastic class. Everybody works and we don't have the 'I didn't prepare' situation-ever." said Ms. Tierney. All students attend the main seminar, which during the fall semester focused on texts within the Indian philosophical, religious, and literary tradition, and during spring will emphasize Chinese and Japanese classics. In addition, students study either Sanskrit or Classical Chinese language, stressing grammar and translation, and participate in two preceptorials each semester which focus on a particular text or tradition. The four offered so far include Taoist and pre-Taoist texts; plays by Kalidasa; a choice of texts in the tradition of Zen Buddhism; and Sankara's commentary on the Upanis ads. Students also have access to a program publication. Maril Blanchard started Open Forum, a monthly newsletter that serves as an information resource and a forum for further exchange. The newsletter has featured detailed essays supplementing works read in class, synopses of student papers, information on doctorallevel education programs, and on-line resources for Asian studies. The remains the most profound element of the students' eXJJen em;es. "You can read them a hundred times " Mr. and always get something Geib said. "I always want to go back and read it again." In comparing the St. John's approach to Asian studies at other schools, Ms. Tierney said it is valuable and unique that St. John's combines religious, philosophical and aesthetic elements as a whole. With this approach, students have been able to look at a range of thought in these traditions, which in many cases has had a powerful impact, she said. "Even if they bothered me or if they angered me, I was passionate about them, dying to read them again." to talk about Eastern works As perhaps in all seminars, the initial classes of the year were difficult and demanded adjustments of all the students. In addition, however, the first Eastern Classics seminars raised issues concerning the perspective of the students in addressing these texts, their qualifications for discussing the works, and the need for contextual information. "At the beginning we were distraught because we didn't know what direction we were going," said Mr. Geib, "but [the St. John's approach to books] works quite well once we get going in it." The program provides students the opportunity to examine the roots of several Asian cultures and in many instances, compare them to basics of American culture. Nonetheless, students interviewed said it was hard to classify differences. "Most of the basic questions are pretty much the same," said Mr. Miller. "The approach to asking them is very different." "Our civilizations evolved differently but we're stillkindofgrabbingatthe same ideas," Mr. Geib said. Join people from around the country this summer to read and discuss some of the greatest literature, philosophy and opera of all time. Summer Classics is a one to three week residential education/vacation opportunity for adults from all backgrounds. Seminars are conducted by members of the faculty each morning from 10 A.M. to noon. In the afternoons and evenings participants are free to explore historic Santa Fe and the surrounding region. Week I JULY 16-22 Homer, Iliad Dostoevski, Crime and Punishment Sophocles, The Theban Plays Week I I JULY 23-29 Opera, Salome, Fanciulla Founding Documents, Partii Virgil, The Aeneid Week I I I JULY 30-AUGUST5 Opera, Salome, Fanciulla Old Testament: Genesis,Exodus,Deuteronomy Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathttstra Tuition ~rom $950/week includes room:& boar€~, Wrlte to: Stm1mer Classics-R, St. Jonn's Cotlege , Santa Fe, New M~;xico 8'75£l'\!Hl599 (SOS) 984-6104 ' �Alumni otes Lt. Col. F. Noble (Ret.), extends an official hello to all members of the classes of 1922 to 1924. He lives in Medford, Oregon. Frank Townsend (A) retired from the of medicine in 1986 and lives in City, Md. He reports that he is "alive and well as a result of a total knee rer,la<~enlenlt, a cardiac and two cataract lens rep1lacem.en1:s. Dr. Barry Fisher (A) is an associate professor in the Department of Surgery at the University of Nevada School of Medicine. He has a new son, Joshua, born in March. at Brown studying Russian and music; his other children are in a high school production of "Oliver." His wife Masha is on the school board and Republican Town Committee and he's "trying to imagine medical care in the rational world of 'managed care' where the bottom line is $only." oralctH~e L. Wheaton Smith (A) retired from IBM in 1992 after 30 years. He's still doing some consulting based on 44 years working with computers, mostly software. Along with his wife, he enjoys traveling throughout the world and enjoys visiting his grandchildren closer to home. Virtual Latin is an artificial intelligence software system developed by John Adcock (A). Vrrtual Latin is a surmort system for the PHI Latin CD/ROM 5.3, which contains all extant Latin texts from the founding of Rome to A.D. 200. John says the PC/DOS based software introduces computer assisted reading (LECTRIX) and incorporates an extensive apparatus for the scholar called AMAMUENSYS. "It should be of interest to the scholar, the teacher, the student, and the general reader. Virtual Latin em- Joseph isnow teaching organization at Boston College and has just published a large reference book, The United Nations System (Oxford: Clio Press, 1995). Thomas Day (A) is currently the project manager for the Association of Farmworker Opportunities Programs (AFOP). He's working on setting up a national database of migrant and seasonal workers. On the homefront, he reports that his family has converted to Catholicism ("I just got tired of arguing with the Bible"); his parish (St. Catherine of Siena in Great Falls, Va.) is interested in starting a private Catholic academy with an integrated curriculum a la St. John's. Tom's wife Lois (Eckler) (A77) is proofreading for the NIH. His son is a sophomore in high school; his two daughters are 7th and 2nd graders. He is interested in hearing from any Johnnies who have concrete ideas on how to structure an integrated K through 8 curriculum at: 26 Brookfield Circle, Sterling, VA 20164. Barbara Sherman Simpson (A) is a practicing veterinarian and has recently moved to North Carolina with her husband Dale Simpson and her three-yearold daughter Diana Sherman Simpson. An editorial by Seth about American foreign policy on the op-ed page of The Washington Times on December 6. He is with the George C. Marshall Center for European Security Studies in Germany. Cruger Johnson Phillips (A) reports that she still works as a Community Educator and counselor at the West Hartford St. Ministry, still teaches counseling courses at St. Joseph College, is still in private practice, is still married to the same man, and still has the same two children: Emily, 10, and Emmett, 6. 1976 Meg Collingwood Kimble (A) has been elected to the St. Anne's (Annapolis) vestry, where she also has taught Church School and participated in a number of other parish activities. She lives in Annapolis with husband Ken (A 77) and their children Elizabeth, 7, and Ned, 5, and works as a manager at Kitchen Bazaar, a gourmet cooking supply store. Janet Durholtz, From Teaching to Torts by Sus3an Borden Carolyn Johnson Forche (Fortier) (A) was recently awarded second place for her manuscript of a children's book called Colors Come from God. ..Just Like Me. She writes: "This book was inspired by my 3-year-old granddaughter, who came home from school crying, 'I don't want to be brown anymore because people don't like you when you're brown.' " The award was presented by the Manuscriptors Guild of Houston, Texas. Ms. F orche was the first woman and first African American to be appointed public affairs director of the U.S. Region Five office, covering six states in the midwest. She served from 1979 to 1981. She has also been the public affairs specialist at Provident Hospital in Chicago and worked on many marketing ·campaigns for children's, health, and service organizations. Col. John Lane (A) has resigned his position as Associate Executive Director and Chief Information Officer at the Securities and Exchange Commission to accept the position of Senior Vice PresiTechnology, with NationsBank. He lives in Great Falls, Va. powers the reader without Latin to read texts in Latin and without translation, radically obscuring the distinction betweenreading and learning," he says. For more info, contact Anagnostic Schema, PlO. Box 420362, San Francisco, CA 94142. 1967 Judith Brownstone Sapp (A) writes that her experience at Covington and Burling continues to support the proposition that one year at St. John's is worth much more than four years at Harvard, Yale, or anywhere else. B. Meredith Burke (A) has written a book with Aliza Kolker titled Prenatal Testing: A Sociological Perspective. The book analyzes the social-psychological and ethical implications of invasive prenatal testing. Publisher is Greenwood Publishing Group of Westport, Ct. 1968 Dr. Charles Watson (A) recently acquired a retreat or "dacha" on Martha's Vineyard, which he calls "luxury in middle age." His first son is a sophomore St. John's students like to point out that St. John's College and the Naval Academy are the only two schools in the country that teach Ptolemy. But thanks to alumna Janet Durholz (A82), some students at Cornell University's DDe_roru:tinent Studies can count themselves among those schooled in the mysteries of the eccentric and ecliptic hypotheses. As a graduate student in comparative literature and medieval studies, Durholz developed the course "Astrotexts: Literature and Astronomy." The course was such a hit, she was invited to teach it five or six times. But when she left the Romance Studies Department to attend Cornell's law school, "Astrotexts" dissipated into the ether. Why did Durholz leave comparative literature, romance studies, and medieval languages for the world of product liability and tax code? Durholz cites her affinity for the intellectual rigors of law school. "I loved being a law student," she says. "It's an intellectual challenge. It puts a very high premium on logic compared to the study of literature and languages, where logical thinking is optional or even a detriment." Durholz's other reason for attending law school developed during a decade of work with the Tompkins County Task Force for Battered Women. She realized that, as a lawyer, she could be more effective in making a difference in the lives of abused women. Not content to put her efforts to help battered women on hold while she pursued her degree, Durholz worked with the group throughout law school. "It was kind of strange," she recounts, "being in law school and getting these 3 a.m. phone calls to come to some police station in the middle of the country somewhere to help a beat up woman and her crying kids." Durholz will combine her love of law with her concern for women when she begins work with Wilmer, Cutler, and Pickering, a Washington, D.C., law firm with a large pro bono department. But the high degree of burnout in her specialty and her love of academics lead her to predict an eventual return to teaching. Though some might question this circuitous route from academics to law and back to teaching, Durholz has built her success by pursuing her interests, no matter how varied, and she's encouraged others to do the same. As academic advisor at Cornell, Durholz was surprised when freshmen, on their first day of college, asked her what classes they should take to prepare for law school. Durholz, who thrived in law school with no formal undergraduate preparation, could only offer the counsel she's always lived by. Though her words might sound hollow coming from anyone else, Durholz's standing as Cornell Law School's recipient of the 1993 Fraser Prize for Academic Excellence would make any freshman willing to listen to her advice: "Just learn what you love, and keep learning what you love." Photo by Keith Harvey WINTER 1995 13 �Alumni Notes Russell Kyle Munroe (SF) is the owner of an executive recruiting firm which he founded three years ago. His address is: Peral Pia Bldg. 102; 5-18-7 Minamisuna; Koto-ku, Tokyo 136; Japan. 1977 Lydia Ossorgin (SF) reports that she and Kevin Holthaus (SF83) continue to work (more than full time) training teachers in the Socratic seminar practice in the Anchorage Public Schools. She adds: "In two high schools we have seminar 'schools within schools' where students and teachers spend two hour periods daily with the best works of Eastern and Western traditions. Mike Strong (SF85) joined up this year from Homer, Alaska, along with his wife, Mally Mechaw Strong (SF 84 ), who works as a seminar coach in the schools. My son Michael (13) spent five weeks in Santa Fe this semester studying Euclid and Greek with Tracey Wernet (SF 95). My other children, Maria (11 ), Sergio (1 0), and Juliana (9) join in family evening seminars, especially when the salmon aren't jumping or the bears appearing in spring. Practice begins early for a third generation of Ossorgins heading for St. John's!" 1982 Mark Krinock (SF) presently lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where he has started a practice following four years of medical school, six years of residency, and a year of fellowship. He says the only complaint he has received during his studies is ''that! am too 'cerebral' regarding my profession of neurosurgeryimagine that!" He and his wife Karen have been married 13 years, have three boys, with another child on the way. He writes, "I appreciate the invitations to the Chicago chapter events and regret only to be too busy during my first year to attend. Even though I am getting busier, I will get better organized and then be able to take advantage of a truly superior cerebral experience! St. John's continues to be and, I suppose, always will be the point of departure for all that I do! Hello, everybody." Jim Jarvis: Physician/Researcher Working on the front lines of the AIDS battle Even in the throes of patient care and research on HIV transmission between infected mothers and their babies, Dr. James Jarvis (A75) is thinking about Aristotle. In September he lectured at the Annapolis campus on the relationship between modern biology and Aristotle's approach to living things, arguing that the language oftoday's medical research owes more to Aristotle than Descartes. Combining patient care with research, Jim fmds himself constantly referring to his St. John's background as he deals with both the emotional and intellectual sides of his work. Jim's field is clinical immunology and rheumatology. He is an assistant professor of pediatrics at Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit and an associate in the Department of Immunology/Microbiology at Wayne State University. After graduating from St. John's, he earned his medical degree from the University of Vermont College of Medicine. He was a resident in pediatrics and a fellow in rheumatology, and for a while served as the only pediatrician in a small town in South Carolina. "What Aristotle tells us is that you have to look at living things in a certain way, because that's the way they are," says Jim. As an example of why mod- 1985 1978 In his second year as an assistant professor of mathematics at Clinton Community College in Plattsburgh, New York, is Winfield Ihlow (A). He, his wife, and his son moved to the north country of New York in 1993. The campus "is in an old 'Grand Hotel' on a high bluff overlooking Lake Champlain, with a magnificent view of the lake, the Green Mountains of Vermont, and the Adirondack Mountains of New York. We have wonderful summers and great winter sports," he writes. Winfield is interested in forming an alumni seminar group and invites Johnnies in the northeast New York, northwest Vermont, and Montreal areas to write him at: Clinton Community College, Lake Shore Road, Plattsburgh, N.Y. 12901. Philip Jemielita (A) reports that after four years working in Holland for Avery Corporation, he has taken a finance director's position for Henkel-Ecolab in Dusseldorf, Germany. He and Kim and their two boys, Matthew (8) and Thomas ( 5) will be relocating in the spring. Another Johnnie in the international community, Chris Olson (A), has moved with his wife Marcela and sons Conrad (8) and Axel (3) from Sao Paulo, Brazil, to Waterloo, Belgium. Chris handles Citibank's relationsips with the European Union institutions and major Belgian banks. He made his annual visit to St. John's in July, when he enjoyed seeing old friends and reading Leon Kass 's new book on the ethics of eating. Robert Covelli (A) recently founded Luna Court, a new literary in the southwest. The monthly will feature interviews with est::tbllsne:o. up-and-coming writers, original short fiction, book reviews and several columns. Two of these columns will feature reviews or reconsiderations of great books which either slipped through the cracks of history or were forgotten over the years. The second column focuses on the kernel of ideas: Did an apple really 14 fall on Isaac Newton's head? Where did Jazz really begin? Anyone interested in subscribing or contributing to Luna Court should contact Robert at 544 East Coronado, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 505-983-4788. THE REPORTER Far-flung alumna Maggie Kinser Saiki (A) writes from Japan that she and her husband Hiromu Saidi have bought a century-old thatched roof farmhouse in the mountains north of Kyoto. They are living peacefully among the cedars and beech trees and raising Hannah Jane (3) and Thomas Korekiyo Saiki, born August 5, 1994. Nancy Pound Townsend (A) recently joined the Directors Guild of America as a second assistant director. She is currently living in Los Angeles, "pining for the East Coast." 1986 Edith Hill Updike (A) received her MS. in journalism from Columbia University in May 1994. She will reutrn to Tokyo under a generous fellowship from the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission. She hopes to meet up with Johnnies James Kennealley, Stephen McShane, Maggie Kinser-Saiti, and Chuk Besher. 1987 Chris (A) and Sabrina Wald Howell (A88) announce the birth of Zebediah Christopher Quinein Howell, on August 21, 1994. Todd B. Peterson (A), a lieutenant in the Navy, recently reported for duty with Helicopter Mine Countermeasures Squadron 15, in Alameda Calif. Todd joined the Navy in June 1988. Brother Robert reports that Smith (A) lives in Boston, has a son named Theodore and works in a theology formed when an Episand a merged and opened in a new building. Eleanor has been selected the 1994 for Economic Justice the West Coast Regional Office of Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports. Her initial focus during the two-year fellowship will be on health issues affecting low-in:.. Jim Jarvis (left) discussesresearch on HIV with fellow physician/researcher Steve Holland (A79) when both visited the Annapolis campus to participate in a career forum for students interested in medicine. ern cell biology can be considered more Aristotelian than Cartesian, he cites what happens to a cell as its pH level begins to fall outside of the physiologic range. "We can give a whole series of things that are inevitable. Enzy~es no longer work efficiently when the pH level falls. Our final understandmg of that process is that those enzymes have a function and ~hen they are denatured, they lose that function." Although we use a Cartesian approach to measure and describe what is happening in the cell, that approach is informed by our understanding of the cell as a part of an organism. Jim is fascinated by the kinds of questions raised during research; he says his daily patient care experiences influence his research directions. "The tremendous beauty of human struggle and vulnerability is something that motivates you every day in the lab," he says. "You want to improve the conditions under which people struggle." It was his interest in the immune system that led him to work with HIV positive children; his focus is the transmission of the virus from mother to child. Jim feels that although progress is being made in understanding the disease, there is still a wide gap between research and actually making patients' lives better. "Young women between the ages of20 and 25 are most at risk and represent the fastest growing number of AIDS cases," says Jim. They become infected between the ages of 15 and 20, and the symptoms begin to appear as they enter their childbearing period. He warns, "If you ~ru;tted ~o wipe out the human species the thing to do is pick an asymptomatic, mvanably lethal, sexually transmitted disease." Outside the field of medicine, Jim pursues his interests in literature (he's recently read Proust, and there's always a book of poetry on his bedside history (he's reading Stephen Ambrose's parallel biographies of General Custer and Crazy Horse), and his family (he enjoys coaching his kids' soccer by Barbara Goyette come and consumers. She has more than six years advocating to protect the rights of tenants, children, and persons with disabilities. Eleanor received her law degree from New York University School of Law in 1993 and she has done advocacy work for groups in New Jersey, New York City, Seattle, Massachusetts, and West Vrrginia. Sara Catania (A) received her master's in journalism from UC Berkeley and is now a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times. Lael Gold (SF) has received a Claud �Alumni Notes W. Place fellowship for her study toward a doctorate in comparative literature at the University of California at Berkeley. 1991 Dianne Cowan (A) is pursuing her Master of Architecture/Master ofArchitecture and Urban Design at Washington University in St. Louis. She says that alumni and students who are interested in architecture or particularly urban design should feel free to contact her at : 6602 Clems Ave., Apt. #3W, St. Louis, MO 63130. Julia Goldberg (SF) was awarded the Creative Writing Fellowship in Fiction for 1994-95 from the University of New Mexico's Graduate English Department, where she is completing a master's degree. Recently moved to Pennsylvania, Benjamin F. Moss IV (A) is working toward a masters in theology at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. Anne Marlow (SF) and Kenneth David Geter (SF) were married in August in Snoqualmie Falls, Washington. Anne Grabborn (A) and Marcus Hunt (SF95) were married on August 16, 1994, in Concord, Mass. Oliver Reynai (SF92) was Marcus' best man and Rick Redington (SF94) was an usher. The couple reports: "After an all too briefhoneymoon in Bermuda, we have returned to Santa Fe for Marcus' senior year." Seth Padner (A) received his B.A. in history from the University of Wisconsin in 1992 and is currently teaching remedial science classes at Roberto Clemente High School in Chicago. Steve Zell (SF) announces his decision to attend Yeshiva in Jerusalem. He intends to become a rabbi and return to the United States to build a congregation. Scott Saxman: Building a Future in Furniture by Sus3an Borden In the enclave-establishing tradition of Johnnies who've lived in Chicago, Paris, and Tokyo, nearly ten percent of the Annapolis class of '94 has settled in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. Five of these new graduates live in the same house; two of them, Scott Saxman and Paul Morf, have gone into business together as Saxman and Morf Furnituremakers. During their senior year, Saxman taught woodworking to Morf and his wife Aimee LaLone. This past summer, while Saxman was wondering what to do with his future, Morf called to suggest that the three move in together somewhere and start a business. Saxman eagerly agreed, but they remained uncertain where they would live until they and several friends attended the June 10 wedding of classmates Lori Williamson and David Clement in St. Paul. At the wedding, classmate Beth Martin realized she liked Minneapolis enough to move there. Saxman, Morf, and LaLone decided to join her, and convinced Muneet Bakshi to complete their household. Now, Bakshi works for Ritz Camera and drives a schoolbus, Martin works in a bowling alley and as a restaurant prep cook, and LaLone works for an architect while Saxman and Morf The Minnesota Crew: David Clement, Lori Clement, Scott Saxman, Muneet Bakshi, Aimee LaLone, Paul Mort, Beth Martin build their business. Saxman's interest in woodworking is natural, if not genetic. His grandfather is a cabinet maker whose pieces are in the White House, the Dupont collection, and at Monticello. "But he's not really a teacher," Saxman says. "I was just around it all my life." Even without direct instruction, his grandfather must have found a way to communicate his skills. Saxman recounts, almost with surprise: "One day, I was in the St. John's woodshop, and Amy Wuebbels wanted a lap desk. I hadn't done anything for money, but I did it and it worked." Saxman exhibited his first commissioned piece in the 1993 Mitchell Art Gallery Community Show. Later he sold his work to other community members including Chris Nelson, the Cohens, and the Higueras. These days, Saxman and Morf divide their efforts between custom orders and experimental pieces for Art Borders, an art gallery in Minneapolis. The two seem to enjoy choosing the names that are required for their gallery pieces. Of their current project, a cabinet in Australian lacewood, teak, and maple, Saxman says "it's thin at the bottom and gets wider at the top, so we're calling it Dr. Caligari's Cabinet." 1992 Catherine Emily Barrier (A) is in her second year of law school at UNCChapel Hill. She asks whether there are any Johnnies near her, and gives her address as: 109 Coleridge Ct, Carrboro, N.C.27510, email:ceb7991 @email.tmc.edu 1993 Working at a homeless shelter in downtown Milwaukee, Carmen Denk (A) says that she fmally gets "to work in a job helping people. I'm learning much about other backgrounds and cultures, and am being stretched in numerous ways. I'm slowly realizing ways in which my SJC education has improved my character and helped prepare me for a career in counseling." Millicant Roberts (A) writes that after spending five months in Toulouse, France, she's returned to Oxford, Mississippi, to work with Project LEAP (Learn, Earn and Prosper), an organization devoted to the education of AFDC recipients. 1994 Kevin Johnson (A), who's living in Brighton, Mass., is an administrative assistant for a small government agency that advises the legislature on health care policy. "It beats bussing tables, I' 11 tell you that ri:LUch," he writes. RE-EVALUATING SEMINAR DISCUSSIONS In Santa Fe last July I attended the 25th reunion of the class of '69, which for me was a heartwarming experience of reuniting with St. John's classmates, some of whom I hadn't seen in 25 years. The weekend's activities were beautifully orchestrated, well-planned, and well-organized. The event that probably meant the most to me was the Saturday afternoon "unseminar" led by Joe Reynolds. After the unseminar was over, we were so fired up with ideas that somehow I got nominated to do something with them-so here they are ... A good dozen of us showed up at the unseminar. Joe's opening question was how the St. John's readings had affected our lives, but we quickly plunged into the more emotional territory of what we felt was wrong with many seminars we attended during 1965-1969. The biggest disturbance most of us felt was that we were never taught how to have a discussion. There we were, fresh out of high school, with most of us never having experienced a single real discussion in school, let alone four hours of them every week! Yet we were expected to sit down and just know how to do it. The result was often a freefor-all, with the most aggressive students dominating, and the quieter students sitting back, unable to contribute. Often, the tutors showed little leadership in mediating the argumentative discussions or insisting on fairness and common courtesy among the students. At the end of those seminars we frequently felt frustrated and dejected. Now, we of the unseminar are not here just to criticize; we have specific suggestions. We suggest that every freshman take a seminar on "How to Have a Seminar": how to listen, how to let the other person fmish before you speak, how to summarize what the other person said before you say your piece, how to stick to the topic, and so forth. These techniques of group dynamics are being taught in some (lucky) high schools in the Touchstones Program. But just taking a seminar (or series of seminars) on group dynamics will do nothing unless these techniques are specifically practiced. We suggest that at the end of every Great Books semi- nar, students take the last 15 minutes and analyze how they carried on the discussion that evening and critique themselves. Selfobservation never becomes habitual; it must be consciously and continuously practiced. And it must be shared with each other. It's not only the students who have to learn how to carry on a discussion, but also tutors. How many of them went to colleges where they had seminars discussing great ideas? Just because they're tutors doesn't mean they are knowledgeable about how to lead a seminar. So there should be tutor training in seminar leadership. We also felt the number of students in a seminar, 18-22, was too large. Why do two tutors need to be present? Why not split the group into 10-12 students, each led by one tutor? It's a much less intimidating environment, especially for students who are not confident in speaking in such a large group. And why do only the tutors come up with the opening questions? Why don't the students get a chance to do this? Why not have a rotating assignment, where each stucontinued on page 17 WINTER 1995 15 �Winter 1995 Alumni St. John's College Association News Glenn Ballard, S68, editor Thomas Geyer, A68, communications committee chair ALUMNI ASSOCIATION ESTABLISHES CAREER NETWORK Professionals in the field of placement say that 70 percent of the time people get jobs through person-to-person contact. Only 30 percent of jobs come through search firms or agencies, direct mail or newspapers. The Alumni Association and the Placement Directors of both campuses have initiated an Alumni Network to assist recent graduates of the college in their career development. Help is especially needed in today's difficult employment market, with keen competition for graduate school admissions, and with many new graduates heavily burdened with debt from their four years at St. John's. Objectives of the Alumni Network The purpose of networking is to provide assistance to the graduate in any way possible. Assistance may come from a word of encouragement or advice. A professional or mentor relationship may develop. It may be that he or she knows of a job opening and can direct the graduate to that opportunity, though that may be rare. Bill Tilles (A59), chair of the Placement Committee of the Alumni Association, says: "This is not a 'provide a job for a graduate' campaign. It employs the effective networking techniques in use throughout the country today to assist the graduate with information, suggestions, and contacts so to the right The Alumni Network will smooth the transition to the real world of work or study after St. John's. Graduates will have immediate contact with people who understand the unique qualifications and concerns of a Johnnie. Not all new graduates will have a clear idea about career choices. 16 THE REPORTER There may be graduates who are interested in meeting with an alumnus or alumna just to talk about the future and get some perspective on "what's out there." The contribution of the alumnus/ a may be a discussion of the qualifications for specific fields, jobs, or graduate schools. The alumnus/a may wish to recommend the Justin Burke (A87) was aided in his job search by alumni. graduate to someone else with whom he or she can further develop an approach to a career field, a graduate school program, or close in on a specific job. All of these contacts will help the graduate better understand his or her options and make the next contact in the network more meaningful. Justin Burke (A87) found a job working through alumni, and he brought the idea of an alumni network to the Placement Office and the Association. Justin has made himself available to who are seeking information that will lead to a career opportunity. "Directly after graduation," he said, "I obtained a position that was advertised through the Placement Office by Jonathan Zavin (A68). Within two years, I moved on to a small yet rapidly growing company where I oversaw employee hiring. Wanting to return the favor of the· employment opportunity provided by Jonathan, I contacted the Placement Office and offered my experience and assistance to students making the transition from St. John's directly into the job market. I figured that with such a common basis of understanding, each graduate should not have to reinvent the wheel and could receive helpful insight from experienced alumni." Getting Started The Placement Directors are currently contacting alumni interested in participating in the network. According to Jennifer Chenoweth, Placement Director on the Santa Fe campus, a list has been compiled of more than 400 alumni who are interested in the network. In addition to occupational information, both Jennifer and Karen Holland, Placement Director in Annapolis, will be collecting biographical information in their interviews. Such biographical information will help graduates identify those alumni with whom they have common interests. When a student inquires about a career field and seeks advice on alumni contacts, they will be given background as well as vocational information on the prospective alumni contact. The Placement Directors will send a postcard to the alumnus/a alerting him or her to the upcoming call. The rest is up to the graduate and the alumnus/a. The ripple effect of an Alumni Network of 400-plus members represents thousands potential contacts, each with some of information or specific assistance. The Alumni Network will be invaluable to the graduates willing to work diligently at the process. -Bill Tilles, Annapolis '59 Chairperson, SJC Alumni Association Placement Committee Chapter Profile: PORTLAND Alumni in northwest Oregon and southwest Washington, who have shown an ongoing interest in forming and sustaining a chapter for seminars and social events, met again January 21, 1995, for an alumni-led seminar on Shakespeare's ''The Tempest:' Other recent events have been held in Portland-so this one took place in Salem. Seminars on Shakespeare, forged on the native strength of his perfect English, often attain great fluidity and vigor, as if by some Pentecostal visit of the Bard himself. For exact time and location of chapter events, contact Rachel Sullivan at 503629-5838. The recent history of the Portland-area group begins on May 31 , 1992, when Santa Fe tutor Glen Freitas led a "sampler seminar'' on Flannery O'Connor's short Story "Parker's Back." The seminar, held in downtown Portland, attracted about 30 alumni-some from as far away as Eugene, 100 miles to the south. Subsequent phone calls and several potlucks revealed that about half of the alumni living in the Eugene-Portland-Vancouver area had an interest in seminars, social events, or both. In March, 1993, about 15 alumni enjoyed a staged reading of "Fever," a new play by nationally known playwright Sharon Whitney, afterward sought comment, questions, and Three weeks later, tutor Carey Stickney conducted an animated seminar on Sophocles's play "Philoctetes." About 20 alumni attended, with many staying for dinner at one of Portland's best Greek restaurants. Our most recent scheduled event occurred in January, 1994, with tutor Torrance Kirby leading 25 �15 an opportunity to ask the openOr, not have the whole group come a dozen opening qm!stlons and the group decide what que:stiCm or questions to focus on? not have a rotating "observer"? This is someone who doesn't in the discussion for the seminar, but who gives a at the end of the seminar. The observer gives feedback to the group on his/her observations of how the group carried on the discussion, what went well, and what needs improvement. The role of observer changes from student to student each so that everyone gets a chance. St. John's is dedicated to teachstudents how to think. But the college needs to be just as dedicated in teaching students how to analyze their own discussion process with each other. After all, we live in a world with other people, and we are always sharing ideas. One of the joys I have in coming back to St. John's as an "adult" is the week-long Summer Seminars. Everyone is so considerate! The seminars are usually very satisfying because we've learned a lot about how to carry on a discussion in a group since we were students. We must improve the process of discussion if we want to improve the content of the seminars. Certainly, St. John's has a bias toward letting students figure out things for themselves, but I think sometimes the slowness of that process can hinder growth. We could let children in grade school just "figure out for themselves" how to read-but if we did, many of them would never learn how, so we speed up the process very deliberately. So, why not speed up everyone's evolution in college and assist them more in the process for group dynamics? Why shouldn't you feel some satisfaction at the end of a seminar? Not because you have "answers," but because you shared your ideas, listened to other peoples' ideas, and evolved a larger picture in the synergy of discovery. Of course, we in the unseminar talked about many more things than I've put into this letter, and I invite my fellow classmates to write to The Reporter about their perceptions. We all agreed that we would have another unseminar at our next reunion, that this would be a tradition among us. Our unseminar was a a very satisfying process and we heartily recommend it to all class reunions. r n u• Association is inclusive of all alumni and does not discriminate on the basis of race. religion. color. sex. sexual orientation. age. national or ethnic origin. or against the handicapped. \snow updating his list names, phone numbers, and postal email addresses. Contact Dale with current information. ADD: A member whose current dues are unpaid is not in good standing may not vote at any meeting, in person orby proxy. Amendment to Article IV, Board of Directors, Section II, ALBUQUERQUE Harold M. Morgan, Jr. (505)256-0294 ANNAPOLIS Joel D. Lehman (410)956-2814 AUSTIN Joe Reynolds (51 BOSTON Alvin Aronson (617)566-6657 BUFFALO/ ROCHESTERnORONTO Hank Constantine (716)586-5393 CHICAGO Rick Lightburn (312)667-0068 Amanda Fuller (312)337-41 05 DALLAS/FORT WORTH Suzanne Doremus (817)496-8571 Jonathan Hustis (214)340-8442 LOS ANGELES Julia Takahashi (310)434-7624 MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL Glenda Eoyang (612)783-1405 or (612)379-3883 SACRAMENTO Adrianne Laidlaw (916)362-5131 Helen Feeley (916)452-1 082 ST. LOUIS Lorin Cuoco (314)935-5576 or (314)725-8972 SAN FRANCISCO/ NORTHERN CALIFORNIA Alex Poulsen (51 0)430-1924 .,..-.,,~ -Beth Kuper (S69) NEW YORK Justin Burke (212)228-8423 or (2121 )620-3955 SANTA FE John Pollak (505)983-2144 Cincy Jokela (505)984-61 03 PHILADELPHIA Jim Schweidel (215)836-7632 SEATTLE Jim Doherty (206)937 -8886 PORTLAND Rachael Sullivan (503)629-5838 WASHINGTON, D.C. Sam Stiles (301 )424-9119 The Reporter welcomes letters, comments, and corrections on issues of interest to readers. Letters may be edited for clarity and/or length. Please address to The Reporter, St. John's College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404 or The Reporter, St. John's College, 1160 Camino de la Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87501 WINTER 1995 17 �OBITUARIES Mr. Lampee served in the Mediterranean Sea during World War II. He is survived by his wife, Sallie Lampee, two sons, one daughter, and four grandchildren. JAMES E. CONNOR: Board Member James E. Connor, a member of the St. John's College Board of Visitors and Governors, died in Dallas on October 30. Mr. Connor was a member of the board from 1991 until his untimely death. He served as chairman of the board's audit committee and was a member of the finance committee. He also served as a member of the Executive Committee of The Campaign for Our Fourth Century. "St. John's has lost a true friend and a strong leader," said John Agresto, president of the Santa Fe campus. "Jim gave generously and worked tirelessly on behalf of this college. He also, for many of us, was a close personal friend. His dedication and commitment to St. John's will always be remembered, and he will be deeply missed." Outside of his contributions to St. John's, Mr. Connor led a full and active life. He received his bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees from Columbia University, where he was an assistant professor of political science from 1965-68. During this time he also was selected as a White House fellow and was a staff assistant to the director of the U.S. Bureau of the Budget. From 1971-74 he held several executive positions in the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, the Department of Commerce and the Office of Economic Opportunity. From 1974-77 he served in the Ford Administration as secretary to the Cabinet and staff secretary to the president. After leaving Washington, Mr. Connor became the managing director at First Boston Corporation in New York until his retirement in 1989. Following retirement, Mr. Connor also served on the board of directors for Suncoast Industries, where he was interim president and chief executive officer during their restructuring, and he recently had joined the board of the Neuroscience Institute, part of the Scripps Institute in La Jolla, California. In addition, Mr. Connor found the time to write two books, one on the Soviet banking system, and another on the state of America today, entitled, Everything Old is New Again, which will be published posthumously. Mr. Connor was an amateur astronomer, military historian, gardener, and golfer. ROBERT BUTMAN: Creative Writing Teacher Robert Hawes Butman, who taught creative writing in the fine arts program in Annapolis since 1991, died on October 21. He was 70. Mr. Butman received a master's degree in English at the University of North Carolina. His history with St. John's goes back to 1953 when he began a two-year teaching internship on a Ford Foundation grant. After teaching at Haverford and Bryn Mawr colleges for many years, he returned to St. John's in 1979, when he coled a freshman seminar and directed a production of the Oresteia. When he retired and moved to Annapolis, he began to teach the writing course. Mr. Butman's wit, attention to detail, imagination, and love ofteaching combined to make him a sought-after instructor. GEORGE L. DARLEY: Lawyer George L. Darley (A24) died in September. He retired in 1966 after working as a staff lawyer for several insurance companies. A Baltimore native, he attended Polytechnic Institute. He was an All-American quarterback at St. John's and was known for his punting and broken-field running. After graduating from St.' John's, he coached at Johns Hopkins for eleven years. He served as assistant coach and chief scout for the football and lacrosse teams, and he became head basketball coach and head football coach. He resigned his coaching duties in 193 5 as the university was de-emphasizing intercollegiate sports. 18 THE REPORTER MILBURN ALEXANDER BUCKLER: Class of '25 Milburn Alexander Buckler, a member of the class of 1925 and a resident of Calvert County, Md., died in June. He graduated from preparatory school in Annapolis before entering St. John's. At the college he was president of the Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity, and Battalion Major of the Cadet Corps. Mr. Buckler worked in a variety of occupations; he was principal of Calvert County High School, an engineer with the Navy at Solomons, an executive with Woodward and Lothrop in Washington, and was manager of his father's farm. From the 1940s until his retirement in 1964, he taught in Calvert County. LEWIS SCHEFFENACKER: Retired Salesman Lewis E.Scheffenacker (A34) died in October in Milford, Delaware. A former resident of Roland Park in Baltimore, he was a retired salesman. Born and reared on Guilford Avenue, he atttended Baltimore city schools and graduated from St. John's, where he was an all-American lacrosse player. ROBERT H. LAMPEE: Newspaper Ad Executive Robert H. Lampee (A35) died in August in Whitehall, Michigan. He had been a newspaper advertising executive for 3 5 years, beginning his career at the Grand Rapids Herald. He also owned and operated a calligraphy studio for 15 years. ISRAEL GREENGOLD: Annapolis Merchant Israel "Sonny" Greengold (A3 8) died in August in Annapolis. Born in 1915, he attended Annapolis High School, St. John's, and Baltimore Business College. During World War II he served in the Army. Following the war he returned to Annapolis and the family business, a men's and boy's clothing store that was started by his parents in 1908. He was co-owner of Greengold's for 25 years before retiring in 1980. Mr. Greengold was involved in many community activities in Annapolis, including Congregation Kneseth Israel, Amos Masonic Lodge No. 226, the Jewish War Veterans, the American Heart Association, and Anne Arundel Medical Center. ELLEN LUFF: Lawyer and Women's Advocate Ellen Luff(A61) died ofbrain cancer in November in California. Born in Washington, D.C., Ms. Luff was a graduate of St. John's and the University ofBaltimore Law School. She was involved in politics, feminism, holistic health, and spiritual development. She worked with the Legal Aid Bureau and was an assistant state's attorney in Baltimore following law school. Later she became an associate attorney with the law firm ofBlumenthal, May and Downs. She formed the partnership of Luff and Perkins with Robert Perkins of Annapolis. In 1992, she recieved an award for her pioneering efforts in founding the Women's Law Center in Baltimore. Ms. Luff helped write and worked for passage of the Maryland Equal Rights Amendment adopted by the General Assembly in 1972. After that, she traveled around the world studying the status of women in a variety of legal systems. She was an active tree farmer, herbalist, reflexologist, and a graduate of the Baltimore School of Massage. She was on the board of directors of the Annapolis Holistic Health Community. TAMES BARRETT: Retired Officer Lt. Col. James Herman Barrett (A41) was killed in a shooting at the Pensacola, Florida, abortion clinic in July. Lt. Col. Barrett and his wife June were volunteering as escorts to Dr. John Britton and were with him outside the clinic when a gunman opened fire. Both Lt. Col. Barrett and Dr. Britton were killed, and Mrs. Barrett was injured. The Barretts had lived in Annapolis for many years and had retired to Florida. Lt. Col. Barrett served in World War II as a navigator and then taught elementary school in Maryland. DONALD BOUNDS: Baltimore Accountant Donald Bounds (A48) died of cancer at his home in Lutherville, Md., in August. Born and raised in Salisbury, Md~, he atended Wicomico High School and St. John's College before earning a degree in accounting from the University of Baltimore. He was a partner for 20 years in the Baltimore income tax service firm of Bert, Bell, and Bounds, which was formerly known as Katz and Bounds. Earlier he had worked for Commercial Credit Corporation in Salisbury and Washington, D.C., and as Manager ofValuation Department at Baltimore Life Insurance Company in Baltimore. He was a member of the board of directors of E.S. Adkins and Company in Salisbury, and was a former softball coach for the Lutherville-Timonium Recreation Council. He was an owner and breeder of standardbred race horses and a member of the United States Trotting Association. Mr. Bounds served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War. He is survived by his wife, Eleanor Adkins Bounds, a daughter, Alicia Bounds, a grandson, and his mother, E. Lucille Bounds. ROBERT SPAETH: Former Tutor and Assistant Dean Mr. Spaeth, a tutor on the Annapolis campus from 1963 to 1979, died on November 28, 1994 in Saulk Rapids, Minnesota. Mr. Spaeth also served as Assistant Dean, and he was involved in local Annapolis politics. He taught at St. Johns University in his native Minnesota after leaving Annapolis. The following is written by Geoffrey Comber. There were many sides to Bob Spaeth and they all came together in the complex person whose company I always found enjoyable, though at times he could be irritatingly stubborn. But the very last thing that anyone could call Bob was dull or boring. Politics, science, jazz, religion, history, and so much more were activities he made a part of himself. And one of the keys that made the many facets of Bob into the one whole person that you wanted to know and be with was that, for him, all those things that mattered to him had to be activities in which he could actually engage himself. If they were not activities that could truly affect him, make changes, shape and make connections with his life, they were not for him. In an address he gave to freshmen at St. John's University when he was Dean of Arts there in 1984, he said, "Conversation is worthwhile in proportion to the importance of the idea discussed. And ideas are important in proportion to their connection to the worldnature, persons, society, God." In tum, it was important to him that those same matters, when he spoke with others about them, cor1nected personally with whomsoever he was speaking. This was true of continued on page 24 �The Program PRECEPTORIALS WHAT'S HOT AND WHAT'S NOT In deciding which preceptorial to sign up for, St. John's students actually get to exercise the subject-choosing faculty of the mind. Whether that faculty had been forcibly restrained during the rigors of allrequiredness or had just been gratefully napping with one less demand to worry about, it still had to shake itself awake and decide. Among the many positives: Students break out of the seminar mold for eight weeks. They concentrate on one subject. They new conversation-mates, they might not have shared an interest. own for choosing reading or study matter *Messiaen's "Quatour," for piano, ,. ,. ..............,...- violin, and cello, composed in a Nazi concentration camp in Silesia. Readings include Elie Wiesel's novel Night, Jean-Paul Sartre's essay "Existentialism," passages from the Book of Revelation, Proposed and field are to the Holocaust Museum and to a Burke. doctrine of or Nature, the unity of mind and body, and the possibility and limits of human freedom or blessedness. Leader: Mr. Cohen. *Plato's Republic and the question: What effect does justice have on the soul of the just person.. .Is it good? Is it profitable? Does it lead to happiness? Leader: Mr. Dink. *Seven Heidegger essays: "On the Essence of Truth," "What Calls for Thinking?," "The Thing," "The Question Concerning Technology," "The Origin of the Work of Art," "The Way to Language," and "Poetically Man Dwells." Leader: Ms. Haigney. *Thucydides. Leader: Mr. AJI.'-''AJS'-'A"· *Rousseau's Emile. Leader: Mr. Maistrellis. Leader: Mr. Kutler. *"The Clouds" The can be read as a of art and also as a source, the only source that gives some hint of the way his contemporaries view Socrates. Leader: Mr. Radista. *Faulkner's Go Down, Moses; The Sound and the Fury; Requiem for a Nun. Leader: Mr. Sachs. *Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics by Kant. Leader: Mr. Sageng. *Aristotle's Metaphysics. Leader: Mr. Schoener. *The problem of Odysseus, as por- trayed in Homer and in Sophocles' "Ajax" and "Philoctetes." Leader: Mr. Schulman. *Plato's Sophist. Leader: Ms. Seeger. *Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter. Leader: Mr. Sparrow. *Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, with a concentration on the last twothirds, most parts of which are not read for senior seminar. Leader: Mr. Williamson. *The poetry and essays of T.S. Eliot, read in chronological order. Texts include: "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," "The Waste Land," "Four Quartets," "Reflections on Vers Libre," "Tradition and the Individual Talent," "The Perfect ""The Function of Criticism," and "What is a Classic?" Leader: Mr. Yee. *Is there History? Works by Hegel, Nietzsche, and Foucault as a of how response to the affects truth. Leader: Mr. Zeiderman. *Miguel De Unamuno's The Tragic Sense ofLife. Leader: George Aigla. *Aristotle's Politics. Leader: David Bolotin. *Kant's of Judgement. Leader: James Carey. *Three French novels: Rousseau's La Nouvelle Heloise, Mme. de La Fayette's La Princesse de Cleves, andLes Liaisons Jar.!o-P.rP.n'sP..« by Laclos. Leader: James ..._...._,_,.""'·UJLl"""' from Claude Levi-Strauss. How can we understand another culture without sacrificing it to our logic and our logic to it? Leader: John Cornell. *Machiavelli's The Prince and Aristotle's Politics. Leader: Janet Dougherty. *Shakespeare Tragedies: Macbeth, Othello, King Lear. Leader: Elizabeth Engel. *Shakespeare's The Tempest. Leader: James Forkin. *Proust's Swann s Way. Leader: Glenn Freitas. *Thoreau's Walden and "Civil Disobedience." Leader: William Kerr. *Augustine's Confessions. Leader: Torrance Kirby. *Hume's Treatise on Human Nature. Leader: Georgia Knight. *A study of the holocaust through the testimony of its victims, perpetrators and resistors. Leader: Philip LeCuyer. *Dostoevski 's Crime and Punishment. Leader: Basia Miller. *Aristotle's Metaphysics. Leader: Timothy Miller. *Husserl 's Cartesian Meditations. Leader: Victoria Mora. *Jung's psychological essays. Leader: Gerald Proietti. *Plato's Laws. Leader: Robert Richardson. *Archimedes. Leader: Robert Sacks. *Mallarme's poetry. Leader: Thomas Scally. *Selected Trinitarian and Christo logical Discourses of Sts. Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus the Confessor. Leader: David Starr. . *Cervantes's Don Quixote. Leader: Joan Silver. *Madison's notes from the Constitutional Convention. Leader: Jack Steadman. *Plato's The Statesman. Leader: by some of the mt1eH!ge11t writers on film such as r:....... u.._ . ..,u_J,.. , Andre Serge L1e:gtr1ea KnlCaller, and others. Leader: Venkatesh. *Godel's Proof. Leader: Hans Von Brie sen. ........ .., ....... AUf''" -'-'H.A.:>L\.-AH' Recommended Readings and Books ofNote And the Band Played On: Politics, People and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts. A stunning expose of how AIDS was left to spread uncontrolled during the early eighties. No one who had anything to do with ignoring the problem is left unscathed, from the president and the media, to the medical and the gay communities. Well written and well documented, this is great reading for anyone interested in AIDS and how people attempted to fight one of the worst diseases of this century. -Recommended by John Schroeder, Graduate Institute student and Public Relations assistant, Santa Fe The Evolution ofCooperation, by Robert Axelrod. Under the influence of Machiavelli, social Darwinism, and scarcity of resources, one might be led to ignore the sheer obviousness of cooperation as a natural survival mechanism, in nature as well as in business. This volume, centered on the iterated prisoner's dilemma, but including both bacterial behavior and warfare, is a wonderful antidote to the notion of the world as unremittingly competitive. The limits on cooperation are also discussed. -Recommended by Hans Von Briesen, Director of Laboratories, Santa Fe A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. By the same author who wrote The World According to Garp, this is a satirical romp through life in the United States. It tells the story of the son of a granite quarry owner who believes that he is God's instrument, and he is. -Recommended by John Schroeder, Santa Fe Nature as Landscape, Dwelling and Understanding, by Kraft E. von Maltzahn. Human interaction with the natural world has created serious environmental problems. InNature as Landscape Kraft von Maltzahn examines the 'unnatural' relationship that has developed between human beings and nature. Drawing on evidence from philosophy and the history of science, he argues that humans have become estranged from nature and shows how this estrangement has evolved. Von Maltzahn focuses on how we experience aspects of nature in terms of their outer appearance, such as landscape, and contends that the naturalistic scientific tradition has taught us to divorce ourselves from the natural world, to become impartial observers rather than participants. He examines the nature of the human life-world as merely subjective. Drawing on phenomenology, semiotics, visual thinking, gestalt psychology, and Paleness arguments about tacit knowing, he offers an alternative way of perceiving the natural world that would reunite humans and nature. -Recommended by Torrance Kirby, tutor, Santa Fe A Guide to Oriental Classics, from Columbia University Press, is a bibliographic tour of the great books of the Islamic, Indian, Chinese and Japanese traditions. For each work information is given on translations, secondary sources, and possible topics for discussion. This is an excellent resource for anyone exploring Eastern territory for the first time: just reading the table of contents is illuminating. Recommended for those in search of alumni seminar topics. -Recommended by Jennie Packard, Admissions Secretary for the Graduate Program in Eastern Classics and pilot program alumna Liberal Education and the Canon, by Laura Christian Ford. Laura Ford is Associate Provost of Wake Forest University, and, accordingly, her dealings with the canon wars are, for once, completely practical. Under six headings, from "Sexual Harassment" to "The Death Penalty," she shows how canonical texts can be used to throw light on current issues. The first case of"explicitly bartered sex," it turns out, is documented in Odyssey V: Calypso extracts sexual favors from Odysseus who, being mortal, is subordinate and wants, moreover, to go home. -Reviewed by Eva Brann, Dean, Annapolis WINTER 1995 19 �Scholarship I to to. by Barbara Goyette Every year two tutors on the Annapolis from the Nathat enables them to devote more time to a single and of interest usual teaching schedule allows. year Michael Dink will be concentrating on a constellation of questions arising from study of Plato, whose works have fascinated him since his student days at St. John's (he graduated in 1975). The National Endowment for the Humanities endows a in Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance Thought and a Thought; a tutor holds chair for two years, studying year leading a gtvmg a group end of the second year. When one tutor is the year of study on an "ancient" topic, another is second year of work on a "modem" As Mr. begins thinking about Plato, Peter Kalkavage is in his second year and is leading a faculty study group on Hegel's Phenomenology ofSpirit. The NEH grant frees the tutors from part of their teaching load for both years. Defining a complex ofquestions Mr. Dink's questions deal with the most basic grounds of philosophy. He explains: "One could call the project 'Philosophy and the Human Good in Plato.' How is the claim that philosophy is good related to other claims made about the good for man?" This subject involves a complex of issues, beginning with a discussion of the goals of philosophy: are they practical-for the guidance of human life-or are they theoretical-knowledge for its own sake? An attendant question is whether the goals of philosophy are achievable; can one still defend the goodness ofphilosophy if its goals cannot be reached? "Achievability is a big issue in the Platonic dialogues," says Mr. Dink. Philosophy is sometimes called an impossible task, and the dialogues often suggest that philosophy is reaching for something that's beyond human grasp. The "Symposium," which deals with different kinds of eros or love, will be one focus of study. "The linking of eros to philosophy is one of the things that brings up the question of achievability," 20 THE REPORTER good for man is posed: pleasure versus intelligence." to Already well-used, Michael DiRk's copy of the "Republic" will get even more use over the next two years as he pursues a long-held interest in the basic questions of philsoophy. Photo by John Bildahl says Mr. Dink. Diatoma gives an account of eros as a child of poverty and resource, and not as a god. She claims that gods don't philosophize-because they are already wise. "So if one achieved wisdom, that would be in a way the death of philosophy. Philosophy qua philosophy is essentially lacking in wisdom." As to whether there might be an intrinsic good in the activity of searching itself, Mr. Dink-laughing-offers an example of what that might mean for the enterprise of philosophy: "Suppose you participate in a sport like basketball with the purpose ofwinning a game, and you do not win. Does that mean the activity has not been good? You could say the exercise was good for us or that certain kinds of excellence have been achieved. In a similar way, we can ask whether the activity of philosophizing does something good for the soul, even if wisdom is in principle beyond its grasp." Almost any dialogue would address the questions Mr. Dink is thinking about in his study, but he plans to focus on just a few. In addition to the "Symposium" he will be spending time on the "Republic," the subject of his preceptorial this fall. "Does the 'Republic' actually defend or does it critique the goodness of justice; does philosophy end up superseding justice as the best candidate for human good, or do philosophy and justice presuppose or mutually imply one another?" he asks. "I think it's still an open question. There are obvious senses in which philosophy presupposes some level of justice ... There are notorious questions about whether the order of the soul which Socrates calls just is related to acting on behalf of the common good Are the goals of philosophy practical-for the guidance of human life-or are they theoretical-knowledge for its own sake? or acting justly in the city... One might have that order of the soul and decide the city is ofno concern." In addition to reading the "Republic" with his preceptorial group, he will deliver a lecture at Catholic University in the spring, on the topic of the goodness ofjustice and the goodness of philosophy. A third dialogue he hopes to spend time on is the "Timaeus," with its accounts of the cosmos pointing the way on the at Catholic University, he worked on Plato as well as Aristotle; Husserl and Heidegger; and phy (Descartes through Hegel). master's thesis topic was the "Phaedo" and his dissertation was a line-by-line commentary on the "Sophist." While Mr. Dink has a solid interest in philosophy, he ardently pursues the other facets ofthe program as well. Before entering St. John's as a Febbie, he finished a year and a half at Harvard. The necessity of declaring a major finally induced him to give St. John's a try, and he's been devoted to its ideals ever since. After graduate school, he taught at the Santa Fe campus from 1980to 1984 and then came east to Annapolis. Relating other intellectual concerns to Plato is easy for someone so wrapped up in the St. John's program. Kant's moral philosophy, although a "nest of problems," interests Mr. Dink, especially the notion of moral obligation as a distinct kind of good. "Also, in the course of doing sophomore seminar and because my wife has a revived interest in her Jewish heritage, I've been thinking about the Jewish Bible, and the questions ofjustice, law, and morality," he says. "I'd also like to spend more time on Emanuel Levinas, who talks about justice in the relationship of the self to the radically other, and claims that this relationship is at the basis of any discourse about truth. Unlike other 'post modem' thinkers, he does not claim to be rejecting philosophy, but giving it a more radical basis." a. �Career Opportunities CoNTRADICTION EQuALs CoMPLEMENTARITY Bell Returns to Heracleitus by Travis Dunn, S97 After showing his Symbolic History Through Sight and Sound series for the past 25 years, Santa Fe tutor Charles Bell has decided to take time off from presenting his weekly multimedia shows in order to complete a book of philosophy. Mr. Bell, born in 1916 in Greenville, Mississippi, said the impetus for his system of philosophy came from his reading about the dual particle-wave nature of light as a 13year-old. "But I've worked it out since then," he said with an impish grin. "The first essay I published making it very clear was 194 5 the of Science magazine ... [My philosophy] is still as now as it was " Mr. Bell stood back and wondered. Mr. Bell doesn't stand back and wonder: He affirms the paradox and says virtue is both taught and innate. Mr. Bell gives another example of Contours but still needs He when I was about thirteen," he said. "If I come upon the possibility of an axiomatic complementarity then I say since the axioms are complementary, both are true-true over the condition of contradiction... Whenever you precipitate one of these axioms you have to see that out into the fabric of reality--of actuality-those are complementary axioms." Thus Mr. Bell affirms Dionysian and Apollonian, action and meditation. "So what [I'm] doing is taking what. .. was formerly seen to be the shipwreck of reason .. and saying that's the principle of reason. "I see that causality can be emergent. ... [Today] we don't know of any purely primal causality," as ancients thought they he For example, Beethoven spent 20 years revising the chorale ofhis Ninth phony- "that's the way an a.n-•a.... o-""~"'t . . , .........., . . . . . _ .._) works-like an ,.... Mr. Bell said he is uncertain how his book eventually will be published, since all of the publishers who accepted his novels and books of poetry have died. Though he's "taking time off' to work on his book, Charles Bell seems unable to limit himself to doing one thing at one time: *Besides his "big project"-his book of philosophy-he's also working on a little book on translation. It will include an anthology of poetic translations he's made himself for Symbolic History and an essay explaining his method of translation.(His method, not surprisingly, follows from his philosophy of "embracing the poles," i.e. he affirms both highly literal and creatively interpretive translation.) *Mr. Bell still plans to present Symbolic History shows as well, though less frequently and out-of-order. When he does present a show, he said he '11 choose one that has relevance to a seminar reading that a class is doing. *Mr. Bell also plans to bring his Symbolic History to completion by typing up the rest of the scripts to the shows and transferring all his material to a permanent form on CD ROM. *And in order to clarify the ideas to be presented in his book, he'll also give lectures on his philosophy in which students, tutors, and townspeople can discuss his work.-. 7 ...... , . , , . . . . " ' . " " ' his The Half Gods): He wrote sketches over a number of years, then took a year off to work on one of the books, memorized the sketches, then put the parts together into a completed whole. "My philosophy starts with the intention-with the belief-that one can reconstitute what has been axiomatic of philosophy," said Mr. Bell. He thinks that previous philosophers have had a confused notion of causality, a notion he seeks to correct in his book. Ancient philosophers find one effect and seek one cause, he said. According to Mr. Bell, this method fails when one takes into account modem scientific knowledge, particularly the theory of evolution. "The old one-way value truth will not hold with regard to organized reality," he said. In a way, Mr. Bell's philosophy is a return to Heracleitus. Mr. Bell, like Heracleitus, says contradictory axioms are true simultaneously. "Whenever I look for axioms I find complementary axioms which seem in a certain sense to contradict one another," he said. Mr. Bell gives the example of Plato's "Meno," in which the characters debate whether virtue can be taught or is innate. Plato and other philosophers saw that the answer was a paradox, but they were so afraid of paradox and contradiction that they .... T11".,t ........... Charles Bell, tutor in Santa Fe. two axioms being simultaneously true. He takes the Euclidian axiom that a whole is equal to the sum of its parts and says this axiom only applies to conceptual things-such as the geometric figures that Euclid treats. Mr. Bell says that the converse is true of organized things, such as harpsichords or students. For if the parts are separated from these wholes, the wholes are destroyed. But both of these statements are true, and instead of seeing the propositions "the whole is equal to the sum of its parts" and "whole is not equal to the sum of its parts" as contradictory, as Aristotle would, Mr. Bell sees these propositions as complementary. Mr. Bell's ideas spring from Schrodinger's writings on the nature of light. Schrodinger affirms both the proposition that light travels in waves and the propostion that light doesn't travel in waves (it also travels in particles). Schrodinger embraces this paradox and creates a scientific system that predicts and -explains how light operates. Mr. Bell incorporates this acceptance of paradox into all rational thought. "I got the scientific sense that you had to reason that way from reading about the complementarity of light from the Annapolis Placement Office The National Science Foundation offers opportunities for research in universities, national research institutes, and corporate laboratories in Japan. Applicants must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents. Awards are available for graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and senior investigators for the long and medium term research visits, short-term visits, bilateral seminars, and dissertation enhancement. For further information call: (703)3061130. RWD Technologies, Inc. of Columbia, Maryland, announces Fellows Programs to enhance personal research and teaching while applying current research ideas to real-world technological projects. Candidates must be full-time, four-year college and university faculty in the region near Columbia and be able to contribute one day per week for a semester (typically 15 weeks). A stipend of $5,000 is awarded. For an application form, write: Dr. R.W. Deutsch, RWD Technologies, Inc., Attention: Fellows Program, 10480 Little Patuxent Parkway, Suite 1200, Columbia, Maryland 21044-3530. ..........~~""" of at the of Alabama seeks a tenured member to serve as Director of its Hudson Strode in Renaissance Studies. The Director has overall supervision of the and activities of the program. record of excellence in teaching, scholarship, and publication consistent with a tenured appointment as an associate or full professor. Applicants should send a letter of application, curriculum vitae, and the names of at least three references to : John P. Hermann and Harold Weber, Co-chairs, Strode Search Committee, Department of English, P.O. Box 870244, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0244. Screening of applications begins on October 1, 1994 and continues until the position is filled. ••~, lnii,.,<~>wo•~it.., The James Madison Fellowship Program is a federally-endowed effort to strengthen teaching in the nation's schools about the framing, principles, and history of the U.S. Constitution. In the Spring of 1995, James Madison Junior and Senior Fellowships will be awarded to college seniors, college graduates, and experienced teachers for use in the 1995-96 academic year. Junior Fellows will be eligible for a maximum of$24,000 for up to two years of full-time study and Senior Fellows for a maximum of$24,000 for up to five years of part-time study. For more information call: (800)525-6928. Deadline: March 1, 1995. The Mathematical Sciences Program at the University of Texas at Dallas invites applications for a tenure-track junior appointment in Applied Mathematics and a tenure-track appointment in Statistics to begin Fall 1995. Applicants are asked to send a letter of application and curriculum vitae, and to arrange for at least three letters of recommendation to be sent to : Academic Search #20 17 and #20 18, respectively, MIS MP 12, The University ofTexas at Dallas, PO Box 830688, Richardson, Texas, 75083-0688. Applications will be accepted until January 15, 1995 or until the position is filled. For further information you may contact: Professor Robert Sterling at (214) 690-2361. WINTER 1995 21 �Campus Life OUTTHERE IN THE REAL WORLD ST. JOHN'S SAYS GOOD MORNING TO AMERICA by John Schroeder, SGI by Barbara Goyette St. John's College in Santa Fe recently initiated a new work-study program to take the seminar style oflearning to local high schools. While St. John's students have long volunteered in local schools, this program, begun by Director of Placement Jennifer Chenoweth, enables students to earn work-study funds for community service. Melissa Cate, a junior from Londonderry, N.H.; Tony Lagouranis, a sophomore from New York; Richard Martin, a sophomore from Mililani, Hawaii; and Patrick Nash, a sophomore from West Newfield, Maine, were selected for the program based on their interest in teaching careers and tutor recommendations. After contacting all the high schools in New Mexico, the four established the program, which consists of five weekly seminars at Santa Fe and Capital high schools. "It seems strange to be reading parts of books that [the students] will never read entirely... but the dialogue skills that they are developing are good, even if they are not going to be scholars," Mr. Lagouranis said. As the program goes on the high school students are asking more questions and are to talk to one another. aren't always are "Mr. ""'""'.,.."'""' 1 "' said. "Sometimes those who aren't in the of their class say the that are most out" Melissa Cate said found that "It takes a while for them to get used to the discussions ... but now they are bringing up a lot of insights that I hadn't thought of, which is great, because I'm learning at the same time as they are." In addition to the weekly seminars, the program has conducted seminars at the New Mexico Military Institute, Crownpoint High School, and Alamagordo High School, allowing a variety of high school classes and teachers to be exposed to the St. John's style of teaching. The New Mexico School for the Deaf asked the St. John's students to prepare an activity for fifth and sixth grade classes who were studying ancient Greece. After acting out several of Aesop's fables, the St. John's leaders held a seminar. "The students seemed to enjoy it a lot, because it was something they were interested in," Ms. Chenoweth said. "We would like to do a lot more programs like that." Next semester St. John's will host a seminar on campus, with participants chosen by their teachers and seminar leaders. The high school students will be able to share their ideas with other students from Santa Fe in the college environment. "The goal is to help out and share with the local ,..,."....,.,..,.., .....,,+-.T We'd like to do as many schools as possible," Melissa Cate said. "It's an op.,..,.,.,....-,".''t"' for to see new ways of on and Twelve third and fourth graders were sitting on the legs in as rapt attention as I could expect from eightve::~.r-IJms. As I read from a children's book about the Trojan war, my voice dropped when I got to the part about Agamemnon, eager to satisfy the gods and set sail for Troy, sacrificing his young daughter Iphagenia. "You don't mean ... ?" asked Kate Axford, a curious third grader with long straight hair, her eyes widening. "Yes, Kate, I'm afraid so," I replied. "Sometimes this isn't a very pretty story." This was Junior Great Books, an activity that Caroline Christensen, director of financial aid at the Annapolis campus, and I have been leading at the Chesapeake Academy Elementary School in Arnold, Md., since October. The Junior Great Books program provides curricula for elementary schools around the country to implement St. John's style discussions ofliterature in the classroom. Chesapeake Academy is one of several schools around Annapolis to draw volunteers from the college. The philosophy of Junior Great Books should be familiar to those who know the St. John's program. The rules are simple. After hearing or reading a short story, a small group of students discusses the text, offering only opinions that they can support with the text. When I heard my first Junior Great Books discussion, my first impression was that it was similar to the seminars I would expect from adults. may be '•U.L.LV.I.,~U~o wonder about the same things as juniors and seniors at St. John's. When I was reading aloud about the Trojan Horse, Jonathan Stepanuk, a vocal third grader, blurted out with astonishment, "But that's against the rules of war!" The students then weighed these rules, and the resulting talk was, in form at least, what one would expect from a freshman seminar. The students weren't the only ones to learn from the experience. Mrs. Christensen and I had to find ways to draw the class's girls into the discussions. "The boys just dominated so totally," said Mrs. Christensen. "As a mother of two daughters it made me worry." In our search to find material that would bring the girls into the conversation, we were surprised to discover that the favorite stories among both girls and boys were the ones about war. After reading both the myth of Persephone's journey into Hades and the history of the battle ofMarathon, we asked the students to choose their favorite. The vote was almost unanimously for Marathon. Working with twelve energetic eightand nine-year-olds was certainly taxing. "You give them an inch, they take a mile," said Mrs. Christensen. "If one got to go to the bathroom, suddenly they all had to go." This is one problem I don't recall from my freshman seminar. 22 THE REPORTER Eight and a half minutes of the college's 15 minutes of fame ticked off when ABC TV's "Good Morning America" featured the St. John's Annapolis campus on Sunday, November 6. The program originated in Annapolis and the producers' idea was to compare and contrast the town's two "universities" (their word): St. John's and the U.S. Naval Academy. Preparations for the eight and a half minutes began in early October when scouts from ABC toured the campus. GMA honcho Randy Berone and segment producer Cindy Greenberg decided to use a taped segment about "a day in the life" of a St. John's student and a midshipman to lead into a live segment, a forum on the two schools with students discussing their educations. On October 20, a three-person film crew arrived to tape senior Gregory Hodges as he spent a typical Thursday. About ten hours' ·worth of material was edited down to about five minutes, including shots of Greg jogging at the Academy, meeting with tutor Mera Flaumenhaft in the Coffee Shop, commenting in seminar, and sitting in the library with his girlfriend, Alice Brown. The crew also shot the Freshman Chorus singing Henry Purcell's "Come Along Fellow Sailors." For the live portion of the show, Mike Mangiaracina ('95), Cora Johnson ('95), Victoria Printz ('95), Adam Wing ('96), Ian Nyberg ('96), and Salvatore Scibona ('97) assembled at dawn to troop down to the City Dock, where a stage had been set up along the water, dozens of TV types scurried around messing with lights, reflectors and miles UA.LH.n.JL.LJLE; Cora Johnson, a senior, chats with middies while waiting in the rain during the Good Morning America live broadcast (above.) Adam Wing, a junior, talks with Midshipman Bridety (right). of cable, and several hundred Annapolitans had gathered. It started to drizzle, then it poured. The Johnnies were seated with Naval Academy midshipmen, awaiting the promised forum. Anchors Willow Bay and Antonio Mora talked into mikes, the lights shone, the audience clapped. After the taped segments on the schools were broadcast, Willow Bay asked a couple of questions-should the schools interact more? what do you think of the role of the Naval Academy today? what about this croquet match? Cora Johnson and Mike Mangiaracina commented, along with three middies. Then it was over. While the students on campus generally pronounced the St. John's segment "cheesy" because it didn't explain the program, it made the Johnnies appear involved and intelligent, and the campus looked great. (n.b. "cheesy" in today's parlance means tacky.) President Chris Nelson said the segment "might have seemed a bit lightweight" but that it nevertheless brought St. John's to the public's attention. Positive outcomes from the appearance: the Johnnies and middies went to brunch together and formulated plans for activities like St. John's students having lunch at the Academy, midshipmen attending a seminar, and a joint waltz party. �A by Sus3an Borden by John Schroeder, SGI A recent meeting of the Live Poets' Society began with a brief discussion of whether or not members wanted to abandon the two most whimsical features of their group: its name and its meeting place in the cupola room of McDowell Hall. Members don't mind climbing the four flights of steps to their weekly meetings and they don't consider the name inaccurate. But they wonder if these features give the group an inappropriate mystique of obscure pretension that keeps other students from joining. Although they reached no decision, it was clear from the meeting that followed that, far from being a cultish gathering of artistes engaged in vainglorious versifying, the Live Poets' Society is a hard-working down-to-earth group of students who are serious about writing poetry. At their Sunday night meetings, members read poems they've written during the week, then ask for specific feedback: Is the meaning clear? Are the images vivid? Those listening also ask questions, usually about technique and interpretation. After a disclaimer announcing that she wrote her poem a half hour before the meeting, Senior Marissa Mijal read out loud: We conducted a survey of students in Santa Fe to see what their reactions were to the recent election, the press, politics in general, and the need for "philosopher kings." The conservatives on campus proved to be the most willing to fill out and return our surveys, in hopes of countering what they view as a liberal student body. No one seemed surprised about the outcome of the election, although there was no consensus on whether this was a direct reflection on Clinton's presidency. However, few expected much to come out ofWashington in the next two years; those who responded foresee gridlock to continue, or ensue, depending on their political persuasion. One person stated that he hopes the Republicans don't let the election go to their "collective heads (as it appears that it has)." The media received good marks for its coverage of the elections on a nationallevel, but according to students, did a poor job of informing people about the candidates in the local races. On the whole, students seemed to feel the media has a positive influence on politics as long as they are covering the issues, but has a negative influence when they start covering the personal lives of candidates. The media also received negative marks for reducing elections to issues of who looks the best and who can come up with the best six-second bumper-sticker quote. Students thought that with more major third party candidates, elections will get better, more issues will be discussed, and voter turnout will increase, as long as the press starts treating these parties seriously. They also expressed some hesitation at people with no political experience running for major political offices, especially on the federal level. Many students, including one conservative, still feel Clinton has a chance of winning in 1996. Some of the issues The phyllophagous silkworm. The phyllophagous silkworm Goes phaging through the trees, Eating phyllornes ofmulberries. But someone put phrenetic virus in the near phreatic well, And when the roots open up to drink In the poisons seep. The toxins, · Entering the veins, cause phyllomania; All the better for the phyllophagous silkworm. "Did you write this during lab?" someone asked Mijal. "No." "Did you write this with the dictionary in your hand?" Tutor David Stephenson PARENTS' The words of live poets can charm even souls of stone, it seems. Tutor David Stephenson and sophomore Adam Marker discuss the work of Live Poets' Society members. Photo by Keith Harvey. guessed-correctly. After arguing in seminars and tutorials about the words of authors long dead, the Live Poets find it satisfying to be able to ask writers about the meaning of their words. Mr. Stephenson started the Live Poets' Society in 1990 to give a group of students the chance to work on and publish poetry. "I had been thinking about it for a few years," he said, "because I felt that one of the real drawbacks of studying so many great poets was that when I would ask students to try to write a poem, they would just despair. They thought that they had to measure up to Shakespeare or Sappho or Yeats. I thought it was important that we have a workshop in which people could compare works in progress, works that were imperfect, works at any stage in the process of writing." The group takes its name from the movie "The Dead Poets' Society." Changing the name to Live Poets emphasizes the difference between the group's endeavors and those of the language tutorial. Freshman Danielle Tabela explained: "The point of it is to keep the work contemporary. Poems are supposed to be written by the people in the group, but if we're going to read someone else's work, it should be someone alive." WEEKEND IN SANTA Parents could experience something of the lifestyles of the young and philosophical at the annual Parents' Weekend, held in Santa Fe October 13-16 and in Annapolis October 29-30. Attending seminars and tutorials, parents discussed, reasoned, and attempted to understand (if only they had known they could sit down and talk rationally like this when their students were fourteen!). In Annapolis, Alex Pickands, a senior, and his sister Christina Jeffers practiced their "similar smiles" routine (right). In Santa Fe, Meghan Williams and her mother, Paula Craig-Williams, participated in the Student-Parent LookAlike Contest emceed by President John Agresto (above). More than 200 Annapolis parents attended the weekend this year, and 176 visited in Santa Fe. FE AND the next presidential candidates might face are education, health care, the size of the federal government, crime, the environment, trade, and governmental gridlock. Students said that they believe America will retain its leadership role in the 21st century. One said we will retain our leadership role because we have the ability to do things that other countries cannot. Another said the U.S. will retain its position because "we have lots and lots of bombs." A third said "if we return to the values of the founders and return our republic to a truly free country with a bustling free market, strong military, limited government and strong citizen participation in all levels of government, we would be envied by the entire world." While just one person expressed an interest in running for public office, all who answered said they would consider going into politics or government in an appointed position or as a career. Only one of the respondents voted in this election. The reasons why students didn't vote ranged from a bureaucratic snafu in voter registration and being too out-of-touch with the issues to vote, to the belief that you should vote for someone rather than against someone else. However, all agreed the student body should be more politically active. Everyone who answered the survey agreed that Aristotle was right in his assertion that man is by nature a political animal, and most agreed that we should be searching for "philosopher kings" to run our government. Although this survey does not reflect the views of the entire student body in Santa Fe, Johnnies here, while not currently active in politics, seem to hold faith in the future. All that were polled are willing to be a part of that future, which is definitely a good sign for America. ANNAPOLIS 1 WINTER 1995 23 �The Arts The newly established Fine Arts Guild has invited two artists to exhibit work in the Santa Fe art gallery this February. Arlene Becker and Stan Berning are the flrst artists to be selected by the guild. Mr. Berning, a surrealist painter and Santa Fe gallery owner, will exhibit paint sketches and various drawings as preliminary studies for an oil-on-canvas series he plans to create in 1995. Ms. Becker, who resides both in Santa Fe and Chicago, will exhibit her sculptures which display the "interconnection between human beings and the natural world." "This is a flrst for our gallery-an exhibit featuring a sculptor and a painter in a joint exhibition. It promises to be very exciting," said art gallery coordinator Ginger Roherty. The show will open with a reception from 3-5 p.m. on Sunday, February 5, 1995, in the Fireside Lounge and will run through Sunday, February 26. For more information or for gallery hours, please call Ms. Roherty at (505) 984-6099. Continuing the exploration of the history of printmaking from Rembrandt to the Twentieth Century. An exhibit of works by James Whistler will be on in the Elizabeth Mitchell at St. John's Col10-March 'lr<rnr.i .... -1-n of 3, 1995. Whistler" features James 40 images the foremost etcher since Rembrandt. ing in HncTI"'-rui The images in this exhibit of life and trace as he lived and traveled England, and Venice. Works in the exhibit are from the Syracuse University Art Collection and include "Sixteen Etchings of the Thames," a famous set, and several "Nocturnes." Whistler was an American, born in Massachusetts in 1834. As a young man he joined the U.S. Coast & Geodesic Survey in Washington, D.C., where he learned the fundamentals of etching doing topographical surveys. As an artist in Paris, he carried small etching plates with him and sketched on them the scenes he came across. He deVl..l!..i.J.I..d ..i.L 24 THE REPORTER etching tecnmqm~s pn:as1:w<1 a scene's Jan,lctuarTm~s cused instead on ""'-11"''-'u Whistler studied and combined that with the scenes and evepts of the age. Whistler the influential French set after France and in 1858. He began work on the Thames set in London the year. These works ...... u,._..,.,,.L St. John's Concert Series: Music on Both Campuses The Francesco Trio, pictured abo~e on the left, performed on the Santa Fe campus in November as ~art of~e 30th anmversary concert series. Featuring pianist Nathan Schwartz, celhst Bonrne Hampton, and violinist Miwako Watanabe, the trio has won numerous awards. . In Annapolis, the St. John's Concert Series featured the Angeles String quartet .m January. The Bachmann-Klibonoff-Fridman Trio, pictured above on the nght, Will perform on April 7. continued from page 18 ve 1rmf~rt his etcJtnn!;IS he began to employ r~.,.,.,.,.,.'"''"datmospheric softness. Although Whistler's etchings were ...,~,_, .............. his were not well-rehe a libel suit against criticJohnRuskinin 1877. Whistlerwon the suit but was awarded only a farthing in damages, leaving him bankrupt. Whistler's final two sets of etchings both portrayed scenes from Venice. By the time the second set was published in 1886, he had achieved acclaim for all of his work; his paintings and etchings were exhibited in Europe and America. Black Lion Wharf, 1859 and his social true with his students. no means did he claim to underall he but his students knew that he cared what texts said and that he also insisted on author esr>eciiaUv) tant to studer1ts, .lLl.u~uu..:>, or anyone who to be nearby until he had a new perspective. It was for characteristics such as along with his sense that so many students became his friends. Bob entered into everything he did with zest and enthusiasm. He came to St. John's College in Annapolis in 1963. We shared an office until 1967, when he became Assistant Dean. His interest and personal involvement in politics at all levels of government was of long standing. Ever since he arrived in Annapolis, he had held especially Sunday mornings, over informal Democratic party headquarters at Buddy Levy's Capital Drug Store on West St. 1971, he convinced himself, with encouragement from his to run for the office of alderman for the Annapolis City Council. He won. Not surprisingly, his integrity in that office was notoriously impeccable. I personally knew him to refuse gifts and donations when there was even the remotest appearance of a conflict of interest. His political interests and connections went back to his Minnesota roots in the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party. Whether they agreed or bitterly disagreed with him, his political associates always repected him. One of his longna1ont~ne:d time J.J..u,.~..~.u,.:>, ex-U.S. senator and pn~sictentlal carldi~jat,e, gave the eulogy at his funeral. It seems to close this with an account of how some of the "sent him off' on his Her account catches the scene, its miliar memories. She has can use her langmLge. "And we sent off with tributes from his old friends: .LJF.'"'!uJcau, Gene and Fr. Emeric. A good friend of ours, Don several Duke will ever have Solitude" gone to communion to "In and "Take a Train. Once Bob to me that not only was jazz the only kind I could get all its .,.....,,.,.""''.,...n just one piece: "On the Sunny Side Street. Don that as everyone left the Church. then we all came back to the house to have one last But it wasn't sad: we ate is a chef at restaurant and he we listened to Billie t1cmacav. and Spaeth stories 50 You should know, too, that L. the children have opened a Spaeth Scholarship Memorial Fund for students who need help at St. John's University. Contributions should be sent to Betty at: 8939 Crestview Dr., St. Josephs, MN 56374. We all remember you with fondness, Spaeth. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The St. John's Reporter</em> Description An account of the resource College newspaper which started publication in 1974. Continued publication into 2000. Includes primarily historical content.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The St. John's Reporter" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=35">Items in <em>The St. John's Reporter</em></a></strong> <span>to view and sort all items in the collection.</span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 24 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context vol 21 issue 2 Winter 1995 Title A name given to the resource The St. John's Reporter, Volume 21 Issue 2 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1995-01 Description An account of the resource Volume 21, Issue 2 of The St. John's Reporter. Published in Winter 1995. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Public Relations Office Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Goyette, Barbara (editor) Allison, Lesli (editor) Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf The Reporter https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/52feb4fdfc36b14b47297528404c8d89.pdf e1fc8dfd96a922719af70e4c716e6027 PDF Text Text SANTA FE ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE ANNAPOLIS ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE LIBRARY 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1~ ~ 1r1~r 1 1r1 f 1'1i1n 111111111111111 31696 01138 2130 GROUNDBREAKING FOR HALL OF RECORDS RENOVATION .............. PAGE 3 BOOKWORM BLUES .. PAGE S SANTA FE WHOOPS ANNAPOLIS IN B-BALL ............................................ PAGE 2 STATEMENT OF EDUCATI,ONAL POLICY. ......... PAG E 6 SCHOLARSHIP. ............. PAGE 7 POST BACCALAUREATE BLUES? ........................... PAGE 10 THE ST. JOHN'S HOMESCHOOL CONNECTION ...... . ........................................... PAGE 12 ALUMNI ASSOCIATION NEWS .............................. PAGE 14 ALUMNI NOTES ........ PAGE 18 JOHNNY MORONIC'S ESSAY. ............................. PAGE 22 PRINTS AT MITCHELL GALLERY. ...................... PAGE 24 �NEWS FROM WATSON FUNDS STUDY OF "INTENTIONAL COMMUNITIES" Jillian Conrad, SF95, has been awarded a Watson Fellowship for studyoutside the United States. Originally from Las Cruces, New Mexico, Ms. Conrad will spend next year visiting a Rudolf Steiner farm in J arna, Sweden, a kibbutz in Israel and a community of rickshaw drivers in Vellore, India. In her proposal to the Thomas J. Watson Foundation, Ms. Connor said her intent was to "experience the dayto-day life of a group of people driven to create their own community by their dedication to a certain philosophical, religious or cultural ideal. Each of these communities depends on farming or other physical work to keep the community self-sufficient. I plan to work, eat and relax alongside the members of these communities in order to figure out what makes a community, and whether intentional communities work." Watson Fellowships are awarded annually to graduating seniors from select liberal arts colleges. The program provides stipends of $16,000 for Ill single Fellows. THORNE SCHOLARSHIPS AWARDED IN SANTA FE The Pre-Medical Committee on the Santa Fe campus has awarded Thorne Scholarships for the 1995 year to the following students: Carmen (Liz) Hering, SF95; Max O'Donnell, SF95; Svetlana Pilyugina, SF97; and Mathew Strickland, SF96. The award, which funds summer classes in general and inorganic chemistry, is given to students committed to the field of medicine who demonstrate financial need II and a strong academic record. THE BELL TOWERS ••• BRETHREN IN BOOKS VIE FOR HOOP HONORS BY SUS3AN BORDEN 'rou~d Ann~polis t~e ~ame pl~yed ( J 7 h e word going the campus about intercamvus basketball to be March 22 was, perhaps, a tad rconfident. Annapolis would wm, everyone agreed. First and foremost, Annapolis students said, we have a gym, where we ve been honing our skills for the past four months of our basketball season. Second, they reasoned, we have our all-star team here, at home, ready to play. Who, Naptown Johnnies wondered, would the Santa Fe team have, but a handful of guys who were willing and able to make the long trip east. Sure, they agreed, the Annapolis team would take it easy on Santa Fe. After all, you have to feel sorry for our Brethren in Books who, because they have no gym, need to travel 2100 miles just to play an intramural game. But as far as Annapolis farts were concerned, the fates had decided and Zeus had decreed: Annapolis would win. But even before the initial tip-off, some fans started changing their tune. A glimpse of the opposing team revealed a formidable group of athletes, not the scraggly bunch of road-trippers they had imagined. Still, most remained confident in the Annapolis team, classically clad in the orange St. John's "books and balance" t-shirt. But Santa Fe looked pretty tough in their black uniforms which proudly proclaimed "Great Books" on the front, while defiantly declaring "No Gym" on the back. Before the game, all present gathered around a podium placed at center court, where a sneakershod Eva Brann delivered the fifth lecture in the Temple Iglehart Lecture Series "On The Body." Reminding students from both campuses of their metacorvoreal connection, the Annapolis dean pointed out that "we, the St. John's College campuses, are twins, but not mere twins, not even mere identical twins: We are Siamese twins. So, we are seeing the incredible sight of a bunch of Siamese twins playing ball with each other." Ms. Brann's lecture went on to explore the theory of basketball which, she noted, "begins by taking into account Newton's third law, the law of recoil: that bodies coming together in violence, or Newton implies in a long lost scholium-in love, come apart with equal and reciprocal force." With the words of Miss Brann still ringing in their ears, the teams took to the court. Annapolis and Santa Fe played the first several minutes fairly even, with basket answering basket. But around the fifteen minute mark, Santa Fe pulled ahead, ending the half up by twelve points. Santa Fe widened the lead in the second half, at one point pulling ahead of Annapolis by twenty points. As the end drew near, Santa Fe slowed its pace, but by then their victory was assured. The final score: Santa Fe 67, Annapolis 58. The next day a student, arriving at the gym for an early morning workout, found a handwritten note taped to the locker room door. 1 Oh, somewhere on I.his campus you can hear I.he lunes of:JJac.h. 9real minds are racin!J somewhere, J1ffedw1'fh Xanl andJfume andBoche. :Jlndsomewhere !/o.IJ'nnies are fauyhiny, andlea/iny lhrouy.h ~nlaiyne. :JJul I.here is no /oy in Xaplown-danla Ye has won l.£e yame. II �REPORTER BACK TO THE FUTURE OR IS IT THE PAST? BY BARBARA GOYETTE Breaking ground for the new library in Annapolis, where tradition gets an update ~ h; library traditionally has played an important role e life of St. John's, from earliest times when the books of Thomas Bray (the first public library in the colonies) were given to King William's School, to the Civil War era when many of the college's books were purloined by soldiers quartered on campus, to the New Program when the term "great books" assumed a mystique of significance and became the public marker of the college's identity. The tradition is due for an update. In a groundbreaking ceremony on February 28, President Chris Nelson and a host of alumni, students, staff, politicians and local friends took shiny new shovels and dipped them into the historic dirt of front campus to begin formally the project of converting the Hall of Records building into a college library. Led by President Nelson, groups of shovel-wielders donned hard hats and posed for pictures. Among those in attendance were Louis Goldstein, comptroller for the state of Maryland and Al Hopkins, mayor of Annapolis. The renovation and conversion of the Maryland State Hall of Reco;:ds building should take about 14 months~ and be finished by the spring di..1996, just in time to kick off the college's 300th anniversary celebration. In the meantime, a huge hole decorates front campus, and the Hall of Records building is surrounded by an eight-foot-tall chain link fence. From the outside, the new library will retain the appearance of the present Georgian Revival building, which was built by the state in 1934 to hold its archives. When you walk inside, however, you'll experience sights and spaces unlike anything else on the Annapolis campus. Architect Travis Price, who attended St. John's in 1968-69, designed a three-storied atrium lit from above by a large skylight. Stainless steel and cherry wood will be used for the balconies, curving stairway, and columns that ascend upward through the three stories. Walk to the right and you'll be zapped into a time warp as you enter the elegant Queen Anne Room, two stories high with a series of round windows and woodwork embellished by carved moldings. Mr. Price calls this juxtaposition "a CONT. ON PAGE 4 Representatives of the college's Annapolis Friends group join C~ris Nelson in shoveling symbolic hunks of dirt: Peggy Sue Atterburg, Joy Shover, Mory Koy Biern, Maryanne Spencer, Chris Nelson, Esther Slaff, St. John's librarian Kitty Kinzer, Mox Duncan and John Moore. Photo by John Bildohl 3 STUDENT RECOGNIZED FOR SCIENCE ACHIEVEMENT Jeremiah James, a junior on the Annapolis campus, has been named a Becton Dickinson Fellow. Underwritten by Becton Dickinson & Company, in cooperation with the Independent College Fund of Maryland, the fellows program recognizes superior academic achievement in the life sciences. Jeremiah has worked as an administrative assistant to the director of laboratories and was a lab assistant for freshman lab class. II AWARD FUNDS STUDY IN NEUROSCIENCE Kelly Stirman, SF97, of Lubbock, Texas, and India Morrison, SF96, of Tempe, Arizona, have each won a $2500 fellowship for summer study at Duke University. The Undergraduate Neurosciences Summer Research Program in Mechanism of Behavior is funded by the National Science Foundation. Ms. Stirman and Ms. Morrison were among twelve students nationwide selected for the award. II ~ St John's College f~"\_ SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO 66 LEARNING IS A .~ KIND OF NATURAL Cl} FOOD FOR THE MINDn Cl} - Cicero And a week of St. John's ......_ College Summer Classics is the r " intellectual equivalent of a '-I Thanksgiving feast. Where Cl} ~ else can you go to read and ~ discuss the greatest literature, ~ philosophy and opera of all time, explore one of the world's E most historic cities, visit pueblos ~ ~ ~ ~ and archeological sites, attend great opera, hike, fish and much more? If learning and play are important to you, we invite you to join us this summer. TUITION FROM $950 I WEEK INCLUDES ROOM & BOARD. WRITE TO: SUMMER CLASSICS-C. ST .JOHN'S COLLEGE SANTA FE. NEW MEXICO 87501-4599 • (505) 984-6104 �4 T R2EPORTER H E CAMPAIGN GRANTS FUND CAPITAL CAMPAIGN, LIBRARY AND FINANCIAL AID St. John's College has received a number of grants recently in support of various projects and programs; From the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, the two campuses are sharing a $125,000 grant; in Santa Fe it will be used for the NEH challenge and in Annapolis for the newlibrary. In Annapolis, local businesses and corporations have demonstrated their support of the college by making pledges for the new library: First National Bank of Maryland, $50,000; Baltimore Gas & Electric Company, $75,000; UNC Incorporated, $25,000; Nationwide Insurance Company and Nationwide Foundation, $50,000; Annapolis Banking and Trust Company, $25,000. The Beneficial CorporationHodson Trust donated $250,000 for the computer system for-the library. The system will be named Clarence in honor of Clarence Hodson, who established the Hodson Trust in his will. To provide Graduate Institute fellowships for public school teachers in Milwaukee, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation is providing a grant for $50,000. The Emily Davie and Joseph S. Kornfeld Foundation has given a grant for $100,037 to fund the Touchstones program and Graduate Institute fellowships for Harlem schoolteachers. The program is in its : second year. The college has received grants for financial aid from the J.M. Kaplan Fund ($5,000), from the Beneficial Corporation-Hodson Trust ($412,000), and from the James M. Johnston Trust for Charitable and Educational Purposes ($10,000). All of these groups have long supported St. John's. For funding preceptorials, the college received a grant of $57,000 from the Evalyn Cook Richter and Paul K. Richter Memorial Funds. To connect the Annapolis campus with the Internet, the National Science Foundation granted $25,000. In Santa Fe, the Brown Foundation gave $500,000 for the NEH challenge. To fund a series of lectures and a conference on the CONT.ONPAGE5 F 0 R 0 U R F 0 U R T H c R y DEADLINE NEARS FORllBRARY CHALLENGE GRANT the Spring of 1996, St. John's College will begin the ebration of its tercentenary with the dedication of the new library in Annapolis. The Hall of Records library is the latest chapter for what began as the first free and public library in North America, when Rev. Thomas Bray gave his collection of books to King William's School in 1696. The new library also will complete a 60-year quest by the college to re-acquire that parcel of land on its campus which it sold to the State of Maryland in 1934. The new library will more than double the square feet and shelving for books, while tripling the study and reading areas. It will remain a quiet place for students and tutors to read, study and reflect. In addition, an on-line computer system will offer access to all other collections nationwide. To complete this project, we must meet the $2,900,000 challenge set by the State of Maryland which expires in June 1995. Opportunities exist in the new library to specially acknowledge gifts of all sizes. While every donor will FUTURE CONT. FROM PAGE 2 metaphorical passage of time based on an architecture of today meeting an architecture of yesterday." The new library also will have an underground addition extending toward Paca-Carroll. Two sides will be at ground level and will be lined with large windows. With its elliptical shape, this addition is another startlingly different kind of At the groundbreaking for the new library in space. It will hold 65 perAnnapolis, State Comptroller Louis Goldstein {left) cent of the collection and joined architect Travis Price, Tom McCrac~en of provide areas for study Henry Lewis Contractors, and a future resident of and reading. A landthe building, librarian Kitty Kinzer. scaped terrace will be be recognized on a plaque in the library, some donors may wish to ha'fe their names appear on a particular area of the library in recognition of their generosity. Study carrels, reading rooms, a periodical room, a rare book room, stack areas and gardens are available for gifts ranging from $25,000 to $1,000,000. We need help from alumni, friends and parents of alumni and students if we are to meet this important challenge and if we are to create this exciting new facility for St. John's College. If you wish to make a gift or suggest other sources ofsupport, please contact Jeff Bishop or Chris Nelson on the Annapolis campus. II Annapolis president Chris Nelson was happy to receive a check for $250,000 from the Beneficial CorporationHodson Trust to fund the computer system, dubbed (\arence, for the new library. Finn Caspersen from the trust presented the check af a ceremony in Baltimore. built on top of the addition. From front campus, the addition will hardly be noticeable, thus preserving the sweep of lawn with brick buildings on three sides. In remarks at the groundbreaking ceremony, President Nelson called the new library "a community effort if ever there was one." Indeed, the college and the architect worked closely with the Historic District Commission in Annapolis to come up with a design that would both serve the needs of the college and conform to historic district guidelines. The campus planning committee and librarian Kitty Kinzer contributed ideas about the elements that were necessary for the final design. Alumni from every era as well as the Friends of St. John's College, individuals and businesses in Annapolis, have been involved with fundraising for the project. Woodward Hall, the library since 1899, will be remodeled into a center for the Graduate Institute, tutor offices and classrooms. The King William Room will stay as is (but with spiffed up furniture) and senior orals will still be held there - one tradition that will remain. II �REPORTER T H CAMPAIGN E 5 F 0 R 0 U R F 0 U "GREAT BOOKS, NO GYM" OR THE BOOKWORM BLUES reat Books, No Gym." Despite the slogan's dark umor, it underscores an aspect of life on the Santa Fe ampus which few find appealing. Constructed in 1909, the Annapolis gymnasium has long been a central part of student life in Annapolis. And, as far back as 1962, the college identified the need for a student activities center in its original master plan for the Santa Fe campus. That need was reaffirmed by overwhelming votes from the faculty in 1987, 1992 and again in 1994. However, over the years more pressing demands for classrooms, dormitories and a library have delayed its construction. Today, the need is greater than ever. Over the past ten years, the campus population has doubled to its current enrollment of 500 undergraduate and graduate students. More than 85 percent of these students are enrolled in some form of extracurricular activity, from life-drawing and yoga to volleyball, fencing and dance. Without an appropriate facility, students have scheduled these activities wherever possible -typically in lobbies, classrooms and common rooms. Ihe Funding the construction of the center is one of the highest objectives -0f The Campaign for Our Fourth Century. For an estimated cost of $4 .7 million, the center will include a gymnasium; studios for dance, art, photography and pottery; a weight-training room; handball and racquetball courts; a student activities office; and a center for the St. John's College Search and Rescue Team. Perhaps most importantly, the center will provide a location for social interaction beyond the classroom. "St. John's has thought about this building for thirty years now," said John Agresto, president of the Santa Fe campus. "Every generation of students has looked forward to it. The faculty has repeatedly reaffirmed its commitment to it. What's been a promise for thirty years can now become a reality." This reality will only be possible with the help of alumni, parents and friends. Students for generations to come will benefit directly and lastingly from the foresight of those who help today. In turn, the student activities center offers an opportunity to be a part of St. John's future. Join us in establishing this historic cornerstone. R T H c R y GRANTS CONT. FROM PAGE 4 relationship of philosophy to public affairs, called the Tocqueville Lectures, the John M. Olin Foundation gave $25,000. The Cimmarron Foundation made a $100,000 contribution to The Campaign For Our Fourth Century. For the Presidential Discretionary Fund, the Earhart Foundation has given a grant of $9,000. Two foundations demonstrated their support of the college with grants for financial aid: The Ahmanson Foundation ($7,500) and the Hubbard Foundation ($4,554). II FUNDS ENDOW TEACHING CHAIR The Santa Fe campus of St. John's College has received an award of $500,000 from The Brown Foundation, Inc. of Houston, Texas. The funds will complete the match for a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to establish an endowed teaching chair. At the recommendation of the foundation, the chair will be named the Louise Talbot Trigg Distinguished Teaching Chair in the Humanities, in honor of St. John's visitor emerita. To be filled on a rotating term, the chair will provide an opportunity for members of the St. John's faculty to undertake scholarly and educational endeavors of benefit both to the college and to the wider educational community. In particular, faculty members holding the chair will have the time and resources to help in various outreach activities for educational institutions -schools, high schools and colleges -interested in the type of education fostered by St. John's. II PROPOSED STUDENT ACTIVITIES CENTER IN SANTA FE TO NAME: BUILDING - WEIGHT-TRAINING ROOM - 2,500,000 BUILDING ENDOWMENT - DANCE/AEROBICS STUDIO - 1,000,000 MULTI-PURPOSE GYMNASIUM - LOBBY - A LOCKER ROOM 750,000 500,000 STUDENT ACTIVITIES OFFICE - ART STUDIO - SEARCH AND RESCUE TEAM CENTER - 250,000 THE CAMPAIGN FOR OUR FOURTH CENTURY 100,000 Santa Fe: Jeff Morgan, Vice-President for Advancement 505-984-6099 (2) - 100,000 100,000 PHOTOGRAPHY STUDIO - 250,000 CONTACT 250,000 POTTERY STUDIO - 100,000 "Annapolis: Jeff Bishop, Vice-President for Advancement 410-263-2371 50,000 HANDBALURACQUETBALL COURT (3) - 25,000 �THOMAS MAY APPOINTED DIRECTOR OF GRADUATE INSTITUTE Tutor Thomas May has been appointed director of the Gradµate Institute on the Annapolis campus for a three-year term beginning in June. John Verdi, the present director, will resume his regular teaching duties at the college. Mr. May, who has b~en on the faculty since 1979, served previously as the director of the Graduate Institute from 1986 to 1989. He was a visiting fellow of St. Chad's College, Durham University, in England. A 1971 graduate of Loyola College in Baltimore, Mr. May worked toward his doctoral degree at Fordham University. Before coming to St. John's he taught classes in ethics, aesthetics and western philosophy, and classical Hindu thought at Loyola and Goucher colleges. Mr. May has taught at both the undergraduate and graduate level across the St. John's curriculum, including music and Freshman Chorus. He has a special interest in art and chairs the faculty advisory committee for the Mitchell Gallery. II The Reporter is published in April and October by the Public Relations Office, St. John's College, 1160 Camino-Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87 501 and in July and January by the Public Relations Office, St. John's College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MO 21404. SANTA FE: Lesli Allison, editor John Schroeder, assistant editor Lisa Donenfeld, graphic designer. ANNAPOLIS: Barbara Goyette, editor Sus3an Borden, writer Betsy Blume, Eva Brann, John Christensen, Pamela Kraus, Benjamin Milner, Brother Robert Smith, and· Elliott Zuckerman, advisory board. USPS 018-750 DEAN'S ANNUAL STATEMENT OF EDUCATIONAL POLICY BY STEPHEN R. VAN LUCHENE DEAN, SANTA FE .............................................................................................................................................................................,. ....... . 0 he Dean's Statement this year describes the situation of both perspectives since they are mutually implied. It is a tall Santa Fe campus and suggests some possibilities for order to undertake a full discussion of the serious practical difp nning our future. It presents a detailed analysis of our ficulties, to inquire deeply into the connection between the financial situation followed by a primer on financial aid and practical difficulties and the quality .of instructional life, and describes the two major financial problems we face: that our expenfinally to ask if there are ways of rethinking our work here that ditures exceed our income and that institutionally providedfinancial in addressing the practical difficultie~ will help us to succeed aid is taking a share of revenue that will soon overtake the cost of even more fully with our kind of learning. To set our sights any instruction if it follows its present trend. lower than this would be unworthy of us as we begin our fourth The statement describes several features of the college that must decade in Santa Fe. I hope with this paper at least to make a be kept in mind and balanced as we consider the proper ways of real beginning with this much needed project. addressing these concerns. It offers a new way of thinking through the In focusing on the Santa Fe campus, I intend no slight on problems of college financing, both from our institutional standpoint our sister campus in Annapolis. In plain fact, the problems and from the standpoint of students and their parents. It proposes Annapolis faces just now are manageable matters of strengthenrevitalizing the phrase "working my way through college" and ing a college that rests on a firm, if restructuring student labor and finannot large, financial and demographic cial aid in ways that would make it base. Santa Fe, on the other hand, possible for students to bear more faces issues that begin with material responsibility for their education while preparing themselves to bear the larger well being and reach beyond to the responsibilities they will face in the very heart of our essential work. world of work when they have left the ~lways have been an It is appropriate to begin by college. noticing how far the Santa Fe campus has come since its beginning in rented rooms at La Posada thirty years ago. Today, the Santa Fe camonly after painstaking deliberation. But we have pus, like the Annapolis campus, can point proudly to traditions of scholalso traditionally prided ourselves on not only our arship and learning that constitute the soul of the college. This campus willingness but our insistence on exploring even the has grown from the seed planted here thirty years ago into a vital organism most troublesome of serious issues to their very roots. with a dedicated and mature faculty, seasoned officers and a talented support staff, a growing body of distinguished alumni, enrollment virtually at capacity for the last several years, and a magnificent campus equipped with nearly all the buildings we might need or want. Our financial condition, if it is not all we might wish, is a. far cry from what it was in those days even fifteen years ago when (as was reported by an accredited agency) we regularly needed to be saved, and usually at the The deans in Santa Fe and Annapolis alternate each year last minute before the books were closed, by the US cavalry in in presenting a Statement of Educational Policy to the college the form of a beloved supporter from Texas. as a whole. This statement has taken many forms over the Much more could be said in praise of our accomplishyears. At times it has been dedicated to a single pressing colments, but this occasion can better be used to look hard at the lege-wide issue. such as writing at the college or the question of problems we face, both old and new, as the college prepares for flexibility in the program; at other times, it has been the occa-. its next generation of students. sion for describing some dimension .of life at the college-the For the past several years we have operated in what might role of the tutor or the intellectual life of the students. This be described as the "hopeful" mode. Our hope was focused on year, the thirtieth anniversary of the Santa Fe campus, I will 1) expectations of rapid receipt of the first $7.8 million from the depart from the usual and appropriate distinction we make capital campaign proceeds, 2) the seeming success of sharp between "educational poliGy" on the one hand and "practical increases in tuition and fees over the past five years, and 3) matters" on the other to discuss the condition of the Santa Fe campus and its prospects for the future as fully as possible from CONT. ON PAGE 7 The penultimate section of the paper is meant to help the Santa Fe campus ask fundamental questions about its work and the principles it serves. It suggests that while the common enterprise of the college on its two campuses-its national mission-is of great importance, each campus must also build a strong relationship with its local community and region. The paper builds a case for certain changes in practice and for reexamining certain fundamental questions that can be best understood in the context of the whole document. Its introductory paragraphs (following) will give you a sense of the questions it addresses and perhaps whet your appetite to read the whole: institution committed to conservative action and change �REPORTER 7 SCHOLARSHIP ••• SANTA FE TUTORS STUDY MODERN THOUGHT M ODERN TIM:ES BY TRAVIS DUNN o ,,he philosophy of the past 60 years is the focus of a w faculty study group on the Santa Fe campus. Created he fall of the 1994-95 school year, the Modern Times Study Group was made possible by the Schmidt Tutorship~a fund which alternates between the two campuses and normally allows for one tutor to have 1/3 release time for one year in order for the tutor to examine a text. Dean Van Luchene decided to break up the tutorship amongst four tutors over a two-year span and have each tutor lead this new study group for one semester. The tutors were to construct reading lists from 20th cenniry texts. "The dean thought it [the Schmidtt Tutorship] should have a thematic unity that it doesn't always have," said Santa Fe tutor Joshua Kates. Duringthe fall semester the group, led by Mr. Kates; focused on 20th century continental philosophy. Thi~ semester the group was led by John Cornell with the focus on philosophical anthropology. Ralph Sweritzell and Bruce Venable will each run the group for a semester next year, and their respective objects of study will be artificial intelligence and neurophysiology. "It might be good, as a faculty, to be aware of some of the more significant developments in the last 60 years or so," said Mr. Kates. The purpose of the study group is not explicitly to change the program or modernize it, he said, but rather to give tutors insight into developments in modern thought - and such insight may lead to new texts being considered as program material. "There is some common direction in 20th centu:ry thought that I think we're getting a glimpse of," faid Mr. Cornell. Last semester the group, led by Mr. Kates, studied the writings of Heidegger, Husserl and Derrida. "In those readings we were trying to get a sense of Heidegger's overall itinerary," said Mr. Kates. "We then turned to Husserl to see what he had to say about reason in history and finally to Derrida who writes about Husserl." Mr. Cornell began his segment with Marcel Mauss The Gift - "one of those rare texts in anthropology that tries to show something essential about all societies by looking at the ones that have been called primitive." The reading list for this semester also included writers like de Saussure and Levi-Strauss. Structural linguistics involves "looking beneath grammar to the way language is structured on another plane .... [Structuralism] is also an attack on the Cartesian subject which is the foundation of modern thought in the West....It makes a major statement about what human beings are." The authors the group has studied this semester are well-read in the Great Books, Mr. Cornell said. "Their discourse tends to be of a philosophical nature that gets to radical questions ... and therefore I think they have something in common with our texts ... although they were not recognized by many of my colleagues until we started this. So I think, in that respect, it's been well received by people because they recognize these are people who are doing social science-they're thinking about human questions with some new methods, but it's not like they're a bunch of specialists who are out of touch with what the grand tradition has been thinking about. There is a real community between some of these authors and the authors that we read." As an example, the Oedipus myth is brought up throughout readings on this semester's list, he said. The format of the study group basically is that of a normal seminar. "If it's like a seminar, it's like some of the hottest St. John's seminars because tutors see things at stake," Mr. Cornell said. "I think teachers will identif}r or oppose more vehemently the voices of their own centu:ry. One gets to see where tutors really livewhat they think is really important, how they read things, what they detest, what they hope for out of the life of the mind, and what they think the direction of the Great Books looks like in our century.. .I think it's fun." Ill READING L I S T SPRIN'G 1 9 9 5 MARCEL MAuss, THE GIFT FERDINAND DE SAUSSURE, COURSE IN GENERAL LINGUISTICS INTRO. (CH CH. 1, CH. 3 (SECS. 1-6); PT II: 3); PT. I: CHS. 3-5 CLAUDE LEVI-STRAUSS, "STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS IN LINGUISTICS AND ANTHROPOLOGY", FROM STRUCTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY (BASIC BOOKS) PP. 31-51; AND GEORGES BATAILLE, "THE PROHIBITION OF INCEST", PT. 2 OF VOL. II OF THE ACCURSED SHARE (ZONE BOOKS) PP. 27-58 CLAUDE LEVI-STRAUSS, "THE STRUCTURAL STUDY OF MYTH 11 1 ANTHROPOLOGY, PP. FROM STRUCTURAL 206-230 SIGMUND FREUD, TOTFAI AND TABOO, CH. (SEC. 4), CH. 2 4 (SECS. 3-7) CLAUDE LEVI STRAUSS, TOT&UIS&I (BEACON 1-3, 15-32 PRESS), PP. (CH. 1, "THE TOTEMIC ILLUSION") AND RENE GIRARD, "VIOLENCE AND REPRESENTATION IN THE MYTHICAL TEXT", FROM To DOUBLE BUSINESS BOUND (JOHNS HOPKINS), PP. 178-197 CLAUDE LEVI-STRAUSS, THE SAVAGE MIND DEAN CONT. FROM PAGE 6 stability or slight growth in enrollment, even with higher tuition. As I will show, these grounds for hope have diminished, and two particularly ominous financial trends suggest that, while we are not in critical danger, we easily could be within a year or two if these trends are not broken. I will make the case for replacing "hopefulness" with a new mode that might be dubbed "self-reliant forethought" and suggest some new ways of thinking about Santa Fe. We alway.s have been an institution committed to conservative action and change only and after painstaking deliberation. But we have also traditionally prided ourselves on not only our willingness but our insistence on exploring even the most troublesome of serious issues to their very roots. With the future of the college at stake, we must muster our collective powers of intellect and imagination to explore eve:ry possibility that offers some promise for our future. Though there are any number of issues looming just over the horizon with respect to encroachment by outside agencies, demands for accountability, urgings toward multiculturalis~, attacks on the "canon," and so on, the two issues that press hardest now are first our problem of regularly spending more money than we take in, and, not completely independent of it, an alarming trend that has emerged over the last few years in financial aid, though its effects go further. The causes of these difficulties are largely national conditions of education and of the economy, though they manifest themselves in a peculiar way here. That the causes are larger than little St. John's should give us small comfort; it is up to us to solve them for ourselves if we can, for no one else is going to, and there is much in our favor. While large universities may be compelled to follow out the course on which they are determined, it should be possible for a small, dynamic, thoughtful college like St. John's to take greater charge in shaping its own future. Copied of the complete document may he requ&Jted from the Dean d Offi£e in Santa Fe at 505-984-6070. Ill (U. CHICAGO), CH. 1: "THE SCIENCE OF THE CONCRETE", PP. 1-33. MIRCEA ELIADE, "SENSE-EXPERIENCE AND MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE AMONG PRIMITIVES", FROM MYTHS, DREMIS, AND MYSTERIES (HARPER) I PP. 73-84 AND CLAUDE LEVI-STRAUSS, "THE SORCERER AND HIS MAGIC", FROM STRUCTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY, PP. 167-184 CLAUDE LEVI~STRAUSS, TRISTES TROPIQUES, CHS. 20, 23: "A NATIVE SOCIETY AND ITS STYLE"; "THE LIVING AND THE DEAD" (PENGUIN 178-197, 230-246) �8 REPORTER JOHNNIES ATTEND AIR FORCE ASSEMBLY CAREY REVIEWS RADIATION STUDIES AT LOS ALAMOS Elizabeth Trice, SF97, and Aysha Massell, SF96, were the two St. John's College representatives chosen to attend the 37th annual Academy Assembly at the Air Force Academy in February. The three-day conference undertook the topic of "U.S. Intervention Policy in the PostCold War World." Over 80 colleges were represented, with approximately 40 percent of the participants having military affiliations. Even though they were the only liberal arts majors to attend, and "philosopher king" jokes were abundant, the St. John's name preceded them. Brigadier General Reuben A. Cuvero, dean of faculty at the Air Force Academy, approached the two Johnnies to express his admiration for the St. John's tradition, Ms. Trice said. Dr. Karl Walling, A84, a political science professor at the academy, said that even though he feels "a little out of place at the academy," he finds that he is "well appreciated for his ability to think creatively and ask questions that otherwise wouldn't arise." Iii BY LESLI ALLISON Santo Fe tutor Jim Corey recently was invited to join the Human Studies Project Team of Los Alamos National Laboratory as on ethical consultant. Reporter file photo. Ill Physiological studies in which scientists investigated new uses of radioactive tracers for studying physiological processes in the body, such as the metabolism of iron in blood formation. Such tests were forerunners of today's nuclear medicine. The most controversial of these studies involved the injection of west of Santa Fe, and within sight of St. John's plutonium into human subjects. "Workers are exposed to minute amounts of plutonium and the Hege, is Los Alamos National Laboratory, home of the question was, what is the rate at which it is excreted?" Mr. Carey atomic bomb. It was here that Oppenheimer and fellow said. "The studies focused on the excretion of plutonium, not on how scientists helped launch the world into the nuclear age. It is here, much damage plutonium can do to the body. Listening to the press, too, that much of the nation's nuclear research still is conducted. one could be led to believe that the plutonium was given to determine Once a gated and top secret community, Los Alamos has long been how much could be given before damage occurred. In fact, the people the target of rumors and the source of many a sensational headline. were given plutonium only to see how quickly it could be excreted Today, Los Alamos National Laboratory is again at the center from the body, and of course it was given in very small doses, in of a media maelstrom, this time for past radiation experiments conalmost every case the smallest amount that could be measured." ducted on human subjects. Headlines in local papers clamor about In terms of whether the individuals involved in these experiexperiments on dead fetuses, radiation injections into unsuspecting ments gave informed consent, Mr. Carey said there are some cases individuals and autopsies on deceased government workers. where gray areas exist. The stir is the result of the "Openness Initiative" announced by "It's not clear whether or not informed consent was given in all Secretary of Energy Hazel O'Leary in December of 1993. "The Cold of the cases, since informed consent used not to be obtained in writing." War is Over-We're Coming Clean" was her theme. Under this inihe said. "If indeed these people were exposed without informed consent, tiative, thousands of formerly classified documents were released to I think it was definitely wrong, but it wasn't the egregious, Frankenstein the public. Ensuing media reports focused on documents revealing experiment that it's been made out to have been." past radiation experiments on human subjects, and allegations that While he did write a paper for the team on rationalism and scientists had acted unethically in conducting these experiments. ethics, and learned more about At Los Alamos, The the labs as a result of his Human Studies Project Team involvement, he said the main was created to locate, review and thing he carried away was a deeprelease documents pertaining to end mistrust of the media the radiation studies. Santa Fe "I learned more about the tutor Jim Carey was invited to s not clear whether press than anything," he said. join the team as one of two ethi"When I would see what the cal consultants. Other team or not informed consent was given in all of the team was doing and then I members primarily are senior would read articles in the press, cases. indeed these people were exposed laboratory officials. I came away with the sense that "Our role was to be prewithout informed consent, I think it was definitely the press was much more intersent at the weekly meetings to ested in what their readers, with offer advice when it was needed wrong, but it wasn't the egregious, Frankenstein their insatiable craving for enteron anything pertaining to ethical want to read. matters," Mr. Carey said. "We experiment that it's been made out to have been." tainment, would the truth, if it The concern for also were supposed to bring the wasn't lurid, was not very high. perspective of informed citizens The content that was worthy to the project." didn't get much attention at all, According to fact sheets whereas an unsubstantiated alleissued by the team, the biomedgation would get front center attention. It's unlikely ical research conducted at Los Alamos National that the public could be educated on an issue as comLaboratories from the 194 Os through the 1960s plex as this through the press. Someone once said consisted of four primary categories: 'News is the first draft of history' but it's an unbalanced draft." Iii Bioassay studies to measure specific types of radiation in urine, He continued to add, however, that while the media may be at feces, and other biological samples for materials such as plutonium fault for preferring the sensational to the substantive, the general and tritium public is even more to blame. II The development of radiation detectors for radiation monitoring "I would suspect the problem isn't so much with the press as Ill Dosimetry calibration in which scientists studied how the body with the public, whose purient curiosity is tempered only by laziabsorbs, retains and distributes internally the various radionuclides ness." he said. "For instance, an enormous number of documents needed for radiation dosimetry. Most of this work was done in aniwas released directly to the public. One place they were made mals, but some stud~es involved low doses to people to verify that available was in the reading room at the Santa Fe Public Library, the animal results were applicable to humans. These studies were and, according what we were told several months after the release, considered especially important in assessing the risk from fallout only one person had bothered to peruse that material." II after atmospheric weapons tests. "fj;, STUDENTS AWARDED AMBASSADORIAL, SCHOLARSHIPS Sara Harris, a student in the Graduate Program in Eastern Classics, and Rebecca Amaral, SF96, have each received an Ambassadorial Scholarship from the Rotary International Foundation. The award of approximately $21,000 will cove,r transportation, tuition and living expenses for graduate study abroad. The award is given annually to 1500 applicants nationwide. Ms. Harris, who currently holds a B.A. in East Asian studies from Oberlin, intends to study next year at International Christian University in Tokyo, Japan. The focus of her studies will be international communications. Originally from Brenham, Texas, Ms. Amaral will studyliterature and writing in Great Britain. II If �REPORTER GUIDING THE WAY TO REAL SCIENCE translation and provided commentary. Also in the works are volumes on Newton's Principia and three papers by Maxwell on the electromagnetic field (chosen and with commentary by tutor Thomas Simpson). Mr. Flaumenhaft himself is working on one on Ptolemy and Copernicus and another on early and modern geometry, including Apollonius and Descartes. LTiutor Harvey Flaumenhaft is working on a series of guidebooks to help reluctant science readers IN THE BEGINNING WERE THE NOTEBOOKS Q r some people, reading science can be like trying to gure out all the positions of the various sides in the Bosnia conflict -- or even like going to the dentist twice a year; it's something you think you should do but for lack of time or compelling motivation you just don't get to it. Annapolis tutor Harvey Flaumenhaft has a solution. For those who think they should read the scientists that have been important in the history of thought~ Newton, Copernicus, Descartes, Aristotle, Ptolemy~but don't, he has designed guidebooks. As series editor of the "Masterworks of Discovery" his mission is to make real science accessible. Mr. Flaumenhaft has :found that many people are eager to understand the scientific works that form the underpinnings of our thought. The key is to make the works less formidable, and that is what he has done in the "Masterworks of Discovery" books. "I think of them as available both to people who are utterly naive about science and to people who have advanced degrees. Instead of taking the current state of the art and running with it, they want to have some notion of where their starting points originated," he said. Each"Masterworks" volume~softcover, about 150 pages, and published by Rutgers University Press~contains portions of text, commentary, explanations of terms, diagrams, and background on the scientist. The first one, Gregor Mendei'J &cperimentJ on Plant HybriJJ, by Alain F. Corcos and Floyd V Monaghan, came out in 1992. Next was Newton'J Opticd by Dennis Sepper. Joe Sachs, another tutor in Annapolis, has prepared a volume on Aristotle's PhyJicJ which will be ready for publication soon. He's done a fresh The idea for the series came from several sources. Mr. Flaumenhaft participated in a panel to advise the National Endowment for the Humanities. A joint program with the National Science Foundation to foster studies that included bioethics and values clarification was near an end, and the NEH wanted ideas about how to continue linking the humanities with science. "I suggested that they might get people to write guidebooks to help those who were not experts but, nevertheless, wanted to read the great works in science," Mr. Flaumenhaft said. "Then I got a phone call from John Agresto [who is now president of the Santa Fe campus but was then acting director of NEH] saying they thought the guidebooks were right on target, and would I be interested in taking charge of such a thing. My first thought was that it was crazy, but my second thought was that you just don't walk away from such a project." In fact, Mr. Flaumenhaft had been keeping notebooks with questions and comments on the tutorials he taught at St. John's. He had a lot of material that he felt related to the project. "In teaching at St. John's, I was in a situation where it was expected that people who were not specialists could read the scientific texts and get something out of it. The classes here are part of a successful on-going experiment in reading these works," he said. That he taught at St. John's was a major help in setting up the series. In 1987, Mr Flaumenhaft accepted a grant from NEH that freed him from class time so that he could line up writers and a publisher. Karen Reeds, an editor at Rutgers University Press, contacted him about Rutgers handling the series. "She was very enthusiastic, very intelligent, with a doctorate in the history of science and an active professional life in the field," said Mr. Flaumenhaft. CONT. ON PAGE 20 The association has worked well. 9 HOMECOMING JULY 2JL = 23 KN SANTA FE o ,.,he classes of '70, '75, '80, 85, '90 and Graduate Institute alumni have seminars, picnics, dancing, hiking and more planned for a memorable Homecoming weekend. All alumni are invited! SUMMER ALUMNK PROGRAM JULY JL6 28 = In Week One of the Summer Alumni Program, Focw on the VuuaL ArtJ (July 16 - 21), alumni will have the opportunity to explore the visual arts as they have the great books. Week Two, P(}LiticaL PhiloJophy: Pa.Jt and Pruent (July 23 - 28), will include discussion of international relations and American politics. Distinguished speaker and scholar, Thomas E. Mann, director of the Governmental Studies Program at the Brookings Institution, will give the opening lecture for Week Two, "American Politics: Is It Everything the Founders Envisioned It Would Be?" Detailed information is included in the Homecoming and Summer Alumni Program brochure sent to all alumni. If you have not received a brochure or would like further information, please contact the Santa Fe Alumni Office at 505-984-6109. la �10 REPORTER PATHS?~ POST BACCALAUREATE BLUES? COMMENTARY BY LESLI ALLISON NAME: John Agresto POSITION: President, Santa Fe Campus COLLEGE: Boston College MAJOR: Political Science WHAT DID YOU WANT TO DO? I didn't know. I thought I wanted to teach. DID YOU EXPECT TO BE ACOLLEGE PRESIDENT?: Don't be silly. HOW LONG DID IT TAKE TO GET ON YOUR PERMANENT CAREER PATH? I went to graduate school immediately and it's been a straight academic path ever since. ANY REGRETS?: "Regrets? I have a few. But then again, too few to mention." NAME: John Schroeder POSITION: Secretary, Public Relations COLLEGE: St. John's University MAJOR: Government WHAT DID YOU WANT TO DO? Originally I wanted to go into politics, but now I'll probably end up teaching. DID YOU IMAGINE YOU WOULD ONE DAY WORK IN APUBLIC RELATIONS OFFICE? No. If you had told me when I was in college that I'd be working in public relations, I would have said you were a fool. HOW LONG DID IT TAKE TO GET ON YOUR PERMANENT CAREER PATH? I'm not there yet. Had I not been here, I certainly wouldn't be getting a master's in liberal arts, I'd be more focused in my studies. This is a detour. ANY REGRETS? No. NAME: Jennifer Chenoweth POSITION: Director of Placement, SF COLLEGE: Kansas City Art Institute MAJOR: Fine Art WHAT DID YOU WANT TO DO? I knew I wanted to be in academia. I wanted to go to graduate school and I wanted to be a teacher, but I didn't know if I could do it. DID YOU IMAGINE YOU WOULD ONE DAY BE APLACEMENT DIRECTOR? Heck no. HOW LONG DID IT TAKE TO GET ON YOUR PERMANENT CAREER PATH? I've been out four years. I think in part I'm building the foundations for a career. ANY REGRETS? No. (!) n the surface, our messages compete. One publication In a follow-up interview to the NooMoon article, Ms. designed to attract students to St. John's tells you we Chenoweth explained that comparing the transition period for St. are among the top schools in the nation in the percentJohn's students with the transition period cited by other schools is age of graduates who go on to earn a Ph.D. Another publication actually like comparing apples and oranges. tells you a liberal arts education is the best career preparation of "I think other schools are just looking at whether their graduall. But a third and seemingly contradictory position often found in ates are employed or not," she said. "What we're looking at is the time it takes them to find their primary career path. Other schools college publications tells you just the opposite: We deliberately do NOT prepare our students for a career or for graduate study. are not measuring the transition time in terms of quality." An informal survey of several other liberal arts colleges conIt's not difficult to reconcile these messages. While the St. John's program is not career-oriented, it does, in fact, provide stufirmed that when these schools keep statistics on their alumnidents with essential skills for the future. This has been documented which few seem to do-they determinethe length of the transition by studies of alumni career paths and by reports on the skills necperiod based on full-time employment rather than the attainment of essary to succeed in a variety of fields - skills such as analytical a professional career or path. thinking, careful listenAccording to Ms. ing and communication. Chenoweth, if we use Despite these studthe standard measure ies, however, there is a of transition time, St. John's compares favorperception among some ably to other colleges. In students, alumni and fact, an October 1994 other members of the is tempting these days to believe that article in Cow?Jeling college community that specialization is the key to future success, but we think that is exactly wrong. True, for a St. John's education Today cited a survey in many students required courses-even in the major field-are a nuisance tolerated as a which St. John's was doesn't adequately premeans to the end of the diploma that wins the job that begins the career. For these rated among the top five pare and can even students a college education is, at best, an introduction to some technical knowledge, colleges and universities unprepare students for in the nation in terms of the working world. And, most of which will be re-learned on the job, along with all the things never learned in the likelihood of its the thinking continues, college that make up the substance of professional life. The professions themselves graduates finding a good while this is an unfortugrounded as they are in what we casually refer to as "the real world" -sometimes job after graduation. nate consequence of a denigrate the very pre-professional graduates drawn to the field: ad agencies don't want In addition, the pure liberal arts educaadvertising majors; newspapers and magazines won't hire journalism graduates. 1994 Money Magazine tion, the sacrifice is §t GuiJe to Col!egeJ found worth the gain. that only 27% of all Perhaps this perWe don't mean to dismiss the importance of specific knowledge. Far from it. But, college graduates go ception stems from forgetting for the moment the aura that often surrounds a technical degree from an elite on to pursue advanced the college's repeated university, companies in most fields are looking for well-rounded employees; people study. By comparison, emphasis on the purwho can read and understand, organize and analyze, plan and execute. 74% of St. John's pose of its liberal graduates pursue arts curriculum as educa-The National &view College GuiJe advanced study with tional, not vocational. up to 70% of those Nevertheless, it appears earning Ph.D.s. to be a largely unfounded In a 1993 study by perception and one possithe Higher Education bly detrimental to our Data Sharing college community. Consortium, St. John's ranked in the top 10% of all American colIn a recent edition of the Santa Fe student newspaper, NooMoon, leges and universities in terms of the percentage of its graduates an article on changes in the work-study program gave an alarming comparison. It said that according to Santa Fe placement director who earn doctoral degrees. Karen Holland, director of placement in Annapolis, said most Jennifer Chenoweth, Johnnies have a five- to ten-year gap between graduation and starting a career, whereas other institutions claim a St. John's graduates go to graduate school within three to five years. She also said that most recent graduates get entry-level jobs one- to three-year transition period. with an average salary of about $18,000. And, within five to ten "The impression I've always had is that it takes Johnnies years "our graduates do spectacularly well and get great jobs," she longer to get into the real world in terms of employment or a career," said Travis Dunn, a sophomore in Santa Fe. "From everysaid. "They do everything you can imagine." Why then, if St. John's has such a high success rate among its thing I've heard, though, St. John's alumni eventually go on to really good jobs. I never thought St. John's prepared one for getting a graduates do some Johnnies end up waiting tables or driving taxis? According to the U.S. New,1 and World Report 1995 Guide to career immediately. I think that's probably the general perception." On further examination, however, it appears the notion that College,1, fewer than 20% of all college graduates have secured fulltime employment of any kind by graduation. As it turns out, it's not St. John's graduates are at a disadvantage in the job market or at all unusual for recent graduates from any college_ or university to entering graduate programs has little, if any, factual support. �REPORTER 11 an incremental pay scale. want to take time off, to travel or to work in a non-professional or "There are some skills that are easy to give them, like resume entry-level job while considering the future. In fact, it may be good writing, but they need more than that," he said. "They need the to take some time off. underlying attitude, the confidence. That's why it's good to provide "I think some transition time is a very healthy thing," Ms. solid on-campus jobs for them which offer both criticism and Chenoweth said. "There are some things in life you can only do when rewards. We want to give them experience in job situations. That you're just out of college, like travel, be a little bit irresponsible, and will give them a sense of familiarity with the world of work and help experiment with jobs and with different parts of the country." take away that sense that it's unknown and scary or frightening." Despite the favorable studies, surveys and the notion that some This focus, however, is relatively new at St. John's and one drifting after graduation is healthy, the issue of the St. John's transiwhich continues to be met by some resistance in the college commution period has lately entered the limelight. Students on campus connity. Simply put, some believe that concerns about things unrelated tinue to debate the merits and shortcomings of the St. John's educato the academic program can be distracting at best and destructive to tion in terms of its value in the job market. And alumni and the colthe New Program at worst. lege administration have continued to emphasize the need for "I think just the opposite," expanded career counseling services. Mr. Van Luchene said. "You If St. John's compares so don't want students to be workfavorably against other schools in ing more than 10 - 12 hours per this respect, why such concern? week, but on the other hand, for And why does the perception them to have an appropriate job remain that students here may be helps them with their studies disadvantaged in the job market? B INDIVIDUAL EXIT INTERVIEWS WITH DIRECTOR OF because it develops a certain kind According to Mr. Van PLACEMENT FOR EACH SENIORIN SPRING of discipline. A successful work Luchene, self-confidence and familexperience can also help with iarity with the environment of the II REQUIRED MEETING OF SENIORSWITH DEAN AND some of the personal and psychoworking world are important for DIRECTOR OF PLACEMENT IN THE FALL logical problems we see in sturecent graduates as they make their Bl ALUMNI OUTREACH PROGRAM TO RECENT dents because it contributes to way in "the real world." Since St. GRADUATING CLASSES things like self-esteem." John's students occupy a fairly While a lack of self-confidence insulated, protected environment B NETWORK OF ALUMNI AVAILABLE TO ASSIST RECENT GRADUATES WITH CAREERAND TRANSITION ADVICE and "real-world" experience may for four years, they may feel less plague some students at St. John's, prepared for the "push and shove" 8 COUNSELING AND PLANNING ASSISTANCE FOR the overall picture remains favorworld outside than students who STUDENTS AND ALUMNI able: Johnnies get jobs and go to attend larger institutions, he said. II GRADUATE SCHOOLAPPLICATION ASSISTANCE graduate school at a rate compara"Some students leave thinking ble to or better than students at that getting back to St. John's 8 RECRUITING ON CAMPUS BY GOVERNMENT EMPLOYERS, other institutions. College is what they should be BUSINESSES AND NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATIONS The supposition that Johnnies striving for, but we don't mean for II MEETINGS WITH STUDENTS REGARDING MEDICINE, LAW, are less prepared than other stuit to be that sort an oasis," Santa Fe EDUCATION, JOURNALISM AND COMPUTER SCIENCE dents for the "real world," theredean Steve Van Luchen said. "It's a fore, is misleading. It's also dannecessary feature of the life of the Bl WORKSHOPS FOR STUDENTSON GRANT~WRIT1NG, gerous. It is dangerous because it college. But we can't let them forSCHOLARSHIPS AND FELLOWSHIPS, WRITING, AND gives students and alumni a false get about the world, so we need to TEACHING ENGLISH ABROAD perception of themselves, of the give some constant attention to that Bl CURRENT INFORMATION ON JOBS, INTERNSHIPS AND merits of their education and of all the way along. That's a little bit VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES the college. It contributes to the different from when I came to the myth that St. John's has "spoiled" college. We now believe we have a Bl ·NEWSLETTERWITH ARTICLES, EVENTS, OPPORTUNITIES AND COMPETITIONS its students, unfitted them in serious obligation to make that some way for fruitful employment transition period a little more proThis information was submitted by the Placement Office in Santa and future success. In some cases, ductive. That's why we have the Fe. Similar programs are conducted by the Annapolis Placement this can become a self-fulfilling placement director involved with Office. For further information~ contact the Placement Office in prophecy as new graduates them early on, so the transition Santa·Fe at(505) 984-6066,.orinAnnapolis at (410) 263-2371. approach employers without from the life of the college to the confidence. Finally, it can lead to world can be more seamless. a suspicion among recent graduates that somehow, people who For this reason, Mr. Van Luchene and Ms. Chenoweth are went to other schools have skills and attributes that Johnnies didn't implementing several changes to the work-study program on camget. This is false. Take it from an Ivy League English major: Out in pus. The maximum amount of hours students can work will be the job market we're shooting from the hip, just like you. increased from 10 to 12. Work-study positions also will allow for increased levels of responsibility and, accordingly, will now have STUDENT/ALUMNI. SERVICES PROVIDED BYTHE PlACEMENlOFFlfE nm a NAME: Lesli Allison POSITION: Director of Communications COLLEGE: Columbia University MAJOR: English WHAT DID YOU WANT TO DO? Write, photojournalism, ranch, adventure DID YOU IMAGINE YOU WOULD ONE DAY BE APUBLIC RELATIONS DIRECTOR? Absolutely not. I still can't believe it. HOW LONG DID IT TAKE TO GET ON YOUR PERMANENT CAREER PATH? It's been eight years since I graduated and I'm not on it yet. I don't know that I ever will be. ANY REGRETS? Not really. I sometimes wish I had majored in physics, and I do wish I'd had the quality of education our undergraduates here receive. NAME: Nick Giacona POSITION: Director of Prospect Management and Research COLLEGE: UCLA MAJOR: Psychobiology WHAT DID YOU WANT TO DO? Medical research, studying mind/body relationships. I actually did it for a couple of years afterward and that's when I decided I didn't want to do medical research. DID YOU IMAGINE YOU WOULD ONE DAY BE ADIRECTOR OF PROSPECT MANAGEMENT AND RESEARCH? Never. I think when I was in college, my career didn't exist. HOW LONG DID IT TAKE TO GET ON YOUR PERMANENT CAREER PATH? I graduated in '79 and I started doing research in '82, but I didn't really get serious until '85, so a good six years. ANY REGRETS? None. It was a circuitous route, but I'm happy about the way it turned out and I wouldn't change it. I think I found the right calling for my instincts. I just had to wait for my career to evolve. NAME: Larry Clendenin POSITION: Director of Admission COLLEGE: St. John's College MAJOR: Not applicable WHAT DID YOU WANT TO DO? Be a college president DID YOU IMAGINE YOU WOULD ONE DAY BE ADIRECTOR OF ADMISSION? No HOW LONG DID IT TAKE TO GET ON YOUR PERMANENT CAREER PATH? Two years. ANY REGRETS? No. II �I see that St. John's is abolishing the French Reading Knowledge Exam as a condition for entering the senior year. I think you should keep the exam, if not as a requirement, then as a TARGET-a recommended level which students should TRY to achieve. You say that some students do well in language class yet are unable to pass the exam. Do you think some of those who do well in class may have difficulty using French out in the world after graduation? I say give them the exam anyway; the experience won't hurt and may encourage them to work on their language some more and to begin to realize that there is a lot of French to be met outside the comfortable walls of the classroom. THE ST. JOHN'S-HOMESCHOOL CONNECTION BY BARBARA GOYETTE there a connection between the type of education fered at St. John's and the homeschooling movement? veral of the current students on the Annapolis campus were taught at home (see profiles on pages 13 and 21), and a number of alumni, formulating their own theories about how children learn, have kept their children out of traditional schools and are working with them at home. Nationwide, between 650,000 and one million children are taught at home, according to estimates by homeschooling groups. Reasons for homeschooling differ widely. Some Christian fundamentalist families want their children to have religion as the focus of their learning. Some homeschooling parents think children learn -Daniel H Daniel! Beth Kuper's letter about her "unseminar" struck a sore point with me, too. When I attended the Graduate Institute I had already done two master's degrees and was self-employed in my own management development business. As an undergraduate I had won regional and national contests in intercollegiate debate and group discussion. St. John's seminar format looked inviting and easy. During my first summer, after a stormy exchange, the tutor, John White, suggested I meet with him for coffee and a little private discourse. "Mr. Snyder," he said, "stop dominating the seminar. You' re preventing others from exploring their own ideas." He shocked me speechless, but he helped me listen, ponder, and gain new ideas from other bright minds. The process was not so easy after all. By the end of my second summer, I could listen for an endless 25 minutes (wow!) before I jumped into the flow. I don't think I'd have attended any "prep course" on how to do seminars, if one had been offered. I didn't think I needed it at first. The intellectual experience had to hit me, just like the classic texts. Would Beth have been interested in a prep course on how to study Plato, much less how to discuss it? St. John's group discussion process is truly complex. Perhaps an analysis and self-critique after a session or two would be valuable and maybe less painful than your tutor's counsel. -Joel J. Snyder, SG/85 Ill something that truly interests and inspires them-and this can be better attempted at home than in a classroom. "My primary reason for choosing to homeschool my children came from watching them," said Janet Nelson Berggren, A72, who lives in Evanston, Illinois. "I wanted to preserve the sense of joy in learning and curiosity children have at a young age." She's working with Charlie, who's in first grade, trying to integrate history, geography, math and language skills into whatever they decide to study. Recently, for example, Charlie developed an interest in knights and castles when they read about King Arthur. Anne Glenn Cruse, A76, takes a similar approach with her daughter, Emma, who is five. "Living is learning," Anne said. "There are opportunities for children all the time; we ruin it when we put them into buildings and require that they all study the same things at the same time." Recently she and Emma watched their cat stalk a bird, then learned all about the bird, including its name, what it eats, where it migrates. Emma has learned about weight and measurement from studying horses, and SOOfi: she will start riding lessons. Janel Nelson Berggren, A72, with her son, Charlie, at Homecoming. Janet homeschools Charlie. and tries to nurture his "tremendous capacity to learn." Photo by Keith Harvey. best when they are pursuing what interests them. Some parents hope to cover more academic ground than traditional schools do. Homeschools range from the highly regimented to the completely unstructured; some use prepared curricula, others look for unconventional teaching methods. Homeschooling is legal in every state, although regulations governing it vary considerably. St. John~s seems to attract independent-minded students who have been homeschooled. According to Admissions director John Christensen, homeschooled students are asked to submit either GED results or scores from standardized tests, just like other applicants who do not have a high school diploma. Three alumni who homeschool their children share an opinion about education: Those who take responsibility for their own learning get the most out of it. And all three homeschooling alumni expressed the same thought about sending their children to "regular" school: Children will learn best when they are working on "I don't feel that people who send their children to school are wrong. This is a personal decision for us," says Laurie Richardson Cavanaugh, A83. She homeschools her son, Patrick, who is seven, and she'll work with her two other children Molly (5) and Althea (3) when they are ready. When Laurie thought about her children going off to school all day, she realized that she would be delegating their education to others - and also that she would be missing all the fun. Patrick loves math and science, and Laurie and her hus- �that only experts have the answers." Because she doesn't feel that band Steve worried that the elementary schools tended to emphasize language arts. They didn't want Patrick to become disenchanttraditional schools can provide such opportunities, she calls herself an "unschooler." ed with learning because of school. Laurie Cavanaugh considers herself a tutor or facilitator rather None of the Johnnie homeschoolers are following a prepared curriculum; only Laurie Cavanaugh, who lives in Wilmington, than a teacher. Her broad-based St. John's background, which covDelaware, has to submit curriculum guidelines to her local school. ered all disciplines, makes Laurie more confident about helping her In Maryland, where Anne and Bryant Cruse, A73, live, parchildren to follow their interests. ents who homeschool must have their program checked by the Janet Berggren agrees. She comes from a quintessential St. local school, or they can join a satellite school, an organization that John's family (she, her father, and her brothers all went to St. John's, and her brother Chris is now president in Annapolis). provides resources for homeschoolers. Anne has joined a group in Janet thinks the notion of taking Annapolis that is orientresponsibility for learning is the ed toward people with link between St. John's and her philosophy, which homeschooling, and she says, "In was influenced by John homeschooling, you are trusting Taylor Gatto, a teacher that your children have the abiliin the New York public ty and desire to learn. It's similar schools who writes to the St. John's notion that stuabout the evils of tradidents can tackle the readings tional schooling, and by John Holt, the educaand have the ability to discuss tional guru whose Teach and learn from them. Your Own is a classic among homeschoolers. Illinois law treats homeschools like private schools, so Janet Berggren must cover certain subject areas with her children, but by Su,J]an Bordan she does not need to Emily Murphy, A95, began submit tests or progress Christy Mcflroy A97 and sister Charissa Mcflroy benefitted from homeschooling as children. her homeschooling in fourth reports. She also cites See story page 21. grade when she and her parents John Holt as an influsought a better education for her, one that would capitalize on her ence on her decision to homeschool, and adds David and Micki special talents without dwelling on her academic weaknesses. Colfax's Home..!Choolingfor EwelLence and Nancy Wallace's Better Than An early reader (she started reading at age 2), Emily was Schooling to the list. already writing in complete sentences by the time she entered first Anne, Janet and Laurie all take their children to the library, to grade. Her handwriting, however, was terrible. Her teachers, museums and on field trips. The usual trapping of elementary uncertain what to do with Emily the precocious student, focussed on schools-textbooks, worksheets and tests-may or may not be Emily with the atrocious handwriting. One teacher, upon discoverused. But another ingredient of regular school is essential-playing ing that Emily's math abilities lagged behind her language skills, frewith other children. One of the big questions for homeschoolers is quently used this discrepancy as an opportunity to berate her. When how to provide opportunities for socialization for their children. the Murphy family moved to Homeschooling networks or groups can be part of the answer. Connecticut in 1981, they decided Often homeschoolers with differing philosophies and children of to try homeschooling. different ages can band together for activities; Janet Berggren's At first, Emily's experiences group, for example, holds weekly gym and nature classes. For in school led her to refuse to do Anne Cruse, finding a group that jibes with her own philosophyany math or writing. "I wouldn't in which education hinges on exploration rather than regimentaeven write my own name," she tion- has been important. says. Her father worked with her Laurie Cavanaugh said she thinks homeschooling goes along to overcome her writing problem, with the St. John's philosophy of not dwelling on testing and spending an hour each evening grades. She's interested in developing a great books program for taking dictation from Emily. her children and would like to hear from other St. John's alumni When that method became too who are homeschooling. She and Steve talk with other homeschoolers slow for her, she took up the pen on the Internet, where Laurie reports that St. John's is mentioned and their focus turned to editing. as a good college for homeschooled students. (Laurie's e-mail Her math aversion was cured address is: Lauriel030@aol.com.) when, after some shopping The alumni interviewed for this article shared similar goals around, she found amath textand methods in their quest to provide education for their children. book she was comfortable with. All allow their children's interests to dictate what they study-at Emily Murphy, A95 Although math and writing least at this early point in their homeschooling experience. And were struggles, Emily had no they agree that their background as St. John's students gives them problems with history and English literature. "I've always been a confidence to act as teachers. Anne Cruse, for example, remembers that at St. John's she voracious reader of history," she said. "And my mother has a maslearned best the things that she figured out for herself. Anne wants ter's in English and my father has a PhD, so my parents just put out her daughter to be able to think independently; she wants her "out their Norton Anthologies and we'd study that." CONT. ON PAGE21 of a system that rewards dependence and passivity and teaches you II m STUDENT PROFILE: EMILY MURPHY LIBERALARTS FOR MATURE LEARNERS "A lot of the students sitting around the seminar table could be my grandchildren," Annapolis Graduate Institute student Robert Gamble said. "It was a little awkward at first, but soon I felt I fit right into the discussions." Mr. Gamble, who is 84 and lives in Annapolis, applied to the Graduate Institute at his wife's urging. He's the oldest student ever to enroll. Mr. Gamble graduated from the Naval Academy in engineering and worked in industry for many years. He did management work for a trucking company and a farm machinery company, and he was also involved with labor relations. "I never had the opportunity to experience this kind of liberal arts education. The St. John's Graduate Institute is such an unusual course," he said. Studying the philosophy and theology segment is interesting, Mr. Gamble said, because he can explore the beliefs of other thinkers. And he praised the expertise of the tutors and the discussion format of the classes, where he contributes to the give and take of ideas. Older people can be a good market for the Graduate Institute, Mr. Gamble said. "Instead of disliking learning, they feel they would like some more. There's a sort of a vacuum that education fills."B , TUTORS TO TEACH SUMMER COURSES Laurence Berns and Gisela Berns, both tutors in Annapolis, will teach courses this summer at The Clearing, a rustic retreat in Ellison Bay, Wisconsin. Mr. Berns' class, titled "Human Nature, Eating, and Ethics," will use as text The Hungry Soul: Eating and the Pe1fecting of Our . Nature by Leon Kass. Dr. Kass, a physician, teaches philosophy and literature at the University of Chicago and formerly taught at St. John's. Mr. Berns hopes to explore "how our biological make-up sets the conditions for our spiritual, social and ethical lives." Mrs. Berns will teach a class titled "The Romantic Imagination: Nature as Expression of the Human Heart." Poems by different authors (Shakespeare, Keats, Dickinson, Frost, Stevens) will be examined in light of their sensibilities about nature as an expression of the human heart. Their classes run July 23-29. For information on The Clearing, contact: P.O. Box 65, Ellison Bay, WI 54210. B �14 REPORTER Spring 1995 St. John's College Alumni Association News Glenn Ballard, 868, editor - Thomas Geyer, A68, communications committee chair ELECTION NOTICES Election of Alumni 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 nominated by the Alumni Association Board of Directors for election to the St. John's College Board of Visitors and Governors. For his second term: STEWART GREENFIELD, A53, Westport, CT Military Service, 1953-55; Founder and CEO, Oak Investment Partners, 1974-90; Vice President and General Partner, Donaldson, Lufkin and Jenrette, 19717 4; Director, National Venture Capital Association; Board member, Nature Conservancy; Trustee, Nature Center, Westport, CT; Member, St. John's College Board of Visitors and Governors, 1993 - . For her second term: ANNE L. LANE, SGl84, Santa Fe, NM B.A., Political Science, George Washington University, 1966; Civilian Employee Relations, Kirkland Air Force Base, 1968-78; Post-graduate course work toward a Ph.D. in Classical Philosophy, 1985-87, University of New Mexico; Volunteer leader of honors seminars, Albuquerque Public High Schools, 1987-91; Substitute teacher, Bernalillo Public School System, Sandoval County, NM; Member, St. John's College Board of Visitors and Governors, 1993For her first term: DR. SUSAN M. FERRON, SF77, Marine-on-St. Croix, MN Post-Baccalaureate, University of Minnesota, 198082, 1990-94; M.D., Mayo Medical School, 1986; Residency in Internal Medicine, Mayo CONT. ON PAGE 15 WHO PAYS THEIR ASSOCIATION DUES? 1994 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION Sharon Bishop, President 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% PERCENT OF ALUMNI DUES PAYERS BY YEAR 25 _••••••••••••••• i7. ................... '2.q 19 .••••••••••••••'..?~ ~L-------------- ~------ll 9 1 '"' 9 10 92 93 94 u 5% n earlier annual reports, we focused on the committees and operations of the Alumni Association Board (1993) and on what we do with the dues (1992). This year, we thought it would be interesting to look at "who" pays their Association dues. I Association Members vs. Members in Good Standing First, ALL alumni are members of the St. John's College Alumni Association (SJCAA), whether they pay their dues or not. The bylaws of the Association define alumni as all who have been awarded a degree by the College and all who have completed at least one semester of undergraduate study or at least one segment of Graduate Institute Study (after their entering class would have graduated}. Further, "all who have ever been alumni shall continue to be." To be a member of the SJCAA "in good standing," however, requires that current Association dues are paid. Being a member in good standing means that the alumnus/a is entitled to cast one vote in person or by proxy at any Association meeting. From the by-laws: "A member who current dues are unpaid is not in good standing and may not vote at any meeting, in person or by proxy." What The Dues Are Annual Association dues in 1994 were $30.00 for members of the classes of 1984 and earlier, $7.50 for members of the classes of 1985 to 1993, and free for members of the class of 1994. Dues are free for members of each year's graduating class. Association dues have not increased since l 989. Reportedly, some members are confused between Association dues and contributions to the College. A financial contribution to the College, while extremely worthwhile, does not constitute payment of Association dues or render a member in good standing with the Association. The Association is an independently chartered organization which keeps its own separate accounts and files with the IRS as a non-profit organization. The College provides financial support for alumni activities but does not give the Association any money. All Association funds come directly from alumni. In the event that an alumnus/ a sends the Association more money than is required for the dues (which happens periodically), the Association assumes that the overage was intended as a contribution to the College and transfers that amount to the College's Annual Fund. The result is that you can send money to the Association intended for the College, and it will get there, but you can't send money to the College intended for the Association. 1994 Dues Income and Payers In 1994, the Association received $30,349.45 from 1,433 members, representing approximately 17 percent of the 8,240 alumni for whom the Association has valid addresses. Over the last four years, the actual number of alumni paying dues has increased substantially: from 1,256 in 1991 to 1,433 in 1994. The overall percentage of alumni paying dues has, however, remained fairly constant: 17 percent in-1991 and 17 percent in 1994. The reason for this apparent anomaly is that the total number of alumni with valid addresses has also increased substantially: from 7,433 in 1991 to 8,240 in 1994, partially as a result of graduating classes and partially as a result of College efforts to find "lost" alumni. 0% 91 - - - Non Grads AN + SF ••••••••• Graduates AN + SF - - - All Alumni Overall, a much higher percentag~ of alumni who are graduates (23%) pay dues than nongraduates (10%). Also, alumni of the undergraduate program (19%) are more likely to pay Associates dues than alumni of the Graduate lnstlh.Jte (13%). Dues Payers By Decade . _. _ On a percentage basis, the DecClcf~ 'of the Forties are the most stalwart supporters of the Alumni Association: fully one third (33%) of alumni from this decade paid their 1994 Association dues. They are followed by the Decade of the Fifties with 29%, and the Decade of the Thirties with 27%, of their members paying dues. Interestingly, these "older" decades, as well as the Decade of the Twenties (which only. has 49 alumni remaining}, all have a higher percentage of dues-paying alumni than any more recent decade. For the Annapolis Decades of the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties, the percentage of duespayers i~ fairly consistent, ranging only from 20-22%. For the comparable Santa Fe Decades, the range is much greater: 23% of the Decades of the Sixties are duespayers, compared to only 11-13% of the Decades of the Seventies and Eighties. Our most recent alumni {the Decade of the Nineties) have the lowest percentage of duespayers: only 16% from Annapolis classes and 11 % from Santa Fe. ALUMNI DUES PAYERS BY CLASS DECADE (UNDERGRADUATE CLASSES ONLY) A 1920'• 1930'1 1940'• 19SO'I SP 1960'1 A SP 1970'1 A SF 1980'1 A SF 1990'1 Dues Payers By Class Year For some unknown reason, the percentage of alumni who are dues payers varies significantly by class year. Some classes have a fairly high percentage of dues payers while other adjacent classes have a fairly low percentage. For example, the Annapolis Class of 1962 has the highest percentage of dues payers (32%), while the Class of 1961 has the lowest percentage (13%) in the Decade of the Sixties. The Santa Fe Class of l 977 has twice the percentage of dues payers (20%) compared to the Santa Fe Class of 1976 (10%). To the 1,433 alumni who paid their 1994 dues; THANK YOU! We hope you will continue to support the Association. To the 6,807 alumni who did not pay their 1994 dues: we hope you will become an Association member in good standing with the payment of your 1995 dues. Just think how much stronger the Ill Association could be with financial support from all alumni! �REPORTER NEW YORK CHAPTER VIEWS THE THAW COLLECTION BY MICHAEL DAVID BLUME A78 n Thursday, December 29th of the year just passed, on a mild ofternoon punctuated by chilly gusts of wind, some two dozen alumni and friends of the College congregated at the Pierpont Morgan Library to attend a docent-led tour of the collection of master drawings assembled by Eugene Thaw, an alumnus of the class of '46. They came from Trenton, New Jersey, and Rockland County, New York, as well as various sections of New York City, braving holiday traffic and the first stirrings of rush hour, to converge at 36th Street off of Madison, in the Murray Hill section of Manhattan. Some were of Mr. Thaw's era, the decade of the forties, when Barr and Buchanan reigned. Among those forties alumni were Allan Hoffman, Peter Weiss alld Peter Davies. Other decades were represented, of course, among them Tom Williams from the Fifties, Frances Burns from the Sixties, and numerous younger alumni, among them Adam Eggers, Fielding Dupuy and the current president of the New York Chapter, Justin Burke. Charles Nelson and his wife Ann, the parents of the current Annapolis campus President, made it down from Croton-on-Hudson. And, of course, my wife Betsy Blume, the Annapolis campus Director of Alumni Activities, and myself, both '70's graduates, drove up from Annapolis. Our son David, at age 10, was the youngest participant, but he has become an old hand both at museum going and chapter visitation. The Alumni Association felt that the exhibit was of such importance, it deserved a visit, and Justin Burke showed real enthusiasm for incorporating a tour into the schedule of New York chapter activities. After soliciting advice from Francis Mason '43, a former director of the Morgan Library, Betsy and Justin arranged the particulars with splendid cooperation from the Library staff. The Library was first established by John Pierpont Morgan, one of the most important financiers and industrialists of his day, as well as a philanthropist and patron of the arts. With ample expert advice, in particular from Bella de Costa Greene, whom he hired as his librarian in 1905, Morgan had already amassed considerable manuscript holdings, as well as paintings, sculptures, and objets d'art, by the time he hired Charles McKim to build his library edifice on 36th Street. McKim, a leading neodassicist, designed a marble rectangle with a recessed portico, decorated with becoming simplicily and tasfe. The interior was much more richly and colorfully O decorated, most impressively in the Rotunda, the vaulted foyer to the Library. The Library was completed in 1906, although much of Morgan's collection remained elsewhere, and after his death in 1913, the disposition of his various holdings took some time to settle. His son, J.P. Morgan, Jr., established the Library as a public institution with its own trustees and endowment in 1924. Since then, the Library has undergone various renovations and expansions, most recently when it acquired J. P. Morgan Jr.'s former townhouse, which was adjacent to the Library property. It has also, of course, built up its collections. The collection of drawings and prints held by the Library is strong, with its strength much enhanced by the Eugene V. and Clare Thaw collection, which, of course, had exerted the attraction on our group in the first place. Gene Thaw has been one of the more important dealers in Old Master paintings for much of his adult life, and has collected in _that area as well as in drawings. Since retirement, he has taken up resiCONT. ON PAGE 16 HILAIRE-GERMAIN-EDGAR DEGAS (1834-1917), Seated Dancer, essence over pencil, on pink paper. l 0 15/16 x 8 11/16 inches. Collection of Eugene V. and Clore Thaw. Photography by: David A. Loggie. c.1994 The Pierpont Morgon Library. 15 ELECTION CONT. FROM PAGE 16 Graduate School of Medicine, 198689; Asst. Director of Admissions, St. John's College, Santa Fe Campus, 1977-78; Director of Admissions, St. John's College, Santa Fe, 1978-79; Medical,Staff, Brainerd Regional Human Services Center, Brainerd, MN, 1989-1994; Instructor, Dept. of Medicine, University of Minnesota Medical School, 1995-present; Certification, American Board of Internal Medicine, 1989; Member, Ethics Committee, Brainerd Regional Human Services, 1989-93, Chairman, 1990-93; American College of Physicians, 1991-present. NOTICE IS ALSO GIVEN THAT NOMINATIONS MAY BE MADE BY PETITION The rules governing submission of nominations by petition are as follows: 1. Petitions must be signed by at least 50 members of the Alumni Association in good standing. 2. Nominations must be accompanied by a biographical sketch of the nominee. 3. The consent of all persons nominated must be obtained. 4. The petition must reach the Directors of Alumni Activities NO LATER THAN DECEMBER 1, 1995; c/o St. John's College, PO 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 above will be considered elected. Terms will begin July, 1996. ELECTION OF DIRECTORS Of THE ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION In accordance with the Article VII, Sections I and II of the By-Laws of the Alumni Association, notice is hereby given that the following alumni have been nominated to serve on the St. John's College Alumni Association Board of Directors: For three year terms as Directors: BARBARA SKAUG I.AUER SF76, Laramie, WY J. D. with Honors, University of Wyoming, 1984; L.L.M. University of Edinburgh, 1988; Appellate Counsel and Assistant Public Defender, Wyoming State Public Defender, 19891992; Partner, Lauer & Newlon, 1993 - ; CONT. ON PAGE 16 �16 REPORTER ELECTION CONT. FROM PAGE 15 THAW CONT. FROM PAGE 15 Editor, legal Publications Division of lugamo Corp., 1994 - ; taught Jurisprudence at U. of Wyoming College of law, 1989-90; judicial clerk, Wyoming Supreme Court, 1987-88; Registrar, Graduate Institute, St. John's College; Director, St. John's College Alumni Association, 1986; Advisory Board, land and Water Review, 1987 ; Colorado Bar Assoc. legal Fee Arbitration Committee, 1989 ; Member, St. John's College Board of Visitors and Governors, 1991 ; Chair, Alumni Relations Committee, 1992 . dence in Santa Fe, pursuing an interest in Native American artifacts, from an aesthetic rather than anthropological stand-point. (That collection is to go to the New York State Historical Association in Cooperstown, N.Y.) He has also written extensively on art, notably in a book about his friend Jackson Pollock, and as a contributing editor for The New Republic. His association with the Library, as trustee and benefactor, has been of long-standing, making this gift particularly appropriate. The exhibition begins with a Rhenish drapery study from the 15th century, unattributed, presum~d to be preparatory to a painting of the Presentation of Christ in the TJmple, a familiar subject of the time. It is followed by a study of three standing Apostles, by Mantegna, from the same period. The first drawing is an exquisite play of light and shadow, with subtly wrought folds and almost painterly expressiveness. The second is much sketchier, a working through of compositional ideas, with figural relations the dominant concern. In a show of about 100 drawings, many of the drawings have a "working", unfinished quality, where the interest lies predominantly in following the genesis of an artist's ideas. But many are complete works in themselves, some colored in pastel chalk, watercolor, or gouache. A fine portrait by Lucas Cranach the Elder uses thinly applied oil paint on paper. Entitled "Portrait of a Man in a Black Cap," it is a robust character study absorbing one in facial details. Jacques de Gheyn ll's "Animal Studies" employs ink, chalk, watercolor, and gouache in startlingly detailed renderings of a bird, a dragonfly, a frog, and a frog's head. Among Mr. Thaw's favorite drawings is Rembrandt's "Three Studies for a Descent from the Cross," which allows for some comparison of the ideas for treatment of the theme that Rembrandt contemplated. Another favorite is by Francisco Jose de Goya, captioned "leave it all to providence" (in Spanish), taken from the Black Border Album, and showing a young woman in an attitude of resignation. Degas's drawings, particularly "Mlle. Becat at the Cafe des Ambassadeurs," show a strong affinity to Toulouse-lautrec. Matisse's "Self-Portrait" and Picasso's "Portrait of Lydia lopovka" show affinities in the way they had come to handle lines. Picasso's "Portrait of Marie-Therese Walter" is· almost too intimate, as the subject was his lover on her way out of favor, and, perhaps, reveals a certain shameless appropriativeness on the artist's part. The last two works in the exhibition are unexpected. There is a still life by Alberto Giacometti, most famous as a sculptor, which shows his draughtsmanship and solidity of observation. last, an WILLIAM TILLES, A59, Rockville, MD IBM Corporation, 1961-92; Manager, Public Safety, Courts and Corrections Public Sector Industry Marketing Staff, 1990-92; Manager of Systems Integration Marketing, State and local Government, 1987-90; Marketing Manager, Federal Systems Division, 1985-87; Senior Program Administrator for the IBM Information Network, 1982-85; Founder, Tampa, Florida, library Great Books Program, 1982- 85; President, St. John's College Alumni Association, 1970-72; CoChair, Washington D.C. Chapter, St. John's College Alumni Association, 1971-72; Member, St. John's College Board of Visitors and Governors, 1992; Chair, Visiting Committee, l 993 ; Director, St. John's College Alumni Association, 1993 . DORINE TEPPER REAL, SF69, Westport, CA Work themes include education: organizing coop preschool program, aide in Montessori preschool, math, reading tutor for independent primary school, aide in special education classrooms, adult literacy tutor; computers: setup and training of a wordprocessing network for scientific publications group; and editing; Director, Westport County Water District; active member, Northern California Chapter, St. John's College Alumni Association; Director, St. John's College Alumni Association, 1993 . MARK MIDDLEBROOK, A83, San Francisco, CA M.S., Engineering Science, University of California at Berkeley; Principal, Daedalus Consulting, specializing in computer CONT. ON PG 19 extraordinary untitled drawing by Jackson Pollock, showing the influence of surrealism, with nebulous glyphs and biomorphic figures overwhelming more recognizable figures, but pointing towards the purer abstraction of Action Painting. After the guided tour, we spent time on our own in the library, after which about fifteen of us adj~urned to a brasserie in the neighborhood, at which Mr.. Burke had made reservations, called Bienvenue. It was modest, comfortable, and tasty, and permitted some catchingup amongst old acquaintances, or the striking up of new ones. Allan Hoffman and I briefly reminisced about an event that took place nearly a dozen years ago, when he was New York Chapter President. Gene Thaw had addressed the New York Chapter and various College officials on the desirability of including the fine arts in the Program, on the suggested basis of seminars similar to those on The St. Matthew's Passion, Don Giovanni, and Tristan and Isolde. Before the lecture, some of us had drinks with Gene in the bar of the Princeton Club, and I got a chance to talk with him at some length. I found him formidably knowledgeable, and passionate about art. His lecture demonstrated those qualities, along with eloquence. As it happened, Edwin Delattre, the former President, suggested I write up the lecture for the College weekly. Thus, this is not the first occasion I have had to praise Gene in print. ., And praise him I must, for his pra~tfced eye and the scholarly appreciation he brought to the selection of these drawings; the intelligence and tenacity with which he advanced his collection; and the generosity of his dispositive intent. I have seen many collections by individuals (and their advisers), such as those of Barnes, Hirshhorn, and the Cone sisters. Although more modest in scope, and representative of only a fraction of his holdings, this collection compares favorably in terms of sureness of taste, diversity of interests, and historical comprehensiveness. The nature of Gene's interest may be summarized in something he wrote: "It is a particular quality of drawings, their kinship to handwriting, which most attracts us to them as evidence of the authentic touch of the artists' own hand. In this age of computers, multiples, and other devices for graphics programming and duplication, the artists' hand seems to be getting less and less important. All the more reason to cherish such survivals from other times when the hand of genius was a sign of civilization." It may also be said that the conne>l~~eur's eye is a sign of civilization, and his passion a hope for its~ontinuance. We should be grateful to Gene for his achievements, and proud of him as an alumII nus of St. John's. CHAPTER CONTACTS Please call those listed below for information about alumni activities in each area. ALBUQUERQUE: Harold M. Morgan, Jr. (505) 256-0294 NEW YORK: Justin Burke (212) 228-8423 or (l 12) 620-3955 ANNAPOLIS: Joel D. Lehman (410) 956-2814 AUSTIN: Joe Reynolds (512) 867-8461 BOSTON: Alvin Aronson (617) 566-6657 PHILADELPHIA: Jim Schweidel (215) 836-7632 PORTLAND: Rachel Sullivan (503) 629-:5838 BUFFALO/ROCHESTER/TORONTO: Hank Constantine (716) 586-5393 CHICAGO: Rick Lightburn (312) 667-0068 or Amanda Fuller (312) 337-4105 SACRAMENTO: Arianne Laidlaw (916) 362-513 I or Helen Hobart (916) 452-1082 DALLAS/FORT WORTH: Suzanne Doremus (811) 496-8571 or Jonathan Hustis (214) 340-8442 SAN FRANCISCO/NORTHERN CALIFORNIA: Alex Poulsen (510) 4301924 LOS ANGELES: Julia Takahashi (310) 434-7624 SANTA FE: john Pollak (505) 983-2.144 or Cindy Jokela (505) 984-6103 SEATILE: Jim Doherty (206) 937-8886 MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL: Glenda Eoyang (612) 783-1405 or (612) 3793883 (W) WASHINGTON, D.C.: Sam Stiles (30 I) 424-91 19 or Bill Ross (30 I) 230-4594 �·REPORTER - · WASHINGTON, D.C., ALUMNI CHAPTER BY WILLIAM WARFIELD ROSS, A47 Murasaki (see photo). last year Annapolis dean Eva Brann chose he Washington area chapter serves more than 800 alumni/ ae W.P. Kinsella's Shoeless Joe, which made for a wonderful seminar in the District of Columbia and suburban Maryland and (the film was entitled Field of Dreams}. Dean Brann returned this Virginia-the largest alumni concentration in the country. This spring to lead a discussion on cognitive psychology. Other Annapolis area offers an unusually wide range of organizational, cultural, and tutors who have led seminars for us include Laurence Berns, Chester social activities, and perhaps for this reason the chapter has succeedBurke, A74, Henry Higuera, Adam Schulman, John White, A65, and ed largely through its emphasis on the seminars, which provide an Curtis Wilson. Former Annapolis dean Robert Goldwin, A50, who ongoing opportunity for continuing dialogue on perennial questions. now lives in Washington, led a seminar last year on Plutarch and Seminars are held every other week throughout the year except returns this spring for one on Polybius. We have also taken advanfor July and August. We have been meeting regularly since 1979, tage of lwo journies east, on other business, by Santa Fe tutors. Tutor when the seminar was organized by Edward F. Grandi, A77, and Mark Aickelin, A75. Readings are suggested by those who attend. They have included a re-reading of some of the works that we read as students, some non-program books by the same authors, and other works ancient and modem-poetry and fiction, science, philosophy and public affairs. Some by Plato, Aristotle and Shakespeare usually show up on our list at least once a year, and the moderns have ranged from Hannah Arendt to Victor Zuckerkandl. Over the summer break we usually read something that we would not have time for during the year, such as Madame Bovary or Anna Karinina. For many years we met at a left to right: Jeon Mitsok, SGl85, Samuel V. Stiles, A54, Annapolis tutor George Doskow, and William R. Tilles, A59, discussing branch library in the District of The Tole of Genji (2/1/95) ot the Armadillo Grill, Bethesda, Md. Photo by Vivion Ronoy, A65. Columbia, then we went to dinner at one of several nearby restaurants. When budget cuts last year caused the library to dose in the emeritus Charles Bell presented a slide show on the eighteenth centuevenings, we were forced to find somewhere else to meet, and it has ry and led the discussion; and Cary Stickney, A75, the new director proved to be even better. We hold our seminar in a private room of a of The Graduate Institute, led a seminar in January on a short story restaurant, ordering dinner before the discussion begins. Two hours by Harold Brodkey. later, the doors are opened and dinner is served at our table. The Each December we hold our annual chapter business meeting, conversation may, or course, continue, but informally. followed by a holiday party. We are now able to have these events in In addition to the regular seminars, we have gone to the Air and the same restaurant that we use for seminars. Other social events Space Museum twice for large screen films, followed by discussion, have included picnics, summer outings, and potluck dinners at homes thanks to arrangements by James T. Hyder, A84. We have also had of alumni. several fine arts seminars in recent years. For these, we meet at an Edward Grandi was for some years the seminar coordinator, folart museum or gallery to sit before one or lwo paintings and discuss lowed by Samuel V. Stiles, A54. When we formally organized ourthem for an hour or so. These have been led by Sharon H. Garvey, selves into a chapter of the Alumni Association, the first president was SGl78, who has selected and researched the paintings and made Deborah Papier, A72, who was succeeded by Sharon Garvey and arrangements for the viewing and seminars. We held an afternoon then Samuel Stiles. seminar on an opera, in which we watched a video, followed by disAlumni who visit the Washington area are invited to join us for cussion. The opera was be Boito's Mefistofefe, and the discussion built seminars and other events. For further information on chapter activion our recent seminar on Goethe's Faust, Part I. ties, call Sam Stiles at (301) 424-9119, or Bill Ross at (301) Because Washington is only thirty miles from Annapolis, we 320-4594. have been able to call on tutors to lead seminars more frequently than can most alumni chapters. Tutor Sam Kutler, A54, led a series of seminars on Einstein's Relativity and Stephen W. Hawking's A Brief History of Time. Annapolis president Chris Nelson, SF70, led a seminar on short stories by Matsu-Basho and Komo No Ch-mei, and tutor George Doskow led one recenrly on The Tale of Genii by lady T 17 ELEOION CONT. FROM PAGE 18 for engineering firms, 1988 ; Contributing Editor, CADalyst magazine, 1990 ; President, Northern California Chapter, St. John's College Alumni Association, 1988-91; Homecoming lecturer, St. John's College, Santa Fe, 1991; Director, St. John's College Alumni Association, 1993 . BEVERLY ANGEL SGl89, Austin, TX Teacher and Dept. Chair, Chemistry, Math and Physics, St. Michael's Academy, 1992 ; Elgin High School, 1990-92; Teacher, 1977 ; Teaching Certificate, University of Houston, 1977; Volunteer Teacher, Austin Adult literacy Council; Volunteer, Kerrville Summer Music Festival; Founder and President, Austin Chapter, St. John's College Alumni Association, 1990-93; Director, St. John's College Alumni Association, 1990-93, 1994 NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN THAT NOMINATIONS MAY BE MADE BY PETITION: Rules governing submission of nominations by petition are as follows: 1 . Petitions must be signed by no fewer than thirty (30) members of the Alumni Association in good standing. 2. Petitions must be presented to the Secretary of the Alumni Association prior to the Annual Meeting at which the election is to be held. George Bingham, SF68, Secretary St. John's College Alumni Association P.O. Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404 3. The election will be held at the Annual Meeting on Saturday, July 22, 1995, at 2:00 p.m., in the Senior Common Room, Peterson Student Center, Santa Fe Campus. 4. The candidates for Directors receiving the highest number of votes for those offices shall be declared elected. H �18 ALUMNI REPORTER NOTES AND PROFILES ••• Morris Parslow (A). reports that having retired, he is now professor emeritus of Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa. The spring 1994 issue of The Merton SeaJonaL contains an article by Bill Buchanan (A) on "The Search for Brahmachari." Brahmachari is the Hindu friend Thomas Merton speaks of so endearingly in The SeJJen Story Mountain. Bill tracked him down and interviewed him. He is living in an ashram near the Calcutta airport, still writing and teaching, in his nineties. Bill also has an article in Swami ViJJek.ananda, a Hundred YearJ Since ChU:ago, a CommemoratiJJe Volume. It is called "Notes on Swami Vivekananda, Christian Science, and Vedanta," and in it Christian Science is seen as a kind of distant American cousin of Vedanta. Charles R. Powleske (A) is beginning his 36th year at the Business Council for International Understanding. For the past 12 years he has been president and CEO. Munir Hussein, A90, is BCIU's vice president for programs. Charles writes that Munir was "mainly responsible for organizing the White House Conference on Trade and Investment in Central and Eastern Europe, which was held in Cleveland in January. Over 1200 people participated, including President Clinton, Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown, and 14 high-level government delegations &om the region. This was an ambitious undertaking for BCIU and, happily, one of our most successful." Ronald McGuirk (A), a senior vice president of First National Bank of Maryland, has been named corporate secretary of the bank's holding company, First Maryland Bancorp and each of its direct and indirect subsidiaries, including four subsidiary banks. As secretary, he will play an active role in corporate governance and in coordinating matters for the various boards of directors and advisory boards. Ronald has been with First National for 35 years. He has served as a member of the Anne Arundel County Council and is active in the local community. Frank B. Murray (A) was conferred an honorary Doctor of Science degree by Moray House College, Institute of Dear Alumni of St. John's College, It is with deep regret that lhave accepted Cindy Jokela's resignation as director of Alumni Relations in Santa Fe. Cindy has done an outstanding job over the past four years, and her efforts and commitmentt<>~t. John's and its alumni will be sorely missed. . .. . Cindy, her husband John, and sons, Karlin and Les, will best8;ying in Minnesota where John. h.as an opportunity to stay on as a faculty member at St. Olaf College. Cindy will continue with her campaign re~ponsibilities. So, for all of you who are volunteers in the campaign, Cindy wiU continue to be the key staff person in Santa Fe for the Alumni D~vision of the campaign. We have begun a ~~arch for the director of Alumni Relations and, there~ fore, I want to share with you some of the key criteria for the position and encourage any of you who are interested to apply~ The Alumni Relations Director develops,. promotes and. coordinates al~ni activities for the Santa Fe campus in conjunction with the Alumni Association and its hoard. The person in this position .recruits, trains, motivates and works with alumni fundraising volunteers. The director is expected to maintain close co;mmunication and coordinati,on with the Annapolis alumni direct~r. The director coordinates and supports activities of the alumni fundraising volunteers. The person in this position reports to the vice president for college advancement. Qualified candidates·~ holci a BAand have two y~a:rs administrative experience in a.college setting, one year.office m.anaget;nentexperience and one year of writing., editing and public .relations expe~ie:11ce. The position requires excellent organizati~naland communications skills •. ·. ' To apply for this position, or to obtain additional inf()rin,atlon, please call or write to: Ted (;onzales, Director of Personnel,(505)984-6141, 1160 Camino Cruz Blanc~. &anta Fe, New Mexico 8750}-4599 Sincerely, Jeffrey D. Morgan, Vice President for Advancement Education, at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. Currently dean of the College of Education at the University of Delaware, Dr. Murray earned his MAT in 1961 and his PhD in 1966 from Johns Hopkins University. He taught high school for several years, then taught at Johns Hopkins, the University of Minnesota, and Teachers' College of Columbia University. In the speech marking the presentation, Dr. Murray was honored as "a scholar and researcher of outstanding distinction and international renown, having sustained for nearly 30 years an unbroken series of publications." His work in developmental and educational psychology has been devoted to the line of psychology pioneered by Jean Piaget. Dr. Murray was cited for helping to create a research tradition that has "extended our understanding of children's cognitive, affective and conceptual development and provided a richer understanding of the complexities of learning to read and how mathematical and other types of thinking can be nurtured." Barbara Mordes Ross (A) reports that the Homecoming reunion for the class of '69 was "fantastic." She's looking for anyone interested in a 1965-75 middle of the decades reunion, since many of her classmates took longer than four years to graduate. At the University of Alabama, Tuskaloosa, Michael Hendry (A) is teaching Latin, Greek, and Greek mythology. He has published almost 20 articles. Douglas Mayer (A) has joined the law firm ofWachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz in New York. Sheri Anderson (SF) reports that she received a letter from the mother of classmate Leeza Tschursin. Leeza had completed a doctorate in microbiology, but a&er efforts to deal with serious depression, she took her life. Her mother requests prayers, for her from her friends. Her mother's address is: Diana MacArthur, 5103 Cape Cod Court, Bethesda, Md. The Oberlin News-Tribune in Oberlin, Ohio, named Anne Hawk (A) "Oberlinian of the Year" for her work with families and children. Anne is the guiding force behind the Lorain County Family Fun Fair, a day of recreation arid exchange of information that brings together parents, children, and the agencies that serve them. The fair has been held each summer for two years, last year attracting thousands of visitors and including more than 60 local businesses. Anne works with Families Yes!, an organization that supports'al1 families however they are made up and entourages programs that help families before they are in crisis. 1 John Polgreen (SF) is a founding partner in the WPA Group in St. Paul. The company develops computer-based training and related services. In 1988 he completed a PhD in education at the University of Minnesota. He writes that he is married and has three children, two of whom are currently sophomores at St. John's in Annapolis. Jacques Duvoisin (A) teaches ethics at Babson College in Boston. A man of few words, Matthew Hartzell (A) says "Hi" to his classmates. Peter Davis (A) reports that he has recently become the manager of public policy for NationsBank Corp. He is still living in Atlanta, where he's been for the past 12 years. Prudence Davis (A) is the Mother Prioress of the Benedictine Priory of Vita Pax in Turve, Bedford, England. Erica Chaney King (A), a lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps, was transferred in October 1994 from California to North Carolina, where she now serves as the commanding officer of the Financial Management School, Camp Lejeune. Sara Marcy (SF) and her husband, David Garcia, had a baby girl, Victoria Amparo Garcia, on January 12, 1995. They're living in Queens, Ny., while David completes law school at St. John's University. Sara is the New York Technology Manager for Chubb Insurance. They can be contacted via email at 74312.174@compuserve.com. Sara also writes that Tina Clark (SF) is in the process of starting her own fashion company and currently is traveling in Europe, and Lance Forsythe, SF81, currently is working at St. John's ----------------------------~----·~--~~- -~-- -- �University in New F oundland, Canada and can be reached via E-mail at forsythl@sparky2.esd.mun.ca. Judi Hammett and Carl Aron (both A) became the proud parents of Maia Hammett-Aron on May 15. Maia was in a hurry and didn't want to wait to get to the Baltimore Birth Center, so she was delivered by Carl in the bathroom at home, as their friends looked on -including Dave Lowther, A86. Curran G. Engel (SE)and his fiancee, Annalisa Chamherlain, have moved to a new home in Oakland, Ca. Curran reports that he is still working in film. Their new address is: 2515 Carmel Street, Oakland, CA 94602; (510)-5302293; e-mail: Curran E@alo.com. Jeremy Lauer (A) writes that he will be moving to Geneva, Switzerland, where he will take a position as editor for the Office of Publication of the World Hea\th Organization. Charles Beckman(A) has passed the bar exam. Andrew Beckman (A) is in his third year of medical school. Eleanor Hamburger (A) is now an attorney with Consumers Union in San Francisco. She is working 011 mental health issues. Shirley M. Banks (SF) writes, "After hiding out since 19B6, when I left St. John's, I am pleased to send a note about the state of my life here in Atlanta. "I live in Midtown, one of the city's most urban neighborhoods .... After working for six years at the Feminist Women's Health Center in Atlanta, I returned to school in the summer of 1993,I am a fulltime student at Kennesaw State.College, majoring in biology and mathematics. I tutor mathematics for a living. (Jack Lincoln, my freshman math tutor, will not miss the irony of this development, having lamented my "unnecessary diffidence" toward the subject in my first don rag. Katharine Mulford, my sophomore math tutor, will be astounded. Ain't life grand?) Intermittently I work at Borders Book Shop where James Silver, A79, is an assistant manager. I was confirmed in the Episcopal Church in 1988, and serve as a verger (a what?) and cantor at All Saints' Church, and sit on the board of directors of Integrity/Atlanta. "Richard Stark, SF90, my best friend, lived in Atlanta until 1990. He now lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and manages a bookstore in Chelsea. He says 'hi.' "I would love to hear from old friends. My e-mail address is sbanks@pigseye.kennesaw.edu and my mailing address is: 790 Myrtle Street, N.E., Apartment 6, Atlanta, GA 303081431; phone: (404) B75-1449." Debbie Hollis (SF) currently is working on her second master's degree while working for USWEST as a research librarian. She got her first master's in library science from the University of Washington in 1989, moved to Denver, and "temped around" until she started with USWEST. Her second master's will be in computer information systems and she will finish in June, 1995. She also has taken up Timiki Aikido and just received her black belt. Friends are welcome to write or call or Internet. Her address is: 3336 S. Alcott Street, Sheridan, CO BO 11 O; phone: (303) 7891769; e-mail: Library30@aol.com. After many tumultuous engagements, Melissa Johnson (SF) and CJ Dallett (SF) were married on Friday, October 7, 1994 in Santa Fe at the home of Deborah Fleig, SFBB. The majority of those witnessing the union were Johnnies: Lara Anderson, SFBB; Denise Malone Barlow, SFBB, Toby Barlow, SF8B, and their daughters Nora and Rose; Theresa Donnelly, SFBB; Caren Friedman, ABB, and Richard Scholnik, SFB5; Robyn Hodges, SFB7; Myra Andrews Keen, SFBB; Sarah Maxwell, SF92, and Jeremy Parfitt, SFB9; tutor Elliott Skinner; the Slakeys: Anne, SF88, Bill, SFB8, and Tom, SFBl; and Mark van de Walle, SFB9. Melissa teaches math at Capital High School in Santa Fe and CJ is the owner of "Red D Designs,"a furniture design and restoration company. They welcome letters at P.O. Box 203, Ojo Caliente, NM B7549. Jennifer Lapham (A) is a graduate student at the Art Institute of Chicago. Jeanne Duvoisin (A) earned an LLM in tax law from NYU Law School last May; she works in Los Angeles now. Raymond Gifford (A) hasjoined the law firm of Raker & Hostetler in Denver. The firm has offices in eight U.S. cities. Raymond, who was formerly with Kirkland and Ellis, has practiced in general commercial litigation, handling matters including toxic tort litigation and securities fraud. He earned his JD degree from the University of Chicago. "On September 4, I married Cristina Bernardi of Chicago," writes Mark Shiffman (A). Guests included Jay and Fawn Powers, ABB, Sophie Ehrhadt (formerly Romano), SFB9, Owen Jones, Olivia Neel, Frances Daniels, and William Culley , all SF90. Eric Lavoie, ABB, was best man. Alexandra Kincannon (A) married Paul Moorehead in May 1993. She is currently living in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Jim Kolsky (SF) got an MS in statistics from University of California, Davis, in 1992. He is currently working on a PhD in statistics at Oregon state University and hopes to be done during the summer of 1996. He is also planning to get married at the end of June to Cathy Baker. Adam Eggers (A) graduated from law school in 1994. He finished at Cardozo School of Law in New York, and is now living and working in NYC. "Having survived law school and the bar exam, it is time to make a living," he says. His message is: B "H. Sapna Gandhi Slatkin (A) writes, "I met my husband, Robert, on December 31, 1993 at the bookstore where I worked. Our eyes met-it was love at first sight! After an hour or so of making eye contact, Robert asked me out for New Year's Eve. Unfortunately, I had other commitments but we immediately made plans to lunch the next day. On Saturday, we met for lunch and spent the entire afternoon together falling in love. On Sunday, we had dinner and after dessert, Robert suggested we get married. I quickly agreed. We were married in a dual ceremony on July 30 at a historic home in Louisville. First, we had an American/Western wedding, with the bride wearing a traditional ivory gown and the groom wearing a tux. An hour later, we married again in an abbreviated Indian ceremony that lasted only one and a half hours. Bride and groom wore Indian garb (see photo, pg. lB). The wedding was attended by over 200 guests from Toronto, Montreal, London, San Francisco, New York City, Boston, Atlanta, Baltimore, Maui, Hawaii, and Melbourne, Florida. Johnnies in attendance were Andrea Rush (SF), Jill Ingram, lnesAzcarate (A). We were told that everyone had a great time and that the weddings were beautiful. We'll have to take them at their word because our memory is blurred. Married life is great. I would love to hear from friends. 1046 Everett Avenue, Louisville, KY 40204; 502-459-B655." Ken Geter (SF) recently was accepted into the Graduate Program at the Department of Environmental Health at Colorado State University. He is seeking a master's.degree in veterinary epidemiology. Ken currently is employed at The Center for Veterinary Epidemiology, College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, Colorado State Univ. Kimi Kanda (SF) and her husband, Eran Williams, SF89, have been living in Hungary for the past six months, "enjoying an Eastern European adventure." Eran is teaching with the Soros Foundation and Kim is learning Hungarian and doing private tutoring. The couple expects to remain in Hungary for at least another year. Sarah Miles (SF) was married to Brandon Valentini in November at the Cristo Rey Catholic Church in Santa Fe. Sarah currently works as a statistical analyst with Research and Polling Inc. of Albuquerque. Brandon is a business student and works for the New Mexico State Fair. James Perriguey (SF) reports that he "will be enjoying a travel spree 'til July as a student of metaphysical law and astrology under the renowned astrologer Alan Oken. He will be assisting an international group of travellers to the ancient temples of Central America where he will meet with the Dalai-Lama at ChichenItza. Then to Norway, Denmark, Lourdes, Zurich and Portugal, working as an apprentice and assistant." He adds that he is "eager to correspond with y'all." His address is: 3211 Breeze Terrace, Austin, TX 7B722-1911. Nicholas Burmeister (SF) is attending the University of Seattle to obtain a degree in existential psychotherapy. He says that any Johnnies who come through can give him a call or write a riote. His address is 605 10th Ave. East, Apt. 1, Seattle, WA 98102. Brian Dorland (A) writes that he recently has been accepted into the University of Maryland's Graduate Physics program .. He writes: "I have the privilege of going to France and Germany in April. I will be presenting a paper entitled 'The Utility of Metadata Catalog Databases Using HTML Interfaces' at the Weaving the Astronomy Web' conference in Strasbourg, France, and also attending the Third International World Wide Web conference right after it in Darmstadt, Germany. The paper is pretty dry, except where I sneak the Kantian term 'schema' into a discussion of computer databases ...Also, my dne"atlci:-a-half-year-old daughter �20 Natalya's favorite word is 'book.' Hmmm ... " Robert Nease, Jr. (A) is pursuing a masters in writing and publishing at Emerson College in Boston. He received a Bookbuilders Award. Diana Rempe Cetas and Justin Cetas (both SF) would like to announce (somewhat belatedly) the birth of their daughter, Isabelle Sophia Cetas, on September 14, 1994. Diana writes, "We are living in Tucson for what feels like the rest of our lives, as Justin has just begun work on his MD/Ph.D and I begin grad school in the fall. Isabelle is content simply to practice rolling over. "Our door is open to anyone who should find her/himself in Tucson. Our phone number is (602) 623-4030 or send e-mail to: jcetas@gas.uug.arizona.edu." Heather Malcom (SF)writes: "I have been back in New York City six months already and the only things I am addicted to so far are e-mail, cheap sunglasses and vinyl. Chris Leyclon, A93, made it out here with me and hasn't freaked out yet either. I work for an amazing woman at New York University. She is a professor with a joint appointment in Chemistry and Math, we have a computer lab where she and about ten other people use computational techniques to research the dynamics of bio- , molecules. I am pretty lost most of the time, but I do have to admit that I would be much worse off had it not been for senior lab. I WAS paying attention, Mr. Forkin! ! But the most exciting thing for me at the moment is that I have been elected to serve on the board of Third Wave, a national non-profit organization dedicated to feminist and youth activism for social change. Our next big project is Freedom Summer '96, when we will be traveling around the country to register voters for the '96 election. Anyone interested in Third Wave (or NYU or NYCor me) should contact me at: Courant Institute, 251 Mercer Street, New York, NY 10012; e-mail: malcolmh@nyu.edu P.S. I continue to send books in for the Books by Women Project, I hope others will too! IEI SCIENCE CONT. FROM PAGE 9 Although Mr. Flaumenhaft's degrees are in political philosophy, he encountered no unfriendly gatekeepers protecting academic turf in the field of history of REPORTER science. Encouragement, advice and support from renowned historian of science and tutor emeritus Curtis Wilson was invaluable. Mr. Flaumenhaft's St. John's background made up for any lack of formal credentials. According to his way of thinking, the connection between political philosophy and science is not far-fetched. He is particularly interested in the emergence of early modern political thought in opposition to classical political thought. During the Enlightenment, the divisions common in modern minds between math/science and the humanities had not yet been defined. MARKETING MENDEL AND NEWTON His first answer to the question of who would read these guidebooks to science is "Me, thirty years ago." In other words, people who are not St. Johnnies but who are perhaps professionals in the academic world. They read Aristotle, Hobbes and Locke and are aware that they are dealing with only part of the story. They might like to read Ptolemy or Descartes' scientific work, but they don't have the time or the opportunity to sit down with students and work through it. Commentaries by specialists tend to be forbidding. The guidebooks, on the other hand, are user-friendly. Everything such a person would need is included: texts, charts, diagrams, notes, commentary. Another group of readers are engineers, scientists and military or business types who do high-tech work. They might want to investigate the source of their presuppositions. Also they are curious about why Ptolemy, for instance, envisioned the universe as revolving around the earth and why he tried to explain everything with circles. "These people are not technophobes," he says, "but they are not about to pick up Ptolemy. If it were available in a guidebook they might." A third group of readers Mr. Flaumenhaft identifies are those involved with core curricula. Those establishing such a curriculum can be at a loss for what to do about teaching science. They don't want just introductory material, or what Mr. Flaumenhaft calls "physics for poets," which lack substance and rigor. The material in the guidebooks is real science, however, and quite do-able in a classroom setting. This is also the kind of science that perhaps should be taught to high school and elementary school teachers, Mr. Flaumenhaft said. A group not mentioned by Mr. Flaumenhaft is St. John's alumni. Science and math are such use-it-or-lose-it disciplines, that if alumni haven't spent time on Ptolemy or Newton in 20 years, they might not remember much. These guidebooks make a great refresher course. While it's true that at one time these scientific texts were read by well-educated people, today they are considered difficult going. BEAUTY IN THE BEAST But it is difficult, are they also beautiful, as beautiful as Shakespeare? According to Mr. Flaumenhaft, you have to do a good deal of work before you can make that judgment. "In some books that I have studied for years, I find the artistry austere but simply amazing," he said. Apollonius he finds especially beautiful. There is a long stretch of propositions that is extremely tedious, but ultimately the whole "is something neatly and tightly put together, with no waste, that enables you to see wondrous sights." Even for those who can't bring themselves to go to the dentist or solve the puzzle of Bosnia, then, reading science can be worthwhile. IEI ALUMNI PROFILE PATRICIAMEYE~ SGI82: GNING STUDENTSA VOICE hy Sara Harru, EC95 One of the most direct ways to put a St. John's education to work, it would seem, would be to teach it. It is remarkable to hear of the. innovative ways the basic pedagogy is being implemented across the country.In particular, the work of Patricia Meyer, a high school teacher in the Glenbard East (Lombard, II.) humanities department is noteworthy. Ms. Meyer has tailored the St. John's pedagogy to a large-class public high school humanities curriculum and made it "one of the showcase classes" of the district. One of the most innovative measures is her development of student leader/facilitators who guide the discussion within a five- or snc-member group of classmates. The leader I facilitators are required to tum in their questions at the beginning of discussion days and meet weekly with other student leader/facilitators to discuss their successes and problems. Ms. Meyer was working as a public school teacher when she decided to return to school for a master's degree. Her colleague, a St. John's graduate, encouraged her to go to St. John's and she started in the summer of 1979, attending each summer for four years until 1982. That also was the year her school district proposed starting a humanities course-- and tapped her to help develop it. 1 'We kn.ew we wanted to use primacy texts and we knew we wanted to use the seminar mode," Ms. Meyer said. So, with some advice from her former tutors and the help of her alumni colleague, in 1982 she established the fust humanities program for Glenbard East. Having student leader/facilitators is a recent develOpment, the result of budget cutbacks that forced the end of team teaching. "I put out a call to all the kids who were enrolled" and instead of the handful of students she expected, ''half the class showed up. JI Ms~ Meyer runs an all-day workshop in the summer, which covers how to ask a good question, how to find the core issues of a text, how to evoke responses and how to control the dynamics of a discussion. Then the students practice on a short piece and discuss the qualitiesof the questions and techniques that worked well. Since that time, the popularity of the class has grown steadily. The students ''truly love it/' Ms.Meyer said. She consistently gets positive feedback, as well as requests to become student leader/facilitators. The most common response is students saying/'We love having a voice in class.'' Aside from the size of the class, the biggest change Ms. Meyer said she has noticed over the· 13-year life of the program is the 11 increase in female students questioning the values of what men have told us." .The question of how this perspective affects how laws were written, for example, is likely to arise in a discussion of Locke. In addition, she 8aid her role has changed from organizing the discussion and drawing outthe main points, to spending more time with student leaders and visiting each discussion group during class. Infact, she now worries about "not taking over their role," she said. Ms. Meyer also hope& to take her show on the road, spreading the word about the program in the region and encouraging wider participation. Part of their work was a teacher's workshop she. presented with four of her students at a Shakespeare Reperto1yworkshop. The reading listlargelyreflects the St. John's seminar curriculum but also includes a selection of African folk tales and a choice of the works of Chinua Achebe, Bessie Head or Buchi Emecheta. Discussion classes also are interspersed with field trips, essay writing, viewings ofart and architecture and listening to music. B �ALUMNl PROFILE · SECOND CAREER TIME: A LETTER FROM CHRIS KING, A75 Here's some news aboutmy wife, Amy L. Oosterhout, A82, and me: Aniy works as a real estate title searcher. She has been in business for h~rself for about seven years. She specializes in searching titles in the various Circuit Courts in the Baltimore area for attorneys located in other areas. of the state, though she has some clients in Baltimore as well. Business has been growing slowly, but steadily, through the years, though not yet to the point that she has to become an employer. Amy is on the cutting edge in the record rooms around Baltimore; her portable computer has almost completely replaced pen and paper for her, and this has aroused great curiosity among her fellow title searchers. In 1990, after almost ten years as a litigator, I quit the practice oflaw, and became a bus driver. I did :Ratenjoythelaw (except for a part-time position teaching legal writing at the University of Baltimore Law School). There was too much pressure, too much fighting (whic:;h is what people hire lawyers to do, I know), too little personal satisfaction (most. ~ases are settled, that is, compromised, not won or lost), and, frankly, it was not particularly lucrative for me (lest one think my decision completely noble or insane). Driving MTA buses here in Baltimore combines two long-time loves of mine: professional driving and cities. The lines I drive serve people in all parts of the city, during all hours of the day (and night). After four years, I remain happy with my job and my decision to leave the law. I still love my city, but I don't know any more about how to solve its problems than I did when I started this job. If I figure it out, I'll be sure to let someone know. For additional fun, I do a little desktop publishing and typesetting with the family desktop computer, and I play with Harry. Harry, our only child, would make his namesake, Harry Golding, proud. He is six DOVVj and loves computers and maps and Thomas the Tank Engine. I could praise him for pages on end, but you still wouldn't think he was as wonderfulas your kids, I know. Within the past year, we learned that Harry has a genetic deficiency called Velo-Cardio-Facial Syndrome (VCFS). Medicine discovered VCFS only about 15 years ago, and learned to confirm it with blood tests only about two years ago. Information about VCFS is still pretty spare, and limited mostly t() technical articles in genetic journals. If anyone in the St. John's community knows about VCFS or knows of any support groups for it, please let us know. Classmates finding themselves in the Baltimore-Washington area: please get in touch. We're at: 135 Soutp Potomac St., Baltimore, MD 21224.;2252. Phone (410)522-2665; Fax (410)522-2033; E-mail 71071.613@compuserve.com. ill HOMESCHOOL CONT. FROM PAGE 13 For her science education, Emily took summer and weekend courses for gifted high school students at a nearby college. "It wasn't like regular school," she said. "There weren't grades. The majority of the kids were there because they really wanted to do the work." Her enjoyment of science continues at St. John's, where the college's approach matches her learning style. "The way we go about it here requires a lot less rote memorization and a lot more explanation, which really helps me. I always want to know why I'm doing something." . She said this approach is what drew her to the college. "I mainly chose St. .. John's because of the conversations," she said. "That's really been the way I've learned. I'd read something and then I'd talk about it with my mom." But, although the college's emphasis on conversation dovetails with her home schooling experience, the all-required program is in direct contrast to her earlier education, where she. determined her own curriculum. This c_ontrast has never bothered Emily. "Another reason I chose St. John's was that I liked the idea of trying a little regimentation after eighteen years of having to do it all myself. It's nice to have structure every once in a while. And St. John's has a lot of freedom within that structure. You can do a lot outside of class." Now a senior preparing to graduate, Emily plans to enter museum studies. She has applied to the Wmterthur Program in Early American Material Culture, and is exploring several possibilities for internships. STUDENT PROFILE: MARY CATHERINE FORD by Ben ZeNey, A98 Many students applying to St. John's come from umique academic situations. Some have been at the top of their class, earning straight N.s and astronomically high standardized test scores. Some, although intelligent, lag behind the others, unmotivated or unchallenged by the traditional educational systems. Very few take the initiative to change how their education is progressing. However, that is just what Mary Catherine Ford (a January freshman in Annapolis) decided to do after years of dissatisfaction with traditional schools. Ms. Ford claims her high school was "boring and a waste of time." After transferring between several different schools, she decided to take personal responsibility for her academic pursuits. After reading a newspaper ad for a homeschooling program, Ms. Ford and her father decided this would be a great substitute for a traditional high school education. In addition, the cost of the homeschooling program was substantially less than the tuition at her parochial school. She used the Seton Home Study School materials. Ms. Ford taught herself about literature, grammar, history, American government, and even studied several languages. Although she did not have a laboratory available for her use, Ms. Ford was able to study basic biology at home, as well. In addition, because she was enrolled in a Catholic-run program, she was able to continue her study of religion. Ms. Ford's academic performance drastically improved with homeschooling. She was motivated to read and formulate ideas about her readings. Many aspects of Ms. Ford's homeschooling experience parallel the St. John's program. Both experiences promote selfrehance in a challenging environment, and both encourage students to think about what they read. In fact, Ms. Ford applied only to St. John's. "After I read about St. John's .. .! knew it was the place for me," she said. STUDENT PROFILE: CHRISTY McELROY by Siu3an Bordan Christy McElroy, A!97, and her sister Charissa (who is currently applying to St. John's) began their education in a small private school. But by the time Christy reached third grade, the McElroy family had grown to five children; the cost of private school became prohibitive. The family explored the public school system and found it incompatible with their fundamentalist Christian beliefs. They decided to homeschool their children. What at first looked like a financial decision had become a religious necessity. When Chrisij and Charissa were young, their parents designed their studies. "We've never used anyone's curriculum," Charissa said. "We have this big laundry room full of resource materials, textbooks and workbooks, on subjects from art to math and everything in between." But for the McElroys, as for most homeschoolers, education is not limited to books. "The emphasis was to be wellrounded," Christy says. "Over the years we did so many social things. We were involved in several church groups, setting up and performing musical programs. As some of the oldest students still in homeschooling, we were asked to offer courses to other homeschoolers. I was in a ballet company for several years. We did Girl Scouts. People may say that we' re sheltered, but we didn't just stay at home and study." One aspect of their education that Christy and Charissa are often called upon to explain is its religious emphasis. "People look at me and think I've been brainwashed, just like they think I've been sheltered," Christy said. "But I've had a specific education in a belief system. When I read the authors at St. John's who have another belief system, I have something to compare it with. If you have an idea of what justice is like according to the Bible, it's easier to understand justice according to Aristotle, because you can say 'it's not like the Bible because it's like this, but it is like the Bible because it's like this.'" Charissa agrees that her education not only has not closed her mind, but also makes a good fit with St. John's. "St. John's is a natural extension of homeschooling in three ways, she said, "in method of education, the actual things learned, and the quality of education." "The similarity of method is perhaps the most striking thing," Christy said. "The discussion method can be considered the primary thing that is different about St. John's. They study the great thinkers in other programs at other colleges, but not like we do here. In our home, discussion was fundamental to our learning. We would have oral tests all the time and constantly be asked about our studies during dinner." Even with Christy now attending college, the sisters continue discussing their studiestogether. Although Charissa is studying under the aegis of her school district in Pennsylvania, she lives in Annapolis with Christy. The sisters review Charissa's work and discuss what each is learning. "Homeschooling doesn't necessarily have to involve parents," Christy points out. "It's kind of like St. John's," Charissa says, "because you have to be interested in your QWn education and be Ill responsible foryourown learning." 11 �22 LOGOI OF THEMYTHOI Were duels once held in the hallways of Pinkney? Is Mellon Hall earthquake-proof? Was Mr. Kaplan really a taxi driver in New York who was discovered by two tutors discussing . philosophy in the back seat of his cab? Did Mr. Lenkowski really make a killing in the stock market? A school that is nearly 300 years old must have accumulated a number of myths and legends. Let us hear from you alumni-what were the stories of your era? The ace reporters in Annapolis will try to figure out if there is any truth to them. Send in the fullest version of the story you'd like to find out about, complete with names, places, dates, sources. Get it to us via any means of communication: write The Reporter, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404; call (410)6262539; fax The Reporter (410)263-4828; we'll even be on the lookout for carrier pigeons and bottles with messages floatII ing in College Creek. COLLEGE OFFICIALS SERVE COUNTY President Chris Nels on and Vice President for Advancement Jeff Bishop are both serving on the transition team for John Gary, the newly elected county executive for Anne Arundel County. Mr. Nelson co-chairs the group that is reviewing Anne Arundel Community College. Mr. Bishop chairs the Committee on Social Services. "The department deals with income maintenance, child abuse and neglect, homelessness, dependent care, and other issues," said Mr. Bishop. "After studying how the department is organized and how services are delivered, we will be making recommendations about how to improve efficiency and delivery," Most of what the department does is mandated by the federal government and funded by the states, and Mr. Bishop said the co~nty handles its role well. "Since we spend time here at St. John's discussing man's responsibility to his community, I think it's important for the college to serve as an example of community involvement," he said. II REPORTER 1 JOHNNY MORONIC S SENIOR ESSAY HAILED AS MASTERPIECE BY SUS3AN BORDEN mong the 80 essays submitted to Miss Brann at the annual senior essay writing party this year was a work that revealed such depth of understanding and passion of thought that, although its author is not a currently enrolled student, it was accepted immediately. The essay, aptly titled "As Any Reader Can Clearly See" was written by Johnny Moronic, a newcomer to the St. John's community, yet clearly a thinker whose piercing insights and unique vision rank him among the greatest essayists ever to ring the bell atop McDowell Hall. Indeed, some faculty members say, not since Johnny Quest Moron has the college seen the likes of an essay such as Mr. Moronic's. Johnny Quest Moron, you'll remember, is the author of a 1981 senior essay intriguingly titled "Johnny Moron's Senior Essay." Mr. Moron's work, so subtle in its design, yet so cunning in its structure, appears to the uneducated eye as a collection of random musings by an assortment of amateur thinkers, almost as if several seniors had nothing better to do during the essay writing period than contribute a page or two of incoherent ramblings to a joke essay. But, those who know better say this haphazard appearance reveals the genius of the work. The seeming incoherence satisfies the casual reader, while masking the essay's esoteric teachings that only the dedicated student will work to decipher. Imagine the genius of a mind that brings us a sentence such as: "And if we take it as a line and bring it to a cube so that it can be perceived, we have the distance between tragedies, and it has been shown that Wagner's opera is five hundred thirty one thousand, four hundred forty one times more tragic than the World Spirit." Indeed, Mr. Moron's idiocy is transcended only by the depth of his underlying profundity. But while Mr. Moron's 1981 essay was a masterpiece of encrypted wisdom, Mr. Moronic's 1995 essay is the very eidos of clarity. Consider its opening sentence, which plainly describes the condition of modern man: "Since all of the paralogisms of practical reason are ampliative, there can be no doubt that our knowledge, then, abstracts from all content of a priori knowledge; certainly, the architectonic of natural reason teaches us nothing whatsoever regarding the content of the Antinomies." Contemplate the wisdom of the final page which treats the reader to the elegant Alex Bowles beauty of simple truths laid bare: "We can deduce that space teaches us nothing whatsoever regarding the content of our sense perceptions; however, the discipline of human reason proves the validity of, however, the Ideal of practical reason." Yet not all are happy with Mr. Moronic's intellectual mastery. There are rumors within the senior class that Mr. Moronic did not write the essay by himself. Some have gone so far as to charge that Mr. Moronic's essay was, in fact, written by a Kant-generating computer program. But others suggest that those making the accusations are resentful of the fact that Mr. Moronic's work is obviously a shoo-in for the essay prize. Senior Zena Hitz, far from casting aspersions on the essay's genesis, had nothing but praise for the work and its author. "I don't think the school will see anything like it for a long time," she said. "Mr. Moronic has really broken new ground. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if his essay were put on the program. It's far more lucid than much of what we read." Mr. Moronic agreed. "The essay is perhaps better than Kant, he said. 'Tve obtained and perfected the form th~t he sought." II 11 MOVIE MOGUL IN THE MAKING BY BARBARA GOYETTE Annapolis junior Alex Bowles loves film; his student-run production company is already working on a St. John's movie. a ih~. has its own language~" said Alex Bowles, a junior the Annapolis campus, "so that ifyou see more films and those of a better quality, you will understand the medium better." In his role as Film Archon, Alex is the chief cheese of the committee that chooses and shows the weekend films at the college. He said he picks movies that he's always wanted to see as well as those he's always loved. The result is one of the campus's most popular diversions-and one shared by the Annapolis community, since "townies" fill half the seats at every showing. Alex, who grew up in San Francisco, traces his interest in film to a strong interest in painting. "That's what I was best at in high school, what I put the most serious consistent effort into," he said. He didn't realize that film would become his passion until he took a year off between high school and college to travel and sort things through. After deferring his enrollment at St. John's he spent three months in Africa and seven months traveling around the Mediterranean .. "I just woke up one morning and was in bed thinking about where I should have breakfast, when it occurred to me that I wanted to be involved in making films," he said. So why would a student talented at painting and considering a career in film choose a college like St. John's? "I was brought up in a house full of books, not being allowed to watch much TV The idea of reading these books for four years really appealed to me," he said. "I also liked the idea of not having to sit through lectures." The stuff of drama, he noted, hasn't changed, and at St. John's he can concentrate on reading and discussing the foundations of drama, literature and philosophy. He continues his interest in art, not by painting (he hasn't picked up a brush in four years) but by working as a student aide at the Mitchell Gallery. When he led tours of the Rembrandt exhibit this fall, he found that the 45 minutes allotted for the tour 'was always over too quickly. "There was so much to talk about in the pictures; every time I looked at them, I found more," he said. CONT. ON PAGE 23 �OBITUARIES AND MEMORIAM ••• ROY ARMSTRONG Roy Armstrong, who served for 27 years at St. John's in Annapolis, died in January. Mr. Armstrong retired as director of laboratories in 1992; he began working for the college in 1965. Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, he received a degree in electronics from the National Radio Institute. In the 1940s he played guitar with country music star Hank Snow and his band. · - Mr. Armstrong lived in Edgewater, Md., and was interested in computers and electronics. He is survived by his wife, Hilda Mae Snow Armstrong; one son; and three daughters. IN MEMORIAM: JOHN SILVER How strange to read the obituary of a friend, especially when the words speak so little of the friend I knew. Hidden between the articles recounting the achievements of other now dead, the few lines spoke the barest facts d the case: he .died, he was buried. A young man, he had so little time to accomplish what he had hoped for the world around him, l~t aloil~ what he dreamed for himself. I cannot now describ9 fhe kind of person that John had been, the traits which I admired in my friend, and the weaknesses which made us both laugh when we would discuss ourselves. I have come to recognize a kind of memory disorder in myself which prevents such recollections. Yet I cannot forget what I felt toward John, the friendship I continue-to feel. I care nothing when I hear of the deaths of other talented or important people. No Kennedy assassination, no Crucifixion could affect me more than the death of my friend, John. It is the persistence of friendship without my friend which causeis me pain. Perhaps that is all that survives death. If so, what a legacy you've · left me, John. 'Z>.idyou .know) J7o.£n7 I.ha! day mhenyou &ave lo l/ie s£ore7 you drove lo i/ie s/ia.flow edje ofhfa? 'l>1dyou hnow, w/ien you swam oul, you swaIIl away froIIl a.f.fof us 7 be_yonc/I.he ranye ofour arIIls (ye! no! bo/onc/our love).? 'Z>1dyou hnow) years before) w/ien we wou.fds.d .fa21{Y kle In ..my near e..mpl_f/ dor..m1lory roo..m, la..lkny a/pas! andendless /ulure7 I.he la.lli ofhfa-iownyyouI.Ii, chef you hnow, even 1/ien, i/ial affl/iai wou.fdsoon re01a1n ofeverylkny yreal w1f£1n you wou.fc/ex1sl onfy w1!£1n 1/ie £earls andlon51..me01or1es oflrue,(r1encfs? Ou.rely every mo.Tl2enfyou hoed, unbnow1n51, bnew Ils ua.fue. !7 /.foal now beyond your hfe )s .horizon w1f.£ i/ie .luxury ofdays oryears) perhaps, whichyou w1ffnever hnow) 57alher1ny whaf 1/ie waves £ave spared. W1!£1n 01e !7carry your easy s..m1le beneal£ IIly sec.rel fuflerness. Your fr1encfs£1p !7shff fae.! ancfs/iare a51a1n as bes! !7can. 'l>o ni_y fears acfcflo your endless ocean.? Xo) lei l£e02 buoyyou onward for as fang as 02y £rfa carr1es w1lhn If whalyou c/iose lo 571ve. -Marie Ru.J/er, A89 RAYMOND FREDERICK DEVANTIER JR., SGl93 Raymond Frederick DeVantier Jr. died in an automobile accident November 30, 1994. Mr. DeVantier was a long-term substitute teacher and night school teacher at Santa Fe High School. He was deeply involved in the education of children and will be greatly missed by his students, colleagues, and friends. Mr. DeVantier was born on April 28, 1952 in Bethlehem, Pa. He graduated from Windham College in Vermont, earned a master's degree from the St. John's Graduate Institute in Santa Fe, and pursued graduate study at the University of Chicago. He is survived by his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Raymond DeVantier of Bethlehem, Pa.; two sisters: Ellen Desnoyers of Syracuse, Ny. and Andrea Whitney of Cranston, Ri.; his grandmother, Ellwood Gordon of Moscow, Pa.; and an aunt, Jeanne Gordon, also of Moscow. Contributions to the Raymond F. De Vantier Memorial Scholarship Fund may be· sent to Santa Fe High School, 2100 Yucca Road, Santa Fe, NM 87501. LAVERA LEVERETT, SGl70 LaVera Leverett, known by her married name, LaVera Loyd, died in February of Alzheimer's Disease. Born in 1926 in Clarksville, Tx., Ms. Leverett earned her Associate of Arts degree from Southern Methodist University. She moved to New Mexico in 1949, were she taught school in Rutheron, a small ranching community. In 1960, Ms. Leverett and her husband moved to Santa Fe. She earned her bachelor's degree from the College of Santa Fe in 1965 and later completed her master's degree at the St. John's Graduate Institute and her Ph.D. at the University of Colorado. A life-long educator, Ms. Leverett taught English at Santa Fe High School from 1966 to 1976. In 1978, after completing her doctorate, she returned to Santa Fe High as an assistant principal, a position she held until her retirement in 1988. She was a founding member of the Santa Fe chapter of the National Organization for Women, was active in the local Democratic Women's Organization, and served on the local draft board and on the city drunken driving task force. She is survived by her sons Lannis and Richard Loyd and daughters Lori Ann Gallegos and R. Gail Morozoff; three grandchildren, five sisters, two brothers and numerous nieces and nephews. RALPH (. DAVIS, Al8 Ralph Cresap Davis, a retired attorney and law professor, died in February. Mr. Davis was former chairman of the Maryland Humanities Council. He began his law practice in Annapolis in 1949 and served as counsel to St. John's, the Naval Institute, Historic Annapolis, the Key School, and the Annapolis Housing Authority before moving to Smithsburg in 1968. The Rev. John McDowell Leavitt, president of St. John's from 1881to1883, was Mr. Davis' great-grandfather. Mr. Davis received his law degree from the University of Maryland School of Law in 1949 and his master of law degree from Georgetown . University in 1962. He served as a lieutenant in the Navy from 1942 to 1946 and fought at Okinawa. While he lived in Annapolis, Mr. Davis was the organizing counsel and member of the board of trustees of Historic Annapolis and the Key School. He served on major standing committees of the Anne Arundel County Bar Association and headed the 1958 special committee that recommended the creation of the county Law Department. He was also a founding mem her of the Annapolis Unitarian Universalist Church. From 1961 to 1968 he was the supervising trial attorney for the Office of the Solicitor of the U.S. Department of Labor. After moving to Washington County in 1968, he taught business law and management at Frederick Community College and at Mount St. Mary's College in Emmitsburg, the Mont Alto campus of Penn State and at Anne Arundel Community College. He served on the Maryland Humanities Council, an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, from 1981to1989. He was also a founding member of the Ocean World Institute. He is survived by his wife, Emma Lou Davis; three daughters; B one step-son; and four grandchildren. MOGUL CONT. FROM PAGE 22 In addition to promoting the films and art gallery exhibits among his fellow students, Alex is starting a production company so that students can make films. "When I took over as Film Archon it was just a matter of running the theater on weekends," he said. "I want to set up a group and actually make some short films so that people here get a real sense of what's involved." He said he hopes to raise enough money showing movies to get some basic equipment like editing decks, monitors, a camera, a simple lighting kit and a shotgun microphone. This spring Alex has started a filmmaking project using borrowed equipment and the expertise he picked up working last summer in film production in San Francisco. About 20 students are interested in the project, which will be a 40-minute film called "Surviving Desire, an academic romance." Each student participating in the film will get a sense of the whole production process, working through all the steps from directing to camera work to editing-a very St. John's-like approach to learning. Alex is working with Justin Burke, A 87, a director of Archive Films in New York, to set up a database of alumni in film production. Putting a list on the Internet, will encourage communication between current students and alumni already established in the field. Although Alex will take next year off from school to work on a film he's writing, St. John's will be very much a part of his script. "Being immersed in the books for the last three years has had an effect-the ideas are bound to be reflected in what I do," he said. "What you learn here is central to making good drama. You have to learn how to think in order to write-and what's on the El screen has to make sense." �ART ... PRINTS AT THE MITCHELL GALLERY .................................................................................................................................................................................................................. c::i ~ ~ CF] ~ <:)', <:)', ~ ~ ~ "f' ,...., ~ 0 ca ~ ..J :::: 00 r.11 ~ '-' ca ~ i;.;i ~ ~ 0 :i.. :;.:i ~ ~ z 0 g::: Q.) u z ·5= z = 0 Q.) ca ~ u 0 ,...., ~ '° ,...., r.11 ~ 0 :::::: """':> §-.; O' ..J 0 0 E:$ ·:;;; u "' ~ \,,,) "' = ~ .. :;.:i = t- ;:i <£ ca ~ 0 u CF] CF] i:.; p:: Ci ca c =< if1 Jim Barrett of Annapolis finds his specs make viewing the details easier. He's looking at one of the prints in the Whistler exhibit in January. Photo by Keith Harvey a mg off a banner year at the Mitchell Gallery will be an exhibit of 169 prints by artists like Albrecht Altdorfer, Durer, Rembrandt, Anthony Van Dyck, Stephano della Bella and Claude le Lorrain. The exhibit, called "Masterpieces of Renaissance and Baroque Printmaking," concludes the focus on prints begun in September with the Rembrandt exhibit and continued through the winter with a display of Whistler's etchings. "Masterpieces" runs April 7 through May 21. The "Masterpieces" exhibit chronicles the development of printmaking in Europe from its beginnings in the fifteenth century to the seventeenth century. With artists from both northern Europe and Italy represented, the exhibit also points up the ways printmaking was prac- Claude Gellee (le lorrain) French, 1600-1682, Harbor with large ca. 1 Etching, 4 15/16 x 77/16 inches. Bayly Art Museum, 1986.5 ticed in different locations. From the early sixteenth century onward, artists travelled, spreading their own styles and techniques while studying new ones. Northern artists, including Hendrick Goltzius and Albrecht Durer, made the trip to Italy frequently; it was less common for Italians to journey outside their own country, but exceptions included Jacopo de Barbari and the Italians working at Fountainebleau. In contrast to painting and architecture, advances in printmaking techniques often began in northern Europe rather than in Italy. Engraving, drypoint, chiaroscuro woodcut, and other refinements were first developed by northern artists. Durer in particular was admired by Italian artists and collectors. Many of the prints in the exhibit illustrate scenes from mythology, ancient history or the Bible, giving them a strong relevance to the works read in the St. John's program. Works in the exhibit are from the collections of the Bayly Art Museum of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and Mrs. Gertrude Weber. It is organized by the Trust for Museum Ill Exhibitions in Washington, D.C. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The St. John's Reporter</em> Description An account of the resource College newspaper which started publication in 1974. Continued publication into 2000. Includes primarily historical content.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The St. John's Reporter" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=35">Items in <em>The St. John's Reporter</em></a></strong> <span>to view and sort all items in the collection.</span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 24 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context vol 21 Spring 1995 Title A name given to the resource Reporter, Spring 1995 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1995-04 Description An account of the resource Volume 21 of The St. John's Reporter. Published in Spring 1995. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Public Relations Office Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Goyette, Barbara (editor) Allison, Lesli (editor) Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf The Reporter https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/878f3dc86d8ccdaaf2ce4ed4c0824d02.pdf febd1b50232cd7fcfba627bfad51b6d6 PDF Text Text ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE LIBRARY ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1~nr1 1 1 1 r1m1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 31696 01138 2148 SANTA FE EDITION WWI MONUMENT RESTORED, TO BE REDEDICATED ................ P. 1 FRESHMEN PITCH IN ON COMMUNITY DAY........... P. 2 LOCAL DEVELOPER BEAUTIFIES SANTA FE CAMPUS .......................... P. 6 S.F. HOMECOMING 1995 ............................... P. 8 IMAGES FROM THE ATTIC ..................... PP. 11-12 ALUMNI ASSOCIATION NEWSLETTER: AUSTIN CHAPTER, WEB HOME PAGE, AND MORE GOOD BOOKS .................. PP. 15-17 ALUMNI NOTES .. PP. 18-19 �NEWS FR 0 THE BE.LL TOWERS ••• AGRESTO ADDRESSES CULTU L FU DI ISS ES Santa Fe campus President John Agresto recently participated in a major symposium on the impact of federal funding on American culture. Sponsored by the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin, the symposium was entitled, "Government's Stake in American Culture." WORLD WAR I MONUMENT RESTORED, BE REDEDICATED Mr. Agresto was joined by William D~ Ford, former congressman; Sheldon Hackney, chairman, National Endowment for the Humanities; Harold Williams, president and C.E.O., ].Paul Getty Trust; Daniel Boorstin, librarian of Congress emeritus; and Jack Valenti, president, Motion Picture Society of America, among others. !iii The World War I monument that stands on front campus in Annapolis, a sometimes-forgotten piece of St. John's history, will be remembered more clearly in the future, thanks to its restoration. A ceremony to rededicate the monument will take place on November 11, Veterans' Day, at 10 a.m. Last year, the Annapolis chapter of the Alumni Association took on the cleaning and restoration of the monument as a project. Evidently, the monument had not been cleaned since being erected in 1920. The Maryland Military Monuments Commission, a state commission, gave a $500 grant to get the project underway, and this was matched by a $ 5 00 gift from the St. John's Alumni Association. The Annapolis chapter raised the remainder of the money necessary for the restoration, which was carried out by Nicholas Veloz, a fellow of the American Institute for the Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works. Mr. Veloz used the most advanced conservation techniques to clean the monument, including spraying the bronze plaque with ground walnut shells and waxing it with carnauba and micro-crystalline waxes. The monument, which commemorates the St. John's students who died in the Great War, is the work of Baltimore sculptor Hans Schuler. A bronze plaque lists the names of 24 men. The rededication ceremony will include remarks by President Christopher Nelson, choral and instrumental music selections, remarks by Admiral Robert Long (a former member of the St. John's Board of Visitors and Governors who served on the President's Commission on downsizing the military), the presentation of swords by the Knights of Columbus, three volleys, and the GRANT FUNDS CONFERENCE ON TRADITION tradition in American society. One of the primary events· in this series will be a national conference funded by a major grant from the Bradley Foundation. The three• day conference, scheduled for the fall of 1996, will address the question of tradition and progress in four areas: education, science and technology, art and culture, and American politics. "In all of our plans, our aim is to make this celebration of St. John's 300th year one that is reflective of what we are and what we have to offer, not only to our students, but to a larger public and to the nation as a whole," Santa Fe playing of taps. Iii! Mr. Jomes Keesing, Royal Botanic Gardens, points to a blossom on Liberty Tree offspring. SON OF LIBERTY ALIVE AND WELL Must-see stops in London include: Poets Corner at Westminster, the Tower, the bookshops on Charing Cross Road, the Rosetta Stone at the British Museum, the son of the Liberty Tree at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew. The son of the Liberty Tree? Yes, a Liberty Tree seedling was given to the garden as part of the 197 6 Bicentennial celebration, and, according to recent visitor Joy Shaver, the baby is now a teenager and doing quite well. Mrs .. Shaver, a friend of St. John's who just completed four years as president of the Caritas Society, made a pilgrimage to visit the tree on a recent visit to ~ngland. She met with James Keesing, whose title a~ the Botanic Gardens is scientific liaison, living collections. "The specimen of Liriodendron tulipifera is on the edge of the newly planted Azalea Garden and quite close to our largest Tulip Tree," he said. At the time of Mrs. Shaver's visit the tree was in flower and thriving, a bit of the New World carrying on in the Old. Ill As St. John's College prepares to celebrate its tricentennial, the question may be fairly asked why anyone should care that an institution is 300 years old. Through a series of lectures and events marking the anniversary, the Santa Fe campus will explore the value of· President John Agresto said. II �REPOR'lGER .2 FRESHMEN BOND, PAINT, WEED BY LESLI ALLISON ST. JOHN'S 101: AN INTRODUCTION FOR FRESHMEN """""'_ __,,..~ reshmen orientation took a new turn this year in Santa Fe as dozens of students and faculty members gave some parts of campus a face-lift. Community Day, organized by senior Andrew Van Luchene, replaced traditional orientation activities such as camping and off-campus community service. "We were going to other places to do community service when there was plenty to be done right here," Van Luchene said. "This also was a way for freshmen to bond to each other and to upperclassmen and faculty." Community Day took place on Saturday, five days after freshmen arrived on campus. Participation was optional, but attendance was high. The two major projects for the day were the creation of a mural in the upper commons room and landscapmg m the upper dorms area. With "mis-tinted" paints purchased at a discount, approximate! y SO people tackled the mural project, and each other. In the end, three quarters of the upper commons room and about as many of the students were covered in paint. In the meantime, others wereweeding, trimming trees and installing 12 tons worth of rock terraces. "It rained the whole day and it didn't interfere," • Van Luchene said. "People worked in the mud. We had to drain out places where we were working and keep going." As a result of the landscaping, the area now has a more finished look, Van Luchene said. "Before it was just grasses and weeds. Now we have a lot of terraces we can plant." To keep spirits high, a barbecue grill was kept going all day and a dance party was held in the commons room later that evening. Van Luchene said he hopes Community Day will help to instill a greater sense of ownership among students. "It gives people a sense that the place is theirs. It encourages them to Like most of the extra-curricular activities on the Annapolis campus, the freshman orientation program is student-organized and student-run. "Last spring we decided who would be in charge for the coming fall, and students volunteered to work on freshman orientation," said co-organizer Lynette Dowty, A97. "We ended up with 28 volunteers. We worked some over the summer on it, and then the weekend before school started it was just crazy." Freshman orientation ran like a well-oiled machine, or as well-oiled as a machine could be after a summer spent pursuing the almighty dollar or lolling in the sun reading non-program books-the usual occupations of Johnnies in the off-season. Small groups of five freshmen were assigned to an advisor or pair of advisors, who led their charges through an academic workshop (what's a don rag, how to get to know tutors, how to get help with Greek), a social life symposium (restaurants in Annapolis, how to learn to waltz, how to get to D.C., smoking and sexual harassment policies, all about parties), and an introduction to St. John's intramurals with Mr. Pickens (followed by dodge ball and pizza). Freshman orientation advisors, identified by their special tee shirts (Know thyself...and others, in Greek), were enthusiastic about helping out the newcomers. "The atmosphere is very casual," said co-organizer Malinda Campbell, A97. "The freshmen ask us questions and we try to tell them what respect it." St. John's is really like." M A R K Y 0 U R lil CALE NDARS PARENTS WEEKEND IN SANTA FE FEBRUARY 16, 17, 18 Visit your son or daughter, attend a seminar, meet other parents, ski Santa Fe. A detailed program and registration form will be mailed soon. For further information or to make early hotel reservations, please contact Liz Skewes at 505-984-6103 or by e-mail at alumni@mail.sjcsf.edu. lil �3 REPORTER COMMUNITY NOTES ..• SKEWES TO HEAD ALUMNI RELATIONS IN SANTA FE he's done laundry for such Hollywood stars as Steve McQueen and George Hamilton, interviewed a cannibal and crafted the alumni magazine at Dickinson College. At last her varied path has carried her here, to St. John's College. Meet Liz Skewes, the new alumni relations director for the Santa Fe campus. Ms. Skewes replaces Cindy Jokela who recently moved to -·~ "l~ Minnesota but continues her involvement in the Alumni Division Our After a childhood spent every three or four years due to I· many a star. "I've fluffed folded for all of them," she said. Following high school, Ms. .ui'-·-'-'-''--H.-'--< •vmT~~.,... Skewes attended UCLA, receiving her B.A. in political science. She continued on to Ohio State where she received her Master of Arts in journalism. Three years later, while working as an investigative reporter in Huntington, West Virginia, she stumbled across an astonishing story of two serial killers. "That started a year of my life talking to truly sick and disgusting people," she said. "It was quite a wild ride. Among other things, I went down to Florida and spent two days talking to a guy who told me ate people." several years as a~~ ..~~~~-~ later in Tampa, ,v,::.nn::.c took a"""''"' ... ''"' . . . in the public department College in next six years articles and helping to reshape Dickinson's alumni magazine. In joining the St. John's staff, Ms. Ske-Wes said she hopes to bring some fresh ideas to the alumni relations program while at the same time strengthening many of the efforts currently underway. "One thing I'd like to do is to build on some of the chapter activities and to try to encourage more people to come out for those events," she said. "I'd also like to find out what kinds of services the college might be able to provide to its alumni." Ms. Skewes welcomes ideas, suggestions-and even complaints-from alumni. She can be reached at the Office of Alumni Relations, St. John's College, Santa Fe, NM 87501-4599; 505-9846103; alumni@mail.sjcsf.edu ,,u1u111.111.11.1 poses with her new husband John Martinez and his grandson Joshua. Diane Mexico. Diane and returned in her present position as registrar in 1986. Iii] INETYHOU PARIS BY SUS3AN BORDEN Two from Annapolis conquer one of the bicycling world's great challenges Congratulations to Annapolis Vice President Jeff Bishop and Athletic Director Leo Pickens, who this August completed the Paris- Brest-Paris Randonnee, a French bicycle race that requires cyclists to finish its 760-mile course in 90 hours. Along with John Lawrence, a friend of Jeff Bishop, the two had trained and participated in qualifying events for two years before the race. The test of endurance was almost too much, even for the well-trained Pickens. "My low point came at the beginning of the second day," he says. "I had ridden for 24 hours straight and gone 40 hours without sleep. I found myself abandoned by my riding partners. I got off my bike, grabbed a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and some water, trying to force fuel into rny body. I lay down in a cornfield and a voice said to me: 'Leo, just surrender to sleep, sweet sleep.' Sleep was the most important thing in my life just then. I almost did surrender... " Bishop was grateful to the people of Franee for their role in the race. "The thing that keeps you going are the thousands of villagers who line this course and come out at three or four or five o'clock in the morning to cheer you on, give you food, point you in the right direction, and yell 'bon courage.' Whenever you heard 'bon courage,' there was no way you were going to quit," he says. Bishop reached the finish line after 81and1/2 hours. Pickens got there at the 85-hour mark. He recalls the thrill of the final miles: "The race ended in St. Quentin en Yveline, a modern planned city with beautiful wide streets and new high-rise office CONT. ON PAGE 19 Still smiling after more than three days in the saddle, the three Annapolis participants in the Paris-Brest-Paris race pose for ovictory pie. Left to right: John Lourence, Leo Pickens, and Jeff Bishop; Julie Lawrence is holding the SJ( banner. �COMMUNITY NOTES ••. NEW FACULTY ON CAMPUS FOURJO~N SANTA . EE FACULTY MORGAN RESIGNS IN SANTA FE After seven years of dedicated service to St. John's College, Jeff Morgan, vice president for advancement in Santa Fe, resigned his position on October 1. During his tenure, Mr. Morgan increased annual giving levels to the Santa Fe campus by more than 300% and played a leading role in the most successful capital campaign in the college's 300-year history. 'Jeff has helped to make this college and this campus more secure than ever in its history," Santa Fe President John Agresto said. "And I will personally miss a friend who helped to show me what is possible as well as where the pitfalls were. He's even saved me from walking into some of them." Mr. Morgan will assume the position of chief advancement officer for the new Native American Preparatory School in Pecos, New Mexico. llil The Reporter is published in April and October by the Public Relations Office, St. John's College, 1160 Camino Cruz Blanco, Santo Fe, NM 87 501. and in July and January by the Public Relations Office, St. John's CoJlege, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404. SANTA FE: Lesli Allison, editor; John Schroeder, assistant editor; Lisa Donenfeld, graphic designer. ANNAPOLIS: Barbaro Goyette, editor; Sus3on Borden, writer; Betsy Blume, Eva Bronn, John Christensen, Pamela Krous, Benjamin Milner, and Brother Robert Smith, advisory board. Poslmoster: Send address changes to Reporter, Office of Public Relations, St. John's College, Santo Fe, NM 87501 Second Closs Postage Paid of Annapolis, MD, opplicofion to moil at additional moiling offices pending. ISSN 018-750 The Santa Fe campus welcomed four new facultymembers this fall. Maren Ormseth Cohn is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Chicago's Committee on Social Thought. Her dissertation is titled "T.E. Lawrence and Odysseus: A Study of Selfhood and Heroism in Ancient and Modern Times." Mrs. Cohn received her B .A. from Stanford University with Distinction and Honors in Humanities Special Programs, with a concentration in modern thought and literature. She is married to Jim Cohn, also a tutor in Santa Fe. Samuel B. Johnson holds aJ.D. in law from Yale Law School and a Ph.D. in mathematics from Duke University. Mr. Johnson has served both as an acting attorney and as an associate professor at Guilford College. He has studied and has basic mastery of ten languages and has instructed in Japanese and German. Alice Parker Behnegar received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago's Committee on Social Thought, her J.D. from Stanford University and her A.B. from Smith College. Her dissertation for The Committee on Social Thought was titled "Feminism and Liberalism: The Problem of Equality." She also was a junior fellow with the John M. Olin Center for Inquiry into the Theory and Practice of Democracy, and a Carthage post-doctoral fellow in The Symposium on Science, Reason, and Modern Democracy, and visiting assistant professor in political science at Michigan State University. Leonard W. Ortmann received his Ph.D. in philosophy with a minor in classical Greek from Pennsylvania State University. His dissertation was titled "Art ~nd Science: Nietzsche's Image of a Socrates Who Practices Music." He received his B.A. from Yale. Ill addition to having received an NEH grant, the DAAD scholarship, and a Fulbright award, he has served as assistant professor of philosophy at Conception Seminary College, and as an English and German instructor at several institutions. SIX JQ.lN ANNAPOLIS FACGULTY Six f!ewtutors];i~v~ been appointed to thefacwty at the Annapolis campus. Jonathan Badger comes from Fordham University in New York, where he has been teaching political theory. While pursuing his Ph.D. and teaching, Mr. Badger was an H.B. Earhart Fellow. His dissertation is on Nietzsche and Plato. Mr. Badger's B.S. is from the University of South Carolina in Columbia, S.C., with a major in computer science. His M.A. is from North Carolina State University in Raleigh, N.C., where he concentrated in political philosophy, European intellectual history, and music. William Braithwaite, a lawyer, has been associate professor at the Loyola School of Law in Chicago since 1979. He was a partner in the firm of Mayer, Brown & Platt in Chicago from 1973 to 1979. His law degree is from Washington and Lee University. Mr. Braithwaite co-authored a book, Law and Philosophy: The Practice of Theory, and has written a number of articles on the relationship of law to philosophy and on modern legal practice. Two of his sons attend St. John's in Annapolis. Robert Alan Goldberg was most recently assistant professor of political science at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. He is a graduate of Harvard University in classics and government, received his M.A. from the University of Toronto, and is currently working on his Ph.D. dissertation at Toronto on democracy and justice in Aristotle's Politics. Mr. Goldberg attended St. John's College from 1977 to 1979. His publications include articles on ancient democratic theory. He has taught political science courses covering the topics of culture and multi-culturalism, gender and the family, and American government and political thought. Katherine Heines is a graduate of St. John's College in Santa Fe, and has been pursuing post-graduate studies at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. Her field of interest is ancient philosophy. She has taught at The Catholic University and at Marquette University. Her doctoral dissertation topic is Plato's Symposium. Oksana Lassowsky has a Ph.D. in mathematics from Pennsylvania State University. Her B.A. is also in mathematics, from Clarion State College in Pennsylvania. Since 1990, she has been an assistant professor of mathematics at Albright College. Ms. Lassowsky is a concert pianist who was a semi-finalist in the Stravinsky Awards International Piano Competition in 1989 and has given numerous solo and chamber music recitals. She is also author of a prizewinning children's story. George Russell has an M.A. and a Ph.D. in philosophy from The Catholic University of America and a B.A. in philosophy from St. Francis College, New York. His areas of specialization are the philosophy of David Hume, political philosophy, and moral philosophy. Since 1991, he has been assistant professor at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he taught courses in ethics, theory of knowledge, and political theory. Prior to that he taught at Albertus Magnus College in New Haven, C.T. and at St. Patrick's Academy in Washington, D.C., where he was dean of students.llJ �S T REPORTER H E CAMPAIGN F 0 R 0 U R FOURTH T U R Y GOAL IN SIGHT, CAMPAIGN FOCUSES ON ALUMNI Efforts will center on raising money for the Santa Fe student activities center and for financial aid With participation from alumni, friends, parents, and board members, the campaign has reached $29,200,000 in gifts and pledges as of October 1. With the June close of the campaign just eight months away, the $30 million goal set three years ago is within reach. According to Jeff Bishop, vice president for advancement in Annapolis, alumni participation will be the focus of the final push of the campaign. So far, alumni have given or pledged a total of $15,625,000with increasing participation from classes in every decade. "Our goal for the alumni division is for all classes to reach at least 50% participation in The Campaign for Our Fourth Century," said Bishop. "Many classes are close to that goal, and some have exceeded it." Almost half of alumni from the 1940's, for example, have made a pledge. Some individual classes are posting gifts from over 50% of their members: 1935, 1942, 1950, 1984. The percentage of alumni who contribute is as important as the amount contributed because it shows that those who know St. John's best-the alumni-support its mission. During the last months of the campaign, said Bishop, efforts with alumni will center on raising money NEW LIBRARY CONSTRUCTION UPDATE Putting round walls in square holes for the student activities center in Santa Fe and for financial aid funding for both campuses. Class leaders will be giving all fellow alumni the opportunity to participate in the campaign to raise much-needed dollars that will ensure the college's future. "Every pledge makes a difference," said Bishop. Other notable gifts include donations and pledges from members of the Board of Visitors and Governors of more than $12 million. And the campaign has received from a variety of donors gifts of $100,000 or more-58 of them. This is significant because the feasibility study commissioned For most of the summer, the library project to renovate the Hall of Records building looked like a $6.8 million disaster zone--piles of lumber and cement block, a jumble of steel beams, mounds of dirt, heaps of old brick were scattered inside the fence, and a seven-storyhigh crane pulled hunks of the building's core out through the roof. But now the addition is taking shape--the shape of an ellipse. Early in the school year, the wham of what sounded like sledgehammers slung by giants interrupted normally silent afternoons when students were reading for seminar or engrossed in lab experiments. With a spray of sparks from the welder's torch, workers were attaching corrugated metal plates to form the roof of the addition. Inside the existing building, which was built in 1934, contractors discovered that the central core had provided support for the before the campaign started predicted no more than ten gifts of that magnitude. CONTACT THE CAMPAIGN FOR OUR FOURTH CENTURY Santa Fe: John Agresto President 505-984-6098 Annapolis: Jeff Bishop, Vice-President for Advancement 410-626-2505 entire structure. When the core was removed, steel beams were added. Its outlines traced by steel geometry, a staircase whose curves echo the shape of the addition will connect the three levels of the building. According to Annapolis Treasurer Bud Billups, crews are now putting in duct work, an elevator, wiring, and cables. The project is on schedule and on budget and should be complete by the May 1, 1996, deadline. !iii �LOCAL DEVELOPER BEAUTIFIES S T P BY LESLI ALLISON ntil r.ecentl. y·.·'· the patio on the south side of Santa Fe's Peterson Student Center stood in sore need of attention. Isolated from the rest of campus behind a large stone wall, and lost among the many pressing needs of the college, the patio had fallen into a dilapidated state. The old fountain had long been silent, its pool filled with leaves and bits of paper. Passers by moved quickly across its walkways, always enroute to other places. Today, however, thanks to Santa Fe developer Joe Schepps, the fountain is bubbling, the pool is full and covered in the summer with water lilies, and the bulky stone wall is gone. Brick walkways, gardens and statuary make it a place the St. John's community can enjoy rather than avoid. Moreover, the Phil and Emilie Schepps Garden, named after Mr. Schepps' parents, is only one aspect of a much larger campus landscaping plan Mr. Schepps is funding for the college. "Joe has really done a wonderful thing for the college," Santa Fe President John Agresto said. "His work will have a lasting effect here, both in the way others perceive our campus and in the way we ourselves feel about the college." The relationship between Mr. Schepps and St. John's had its origin a number of years ago when Mr. Schepps and his wife, Kathy, first hired a St. John's student to baby-sit their infant son. When that student moved on, another was hired, and later another. "We've had about five different people over the last decade become close to our family," Mr. Schepps said. "That's how I first became attached to the school." It was also through a student that Mr. Schepps first was introduced to President Agresto. "I found him really responsive and nice and it was then my friendship with him began," Mr. Schepps said. In addition to the work Mr. Schepps has done for the college, he also is a member of the board of nearby Rio Grande Elementary School and recently helped to negotiate the lease of a small triangular patch of college land to help the schooll expand its Nancy Connor addresses guests and board members at the dedication of the Jomes Connor memorial plaque. classroom space. [ii] Members of the Boord of Visitors and Governors gather for the dedication of the Schepps Gorden. Also dedicated during the some ceremony were a memorial plaque by Santo Fe artist Glenna Goodacre honoring the late Jim Connor, and a gift of sculpture by Santo Fe artist Nita Schwartz and friends. Ancient Mon and Ancient Woman keep sentinel in the new Schepps Gorden. The two works were donated to the college by the artist, Nita Schwartz, and friends. �N GRADUATION DAY, ET WET Western works, Mr. Cohen also The inaugural year of The addressed a kind of wisdom best Graduate Program in Eastern understood as "not knowing." Classics concluded this summer in "Not-knowing is not a mannerSanta Fe as 20 candidates received ism to be adopted, as it is for the degree of Master of Arts in Apollodorus, nor a credo that Eastern Classics. Side by side with should be used to oppose anyone them were 22 recipients of the who feels sure of anything; finding Master of Arts in Liberal Studies. the invigoration of not knowing, Rod Gammon, a graduate of discovering how what was taken for the Eastern classics program, prothe whole is only a part, is an vided bagpipe accompaniment to achievement that must be honestly the procession. The Santa Fe Brass won," he said. "I know of nowhere ensemble also accompanied the cerin world literature where the disemomes. covery of what remains to be In his commencement address, learned is more difficult, elusive, Santa Fe tutor Marty Cohen spoke fascinating and crucial than in of Socrates and Hwang-Ti, Aristotle regard to certain Eastern notions of and Patanjali, but primarily, he enlightenment, which I believe spoke of "primordial virtue" and issue not wisdom. from arro"Sometimes, gance but when I find from promyself found realrespecting ization. those human My own qualities §know of nowhere in world attempts that defy idealization, literature where the discovery of what remains to cope with these I posit a matters realm, prito be learned is more difficult, elusive, have been mordial virtue, of fascinating and crucial than in regard to certain helped immeasurwhich priably by Eastern notions of enlightenment mordial my years courage 1s at St. one part," he John's of said. "I try trying to to envision underthe physiogstand what nomy of pria question is." mordial compassion, primordial In conclusion, he said, "I hope humility, primordial humor-the and trust that your time at St. whole set of analogues to primordial John's leaves you more able to courage. These are not simply defireceive from others the unceremocient modes of another kind of nious blessings and challenges of virtue, to which they are clearly ordinary life, and that when you subordinated; they have their own reciprocate, the liquor you offer light and dignity that both Eastern will be redolent with the powers and Western texts have prompted of insight, inquiry, and not knowme to consider." ing that have aged during your Through anecdotes and passages from a yariety of Eastern and time at St. John's. Judith Hughes-Vassar with her grandson and Annapolis Graduate Institute Director Tom Moy. Photo by Keith Harvey. GI COMMENCEMENT SPEAKER: "TAKE ST. JOHN S 1 WITH YOU" BY BARBARA GOYETTE "The unlived life is not worth examining," said Professor Alan Hornstein, causing a murmur of surprise to ripple through the audience of Graduate Institute master's degree candidates and their friends and families. In turning Plato on his head, Mr. Hornstein hoped to point out to those gathered for summer commencement that our active, public lives and our private, reflective lives should be grounded in the same values. Fourteen students received the Master of Liberal Arts degree at the commencement exercises on August 11 in Annapolis. Tutor and Graduate Institute Director Tom May welcomed the graduates, and Betsy Blume, alumni director in Annapolis, awarded a prize on behalf of the Alumni Association to James Robert Van Dyke, S.J., for best tutorial essay. President Christopher Nelson conferred the degrees. Mr. Hornstein, a professor of law at the University of Maryland School of Law, received his degree from the Graduate Institute in 1986 and has served as a visiting tutor. In his address, he called on his experience as a teacher of law to discuss how our professional lives should not become divorced from our private lives. He cited Atticus Finch, the lawyer-hero of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, as a man who "is not bound by different sets of values as a family man, a lawyer, and a public man. He is the same man, living out the same values." While enmeshed in the life of a graduate student ~t St. John's, Mr. Hornstein said, reflection and inquiry become important. "I urge you not to neglect the world outside," he said. And, once gone from the close community of learning that the Graduate Institute becomes in the summer, students need "to take moments from everyday life to reflect and take stock. By both living life-and by examining it-you will not be leaving St. John's, you will be taking it with you," he said in conclusion. Ill �S.F. HOMECOMING 1 s BY LIZ SKE-WES anta Fe-For the nearly 200 alumni who came to Santa Fe for Homecoming on July 21, 2 2 and 2 3, the weekend provided the chance to take part in seminars led by some of their favorite tutors, the time to visit with old friends, and the luxury-thanks to a team of baby-sitters - of dancing the night away at the Homecoming dinner. While the focus was on the reunion classes - with special events for those who graduated in '70, '75, '80, '85 and '90 -there was plenty for alumni of all ages, including an all-alumni seminar on Friday night on The Bear, led by Santa Fe tutor Bill Darkey, and a Saturday afternoon picnic for alumni and their families. There also were tributes and honors. Former tutors David Jones and Michael Ossorgin were remembered on Saturday afternoon at the annual meeting of the college's Alumni Association with talks by former colleagues, students and family members. Jones, a 1959 Annapolis graduate and a tutor at St. John's from 1964 to 1990, was remembered by Santa Fe tutor Ted Skinner, who said that Jones "lives on very much in this institution and in our teach" Harvey Goldstein, A59, also about Jones, saying former classmate, a in cowboy boots," was a man extraordinary rn arts and sciences. to he did gernus may well have been I've ever known." Ossorgin, a tutor at the college for 30 years until his death in 1986, was remembered as fondly by one of his students, .H'..ul1...J.1a.c:i. Waltzing has become a tradition at the Santa Fe Homecoming Dinner and Dance Party. Michael Mechau, AS 9, and by his daughter, Lydia, who graduated from the Santa Fe campus in 1977. Mechau recalled Ossorgin as "a mysterious figure ... in the course of the year, he scarcely uttered more than very thoughtful opening seminar questions. Yet his presence was so expressive of intense concentration and deep seriousness that we could not help but be fascinated and influenced by it." Lydia Ossorgin's memories of her father were of a man who, she was a small sitting at a full tutors, deans ers, would wink at her to let her know was a part of group. Her helped open the Santa Fe campus, she said, and her father's contacts in the music world helped bring international talents to play in Santa Fe. "These concerts were always highlights of St. John's community life .... But for my brothers and me, who grew up being, cajoled into eating pablum for Uncle Tchaikovsky or Uncle Rachmaninoff, and later paid a quarter by my father if we didn't guess but knew - the composer, the artist, and the key of the music he played, this time of our lives was profound! y rich. "To say that my father's life was dedicated to his family and church, or to the study and writing of music, or to the reading of Dostoyevsky, or to his dedication to the great works and the college, is to limit it," she said. "He never separated these loves in his life. My father's presence included each of us - precisely in the moment where we stood - so that doors opened to infinite possibilities and to the most simple, sublime and direct answers." At the dinner on Saturday night, tutors Timothy Miller and Ralph Swentzell were made honorary alumni and graduates Gerald Peters, SF70, and Rina Swentzell, SGI70, were given awards of merit. Christopher Nelson, SF70, currently the president of the Annapolis campus, also was given an award of merit, but received that award at the Annapolis homecoming in September. After an evening of waltzing in the Great Hall, alumni were treated on Sunday morning to a leisurely brunch at the home of John Agresto, Santa Fe's president. Those who weren't staying for the second week of the summer alumni program then turned in their dorm room keys and headed back to their homes - but hopefully only until July 12, 13 and 14, when Homecoming 1996 will give alumni a chance to come back to campus once again. Brookings Institution Scholar Thomas. Mann conducts a seminar during Alumni Program week in Santa Fe. �LETTERS TO THE EDITOR ••• PEN LETTER TO THE ST. JOHN'S ALUM I In the spring, the Johnny List on the Internet began a discussion about various aspects of gender. As part of this discussion, many alumnae related their experiences as female students at the college. I felt that the next step was to re-open a discussion that has occupied many students over the years, i.e., women authors on the program. So, I drew up a version of the proposal printed below. At first, people were quiet, but when I asked for opinions a second time, the subscribers seriously took up the issue. The impetus for this proposal is my belief that the dialogue on gender at St. John's although never silenced, has been quiet and tentative. One way of opening that dialogue is to add more great works by women. One of the criticisms I have encountered is that additions to the program cannot be made on the basis of the sex of the author. They are not proposed on that basis. They are proposed because they are great works. If they were once overlooked, it may have been because of the sex of the authors. So, we now ask that they now be considered. Another problem that arises concerns the deletion of other works on the program. Each work will have to be considered separately. When a single work is considered for seminar, something will have to be taken off the list. This is a long process undertaken by the Instruction Committee. They will make the final decision, as they have always done when they decide to add a work or shift things around. Many of the alumni I have contacted support this proposal and almost none are against it. If you want to add your name to the list before I present it to the faculties of the two campuses please send me a note. If you just want to voice your opinion or suggest other works to add to my list, please do. I want to know what the alumni think. My address: c/o Lew & Gina McMurran 6724 SW Virginia Ave Portland, OR 97219 Thanks, Mary Helen McMurran SF '87 THE PROPOSAL As former St. John's students interested in the quality of education at the college, we address the tutors and administration on the subject of women authors in the curriculum. We believe that the St. John's program should consider a broader range of great works by women for potential inclusion in the program. We do not here present reasons for including more works by women authors because arguments must be made for each work as an individual case. Instead, we point out two important benefits of implementing our proposal. 1 ) Because great works by women represent central voices in the philosophical, political, and artistic dialogue that constitutes the Western tradition, including more of these works on the St. John's program is a means of recognizing the contributions of women to the Western canon. 2) Since many works written by men included in the program engage in a discussion of women and femininity, works which portray the experiences of women and record their thoughts will allow for a real dialogue on gender to take place in the classroom, as it did in the historical tradition. The following is a list of suggested works: FRESHMAN YEAR: Sappho. Poems. (language tutorial) SOPHOMORE YEAR: Love Letters of Abelard and Heloise. (seminar) Christine de Pisan. The Book of the City of Ladies. (seminar) JUNIOR YEAR: Hildegard von Bingen. (music tutorial) *Eliot, George. Middlema-rch. (seminar) Graffigny, Francoise. Letters from a Peruvian Woman. (excerpts language tutorial) **de Lafayette, Marie Madeleine. La Princesse de C!eves. Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. (seminar) Wollstonecraft, Mary. Vindication of the Rights of Women. de Gouges, Olympe. Rights of Women. (together in seminar) SENIOR YEAR: de Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. (excerpts- seminar) Dickinson, Emily. Poems. (language tutorial) Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God (seminar) Sand, George. The Haunted Pool. (language tutorial) Stanton, Elizabeth Cady. Seneca Falls Speech. (seminar) Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One's Own. (seminar) *Already included in Annapolis program; proposed for Santa Fe only.** Already included in Santa Fe program; proposed for Annapolis only. A LIST OF ALUMNI WHO SUPPORT THE PROPOSAL: Rachel Shroeder Andreyev SF88 Ines Azcarate A91 Lexey Bartlett A94 Marie Benedict A84 Tequila Brooks A91 Sheri Brown A76 Franees Burns A69 Debra Burkett Roberta Carnevale SF Sarah Coburn SF94 Amelia Crawford SF87 Christopher (C.J.) Dallett SF88 Melissa Johnson Dallett SF88 Karen Delahunty SF87 Sharon Dinitz A95 Sophie Romano Ehrhardt SF89 Bill Fant A79 Dan Fassett SF84 Martha Franks SF7 8 Charlotte Glover SF87 Rich Green SF87 Alan Baffa A87 Sarah Harwell SF84 Nathan Hey SF87 Barbara Hum SF87 Laura Hunt SF93 Christopher Johnson SF91 Leslie Kay SF83 Amber Keyser SF94 Andrew Krivak, S.J. A86 Janet Kolsky SF93 Chris Leydon A93 Breta Malcolm (friend of the college) Heather-Malcolm SF94 Nancy Marcus Mary Helen McMurran SF87 Jennifer Miller A84 MatthewMiller SF87 Joanne Murray A70 Jeff North SF87 Laura O'Keefe SF92 Cate Parish A7 6 Margaret Parish A86 Valerie Pawlewicz A89 Sue Price A84 John Riley SFGI87 Barb Ritter SF86 Yolanda Rivera A86 J'laine Robnolt A86 Melissa Sedlis A 7 3 Nadine Shea SF9 l Raoul Slavin SF94 Barb Smalley A84 Anne Marie Streeter A86 Mary Ruth Strzeszewski SF89 Julia Takahashi SF74 Mary Tarail SF7 2 Margo Hobbs Thompson A85 Daniel Vona A67 David Wallace SF75 Elizabeth Wallace SF88 Professor Jennifer Wicke SF7 2 EmilyWilson SF89 !iii SEE PAGE 14 FOR MORE LETTERS TO THE EDITOR �TUTORS SPEAK ON EASTERN CLASSICS BY SCOTT A. ANDERSON g n the opinion of those involved with its implementation, the Eastern classics pro- gram has been a clear success. The class discussions in seminars, precepts, and language tutorials were lively and rich, as important dialogues are meant to be. Socrates urges us to follow an argument wherever it leads. For some of us, after completing the undergraduate or liberal arts graduate programs, we have found ourselves following arguments east, east beyond the Euphrates river, east outside the Ural mountains. The Eastern classics program offers alumni the perfect forum to examine ideas both familiar and foreign to those raised by the material of the established curriculum. Several tutors were asked to relate their impressions of the Eastern classics program to the St. John's experience: JAMES CAREY We call ourselves and encourage others to call us "the great books school." Now there are great books in the Eastern tradition, so we should be trying to read them too, unless we're content to call ourselves "the great books of the West school." We made the right decision not to include Eastern classics in the undergraduate program. It's already overcrowded and they would make only a token appearance there. I taught the Sanskrit tutorial last year and was impressed how much discipline and intelligence the students brought to the study of the language. They accomplished a lot more than we expected. I remember only one occasion when a student had not managed to translate all the assigned sentences in the grammar we were working through last fall, and he had a legitimate excuse. I don't see this venture as opening doors here {at St. John's} to the study of all so-called "cultures," since most of these don't have written traditions of great antiquity, and many don't have written traditions at all. A written tradition allows for great minds to address other minds across centuries, and is in my opinion a necessary condition for the emergence of a "classic." The study of Eastern classics is intrinsically rewarding. But it also gives us at St. John's a broader perspective from which to consider the Western intellectual tradition. On the other hand, there can hardly be a better preparation for studying Eastern classics than the kind of familiarity with the Western intellectual tradition that we aim at in our other programs. So I think alumni would particularly benefit from the Eastern classics program. CARY STICKNEY What has emerged from this program is not different than what you might expect. We discover we can learn a great deal from a Homer, someone far removed from us, nonetheless speaking to enduring human concerns. This is the case of Kalidasa, or the Mahabharata. It should be no surprise to us, who successfully overlook historicism to learn from Homer, that we can do the same thing with these other authors. There clearly is a tradition in the East, where one sees human thought examining itself, following and varying certain themes through the centuries. The books converse in a way similar to that of the Western books. Some alumni of the undergraduate program really hit their stride in the Eastern classics in a way they hadn't before. They come to full fruition as speakers, readers, and writers. Finding a whole other set of great books, they can bring their experience to this project which is both new and familiar\ It makes me think of those seniors who say "now, I could do freshman year justice." This is a way in which seniors become freshmen agam. RALPH SWENTZELL The density of these great works is enormous. If you took all of the great books found in a literary tradition, India and China would far exceed Europe, yet we condense them into one year. The weightiness of the Eastern classics seminar reading list is weighty indeed. Freshmen are being forced into the strange world of Greeks, and sophomores the Bible. There is this same strangeness to the Eastern works. Not just any old strangeness, but a strangeness with quality. About these readings-instead of knowledge, these books are about wisdom. .. how to be wise ... sagely, like the works of freshman and sophomore year. They approach how best to live one's life, and so they have an impact on the whole person, not just the cerebral cortex. When I look at it, a year's work in terms of reading these "wisdom" books, it's no exaggeration that this seminar list is denser than any other. The Sanskrit and Chinese studies are accomplishing what I assume to be the goal of St. John's. We've come closer to the ideal than any Greek class I've seen. That ideal is to have people use their knowledge of language to see through into deeper meaning behind the great texts. It is all too common to hear students at the end of sophomore year say, "Thank god I'll never see Greek again." These graduate students don't do that. My impression is that many of the masters' essays closely examined translations, looking at Chinese and Sanskrit terms. I'm seeing ideas being struggled with seriously in the Eastern classics, so I think it's one of the best things St. John's has going in its program. KRISHNAN VENKATESH One thing I love to remember-a student said to me, "Before I started this program, I thought I was open to Eastern thought." It's a good thing for it to exist. It reminds Johnnies that there are other books out there, that other people think, too. We might fall into a bad habit, to understand ourselves to be the only ones. So I think its very existence is a healthy reminder that other books exist. An understanding of this whole project is getting to overhear, or participate in, another conversation about the same questions. An analogy would be carrying your own discussion out of seminar, and then wondering what people were talking about in other seminars. Nietzsche and Chuang Tzu, for example, initiated different questions about the same thing. Thucydides and Ssu-Ma Chien, too. Starting with the same phenomena, they can arrive at different thoughts. Classical Chinese is a completely different language from Greek. For one thing, it lacks morphology. As a result of this, texts can be bafflingly terse, bewilderingly ambiguous, much more so than even pre-Socratic fragments. The study of Chinese may help us to rethink Aristotelian approaches to language. What kind of a medium for rational thought is this language if it lacks the capacity for precise connections that we expect from philosophical thinking? For tutors of the undergraduate curriculum, an acquaintance with Chinese may deepen discussions concerning the possibilities of language. It seems natural for us to assume that Greek is paradigmatic of all languages. But what if Chinese were the more paradigmatic? �11 REP©RTER IMAGES FROM THE ATTIC BY BARBARA GOYETTE Old photographs from the St. John's archives in Annapolis provide a glimpse of life in the past ,,__ __, oday, we take pho- can connect us to the past. Take the photo of the class of 1889, photogtographs of everyrapher unknown. Twelve men stand thing-pets and stiffly in front of an ivy-covered flowers, babies at building. Dressed in caped topcoats, birth and children at graduation, with fresh collars, waistcoats, and the Grand Canyon and Chartres cravats, their heads topped with Cathedral. Photographs illustrate nearly identical round bowlers, their who we are on our drivers' licenses; right hands-gloved, in most photos scanned into the World cases-clutching walking sticks, Wide Web tell strangers about St. these St. John's students stare into John's. Some photos are snapshots the camera's lens. Some appear dapthat record a special or even an per and self-confident; others have everyday event. Some photographs the tentative air of the too-young in are works of art, their lighting and an adult setting. Despite the composition carefully considered. image's otherworldly air, we realize that these people are the same age as today's students sitting on the quad, and that their costumes are as au courant as grunge shoes and baggy jeans. These students probably left home for the first time to come to St. John's, just like today's students, just like alumni from every era. They endured, or enjoyed as the case may be, several years of enforced study at the college and are now ready to enter the craggy terrain of adulthood._ The camera's lens focussed, the shutter fell shut, and they remain for us today as they were on that far-distant afternoon. Mr. Weigle (left) and Mr. Klein (right} at commencement. This is the kind of thing we No date, photographer unknown. hope to find when rummaging in the attic-a bit of the past held forOthers serve as documentationever. St. John's has its own attic. It's news photos of the war in Bosnia, a tiny "archive" room in the library, for example. presided over by Kitty Kinzer, the Ephemeral bits of reality held librarian. Old yearbooks on shelves forever in the guise of paper treated and in piles are hidden by boxes and with chemicals, photographs not boxes of photographs, which are only record our present lives, they hidden by more boxes of old magazines. For years the photographs have been stored in file drawers and movmg boxes. Now they are finally seeing the light of day, being studied, cataloged, and preserved. Humphreys began in 1835 as a dormitory, but when this photo was taken by E. H. Mrs. Kinzer, Pickering in the l 920's it served as the science building. with the help of Emily about the photos should be entered Murphy, A95, is putting this particin a data base, she said, and then the ular corner of the attic in order, and images should be scanned in, so that wonderful bits of the past are being anyone wanting to look at an image discovered. will be able to find it listed in the data base and then look at the sca~ned image. The photo itself HOW OLD PHOTOGRAPHS need never. be touched-a boon to WILL BE PRESERVED preservation. Mrs. Kinzer gave Emily the Emily has been working on task of cataloging the library's implementing these suggestions. photo collection as a campus workShe has gone through hundreds of study job last year. In order to find pictures, studied them, and cataloged pertinent data in a computer out the best way to catalog and preprogram. "I devised a system with serve the pictures, an expert was consulted-Mame Warren of the seven fields, including photographMaryland State Archives. Ms. er, date, building, person, activity, Warren is the photo archivist for the locality (i.e., coffee shop, back camstate, and she also has written several pus, etc.). I'm also working on a books based on the collections of her processing manual so that the next father, famed photographer Marion person to have my job can continue Warren (he photographed students, the project," she says. Scanning in tutors, and campus activities from the images will be the next phase of the 1950's to the 1970's and many the project. "Every time I think I'm done, of his images are in the St. John's collection). somebody finds another box of phoMs. Warren suggested conservtographs," she says. Emily estimates that ing the photographs by putting the St. John's collection contains about them in acid free mylar sleeves and 2200 photos of Annapolis. So far, she's then into binders. Information looked at about 1900 pictures. �REPORTER Included in the collection are many old photos from the 1880's to the 1940's. For example, the Alfred Eisenstadt photos that were taken for the Life magazine article of 1940 are at the college. Images other than those that appeared in the article are also a part of the collection; some of these were used in the 1940 yearbook. IMAGES AS PART OF THE COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS Marion Warren's photographs from the 1950's on represent an important era at St. John's. A photographer who came to Annapolis following World War II, Warren documented many aspects of the town's life, including the sailing craft at the dock, farmers in the out1ying regions, business leaders and building projects, and St. John's. His images are part of the collective consciousness of the college-many were used in the admissions catalogs of the 1960's and early 1970's. These photos of tutors-] acob Klein, Hugh McGrath, Simon Kaplan, Winfree Smith-and of students in seminar and other classes were a window into the life of the college for prospective students who studied the catalogues for clues about what St. John's was really like. According to Emily, the earliest images in the St. John's collection Students from the doss of 1889. Photographer unknown. 12 are from the 1880's~ The majority of the "old" photos date from the turn of the century-buildings, groups of students in their military training uniforms, portraits. "One that I particularly like is labeled 'Fun' and it shows all the belongings of one student piled in a corner of a room. It dates from the 1920's," says Emily. Another interesting image, also from about 1920, is a panoramic. The print is about six inches by six feet and it shows the campus from McDowell all the way around to the houses across College Avenue. The view includes the entire student brigade, all in Wine, song, but where ore the women? As this photo shows, excerpts of speeches, yearbook students in 1903 knew the pleasures (vices?) of college life. the uniforms of the then-milientries, essays, interviews, and cortary college, in addition to the Photographer unknown. respondence-a book that would campus band. help tell the story of the campus whoever looks at it. Emily even Emily enjoys working with the and bind readers from today with thinks that photographs can induce older photographs. She hopes to purthe past. a personal experience: "You can read sue a career as a museum curator and The book project will be sponabout the Civil War, but until you is particularly interested in photos and sored by the Friends of St. John's, an see the Mathew Brady photographs objects from the Civil War era. "Now Annapolis group that supports of Antietam, you don't realize how our society has the attitude dictated events at the college. Emily will be horrible it was. It makes it much by TV that everything is handed to working over the course of the next more real." That kind of connection us. We don't use our imagination as year to choose photos and unearth is why she enjoys working with the much," she says, comparing modernspeeches and correspondence to use St. John's collection. Preserving the day photos with those from the era of in the text. images of the college will help us all black and white. "A black and white Meanwhile, Mrs. Kinzer is remember, will help us recognize photo is more arty... You have to fill pleased that the photograph collecthe traditions and history that are in the colors, or maybe you just think tion is finally getting its due. The part and parcel of this 300-year-old of that world as black and white, with new library will have more room for institution. a little bit of records. The photograph files will Mrs. Kinzer and Emily, after yellow mixed in. be organized and accessible on comconsidering the extent of the collec"From a hisputer. "There will be a hospitable tion and thinking about the history toric standpoint, area for people to come and use our of the Annapolis campus, thought this [photo colold records," she says. "As soon as that a book would best showcase the lection} is a the indexes are available, they will photo preservation project. They record of a be on the public terminals in the envision a 300th birthday volume time," notes that would include old images and library." lll Emily. Before the invention of the camera, we could have averMLIUB1111111--tW you have photographs from your bal description days at St.John's tucked in some corner of your attic or stuffed in a box under a bed? If of an event or a scene-one person's view. A camera makes an image that is universally available, able to be interpreted by you think they may be of some interest and would like them to be part of the St.]ohn's collection, please send them to Mrs. Kinzer at the library. {{There are many gaps in our collection,'' says Mrs. Kinzer. {{Years when there were no yearbooks are not well represented, for example. If there is a notation on the back of the photograph about when it was taken and who or what the subject is, that would be most welcome. n + �LETTERS CONT. FROM PAGE 9 WHAT'S ON THE LIST I gather that there is some agitation for the addition of books written by women. Women on the St.John's campuses may, indeed, feel swamped by the books and since they were written by men they may feel swamped by men. However, I certainly as a man did and still do feel swamped by the books. Indeed, I went to Dean Buchanan one day and confessed/ complained that I was so confused I didn't know which end was upthat if someone pointed to a dog and said, "What is it?" that I wouldn't say, "It's a dog" because I wouldn't be able to answer if someone asked how I knew it was a dog. I asked the dean how long I would be so confused and he ans>"ered, "Certainly as long as you're here." Yes, I was swamped by the books. Scott Buchanan, primarily, chose the books for the reading list. He chose those books, I maintain, which he knew would swamp every serious student. In my view that was his primary objective-to con- fuse students and cause them to suffer and to cause them to learn. As I see it, Scott Buchanan was a Greek in the highest sense of the word. The one student in my tutorials who despised the Greeks also thought Dean Buchanan to be the Devil and, I venture, for the same reason-they likewise confused him (some people don't want to be confused) causing him to suffer. This student rebelled by never coming back. The concept that learning is suffering was and is, I say, at the core of Scott Buchanan's concept for St. John's. If a book is provocatively swampable and intrinsically important to Western civilization, then it would be within his range to be considered for the St. John's list. Quality, merit, provocative swampability, and intrinsic importance to Western civilization should, in Scott Buchanan's concept, I offer, determine the books in the St. John's listnothing else. -George Cayley, A45 and SGI78 Ill MORE ON SEMINAR TYLES I must respond to Dana N etherton's letter "Thoughts on Seminar Styles" in the Summer '95 Reporter, taking in particular the quotation from Beth Kuper concerning freshman seminar as a starting point-"a free-for-all, with the most aggressive students dominating, and the quieter students sitting back, unable to contribute." The description is apt; I recognize my freshman seminar. But, hey, that is the stuff out of which the seminar is made. Indeed it is volatile, indeed it is frustrating, but no way should that conflict be avoided, no way! The seminar is not, forgive me, a croquet game. The best seminars I remember have elements more akin to surfing-the great wave of an idea comes along, and it may begin with the still, small voice of someone who has been "unable to contribute" for a long time. Contribution isn't the point; understanding is. And it is an important measure of understanding to value the SETTING THE RECORDS STRAIGHT BY LESLI ALLISON g f you received this copy of the St. John's Reporter in the mail, chances are that at some point in the past you have received duplicate mailings from the college, the mailings you received were sporadic, or you haven't received mailings at all. .. that is until now. On its face, the Alumni Database Cleanup Project may not seem like something to write home about. However, the project will have a significant impact on the college's ability to communicate with alumni, parents, friends and others. The project dates back to 1992 when the Alumni Relations Committee of the St. John's College Board of Visitors and Governors began to take a serious interest in the accuracy of alumni records on both campuses. Part of this interest was long-standing; the alumni lists held by each campus had been known to be highly inaccurate for a number of years. The interest also was motivated by a desire to assist the capital campaign. Finally, the Alumni Relations Committee and the Alumni Association Board had acquired for the ·first time a generation of computer-literate members who began to raise questions about the adequacy of the technology that supported the alumni list on both campuses. "The Alumni Association and the Alumni Relations Committee were unhappy-and rightly sowith the discrepancies between the two campuses in terms of alumni information, class year, campus designation, and the problem of duplicate mailings," said Nick Giacona, Santa Fe's director of prospect research and chairman of the Intercampus Computer Committee. "Some people were getting triplicate mailings, and some were get- dynamics of the seminar as they progress from rough to rougher to-not smooth, but exciting, invigorating, empowering. The best example of this I can think of occurs at the beginning of The Republic. Everyone is together in the home of a genteel old man-he would indeed consider a croquet-type seminar to be the optimum form of dia-. logue. But then comes Thrasymachus-"hunched up like a wild beast, he flung himself at us as if to tear us to pieces." (Bloom translation) What is happening here to the dialogue? And why does Socrates finish Book I of The Republic calling Thrasymachus "blessed"? I think he truly means it. Exciting things are possible in seminar. I extend praise to all of my wise tutors who let the seminar be, as I cherish memories of the diversity of "characters" in whose company I answered the seminar bell. -Dianne Bentley, A62 llil ting no mail at all." In response, a computer summit meeting was held last January in Annapolis with representatives from both campuses present. The discussion was moderated by board member and alumnus Bill Tilles, A59. By the end of the meeting, the two campuses had agreed to develop a common alumni database policy for class year and campus designation, create an inter-campus committee made up of staff from each campus, and, with the help of funding from the Alumni Association Board, hire aides and create computer work stations to facilitate data entry. "In the past, we haven't had the time or the resources to attack it," Mr. Giacona said. "This has been a project that has been more than 200 CONT. ON PAGE 17 �MC DOWELL PRINT AVAILABLE Luke Trares and Pia Thadhani, both juniors, spent the summer deaning and testing equipment for the junior laborafory classes. Photo by John Bildahl. 11 HOW TO "WIN JUNIOR LAB BY SUS3AN BORDEN g f junior year is the Boston Marathon of the St. John's program, then lab is the Heartbreak Hill of junior year. Although many students hope just to finish the race, others plan to rise and conquer, to understand, to "win" junior lab. Junior lab assistants cite this as the key benefit of their job. They see the responsibility that comes with the position as a path to understanding. They say that attending twice as many classes gives them a double-dose of thought time. This year in Annapolis, two juniors will get a triple-dose. Luke Trares and Pia Thadhani are the first archons of Annapolis' new junior lab archon internship. The pair spent the summer cleaning electrometers, testing spectrometers and cataloging galvanometers. They worked with Director of laboratories Mark Daly to learn the experiments and equipment of junior lab. Now that the school year has begun, they meet with Daly regularly to keep ahead of the experiments, and they meet weekly with their fellow lab assistants to teach them the experiments. Daly hopes that having students teach the experiments will lead to more interaction and interest among the lab assistants. "We're trying to encourage students to get together after hours, work with the equipment, and talk about challenges with class- work and with the experiments," he says. "With Pia and Luke as archons, the students will have someone they can talk to 24 hours a day." Santa Fe Dean Stephen Van Luchene brought up the idea at a meeting in Annapolis where he described the role of the lab archons in Santa Fe. Annapolis tutor Anita Kronsberg notes that "the lab programs are different and administered differently so we can't do something identical. But we thought we'd use what they were doing as a point of departure." Although Kronsberg is already pleased with the quality of the lab program, she sees clear advantages to the internship. "The more we can get the lab assistants working together, the more they' re likely to infuse the labs with an even greater enthusiasm." Kronsberg particularly likes the idea of students being able to talk to other students when they run into difficult lab readings, as they do regularly in their other classes. "It makes them aware that they can do something when they get confused, something that's not tutor-dependent. Students prefer to figure things out among themselves. They do not like to rely too much on their tutors," she points out. Dean Eva Brann has high hopes for the program. "We will now have an extra layer of help for everyonetutors as well as students," she says. lil Annapolis alumni have fond memories of McDowell Hall. Seminars, waltz parties, the coffee shop, the Dean's Office (pre-1989) -these and other memories mark the days spent in and around this lovely old building. To help alumni remember their time at St. John's, Bruce Preston, A65, a Washington, D.C., architect, has produced a black and white drawing ofMcDowell Hall. The 11by17-inch print is matted and ready for framing. For a limited time, this drawing is being offered to St. John's alumni for $25. All profits from the sale of the print will be donated to The Campaign for Our Fourth Century. The print can be ordered by mail (add $3.00 for postage) from: Advancement Office, St. John's College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404. -submitted by Grace (logerfo) Bateman, Jessica (Hoffmann) Davis, and Jethro (Mark) Eisenstein, class of 1965 llil JAZZ ECHOES IN THE HALL Thanks to alumnus Michael MacDonald, SF76, Grammy-nominated pianist Fred Hersch was on the Santa Fe campus recently in a solo performance benefitting St. John's College. A Grammy awardwinning sound engineer himself, MacDonald sponsored the event as a gift to the college. More than 200 students, faculty and local residents attended the stellar performance in the Great Hall. Hersch also gave a smaller, private performance to honor benefactors of the college. llil �f LL l L U ASSOCIATION NEWS JOHN'S (OLLEGE MARK MtDDLEBROOKJ A83 I THOMAS GEYER 1 A68, COMMUNICATfdNS COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN EDITOR The Alumni Association Newsletter is published in each issue of the Reporter. We welcome letters, capsule book reviews, and article ideas from alumni. Send submissions and suggestions to Mark Middlebrook at 73030. 1604@ compuserve.com (e-mail) or call 510/547-0602. by Larry Davis, SGl87 Austin Chapter Vice President Editor's note: This article is part of an ongoing series profiling local alumni chapters. Our next profile will feature the Philadelphia chapter. The Austin chapter had its unofficial beginning in December 1989 with a reading of Those Who Walk Away from Orne/as, a short story about a utopia except for one small detail. Among those in attendance was Jill Wilkinson, benefactor of several Austin area alumni and a former member of the Board of Visitors and Governors. This unofficial group continued for about two years, meeting at the homes of members for seminars, with the readselected and the discussion led by the host. "founding mother" of unchartered group N I in July 1991 at a gala affair at the Hyatt featuring a reading of Euripedes's Iphigenia at Au/is led by Santa Fe tutor and native Texan {very important) Tim Miller. The first officers were President Bev Angel (currently the Secretary of the Alumni Association Board), Vice President Joe Reynolds, and Secretary-Treasurer Larry Davis. The above individuals, plus Paul Martin, have held almost all of the officer positions of the chapter since its chartering. This cabal is not intended to be a de facto self-perpetuating "board": We hope (and pray!) that other chapter members will step forward and serve as officers. The chapter's primary, indeed almost exclusive, activities have been monthly seminars which, in view of the relatively small size of the chapter, have been well attended. The discussions are almost always quite good. Exceptions were those readings involving the arts. We encourage nonalumni to attend our seminars, and there are usually several such "friends", as we call them (as opposed to, say, bubbas), in attendance. Our readings are selected by meeting. The tutor visits are always very well attended, and we would invite tutors more often if the college would financially support more visits. We have always had a pot-luck dinner in conjunction with tutor visits. The dinners seem to promote a convivial atmosphere. The chapter decided to try having our monthly seminar meetings on a given date of each month (the 13th, for good luck) instead of, say, the third Thursday. This arrangement allows everyone the opportunity to make most of the meetings. Since the day of the week will vary from month to month, no one is precluded from attending every meeting because of another obligation on that particular day of the week. A number of our members are graduate students at The University of Texas (Hook 'em Horns! [editor's translation: "We hope fervently that our heavily-padded Neanderthals are able to triumph over your heavily-padded Neanderthals in contests employing an inflated ellipsoidal porcine hide"]), and we have had a difficult time getting them to forego their studies for the ALUMNI ADD INCLUSION CLAUSE TO ASSOCIATION Peterson Hall's Senior Common Room in Santa Fe was bursting at the doorways for this year's Alumni Association Annual Meeting, which was held on July 22nd during Homecoming. No doubt most alumni came to hear the heart-full, joyous, and often humorous encomia to tutors David Jones and Michael Ossorgin. Nonetheless, there was also business to be transacted, which the numerous alumni present dispatched expeditiously. Three amendments to the Alumni Association By-laws passed unanimously, including the addition of a clause expre~sing inclusiveness in Association membership. Article II, Membership, Section I, Regular Members originally read: "All who have ever been alumni shall continue to be." To this life sentence without appeal was added: "The Association is inclusive of all alumni and does not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, sexual orientation, age, national or ethnic origin, or against the handicapped." band whoever agrees, at the conclusion of a meeting, to lead a future seminar. Readings have been a 50-50 mix of program non-program texts. invite tutors about twice per year to lead our seminars, one of which is combined with the annual business more important activity of chapter meetings. St. John's seems to have instilled in them some sort of study habits. What is the world coming to?! Bv-LAws intrepid alumni who through the Internet derives either the sputterings of prim Senators or the adulation of techno-fetishists, �R.EPOR{lJ'ER. here's a more moderate preds. The Internet is a vast network of computer networks, through which people with computers and modems exchange email messages and files and search for information. The Internet's immensity is both a blessing and a curse: The resources are endless, but so is the time you can waste typing cryptic UNIX commands while trying to locate something of value. The WorldWide Web has evolved as a more civilized means of organizing and navigating data on the Internet. The Web is organized as a huge number of home pages, which are akin to electronic greeting rooms. Schools, businesses, government institutions, and individuals create home pages on computers called Web servers, which are spread around the g\obe. Home pages (and everything else on the Web) employ a graphical user interface, whereby plain text is dressed up with different fonts and pictures, and your mouse clicks serve to maneuver within and among Web pages. ''Behind" home page are usually other, more detailed offerings, just as a greeting room offers access to rooms for other functions. You walk {or crawl, depending on the speed of your modem} to these other rooms by picking highlighted words with your mouse. The most interesting characteristic of the Web is that the links to other pages aren't limited to a single Web server. Those who create web pages can include highlighted words that cause you to "jump" to other home pages on other servers anywhere on the Internet. For example, the Santa Fe campus' Web pages include a "hypertexted reading list" organized by year. Picking James Joyce's "The Dead" connects you to a server across the pond and transfers the text of the story to your computer, whence you might search for all occurrences of the word "snow". Whether doing so would result in better senior seminars or essays is another question. Of course one must start all this aimless exploration somewhere. Every home page has an address, which Internet-savvy folks call its URL, or uni- form resource locator. URLs are perplexing aggregations of letters, slashes, and other symbols, and as with e-mail addresses, you must type everything accurately in order to accomplish anything. Before you can mistype anything, though, you'll need a connection to the Internet that supports WorldWide Web access, plus a piece of communications software called a Web browser. Both of these necessities can be had from commercial Internet service providers or from traditional on-line services like CompuServe and America On-line. The URL for the unofficial alumni home page is: http://www.leland.stanford.edu/ ""redcloud/johnny.html , 1(> Ted Skinner addresses the Alumni Association in honor of David Jones. and it currently includes: + An on-line directory of alumni who ask to be listed. You can find e-mail and "real" addresses for some alumni, send e-mail directly to listed alumni, and connect to the home pages of alumni who have them. + A Transcript of Santa Fe Dean Steve Van Luchene's controversial October 1994 "Statement of Educational Policy and Program" (introductory paragraphs of which were published in the Spring 1995 Reporter). + Connections to the official home pages for both campuses (http:// sjc.stjohns-nm.edu/ for Santa Fe and http://www.sjca.edu/ for Annapolis). CHAPTER CONTACTS Please call those listed below for information about alumni activities in each area. ALBUQUERQUE: Harold M. Morgan, Jr. (505) 256-0294 NEW YORK: Justin Burke (212) 228-8423 or (212) 620-3955 ANNAPOLIS: Joel D. Lehman (410) 956-2814 AUSTIN: Joe Reynolds (5 12) 867-8461 BOSTON: Alvin Aronson (617) 566-6657 BUFFALO/ROCHESTER/TORONTO: Hank Constantine (716) 586-5393 CHICAGO: Amanda Fuller (312) 337-4105 or Rick Lightbum (312) 667-0068 DALLAS/FORT WORTH: Suzanne Doremus (817) 496-8571 or Jonathan Hustis (214) 340-8442 PHILADELPHIA: Jim Schweidel (215) 836-7632 PORTLAND: Rachel Sullivan (503) 629-5838 SACRAMENTO: Arianne Laidlaw (916) 362-513 I or Helen Hobart (916) 452-1082 SAN FRANCISCO/NORTHERN CALIFORNIA: Cynthia Kay Catherine Hobgood (415) 552-9349 SANTA FE: John Pollak (505) 983-2144 or Elizabeth Skewes (505) 984-6103 LOS ANGELES: Julia Takahashi (310) 434-7624 SEATTLE: Jim Doherty (206) 937-8886 MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL: Glenda Eoyang (612) 783-1405 or (612) 379-3883 (W) WASHINGTON, D.C.: Sam Stiles (30 I) 424-91 19 or Bill Ross (30 I) 230-4594 �ALUMNI ASSOCIATION NEWS ... Ex sees and tells the truth, a man who lacks one lower arm. Unable to work stone, he takes on the craft of storytelling and feeds it with wanderlust. His tales create laughter but also foreboding in the villagers, who, like us, are made to confront love and work and "the slavery of skill." L1BR1s ALUMNORUM CAPSULE REVIEWS "Law One of the Discriminating 'Devour everything you can swr111ow with relish, indiscriminately. Test texts as I recommended before, give everything a - Annapolis Eva Brann, in her is a Book?" 991 lecture lished on pp. 75 in Volume number one, St. John's Review) Louis Armstrong: Portrait of the Mst as a Young Man, 1923-1934, 1994, Columbia/legacy. 4 CD's booklet. Submitted a 77 page reviews to Crace 170 pages. rtl"l"'°IOICIO<" that will elicit or groans, depending and what you're payInternet connect time. lnl","'\rn•rotinn about the alumni Internet mailing list discussion group and how to participate in it. like the alumni mailing list discussion group, the unofficial alumni home page is an independent creation of individual alumni. It was dubbed "unofficial" in order to distinguish it from the College's Web home pages and from a possible future home page for the Alumni Association. TRAVEL PROGRAM TO DISCOVER TWAIN'S MISSISSIPPI "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." So goes Mark Twain's famous warning to those who read Huckleberry Finn. Travelers interested in the St. John's Travel Program's second voyage-down the Mississippi River from Memphis to New Orleans aboard the "American Queen"-will have to disregard Twain's words. Reading and discussion on the cruise, led by St. John's president Christopher Nelson, will focus on Huckleberry Finn. Dates for the trip are March 1- 7, 1996. All alumni and friends of St. John's are invited to participate in the travel program. The "American Queen" is a replica steam-powered paddlewheeler, the largest in the world. The ship is outfitted in the elegant style of old, but is modern in all creature comforts (including elevators, an athletic club, a swimming pool, a movie theater, a library, and a sun deck). The river journey will include ports of call to Francisville's Rosedown Plantation, Natchez, Vicksburg, and Magnolia Mound, a working plantation in Baton Rouge. Annapolis Travel Service is serving as the agent for the trip and will make arrangements for air trans- Middlebrook, This sculpted story positively radiates through its simple but shapely prose. A village of stoneworkers labors smugly as their way of life begins to crumble from the intrusion of the Bronze Age. One among them portation at competitive rates. They will also help with arrangements in Memphis and New Orleans for travelers wishing to extend either the beginning or the end of the trip. For information on the cruise "Discover Mark Twain's America" contact Pamela McKee in the Annapolis Advancement Office at 410-626-2506. Hllm~VH.1111?"6 Ill CONT. FROM PAGE 13 years in the making. There are more than 14,000 alumni to date." Last summer, the efforts of the summit began to pay off. Darien Large, SF95, and Luke Trares, A97, worked tirelessly to reconcile records on both campuses. "Thanks to Bill Tilles, Betsy Blume, Chris Denny, Kim Kern, and several others, we really are about to complete this project," Mr. Giacona said. "And, we've already begun seeing positive results." The last phase, currently under- men ts, not Among the many are two versions of "St. Louis Blues": a bluesy 1925 recording with Armstrong on cornet accompanying Bessie Smith, a 1929.ro\\icking rhumba version on which Armstrong's smoking trumpet is supported by his 10 piece orchestra. way, involves developing an electronic method of automatically importing and exporting alumni information between the campuses. "One benefit of this project is that the data going into the next alumni register is going to be as clean as it can be from our data," Mr. Giacona said. "I'd also just like to apologize to the alumns for the unacceptable level of inaccurate and inconsistent information on our databases in the past. We're really trying to correct that in the future. Bear with us as we work out the wrinkles." SANTA FE olumni@moil.sicsf.edu ANNAPOLIS 7~637~2660@cofl1p~erve.co111 Ill �REPORTER ALUMNI NOTES ••• year as chief resident) at University The Reverend Dr. Harold A. Milstead (A) writes that he is finishing 5 5 years as a pastor under the uninterrupted appointment of the bishop. He is living in Indian Head, MD. Jack I.add Carr (A) was interviewed on National Public Radio's "All Things Cnnsidered." The occasion for the interview was the 50th anniversary of the Japanese surrender marking the end of World War II. Mr. Carr discussed how the G.I. Bill enabled him to attend St. John's -The fust in his family to go to college. He told Linda Wertheimer: "Many people were going off to trade schools and getting degrees so that they could get on with their lives. I did the impos.sible thing - went to this college that taught the great books." The Baltimore Salon of Leslie Starr (A) and her husband, Joe Turner, was the scene in August of an informal get-together. Traditional refreshments were served. Present were Ezra Harris (A), currently residing in Jerusalem, Israel; David and Susan Kiralis Shipman (A) of China, ME.; their daughter, Johanna, a freshman at Barnard College; their son, Ezra, of Madison, N.H., his wife, Leigh Le Clair, and their one-year-old son, Jacob. News of the past 25 years was exchanged and pleasant memories revisited. The reunion theme continued as the Shipmans went on to spend a week with McKee and Ilene Pregler Lee (A) and their daughter, Mollie, a freshman at Simon's Rock College, and friends from many years in Chapel Hill, N.C. ;,'!;',70 Judith Paine Harris (SF) and her five children are "having a home schooling experience" and live in Bloomfield, New Mexico, according to William B. Malloy, SF 77, who learned about her from her sister Nun Susanna (Joan Paine, SF73). William B. Malloy (SF) writes: "I have recently resolved to write a half serious-half comedic memoir of my four years as a friar in the '60s. (I flew the coop the weekend of Woodstock; but no, I did not attend.) The working title is The House of Perfect Observance,' and it will delve into both the ideals and impe.tfections ofsuch a house. This combines both my interest and my recognized talent, since as I:>on C.OOk once put it at the beginning of a fourth year seminar, 'I direct this question to our resident expert on Original Sin.' Any publishen; reading this?" Susan Otto (SF) was one of the federal public defenders assigned to Oklahoma City bombing suspect Timothy McVeigh, but she was removed from the case. Miriam Marcus-Smith (SF) writes: "After three years of combining graduate school, family and work, I'm pleased to report that on June 10, I received my Master of Health Administration degree from the University of Washington. However, I couldn't bear to leave the UW, so I'm staying on for at least the next two years as a research coordinator (a.k.a. project manager) for a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded grant looking at the behavioral and utilization effects of physician compensation methods. By the way, it is a small world: Last fall I was surprised to see a SJC diploma on the wall in our program office and learned that it belongs to Tatiana Masters (a much more recent alumna than me [SF90}), who works in the International Health Program in the Department of Health Services. "My kids are now 7 and 5, both growing and developing fast, so we' re getting more into activities like soccer and swimming. Our home address and phone haven't changed from 21906 3rd Dr. SE, Bothell, WA 98021; 206486-05 72. My new work phone is 206-616-4922." Dr. Peter Faulhaber (SF) reports that he was married to Lynne Jaskulek last year, and that they now have a son, Justin, born in April. After finishing his residency (the last Hospitals of Cleveland-Case Western Reserve, Peter is now a Fellow in Nuclear Medicine at Case Western. Didi Schancke (A) has moved back to the U.S. after eight years in Africa and the Middle East, where she worked as a reporter. She is married, has two daughters, and is living in southern Maryland. According to William Malloy (SF77), Margaret Krebe Jesperson (SF) owns and operates a wilderness outfitting and guide business called South Mountain Tours, in Edgewood, N.M. Daniel Van Doren (A) has a son, Benjamin, who is 15 months old. Elizabeth Bowser (A) is currently serving as the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Watsontown, Pennsylvania. Elizabeth went on from St. John's to earn a Master of Divinity degree from Princeton Theological Seminary and served as an ordained pastor in two Presbyterian churches in the Philadelphia area prior to coming to her current parish in central Pennsylvania. She is married to Eric Affsprung, a psychologist at Bucknell University. They have two sons, Joseph (age 3) and Daniel (age 1). Heraddress is 220 S. 15th St., Lewisburg, PA 17837. Melissa (Kullberg) Ryan (SF) and Michael Ryan (SF86) had a baby girl: Chloe Elise Ryan on July 24. Kelly Cowling (SF) has just finished her master's degree in nurse-midwifery at the University of Texas Medical Branch and passed the national certifying exam in nursemidwifery. "I expect to defend my dissertation on the connection between aesthetics and morality in Kant in August," writes Jeffrey L. Wilson (A). "In September I begin as assistant professor of philosophy at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Ancient philosophy, ethics, aes- thetics, and German philosophy are among my responsibilities there. I occasionally write book reviews (in German) for the Philosophischer Literaturanzeiger, published in Aachen. During the past nine months, I've had the pleasure several times of attending, leading, or hosting alumni seminan; in the L.A. area." ·cr~ Al Haffa (A) has received a Newcombe Fellowship for work on his Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Wisconsin in the departments of classics and comparative literature. His proposed dissertation title is "The Poetics of Supplication in Homer, Virgil, and Tasso." John Newell (A) writes with some good news: Last summer the status of his health was upgraded to 'cured' with respect to the rather advanced cancer he had developed (Si mori hunc vis, tibi hie necandus est!). He is currently working towards a Ph.D. in ancient Greek and Roman literature, philosophy, and science through the classics department at the University of Pittsburgh (Cum doctus sit titulus, tamen homo erit, etiam, ignarus). Lastly, he is engaged (Omnes, praeter unam, nubiles laxatae et gaudentes exspirant!) though a date has not yet been set. For translations of the Latin here, or for other reasons, you may contact him by email atJFNST4@PITT.EDU or at the address given in the register. Scott Vineberg (A) was married to Lisa Bush in 1989; they have two children, Grace, who is 4, and Kalli, who is 2. Jean Campbell (A) will be starting chiropractic school in the fall. Spyros Ritsinias (A) earned his law degree from George Mason University and is now in private practice. Kim Wt.strand LaFave (A) graduated from George Mason University this year in English. With husband Greg, she has a daughter Emily, 4, and two stepsons, 10 and 12. Dariush and Lisa LiskeDoorandish (88 and 90, A) report that they have a daughter, Miriam, born on July 4, 1994. �ALUMNI NOTES ••• Sara Wetherson (A) has finished her master's thesis and now has an MA in women's studies and public policy from George Washington University. She's looking for a job. Susan Petrone (A) will begin work on an M.A. in English with a concentration in creative writing at Cleveland State University in the fall. She returned to the U.S. in 1994 after working in the Netherlands for two years. "Among the things I brought home was a dutch husband, Jan-Arend Bult," she writes. "I realize now how small a city Cleveland really is, because I keep running into Marty Gelfand, A89." "My new position beginning in midJune is assistant director of Post-graduate and Continuing Education at Northwestern College of Chiropractic · in Minneapolis," reports Kelly Koepke (SF). "It is nice to be going back to academia and to start applying what I have been learning in my MBA program at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul. If any alums find themselves in the Twin Cities, look me up!" Liz Mogford (SF) is in the Peace Corps in Cameroon (Africa). She is working at a post in Meme, a village near Mora in Extreme North Cameroon. Much of her work has focused on the funding and completion of a hospital in Meme. Her father, James Mogford, writes: "The building had remained unfinished-no roof, no floor, incomplete interior, open to the elements ...-for quite some time. Unfinished projects are common because graft and thievery will often exhaust the funds while workers use paid-for time and materials for their own purposes. Liz was aware of such practices so she controlled money, materials and workers very carefully-a ticklish task because it had to be done without subverting local authority, without upsetting traditions, and without creating resentment among those involved. ''Dwing the last week of May the completed hospital was dedicated. Liz said that the dedication turned out to be much more elaborate than she had anticipated: attendance comprised Chiefs, local Governors, various officials and dignitaries, and many appreciative people; there were numerous speeches including one delivered in French (in the village she uses Mandara and Fufuldi); the celebration lasted more than one day-it was a big deal! The surprise came at the end when the actual dedication occurred and the hospital was named after Liz-Hospital Liz Mogford. I can't speak for Liz, but I can say that I was thrilled that she was so honored." Liz's term in the Peace Corp will end in December and she has no firm plans yet. In the meantime, she welcomes correspondence at the following address: Liz Mogford, Centre de Sante de Meme, B.P. 15, Mora, LExtreme Nord, Cameroun, Africa. Michelle Baker (SF) lI'Cflltly had a month-loog exhibit ciblackand white photographs at the Op:nEye Gallery on Oras Js1anL F.ast Srund, Wa4llngton. Jeaneen McAmis (A) writes that she has finally d&nvered her true vocation: "lounging in a hammock sipping coconut milk by the sea. OfCOlll"Se, this entails teaching English, which f ve fuund I really love and have some talent fur-plus it enables me to travel-a nice combination ifyou have to work fur a living. I finished my coufsework fur a rnseis in teaching English as a second/fureign language at the School fur International Training in Vermont (cold!), did a couple cfinternship; teaching adults and kids in Ca;ta Rica (pua:lise) and Mexico (hot and dusty). Now f m writing my thesis and living with my sister in Knoxville, Tennessee (none too exotic). Next year proOO.blyJapin to piy offall these student loons, then who knows? As one cfmy ffiL students put it, "The world is my clam!" Jeaneen would like to hear from fellow Johnnies as well as alumni involval with ffiL pi.5t/present. Shes at 202 Twelfi:h St., #27, Knoxville, 1N37916. Ramona Denk (A) will be traveling to Davao City in the Philippines to start a birth center that will provide maternity care to poor women. Teddi Ann Galligan (SFGI/AGI) and David Diggs (AGI) married on September 1 in Washington, D.C. They are living and learning in Haiti. Their address is c/o Lynx Air, P.O. Box 407139, Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33340. Lake Perriguey (SF), formerly known as James Perriguey, began his legal studies at Northwestern School of Law of Lewis and Clark College this fall. He may be reached at: 2210 N.W Everett #115 Portland, OR 972105510; 503-224-2429. Jim Michel (SF) and Jenna Palmer (SF93) were married in August in San Francisco. Jim is a third year law student at Golden Gate University and worked this summer with the San Francisco public defender. Jenna will begin a master's program in English literature at S.E State in the fall. Their address is 1591 Page St. #302, San Francisco, CA 94117. Jmichel@ggu.edu. C. William Cox (A) writes that he is now married to Deena A. Kuchinsky ofYorktown Heights, NY After leaving St. John's, he attended HampdenSydney College in Virginia, then transferred to Fordham University. He is currently employed as a typesetter/ graphic designer/pre-press person/troubleshooter at Alphagraphics in Greenwich, Connecticut. He'd like to hear from friends, and notes that e-mail virtually guarantees a response. stronghelm@aol.com. Michael Zinanti (SF) and Susan Svetich (SF92) were married September 1 in Denver, Colorado. "I am home after two short years on Palan, a small island in the Pacific, where I taught at a local Catholic high school," writes William J. McMahon (A). "I plan to be in the Chicago area for the next year and would love to hear from anyone." A sprightly notice arrived in the Reporter's box announcing the marriage ofJulie R Girone (A) and Eric Marc Martin in August at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. Phoebe Merrin (SF) recently completed her master's degree in library science at Simmons College in Boston. She currently is looking for reference work in an academic library, preferably in the west. Her address is 234 Owl Creek Road, Boulder, Colorado 80302. Iii! TO PARIS CONT. FROM PAGE 3 buildings. After riding through countryside for three and a half days, I found myself in Friday lunch-time traffic. Once I smelled the finish line, I sprinted the last several miles, running red lights and weaving in and out of traffic, doing some of my best 'traffic jamming,' as they say in bike riding parlance, as I sped to the finish line. We finished at the Gymnasium of the Rights of Man. A crowd of hundreds cheered. as we crossed the line. It was hard to believe that I'd done it, it was over: Two years of training and preparation were now finished." Finished is a key word for both Pickens and Bishop. Neither plans to ride the Randonnee again. "I love bicycling, and will continue to use it as part of my fitness regimen and to tour. Travelling by bicycle is the best way to see the country. But what I've learned from endurance racing is that the best distance is no more than 7 5 miles a day. That's the maximum humane amount of bicycling," says Pickens. Bishop's finish was even more final. He plans to give up cycling entirely. "It was not about biking for me, it was about the challenge. I enjoyed biking but it could never come close to being as memorable and as pleasurable as the conclusion of this race. Therefore, I guess I'll quit while I'm on top." Bishop does, however, have plans for a new challenge: "Once the feeling returns to my fingers which are still numb from the race I will start taking piano lessons," he says. But how will he top his bicycling accomplishments? Will he aim to play Carnegie Hall? "Probably not Carnegie Hall," he says. 'TU be happy with the lounge at the Holiday Inn on the Pennsylvania Turnpike." llil �REPORTER 20 A JOURNEY OF TILTING AT THE WINDMILLS OF ACADEMIA LIGHT BY SUS3AN BORDEN BY LIZ SK.EWES After more than 25 years of working as a lighting specialist in films and more than a decade of being at the top of the industry- working on movies that include "Unforgiven", "French Kiss" and the currently running "Dangerous Minds", starring Michele Pfieffer - Tom Stem, SF69, says the key for him still is "the issue of trying to get to the first principles, which is one of the main points of the St. John's experience." It's an experience that led him from building houses in Santa Fe to graduate school at Stanford University to working on documentary films and, eventuto lighting major feature films. "I've always been rather mechani, ,..,,.11...,"'',; "Stern says. His introduction into film work came after graduation when one of his classmates, was working on a shoestring documentary on New Mexico's land ownership. "He was intrigued with the idea· that if all the land in 1800 was owned by the Hispanics, how come it wasn't anymore. I helped out on the project along with a few other people." From there, Stern made his way into the graduate program in communications at Stanford. He worked as a teaching assistant and a residence assistant, but says he still wasn't planning on a film career. "There weren't a whole lot of people who were planning much of anything in the '60s," he says. Still, the master's degree from Stanford and his thesis project on neonatal care and premature babies put Stern in contact with a number of doctors who then hired him to make medical documentaries about devices they were developing and new surgical techniques. It meant spending a lot of time in operating rooms and finessing the surgical nurses to avoid having to sterilize every last lens cap that might find its way near the operating room. "Then I branched out into technical films. It was where the money was, plus CONT. ON PAGE 21 nnapolis tutor Henry Higuera's book, Eros and Empire, was published this summer, but Higuera is only marginally excited. Higuera completed the book, his doctoral dissertation for the University of Toronto's department of political philosophy, in 1982. What happened in the intervening thirteen years tells a story about academic publishing and the ins and outs of scholarship's fashions. "Don't do it." That was the advice for which Henry Higuera self-mockingly Clifford a professor at the University of Toronto, in the preface to Eros and Empire. offered advice in 1977 when Higuera . . . . . to write his soence r-1"'""",..,...,..,,...,,..,.n temporaries on the function of natural law and its relationship to Christianity, and focused on the question of whether the Bible alone, or the Bible as understood through the traditions of scholasticism, justified the political structures in effect at the time. Higuera argued that Cervantes, through Don Quixote, "tries to grapple with what is great and what is insane about Spanish imperialism. More dif- to the Straussian notion of esoteric interpretation, the idea that an author will imbed a message in a text intended for a perceptive few, and contrary to its surface meaning. Higuera's suggestion that Cervantes wrote Don Quixote as a critique of Christianity and the Spanish empire at the height of the Spanish Inquisition demands some notion of hidden meanings. Higuera was not the first to come to this conclusion. "Don Quixote has a long tradition of esoteric interpretations, because the book is so crazy, it makes no sense, it's so obviously enigmatic, its such a puzzle. Unfortunately all those interpretations were written the worst ,_.A"-'-'-·'-'- on Cervantes' Don Quixote. When Higuera asked him to on his suggestion, did not mince words. "If you write on Don Quixote you will be forever branded as the worst kind of Straussian obscurantist. And you'll never, ever get a job," he said. Though Higuera was disturbed by Orwin's prediction, his teacher and mentor, Allan Bloom, encouraged him to disregard the advice and write his dissertation, a political reading of Don Quixote. Higuera was a student of Bloom's (author of The Closing of the American Mind and student of Leo Strauss, a guest lecturer and close friend of St. John's) when Bloom was teaching at the University of Toronto. When Bloom began teaching at the University of Chicago in 1979, Higuera chose an advisor from Toronto, but Bloom remained his teacher in the truest sense. In his dissertation, Higuera traced the notion of love of God from the Symposium, through the neoPlatonists, St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas (via Aristotle), Dante, and the Spanish mystics, using sexual love as a way to understand what love of God means. He explored the schools of thought of Cervantes' con- not ficult yet, he grapples with the complicated religion that helped inspire and justify that imperialism. In so doing he delves very deeply indeed: Eventually the novel explores issues crucial to Christian love, to any religion that tries to cope with politics, and to revealed religion as such." Although Higuera's work was well received by his committee, his subject matter and approach made publication difficult. When publishers sent out his manuscript for peer review, it kept hitting the same walls. "Political theorists were not interested in a political interpretation of Don Quixote because no one thought it was about politics. Hispanists hated it because it portrays Cervantes as writing a critique of Christianity," Higuera explains. "People weren't interested in imperialism, in Spain, in Roman Catholicism-they think those are all dead issues." Finally, Higuera cites resistance political science departments. remember vividly a couple of interviews where I'd give my presentation and people would say 'Well, what's this got to do with politics?" "Finally Bloom told me about St. John's. All the turf wars and disciplinary narrowness that made political scientists think I was a nut didn't bother St. John's at all." In his first years at St. John's, Higuera rewrote his dissertation, with a view to making it more appealing to publishers. "I really did try to pitch it to literary critics," he says. "Every chapter started out with a little summary of what Professor X and Critic Y thought on this topic, and then I would develop my point in contrast to them." Even with this rewrite, Higuera says, literary critics hated it. A comment from one finally persuaded him to abandon his quest for . . . ~~AA~~·-i~•-A· "He said that the shoddiness of my scholarship was revealed glaringly the fact that I hadn't read this Italian guy from the 1500s who I have never heard of. I thought to myself: Not CONT. ON PAGE 21 �STERN CONT. FROM PAGE 20 I really have an interest in scientific things," Stern says. His early projects were films with $5,000 budgets, but since then he's worked on films with budgets of more than $60 million. Despite the big budgets, though, Stern has avoided the infighting that sometimes characterizes Hollywood sets. "I made a very conscious choice to specialize in lighting," Stern says. "It leaves you out of the political path. In film, you often get judged by very subjective criteria. The area I chose is more objective. It's simply a matter of how good it looks. I enjoy working in film because it's a good blend of the mechanical stuff and the creative aspects of a project." More recently, though, Stern has started looking outside of film and is working on developing his own businesses, which specialize in developing lighting equipment and lighting techniques. The time on a film, he says, means too much time away from his four children -ages 12, 1 1 and 6-year-old twin sons. "I just missed a lot of birthdays and back to school nights," he says. The career in film also has seemed at odds, sometimes, with Stern's own lifestyle choices. He only recently installed cable at his home - and then only so his girlfriend, a French native, could watch the news from Paris. 'Tm like a vegetarian working at a hotdog factory," he says. "A huge problem that confronts me sometimes is the inexorable shift from participation to spectation in our culture. If you go back in time to the morality plays in the 1500s, there was a lot more participation by the audience. I think as a result of that shift, there's sort of a glamour attached to film that's a little unsettling to me personally." But it's also been a lot of fun sometimes. His skill and talent with lighting has enabled him to work on films such as "Reynaldo and Clara" with Bob Dylan and "Bird," which starred Forrest Whittaker and was directed by Clint Eastwood. "That was probably the best work I've done," Stern says. Apparently Eastwood also liked his work. Stern became part of a small group of about seven people who worked with Eastwood on several projects including "Unforgiven" which won an Oscar for best film. Despite the closeness of the group and the collaborative environment, Stern has found himself moving away from film and into the more scientific aspects of lighting. It's a path that's taking him back to some of tenets he learned at St. John's. "The hardest thing I found is learning to exercise restraint," he says. "I could say that's universally true - not just with lighting. What we're doing when we're lighting for a film is constantly flipping all the way around, unlike in the theater where they' re only lighting the stage. It brings me back to Euclid, Newton and the pool table in the commons room one really needs to understand the geometry of that stuff to be able to do this. You need to understand the inverse square law to see the way light falls off over a distance and to know Newton's law about the angle of incidence being equal to the angle of reflection." In his venture with the business and art of lighting, through his two companies - Sequoia Illumination in California and Mirage Illumination in Canada - Stern hopes to move into producing and "realizing interesting literary work into film. I'm an avid reader and I've got scads of stuff that would provide for engaging, interesting and CONT. FROM PAGE 20 only have I never read him, I've never heard of him, and I never want to read him. If that's what it's going to take to get this book published, I give up." Higuera's book spent five years in a corner of his office; he gave his full attention to teaching at St. John's. He received tenure in 1989. In the meantime, changing fashions in the world of scholarship were quietly making the academic world more receptive to his book. "There were always little stirrings, not so much in mainstream political science or among Hispanics, but in academic nooks and crannies; there was always some interest in political readings of novels," Higuera explains. "Two years ago it got really big partly because of University of Virginia professor Richard Rorty-a MacArthur fellow, a certified genius. During his MacArthur year he wrote a long interpretation of Lolita as a bedrock of liberalism." Without realizing the effect Rorty's work would have on his dissertation's acceptability, Higuera agreed to speak about Don Quixote as part of a panel on politics and literature in memory of Allan Bloom (who had died in October 1992) at the 1993 American Political Science Association Convention in Washington, D.C. Higuera's panel drew an overflow crowd. His fellow panelists told him his topic was "really hot." They suggested he send his book to Rowman & Littlefield, a Maryland press that has published books by St. John's Dean Eva Brann and tutor Mera Flaumenhaft. Before accepting his work, Rowman & Littlefield sent it to two political scientists, one of whom commented on the introductions Higuera had so tediously crafted to please literary theorists. "All of this obsequiousness, it's so boring," he wrote. "Every single chapter starts with a bunch of points that turn out to be utterly wrong. Higuera just doesn't agree with any of them. It's so mealy-mouthed. Couldn't you get him to cut out all this stuff?" Higuera cheerfully removed the of' nding passages as he prepared the manuscript for publication. In the end, Higuera's approach to Don Quixote, which made it so hard for him to find a job in a political science department, paid off. So did his long road to publishing. Joining the St. John's community has enabled him to teach and learn in a satisfying way. "If I'd been somewhere else all this time, I certainly would have published more. But it would have been written in a hurry, sort of cooked up. Eros and Empire, at least, was not cooked up. I A\.IUICllYUA challenging stories." really believe in it," he says. Iii Iii GUILD CONT. FROM PAGE 23 To finish off the year in grand style, November will bring selections from the Charles and Janice Rosenak American Folk Art Collection. This will be the first public exhibition of this collection in New Mexico. The Rosenaks first started collecting folk art in 197 3 after a visit to the Whitney Museum in New York. Since that time, they have traveled widely, collecting folk art and visiting and documenting folk artists through photographs and taped interviews. This collection of interviews is believed to be one of the most complete documentations of 20th-century folk artists available. Because of this extensive collection of documentations, they were commissioned by the Museum of American Folk Art in New York to write the highly-regarded Museum of American Folk Art Encyclopedia of Twentieth Century American Folk Arts and Artists. Their collection of American folk art, which has grown from that first piece they bought at the Whitney Museum in 1973, now includes more than 5,000 pieces. The first public exhibition of this collection in New Mexico will open with a reception from 3-5 p.m. Sunday, November 5 in the Fireside Lounge at the college and will continue through November. The Fine Arts Guild is currently conducting its first membership drive. For more information on the exhibits, or on the Fine Arts Guild, please contact Ginger Roherty at (505) 984-6099. Iii] �OBITUARIES AND MEMORIAM ••• HENRY R. FREEMAN, A44 DAVID JOHN SMITHKA, A78 DALE EDWARD HELEINE, SF94 Henry R. "Hal" Freeman, who was in the class of 1944, died of a heart attack at his home in Denver, Colorado, on July 16, 1995. He served in the tJ .S. Armed Forces during World War II in Greenland as a weatherman before returning to St. John's College. After graduation, he spent two years in Paris, where he studied at a film school. He worked as a film editor in New York City, Hollywood, and Denver. Mr. Freeman's St.John's roommate, Vernon Derr, writes, "His friends remember his integrity and good humor and his love of films and music." David John Smithka, A78, died suddenly on July 5. While at St. John's, he was active in theater and performed in "King Lear" and directed a production of "Night of the Iguana." He started with the class of 1978 but took sophomore year off and then graduated with the class of 1979. Mr. Smithka did a variety of things for paying jobs, but eventually he went to Hollywood where he obtained a screen credit in the movie "Beast Master" for the carpentry work he did. He was in the Army from 198 3 to 1988, spending the majority of his time at the U.S. Army Field Station in Augsburg, West Germany. A Russian linguist, he also had special assignments in Berlin and Turkey. He received three Army Achievement medals for his work. After the Army, Mr. Smithka attended Georgetown University where he obtained an M.A. in Russian area studies. When he died, he was working for a joint venture (with Russian partners) international consulting firm in Silver Spring, The Parvus Company. He also did translations of technical work and literature. He published his translation of "On the Eve" by Turgenev and was working on more. He leaves his wife, Katherine Buck, A79, and two children, Iliya and Valeriya Smithka. Dale Edward Heleine was killed on September 14, 1995, while vacationing with friends near Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Dale, 24, was well known to many Johnnies in Santa Fe as an expert mechanic who could fix anything, and it was while working on a friend's car that his death accidentally occurred. His death was particularly tragic in light of his miraculous recovery from a near-fatal motorcycle accident in the summer of 1994. Dale was a well-known personality on the Santa Fe campus, universally liked and respected for his intelligence, ready wit, devilish sense of humor and facility with all things practical. He matriculated in 1990 and was in the process of finishing his senior essay at the time of his death. He is survived by Fred and Joan Heleine and a brother, Gregory, of Phoenix, Arizona, as well as two grandmothers and several aunts, uncles, and cousins. A memorial service was held in the Great Hall at St. John's College on October 3, which was attended by his parents and nearly one hundred friends. Cards or letters may be sent to his parents at 11 Cutter Drive, Ocean, NewJersey. 07712 Submitted by Bill Kowalski SF94 ELMER M. JACKSON, JR., A27 Elmer M. Jackson, Jr., who figured prominently in the life of Annapolis, died from complications of a stroke in July. A native of Hagerstown, Mr. Jackson graduated from St. John's in 1927. He was an alderman in the city of An~apolis from 1932 to 1936 and a member of the Maryland House of Delegates from 193 7 to 1941. He served in Naval Intelligence as a commander from 1941 to 1947. Mr. Jackson was perhaps best known in Annapolis as the editor and general manager of The Evening Capital, the city's newspaper, from 194 7 to 1969. After the paper was sold in 1968, Mr. Jackson became owner and editor of a weekly newspaper, the Anne Arundel Times, which he sold in the early 1980's. Mr. Jackson served as president of the Anne Arundel County Library Board ofTrustees for 35 years, during which time the system grew from one library to eight branches. He also was a member of the Annapolis Civitan Club, the Annapolis Elks Club, the Annapolitan Club, and the Annapolis Yacht Club. He was chairman of the Anne Arundel Economic Development Commission and the State Planning Commission, among other activities. He is survived by his wife, two children, three stepchildren, and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. WALTER RUSSELL CHANCE, A38 Walter Russell Chance, a naval architect, died May 29 in Lusby, Maryland. Mr. Chance was born in Annapolis and graduated from St. John's in 1938. He did post-graduate work in naval architecture and marine engineering at the University of Michigan. Before joining the Department of the Navy in 1970, he had a private practice, Chance and Associates, in naval architecture and marine engineering in Falls Church, Va., and Waldorf, Md. Mr. Chance retired from the Department of the Navy in 1982. He is survived by his wife, three children, and three grandchildren. NOTED... Robert C. Lynch, A32, died on June 22, 1995. Max F. Hausmann, A29, died in the summer of 1995. Peter Ringland, A45, died on September 4, 1995. The Rev. Paul M. Cassen, A20, died on October 24, 1994. The Rev. Scott Broadbent, A32, died on October 3, 1994. Sara Jane Dean, SGI88, died on August 1, 1995. J.I. STALEY A current member and former chairman of St. John's College Board of Visitors and Governors died of heart failure on Saturday, June 24 at his home in Wichita Falls, Texas. Mr. Staley joined the St. John's College board in 1965 and, at the time of his death, had the longest record of service of any living member of the board. Mr. Staley was president of Staley Oil and divided his time between Wichita Falls and Santa Fe. In addition to his generous contributions to St. John's College, he was a benefactor of the Santa Fe Opera and the Santa Fe Institute, among others. He was remembered by the Board of Visitors and Governors in July for his loyalty, his moral support, his generosity, his wit and his gaiety. VENABLE Santa Fe Tutor Bruce Venable died peacefully at his home in Santa Fe on September 27. Mr. Venable served as a member of the faculty in Santa Fe since 197 3. He contributed greatly to the life of the college in many ways. He wrote the Greek primer currently being used by the freshman class. He played a large part in shaping . the music program on the Santa Fe campus, and wrote the Gregorian Chant in the current sophomore music manual. For the past several years, Mr. Venable put up a valiant fight against the effects of the AIDS infection to which he finally succumbed. His courage and dignity in facing immense odds have been a continuing inspiration to the St. John's Community. Mr. Venable is survived by his partner Bob Homrich, his sister Barbara Venable of Seattle, and his brother Thomas Venable also of Seattle. �0 ~ f-< VJ ~ II"\ ;:J QI "1 ..--< i:i::: 0\ 0\ µ:.:i 0 µ:.:i H H ~ 0 ~ f-< u Cl) ~- 0 z ro u c ro 2Q N 2 0 II"\ r--- ~ -~ ~ u ill ill, ~Ou ~ ::r:~ ~ c ro ~1->o Cl) s z 0 00 0 u ~ ~ u ~ 0 i::' u 0 ill .9 z VJ °"' ::c e f-l ~ ..--< ro VJ VJ ~ ~ 0 0 -< s s A year of exhibits that can be characterized by that charged word "diversity" opens at the Mitchell Gallery in Annapolis with a show that features images of Kabuki actors and courtesans. "Japanese Woodblock Prints: The Ukiyo-e Tradition," an exhibit of 67 works, will be on display at the Mitchell Gallery from August 30 until October 22. The prints depict the daily life and environment of 17th through 19th century Japan during the Edo period (1615-1867). The prints are from the collection of the Dayton Art Institute. Dynamic in composition as well as vibrantly colored, the woodblock prints are part of the ukiyo-e ("pictures of the floating world") tradition. In addition to courtesans and popular actors, ships, warriors, and musicians became the subjects of art during this period of relative tranquility in Japanese history. Ukiyo-e or "the floating world" had previously referred to the Buddhist notion of the transient nature of life on earth, but with the rise of the merchant class, a more secular meaning evolved. Ukiyo-e came to represent the pursuit of physical pleasure and an enjoyment of the arts. Woodblock prints focused on the lifestyle of the plebeian class as opposed to the traditional courtly art of the aristocracy. The startling images and rich colors of the uki yo-e are achieved in a variety of ways, from single impressions to multiple layers of as many as 20 colors. Some prints are embellished with black lacquer or silver or gold dust. Woodblock prints produced during the nineteenth century became tremendously popular in the West as well as in Japan. Other exhibits this year will feature oil paintings of the White Mountains, abstract expressionist paintings of Herman Maril, and maps and cartographic images from China and the west. ~ I I A golfing weekend in Ireland, a case of rare wine, and a specially commissioned painting-these are some of the luxury items that will be offered at the Mitchell Gallery Auction scheduled for April 26-27, 1996, in Annapolis. Author Peter Mayle (A Year in Provence, Acquired Tastes), archon of the high life, will preside over a reservations-only black-tie dinner and auction of the "Best of the Best" on Friday evening, April 26. Saturday the 27th begins with a BY JOHN SCHROEDER With the newly created Fine Arts Guild in place, the Santa Fe campus art gallery is in the midst of one its most exciting years ever. Initiated in 1994, the guild is made up of local artists, gallery owners and friends of the college. According to gallery director Ginger Roherty, the guild has increased the caliber of the artists who are exhibiting at the college and has allowed the college greater outreach to the art community in Santa Fe. The gallery started this school year with an exhibit by local artist Lisa Bemis, who displayed paintings of her "favorite places." "No photograph can capture the sense of smell, sounds, temperature, changing light and the myriad of other things that place its personality," she said. personality of a certain location also includes the little interruptions, such as ants crawling across the paper and dogs drink- brunch at the college Boathouse and continues with an auction of a hundred of "The Finer Things" that will be offered to the highest bidders. All proceeds will benefit the Mitchell Gallery. The Mitchell Gallery Committee would welcome donations of art, quality merchandise, artifacts, antiques, services, or unique experiences to auction in April. To discuss possible donations, please call Kathy Dulisse at 410-626-2530. ~ ing her painting water. Following Lisa Bemis' exhibit, the gallery moved on to a joint exhibition, along with the ZaplinLampert paintings by artist Alyce Frank. This show was arranged as a benefit for the guild by Richard Lampert, a member of the guild's board. A portion of sales at both locations went to support the gallery. Ms. Frank's work, which has become nationally recognized in recent years, consists in large part of landscapes painted in an abstract, expressionist style. Under the direction of the guild, the month of October also saw the first Spanish Colonial Arts Market and Exhibition at St. John's. Nine of New Mexico's finest Spanish artists gathered in the Meem Library to exhibit and sell their works. Among the artists who took part, several have exhibited or have permanent pieces in the Smithsonian Institution. They also include winners of the coveted Governor's Award, and the Grand Prize and First Prize awards at Santa Fe's Traditional Spanish Market. A auction also was held, the proceeds of which benefited ·the library and the art gallery. It is hoped that this will become an annual event. CONT. ON PAGE 21 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The St. John's Reporter</em> Description An account of the resource College newspaper which started publication in 1974. Continued publication into 2000. Includes primarily historical content.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The St. John's Reporter" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=35">Items in <em>The St. John's Reporter</em></a></strong> <span>to view and sort all items in the collection.</span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 24 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context vol 22 issue 1 Fall 1995 Title A name given to the resource Reporter, Volume 22 Issue 1 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1995-10 Description An account of the resource Volume 22, Issue 1 of The St. John's Reporter. Published in Fall 1995. (Santa Fe edition) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Public Relations Office Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Goyette, Barbara (editor) Allison, Lesli (editor) Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf The Reporter https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/de20bdb824ca8ff48d3b62730326fbdd.pdf 278a77741b616b854086c0579acc2019 PDF Text Text ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE LIBRARY 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 ~1~1r1r1r1 1 ~1r1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 31696 01138 2163 St. John's College ANNAPOLIS EDITION Features ST. JOHN'S FIRST CLASS OF WOMEN When women were first admitted to the college in 19 51, the newspapers focused on the novelty. But what was St. John's really like for those pioneer women? .......................................... 12 '95 Annapolis, alumni gathered to re-connect, meet seminars, and distinguished Annapolis tutor Cordell Yee is curating an exhibit of Chinese and Western maps ................................ 6 Tutors from Annapolis and Santa Fe have been visiting each other's labsand exchanging ideas ...................... 8 Excerpts from Dean Eva Brann's Statement of Educational Policy.... 21 From the Bell Towers: News from Annapolis & Santa Fe; the Air Force Academy connection; solving an old murder case; St. John's sports; Campaign update ........................... 2 Alumni Notes: News from the classes, alumni profiles .................. 16 Alumni Association: Profile of the Chapter, plus capsule _._ ... _._.U"'"-'-'-'-LI-'_. ......... Great food-at lastSanta profile of Annapolis' grandmother-student .................... 20 The Arts: Peter Pesic plays Mozart; St. John's, the Movie II.. ............... 24 If it's February, it must Writing ... a month from classes to on writing the paper that many Johnnies consider the summation of their four years. Annapolis senior Hannah Gillelan begins her work on Rousseau in a quiet corner of the library. See story on page 3. Photo by Keith Harvey. / �2 THE REPORTER From the Bell Towers. • • THE AIR FORCE ACADEMYST. JOHN'S CONNECTION spirit of inquiry and learning that gets students to take responsibility for their classes, and they were impressed by the grade of formality at St. John's,'' Mr. Van Luchene said. "They face the problem of trying to combine a liberal education with a military education and they are constantly trying to integrate those two. They actually are doing things similarly in some of their classes. I visited a biology class which was co-led by two people and was like a seminar. It wasn't just like ours, but it was similar." This past summer, two more faculty members from the academy enrolled in the Graduate Institute. And, in November, the college hosted a seminar for academy members on ''Antigone." "We're hoping to do this kind of visit at least once a year," Mr. Van Luchene said. "They seem to be very enthusiastic about it. We're putting together a special package for them for the summer Graduate Institute and we hope to enroll at least a half dozen of their faculty next summer. We're also open to doing more work up there, Santa Fe dean Steve Van Luchene, President John Agresto, and tutor whether it means workCharles Fasanaro lead a seminar on "Antigoneu for members of the shops or classes or simply consulting with them. Air Force Academy teaching faculty. "I find them very refreshing to work with. "He was very enthusiastic and There's a sense of willingness to underthought there were things the Air stand a problem and to solve it. Force might borrow from us," Mr. They're trying very hard to make the Van Luchene said. As a result of that experience at the Air Force Academy as good as it can be in every respect. visit, Van Luchene and Santa Fe Tutor Charlie Fasanaro made a trip in They see us as dedicated to great November 1994 to the academy to conbooks, having a highly intellectual duct a seminar on the "Phaedo" and a student body, and doing things that are not constrained by the usual conworkshop on St. John's approach to instruction with department heads and seventions but which happen to work nior staff members. very well. They also see our students "They were interested in our disas disciplined and hardworking." • -by Lesli Allison cussion methods, in how we foster the "\VJhen 17 members of the U.S. W Air Force Academy descended on the Santa Fe campus this fall, more than a few heads turned. After all, aside from Government Career Day, the sight of a military uniform is rare. This time, however, they were not here to recruit, they were here to learn. Over the past several years, the Santa Fe campus has quietly been building a relationship with the Air Force Academy, located in Colorado Springs, Colorado. According to Dean Steve Van Luchene, it started when a trickle of professors from the academy enrolled in summer sessions of the Graduate Institute. Then, in April 1994, Air Force Academy Dean Brigadier General Cubero visited campus to talk with students and faculty. RECOLLECTIONS OF SCOTT BUCHANAN Honoring a great teacher •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• "\VJhen an important thought W strikes, some people remember the exact moment. Charles Nelson (A45) recalls the thought whose consequences have led him in many interesting directions: "It was on the eighth of July, last summer, when I thought to myself that Scott Buchanan's 1OOth birthday would be coming up in 1996 and decided that I wanted to do something to commemorate it," says Mr. Nelson. When he discovered that Buchanan was born in 1895, not 1896 as he originally thought, he realized that he would have to "get moving fust'' to accomplish his goal in 1995. Mr. Nelson, former chairman of the Board of Visitors and Governors, father of Chris Nelson (SF70), president of the Annapolis campus, and of]anet (A72) and Ted (A76), has devoted countless hours to the college. Scott Buchanan, who founded the New Program in 1937 along with Stringfellow Barr, was Mr. Nelson's teacher-a teacher of extraordinary power, by all accounts. To remember the power of Buchanan's mind, to recall the influence he had both on students and colleagues, Mr. Nelson wanted to publish a memorial volume. "I began to get in touch with people who could help me get such a book together," he says. "I relied on John Van Doren (A47), Steve Benedict (A47), and Allan Hoffman (A49) to help me select material. We tried to think of people who are still living who might be able to make some contribution to the book" Mr. Nelson contacted Clifton Fadiman, blind, 90 years old, and living in Florida; Fadiman, a renowned editor, responded with a memorial piece. Mr. Nelson found references to Buchanan in both of Mortimer Adler's biographies, and with John Van Doren he edited them into a single essay. A second set of people he wanted represented in the book were Buchanan's students, friends, and later contemporaries. Recollections collected include those by J. Winfree Smith, William Darkey, Harris Woffurd, John Van Doren (including a previously unpublished poem, "Socrates Buchanan"), and others. Several scholarly essays on Buchanan's works are included in the volume: John Dewey's review of Possibility, which appeared in The Nation in 1928; the forward to Truth in the Sciences by Curtis Wilson, and essays by John Opie and Mary Bittner Goldstein. Finally, Mr. Nelson chose two pieces by Buchanan himself as bookends to the collection. Buchanan's son, Douglas, found old family photos and Mr. Nelson searched the Houghton Library at Harvard, where Buchanan's letters and other photos are stored, for more material. "Putting the book together has been a real pleasure. I had such great success and cooperation, with so many people anxious to say something in memory of Scott Buchanan," says Mr. Nelson. Scott Buchanan: Recollections and Essays will be published by the St. John's College Press in February. 9 Scott Buchanan as dean in 1941, with the telephone, that symbol of efficiency. BRADLEY MURDER CASE SOLVEDAFTER27YEARS A nnapolis police and the Anne Arundel state's attorney's office solved a 27-yearold mystery recently when they announced that they had discovered who killed Anne Bradley. The St. John's junior was shot as she sat on a park bench on the State House grounds on the night of November 10, 1968. Authorities revealed that Alonzo Henry Johnson, who died of a drug overdose in New York in 1983, killed Ms. Bradley in a robbery attempt. Ms. Bradley had been to a party on campus until about midnight, then walked to the Colonial Kitchen, a small restaurant at the corner of Maryland Avenue and State Circle, for a pizza. She was shot at about 3 a.m. as she sat outside eating the pizza. The initial police investigation turned up no concrete leads, and the case was put in the inactive file in 1975. When the police formed a "cold case" task force in 1992, the Bradley case was one they reopened. David Cordle, chief investigator for the state's attorney's office and a member of the task force, remembered the crime and, after studying old case files, began to follow up on some of the leads that had dead-ended more than 20 years ago. He located some people who were mentioned in the old files, but not all. According to Kristin Riggin, spokesperson for the state's attorney's office, "these people are not pillars of the community, and when they act as witnesses in a case, we must corroborate their stories." Mr. Cordle was unable to make solid connections and the case became inactive again. This past January, Ms. Bradley's sister, Georgia Houle of Rhode Island, wrote a letter to the Annapolis police asking them to look·into the murder again. They brought the case up with Mr. Cordle, who told them that if he had just been able to locate one particular witness, he could have made significant progress. Police were able to find the man, who happened to be in the county jail in Annapolis. This man said he gave a handgun to Alonzo Johnson (then 19 years old) on the night of the murder because Johnson said he needed money and wanted to rob someone .. The witness told investigators that Johnson gave the gun back the next morning, admitting to the killing. The witness then threw the gun into College Creek. Now in his 40'8, the witness was 16 in 1968 and had stolen the gun from a law office in Glen Burnie-hence his reluctance to come forward at the time. He told his story to police and Mr. Cordle after being promised immunity. Mr. Johnson had been arrested several times for robbery and burglary before killing Ms. Bradley; he evidently left Annapolis in 1969. Those at the college who remember Ms. Bradley and the murder expressed satisfaction that it was finally solved. Dean Eva Brann said, "They evidently did a good bit of detective work to solve this case. We're glad to put the mystery to rest." A story in the Baltimore Sun focused on Ms. Bradley's family, who finally felt a sense of resolution after many years of questions. e -by Barbara Goyette �Th e Sp o r t i n g L i f e ALUMNI, STUDENTS PREVAIL IN ROWING F ive St. John's alumni returned to College Creek to row against the Annapolis Rowing Club in the Lianne Ritter Memorial Regatta this fall. The rowers, Ciaran Powers (A92), Kurt Heckel (A93), Matt Fremont (A94), Jamie Whalen (A81), and Fred Haller (A92), were all top athletes while at St. John's, and several have gone on to win considerable success in the rowing world. In view of the alums' abilities and achievements, Athletic Director Leo Pickens tips his hat to the Annapolis Rowing Club team (Gene Nelson, Ivan Leshinsky, Bill Schauffler, and Tom Gianta) who kept the St. John's margin of victory nail-bitingly narrow. The alumni race was one of nine events at the regatta, where 35 St. John's rowers and 35 Annapolis Rowing Club members competed. St. John's won eight of the nine events, taking the Ritter Cup for the fifth year 1n a row. According to Pickens, crew attracts between 40 and 45 rowers-ten percent of the student body. "To see so many Johnnies up and working out at 6 a.m. never fails to impress me," he says. "When I was in school here in the mid-'70s, there was barely a handful of people who managed to get out of the sack by 9 a.m." When asked what kind of Johnny is willing to get up at that hour, Pickens says there is no typical student. 'Tm always surprised by who shows up. You'll get the typical jock types, but even better, people who have never done any athletics in their lives will suddenly fall in love with the sport and become some of its biggest devotees." The Lianne Ritter Memorial Regatta is a growing tradition born of a personal and community tragedy. Lianne Ritter discovered her love for rowing at Cornell University. After graduating, she taught and coached at a private school in New England and worked for Outward Bound. In 1987, she enrolled in the Graduate Institute, made friends with members of the Annapolis Rowing Club, coached a season for the St. John's rowing team, and became an active member of the college's boathouse. In 1990, while trailering boats for Outward Bound, Lianne died in an auto accident. The following fall the Annapolis Rowing Club and the St. John's team inaugurated the Ritter Cup, dedicated to Lianne's memory, her energy, and her enthusiasm. Athletic Director Leo Pickens keeps the event scheduled as the season-ending regatta. "Lianne was a bridge between the Annapolis Rowing Club and the St. John's rowing team," Pickens says. "I felt it was appropriate to honor her in some way. How better than to have an in-house regatta between the two dubs?" e -by Sus3an Borden GREAT BOOKS Ateam of four from the St. John's crew takes a break after a race (a)ove). Rowers John Michels, a senior, and Dani Schaffel, a sophomore, are two of the 40 or so students who participate in crew events (right). Photos by Christine Coalwell. If this is February, it m.ust be . . . senior essay wr1t1ng ... nter memories of St. John's include sledding on food service trays, coffee shop fireciders, and, of course, senior essay writing. Essay writing is a time of high anxiety: can I write enough on this topic? what if it turns out I don't really understand it? will my advisor like it? will I make it through the oral? It seems like all the effort of the previous four years is on the line when you're working on the essay, and, as one tutor (Brother Robert) has said, you re-write it in your mind for years to come. St. John's may not have the stress-inducers that other colleges do (cramming for W exams, multiple term papers due on the same day), but the pressure to produce a good senior essay more than compensates. Essay topics wax and wane in popularity. Listed here are the 12 most frequently chosen senior essay topics from the past five Annapolis graduating classes. Can you rank them in order of popularity? Answers are on page 23. Aristotle Baudelaire The Bible Cervantes Hegel Kant Math/Lab topics Nietzsche Plato Rousseau Shakespeare Tolstoy Annapolis senior Hannah Gillelan chose Rousseau for her essay topic. "\VJhether you're a collector of first W editions or you just like a cheap but good read, mark June 1-2 on your calendar. That's when the first book fair will be held on the Annapolis campus. Sponsored by the Board of the Friends of St. John's, the book fair will include thousands of softcovers, hardcovers, books on tape, and videos. Subject matter? The great books, the lesser books, the not-sogreat books, the thin books, books on anthropology, books on zoology-every genre and subject matter represented from a to z. Location will be Woodward Hall, which will be recently vacated-the library's collection will by then be in its new home across front campus. And if you need to clear out your bookshelves in anticipation of a major re-stocking, the Book Fair committee would love to have your donations. Drop-off days are every first and third Saturday and every second Wednesday, from 10 a.m. to noon in the parking lot between Mellon and the Heating Plant. Call organizers Joy Shaver (410/ 647-1478) or Peggy Sue Atterbury (410/757-3648) for more information. All proceeds from the Book Fair will benefit the college library. e �From the Bell Towers. • • For GI graduate Meg Heydt EASTERN CLASSICS COME TO LIFE •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• A s a child, Meg Heydt would wander through her grandmother's house and ~arvel at the Oriental treasures-mostly Chinese and mostly dragons, she says-that filled the home. And as she grew older and learned more about Oriental philosophy and ways of thinking, she realized she was more comfortable with Oriental ideas and that she wanted to learn even more about them. That's what brought Heydt, who already had a bachelor's degree in fine arts from the University of Colorado, to St. John's College and the Eastern Classics program. She considered being a part of the program when it began as a trial project, but held off until it was a degree program, she says, "because if I was going to put all of my time into it, I wanted a degree." And it did take all of her time from August 1994 through August 1995, when o Heydt and 19 others became the first class to earn master's degrees in Eastern Classics from St. John's. "It was difficult, it was intense and I put all my time into school for the past year ... and I felt fortunate that I could do that,'' she says. Heydt is grateful that she had the time to focus on readings fiom works that included the Mahabharata and Ramayana. And she's finding that the time spent in the classroom at St. John's is having an effect on her writing, her travels and even her house painting. "I had taken Mr. Harris' Japanese literature course and in one book Tanizaki talks about how the Japanese have very subtle color changes from room to room. He says that as the viewer/perceiver moves from one room to another, he feels mood changes because of the slight color changes. I'm testing the theory," Heydt says, laughing. "Every room in my house is being painted a slightly different shade from the next room." The program also is affecting her life in larger ways. As a graduation present to herself, Heydt recently took a six-week trip to Indonesia, where she got the chance to see and experience the Hindu and Buddhist cultures. "It was a visual for all the reading and discussing we had done. The puppet shows and dances that I saw were all related to the Ramayana. Since I tracked mostly with the Taoist, the Buddhist and the Zen Buddhist, it was especially nice to go back to the Hindu traditions and see them being lived out," she says. Most of her time in Indonesia was spent in Bali, where she participated in Hindu ceremonies and Hindu prayers. She said her readings in the Bhagavad Gita, which talked about religious offerings, became real when she saw the Balinese making up of- TRAVEL PROGRAM ITALY-BOUND I taly will be the destination for the next trip sponsored by the St. John's Travel Program. The learning-cumsightseeing experience will include five nights in Rome, four nights in Florence, and visits to Assisi, Venice, and Siena, the most perfectly preserved medieval city in Italy. Dates are November 7-17. Tutor Geoff Comber will accompany the group and offer seminars in readings related to the itinerary. For information on itineraries and rates, contact Pamela McKee in the Advancement office in Annapolis at 410/626-2506; e-mail mckee @mailhost.sjca.edu. Note: It's not too late to sign up for the spring '96 trip "Exploring Mark Twain's America," a riverboat journey on the Mississippi with Annapolis president Chris Nelson leading seminars on Mark Twain. Dates are March 1-7.There are still a few spots available. Contact Pamela McKee. e The Reporter (USPS 018·750) is published in January and July by the Public Relations Office, St. John's College, Annapolis, MD, and in April and October by the Public Relations Office, St. John's College, Sonia Fe, NM Known office of publication: Public Relations Office, St. John's Col· lege, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404·2800 Annapolis: Barbara Goyette, editor; Sus3on Borden, writer; Betsy Blume, Evo Brann, John Christensen, Pamelo Kraus, Benjamin Milner, Brother Robert Smith advisory boord. Santa Fe: Lesli Allison, editor; John Schroeder, assistant. Second class postage paid at Annapolis, MD, and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes lo Reporter, St. John's Col· lege, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404·2800 ferings of flowers, leaves, and holy water for the spirits. "It was a truly profound experience, especially in Bali, because the religion, culture and society are all one thing. In Western cultures we separate our religion from the rest of our lives," she said. But there was a vibrancy to daily life in Bali because the religious beliefs of the society were integrated into every aspect of it. Meg Heydt found that her studies in the Her time in Bali and the rest of InEastern Classics program influenc~d donesia also helped Heydt get some per- everything from her travel plans to the spective on her work here. In addition colors she painted her rooms. to working on a book of essays, Heydt has been building a shrine path at the ranch that she owns near Pecos. So fur, she has 11 shrines, including a Native American medicine wheel, a Zen garden and a shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe on the mountain path. She now has plans to build two more as a result of her trip to Indonesia and says that the path "is an ongoing, lifetime project." But more importantly, she says, the trip helped her to understand the importance of having an integrated relationship between her personal experiences, spiritual experiences, and the land around her. She saw that practiced in Bali and said it occurred to her there that she was moving toward that same integration of experience, faith and land at her ranch, "but I just hadn't realized it," she says. "Of course, the Native Americans already knew it. It's just been lost in Western society. Western thinking is more dualistic-things are either bad or good. In Bali, they recognize that there is bad and good. The point is to try to keep it in balance." Heydt says she wants to keep learning about Oriental cultures. She hopes to travel there every year for six weeks or so. Her next trip may be to Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, she says. ''I'm especially curious about Vietnam since I was protesting that war in college," she adds. She also wants to keep learning at St. John's and has signed up for one of the college's community seminars-this one on Christian religion-for the spring. • -by Liz Skewes TUTOR EXTRA-CURRICULARS "What faculty members in Annapolis and Santa Fe are up to ... In Santa Fe, tutor Jam es Carey has been appointed dean, with his term beginning this summer. More information will follow in the spring issue of the Reporter... Tutor Abe Schoener, A82, was appointed assistant dean for the academic year 1995-96 in Annapolis. William Pastille continues to serve as the other assistant dean ... Joining scholars from throughout the world, Annapolis tutor emeritus Curtis Wilson took part in a symposium on Newtonian science and mathematics held at the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in November. His paper was titled "Newton on the Moon's Variation and Apsidal Motion: The Need for a Newer 'New Analysis'". Mr. Wilson is the translator of a book by Francois de Gandt, Force and Geometry in Newton's Principia newly published by Princeton University Press. Professor De Gandt is a senior research fellow at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris ... Santa Fe tutor Jorge Aigla has published a volume of poetry, The Aztec Shell. Tutor emeritus Charles Bell wrote the introduction. It's published by Bilingual Press, Arizona State University... Annapolis tutor Lawrence Berns had a forum piece published in the December 1995 issue of PS: Political Science & Politics. His article was in response to recent articles in the New York Times about Leo Strauss. Mr. Berns argues that "there is no single contemporary political stance that follows necessarily from Strauss's teaching." He also addresses the use of the buzz word "elitism'' and explains how fiee elections "introduce a principle of merit into our political system, predicated on inequalities of ability to ful£1l the offices for which the elections are held." The April 1995 issue of Commentary carries a book review of Roger Penrose's Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness by Annapolis tutor Adam Schulman ... Douglas Allanbrook's memoir See Naples was reviewed in the New Yorker of January 8, 1996. The review says: "The author is a harpsichordist and a composer, and the elliptical, balanced structure of the book is distinctly musical. It is fine music indeed." Mr. Allanbrook, a tutor emeritus in Annapolis, will present a series of two lecture-recitals on J.S. Bach's "Well Tempered Clavier'' Book II for the harpsichord on January 28 and February 4 in the Great Hall... In December the pastels of Annapolis tutor Leo Raditsa were displayed at a one-man show at the Ira Pinto Gallery. The series of works is titled "In Dorsey House Gardens." "Straight Talk about the Small Independent Liberal Arts Colleges," an article by Annapolis dean Eva Brann, appeared in the fall 1995 issue of Liberal Education. Miss Brann challenges liberal arts colleges to adopt "a new way of speaking for ourselves" and offers a series of arguments in favor of the St. John's brand of education to a series of supposed audiences: prospective students, parents, faculties, legislators and education officials, and public interest groups. e �THE CAMPAIGN FOR OUR FOURTH CENTURY _ _ _ _H . ., .. : . .. CAMPAIGN TOPS ITS $30 MILLION GOAL ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• T he official conclusion to The Campaign for Our Fourth Century is June 30, 1996, but as of January 1, 1996 more than $30.5 million has been pledged, exceeding the $30 million goal originally established for the Campaign. "The support for the Campaign has been immensely gratifying," says Campaign Chairman Ray Cave. There is still much to do, however. Because many gifts have been received in the form of irrevocable trusts where the cash benefits for the college are to be realized in the future, and because of the need to oversubscribe the Hall of Records project to meet unexpected cost;Jhe Campaign ai~ThiIJYfund/ing,,the new Student Activities Center in Santa Fe and the Jacob Klein tutorships on each campus has not been met. "By all measures, The Campaign for Our Fourth Century is successful," says Cave. "Never before has St. John's College raised so much in such a short period of time. Nevertheless, we want to dose out the Campaign having achieved all we set out to accomplish. The Student Activities Center, the Klein tutorships, and at least 50% participation of our alumni are goals we remain committed to meeting." Challenges fuel activities center drive Board members, friends, and alumni Fe's Summer Classics program and a have established special challenges to prospective Graduate Institute stuhelp meet these goals. The fund.raising dent. Mr. Balkcom has offered drive for a new Student Activities Cen$50,000 to match gifts from other ter on the Santa Fe campus has reSummer Classics alumni. In making ceived a boost from three separate the pledge, he said he was happy to challenges. The center, expected to find a way to support the college and cost approximately $5 million, will its priorities. "What appeals to me provide long-awaited facilities for about St. John's is that, more than any student activities ranging from inother educational program I've particidoor athletics to photography, potpated in, it is devoted to the developtery, and dance. The center also will ment of the whole person," he says. relieve overcrowding in other cam"For me it's really about completing pus facilities and is expected to bolmy education. I find the combination ster student recruitment efforts. of the unique teaching method, the In November Ray Cave offered shared learning, and the mountains $50,000 to the student activities center if Santa Fe President John Agresto could raise five more $50,000 pledges by December 4. When five people-two board members, one former board members, and two alumni-met that deadline, board chairman Steve Feinberg Artist's rendering of the Student Activities Center for the offered a second chalSanta Fe campus. lenge on the same and culture of Santa Fe deeply nurturterms, this time with a Valentine's Day ing, and that experience has gotten deadline, hoping to provide the incenme back in touch with something tive for an additional five pledges of the same amount. for which I have a strong commitment and an abiding interest." The third challenge was offered by Says President Agresto: "These John Balkcom, a participant in Santa challenges, and those who have responded so generously, will take us a long way toward building this center. Not only do these gifts bring us closer to our goal, they serve as a source of inspiration to others. We on the Santa Fe campus owe a great debt of gratitude to each of these people." For further information about the Student Activities Center, or to make a contribution, please contact Santa Fe President John Agresto at 505/9846098. Alumni challenges aim to fund Jacob Klein tutorships Alumni from the decade of the 1950's have established a goal of funding a $1 million tutorship for each campus in honor of Jacob Klein. $600,000 remain to be pledged to meet this ambitious $2 million goal. Alumni division chairman Warren Winiarski, A52, joined by decade of the 1950's co-chairman Stewart Greenfield, A53, has offered a challenge to the decade. The college will recieve $100,000 if 100 additional alumni offer five-year pledges of at least $1,000. For further information on the Jacob Klein tutorships or to make a contribution, please contact Annapolis Vice President Jeff Bishop at 410-626-2505 . • PETERMAYLE TO BE FEATURED SPEAKERAT GALLERY AUCTION ON VETERANS DAY, l'~OVEMBER 11, alumni, friends, and students gathered to rededicate the World War I memorial on front campus in Annapolis. The memorial, which lists the names of the 24 St. John's alumni who fought and died in the Great War, was recently restored. Funds for the restoration were raised by the Annapolis Alumni Chapter and by the Alumni Association. At the rededication cememony, a color guard from the Knights of Columbus provided pomp, and Admiral Robert J. Long, USN (ret.) spoke on the future of the U.S. military. Top photo: John W. Wood, St. John's class of 1917 and a veteran of World War I, attended the ceremony with two Second World War veterans. Bottom photo: Henry Robert, A4 l, read the names of the honored veterans, and then the McDowell Bell tolled 24 times. ""\VJhen British author Peter Mayle W began to record his delight in the sun-drenched landscape and his memorable neighbors in the south of France, he could not have anticipated the huge reader response that greeted A Year in Provence. Overnight a literary superstar, Mayle had become a man who both lived the enviable life and also laid it out in felicitous and entertaining prose. A companion book, Toujours Provence, followed the next year, and in 1993 came a collection of essays, Acquired Tastes, in which the author examines, tongue usually in cheek, "the very best life has to offer." Mayle's notion of "the very best" is the inspiration for the Mitchell Gallery ''Auction of the Finer Things," scheduled for April 26 and 27. Mayle himself will speak at a reservations-only black tie dinner Friday, April 26, in Randall Hall, where a dozen or so items or services of the very highest quality will be auctioned. · 'fhat event is preamble to two Saturday events, a brunch in the college boathouse at 9:00 a.m. and the public auction of 100 additional fine items and services in a tent adjacent to the Mitchell Gallery at 11 a.m. Guests may preview the tent display beginning at 10 a.m. (This is also the scheduled weekend for the annual St. John's-Naval Academy croquet match-a fine opportunity to combine two high-life events.) Among the items to come under the gavel Friday night will be a golfing trip to Ireland, a matchless handmade rowing wherry boat, and a case of the finest wine. On Saturday the public will be invited to bid on works of art, fine furniture, entertainment, gift certificates, and personal services. All auction proceeds go to the Mitchell Gallery. For more information about either of the auctions or re-. lated events, or to discuss possible donations, call the Advancement office in Annapolis at 410/626-2530. e �Scholarship. TWO TRADITIONS, TWO WORlDS Annapolis tutor Cordell Yee looks at Chinese and Western maps M aradox confronted Cordell ee as he studied Chinese aps and began to consider their relationship to Western maps. Why did Chinese mapmakers continue to use traditional methods and styles even after they were introduced to such Western cartographic techniques as projection by the Jesuits in the late 16th century? "Wouldn't it be natural to leave their traditional practice behind?" asks Mr. Yee. "These were not dumb people. The Chinese intellectuals raised the objection that the world is not regular, so Western maps-which treated nature mathematicallywouldn't present a true picture." Finding that Chinese mapmakers resisted Western influence for 300 years, until the end of the 19th century, and trying to understand why, has led Mr. Yee on a several-year investigation which has brought him to a new understanding of Chinese cartography. This understanding is reflected in his scholarly writing for a major project and also in the work he's done arranging an upcoming exhibit at the college's Mitchell Gallery. Mr. Yee, who has been a tutor in Annapolis since 19 8 9, is curating an exhibit that will approach the differences in Eastern and Western cultures in a unique way: through an examination of their maps. Called "Space and Place: Mapmaking East and West," it will be on view in the gallery from April 12 through June 16. The 47 pieces represent Western and Chinese cartography from the 15th century to the present. "Maps from the two traditions present two different visual worlds," says Mr. Yee. "They imply different answers to the question of how we understand and represent the world graphically." Western maps are based on the notion that to measure the world is to understand it. Measurement assumes that space is homogenous; as mapmaking evolved from the Renaissance to the present, maps became more ''mathematical" by quantifying more features and by employing the results of more sophisticated means of measurement. Traditional Chinese maps, on the other hand, can be described as pictorial. They look like landscape paintings and were either hand-drawn or printed with woodblocks onto scrolls or large pieces of paper-in contrast to Western maps which were engraved and could be reproduced in greater quantities. Chinese maps emphasize what Mr. Yee refers to as "place" rather then "space." For example, consider the segment shown at right of the "Complete Map of Salt Fields in Fujian Province." It was drawn in ink and color on silk by Xing Yuan during the Qing dynasty in 1746. The important features, those that define what kind of place is being depicted, are shown in great detail: mountains, the salt fields, cities, storehouses, bridges, and piers. What lies beyond the coastline is drawn like the background to a painting; there is no detail, just an impression in the distance. "For the purposes of knowing where the salt was and where the facilites were-the storehouses and barracks for the soldiers guarding the fields-the map didn't have to be drawn this way," notes Mr. Yee. The mapmaker paid attention to the sense of place and conveyed the natural beauty of the area as well. The following year Mr. Yee became a tutor at St. John's, leaving Madison and the cartography project behind, at least temporarily. That summer he was asked to return; one of the readers for the press, after studying his essays, had suggested that he take over the Chinese section of the project. "I felt I had a responsibility to do what I could," he says. Even after classes began at St. John's in the fall he continued to work on the project. It turns out that Annapolis, with its proximity to Washington, wasn't a bad place to be. The Library of Congress has one of the largest collections of maps in the world, and Mr. Yee went in on weekends to study the 200-plus examples of imperial Chinese cartography dating from the 16th to the end of the 19th century. Mr. Yee's chapters on Chinese maps, published in The History of Car- Eastern mapmaking. Mr. Yee's research, however, turned up the previously mentioned paradox-that the Chinese may have understood Western mathematics and scale drawing but consciously decided against using them in mapmaking. Fascinated by how Chinese maps continued to be pictorial, Mr. Yee began to see how a study of cartography could point the way to an understanding of the differences in Eastern and Western cultures. "The Chinese intellectual elite didn't regard scale drawing as anything special," says Mr. Yee. "For them, the image [of the mapJ ought to have expressiveness. There was also some resistance to the notion of the world as spherical," which is the basis for the setting out of lines of latitude and longitude. Mr. Yee thinks that rather than looking at mapmaking as a science that developed toward a telos, an end, we need to think of it as an art that expressed certain qualities about "place." A Chinese map might not even be accurate by Western account, although many carried information about distances in text right on the map. "The maps were not trying just to present information, but to evoke a response," he says. Getting involved in the study of Chinese maps "was all by accident, nothing was planned," says Mr. Yee. In 1988, as a doctoral candidate in English at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and short of money, Mr. Yee was hired by the geography department to do some translation and editorial work for a project on the history of cartography. He took a break from his dissertation on Joyce. "Wisconsin is one of the top two geography departments. They had a large grant to proA detail from "Complete Map of Salt Fields in Fujian Province," China, drawn by Xing Yuan in 17 46. Chinese maps were duce the history pictorial, like landscape paintings, and, according to Cordell Yee, they emphasized a sense of "place" rather than measurements project, which was of "space." The map is done in ink and colors on silk. From the collection of the Library of Congress, it is to include volumes part of the exhibit at the Mitchell Gallery on view from April 12 to June 20. Photo by John Bildahl. on different periods and types of cartography," he explains. tography, Vol. 2, Book 2, in 1994, preFor example, in the map of the salt They needed someone who knew classented his scholarly interpretation of fields of Fujian Province shown, the sical Chinese, the literary language in the history of Chinese cartography. abundance of salt as a resource is clear. official use until the early part of this The section received excellent reviews, The fields are drawn larger than procentury. Mr. Yee had done some gradalthough Mr. Yee modestly acknowlportion would dictate, and certain uate work in east Asian languages and edges that there are few people to asman-made features are included in deliterature at the University of Califorsess his work, since few have done as tail (the bridge, the storehouses) while nia at Berkeley and also at Wisconsin. much research. others are omitted (roads, for ex"When I started working on the ample). "It is a very orderly scene. For cartography project, I was reading and Chinese maps: the poetry of place someone concerned with preserving it, I kept thinking 'this ought to be covBefore Mr. Yee began to write the way the map is drawn reminds ered, and that ought to be covered,' " about Chinese maps, the accepted him of his purpose," says Mr. Yee. He he says. His responsibilities grew as his opinion was that when the Jesuits arconjectures that the beauty and lyrical familiarity with the maps and the rived in China in the 1580's, they quality of the sometimes idealized scholarship increased. brought Western ideas that changed maps also encouraged those who used �them to feel pride and respect for the particular places shown. Western maps: a legacy from Ptolemy In the fall of 1992 an article outlining Mr. Yee's view of Chinese cartography appeared in "Asian Art," a periodical from the Arthur M. Sadder Gallery of the Smithsonian. Fellow Annapolis tutor Tom May, who served as chairman of the Mitchell Gallery Committee, and gallery director Hydee Schaller read the article and thought Mr. Yee should curate a map exhibit for the gallery. He agreed to put together such an exhibit-a task that proved more daunting than anyone expected. "First, I had to learn more about Western cartography," he says. "It's on the borderlands of academic respectability." The St. John's program provided important backgroundPtolemy, the Alexandrian Greek studied in math tutorials, established the fundamentals for mapmaking in his Geography. In the Amalgest, his astronomical work, Ptolemy posited a spherical earth as the center of the cosmos. The earth can be divided into quadrants by lines through the poles and around the equator-latitude and longitude. Ptolemy dealt with the problem of how to represent a spherical body on a flat surface-what a map must be-by outlining four methods of projection in his Geography. Another essential element of mathematical cartography is measurement of distance, which Ptolemy proposed to accomplish with surveys. During the Middle Ages, when Ptolemy's Geography was lost, maps were largely pictorial-like Chinese maps. "Pictorial mapmaking seems to be common to many cultures, particularly early in their development," says Mr. Yee. For example, a map serving a religious purpose would not attempt to present a true picture of the world. Jerusalem would be shown in the center, meaning that it should be the center of one's life. By the beginning of the 15th century the revival of interest in Greek thinkers had brought Ptolemy's ideas on geography to the forefront. Mr. Yee thinks that his view of the world "stimulated imaginations-particularly his idea that the Eurasian land mass takes up approximately half of the globe. Of course you wonder what's on the other side." Columbus relied on Ptolemy's estimate of the world's size as he plotted his alternate route to Asia. Once the age of exploration was underway, maps became hot properties. Competition for the most up-todate information was intense and map publishers would even steal each other images. Maps began to look the same, with abstract signs replacing pictures to indicate cities, harbors, and other features. Mr. Yee labels this "standardization." Advances in technology enabled mapmakers to use copperplate engraving; one engraving could make 2000 copies. The rising middle class Tutor Cordell Yee became intrigued with maps while working on a history of cartography project. had money to buy books and maps, which were published in book form, so that while the maps were often commissioned by rulers, they were increasingly profitable for the great cartographers like Ortelius and Mercator. Assembling the exhibit "Space and Place" is only the second exhibit to. be curated by someone at the college-others have been traveling exhibits put together by museums or universities. The most difficult tasks were bureaucratic: gaining permission from the Library of Congress to borrow certain examples; finding a private collector to supplement the Library of Congress maps; seeking fund- ing for the exhibit itself, for educational outreach programs, and a catalogue; locating cases large enoug!i to display scrolls. Three students had internships helping Mr. Yee assemble the show, Alex Bowles (A96), Sarah Fremont (A97), and Heather Deutsch (A98). "They were able to look at the pieces as visual art; they could see things I could not. The exhibit, put together with student help, gives us as an institution a chance to show what we can do," says Mr. Yee. Criteria for including maps were artistic merit, importance within the field of cartography, and a final, very St. John's-like attribute: portrayal of places that produced the great books. Examples are Greece (a Renaissance update of Ptolemy), ancient Rome, Palestine (a Renaissance map with Biblical events and sites represented), and London about 30 years before Shakespeare. At St. John's there's perennial debate over the program's focus on the Western tradition. Should we read and discuss some Eastern great works? Can we say that we are investigating the meaning of our world if we ignore other cultures? While the college has developed a set of arguments in favor of the current scheme of the program, the question still comes up every year. Cordell Yee's exhibit will give the community an opportunity to examine the relationship between the two cultures, East and West, in a new way. e -by Barbara Goyettte Book Review ARISTOTLE'S PHYSICS: A GUIDED STUDY BY JoE SACHS I f you have in typescript any version or part of Joe Sachs' translation of Aristotle's Physics you will be pleased to know that the full printed form, Aristotle's Physics: A Guided Study (Rutgers University Press, 1995) is now available in the Masterworks of Discovery series edited by Harvey Flaumenhaft. If you have no typescript to replace yet retain even the smallest curiosity about the Physics, you will almost certainly want a copy of the book anyway. Many forces conspire against readers who would discover and re-animate for themselves the intellectual pleasures-that is, the insights-of Aristotle's "Physics." As one of the most intense treatises we have from the mind of an already intense thinker, it is naturally daunting. Guidance from other books about Aristotle's book is for the most part deformed by needlessly (often uselessly) narrow canons of scholarship and academic debate. And perhaps most distracting of all, there is the underlying suspicion that regardless of what praise we might have for Aristotle's ethics, or logic, or politics, or metaphysics, or rhetoric, isn't his physics just plain wrong-as inaccurate in detail as it is wayward in orientation? Mr. Sachs' guided study is a valuable shield against this conspiracy of discouraging forces. His book joins that small body of commentary on Aristotle distinguished by the uncommonness of its common sense, and distinguished also by the conviction that there are things, simply, to learn from Aristotle, that he is a friend to the life of the independently inquiring mind. If you are-happily-already convinced that nature, causality, change, rest, motion, place, void, infinity, time, and origins are matters worth thinking about, then here is a way of getting right down to business. No fuss. No anxiety. Just good, honest, intellectual toil. Aristotle is always like that, and Mr. Sachs' new translation, with its introduction, supporting commentary, and glossary, gets about as much of the extraneous clutter out of the way as one could hope for. With respect to Aristotle's Greek, the translation is lean and idiomatically consistent. It also avoids much of the received technical vocabulary. Thus, e.g., ousia is not "substance" but "thinghood," arche is not "principle" but "original being" or "ruling source," what is usually translated as "matter" becomes "material," "accident" becomes "incidental attribute." Most striking amongst the departures from standard usage are the renderings of energeia, to ti en einai, and entelecheia-arguably the profoundest notions of Aristotle's whole philosophy. Inspired partly by Heidegger and partly by Joseph Owens, Mr. Sachs translates the energeia of a thing as its "being-at-work," its to ti en einai as "what it keeps on being in order to be at all," and its entelecheia as its "being-at-work-staying-itself" (which I think of as the "self-maintaining being at work" of a thing). The fixity and lack of dynamism so commonly linked with the concept of "essence" and the sheer existential presence that tends to usurp the meaning of "actuality'' are thus nicely sidestepped in favor of the powerful, pulsing, actively organizing sense of form that is visible on the face of Aristotle's own neologisms. Both the commentary (interspersed in sections, a few pages at a time, with the translation) and the introduction (pp. 1-30) are marked by an unapologetic willingness to grapple directly with the matters at hand. This robust mode will be familiar to anyone familiar with the St. John's classroom; the pleasure here is to watch a tutor do the talking! The book's commentary focuses on nothing but the central ideas and the accumulating force of the treatise's over-arching argument, ranging freely over the subsequent historical response to those ideas and the unifying view of the world. The introduction first addresses issues of translation then turns to the topic of a philosophic, non-mathematical physics. Readers will be provoked to hear, among other things, that ''Aristotle devises a vocabulary that is incapable of dogmatic use" (p. 2), and that the equivocal richness of ordinary language is for Aristotle "not a fault of language, but one of the ways in which it is truthful" (p. 8). Readers will also have to ponder how "the physics of our times is inescapably philosophic" (p. 10), how its atomism implies "there can be no cosmos ... and no activity at all, except for motion in space" (p. 25). Not that we have to choose between Aristotle and quantum mechanics. As contemporary physics itself begins to appreciate the speculative questions that were always latent in its own foundations, Aristotle becomes both unavoidable and indispensable. We can be thankful for how much more available Mr. Sachs' book has made the unique resource of Aristotle's Physics. e REVIEWED BY CARL PAGE, TUTOR, ANNAPOLIS �Scholarship. • • Strengthening Ties TUTOR EXCHANGE IMPROVES LABS, PROMOTES UNITY •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• BY LESLI ALLISON eparated by roughly 2,000 miles, faculty members in Santa Fe and Annapolis are getting to know each other better, thanks in part to a donation by the St. John's Alumni &sociation. Both this year and last, several faculty members have participated in a campus exchange program centered on freshman and junior labs. In 1994-95, Santa Fe tutors David Levine, Linda Weiner and Jim Cohn visited Annapolis to review the Freshman lab curriculum. Likewise, Annapolis tutors Abe Schoener, Radoslav Datchev and Katherine Haigney visited Santa Fe. The primary object of the exchange is to coordinate the curricula between the campuses. "Annapolis had undertaken a review of freshman lab about five years ago and in subsequent years has modified their lab to the point where it was very different from ours," Santa Fe tutor David Levine said. ''At the same time, we thought the previous lab had difficulties and we saw a need to review the material." Santa Fe Dean Steve Van Luchene proposed that the best way to address the matter was in person. So far, the exchange has revealed as much about what the two campuses have in common as the ways in which they have diverged. "The principles for our review turned out to be the same or at least compatible with the principles of the Annapolis review," Mr. Levine said. ''And they were enthusiastic about our proposals and we saw how they were successful in the changes they made. In such circumstances we discover that we're one college, that we have common problems, and that our solutions are often of a piece. According to Mr. Schoener, both campuses were striving to reduce the number of readings so that students would have more time to reflect on the material. "When we got together it seemed like there was impetus for a radical change in the curriculum," he said. "In Annapolis we had made some big changes already. In Santa Fe they felt like they needed to restructure the program and to focus on what students were reading. We all tried to figure out together how best to focus on five or six authors or books and to make sure we had good practical works so there was a lab that went with each meeting." In Annapolis, the freshman lab had already been re-structured so that readings in the first semester centered on the works of Aristotle, with emphasis on Parts ofAnimals, books I and III. "[Aristotle] lays out some questions about what a science of animals should S be doing and shows its relation to other kinds of inquiry," Schoener said. "In books II and III he starts investigating parts ofliving animals." In conjunction with the first readings, students in Annapolis locate a wild animal and observe it over aperiod of six to eight weeks, observing how it moves and behaves. Then, as Aristotle begins talking about things on the inside of animals, students begin dissections of fresh whole fish, and fresh cow and sheep hearts. ''After we read Aristotle we turn to Harvey for a more specific look at the heart and the argument for the presence of a circulatory system," Schoener said. Students then turn to "Annapolis was usiastic a proposa our we saw were sue- cover we're one col we common problems, and that our utions are often of a piece." questions about really small parts-cell theory, for instance. "This is when we begin what I consider to be the second half of the semester,'' Schoener said. "We study how a whole arises from a little egg and sperm. And we do that mostly through observing the fertilization of sea urchin and frog eggs." Freshman lab concludes with 19th and 20th century works by Driesch and Spemann, and, in some cases, with Aristotle's On the Soul. By comparison, the first semester of Santa Fe's freshman lab concentrates on form, function and development. Recently, a number of minor readings were eliminated, thereby allowing students to focus more on issues than authors. As in Annapolis, readings in Aristotle and Harvey form a major part of the curriculum. However, while Annapolis freshmen are studying animal behavior and cell theory, freshmen in Santa Fe spend more time coming to grips with classification. According to Santa Fe tutor and freshman lab archon John Cornell, the most popular reading during the first semester is Goethe's Metamorphosis ofPlants. Another favorite is Aristotle's On the Gen- eration ofAnimals. Despite these variations, the curricula are, by and large, more alike than different, and students transferring between the campuses have little difficulty making adjustments in later labs. "The two labs work extremely well together," Cornell said. "They're almost a model of difference and similarity. In fact, they're more allied than many of the tutorials." This year, questions concerning junior lab will be addressed when Santa Fe's Tom Scally, Hans Von Briesen and Jim Forkin visit the Annapolis campus and Cordell Yee, Eric Salem and Erik Sageng from Annapolis visit Santa Fe. Santa Fe's committee chairman, Jim Forkin, said the primary difference he perceives is that Santa Fe requires students to read more original texts while Annapolis places more emphasis on the lab manual. "In first semester [the labs] are essentially the same," Forkin said. "In the second semester of junior lab Santa Fe does more on Maxwell-electricity and magnetism. In the spirit of doing more original texts, we're actually going to try to read more of Maxwell than we have in the past. We've also been trying to re-arrange things so we can read more Farraday, in part because we think the conversation between Maxwell and Farraday is an especially interesting one, and we want to present as full an account of that conversation as possible." The Santa Fe committee will travel to Annapolis later this spring to discuss these differences and find ways to improve both programs. "The idea is to spend a week and sit in on classes and talk with tutors," Mr. Forkin said. "We're trying to get to know each other, not just for lab, but for the sake of unity between the campuses." Several tutors echoed the sense that while the exchange program has been helpful in making curricular reforms, its greatest value lies in the fact that the campuses are getting better acquainted. "I had never been to Santa Fe and so the most valuable thing was getting to know the other campus and the other faculty," Schoener said. "I went to a faculty meeting, met with tutors and students outside of class, and sat in on a half dozen classes. The interaction with other faculty was the most valuable. We even talked about things outside the freshman lab, so there were all kinds of unforeseen benefits from it."e ALUMNI OPPORTUNITIES FROM THE ANNAPOLIS PLACEMENT OFFICE The Educational Testing Service (ETS) is offering several opportunities for research projects in various fields of study. Please contact Linda J. Delauro, Mail Stop 16-T, Educational Testing Service, Princeton, NJ 08541-0001, Telephone: 609-734-1806, Internet: Idelauro@ets.org for additional information regarding the following programs: 1996-97 Test of English As A Foreign Language (TOEFL) Postdoctoral Fellowship Program- One person will be selected to conduct research and development with ETS on the TOEFL 2000 project. This 12-month fellowship runs from September 1, 1996 through August 31, 1997 with the possibility of renewal for a second year. There is a $35,000 stipend with limited relocation expenses offered for the 12-month period. The applicant should hold a doctorate in second-language testing or a related field and show evidence of a commitment to research, especially language testing research. Deadline: March 30, 1996. 1996-97 Center For Performance Assessment Postdoctoral Fellowship Program- One individual will be selected to conduct research in association with ETS staff in Princeton, NJ. Ongoing projects that examine the design of performance assessments; the effective and equitable use of these assessments; inferential issues related to performance assessment; and the implications of performance assessment for teaching, learning, and school reform will be the main focus of research. A $35,000 stipend, with limited relocation expenses included, is awarded for the 12-month period beginning September 1, 1996 through August 31, 1997. The main criteria for selection will be scholarship and relevant experience in educational settings. Deadline: April 30, 1996. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory has a Computer Specialist position available in Greenbelt, Md. The candidate must have a bachelor's degree in computer science, applied math, physics, or related field. All Smithsonian Institution positions require background checks, including fingerprinting. Relocation expenses may be paid at the discretion of the Observatory. Interested candidates should submit resumes to recruiter #228 at: Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, 60 Garden Street, MS 17, Cambridge, MA 02138. �Letters. • • WOMEN IN THE PROGRAM? Following is a letter I wrote to Ms. McMurran because of her special interest in our procedures for reviewing program readings. It is meant for general circulation also. The letter bears on the "Open Letter" published in the fall issue of the Reporter. -Eva Brann, Dean Dear Ms. McMurran: Let me plunge right into a description of the principles and procedures by which we change the program. Of course you're free to show this letter to all your friends who might be interested. The Instruction Committee is the group immediately responsible. Each spring, all the tutors for a given seminar year meet under the direction of one of them (whom we've taken to calling a "scribe"). They collect all the suggestions for changes in selections, for dropping old books and adding new ones, and send them to me along with reasons. The Instruction Committee then spends lots of time discussing the four reports and makes the new seminar list. The Student Committee on Instruction may also give us advice. And, of course, the ideas of all who know the program (and who would know it better than our alumni?) are most welcome. If the proposed changes are quite serious (e.g. dropping or moving books the community considers venerable), we go to the whole faculty for advice. That's the procedure. The principles from which we work are, roughly, these: 1. We wouldn't adopt a book that most of us haven't read. Similarly, whoever proposes it should be familiar with it, at least enough so as to help us make selections. For example, the Pisan Treasure ofthe City ofLadies is dearly too long for an evening-how to cut it deftly? 2. The proposers should make themselves responsible for suggesting the book to go offthe list. This part is usually the hardest-fought aspect of •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• here are many reasons to come to Santa Fe in the summe:rtune, but for the best held 13 and 14. rtomecornm.g Vl.reeJ{enla offers opportunity to visit the 1..<Uuvu•» waltz the night away during Homecoming dinner and dance on night, a few days with classmates former tutors. All of that and more will be a part of Homecoming Weekend this year. We'll have the traditional acnvu1c::s--uLe all-alumni seminar on Friday night, the Fiesta picnic on Saturday, followed by special reunion class seminars, and the Presidenfs Brunch on Stmday. And, :for those who are in a retmion dass-1971, 1976, 1981, 1986and1991-we'll have small class dinners on night. For Graduate Institute alumni, there will be a wine and cheese reception on Friday. We're also malcing plans for a few additions, including a session fur children (and their parents) by Lucy Dtmcan, SF86, a professional storyteller and owner of the Story Monkey Bookstore in Omaha, Nebraska. And, those who want a more in-depth St. John's experience can come a little earlier or stay a little longer and take part in one (or both) of the Summer Alumni Program weeks. The first July 7 thr1oui::~11 July 12, will focus on where technology is the art of in the future. Among those during the first week will be Santa Fe tutors Grant Franks and David Starr. The second week, beginning the evening ofJuly 14 and continuing through July 19, will examine the tradition and ethic in film. Seminars and tutorials will include sessions led by Dean Eva Brann of the Annapolis campus on Shane, Red River and High Noon. Tom Stem, SF69 will lead a seminar on The Unforgiven, a Clint Eastwood film he worked on. Other seminars and tutorials are being developed by Krishnan Venkatesh, a Santa Fe tutor, and Jim Sorrentino, ABO. More in:formation about these programs and Homecoming Weekend will be sent to all alumni, along with registration materials, in March. In the meantime, if you have questions about Homecoming or the Summer Alumni Program, please contact the alumni office in Santa Fe by calling 505-984-6103; by writing to St. John's College, Alumni Office, 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 875014599; or by sending an e-mail message to alumni@mail.sjcs£edu. -Liz Skewes making an addition. There is always an A who inordinately loves the book that B wants to chuck. 3. There should be telling arguments for each selection (old or new) on the list. We have to concern ourselves with whether the book is somehow (very broadly) coherent with the rest of the list, whether it will make for a good seminar (some fine books don't), whether it is rationally cuttable (if that's necessary). The chief and preeminent argument is, of course, the superlative quality of the work. Other arguments might be the one you allude to, that a book might bring about a discussion of a universal but neglected subject. For example, the list you kindly sent me contains Middlemarch, (which has been on the program in Annapolis for four or five years now). It is among my favorite musings, and some seminars have actually discussed the question, whether one can tell that it is by a woman-a question leading to all sorts of interesting considerations, and one to which I have a secret answer-though, of course, there are far deeper issues to be talked about in this masterpiece. I think that if a book were proposed because it is by an author of a certain gender, class or race, we would not neglect that fact altogether, but we would wonder if nothing better could be said of it. I myself am here, as always, a great advocate of maintaining pure principles and combining them with corrupt administration. The purest, and an ultimate, principle of the St. John's reading list is that works stand on their own and speak for themselves, but most of us are not adverse to admitting a little bit of circumstance now and then, for the sake of current preoccupations. Some of the books on the list (two of which I don't know but would like to, especially the Graffigny book) are proposed for the language tutorials. Although the general guidelines for the tutorials are laid out, and some works are traditionally read, the Instruction Committee has never had much luck in persuading all tutors to read any particular work with their classes. I would love for Sappho to be read. But the truth is, whoever suggested it probably hadn't tried it. It's magnificent beyond description-and hellishly difficult. Another tutor and I had a mini-seminar on "he seems to me like a god" in anticipation of a Friday night lecture on Sappho, and the Aeolian dialect was almost too much for us. Still, I can but preach, and so can all of you. I've been trying for years to get Toni Morrison on (why is she missing from your list?), but my colleagues make persuasive arguments that we can do even better. Perhaps we can try with Zora Neale Hurston. The place where a lot of these minor-and major-masterpieces are taken up is the preceptorial. We've had quite a few that would be of interest to you: Eliot, Lady Murasaki, Hurston, among them. This is a golden age for novel writing (though the literati keep talking of its death). A large part of that fiction is by women, and when things sort themselves out, there may be another Austen or Eliot. Meanwhile, there's nothing for it but to read them all; it goes without saying that the most persuasive comparative judgments (and those are the ones we must make) come from people of liberally wide reading. -Eva T.H. Brann, Dean INTRINSIC MERIT In response to the proposal (Fall 1995), I believe that the only valid reasons for including books in the program are their quality and influence. I do not doubt that many wholly meritorious works by women are not included currently, primarily because of sociological and/ or historical circumstances that led to a denial or ignorance of their intrinsic merit. Nonetheless, I believe equally strongly that including any books "as a means of recognizing the contributions of women to the Western canon" in wholly inappropriate. There are works already in the program the gender of whose authors is unknown. Suppose that Homer or the author(s) of Genesis or the rest of the Pentateuch were somehow proven to be women, would that have any relevance to their merit or their place in the program? Instead I would offer the following observations: 1.Preceptorials should be an option, rather than a requirement. The alternative of six to eight weeks of additional seminar readings in the junior and senior years would allow expanding the canon to include both women and other authors. 2.Even if students had the choice of continuing both junior and senior seminars, so much has been written in the last 300 years that any choice of readings is bound to be somewhat arbitrary. 3. There should be questionnaires, so that students, alumni and tutors could comment on current and proposed readings, as an additional guide for the Instruction Committee. -Steven Shore, SF68 The Reporter welcomes letters, comments, and corrections on issues of interest to readers. Letters may be edited for clarity and/or length. Please address to either campus. The Reporter, St. John's College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404 (e-mail bgoyette@mailhost.sjca.edu) or The Reporter, St. John's College, 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87501 (e-mail alumni@mail.sjcsf.edu). �. A Winter 1996 St. John's College u m n 1 Association News Mark Middlebrook, A83, editor • Thomas Geyer, A68, communications committee chair The Alumni Association Newsletter is published in each issue of the Reporter. We welcome letters, capsule book reviews, and article ideas from alumni. Send submissions and suggestions to Mark Middlebrook at 73030. 7604@compuserve.com (e-mail) or call 5 70/547-0602. I SIP E oc LS by Jim Schweidel, A63, Philadelphia Chapter President Editor's note: This article is part of an ongoing series profiling local alumni chapters. Our next profile will feature the Dallas/Fort Worth chapter. ome time in the early '70s I received a phone call from Victor Schwartz (A61) asking me if I would be interested in attending a dinner for the Philadelphia area alumni of St. John's College. I told him that I thought it was a splendid idea. Victor was able to procure a room at the venerable stately Union League. We dined in a room in which richly paneled mahogany cases support tomes of civil war histories. It was a marvelous setting for a St. John's alumni gathering, even if you happened to be a democrat. Despite the success of the event, meetings and seminars were sporadic over the next several years. Hugh McGrath traveled to Philadelphia to lead a seminar on King Lear at the historic Old Swede's Church. The following year Curtis Wilson presided over a seminar on The Federalist Papers which was held at the Philadelphia Art Alliance. It was not until 1982, when members of the New York chapter led by Jonathan Zavin (A68) sponsored a dinner and seminar at a social dub in center city Philadelphia, that serious consideration was given to establishing a chapter in Philadelphia. After a marvelous seminar on Antigone led by Eva Brann, Andrew Steiner (A63) suggested to me that since our former leader Victor Schwartz had moved to Santa Fe, the two of us might assume responsibility for having two or three meetings a year. I agreed. We selected the Germantown Cricket Club as the site of our meetings and there overlooking the grass tennis courts on which Bill Tilden won title after title we settled in for a period of five years. Our format consisted of cocktails hors d'oeuvres from 6:30 to 7:30 followed by the seminar. Attendance averaged 15. Besides alumni, friends of the College and prospective students were welcomed. Institute Philadelphia has a large number of alumni from the and they constituted a significant percentage of the group. Annapolis tutor emeritus Elliott Zuckerman led a chapter seminar on works by Emerson last year. The group meets at the Whitemarsh Valley Inn in a suburb of Philadelphia. Tragically, in 1990, Andrew Steiner was killed in an automobi\e accident. In 1988 Andrew had been responsible for us finally becoming a chapter and had worked diligently to see that our project was successful. Andrew loved the College, and this chapter is a tribute to him. In 1991 we moved our meetings to the Whitemarsh Valley Inn in Lafayette Hill, a suburb of Philadelphia. Our meetings now take place on Saturday afternoons. The seminar still is preceded by cocktails and hors d'oeuvres (there is no charge), which begin at 1 :30. In October of last year Elliott Zuckerman led a seminar on two works of Emerson: The American Scholar and The Divinity School Address. In November, Jonathan Tuck made the trip from Annapolis to lead a seminar on Emerson's essay Thoreau and Thoreau's essay On Civil Disobedience. In December Chris Nelson joined us, as he did last year, for a Christmas Cocktail Party. We are hoping to make this party an annual event. As we continue, our hope is that more alumni will take advantage the opportunity to renew old friendships, keep up with the news from Annapolis and Santa Fe, and once again sit around rectangular tables exchange thoughts on Great Books. • ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• St. One of the responsibilities of the Alumni Association Board is spending your money, in the form of Alumni Association dues. Many of the expenditures are for the Association's share of time-honored and popular items like homecomings on both campuses, senior dinners, and the Alumni Register (a new edition of which will be sent to all alumni this year). Other expenditures result from special projects or one-time requests from Alumni Board committees or the College. For instance, this year the Alumni Board allocated money to help the alumni offices validate and reconcile their alumni databases. And because of our concerns about the unity of the two campuses, we now help fund an annual inter-campus tutor exchange program. In the past, Alumni Board members have deliberated and voted on expenditures based on their sense of what would benefit alumni and the College best. Last year the Alumni Board decided that it would be beneficial to articulate principals for spending Alumni Association funds. Out of an ad hoc committee led by Alumni Association Past President Harvey Goldstein came the following proposed amendment to the Association By-Laws. This amendment does not change how the Alumni Board spends Association funds, but rather attempts to clarify how and why funds should be spent. Amendment to Article IV section 1 Funds of the Association shall be spent primarily for the support of the collegial activities of the members, encouraging the continuing fellowship of alumni with one another and promoting association among alumni in their practice of the liberal arts. In addition, since the Association acknowledges its intention to support the College in its many purposes and, in particu- lar, to support the College's unique educational program, funds may be expended to serve, preserve and advance the best interests of St. John's College as one community of and for liberal education. However, such expenditures shall not be made at the sacrifice of the support necessary to maintain an appropriate level of collegial and educational activities for the membership. All expenditures of funds shall be made at the sole discretion of the Board of Directors. This proposed a~endment will be voted on at the Annual Meeting of the Alumni Association: Saturday September 28th, 1996, 10:00 a.m., Conversation Room in Mellon Hall, Annapolis, Maryland. • �Capsule Reviews by Alumni of Favorite Books ... Your editor started a dangerous trend in the previous installment of Ex Libris Alumnorum by including a musical recording. Alas, the barn door is open, and this time a film has wandered in. What nextMicrosoft Multimedia Marx? ,.,...,.,, ...... r ...... reviews to the this Newsletter. More One Fred Chappell, 1 , St. Martin's Press. 197 pages. SubmitCynthia Hobgood, IS befell taxonomist Linnaeus when he first .... .,,...,...,.., . ... .,..., plants have sex I was the subject matter from the paragraph of the first story, then realized as I read further that the author is not merely a decent imagination enrobed in a mind that wants to write. He is a master of his craft. His language and approach vary from story to story, but in each, his prose is heady, rich, enigmatic, and provocative, as is the subject matter. One story deals with the slavery of women: "I feel different about women than a lot of men do, and I'll tell you why. It's because I had my own woman one time. I lived real close with her and that has made me think thoughts apart." An opening paragraph like that is hard to swallow, but I trusted Mr. C by this point, and he did not let me down. The stories are part magical realism, part pure fantasy, part science fiction, and part just plain good southern writing (the dust jacket compares him to Eudora Welty and William Faulkner). I hope to find that Mr. Chappell is really better known than I have found him to be. This is an author who deserves attention! Discovering by Robert Scott KO<)T-t:•err1srem 1 Harvard University Press. 501 pages. Kurt Schuler, A81 who makes scienA book tific discoveries, when, why where, how. Johnnies are uniquely well equipped to appreciate it because it is written as a dialogue among six rnt"'lrrtrT.cre it historical episodes scientific discovery that are iar from the junior and senior lab. It a lot to say about makes for creativity in the natural sciences, and many its ideas about how to improve creativity apply to other fields also. 1 The Seventh Seal directed by Ingmar Bergman, 1953. 96 minutes. Submitted by Jim Sorrentino, ABO Bergman's The Seventh Seo/. Set in plague-ridden Sweden during the 13th Century, The Seventh Seal recounts the journey home of a knight and his squire, returning after ten years of misery in the Crusades. At the beginning of the film, Death meets the knight to take him away. The knight challenges Death to a game of chess: as long as the knight survives on the chess board, he may continue on his way. The Seventh Seal is an elegantly brief 96 minutes, and yet in this short time, Bergman poses all the Big Questions: the existence of the meaning of life, the power the nature evil. no answers ; unlike Cecil B. Demille, Bergman does not stoop to using effects to portray The Seventh secures its place as a great work offering us a framework to discuss the nrr.n1.:.me intelligibly. Just as impressive is fact that it so in a seductively entertaining way. Bergman partially refutes the Black Plague with black humor. The power of film comes from its ability to move from despair to humor to thoughtfulness to hope in a few moments, with no more than a line of dialogue or a facial expression to convey the message. See it. Own it. See it again. You may find, as I did, that it gets under your skin. Most films, like most books, are not worth experiencing more than once. Some are worth an annual viewing. But there is a small number of films which one comes back to again and again, experiencing new insights and taking pleasure in old ones. Such a film is Ingmar CHAPTER CONTACTS Please coll those listed below for information about alumni activities in each area. ALBUQUERQUE: Harold M. Morgan, Jr. (505)256-0294 NEW YORK: Justin Burke (212)228-8423 or (212)620-3955 ANNAPOLIS: Joel D. Lehman (410)956-2814 PHILADELPHIA: Jim Schweidel (215)836-7632 Joe Reynolds (512)867-8461 BOSTON: Alvin Aronson (61 Rachel Sullivan (503)629-5838 SACRAMENTO: Arianne (91 131 or Helen Hobart (91 1082 Constantine (716)586-5393 CHICAGO: Amanda Fuller (312)337-4105 or Rick Lightburn (312)667-0068 SAN CALIFORNIA: Cynthia Kay Catherine Hobgood (415)552-9349 DALLAS/FORT WORTH: Suzanne Doremus (817)496-8571 or Jonathan Hustis (214)340-8442 SANTA FE: John Pollak (505)983-2144 or Elizabeth Skewes (505)984-6103 LOS ANGELES: Julia Takahashi (310)434-7624 SEATILE: Jim Doherty (206)937-8886 MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL: Glenda Eoyang (612)7831405 or (612)379-3883 (W) WASHINGTON, D.C.: Sam Stiles (301 )424-9119 or Bill Ross (301 )230-4594 �"Cute Blondes Study Aristotle" When the first class ofwomen came to St. johns in 1951, the newspapers had a field day. But what was it really like for the pioneer women at the college? ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• BARBARA GOYETTE sensibilities rebel at the 1angu:age the press used to de St. John's first class of women in 1951. Female students are often identified by hair color: Sue Griffith is an "attractive blonde miss," Dorothy Olim is a redhead from Elizabeth, New Jersey, Janet Jenkins wears an "attractive patent leather belt" and has long blonde hair. Even Barbara Leonard, St. John's first woman faculty member hired as assistant dean of women, is described as "pretty in her short curly hair." Carolyn Banks, protesting the "silly'' stories that appeared about St. John's coeds in the press, is called a "wholesome-looking blonde." Would a news reporter describe Dean Jacob Klein's high forehead, small precise mouth, and mischievous eyes? No, but with women, their appearance and demeanor, rather than their thoughts and motivations, are somehow what mattered. In the zeitgeist of the 1950's women may have been encouraged to attend college, and female professionals may have been accepted in many fields, but the overriding goal was supposed to be excellence in the ways of marriage and housekeeping. The kind of language used in the news stories mirrored the attitudes of society. While the language and the attitudes it implies bother many women today, they didn't bother most of the pioneers in St.John's first class of women-for the very reason that the attitudes were acceptable. The women had other concerns. As Barbara Brunner Kiebler says, "I didn't feel any discrimination. I sat down and studied." In September 1951, 24 women broke the gender barrier that had guarded the college for 255 years. Admitting women was an innovative idea-not as radical as the 1937 change to the New Program, but nevertheless a change that brought plenty of interest in the press and the education community. President Richard Weigle advocated the admission of women and he convinced the Board and faculty to agree. Enrollment, never stable, had fallen during World War II, soared when the Gls returned, and then fallen again as the veterans finished up and the Korean War began to siphon potential students away. Mr. Weigle and the Board were looking at viable ways to beef up the numbers of students. According to his memoir, Recollections of a College President, the first suggestion for a coordinate college for women was rejected as too costly. After the Board approved the admission of women in 1950, some students protested, according to Mr. Weigle's book, because "they feared the quality of classes would suffer." The decision proved to be contro- versial for social as well as academic reasons. "Everyone said the women would come here to be near the Naval Academy," says Barbara Leonard. ''And the men students said that the women wouldn't be able to do the math and science." But the women came. They loved St. John's and were successful. Adding more voices, new voices, to the dialogue among students, books, and ideas made the college more vibrant and more like the "real world." The challenges that the women dealt with in their first years at St. John's were defined by the academic and social concerns of the student body: could they prove themselves in the classroom, and could they live in harmony with the men? Why they came The women who enrolled at St. John's represented a variety of ages, academic experiences, and backgrounds. Sixteen were from Maryland-most with senatorial scholarships that provided tuition or tuition, room, and board-and the others came from as far away as California and New Mexico. They ranged in age from 16 to 46 years. Twenty were unmarried, three were married to current St. John's students, one was a widow. Six of the women had been to college before. Janet Jenkins had spent a year at Swarthmore; Lydia Aston was a nurse who had studied at William and Mary and Johns Hopkins; two others had been to Barnard. Several had worked as secretaries since graduating from high school, and two entered St. John's without finishing high school. The majority completed high school the previous June. Emily Martin remembers the age differences as being intimidating. "I was only 18, and some of the others already had degrees," she says. "I grew up in Garrett County. It was very rural and a strong Christian community ...There was a marked difference between those of us who came from rural areas and the more cosmopolitan." Although the women's backgrounds were varied, because there were not any upperclass women to help them adjust, the first class students formed strong bonds of friendship among themselves. Members of the first class of women and some male classmates gathered for their 40th reunion at homecoming. Left to right they are: Barbara Brunner Kiebler, Sam Kutler ('54), Emily Martin Kutler, Faye Councell Polillo '(56), Barbara Dvorak Winiarski, John Joanou, Barbara Leonard (first female faculty member and assistant dean), and Jim Stow. Photos by Keith Harvey. event that has occurred at St. John's in The program was, of course, the recent years, as far as the College in its major draw for them. They knew relation to the critical world outside is about the all-required curriculum and concerned," proclaimed the 1953 yearwere intrigued by the prospect of studybook. Certainly the coming of the 24 ing the great books. Carolyn Banks, for women students changed the college. example, had been studying voice at Peabody Conservatory when a friend The all-male student body of 1950 wrote her that St. John's was going to was first of all upset at not being told about the admission of women until it take women. "I thought to myself that was a done deal. As Sam Kuder, a all I knew was music, and maybe I should know more," she says. Emily freshman in 1950 and now a tutor, says, "We found out about coeducaMartin came because she had received tion in the newspapers. It made us anone of the Maryland state senatorial scholarships. "I had a great curiosity about the program. I was not put off by the math and science, I was interested in that," she says. Hilyer Gearing grew up in Annapolis and her brother was a student, class of 1954. ''As soon as I found out women were to be admitted, I was there," she says. In the firestorm of newspaper stories written "And Now It'll Be 101 Great Books?", a cartoon by Richard about the women in Yardley in the Baltimore Sun, 1950. the fall of 1951, the gry." The '51 yearbook explains that women emphasized their educational students were upset because they felt goals. Joan Eisner, who had finished her that choosing St. John's involved such freshman year at Barnard, is quoted in an investment that "everything that the Baltimore Sun as saying that she happens in any way affecting the prohoped St. John's would furnish her with gram is [every student's] business and a "broad, basic culture." something he has the right to .know Barbara Brunner says she would about." have gone to the University of MaryPhysically, there had to be room for land had St. John's not given her a women. The second and third floors of senatorial scholarship. "I don't think I Randall were converted into space for would have reached my potential the newcomers: walls were painted there, and I certainly wouldn't have pastel colors, and a two-room suite studied math, which turned out to be was made for Miss Leonard, who was my favorite subject." to live alongside the women. Three The women were an eager group, common rooms, where opposite-sex and their diversity fit right in at St. conversations could take place, were John's where men from all walks of built out of four former dorm rooms. life, veterans, and students who hadn't How were the women students acfinished high school were living in a cepted by the male students and facsmall, intense community of learning ulty? The women remember some facwholly devoted to the program. ulty members as being particularly Acceptance welcoming. Carolyn Banks was invited to dinner frequently at the home of tu"Undoubtedly, the introduction of tor Ford K. Brown and his wife; her coeducation is the most important �wedding reception after freshman year was held at Jascha Klein's house. Emily Martin found the library, with Charlotte Fletcher and Mrs. Kaplan presiding, a "warm and friendly place to be." Barbara Brunner praises Barbara Leonard for her understanding and unflappability. While the women were ready, willing, and able to take on the rigors of the program, their experiences in classes were varied. "What we were studying was so hard," says Barbara Brunner. "I did not have the feeling that the boys were being treated with more respect." Emily Martin agrees. "The college was much more than I expected in terms of the academic program,'' she says. "I had no idea it would be so interesting, so engaging ... The seminars were most difficult. I think we had more respect in math tutorials and lab, because we really did the work." Carolyn Banks also found seminar the most difficult forum for the women. She says she didn't sleep more than three or four hours a night that first year, and that she and her friends considered their work with the utmost seriousness. If a woman took a controversial position in seminar, she was more likely to be "run over" for it than a man. She recalls one don rag at which a tutor told her that it was "typical of a woman to be so romantic," referring to something she had said in class. Sam Kuder was a sophomore in 1951. He doesn't remember worrying that the women wouldn't be able to handle the program, "The school was very intense. Students used to stay up all night talking about the program, which we didn't think was fixed; it was evolving. We were all impressed with [DeanJ Klein because he was making the school so solid academically." Barbara Leonard, herself enmeshed in trying to learn and teach in the program after an academic background in biology, says that the women worked hard and were quite successful in all their classes "to show their worth." By the end of the first year, says Miss Leonard, "it was certainly easier for those that made their impression. The men found out that they really could do the work and that they weren't giddy and running after dates." The Social Scene Cotillion balls, movies in the gym that you could never hear, plays by Ibsen and Shakespeare, chorus, the boathouse, drawing class-the women enjoyed all of the extra-curricular activities on campus. One, Sarah Covington, even became a pitcher on the men's softball team. Many of the newspaper stories focused on how the women were fitting in socially on campus, and the wholesome atmosphere of young men and women playing and working together was conjured up on a regular basis. "They read the same books, they play on the same softball teams, they even wear the same clothes," began a feature in the Baltimore Sun Sunday magazine. Underlying the fun-and no one denies it was not fun-a few controversies were simmering. The largest was a question of students vs. administration, rather than men vs. women. That was the question of rules of residence. The Student Polity, charged with formulating dorm rules that took the presence of women on campus into account, declined to do so because any such rules would "compromise the freedom of men and women to visit each other" (1951 yearbook). In typical St. John's fashion, the protracted debate took on a classical air, with arguments for the administration and student positions formulated like the Melian dialogue in Thucydides (1953 yearbook). The administration, with the security of the women (the college had responsibility "in loco parentis" for students under age 21) and the reputation of the college at issue, settled on "three simple rules," says Miss Leonard. They were: no visiting in the rooms of students of the opposite sex; a freshman curfew for both men and women at 2 a.m.; and freshmen who would be off-campus overnight were to leave a phone number or address with the assistant deans. Midway through the year, the Student Polity adopted changed rules that abolished the curfew and allowed opposite-sex visits with a third person present. The new rules fit both the students' desire to be treated as adults and the administration's desire for seemliness. Inevitably, the women students were courted by the men. They formed alliances like college students everywhere, although the basis of relationships might have been different than it would have been at another college-they might have been partners in philosophic dialogue or fellow actors in Shakespeare or lab partners. Some of the women thought the men came on a little strong; others weren't bothered. There were weddings. Barbara Brunner married John Oosterhout ("he was one of the leaders of the student protest against admitting women, but he changed his mind") after sophomore year. Emily Martin, Hilyer Gearing, and Carolyn Banks also married St. John's students. In all, ten of the women married fellow Johnnies. Living Their Lives The pioneer women were an exceptionally bright and studious group, by all accounts. And yet many left St. John's (attrition was high in the early 1950's for both men and women), and none of the women who did graduate continued their studies in graduate school the following year. The boom economy of the l 950's made it possible for women to stay at home, reinforcing the stereotype of educated females as attractive partners for wage-earning men. "I was a product of the l 950's. I Male student preditctions that the women students would have trouble in math and lab were quickly disproved. The women excelled in both subjects. Here Jane Gerber, Emily Martin, and Joyce Kittell work on a measurement procedure. In the background are Hudson Keithley and John Gordon. All are from the class of '55. The photograph is by Marion Warren. did what was expected of me-I married, stayed at home and had children," says Barbara Brunner Kiebler. She did teach math for a brief time at Lamar College in Texas, where she was hired "as soon as I set foot on campus" by a professor who was familiar with the St. John's program. After raising her children, she went to law school at the University of Maryland and is now a successful attorney. Carolyn Banks Leeuwenburgh sang in Europe, where she called on her St. John's background to bring depth to her roles; she has taught in the Princeton, N.J., schools for many years. Two of the women, Emily Martin Kuder and Hilyer Gearing Shufeldt, who did not finish the undergraduate program returned to earn master's degrees from the Graduate Institute. Hilyer Gearing Shufeldt, a teacher, says of her GI experience, "I didn't want it to be over." Many of the women are followed the pattern of getting involved in a career after their children were older. "We are strong, intelligent women,'' says Carolyn Banks Leeuwenburgh. Their St. John's experience is something that's a part of them and the ways of thinking introduced at the college are permanent. Like many other alumni, the women look back on their time at St. John's as pivotal. The first class of women had a lot to prove-to themselves, to the college, and to the headline writers-and they succeeded. St. John's gave them a legacy, a feeling of empowerment, summed up by Barbara Brunner Kiebler: "I have an undying conviction that if I sit down and work at it, I can learn anything. I'm not going to turn my back on anything." • �HOMECOMING APO LI ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• ·························~ BY BARBARA GOYETIE bout 420 alumni, representing every era, came home to Annapolis for Homecoming September 9-0ctober 1. The weekend was blessed with perand a of activities. you might have semi-embarrassing moments of non-recognition or selective non-memories about classfrom 5, 15, or 25 years ago, a St. mates and homecoming allows for a profoundly positive form these are the people have lived ~. . . . . ~~-~ . . . the program, as you did, experience its lasting effects daily, just as you do. ...... ,.,,,_...__.__.... ,., .... L.HJ ....... This was a reunion year for the classes of 1945, 1950, 1955, 1959, 1965, 1970, 1975, 1980, and 1985. The first class of women-who enrolled in 1951 and graduated in 1955-was especially well-represented, with 14 attending, including Barbara Leonard, the college's first female tutor and the assistant dean hired to "handle the girls." Their luncheon in the private dining room was capped by a skit recalling favorite tutors (like Ford K. Brown) and times during their pioneering years at the college (see related article on page 12). About 35 alumni from the Graduate Institute enjoyed meeting up again, attending a lunch at the President's House, and sharing a table at the banquet with current GI director Tom May. Reprising their discussion skills, many alumni attended seminars where works examined included "The Tempest" (classes of'45 and '50), "King Lear" (class of '55), "Symposium'' (class of '70), "Phaedrus" (classes of '75 and '85), "Heart of Darkness" (class of 80), and, winning in the category of most ambitious reading, Nietzsche's "On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life" (Graduate Institute). Other homecoming weekend activities and events included chatting on the quad, going to lecture (Marta Weigle, A65, on the development of tourism in the Southwest), chartering a sailboat, comparing school pix of children, and visiting old haunts in Annapolis. A special memorial service for tutor Hugh McGrath was held on Sept. 30. There were Alumni Association tributes to tutors Ford K. Brown by George Van Sant (A47) and to William O'Grady by Jason Walsh (A85). The Homecoming Banquet featured recognition of Award of Merit honorees and speeches, and the now-legendary classic rock party, with Robert George (A85) as DJ, kept alumni hopping to the wee hours. Finally, the President's Champagne Brunch on Sunday morning gave everyone a last chance to commune about the weekend and to make plans to come back again for another Homecoming. e Scenes from Homecoming '95: Two '75s, Seth Ginsberg and Jose de Peralta, engage in animated discussion (top this page); Connie Rubino , '75, and Robert George, at the President's Brunch (middle, this page); tutor Tuck catches up with David and Anderson-Stahl, both '85 (left, top); '65s Dennis Glew, Jan Blits, and Bruce Preston on the quad (left, bottom); a furry denizen of back campus forages at the picnic (left); Ron Fielding, Joanne Murray, Lesli Margulis, and Fenton Gary, all from the class of 1970, on the quad (opposite page, top); a future Johnnie (?) gets a new point of view (opposite page, left); Bernard Gessner, '27, considers a point at the Alumni Association meeting (opposite page, right). 1 All homecoming photos by Keith Harvey. �••••••••• •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• AWARDS OF MERIT & HONORARY ALUMNI The Alumni Association granted Awards of Merit to Rogers Albritton (A45), William Goldsmith (A45), and Christopher Nelson (SF70). Tutors Michael Littleton, Geoffrey Comber, and Elliott Zuckerman were made honorary members of the Class of 1995. Rogers Albritton Rogers Albritton was one of the many Johnnies from the decade of the 1940's whose education was interrupted by World War II. After serving in the Army Air Corps, he returned to Annapolis, graduating in 1948. He spent a year at the college as an associate tutor studying Plato with Jacob Klein, then went on to Princeton, where he received his PhD in 1955. He taught philosophy at Cornell, and then at Harvard, where he was chairman of the department. In 1973 he moved to UCLA, serving as chairman of the department until his retirement in 1981. ,, name. Another anecdote was about Ford 's time in Santa he was one of After being introduced by classmate James Frame (ASO), Mr. Albritton expressed his gratitude to the students and faculty of his own time. He noted that he owes the program both a moral and an intellectual debt. ''As a homosexual," he said, "I always felt gratitude toward the college for accepting me. At this extraordinary college, nobody seemed to mind ... " He wondered whether the school's tolerance of all kinds of people is derived from the Greeks. Mr. Albritton cited the oftquoted bit from John Van Doren about how everyone at St. John's is a misfit; in his case he felt that he was an intellectual misfit as well, since he had been dissatisfied with his studies at Swarthmore, where he was enrolled before coming to St. John's. "I very soon felt that I absolutely belonged here; the intellectual intensity was en- Continued on page 16 �Homecoming. • • Honoring Our Founding Fathers Excerpts from Bill Goldsmith's Homecoming Speech The Alumni Association made tutors Elliott Zuckerman, Geoffrey Comber1 and Michael Littleton honorary members (top). Rogers Albritton, Chris Nelson 1 and Bill Goldsmith received the association1s Award of Merit (bottom). Photos by Keith Harvey. Continued from page 15 thralling," he said. "I didn't feel isolated since we were all reading the same texts and learning the same languages." Mr. Albritton characterized himself as an analytic philosopher strongly influenced by Wittgenstein, and concluded by saying that St. John's had been a true home for him during very critical years of his life. William Goldsmith William Goldsmith (A45), a professor in the American Studies department at Brandeis for more than 20 years and the author of a three-volume study of presidential power, was introduced by his one-time St. John's roommate, Phil Camponeschi (A46). After outlining Mr. Goldsmith's distinguished career, Mr. Camponeschi emphasized his personal regard for his friend of many years. He recalled how they formed a local chapter of the American Veterans Committee, "the flip side of the American Legion'' so that Annapolis' black veterans would feel welcome. They campaigned to defeat the Ober Bill, Maryland's Anti-Subversive law. Mr. Camponeschi also talked about Mr. Goldsmith's family, how he supported his wife as she attended medical school and helped several wards through school in addition to his own children. In his speech, Mr. Goldsmith remembered the intellectual stimulation and happiness of his days at St. John's. "I doubt if any college in America could match the intellectual excitement that existed at St. John's in the 1940's, fostered by these two leaders [Scott Buchanan and Stringfellow Barr] who did so much to enrich the curriculum and also our lives. Most of us carried the memories of those days with us forever," he said. But even more important than their actions at the college, said Mr. Goldsmith, were the convictions of Barr and Buchanan after the war and after they left St. John's. The world had changed irrevocably, and those who lived through that time realized that new methods for dealing with national and international problems were necessary. Before taking up his academic career, Mr. Goldsmith worked for a number of years in the labor movement as Southern Regional Educational Director of both the CIO and AF ofL unions. (For excerpts of Mr. Goldsmith's speech, see the box at right.) Christopher Nelson In introducing Chris Nelson, SF70, president of the Annapolis campus, Dean Eva Brann said, "There are two main things I've learned about Chris. One is that he is a man not of power but of authority. The other one is that he is a man not of pretensions but of presence ... He runs the college by means of a quick but careful intelligence; he is a man of many devices and prevails naturally because he thinks of the way out. He has the finesse of real authority... He is called on for leadership [in the local civic and political sphere and in national educational circlesJ not only because of his fair and conciliatory presence but also, and more importantly, because he offers in the world as he does at home something very rare in education: principled stands and workable solutions ... " ----~-~-----------~------------------- Both [Scott Buchanan and Stringfellow Barr] were heavily engaged in the affairs of the world as it was radically changing in those postwar years. All of us were veterans of the war. Our education had been interrupted for a number of years as we served in the armed forces all over the world ... All but two of my classmates left for the war in one capacity or another, and several didn't return. Both Scott and Winkie were war veterans too. They had to struggle to keep the college alive until we returned, and fight off the Naval Academy which was constantly threatening to confiscate the campus. I learned of FDR's death when I was on lwo Jima, while the marines were still flushing the enemy out of caves with flame throwers, and I made up my mind then that I would not return to the complacent world we had left. I know Scott and Winkie felt the same way, and I think our wartime experiences resulted in a determination to tackle subjects and problems we had not seriously explored in the pre-war days. There was an impression among some in the St. John's community that the founding fathers had abandoned the New Program and the college, and moved on to more exciting frontiers., That was clearly not the case. But the exciting aspect of teaching, that I later discovered myself, was that one tends to grow with experience, and the best teachers are those who are continually growing, with new insights and new ideas. I think it is fair to say that no one grew more than these two men during the war and after, and everything they said or wrote reflected this development... Both Scott and Winkie began to think a lot harder about America and its problems and to explore our political 1 legal, social, and economic culture more seriously than they had previously... Scott began to analyze the American Constitution, its development through constitutional law and practice, and reflect upon a degree of corruption that had crept into our institutions by ignoring the early creative surge of the founding fathers. He singled out the role of the common law as one of the problems, and the growth of the corporation through its manipulation of those laws to the disadvantage of the public interest. He traced the history of corporations from their early colonial franchises into the all powerful mega-giants that exist today, bastions of private power, exercising extraordinary influence, not only in private markets, but also in public affairs ... 1 1 ... In the late 40 s Winkie wrote a famous pamphlet entitled 'Let's Join the Human Race/' in which he recognized many of the changes that were emerging in the postwar world, and the need for Americans and others to respond to these developments and to rethink our earlier and more limited and isolated view of the world and the human condition ... In many ways the New Program was incubated at Columbia University and the University of Chicago ... But neither [Columbia nor Chicago] abandoned the in-depth examination of contemporary America, its history and its culture, political and legal as well as literary and philosophical. .. ! know I will be admonished that some great American classics have already been added to the original Great Books list at St. John's. I'm aware of this ... 1 lsn t it about time we discovered some of the contemporary wisdom of our own [St. John's] founding fathers? While we continue to honor their names, we seem to ignore their developing ideas in their mature years, while adhering to an earlier curriculum as if it were etched in stone ... My message is not only to honor Scott Buchanan and Stringfellow Barr for the program they put into effect 50 years ago, but also to listen to what they were saying after they experienced a war that almost destroyed Western civilization ... In 50 years of my own efforts to grapple with this problem, I have discovered that the Constitution and the Federalist were only the very beginning of the American experience. They outline the rough parameters of the path the founding fathers intended us to travel. But the 20th and soon the 21st century finds that original blueprint very badly transformed ... Our present political and yes, social and even intellectual institutions were hammered out in the crucible of hard experience. To understand that transformation, and to become intelligent citizens of this country, and the world, as Winkie implored us to be, we are going to have to understand what took place in that transformation ... This does not mean scrapping the New Program, God forbid. It has been one of the great restorations of the roots of our American culture. But it does mean that now we need a wider focus, a broader understanding of that culture and that experience. Without it we are crippled in trying to understand what is going on in this country today, and what possibilities there are for changing this disintegration of values and goals. Scott began this learning process in his analysis of the Constitution and the corporation, and the impact of the common law on both of them. To brush this aside as if it never existed is not only an insult to our founding fathers, but a self-inflicted wound that robs us of our proper American birthright. As true liberal artists we cannot escape from this formidable Socratic challenge. Let the dialogue begin ... • ----- ---~ �Alumni Notes and Profiles. • • FROM THE COAL MINES OF WEST VIRGINIA To THE WoMEN's CONFERENCE IN BEIJING (with a stop at St. John's on the way) ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• BY SUS3AN BORDEN ust two weeks after receiving her master's degree from St. John's this past summer, Marat Moore rded a plane to China to attend the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. When the plane touched down in Shanghai, Moore found the yellow smoke hovering over the city overwhelmingly familiar. She identified its sulfurous smell as burning coal, a smell that Moore, a former coal miner, knew well. In 1977, Moore, a new graduate of Duke University, went to West Virginia to volunteer with Vista's flood recovery project. She helped dig mud out from houses, make repairs, publish a community newspaper, and secure funding for a housing project. While living in West Virginia, Moore found herself drawn to people who worked in the coal mines, admiring their collective tradition and struggle for justice. To understand their experience better, she visited the coal mines. ''At first I went underground to learn more about them," she says. "But I found that in the mines you get attached to the work and the people you're working with. You grow close to them because you have to trust them, in the end, for your very life." What started as a sympathetic visit became Moore's full-time occupation for nearly a year. After leaving her job in the mines, Moore continued to work for the United Mine Workers of America. She saw the miners' personal interdependence reflected in their political ap- 1 United Mine Workers department head. While working for the union, Moore witnessed a growing global awareness. "In the 1980's," she explains, "labor in the U.S. faced setbacks and women miners were concerned about layoffs. Yet despite these problems, when British mine workers went on strike, U.S. women mine workers found the resources and the will to support their British colleagues. They marched on picket lines, raised money, and helped publicize the strike. They discovered that they had more common ground than they'd realized some of the same corporations were involved on both sides of the Atlantic. "The experience in Britain made us think, as early as five years ago, about Beijing. We saw that our future was not simply protecting high wage jobs that already exist, but organizing people who have no protection, particularly low income women and people of color at the bottom of the economic ladder." As the Beijing conference approached, Moore contacted the Shaler Adams Foundation, a California foundation with a focus on human rights work. Shaler Adams funded her trip, and two weeks after completing the Graduate Institute, Moore was on her way to Beijing. "I was thankful to have come out of St. John's and gone to China, going from one rich experience to another," she says. "The conference was so rich •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Moore found herself thinking ofHegel's discussion ofthe power ofthe written word when she witnessed the police hassling journalists and writers. •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• proach. "Their political struggle seemed to grow from their experience of depending on one another in the mines. The mine working tradition is a collective tradition you don't often find in the United States. I found it interesting politically, socially, and psychologically." In 1991 she extended her interest from the professional to the familial: she married Steve Lindner, at the time a it was like being at a feast. There was so much diversity, of cultural things, celebration, singing, traditional dress, and impromptu performance, as well as political things." Amid the smorgasbord of experiences surrounding her, Moore found St. John's very much on her mind during the conference. "I thought about Mr. Sterling's precept on Hegel's Philosophy ofHistory. Much of the discussion in the precept was about China, an insular, static society at the time Hegel was writing, a place of absolute equality but no freedom." Moore also found herself thinking of Hegel's discussion of the power of the written word when she witnessed the police hassling journalists and writers. "Hegel discusses how the power of the written word is a strong part of the Chinese culture. It goes back so many years-the tradition of educated civilians elevated above the military, the stature given to poets," she says. "I imagine that they felt threatened by the journalists because they understood the power of the written word" Although her work with miners brought her to Beijing, Moore was not surprised that many of her thoughts were with St. John's. Far from seeking an abstract intellectual experience at the college, she went to St. John's in search of a more direct connection with people. Now that she has graduated from St. John's and returned from Graduate Institute alumna Marat Moore, fresh. from the mines in her pre-St. John's days. After graduating from.Duke and volunteering with Vista in West Virginia, she worked as a coal miner for a year. Beijing, she finds herself pulled towards teaching. "I would like to find a way to carry on the teaching methods of St. John's," she says. ''I'm interested in both the readings and the way discovery takes place in a group. I'd like to bring that experience to people it would not normally be available to, either people in rural areas, or disenfranchised groups." As Moore explores her new career in teaching, she is also putting the final touches on her book, Women in the Mines: Stories of Life and Work 1914-1994. The book, a collection of oral history and photography, will be published by Twain, a subsidiary of MacMillan. Twain has scheduled its release for this spring and aims to bring it out during Women's History Month in March. 9 �Alumni Notes and Profiles. 1945 Walter C. Paine (A) is happily retired and pursuing a lifelong interest in malacology-the study of mollusks. 1951 Boyd Kyle (A) a "cause person'' as a student, continues to-work for causes, especially animal rights and the humanization of the workplace. In his spare time, he says, he does investment banking. He has four living children (a fifth drowned young) and two grandchildren. 1952 Professor Joseph Manusov (A), retired from Temple University, is now Professor Emeritus at the university. 1964 Jeremy Leven (A), on the heels of his successful film "Don Juan de Marco,'' will write and direct a film for Castle Rock about the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre. He will shoot this film in Paris. He has written a script called "The Double" based on the Doestoevsky novella. He will produce it with Lili Zanuck, who also produced "Driving Miss Daisy,'' "The Sting,'' and "Jaws." Roman Polanski will direct and Jack Nicholson will star. The film is about a doppelganger, a double, who comes to bring his original back to the grave but then sees that his life would have been all right if he'd known how to live it, so he decides to live it for him. This film (made by Mandalay, a division of Columbia Pictures) will also be shot in Paris. Leven is writing a film for Robert Redford called "The Legend of Bagger Vance,'' about a golf match that takes place in 1931 in Savannah, Ga., between Bobby Jones, Walter Hagan, a local (played by Redford), and his caddy Bagger Vance (played by Morgan Freeman), who may or may not be God. Leven used a Johnnie, Jill Kasparek (A95), who's from Savannah, for the research. He's writing, Redford plans to direct (but if he decides not to, Leven will). Jake Ebert will produce (his other flicks have been academy award nominees, "Ghandi,'' "Chariots of Fire,'' and "The Killing Fields"). 1965 Milo H. Gibbons (A) has received the degree of Master of Arts from the University of Delaware. His coursework was in liberal studies. 1970 Father John Emerson (SF), recently stationed in Rome, and charged with the celebration of the Old Mass in the Church of St. Luke in the Forum, has • • been honored by the pretender to the throne of the two Sicilies with the Constantinian Order of St. George. 1974 Lt. Col. Erica Chaney King (A) reports that she is now the Commanding Officer of the Financial Management School located at the Marine Corps base at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. 1975 Stephen G. Gilles (A) has been appointed professor of law in the Quinnipiac College School of Law where he teaches torts, economic analysis of law, and legal regulation of education. He previously taught at the University of Chicago Law School and was a law clerk for the Hon. Sandra Day O'Connor and the Hon. Robert H. Bork 1977 Deborah W. Cohen (A) of Monkton, Maryland was married to Gregory L. Cochran in a small family wedding on November 22 at her brother's home in Corbett, Md. The couple will continue to reside in Monkton. Greg's daughters Maggie and Phoebe were in attendance. Judy Kistler (SF) married J.B. Robinson on October 17, 1995. Judy writes: "As a result of this happy marriage, I am now a proud grandmother!" Her address is 1204 South Florence, Springfield, MO 65807; 417-866-3898. 1978 Leo Pickens (A) and Valerie Pawlewicz (A89) were engaged this past August in France. They will hold a Quaker marriage ceremony in the Great Hall in September, 1996. 1979 Marjorie Allison (A) has moved to 1701 South Emerson Street, Denver, Colorado 80210. She was so deeply impressed by Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy that she has embarked upon a cimpaign to first meet and then marry Mr. Seth. Ms. Allison would appreciate any help fellow alumni could lend to this endeavor. 1981 Elizabeth Mills Acciani (SF) and Stephen Acciani (SF82) and their three children have left the land of milk and money for the land of lots of milk and no money. Their new address is 34 Browning Hill Road/Chatham, NY 12037 1982 Steve Sayre (SF) has moved. His new address is 655 Kansas Street, #304, San Francisco, CA 94107. 1983 Leslie Kay (SF) writes: "I finished my PhD (in biophysics) in November at Berkeley. My dissertation was entitled "Dynamic Interaction of Olfactory and Limbic Brain Regions During Olfactory Perception." I am now living in L.A. and am a Sloan Postdoctoral Fellow in theoretical neurobiology at Caltech (California Institute of Technology, Pasadena). I love what I do, which includes experimental physiology, chaos theory, nonlinear dynamics, philosophy, psychology, and medical research. It's also interesting being back in L.A. where I grew up. I welcome calls or email from any of my old SJ C friends, and I apologize for not returning phone calls the past six months, but the dissertation disrupted everything." She can be reached cl o Biology/CNS, 139-74, Caltech, Pasadena, CA 91125 or by phone at work: 818-395-2799; home: 213-625-8465; or by email at LKAY@dope.caltech. edu or LKAY@artemis.caltech.edu. 1986 Writes Jennifer Flynn Israel (A): ''A gorgeous new baby boy was born to Sandy (Sanford Israel, A85) and me. His official name is Jason Flynn Israel, but he is known more familiarly under a number of handles including Jake, Jakeroo, Jakelope, Squishy, Little Loony, Varming, and Chomper Boy. Please do not presume to use any of these nicknames, however, until you have earned it-by making him smile or, even better, getting him to go to sleep so his Mom stops having those sleep-deprivation hallucinations which, cute though they may be, can be somewhat annoying when you are driving." Their address: 242 E. 19th St., Apt 13H, New York, NY 10003; e-mail: 102670.304@compuserve.com. 1987 Mary Anderson Britain (A) and husband Bill report the birth of their second son, Beau, in April. Barbara Hum (SF) is a first year medical student at Georgetown University. 1988 On April 1, 1995 Paul Argodale (A) married Jarmila Patzelova in Brno, in the Czech Republic. Argodale lived in the Czech Republic for five years, first teaching English in the medical school of Masaryk University and later was involved in a joint venture with the Swiss-Swedish heavy engineering firm ABB Asea, Brown, Boveri. He is now living in New York with his wife and stepdaughter, working on �an MA degree in Applied Linguistics at Teachers College, Columbia University. Juliet Rothman (GI) writes: "My son chose to terminate life support after a diving accident, and I have written a book about our journey to this difficult decision." The book, Saying Goodbye to Daniel is available in Barnes & Noble, SuperCrown, Borders, and Waldenbooks, as well as many other bookstores. 1989 Valerie Pawlewicz (A) and Leo Pickens (A78) were engaged this past August in France. They will hold a Quaker marriage ceremony in the Great Hall in September, 1996. (See notes for 1978-it's a two-fer.) Recently seen on campus was Charlie Schlueter (A) telling tall tales of the ups and downs of road life as tour manager for the legendary bluesman Clarence "Gatemouth'' Brown. Mr. Brown and his band were opening for Eric Clapton that night at D.C.'s US AIR Arena, so Charlie had time to catch up with old friends and tell everyone about touring the eastern United States in a 40' Silver Eagle bus with a bad habit of breaking down. He also managed the tour throughout Europe. Charlie brings news of his parents, who have also been singing the blues. Hazel Schleuter (A69) and the Delta Ramblers have just recorded a CD "Live at JazzFest." Larry (A67) and Hazel spent a month in France providing music for the Caminga Dance Troupe. Maureen Mericle (AGI) has spent the last two and a half years working for AID, focusing on Sudan. ''After being shot at twice in Sudan during USAID food missions, I enjoyed a skindiving vacation at Watamu, Kenya," she writes. J. Christoph Amberger (AGI) and John Forde (AGI92) were put in charge of the in-house financial products of Agora Financial Publishing of Baltimore. Among the products they now manage as group publishers are the newsletters "Taipan'' (an internationally oriented investment and entrepreneurship newsletter) and "Tax-Wise Money," as well as the new product launch of ''American Wealth." Their editorial and research team includes P. Mitchell Prothero (AGI94), Haydn Sweterlitsch (AGI95) and James Passin (A94). 1992 Sharon Moscinski (A) received a grant to study Polish language and East-Central European studies at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. Alumni who would like to get in LORNA CAHALL: FOSTERING A CREATIVE SPIRIT •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• L orna Cahall, A59, is the kind of artist everyone would like to be who wants to be an artist-she follows where her inspiration leads her to produce art for art's sake. She experiments with imagery and methods, considers "painting for the market" a curse, and recently created artwork that is used in church services. For many years after St. John's, Ms. Cahall was involved with leading others to express themselves. After receiving an MA in art history, she taught art and art history at the University of Maryland, and studio art at Howard Community College (outside Baltimore). "For about 15 years I taught in the Open University, an interdisciplinary program at the University of Maryland," she says. "I ran seminars, but they were not at all like St. John's seminars. Students are used to listening to lectures and then coming back with what the authority has said. When I was teaching I found it to be a burden to lead people to looking at things from more than one point of view." She finally decided that she needed to devote more time and effort to developing her own vision, so she quit teaching. For several years she had a studio at Savage Mills, along with other artists who work in a variety of media. "I realized that developing my own art was hard work. When I left teaching and made the transition into my own work it was just agony," she says. When she talks about her art, Ms. Cahall uses the word "creativ- touch, or who will be passing through, can contact her at Jagiellonian University/Polonia Institute, Rm. 208/ 30-252 Krakow/UL. Jodlowa 13/Poland. Her e-mail address is Moscinski@APUS.FILG.UJ.EDU.PL Lisbeth Fouse (A) has been working as assistant to the director for Terry Gilliam of Monty Python fame. She worked with Mr. Gilliam on his latest project "Twelve Monkeys." The movie was filmed in Philadelphia and Baltimore and stars Bruce Willis, Brad Pitt, and Madeline Stowe. Anne H. Boynton (SF) writes that she and her partner, Jane Canulette, had a commitment ceremony and celebration in August. "The meditative ceremony was on top of a grassy mesa overlooking the Rio Grande Gorge Lorna Cahall, A59, (top} taught at the University of Maryland before deciding to devote time to developing her own artwork. Shown is her painting "Cold Day with Snow" (below). ity" freely. "I am more concerned with the process, meaning, and social context of art than its use as a valuable object," she says. Creativity for her means being true to what is inside the artist; the expressive process, she says, should be brought un- north of Santa Fe. The celebration following was held at nearby Embudo Station restaurant on the river banks, complete with a folk music trio and really good food and drink," she says. Among those attending were Laura O'Keefe (SF), Marlene Stutzman (SF89) and her husband Phil Potter, Theresa Mullen (SF91), and former Annapolis tutor Paul Antal. Anne writes that she is in the graduate architecture program at the University of New Mexico, "after watching over others' shoulders at Spears Architects, in Santa Fe, where I had a great job as a sort of Jill-of-all-trades (except design) for the last couple of years." Her address is P.O. Box 4043, Santa Fe, NM 87502; e-mail at anneboy@unm.edu. Ted (A) and Sarah (A93) Naff are der the control of knowledge of form and color. Thus beauty in art is a function of the artist's striving, regardless of a work's final marketability. Examples of her recent works include a set of prints of the stations of the cross, produced for her church, St. Philips in Laurel, Md. She built plates with "found" materials, then inked and printed the images, pressing paper into the plate. This process, known as a colagraph, is "a poor man's medium-inexpensive," and yet the final product is something that is being used in a public setting for worship. The social context for art in this case gives it an extra layer of meaning. She also paints in acrylic, favoring abstractions of landscapes, birds, and favorite places. Collage is another favorite medium; "I use acrylic on paper with found articles like handmade paper, textural fabrics, and rope, sealed with acrylic," she says. How does having gone to St. John's, which in the 1950's offered no formal instruction in or emphasis on visual art, affect Lorna Cahall's work? "I have a strong feeling that my St. John's education was a wonderful gift," she says. "There were so many things wrong with St. John's, but the education definitely did make free men and women by means of books and a balance ... Wrestling with the material, I think, made me courageous. I called on that courage when I quit teaching and went out on my own. And St. John's fosters creativity. When they give you the Odyssey to read and nothing else, you have to be creative to deal with it." • -by Barbara Goyette now settled happily in Seattle. They write: "New York and graduate school were not to our taste!" Ted has finished the first quarter of school studying acupuncture and oriental medicine. Sarah is also currently studying oriental medicine. They invite anyone interested in alternative medicine, particularly oriental medicine, to give them a call. 1993 Alex and Vanessa Ellerman (AGI and A, respectively) recently moved to San Diego. Alex is a Navy search and rescue pilot and Vanessa is in her first year at USD Law School. They visit Continued on page 20 �HANG ON FOR DEAR LIFE Continued from page 19 Annapolis whenever they can. James Propis (A93) and William Edelglass (SF93) are both doctoral students in Emory University's philosophy department. James says, "Due to the strong emphasis on historical philosophy, especially Continental Philosophy, Emory attracts St. John's graduates, and one-quarter of the graduate students in coursework are Johnnies." Both James and William can be reached at: 684 Moreland Ave. #2, Atlanta, GA 30306; (404)8880972; jpropis@emory.edu. Bob Fitzgerald (SF) is in his first year of law school at St. Mary's University in San Antonio, Texas. He said he would love to hear from classmates. His telephone number is 210-436-3699. 1994 Colleen Hatch (A) is a Quest volunteer at the Good Shepherd Ministries in Washington, D. C. Quest is a full-time volunteer service program that offers an experience in Christian community living and service to the poor. She is assistant director of an after-school program for low income children in grades 4-6. Ms. Hatch is also coaching a basketball team of 11and 12-year-old girls. 1995 Zdravko Daskalov (A) is a faculty intern in the math department at the Culver Academies. He is responsible for teaching classes, serving as a role model for students, supervising students in dormitories, and coaching varsity, junior varsity, and freshman athletic teams. Laura Gianniny (A) is currently studying for her masters in education and Latin at Vanderbilt University. She was married on June 24 to James Joyner and they are living in Clarksville, Tenn. Dear Alumni: A couple of years ago an alumnus, Dr. Dale Mortimer, who has spent 17 remarkable years away from us, came to visit me. We had a wonderful talk, and before leaving he said that he wouldn't have taken the opportunity to look in ifI hadn't invited all traveling alumni to do just that. He said I should repeat my invitation in the Reporter every year. So I'm doing just that: You will be warmly welcomed and your stories will be eagerly heard. Eva TH Brann, Dean The JF Journey •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• BY JOHN SCHROEDER T his January St. John's will wel come a as it does every year, new group of students onto campus for the spring semester. These JFs Qanuary freshmen in Santa Fe, or Febbies as the Naptowners call them) must not only make the transition to college life, but they must do it halfway through the year, when even fall freshmen already have their feet on the ground. You may say "What's the big deal, lots of students do that," but as in all things, St. John's tends to be just a bit different. Because of the nature of the program, JF s have to cover in a semester plus part of the summer, what the other freshman cover in two semesters. For example, JFs have three seminars on the Iliad rather than four-meaning about 145 pages of reading per seminar compared to 109 for other students. They have similarly intensive assignments in all their classes. Many JFs enroll in mid-year for financial reasons. "I applied late and I was borderline," said Paul Lopez of Menlo Park, California, currently a sophomore. "I could have started in August but financial aid would have been a little more risky, so instead of waiting another year to start, I figured I'd want to start as soon as possible." Paul Lopez noticed a difference between JFs and other students, which he attributed more to January enrollment than the personalities of the students themselves. "JFs are more intense, they're more involved with academics,'' he said. When they arrive, everyone tells them to "be prepared to face the consequences,'' so they buckle down more on their work, and are more concerned about getting an education than about getting "the whole college experience." JFs form a more cohesive group than anyone else on campus. They are together in every class. They eat, study and socialize together, with the rest of the school happening around them. While entering St. John's mid-year is challenging, it also has its advan"It's like the maelstrom of the tages. new school year has already stopped and everyone on campus is set in their ways, they have figured out where they want to be, where they want to go, what they want to do, and the JFs just fall into that. You still have some surprises in store, but it's a lot more steady and calming, rather than just being a freshman and being frantic about everything," said John Carone, from Corvallis, Oregon. Another unique feature about the JF year is the JF summer. The JF s spend 10 weeks filling in their second semester, with only the graduate stu- dents and summer conference guests on campus. "It was weird, but I liked it,'' Paul Lopez said. "It wasn't this mad house. I got to focus more on my studies, although there was definitely cabin fever among us." The summer session further strengthens the bond among class members. With only 17 JFs in Santa Fe last summer, they became ••••••••••••••••• ]Fs form a more cohesive group than anyone else on campus. They are together in every class. They eat, study, and socialize together, with the rest ofthe school happening around them. ••••••••••••••••• better friends and got to know each other even more than they did during the regular year. The other advantage to the summer term is that there is only a two-week break between the end of the summer term and the beginning of fall semes- ter, rather than three months. So sophomore JFs are working with information still fresh in their minds. Paul Lopez said he noticed in his seminar that the JFs were the ones who tended to start the discussion and lead the class at the beginning of the fall semester. The JFs' familiarity can sometimes be a disadvantage, said John Carone. "You can predict how people are going to react and how they are going to say it,'' John Carone said. "The seminars I have now seem a lot more alive. Now I have to make my arguments less directed so they apply to people I don't necessarily know, whereas before I could gauge my answer to one particular person, or group of people, knowing what they were thinking on the subject." According to Lopez and Carone, the small class size and the friendships that formed were the most important features of the JF experience. Carone says that for him, what he learned has more to do with St. John's in general than with being a JE "Rather than isolating yourself with a particular group, I think you should pick out where you stand personally and go from there, then figure out where you belong... Oh, and hang on for dear life." e ST.JOHN'S COLLEGE Santa Fe, New Mexico PARENTS, FRIENDS, ALUMNI Join us this summer to read and discuss some of the greatest literature, philosophy and opera of all time, explore one of the world's most historic cities, visit pueblos and archeological sites, attend great opera, hike, fish and much more. JULY 21 - 27 Plato, Republic I Dante, Purgatorio I Mahabharata-Bhagavad Gita JULY 28 - AUGUST 3 Opera, Don Giovanni I Euripides, Bacchae, Medea, Electra Rousseau, On the Origins of Inequality AUGUST 4 - l0 Aristotle, Ethics I Opera, Madama_ Butterfly, The Rake's Progress Shakespeare, Tragedies (Participants choose one topic per week) Tuition from $1150 a week includes room and board. Write to: Summer Classics-R, Sc John's College, Santa Fe, NM 87501 (505) 984-6104 �The Program~ • • ON THE LANGUAGE TUTORIAL Excerpts from the Dean's Statement ofEducational Policy, 1995-96 by Eva T. H Brann T his, my last Statement of Educational Policy, gets down to brass tacks, not in the sense of offering many concrete proposals, but in the sense of forsaking large topics, like the character of our community (1991) and the nature of our teaching (1993), for a particular part of the Program. Being fresh out of global thoughts, I asked the Instruction Committee on what subject it would be good to incite a college-wide discussion, and they told me to report on the language tutorial. This moment seemed right for such discussion 1. on general principle, 2. because we have a large number of fairly new tutors, 3. because we, that is, the whole college on both campuses, have just abolished the French Reading Knowledge Eexamination, 4. because both in our 1993 Self-Study and in the annual conversation of the Instruction Committee with the Student Committee on Instruction the language tutorial was a subject of pertinent criticism. Perhaps I should apologize for never having made, nor now seizing my last chance to make, proposals for grand changes. No one, however, seems to be looking for them, and I am fond of the "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" mode. It isn't broke, as it seems to me, though it's creaky in places. I sense that, at least at the moment, we thrive on continual review in principle and small but concrete incremental improvements. [The section numbered "1. History" is not included.] 2. Purposes of the Language Tutorial The founder and re-founder of the program have both insisted that our two tutorials spring from the same ground, Mr. Buchanan by making the trivium extend into mathematics, Mr. Klein by claiming that the intellectual disciplines, of which he distinguished four (see below, under the fifth purpose), extend similarly over all parts of the program. We might, however, note that for both men the arts and disciplines named are primarily applicable to speech, which justifies the fact that the language tutorial almost always precedes the mathematics tutorial in our literature. The purpose of the foreign languages has been from the beginning that students might "learn something of the nature of language in general and their own in particular" -by way of comparison, through being compelled to pay the laborious attention to detail required by a new language, and above all, from the effort to preserve meanings expressed in one language in another. The list below is collected from documents beginning with Buchanan's "Search" of 1937, the founding year of the New Program, from early and recent catalogues, from dean's statements, and from self-studies. It is worth remarking that the order of purposes has not changed much over the years except that in the earlier catalogues it is much more brusquely stated than later on. For example, the 1958 catalogue (dear to me because it is the first one in which I appear as a faculty member) says under "Primary Aims": "The primary purpose of the language tutorials is thus not the mastery of any foreign language,'' and explicitly mentions competence as a "Secondary Aim." This listing is thus in roughly descending order of importance, at least for the main items. 1. Inquiry into language as a uniquely human capability for uttering thought, as the "discourse of reason" (Klein). 2. Close reading of texts, supported by all the skills of language. 3. Acquisition of those skills, traditionally grammar, rhetoric, logic. 4. Use of those skills in support of the more extensive seminar readings. 5. Development of intellectual disciplines such as discussion, translation, demonstration, experimentation (Klein). 6. Development of the intellectual faculties, such as acuteness and discernment, necessary for interpreting language. 7. Development of the intellectual virtues, such as care and meticulousness, necessary for reading texts. 8. Development of the sensibility and civilizing of the sentiments. 9. Increasing familiarity with English reading and writing (1993 Self-Study). 10. "Breaking the spell of familiarity" of speech (Klein). 11. Incitement to original literary creation (Buchanan). 12. Training of rote memory, since "memory is the seminal reservoir of the intellect" (Buchanan). 13. Language competence-last in importance, first in the concern it has caused us. I think it would do us a lot of good to review these purposes, for the sake both of recollection and revision. Although all of them seem to me good, and the emphasis given to any of them seems to me inevitably and rightly, a matter of each tutor's choice, we can never be finished with these considerations-as with anything else about the Program. I placed language competence last, however, to raise a specific discussion about this 60year old thorn in our side. Is the learning of the hard facts of Greek and French really mostly ancillary for us? Is the learning that serves reflection first and primary or is it first and least in importance? The matter will be raised concretely under "Problems." [Sections "3. The Present Language Program" and "4. Some Differences between Annapolis and Santa Fe" are not included.] 5. Problems The Greek word used universally for the subject matter of our second tutorial, "mathematics," seems to justify its meaning-"what can be learned"-in our experience. Although we tinker with it as we do with every part of the Program, it comes in for far less criticism than do the language, laboratory and music classes. Language has attracted the most hearfelt and trenchant critique, partly because it is what the students do longest, besides the mathematics. From the alumni survey of the 1952 Self-Study I cull these complaints: 1. There is a problem with the division of time between dose reading and acquisition of language skills. 2. There is not enough language knowledge. 3. There is not enough attention paid to the formal and stylistic side of poetry. 4. St. John's concentrates too much on language as avehicle of thought and not enough on linguistic structure. 5. There is not enough writing. These are about the same complaints we heard from students in the Student Committee on Instruction forums of the last few years. While there is generally comfort in discovering something not subject to today's ravenous change, this particular stability is perhaps not so pleasing. I cull from the 1993 Self-Study the main difficulties raised by tutors: 1. The best and the weakest students are regrettably far apart in their language learning, partly because of weak linguistic preparation. Consequently, in the sophomore and senior years some students are not prepared for intensive reading of Greek and French works. 2. Time given to drill is time lost from reflection. 3. In the sophomore and senior year there is less of a common program than might be desirable. 4. The junior year is too full because the Moliere play has been moved back from the senior year. 5. Not enough time is spent on the metric aspect of poetry. A most cogent critique came from the Instruction Committee's meeting with the Student Committee on Instruction in May of this year. They asked to discuss the language program with us. The burden of their well-delivered message was: 1. The language tutorial, particularly its English component, is more highly esteemed the more stable it is. (What they actually said with conviction was that this part of the tutorial was least respected of any except the music tutorial, which had been-until the recently revised music curriculum began to tal<:e hold-taken lightly for just this reason: that it was felt to be fluid and uncertain.) 2. They pleaded for common texts, especially in the sophomore year; they said that seniors do not like open-endedness but tolerate it better. 3. They reported that because of tutorial idiosyncrasy, the Greek reading of the first term spills into the second and displaces sometimes the logic segment, sometimes the Shakespeare play. They wish that tutors would agree on one major Shakespeare play, preferably taken from the seminar, so the students can work together across classes. 4. They ask (most pertinently) how the archon meetings work when tutors are doing different readings. 5. They say that students do not prepare poetry assignments because there are no concrete and time-tested exercises associated with the poems, which are chosen ad libitum by tutors. In my experience, no message from students to us has ever been clearer: We should control our individual preferences and stabilize the language program so as to promote common study for the students and a common teaching tradition for the tutors. Why do the problems of the language tutorial appear so intractable? Partly it is because they aren't really so bad-even the sharpest critics concede that the language tutorial is a well-conceived and largely successful part of the Program. The aspect one would think most vulnerable, the year and a half of Greek study, is almost never questioned; many students become attentive to the nature and successful with the use of their own and a foreign language to a respectable degree; their writing does improve-and all of this in the face of the American students' often deficient preparation and legendary resistance to language learning. Partly it is because the failings of this tutorial display the vices of the college's virtues: The "vehicular" use of language is really our insistence that matter come before style; we are, rightly, primarily a conversing, not a paper-writing school; we recognize that the tutor's individual taste requires more scope in language teaching than in other parts of the Program. What all these considerations add up to is, to my mind, once more that small improvements in many places are to be preferred over wholesale reformations. 6. Suggestions Here is a laundry list of things we might do, gathered from tutors, students, and my own observation. 1. Since the college-wide French Reading Examination has been abolished (with good reason, as I think) the responsibility for the student's language competence falls on individual tutors; we should remind ourselves of this fact (on the assumption that whatever rank we assign competence in the order of importance, in the first terms of the freshman and the junior years at least it is one of our main concerns). There may be more effective ways to accomplish the drill work and the monitoring of progress. Jim Cohn, a colleague in Santa Fe who has an interest in the elementary language teaching of "living" languages (not that Greek seems to me really very dead), knows about a training program that emphasizes the hearing and speaking of French. It is, he writes in a letter to me, an efficient way to teach basic grammar and might be run by student assistants. I suggest that next year's campus exchange committee-we're hoping to make it a permanent institution-might take on the question of language learning. 2. We should reemphasize the importance of the weekly tutor's meetings even when the group is very experienced, not only to read together but to work out stable sequences to recommend to the Instruction Committee and to propagate a teaching tradition for the texts adopted. Stability, even if it is sometime restrictive, does seem to be important to the students' sense of our seriousness. 3. We should try to get poetry manuals for all years doing poetry; they would contain a canonical collection of poems (that is, poems students can expect each other to know) and suggestions for exercises use~ to tutors in ensuring that students do some specific preparation for class. 4. Within two years we will, with the renovation of the old library, have a writing center, and an even more effective writing assistance program. I think, however, we would help ourselves by coming to a general agreement-countering a venerable tradition-that writing papers is far more important than having them read. There should, of course, be paper conferences, but the duty to have them should, once and for all, be agreed not to Note: For a complete copy of the Dean's limit the papers assigned. I Statement of Educational Policy, write to am not even persuaded that Eva Brann, St. John's College, Box 2800, students read written com- Annapolis, Maryland 21404. Continued on page 23 �Campus Life. • • SANTA FE'S RECIPE FOR SUCCESS DO IT YOURSELF •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Start with fresh pastries, add steaming cappuccino and a touch ofFlamenco guitar as the sun sets over the Jemez mountains, and you get the new Santa Fe coffee shop-now under college management I t's bad news for those with a weakness for fresh-baked cinnamon rolls or anyone trying to break the caffeine habit, but for most on the Santa Fe campus, recent changes in the food service operation are more than welcome. For years, faculty, students and staff complained of poor quality food and service. A number of steps taken to correct the problems, including a complete change in food-service providers, seemed only to make matters worse. Few students were gathering in the coffee shop for conversation, lunch, or a snack All that changed this fall when St. John's took over the food service itself. The change was due in large part to the efforts of Joe Shaffer, director of operations and auxiliary services, with the whole-hearted support of Santa Fe President John Agresto. Mr. Shaffer, Mai Grant (left) and Penelope Benekos enjoy a holiday atmosphere in the Dining Hall just before winter break. who assumed the newly created position on August 1, 1995, was handed oversight of the food service operation and, after an extensive review, he recommended the college cancel the current contract and assume management of the operation. "The items of concern were poor sanitation, poor management, mediocre food quality, a lack of imagination in food preparation and presentation, and the total lack of any atmosphere in the coffee shop. Other than that, things weren't so bad," Mr. Shaffer said. "Our goals when we took over the program were to have impeccable sanitation, a management system that met the needs of the faculty, students and staff, and to develop the coffee shop into a true meeting place." The change took place mid-semester. On September 30, food service was still under the management of an outside firm. On October 1, St. John's was in charge. The transition included hiring an entirely new food service staff, remodeling the coffee-shop and changing menus. "Ideally we would have liked to have changed over during the winter break, but we felt the conditions were unacceptable for what the students were paying for board," he said. Under the direction of Paul Perrier, the new executive chef and food service manager, and Steve Garcia, the new sous chef, significant improvements have already been made in both the coffee shop and dining hall. Paul Perrier is a French-trained and master pastry chef with extensive restaurant experience in France. This is evident to anyone visiting the coffee shop where trays of fresh-baked croissants, cinnamon rolls and muffins are available daily. Steve Garcia specializes in French and Southwest nouvelle cuisine, bringing things like corn huskwrapped tamales to the dining hall. The coffee shop now serves espresso and coffee drinks, from lattes and cappuccino to flavored coffees. Fruit drinks and a full menu also are available. Similar innovations are being made in the dining hall. "It's not uncommon to find eggplant and artichoke dishes or authentic Southwest cuisine. Additionally, we meet regularly with students who have special dietary needs; we have a large population of vegetarians, for instance," Mr. Shaffer said. Santa Fe senior David Duncan said he particularly enjoys the flexibility of the food service plan. "I like it that we have options, and that we can get a salad now without having to buy a whole meal." Beyond improvements in food quality, the service has changed dramatically. The new members of the staff, employed by the college rather than an outside firm, are part of the college community. In addition, the coffee shop is run almost entirely by students. Katie Lynn, a junior who works the coffee shop counter, said the coffee shop simply is a more pleasant place to be. "People come and sit for longer," she said. "And it's going to get even better. It's also nice to be able to get a decent cup of coffee." Indeed, the atmosphere has changed. The coffee shop was re- Continued on page 23 ANNAPOLIS' GRANDMOTHER-STUDENT After raising a family, junior Judith Neely finds an intellectual home at St. john's. "'\Vlhen the assisW tam deans interviewed applicants for the position of resident assistant, Judith Neely struck . them as the perfect candidate: a thoughtful student, a voice of reason in the community, and a friendly face in the dorms. If that wasn't enough to land her the job, Neely had an entirely different set of qualifications that made her a shoo-in: she is a mother of four, a grandmother of four, and a foster mother to four. With her young Judith Neely, an Annapolis junior, has been a "library addict 11 face, hair in ponytail, for most of her life, so she feels right at home in the reading and jeans-cumroom of Woodward Hall. Photo by Keith Harvey. sweatshirt style of dress, it's hard to pick Neely out of a crowd of Johnnies as the grandmother of the group. Yet Neely decided to attend St. John's after raising her four children to adulthood. Her children grown, her interest in her profession (accounting) dwindling, she found herself looking for a new direction in her life. Neely considered training for a career in healthcare, hoping to work in a third world country. While discussing these plans, a friend made a simple suggestion that led her to pursue a different path. "He asked me to look inside myself and see what would fulfill me," Neely recalls. "I said that I love to write and read, and he said 'why don't you go to college?' " Soon Neely found herself in the library studying college guides. When she read about St. John's in The Fifty Best Liberal Arts Colleges, she knew she had found the right place. "When I read about St. John's I said this was the place for me: the program, the lack of tests, the small size, and no SAT! But really, it was the program that interested me." Neely arranged a prospective visit, but was nervous about how she'd fit in. Not only was she old enough to be the mother of most students, she knew she'd stand out in another way, as one of a handful of black students on a mostly white campus. Fortunately, her fears were short-lived. "When I came here as a prospective, I thought 'this is home, this is me, I feel so at ease here.' I didn't think I'd have to be concerned about my age difference, or race difference, or any other difference. It seemed like everybody here was different somehow, everyone was in their own personal minority group." When Neely enrolled, she opted to live in the dorms. Although most older students prefer to live off campus, after 24 years of raising a family, Neely is happy to have someone take care of her. "It's more practical. I hate to cook and shop. Just being in a grocery store make me nauseous," she says. Her commitment to campus life is appreciated by the assistant deans, and now that she's a resident assistant, the students on her hall benefit from her wisdom and experience. As a resident assistant, Neely serves as problem solver, mediator, advisor, and role model to her floor. She helps roommates work out their problems, counsels students suffering bouts with angst, and guides freshmen through the academic maze of the St. John's program. Sophomore Suzanne Crane was pleased to end up on Neely's floor. "She's been great ~ith any problems on the hall. She understands that problems will happen and she has enough experience to relax about it and let everyone know that things will work out in the end," Crane says. Neely's contributions to the college are not limited to campus life. In the classroom, her insight and experience are appreciated. "She is very good in class," says Amy Robertson who was in Neely's freshman seminar and lab. ''A lot of us came into seminar with a lot of assumptions, but Judith's experiences could stop our assumptions dead in their tracks." • -by Sus3an Borden �THE REPORTER Obituaries. 23 • • of the house, as much a joint project of Paul and Vannie as the garden, was Paul A. Lowdenslager died on Decema small paradise of comfort and cultiber 27, 1995 at the age of 63. He bevation-simple, light and with somelonged to the Annapolis class of 1955. ~ thing for the eye and ear everywhere. I He took his Master's degree at the remember the delight of waking up in University of Dallas in philosophy and a new addition Paul had built together literature, and his doctorate at North- 1 with Vannie's brother Dorik, to gaze at ern Illinois University in political phithe fine proportions and handsome losophy. His teaching life was devoted woodwork of the room. Everywhere to the Western State College of Colothere were intriguing found objects, and rado in Gunnison. books galore. The bedside reading chosen Paul and his wife Vannie both have fur me was always memorable. Last time, extensive ties to St. John's. Paul's in this haven of soundmind-ednesss, I was brother David and Vannie's two given Huysmans' slim classic of the brothers Dorik and Michael.Mechau, Decadence, Against Nature. There were as well as Michael's wife Blakely who always musical discoveries. Many years ago is Michael Littleton's sister, are all I was particularly enchanted by one of Paul graduates of the college. and Vannie's out-of-print records, some I began to know him and Vannie Scottish ballads set by Beethoven, and on more closely when they invited me to my last visit Paul made me a tape, which I visit them in Gunnison on my way to now cherish doubly. or from teaching in the Graduate InAll day long there would be widestitute at Santa Fe. I was there last ranging conversations, punctuated by summer after attending the summer gracious, simple meals, and Paul Board meeting. Paul was a little thinwould often speak of the creeping inner and suffering from back pain, but tellectual famine in his own school he looked and acted much as he aland his own battle to provide his stuways had-like a competent outdoorsdents with more solid fare. He was a man. In earlier years, I remember, he passionate and gallant teacher, one would go to a nearby creek and catch who knew by heart one of St. John's us a stringer of trout for lunch. great lessons: that nothing matters as Those visits-and how glad I am much as what you do here and now in that I resumed them just in timeyour own place. Vannie told me that would begin with the prelude of a he expended his waning energies in spectacular drive into Gunnison, and teaching well into December. The efthen rise in a crescendo of pleasure. fect of his carefully thought-out The pleasure was not only that of being courses in political theory and constiso warmly received but of entering into tutional law will not be lost to his a little preserve of civilization. school, for colleagues have established The house was unassuming outthe Paul A. Lowdenslager Memorial side, though it was surrounded by a Scholarship in Political Theory and beautiful garden; I remember from Constitutional Law (Western State last summer especially a stepped bank College of Colorado Foundation, of various flowers, laid out to form the Gunnison, CO 81231). visual base of the long mountain Vannie says she will stay in their house. range in the distance. But the inside -Eva T. H Brann, Dean Paul A. Lowdenslager Samuel Brown, tutor Samuel Brown died Thursday, November 2, 1995 in Nashville, Tennessee. Mr. Brown taught in Annapolis from 1956-1965 and in Santa Fe from 1965-1989. He is survived by his son, Jamie, and his daughter, Becky. A memorial was held at St. John's College in Santa Fe on Saturday, November 18. Fauneil Rinn, professor Fauneil Rinn (87SGI) who was in the forefront of change at San Jose State University and in the national world of women's studies, died of cancer on November 24, 1995, at the Monterey Hospice in California. She was sixty-nine. Known to her friends as Fanny, she was a professor of political science at San Jose State University for 35 years. During her tenure, she served as assistant dean of graduate studies and research, associate dean of undergraduate studies and provost of the university's New College. Always working to advance the cause of women in academia, Ms. Rinn was a founding member of California Women. in Higher Education in 1973 (and president in 1976), and a founding member of the National Women's Studies Association in 1977. She also was the Coordinator for women's studies at SJSU. Born in Boulder, Colorado, Ms. Rinn graduated from the University of Cincinnati, later receiving an M.S. in Journalism from Columbia University, an M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from The University of Chicago, and an M.A. in liberal arts from St. John's College. She also was a regular participant in the St. John's College Summer Classics program in Santa Fe. She is survived by a sister, Alice M.R. Fundingsland of Colorado; a brother, Michael M. Rinn of Illinois; and three nephews. Memorial contributions may be made to St. John's College in Santa Fe. Noted: William E. Reese (A34) died September 19, 1995 William K. Flora (A35) died October 29, 1995 . As o memorial to Mr. Venable, The Meem Library in Santo Fe is now accepting contributions to the BRUCE VENABLE LITURGICAL MUSIC COLLECTION FUND Donations in his memory can be mailed to: The Bruce Venable Liturgical Music Fund St. John's College 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca Santa Fe, NM 87501 For more information, please call 505-984-6098 Continued from page 21 Continued from page 24 Continued from page 22 ments (tending in any case to be illegible scrawls). I think we should find all sorts of ways of having · the writing assignments frequently done and efficiently dispatched: some just thrown away, some self-critiqued by re-writing, some read by classmates, some by writing assistants, and of course, some discussed in a conference with the tutor. It seems to be the case that writing assignments pertinent to students' current preparations are particularly engaging to them. 5. We should review and stabilize the logic segment of the sophomore year. 6. We should stay in closer touch with Santa Fe through the deans, the Joint Instruction Committee, the campus exchange committees and individually. The dean's office will gladly fund acquisitions of manuals, phone calls, and the like. Here e-mail will eventually be helpful, I guess. goauche and pastel on paper entitled "Collections ... 100 Butterflies." Ms. Chandler has studied international relations and history at Rutgers University, Oxford and the London School of Economics, and art at Belle Arte and Instituto Allende, both in Mexico. She now works on her paintings full-time, following her own instincts and style. She has appeared in numerous one-person and group exhibitions since 1980, and has works in several collections, including Texas Instruments Corporate Headquarters in Plano, Texas, the Ronald McDonald House in Houston, Texas, and First City National Bank, also in Houston. Ms. Chandler's exhibit will open with a reception from 5-7 p.m. Friday, February 23 in the Fireside Lounge, and continue through March 28. April will feature the third annual student art exhibit which will open April 5 and continue through April 27. For more information on the exhibits or the guild, contact Ginger Roherty at 505/984-6099. -by john Schroeder painted, partitions were removed to enhance the sense of openness, and all the tables were refinished. Student art decorates the walls, and large plants were added to the room. Monthly entertainment also is a new feature of the coffee shop. In November, for instance, wellknown flamenco guitarist Rubin Romero performed for a large crowd of students. Overall, changes to the food service operation have received positive feedback from all quarters. "We have seen greater staff, fuculty and student use of all our food service operations. And although we're pleased with our first step, we're not sitting back," said Mr. Shaffer. -by Lesli Allison 7. Speculations for the future It seems unlikely to me that the language program, any more than the Program as a whole, will undergo great changes in the coming decade. There are three reasons that make it so. 1. There is no major, univocal dissatisfaction with what we have. Criticisms circle around the present curriculum on this side and that, a sure sign that we have found if not the happy medium then at least a workable one. Our watchword seems to be here as always to do better what we already do. 2. The faculty is too fully occupied and over-occupied with the demands of the present Program to want to invest much time in the cloudcuckooland of curricular revision. 3. It is by no means clear that there could, at this time, arise simultaneous impulses for the same major instructional proposal on both campuses. Maybe later. Nonetheless I can't resist reminding the faculty of a plan for a fairly radical restructuring of the language program proposed by Tom Slakey many years before he became dean, a plan that I have never been able to let go. He thought we should have only one foreign language, Greek, which we should study over four years in the slow, prolonged way that really sticks. The main study would be English. We would read not only poems and short prose, but novels. We would parse, scan, analyze, paraphrase, in short do everything that should properly precede the kind of reflection on language we are interested in. Then we could deal exhaustively with the trivium of grammar, rhetoric, and logic. The last particularlycould then include a sampling of the post-Aristotelian logics. And we could add a fourth modern study, linguistics. But for now these are pipe dreams. [There follow several more speculations for the future, not included.] e e e Most popular senior essay topics Answers to quiz from page 3 Plato Tolstoy Math/Lab Shakespeare Baudelaire Bible Hegel Niefzsche Kant Aristotle Cervantes Rousseau �s. ESIC C B SWITH •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• A prelude to the college's 300th ~niversary celebration has begun on the Santa Fe campus. For the past several months, Musician-in-Residence Peter Pesic has honored the tricentennial with public lunch-time performances of Mozart's piano sonatas. During the past few years, Pesic has offered informal lunch-time concerts to the public at no charge. The events are held monthly during the academic year and weekly in the summer. He has performed the complete series of Beethoven sonatas and the complete piano works of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern. This year's series focuses on Mozart. "I decided to do the complete piano sonatas of Mozart, both because I was drawn to them and also because I wanted to do something special to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the college," Pesic said. "Although Mozart had not yet been born in 1696, he was contemporary with the early years of this college and somehow it seemed to me there was something celebratory and appropriate about this conjunction." During the lunch hour concerts, Pesic not only performs selected works but discusses them with audience Peter Pesic, by Ryan Underwood (SF94). members. "I've enjoyed very much these occasions in which I can both speak a little bit about the music as well as play the works, and there has been a veiy gratifying and sustained interest in the local community;" he said. "I've been able to include a number of little known works by Mozart-sonatas and fantasies, that are exciting to learn and share with the audience. I've also enjoyed the informality of the occasions which somehow seem more ap- proachable and intimate than evening concerts." Pesic also participated this fall in the Chopin Music Festival, which honored the composer through a series of concerts in the United States, Canada and Mexico. As part of the festival, Pesic performed by invitation in El Paso and also at St. John's. "I chose to do late and lesser known works of Chopin that emphasize the visionaiy side of his compositions. Other pianists concentrated on better known works, more characteristic of the flamboyant romantic, who Chopin is for many people," he said. But how does a St. John's tutor find time to learn and practice new works? There isn't much opportunity, Pesic said. "I cram in the time late at or between classes, on vacation or the summer. It's difficult with the very busy teaching schedule we all but it's something I would feel lost if I didn't do." -by Lesli Allison 1th membership in the St. John's College Library and Fine Arts Guild growing, the Santa Fe art gallery is in the middle of a season that has turned out to be even better than anticipated. In October, the guild conducted two successful fund-raising events: the Meern Library Booksale and the Spanish Colonial Arts Market. The college is already receiving calls from artists as far away as California who would like to participate in the market next year. The guild also sponsored an exhibit of the Charles and Janice Rosenak American Folk Art Collection in November. In January, the art gallery will begin its celebration of the 300th anniver. sary of St. John's with an exhibit by nationally renowned Santa Fe artist William Lumpkins. Born near Clayton, New Mexico, Mr. Lumpkins demonstrated artistic talent even as a child, but it wasn't until his family moved to Roswell when he was in his early teens that he really began to mature as an artist. In Roswell he met and painted with a young Peter Hurd and through him Paul Horgan. These two would have a profound effect on Mr. Lumpkins, and would themselves leave an indelible mark on the histoiy of the arts in America. In 1929, Mr. Lumpkins enrolled in the University of New Mexico and took a watercolor class from Sheldon Parsons, and as he later recalled, "Well, I just went through the roof. I went back down to the ranch that summer and I remember I completed 90 watercolors. I couldn't quit." The next year, he ventured into modern art after discovering the works of artists like Kandinsky. While he was an architect by profession, art never stopped being a part of his life, and in the late 1930's he was asked to join the Transcendental Painting Group. In 1940, the Guggenheim exhibited seven paintings by the group which were then scheduled to be shown at the Paris World Exhibition. They were lost when the Germans blitzkrieged France. Ten of the group's works were also shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York The group disbanded in 1941, as WWII pulled some of its members into the military, including Mr. who flew with the Navy. Aftei the war, Mr. Lumpkins returned to his architecture and his art. Given his career as an architect, it seems unusual that his art never encompassed geometric abstraction. Instead, because of his zen philosophy, he focused on landscapes and nature. William Lumpkins has exhibited "Untitled" by William Lumpkins, watercolor on paper1 1940 his work at the Art Institute of Chicago, Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., New York World's Fair and the Museum of Non-Objective Art in New York. At 86, Mr. Lumpkins is still prolifically producing work in his studio. What better way to kick off the celebration of "tradition and progress" than with selections from Mr. Lumpkins' 70 years of painting. The exhibit will continue through February 15. Mr. Lumpkins' show will be followed beginning February 23 with an exhibit by Texas artist Sally Chandler, who is currently living in Santa Fe. Ms. Chandler will be presenting 100 small paintings (approximately 10" x 10") of Continued on page 23 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The St. John's Reporter</em> Description An account of the resource College newspaper which started publication in 1974. Continued publication into 2000. Includes primarily historical content.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The St. John's Reporter" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=35">Items in <em>The St. John's Reporter</em></a></strong> <span>to view and sort all items in the collection.</span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 24 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context vol 22 issue 2 Winter 1996 Title A name given to the resource Reporter, Volume 22 Issue 2 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1996-01 Description An account of the resource Volume 22, Issue 2 of The St. John's Reporter. Published in Winter 1996. (Annapolsi edition) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Public Relations Office Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Goyette, Barbara (editor) Allison, Lesli (editor) Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf The Reporter https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/1bfef98f8a1b1688a4cd2f2bb7aee0be.pdf 0486e9bdfb3cae9106ce616f0d900b78 PDF Text Text ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE LIBRARY ~1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1~l1lf ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE 1\l\1\1\f11f1'1I111111111111111111 31696 01138 2171 SANTA FE EDITION 1 ST. ]OHN S AT 300 ............ .1 CELLULOID COWBOYS AND THE LITERARY FUTURE ...... 2 THE DOUBLE LIFE OF NICHOLAS CAPOZZOLI ..... .3 CHEZ GREAT BooKs ......... 5 SF BOOKSTORE ................... 6 ONE COLLEGE .................... 7 BART, DARKEY REFLECT ON THREE DECADES IN S GUIDES TO THE GREAT BooKs ................................. 11 SEARCH AND REscuE.. ... .12 ALUMNI ASSOCIATION NEWSLETTER: PLATO IN A 10-GALLON HAT; ELECTION NOTICES, AND MORE GOOD BOOKS: ................................. 13 LETTER FROM THE CZECH REPUBLIC. .......................... 15 SANTOS COLLECTION ..... .19 �1 NEWS REPORTER FROM THE BELL TOWERS ••• ST. JOHN'S AT 300: HONORING THE PAST, CELEBRATING THE FUTURE her: 1<.ing William's School was founded as a "free" school in 1696, the term "free" referred to the freedom that students educated in the liberal arts would experience. The new colony, an untamed land in the midst of a vast continent of opportunities, needed young people who could face the challenges of settlement and governance. Liberal education, giving students a solid foundation in all aspects of learning, was seen as the way to ensure the future of the new world. Today, with its pure vision of the liberal arts, St. John's comes full circle back to that original purpose and continues to lay firm foundations for its students to face the future as free adults. As St. John's begins its fourth century, the college will be looking back to honor its past and forward to celebrate its future. THE KICK-OFF: JUNE 1, 1996 St. John's will be celebrating its 300th year beginning on June 1 with a day packed full of events. The highlight will be the dedication at 2 p.m. of the new library, housed in the former Hall of Records building. The architecture and interior design of the renovation and addition meld historic preservation with daring modern elements, setting the theme for the tercentenary year. Along with an opening ceremony, speeches, and tours of the new library, June 1 will also be the date for the first ever St. John's College Book Fair. More than 10,000 books have been donated and will be sold in Woodward Hall. Sale hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, June 1, and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. onJune 2. The Book Fair is sponsored by the Friends of St. John's College, and proceeds benefit the library. On the evening of June 1 a black-tie, invitation-only dinner will kick off the tercentenary year and celebrate the successful completion of St. John's five-year capital campaign, which raised over $30 million for the college. In July, the Santa Fe campus will join the celebration with a special exhibit of the Larry Frank New Mexico Santos Collection. Alumni will also have the opportunity to celebrate during Homecoming and the Summer Alumni Program. A YEAR OF CELEBRATING During the 1996-97 academic year beginning in September, the college will host a number of tercentenary events. At the top of the social calendar will be "Lafayette's Ball," a costume ball held in the Great Hall of McDowell. In 1824, General Lafayette was feted in the same room during a visit to Annapolis. On the intellectual side, a Great Issues Forum will address the future of reading in today's technological age. Annapolitans will be able to participate in small seminars to discuss the topic, under the leadership of St. John's faculty members and leading experts in the field. Several Community Seminars will bring people from Annapolis together with St. John's faculty members to discuss topics in history, philosophy, and political science. The Mitchell Art Gallery will feature special tercentenary exhibits, including a photo display covering 150 years of college history. Annapolis photographer Marion Warren's work will be on exhibit, as will that of famed Life magazine photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt. Focusing on topics in Maryland history, the monthly series of Tuesday lectures co-sponsored by the Anne Arundel County Trust for Preservation and the Friends of St. John's will present programs on the history of the college. Other activities in the works include a small-boat expo and regatta on College Creek (slated for the summer of 1996), and a national rally for liberal education to be held in Washington, D.C. with political leaders. The U.S. Postal Service will issue a special commemorative postcard featuring St. John's. A commemorative book with photos and artwork illustrating college history and a large time-line poster highlighting the intellectual history of the past 300 years also are being produced. ST. JOHN'S AT 300 CONT. ON PAGE 2 REGISTER NOW FOR SUMMER CLASSICS The Santa Fe campus is currently accepting registrations for its 1996 Summer Classics program. Now in its sixth season, Summer Classics is a series of week-long seminars in literature, philosophy and opera. The topics for 1996 include Plato's Republic; Dante's Purgatorio; the Mahabharata-Bhagavad Gita; Euripides' Bacchae, Medea and Electra; Rousseau's On the Origin of Inequality; Aristotle's Ethics; Shakespeare's Othello, Antony and Cleopatra and]ulius Caesar; and the operas Don Giovanni, Madama Butterfly and The Rake's Progress (participants will have the opportunity to see these operas performed live at the Santa Fe Opera). The program also includes professionally guided anthropological, archeological and geological excursions, special events and ample recreational opportunities. Seminars are led by members of the St. John's faculty and guests from other institutions. Tuition from $11 SO/week, includes accommodations and meals for six nights and seven days, excursions, receptions and extras. For information contact: Summer Classics, St. John's College, Santa Fe NM 87501-4599 I (505) 984-6104 I email: sjcsfpr@aol.com. The Reporter is published in April and October by the Public Relations Office, St John s College, 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87 501 & i~ July & January by the Public Relations Office, St. John s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404. 1 1 SANTA FE: Lesli Allison, editor John Schroeder, assistant editor Lisa Donenfeld, graphic designer ANNAPOLIS: Barbara Goyette, editor Sus3an Borden, writer Betsy Blume, Eva Brann, John Christensen, Pamela Kraus, Benjamin Milner, Brother Robert Smith and Elliott Zuckerman, advisory board. USPS 018-750 �REPORTER 2 CELLULOID COWBOYS & THE LITERARY FUTURE IN SANTA FE THIS SUMMER you a brochure and included a few articles The Reporter for you to read. of you who might not have read them or still aren't convinced you want to attend, here-in a nutshell-is everything you'll be missing if you don't come back this summer: WHAT: Homecoming Weekend and the Summer Alumni Program in Santa Fe. WHEN: Homecoming Weekend starts July 12 and runs through July 14. And there are two Summer Alumni Program weekS---One from July 7 to July 14 and the second from July 14 to July 19. WHY: Because you miss the college, the college misses you, and this is an excellent opportunity to see old friends and tutors, learn how to waltz again (for those who might have forgotten), eat good food, bask in the Santa Fe sun, hike the trails of Atalaya and Monte Sol, and take part in great seminars. ACTIVITIES FOR ALL ALUMNI: Dinner on Friday night, followed by an all-alumni seminar on Descartes' "The Passions of the Soul," led by James Carey, Santa Fe tutor and soon-to-be dean, and a Coffee Shop rock and roll party hosted by the Class of 1986. On Saturday, there will be a traditional Fiesta picnic with lots of games, followed by a story hour for children and their parents presented by Lucy Duncan, SF86, a professional storyteller and owner of The Story Monkey Bookstore in Omaha, Nebraska. There also will be a cocktail reception Saturday night, followed by the Homecoming Dinner Dance, with lots of waltzes and music. Last, but certainly not least, will be a brunch on Sunday at the home of President Agresto. SPECIAL ACTIVITIES FOR REUNION CLASSES (1971, 1976, 1981, 1986 and 1991): Reunion class barbeque dinner on Friday night plus special reunion class seminars on Saturday. FOR GRADUATE INSTITUTE ALUMNI: There will be a special wine and cheese reception on Friday. AND ABOUT THE SUMMER ALUMNI PROGRAM WEEKS: Come a little earlier or stay a little longer and take part in one (or both) of the Summer Alumni Program weeks. The first week, July 7 through July 12, will focus on reading and how technology is shaping the art of reading for the future. Among those teaching during the first week will be Santa Fe tutors Grant Franks and Ralph Swentzell, who will be leading a seminar on Plato's "Phaedrus," and David Starr, who will lead a seminar on Nadezhda Mandelstam's Hope Against Hope: A Memoir. Also teaching that week will be Peter Weis SF84, an archivist at Amherst College in Massachusetts, who will lead a tutorial on the decline of paper and print. The second week, beginning the evening of July 14 and continuing through July 19, will examine the Western tradition and ethic in film. Seminars and tutorials will include sessions led by Annapolis' Dean Eva Brann, with the help of Jim Sorrentino ABO, on Shane, Red River and High Noon. Tom Stern SF69 will lead a seminar on Unforgiven, a Clint Eastwood film on which he worked, and Krishnan Venkatesh, a Santa Fe tutor, will lead a seminar on Cormac McCarthy's The Crossing. IF YOU NEED TO KNOW MORE: Read the brochure! And if you haven't received it yet, call or write the alumni office and we'll send you one. You can contact the alumni office in Santa Fe by calling 505-984-6103; by writing to St. John's College, Alumni Office, 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87501-4599; or by sending an e-mail message to alumni@mail.sjcsf.edu. Iii I ITALIAN ADVENTURE TO COMBINE CULTURE, CUISINE, AND CLASSICS The St. John's College Travel Program will host a learning-cum-sightseeing trip to Italy, November 7-17, 1996. Italophiles and great books fans will travel together to Rome, Florence, Assisi, Siena and Venice. Tutor Geoffrey Comber will accompany the group and lead seminars on Italian and Latin classics such as Virgil's Aeneid, Dante's Divine Comedy and Machiavelli's The Prince. Six educational sessions will be available in cooperation with the University of Rome. Sessions include "The Rise and Transformation of Rome and the Roman World," "The Decline and Rebirth of Rome, from Imperial City to Christian Capital" and "Michelangelo and the Great Masters." Before the trip, tutor Walter Sterling will offer an optional seminar in the Continuing Education/Fine Arts Program in Annapolis on Plutarch's Lives. In addition to the educational elements of the trip, travelers will have plenty of time for sightseeing, shopping and enjoying "La Dolce Vita." For further information, contact Pamela McKee, St. John's College Advancement Office, (410)626-2506. Ill ST. JOHN'S AT 300 CONT. FROM PAGE 1 Alumni from the class of 1968 want to invite fellow alums to a joint 50th birthday celebration on Saturday, May 25, in the Coffee Shop on the Annapolis campus. Dorcey Rose, one of the organizers, says, "We thought it might be easier to face this important time in our lives if we were together." Along with Vicki Cone, Debbie Renaut and Joe Sachs, Dorcey is currently working at the college. The '68s will be inviting all of the tutors and other members of the St. John's community to their B-Day party. For more information, contact any of them at these Annapolis numbers: Vicki Cone, 268-0823(H), 626-2549(W), v-cone@sjca.edu; Debbie Renaut, 2691768, d-renaut@sjca.edu; Dorcey Rose, 268-4371(H), 626-2527(W), d-rose@sjca.edu; Joe Sachs, 268-3533(H). Ill In Santa Fe, the college will host a major conference early next fall exploring the theme of "Tradition and Progress" in the areas of education, science and technology, art and culture, and politics. In October the Santa Fe campus will also host a major celebration which will include a booksale, a Spanish Colonial Arts exhibit, seminars for local residents, poetry readings, book signings and more. And, of course, during the tercentenary year the college will continue its tradition of free concerts, lectures and art exhibits that are open to the public. St. John's students on both campuses will continue their tradition of volunteering in the local communities, tutoring students, working in hospitals and helping with ALUMNI REGISTER UPDATE: The crackerjack team of Alumni Register experts is standing by, ready to produce the 1996 edition of the Register. Alumni will soon be receiving Register data forms in the mail. Be sure to send them in so that the new book will be the most complete ever. Shown are Annapolis Alumni Director Betsy Blume (sitting, left); her assistant, Kim Kern (sitting, right); student aides Reynoldo Miranda (far left), Dimitry Fedotov (second from left), and Luke Trares (right); and Chris Denny, advancement records systems manager (middle). lilJ environmental and housing projects. Ill �REPORTER 3 SCHOLARSHIP THE DOUBLE LIFE OF NICHOLAS CAPOZZOLI ALUMNI CARVE PUBLISHING NICHE BY SUS3AN BORDEN BY ELIZABETH SKEWES ·• JE;Nicholas Capozzoli is a neupologist in Annapolis with a < .(. ../ .··thriving practice and an unusualsecond job: he's a St. John's College tutor. Though some might imagine that such an endeavor would distract him from his medical work, Dr. Capozzoli feels that the Great Books help him. "I love the books that we read at the college and I love to be with the students," he says. "It puts my medical life in a good perspective, and it provides balance to the stresses that I feel in the practice of medicine." Those who imagine that Dr. Capozzoli limits himself to lab class or the occasional math tutorial underestimate the broad interests of the man, and ignore the college's commitment to interdisciplinary learning. As the catalogue states: "In order that conversations at St.John's will not be limited to what fits neatly inside a single discipline, it is essential that St. John's tutors reeducate themselves to acquire increased understanding in those parts of the program that are outside their field ofpostgraduate training. For example, tutors with advanced degrees in mathematics would prepare themselves to lead language tutorials requiring translations from Sophocles or Racine." And it naturally follows that a medical doctor with a specialty in neurology would lead seminars in everything from Homer and Mozart to Kant and Hegel. Although St. John's leads the field in interdisciplinary study, Dr. Capozzoli could easily have invented the concept. As an undergraduate at Manhattan College, Dr. Capozzoli had to major in chemistry in order to qualify for the courses he needed to attend medical school. But, he points out, he took more credits in philosophy than in chemistry. The college catalogue comments on the advantages of cross curriculum teaching: "The advantage of this for students is that they are under the guidance of active learners who will not parry their far-ranging questions with the reply that these matters are handled in another department. There are no departments! The advantage of this for tutors is that they are involved with a variety of works of such richness that they are continually tempted to strive for greater comprehension of them. " And the advantage of this for Dr. est. "They see it as a kind of curiosity," Dr. Capozzoli says. "I was the founder of Anne Arundel General Hospital's medical ethics committee and its chairman for twelve years, so the hospital is accustomed to my dealing with issues not strictly scientific but having more to do with philosophy." And while the medical community indulges what they might see as a quirky calling, the students at St. John's are impressed by this man who deals with the flesh-and-blood of real life, yet is devoted to joining them in what some might call their Ivory Tower. When Dr. Capozzoli began teaching at the college, students referred to him as "the brain surgeon" even though surgery is not part of his practice. "I suppose it was a mark of respect," recalls David Heimann, A87, a junior when Dr. Capozzoli joined the faculty. "Perhaps we wanted to heighten our differences, because it was so interesting, even flattering, to have someone from another world who wanted to join ours." Often, those two worlds overlap. "Because of my medical background, students who have an interest in medicine will contact me. Students have made rounds with me at the hospital and attended medical ethics sessions there. I've also led preceptorials at the college in medical ethics," Dr. Capozzoli says. photo by John Bildohl Certainly Dr. more math tutorials, and freshman Capozzoli's work in ne~ology attracts students with an interest in medilab. Dr. Capozzoli is now teaching himself cine and brings a different outlook and Greek in preparation for his first language fresh insight to his work as a tutor. But pritutorials. marily, Dr. Capozzoli is not valued for his Tho.ugh this seems like a tall order expertise, but for his willingness to explore for a full-time doctor, the college catathe books with an eager and open mind. As logue is not silent on the subject of extracurricular work by its tutors: the catalogue reminds us: "At St. John's the teaching members of the "Some tutors do find time to write articles faculty are called tutors. The title professor is and books, but their first duty is to prepare themselves to teach the St. john's program." avoided to signify that it is not the chief role of the tutors to expound doctrines in their field of Although the practice of neurology is expertise. " not explicitly mentioned, it is clear that the Or, as generations of Johnnies have catalogue allows for the possibility of a tutor said, the tutor is simply the most practicing that complex art. But is the medadvanced student in the class. Dr. ical world equally open to one of its practiCapozzoli puts it even more modestly. "I tioners occasionally finding time to teach don't consider myself the most advanced Descartes and Jane Austen to a roomful of liberal artists? Dr. Capozzoli thinks so. student in the class. I don't claim any speGranted, his tutorship at St. John's is cial expertise in any area. I just love the unusual for a doctor, but he finds the books and hope that will be ... "he says, medical community a~cepting of his interever the doctor, " ... contagious." Ill Capozzoli is that he can continue with the mission that originally brought him to St. John's: the study of the liberal arts. In 1974, when he began his medical practice in Annapolis, he enrolled in continuing education classes at St. John's. When the school started the Graduate Institute, Dr. Capozzoli signed up, and earned his master's degree in 1981, a member of the Annapolis Graduate Institute's first graduating class. He's been teaching at St. John's ever since, finding ample opportunity to continue his education. He's led all four years' worth of seminars, freshman and sopho- When Bill Donahue, A67, and Dana Densmore, A65, wanted to publish Densmore's guidebook to Newton's Principia - a book that would make the work more accessible by including translations, illustrations and a step-by-step reconstruction of Newton's argument - they first contracted with a large university press. It gradually became clear, however, that despite the academic press's initial assurances, the book that was going to emerge from that publication process was not the book that Ms. Densmore had envisioned. The solution, they decided, was to publish it themselves. So, in August 1995, they launched their own publishing company, Green lion Press. And in late October, Newton's Principia: The Central Argument, was being shipped to bookstores and individual scholars. "Many scholars are not happy about the lack of control in dealing with mainstream academic publishers, and we have a niche that we're interested in and think we can do well," said Ms. Densmore, a former tutor at the college and now an independent scholar with several other guidebooks in the works. Green lion Press's special niche is providing access to sources in history of science. The books will be in three areas: reprints of classic texts that are out of print, first English translations of important scientific texts, and guidebooks to classic works of particular difficulty, such as Newton's Principia. The fledgling company has three more publications currently forthcoming and is working with other authors who have translations or guidebooks to source texts. "We contract out the actual printing, but we do everything else-design, layout, typesetting, proofreading, distribution, sales.," Ms. Densmore said. "We're only doing books that we know and care about, books we know are worth studying. We have an interest in making these books serve the students and support the way students will need to use the books. By knowing the subject and having taught these books, we understand the pedagogical considerations in presenting the guidebooks in our series. Because of that, we can do a better job of designing and laying out the book to make it easy for students to use than a publisher who turns the design and typesetting over to people who don't know the texts or how they're used." CONT. ON PAGE 4 �REPORTER T NEW LIBRARY WISH LIST Remember that first apartment and how bare it looked even after you'd moved in? 'Remember that first house with the blank living room, its furniture "to come?'' When the new library in Annapolis is complete, it will be beautiful, tastefully appointed and user-friendly for students and other patrons, but there will be a number of blank spots. Here's a wish list, put together by the Campus Planning Committee, to fill in the blanks. Monetary donations to be used to purchase these items would be gratefully accepted. Contact Jeff Bishop at 410-6262505 for details. ~ Several room area rugs, original oriental rugs or Karastan copies, to be used in the entry, the Reference/Great room and 'Junior's office" ~ Brass table lamps for all reading tables ~ Halogen floor lamps ~ Large plants and large terra cotta or wooden planters (for indoors) ~ Floor-model wooden or brass dictionary stands GREEN LION CONT. FROM PAGE 3 Mr. Donahue, who also taught at St. John's, made a new translation of the central propositions of Principia for Densmore's guidebook and drew all the diagrams with a computer drawing program. He is currently working on a gmdebook for Johannes Kepler's New Astronomy, a book which he translated several years ago for Cambridge University Press. In 1981, when he and Ms. Densmore were married, he left teaching for a career as an independent scholar in history of science. Since then he has been translating important texts in history of science, researching questions in original manuscripts and writing. With funding from the National Science Foundation, he finished the translation of New Astronomy. Following on the success of that translation, he received grants from a number of funding agencies, including the National Endowment for the Humanities, to continue his work on Kepler. Mr. Donahue said that cutbacks to those agencies, however, is another reason H E p A G N KIDVID GREATS? 0 R 0 U R FOURTH TOCQ!JEVILLE SOCIETY TO RECOGNIZE SPECIAL GIFTS Getting together a "great books" list for children is one of the fun tasks of parenthood. Starting with the littlest listeners, there's Goodnight Moon, Russell Hoban's Frances stories, In the Night Kitchen and Where the Wild Things Are, Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel, and many more. For today's kids, videos can also be a big part of childhood idle hours-they'll watch the same movies over and over and over. Of course no video will have the charm and value of a good book, but for sheer power to hold young attentions, videos can be useful to parents who need to cook dinner or make a phone call. Annapolis alumna Lyn DesMarais, 83, has produced a video that would make a good addition to a children's collection. Called "Hey, That's My Hay," it chronicles life on a dairy farm and is told from the point of view of Geraldine, one of the ·bovine inhabitants. Children are fascinated by animals, large machines and how everyday stuff gets made-all elements of "Hay." The footage was shot on or near Ms. DesMarais's family farm in Massachusetts. Ms. DesMarais will donate profits from the sale of "Hey, That's My Hay" to The Campaign for Our Fourth Century. The video can be ordered for $19.95 plus shipping from Farmer Small Productions, 617 /891-3689. F 4 I must say that I have often seen Americans make great and real sacrifices to the public welfare; and I have noticed a hundred instances in which they hardly ever failed to lend faithful support to one another. -Alexis de Tocqueville C E N T U R Y ways. These "gifts for the future" help ensure the college's ability to continue its mission in the years to come. For example, the college's ability to continue offering scholarships depends on its scholarship endowment, which is largely established by deferred gifts through bequests and charitable trusts. There are several ways such gifts can be made. Deferred gifts reserve for the donor some present financial benefit from the contributed assets while giving a future interest to St. John's. In other words, they work for the giver now and for St. John's later. Charitable trusts, charitable gift annuities, life insurance, charitable lead trusts and gifts through one's will are examples. The advancement offices in Annapolis and Santa Fe can assist in gift planning. Contact either campus for more information. St. John's has enjoyed the benefits of many. gifts to the college during the course of its history-in the spirit of community support noted by de Tocqueville as he studied America. Named in honor of the kind of generosity he described, the newly established Tocqueville Society will encourage those who want to think creatively about making gifts within the context of their financial and estate plans. The Campaign for Our Fourth Century spurred several donors to make major pledges to the college in the form of deferred gifts; the Tocqueville Society will continue to recognize those who wish to support St. John's in similar liJ he and Ms. Densmore started thinking manufacture. An added bonus is that the CD-ROM text will be computer-searchabout creating their own company. "Instead able. of getting the money up front," he said, "we'll do what we think needs to be done And it turns out that there's a common bond between Tycho Brahe and Mr. and go out and sell it." Included on that list are two of the Donahue and Ms. Densmore. Brahe, an company's current projects - a translation astronomer in the late 1500s, often made of Kepler's his own instruOptics, in which ments or worked Santa Fe tutor closely with the Bruce Perry is instrument mak"~re helping to also involved, ers, most of spread the close reading of original whom were not and a reprint of educated, to Tychonis Brahe texts in history of science beyond ensure that the Opera Omnia, the two St. John's campuses" Tycho Brahe's equipment served the scicomplete works. ence. It's that Green Lion same attention to decided to serving learning that made Mr. Donahue reprint Tycho's works because it is out of and Ms. Densmore decide to create their print and nearly impossible to buy. The company. length of the 15-volume Tychonis Brahe Opera Omnia means that a paper edition In fact, Ms. Densmore said the focus would be too expensive for most individof the company comes out of their St. ual scholars, however, so Green Lion Press John's experiences and the love for books will be publishing the full text on CDthat they nurtured at the College. "How do you make your life's work ROM, which will be much cheaper to • CONTACT THE CAMPAIGN FOR OUR FOURTH CENTURY Santa Fe: John Agresto President 505-984-6098 Annapolis: Jeff Bishop Vice President for Advancement 410-626-2505 continue to serve the ideals of the college and its program? This is something that we've found that we can do," Ms. Densmore said. "Preserving and providing access to these texts makes them available not only to students and faculty at St. John's, but also makes it easier for other colleges to incorporate original texts into their programs. Other colleges have great books programs that read some of the philosophical works and literature, but these programs don't do the math and science we do because the texts are too difficult. Guidebooks that keep the text central, but provide help to get through the difficulties, make it possible for other colleges to really study the original texts.·· Mr. Donahue noted that the Newton guidebook already is beginning to be used that way at several other colleges. "So we're helping to spread the close reading of original texts in history of science beyond the two St. John's campuses," he said. More information about Green Lion Press and its forthcoming books can be found on Green Lion's Internet web p<1ge at http://www.greenlion.com. Ill �S , REPORTER CHEZ GREAT BOOKS: THE BOOKSTORE IN ANNAPOLIS PACKS A LOT OF KNOWLEDGE INTO A SMALL SPACE BY BARBARA GOYETTE • • ~ • • • . • •• • . : . . • • • • • • ·~· ··~-~- • • • • •• • • • • • • • • 1 • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •• • • • • • :~··:··~·· ~-. ·~ •••••••••••• ~ ~·':"':;·::~ ~· •·• •••• ·~· ••••• ;·~· • • _.-•. ~ ':-• • • • _.: • • • •.• . . . .: •,.• ~-.-;~ ~-;-. ~:~;· ~ ~ ·~·~··~ •••••••• ~ ·~: ••• ' • • • •• : ~: -~·~ ~:-~: • • • • • • •• •· ; : • • • • •• • .off could describe the Annapolis bookstore the '/ same way you could describe the <;91lege: in terms of what it doesn't have. For the college-no departments, no majors, no semester exams, no fraternities, no intercollegiate football. For the bookstore-no cookbooks, no children's books, no GRE prep manuals, no selfhelp section. But, as we learn from Hegel, negativity isn't the whole story. Here's what the bookstore does have: 6,000 titles arranged in less than 800 square feet of retail space; The Wall of program books cozily tucked under the brick arches at the back of the shop; four translations of Augustine's Confessions; seven translations of Dante; a fiction section put together by someone who knows fiction and has zero tolerance for junk; 12 books by or about Leo Strauss; an array of Loeb Latin and Greek editions joyously clad in bright red and green; 15 shelves of science, history of science and mathematics books; a case of "used great books" at bargain prices; St. John's emblazoned t-shirts, caps, fleece and mugs; notebooks, pencils, folders; and Roberta Rusch, A78, wise and witty proprietress extraordinaire, and her assistant Taylor Waters, AGL "We've cultivated a reputation for not being general interest," says Ms. Rusch, by way of explaining her general philosophy of bookstore retailing. "We have very strong sections in philosophy and science, for example. For the GRE prep books and the cookbooks, though, you'll have to go down to Crown," meaning Crown Books, a chain outpost on Main Street. Continues Ms. Rusch, "We do carry fiction, essays, criticism, music, psychology, languages, a lot of Eastern stuff and mythology." With space at a premium, the choice of what to stock is important. Ms. Rusch does a lot of homework before ordering. She studies publishers' catalogues, consults with faculty members and reads reviews. "It really is what you can do on your own gumption unless you want to deliver yourself into the hands of the sales reps," she says, adding, "I don't do sales reps." While most of her sales are to students, tutors and the St. John's extended family, she does get some pilgrims from Annapolis Bookstore Manager Roberto Rusch at work in her office. Pencils, she reports, are the best selling non-book items. "A lot of people at the college hove writing implement fetishes," she soys. Photo by Keith Harvey D.C. (from Catholic U., for instance) and some mail requests. Most recent is a letter from a man in Guam who just had to have a copy of tutor Stewart Umphreys' Zetetic Skepticism. "Commercial bookstores don't carry the more esoteric titles (often from university presses) because demand is lower-than for your usual bodice ripper," explains Ms. Rusch. On the other hand, she doesn't go overboard on literary criticism-possibly the most prolific genre of scholarly works. "The criticism parade is passing us by and we're happily waving," she says. Alumni who have stayed in academia will sometimes contact her with a special order. Michael Hendry, A75, for example, teaches classics at the University of Alabama. He told his classes about the Greek verb chart in the St. John's bookstore and several students called to order one. ("I have tried to get the publisher to print that chart in larger type," says Rusch. "I call it the Greek eye chart-probably no one over 40 should try to use it.") Ms. Rusch also publishes "Book Chat," a wisecracking and informative monthly newsletter on bookstore and publishing happenings. A popular campus publication, "Book Chat" has information on translations, lucid explanations of why books cost what they do, lists of recommended summer reading for greatbooks-stressed Johnnies, and lots more. And then there are the contests. Ms. Rusch calls them "invitationals": 50-word ·j .- • ·;· ;· ••••• :·••••••••• ·••••-•• : ••• ·••• ~,;, •.••• • ••• -;. .~1 ••• •• • ~- •••• •.·_.a. reviews (for frustrated blurb artists) and haikus on favorite books or on the subject of love were the most memorable. She'll send a copy of "Book Chat" with a catalog if requested. Ms. Rusch is always on the qui vive for helpful liberal arts items. In an atlas of historical maps, she spotted maps of ancient Greece that showed the situations described in Herodotus and Thycydides. She wrote the publisher and asked whether they could reprint those two for her to sell. The publisher responded with something along the lines of "Well, you'd have to order 1,000 and no one in his/her right mind would want that many." She wrote back that yes, she did want them. The maps are a popular item-so handy Ms. Rusch claims she keeps one in her glove compartment. Another programrelated victory was convincing Dover to reprint Jacob Klein's Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra, which had been out of print for 15 years. Descending the seven steps (symbol of the seven liberal arts?) to the basement of Humphreys, one anticipates the pleasures of the bookstore: the smell of new books, the faint crackle of an untested binding as a volume is opened, the hope that possession of a book will be the first step in understanding its contents, andcertainly not the least of the bookstore's pleasures-a few minutes in the company of Misses Rusch and Waters. They might be talking on the phone-simultaneously, into the same mouthpiece; singing a song; exhorting an effort at haiku for "Book Chat;" describing the virtues of various editions of Plato for a freshman; or just pushing a current favorite book. Like other good things about St. John's, the bookstore makes sense and it works-but a lot of effort goes into making it that way. Rusch sums up her philosophy like this: "First, we try to stay close to the community and the community's needs. Second, the books are a very serious thing. It's important to me that they be handled with a light heart." Bl ALUMNI, PARENTS, FRIENDS: ORDER YOUR Annapolis: Call:410-626-2540; or write:St. John's College Bookstore, Box 2800, Annapolis, Maryland 21404 Santa �HUMOR LIGHT AND THOUSANDS OF CLASSIC TITLES GRACE·SANTA FE BOOKSTORE BY LESLI ALLISOKJ Andrea D' Amato ·and Bechko, the longtime managers of the Santa Fe campus bookstore, is like trying to interview two standup comedians on stage in front of a live audience-it's virtually impossible. This boisterous, good-humored team responds playfully to almost every question. Asked to describe the 1993 transition from the old bookstore location in the basement of Peterson Student Center to the new first floor location, Ms. D'Amato said, "It was like moles coming out into the light." Underneath all the light-hearted bantering, however, are two highly experienced and motivated professionals who are dedicated to St. John's. Ms. D'Amato, who also is an Olympic-style weightlifter and practicing Zen student, recently celebrated her 15th anniversary as the bookstore's manager. "I started here February 18, 1981," she said. "I know it sounds cheesy, but I love my job. I love working with my staff. I love working with books. I love selecting the stock-it's probably my favorite part of the job." Ms. Bechko, a novelist specializing in westerns, romance and science fiction, has been with the store for the past nine out of her eleven years with the college. For Ms. Bechko, the bookstore's friendly and relaxed environment is a perfect complement to her other life as a writer. "It works very well with my writing," she said. "Igo home each night from a very non-stress atmosphere." Indeed, the bookstore's environment is appealing to anyone who chances in the door. In addition to a warm, knowledgeable staff, the bookstore provides a light and spacious hideaway in which to shop, browse or store to both support and supplement the St. John's Program. With more than 9,000 titles and nearly 2,000 sideline items, including St. John's sweaters, t-shirts, a variety oflogo items, and even a small artsupplies department, the bookstore meets Complete with couches and a kiva fireplace, the Santa Fe campus bookstore provides a light and spacious hideaway in which to shop, browse or read. above is the bookstore staff: (left to right: Jamie Spearman, Andrea D'Amato, Marie Dessomes, Stacey Kaufman and Peggy Bechko.) read. Couches, chairs and even a kiva fireplace make visitors feel more welcome. While the old dungeonlike space had a certain limited charm-and even, for a time, a live bat hanging in the doorway-the new location is not only inviting, but also allows the the needs of the entire college community. "We now have an extensive philosophy selection, including both Western and Eastern philosophy, along with large selections of religion and literature," Ms. D'Amato said. In addition to program-related books and non-program classics, the Santa Fe cam- r. JOHN'S COLLEGE BOOKSTORE CATALOGS NOW! : 505-984-6058; e-mail : Bookstr@shadow.sjcsf.edu; write: St. John's College Bookstore, 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87501 pus bookstore also keeps an eye on contemporary developments. "We're paying attention to what's going on in the outside world," Ms. D'Amato said. "Not only do we cater to people's needs with the program, but we try to keep up with current issues." The bookstore also offers lighter reading, with titles by Tom Robbins and Ann Rice, for instance. According to Ms. D'Amato, these are the kinds of books students read during the holidays. "We also sell a ton of humor books-Calvin and Hobbes, Dilbert, Fox Trot," she said. "That's what kids come in and put on their charge accounts immediately at the beginning of the month." When determining which books to stock, Ms. D'Amato said she looks for classics, even among contemporary,entertainment titles. "I think of relevance to the program," she said. "I look for a book I would want to keep reordering always. I don't just look for topical sales. A book on the O.J. Simpson trial, for example, isn't going to be considered great literature twenty years from now. I look for something with lasting value, and that's a judgment call. Or something that will assist students in their study of Greek or French. And I try to carry books that are representative of certain eras." For alumni, the bookstore is only a phone call away, a fact that many take advantage of. For instance, one afternoon a long-distance call came in from an alumna and her Academy Award-winning husband who were vacationing in the Grand Caymans. For reasons never explained, they had an urgent need for a copy of The Basic Works of Aristotle. The order was shipped overnight express. Another alumna once called to request The Peloponesian Wars for a cruise she was taking through the Greek Islands. The relocation of the store also has brought expanded hours-a move that has delighted Graduate Institute students and attracted a wider range of customers from town. The bookstore now is open 8:45 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Friday and 1 to 7 p.m. on Saturdays. And, while the bookstore has undergone a numberof-ehanges in the past several years, its mission has remained constant. "Our primary goal is to serve the college community," Ms. D'Amato said. "Secondarily, it is to serve the local community and thereby raise money to benefit the college. So at all times the college community comes first." liH �BRIDGING MILES, TIME ZONES & FINANCES ST. JOHN'S REMAINS ONE, CQL,L,EGE BY LESLI ALLISON campuses bound in like siamese twins but physically separated by miles, St. John's College remains in constant dialogue with and about itself. One of the perennial topics of conversation is the relationship between Santa Fe and Annapolis. From a managerial standpoint the college seems, at times, like a two-headed monster. Yet in this very structure, much like a seminar with two tutors, it also finds its strength and stability through the process of interaction. It is an unusual circumstance for any institution. It also is one that will be brought to bear on any discussion about the health or future of St. John's. Lately, there has been much discussion in the college community about the unity of the two campuses, prompting fear among some alumni of an impending shift in the structure of the college. Both presidents and deans, however, say that despite variations between the campuses, the fundamental bond is intact and will remain so in the future. "In the principles of instruction, the mode of instruction, the content of the curriculum and in terms of transferability, we are a unified college," Santa Fe President John Agresto said. "At the same time, we want each campus to be creative, imaginative, and to think of news ways of expanding and promoting the program, e.g. the Graduate Institute and the Eastern Classics program-so long as it doesn't affect the basic and pedagogic philosophical unity of the institution." The recent discussion derives in large part from the "1994 Statement of Educational Policy and Program" issued by Santa Fe Dean Steve Van Luchene. In the statement, which was published in abbreviated form in the Reporter and also made available to alumni through the dean's office and the unofficial alumni web page, Mr. Van Luchene drew attention to some of the major financial issues currently facing the Santa Fe campus. In so doing, he raised a number of questions for discussion, among them the nature of the relationship between the campuses. The statement provided an overview of the college's present financial situation and pointed out several major problems with which the college must contend if it is to maintain a solid financial footing in the future. Among these are the fact that Santa Fe's endowment is significantly smaller than that of Annapolis and that college tuition levels in the west are traditionally much lower than those in the east. The disparity between the two endowments poses several problems, not the least of which is faculty salaries. In his statement, Mr. Van Luchene said, "We all agree that the unity of the program in spirit, if not in all the details, is of central importance. The three practical elements we,have traditionally aimed to keep the same are (1) faculty salaries, (2) tuition and financial aid, and (3) the transferability of students between campuses .... "For the first time in many years, the faculty on the two campuses will receive salaries at different rates ... While we can live with a small disparity for a long time or even a large one briefly, in the long run this will contribute greatly to unknitting the unity of the college as it creates distinctions, complicates the transfer of tutors between campuses, and strains the meaning of a single faculty on two campuses." The second problem, the variance in tuition levels between the two recruitment markets, further complicates the matter. For the Santa Fe campus, annual tuition increases have a negative impact on enrollment while requiring the college to spend more on financial aid. Presently, almost 70% of all students in Santa Fe receive some form of financial assistance. As Mr. Van Luchene said in his statement, "The ironic conclusion to be drawn here is that the Santa Fe campus, the one that most needs the money, has either reached or exceeded the level of tuition that is appropriate for the Southwest, while the Annapolis campus can probably benefit further by substantial increases in tuition." In an effort to address these concerns, Mr. Van Luchene suggested the college community explore new ways of thinking. Seeding the dialogue, he asked the college to consider a number of things, ranging from rethinking the New Program to garnering greater financial support for the college from the local community. He also suggested the college take a second look at the relationship between the campuses, changing it from that of "twins" to that of "cousins." "It should be possible to retain a sense of the unity of our animating spirit without -clinging to a moribund conception of parity in all ways," the statement read. "We are clearly moving in this direction; we should proceed thoughtfully and not merely by inertial drift." In conclusion, he said, "I hope that this paper will serve as a springboard to further possibilities and that it will not invite merely reactionary criticism of its smaller points. None of the ideas it includes about instruction is intended as a proposal. They are all meant to illustrate possibilities and to encourage conversation about our situation." Nevertheless, the statement did raise alarm. "It generated a lot of concern among Alumni Association board mem- bers," Mark Middlebrook, A83, said. "That led to consideration on the board's part that we should look into it. We had meetings with the deans and one sort of quasi-seminar with members of the Instruction Committee, and we had special sessions among ourselves. We went through a couple of years with the college trying to convince us that there wasn't a unity problem. Although we weren't completely convinced, our fears were allayed. We did find that most people think unity is in the interest of college. vigilant." "The reason the association became concerned about Van Luchene's statement is that the Alumni Association is firmly committed to the St. John's College program and its execution on both campuses," Sharon Bishop, A65, president of the Alumni Association said. "For us it is one college, it is one program. It is that which binds us together. As dean, Steve �Van Luchene is operating the college on a day-today basis. From his perspective, having a little distance wouldn't hurt. Similarly, Eva Brann felt the need for a little breathing room. But the way it gets presented simply raises red flags with alumni. We get concerned when we hear college officials say we should become distant cousins instead of sisters. "The conclusion I came to was that the two campuses do indeed need to have enough breathing room in order for them to stay together as one college. In the end, we on ,the Alumni Association Board felt, in essence, that we didn't want to beat this drum too loud, we didn't want to be Chicken Little saying the sky is falling, and so starting last year we decided we should just let it sit but remain vigilant." Glenda Eoyang, SF76, said she was alarmed by the "1994 between the campuses rather than the similarities. "It's my understanding that there are many dimensions that tie the two campuses together: finances, administrative procedures, the ability of students to move back and forth, the alumni who see the college as one institution, faculty, the Joint Instruction Committee, all of those things are ties between the two campuses," she said. "There also are pressures from pragmatic, urgent issues that cause those ties to be looser or tighter from time to time. The campaign, the Eastern studies program, the fact that tutors are doing less exchange from one campus to another and a number of other things recently have served to underline the differences. In that context, Van Luchene's 'Statement of Educational Policy' was unfortunate. It focused just on Santa Fe, it accented differences instead of similarities, and it focused on those urgent administrative and financial concerns." However, Ms. Eoyang said that after some investigation into the issue she is how persuaded that the college will remain intact. "I think it has been resolved with verbal commitments from the deans and presidents on both cam puses that we are a single institution and that we'll resolve our problems in the context of the institution," she said. "But I do believe we need to keep a watchful eye on those urgent issues that will tend to highlight differences rather than similarities." Just about the time the concern over unity began to subside, a new twist genera:ted a second wave of alarm. When the college announced during the January 1996 board meeting that the Joint Instruction Committee would not hold its regular annual meeting due to temporary budget constraints in Santa Fe, it met with a strong reaction from members of the Alumni Association Board. "It appeared to fly in the face of all the assurances we'd been getting," Mr. Middlebrook said. "It's important for tutors from the two campuses to get together for a few days and talk. It still strikes me as of concern that many of the faculty haven't experienced the other campus at all." Mr. Van Luchene said he was surprised by the alumni response. "The Instruction Committee meeting was delayed from March to September, essentially to move it into the next fiscal year," he said. "While we all regret not getting to see our colleagues in Annapolis, no one thought that anything serious was lost by postponing that meeting." "What we heard was that Santa Fe did not have enough money so there would not be a meeting of the Joint Instruction Committee," Ms. Bishop said. "Initially, people got concerned. Then we heard it wasn't cancelled, it was just delayed and that it wasn't anything to get excited about." While most eventually concluded that the postponement of the Instruction Committee was a practical and largely inconsequential move, Annapolis President Chris Nelson, SF7 l, said he agrees with alumni that exchange between the campuses is imperative. "There's one thing we know from experience at St. John's, something everyone here believes is a principle of intellectual growth and human activity and it's this: Talking brings people together," he said. "Listening and talking to one another are good. They are fundamental to education and they arf fundamental to governance of a common enterprise. So if people on our two campuses are struggling with each other from time to time, it usually means they need to talk, and where memos don't work, a telephone might, and where the telephone won't, a personal meeting probably will. And if we haven't always acknowledged this principle explicitly in the past, we recognize it from day to day experience. In this we agree with the Alumni Association: Tutors, associates, officers and staff on the two campuses need to see more of each other and more of each other's campuses. We simply must make this happen or we will have a hard time recognizing ourselves as a single entity in certain fundamental respects. E-mail and telephone are great ways for two to communicate. Physically being together, however, is a far sight better for recognizing those respects in which we are one." Despite the administrative and financial challenges of managing the two campuses and a unilateral desire for more exchange between the two, there seems to be no doubt that St. John's will remain a single institution. "There is absolutely no question about it, the college will remain unified,'' Mr. Agresto said. "On the other hand, it is also important to realize that unity does not necessarily mean 'sameness."' Annapolis Dean Eva Brann agreed. "There is no problem with unity," she said without hesitation. "To begin with we have the 'Statement of Unity' which makes it crystal clear that we are one college. Then we have the yearly exchange of students, the result of which is that two-fifths of our students belong to both campuses. Then we have the fact that we are good friends with each other and are in constant communication. Then we have the Faculty Inter-Visitation Committee. Then we have the Joint Instruction Committee meeting, which was postponed this year because of a change of deans and money difficulties but which will resume early next fall-ahead of schedule. Then we have the fact that many people are now in e-mail communication with each other on both campuses. Then we have the fact that we now make conference calls when we need to, either between Instruction Committees or all the people who are managing the college. Then we have the fact that everyone in Annapolis loves to visit Santa Fe and we hope other way too." Ms. Brann added that a recent change to the Polity which, under highly controlled conditions, allows the two campuses to make slight changes separately from one another, will actually bring the campuses closer together by eliminating unnecessary sources of friction. She also noted that the measure was approved by a huge majority on both campuses and by the Board of Visitors and Governors. Mr. Agresto emphasized that any disparity between the campuses does not stem from philosophical differences, but from the fact that one campus is poorer than the other. And, while this causes a number of difficulties, it also has fostered new growth. "Necessity has been the mother of invention on this campus and we really have been willing to dare," he said. "I think that's what the program ultimately tries to teach." However, determining which things can vary between the two campuses and by how much is no easy matter. "We recognize that too great a disparity between the two is not a great idea," Mr. Agresto said. "This is a difficult line to walk. Each campus wants to be competitive with its neighboring institutions, but we don't want to be competitive with each other. ONE CAMPUS CONT. ON PAGE 10 �BART, DARKEY REFLECT ON THREE CADES I S T FE BY ELIZABETH SKEWES ..............· .................................................................................................................• ............................................................ . who haven't gone to St. John's College in Santa Fe, it is a place on a map-a dot found on the east side of town and tucked into the mountains. For those who have attended classes here, however, it is much more than that. It is a place in the heart and in the mind-a place inhabited by the friends and tutors who have shaped their lives. And for many of them, when they reflect on their days here, two faces, especially, spring to mind. Tutors William Darkey and Robert Bart are as much a part of the foundation of St. John's as any building. Mr. Darkey, who was here when the campus opened, and Mr. Bart, who came nearly 10 years later, are both alumni of the Annapolis campus and were both long-time tutors in Annapolis before coming to Santa Fe, and both served on the committee that selected Santa Fe as the site for the second campus. They have seen St. John's through the decades and been on hand each year as the college has welcomed new students and tutors, which are, for Mr. Darkey and Mr. Bart, the very Santa Fe tutor emeritus Robert Bart transferred to Santa Fe in 197 5 after 30 years on the Annapolis campus. Photo by Vivion Ronoy lifeblood of St. John's. "The faculty makes the college what it is," said Mr. Bart, who came to Santa Fe in 197 5, after teaching at Annapolis for 30 years. "We spend all of our time teaching and even out of class we spend time with our students. That certainly was the case 10 or 15 years ago and it continues today, though perhaps not to as great a degree. Still, the students are often in the homes of the faculty, sometimes helping with the children or just talking. Our pleasure and delight rests in knowing our students well." Mr. Darkey, who came from Annapolis to Santa Fe when the campus opened in 1964, said that in those first years, "there was a great feeling of newness and the excitement that goes with it. I got excited about 'building' the college. What Mr. Weigle had wanted was a bunch of old hands to come and bring the tradition of teaching and learning with them. "We were not trying to be different," he added. "We were trying to be the same in our teaching and tradition. But, of course, we're all individuals and different people modify things in different ways." What they modified, Mr. Bart said, was the tone of the campus. Tutors like Bob Neidorf and Michael Ossorgin have left strong impressions and warm memories in the minds of their students and colleagues. "In a college like St. John's, which is a teaching college, the loss of a good teacher can have a great impact," Mr. Bart said. "The faculty really is the college. The _deaths of Bob Neidorf and Michael Ossorgin have changed the college considerably and those changes are very different from the curricular changes. I'm very aware of who is no longer at the college, as well as who is there." Mr. Darkey credits Istvan Fehervary, who was the first student activities director in Santa Fe, for leaving a lasting mark on the campus. "He's why we have fencing on this campus. He invented the Fasching Ball and picnics on the mountains and all sort of things that are traditions, now, in Santa Fe." He also points to Mr. Bart as someone who has shaped not only the campus, but John Gaw Meem and St. John's President Richard D. Weigle survey the site on soon be constructed. the curric~lum as well. The introduction of the art program into the curriculum was sponsored by Mr. Bart, he said. And while neither man is a strong advocate of change in the St. John's program, they both said that the art sequence in the senior year has added more than it has taken away. "The art program is a very valuable addition to the program and one that was imagined with the founding of the program," Mr. Bart said. "But something had to give way to make room for it and the fact is that there is less time for language and math than there was before in the senior year. "Still, there's very little reason to change our curriculum. It wasn't designed to be contemporary and I don't think that we ought to push out authors that we cur:.. rently read to make room for others who may not be any better," Mr. Bart added. For Mr. Darkey, the importance of the curriculum rests in the way it brings together students with increasingly different educational backgrounds and molds them into a cohesive group of scholars who can learn from each other, as well as the text. Changing the curriculum to bring in more contemporary texts or opening the seminars to discussions of current world events would do far more harm than good, he said. "During the second World War, when I was in college in Annapolis, we kept pret- Santa Fe campus ty good track of the war, but that's different from following Dole, Forbes and Buchanan in the presidential primary," he said. "Vietnam did touch the campus, but it didn't come much into the classroom. It seems to me that those discussions happen, but they do so extracurricularly. I don't think it's our business to teach that to undergraduates. Mr. Barr said that students ought to be out of the world for a while. I mean, why should anyone study Watergate? "Reading the same books - that's a fundamental tenant of the curriculum. Mr. Barr used to say that these books are the minutes of Western civilization." · The very fact that the same books have been read and examined by generations of St. John's alumni from both campuses means that the common experience - over the years and over the miles makes the differences between campuses and between decades very minor. What matters more, both tutors said, are the similarities of a single program and an approach that encourages students to discuss their ideas. "This is a totally talking college," Mr. Darkey said. "We talk to each other all the time and that's possible because we're all studying the same thing. It seems to be more and more the case that the students who come to us have relatively little in common educationally. It's hard to find a �a book that all of them have read. What this college does, through the program, is make a kind of culture that is unusual in most places. By the middle of the first semester, the students are beginning to have a lot of things in common- and not only horizontally among the members of their class, but vertically among students in other classes and other years because they're reading the same authors." It's those factors - the emphasis on learning and talking, and the common experience of the program that give St. John's its most unique character, he said, whether it's St. John's in Santa Fe or St. John's in Annapolis. "Santa Fe may be more 'western' than Annapolis, whatever that means, but the campuses are not really very different. They' re more alike than anyone might suppose." Mr. Bart said there were more differences 30 years ago, when Santa Fe was brand new, and even when he came to Santa Fe nearly 10 years later. "When I came out here, a lot of people thought I represented Annapolis and there were some who were concerned. But I really think we've outgrown that kind of tension," he said. "Of course, things like that don't disappear completely." Still, the two campuses work well together, he said, because they are bound by the common program and by the students and tutors who often spend time on both campuses. The shared experiences and shared vision are what will keep the college going strong well into the next century and beyond. "I sincerely hope that the college in 20 years will be very similar to what it is now and I don't think any changes that will occur will be significant," Mr. Bart said. "If they read 10 other books and drop 10 that we have now, the seminar would be the same. You see, once we establish that we're interested in what the students have to say, that makes a world of difference and it's what sets us apart from other colleges." Dedication of the Santa Fe campus, October 10, 1964 liil ONE CAMPUS CONT. FROM PAGE 8 "For instance, it's much more important to come to parity on faculty salaries than in other areas. The work is the same, the curriculum is the same, the demands on tutors are the same, and as best as possible, the salaries should be the same. When it comes to tuition, room and board there can be a bit more leeway, especially in the area of room and board. Historically, room and board has not always been equal or the same on both campuses, and this is one place where each campus really does have to situate itself within its local housing market. We want students to live on campus and be part of campus life. What may be reasonable on one campus might be too high on the other and drive students out of campus housing." In terms of tuition, the two campuses exist in very different markets, he said. "Annapolis has only to look around the corner to find schools that are as expensive or more so. Annapolis tuition is where it needs to be to be attractive and competitive, but here in the west a tuition as high as Annapolis' means a deficit of students." On this point, however, Santa Fe Dean Steve Van Luchene said the college needs to be cautious. "I personally like the idea of a lower tuition myself, but we have to ask where are we with respect to our competitors, we have to define our market. Then we have to ask how much of an overlap is there in the markets that Santa Fe and Annapolis serve." According to Mr. Agresto, research on these questions which was initiated several years ago and is ongoing today will help to determine the optimum tuition level for Santa Fe. And, while the Santa Fe campus has, over the past two years, lowered its annual tuition increases relative to Annapolis, the college is watching carefully to ensure the variation does not affect transferability. In fact, Mr. Agresto said, when the difference in tuition between Annapolis and Santa Fe became apparent, more students went to Annapolis than transferred to Santa Fe. "We have no evidence that within certain boundaries the tuition differential harms transfer to the more expensive campus." While a number of issues, such as differing tuition levels, continue to generate research and discussion, Mr. Nelson said these problems can be resolved. "I believe in the idea of one college," Mr. Nelson said. "In my mind the Program is the college and the Program ought to drive other questions. It seems to me that as long as we' re unified about the Program it ought not to be hard to discover the various means we will need to use to protect it. "The questions we are talking about are the same ones our freshmen face in their second semester when they talk about sameness and otherness, and the one and the many. Beings have integrity or oneness in what they together share and we have this integrity in the Program. It requires vigilance, work to protect it, and it probably requires many different ways on our separate sites to see that this actually happens. And of course it requires a lot of talk. The exchanges that we've had on the unity theme are healthy in that they've caused us to examine ourselves out loud and to hear what is said by people that we don't see on a daily basis." The two things, then, that everyone seems to agree on are that St. John's College should remain a single entity and that unity does not necessarily mean sameness. "Instead of talking about unity, we should be talking about the relationship between two parts of a whole," Mr. Van Luchene said. Mr. Agresto agreed. "Everyone assumes unity means sameness," he said. "We want to be unified in terms of the core of instruction, the transferability, and the aims of the curriculum, but if one campus looks a little different than the other in terms of its endowment, revenue stream and experiments, that's allowed too." "We want to avoid talking it to death in this kind of generic way," Mr. Middlebrook said. "I am not sure how to do it, but I hope that in our discussions about unity we don't turn it into a momand-apple-pie issue, that we can continue to talk about it critically." For Ms. Eoyang, while she said she is convinced the two campuses will remain unified, she now worries about a different kind of unity within the college-the unity of ideas. "I think the philosophical grounding of the college is the unity of knowledge," she said "The whole idea of studying ideas across disciplines is fundamental to what the college is. And there are ways in which I see that unity being challenged. For instance, there is a tension at the college today between the idea of expertise in a discipline and unity of ideas across disciplines. According to the way I see the college, we need to think about expertise in the context of integration rather than integration in the context of expertise. "I think in some ways our concern about the administrative issues is a -.symptom of our concern about this deeper issue. I would like to see us as a community ask ourselves the question and continue to talk about the unity of ideas as embodied by the college." And so, the dialogue continues. Iii] �PUS LIFE ES TO THE GREAT BOOKS BY SUS3AN BORDEN mid-eighties, an Annapolis .Astucier1t devised a campus tour that capitalized on St. John's diminutive stature. She'd lead a small group out to the quad where she would say: "Now ... pivot!" End of tour. Granted, she had hit upon an efficient way to provide sightseers with a glimpse of our historic buildings and hallowed grounds; yet she failed to do justice to a college as interesting and complex as St. John's. Those who find themselves unsatisfied with the quick pivot tour might be tempted to present themselves at the admissions office on a Monday or Thursday afternoon when prospective students arrive for their campus visits. The campus visit is designed to give prospectives a taste of life at St. John's: they stay overnight in Campbell Hall, talk with students, eat in the dining hall, and attend seminar, tutorials and lab. Each visit begins with a campus tour led by a student guide. In the true St. John's spirit, the guides receive little if any training for their tours. They must decide for themselves how best to interpret the college for the prospectives they introduce to the school. Student guide Kevin Gardner describes his program-centered tour. "We begin at the library and talk about the essays. We discuss our approach, how our papers are personal rather than strictly commentary. We walk through the quad, look at the seal,. go into FSK. If they have an interest in theater, we visit the auditorium. But it is in the classroom, McDowell especially, that the tour reaches a turning point," says Gardner. "We sit down, talk about the chalkboards, discuss how everyone participates. Then we go to the bookstore and talk about the books themselves. The prospectives will often talk about the program books they've read. My tour doesn't address the social life very much. We really have to sum that up because we talk mainly about the program." Head guide Cindy Lutz tries not to skimp when discussing the college's social life. She feels that talking about non-program issues is an important part of her tour. "A visit to the gym is a good time to talk about student activities outside the program. Prospectives are usually surprised by this. They think we spend 24 hours with our noses stuck in books. I like to stress that this is not just an academic life, but that St. John's is a community." Director of Admissions John Christensen values the student guides' various emphases. "Part of the reason for the lengthy stay is to allow prospectives to remain on campus long enough to gain an understanding of the day-to-day life of the students. We want them to have a chance to see the community as a whole, both in its academic and its extra-curricular dimensions," Christensen says. "The tours have a dual purpose. They give the students a physical orientation to the campus, and they give them a chance to talk about what will happen while they are here, what the classes mean, and what the students' attitude is toward attending a class. The chance to speak to a current student during an extended tour helps the classes make sense to them." This well-rounded view of the college pays off. When the admissions office surveyed entering freshmen about the activity most helpful in making their decision to attend the college, the prospective visit was far and away cited as most important. When asked about the quick-pivot tour, Christensen laughs and says, "The campus may be small, but the college is deep, rich and complex. It is the job of the student guides to pull away the veil of the campus and reveal the larger college to our prospective students." Re: "An Open Letter to the St. John's Alumni," Reporter, Fall 1995, why does the College persist in tippy-toeing around this question? No, Their Eyes Were Watching God is not specifically a "great" book. Yes, Frankenstein is melodrama, and Christine de Pisan may have sophomore girls cracking gum and cracking wise in the dorms. But how does one call oneself educated without Sappho and Emily Dickinson? Far more important, oh, philosophers, is the idea. What's Aeschylus the warrior talking about, when he says in The Eumenides that Athena can judge rationally because she wasn't born of woman? Who's this country boy, Aristotle, who writes without evident irony that any male fool can plainly see how irrational women are? And, yes, why does ugly old Socrates call himself a revolutionary, when he allows women to be guardians? The proposal in "The Open Letter" is pretty well argued and reasonably presented, the proffered titles incorporated into the curriculum intelligently. But isn't all of this a little late in the day? Why doesn't the College set aside a month in the senior year, after the Freud readings, to investigate what three generations of shrinks wished Freud had asked his own mother-what does 'Woman' want? There is a reason. To judge by what passes for philosophy in the 20th Century, we may have reached the end of what meaningful new ground philosophy can break. Precisely there, perhaps, 'Woman' is waiting. Talk about calling oneself educated ... - Robert Covelli, A79 llil St John's College Alumni Relations 1160 (amino Cruz Blanca Santo Fe, NM 87501 e-mail: eskewes@shadow.stjohns-nm.edu St. John's College Office of Public Relations P.O. Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404-2800 .e~mail: bgoyeffe@mailhost.sjca.edu Christina Papavasiliou (center), on Annapolis sophomore, explains the New Program seal to two prospective students. Photo by Keith Harvey �SEARCH AND RESCUE TEAM CELEBRATES 25TH ANNIVERSARY BY JOHN TULL Team Founder Herb Kincey College Search and proud heritage of twenty-five years to the people of Santa Fe and Northern New Mexico with a festive banquet on April 27, 1996, in the Great Hall at the Santa Fe campus. All members and supporters, past and present, are invited. The plans for the evening include remembering the past with fondness and looking to the future with confidence and optimism. The team was founded in 1970 by Herb Kincey, Istvan Fehervary and Jim Carr. The initial concept continues unaltered after a quarter-century: encourage the St. John's College student to participate in meaningful activities while providing a vital service to the community. It is the unusual student who has not had his or her life tangibly changed through the experience received as a result of SAR participation. From those early days, with fourteen original members, the team has grown into one of the most respected search and rescue teams in the nation. The team now has 100 members, equally divided between St. John's College students and · community members. Every member of the team is a volunteer who donates valuable time and equipment to the goals of the team. FACT: The members own 42 four-wheel-drive vehicles, 16 cellular phones, 48 mountain bikes and 24 sets of snowshoes. The team now has over 40 members trained as a Paramedic, EMT, or Wilderness First Responder, as well as three physicians. Such a wealth of medical training allows the team to respond in a proficient manner to almost any type of life-threatening emergency. Leaders or Team Leaders. FACT: The team participates in approximately thirty-five missions per year, equally divided between rescues of injured persons and searches for lost persons. SJCSAR is highly regarded for its diverse membership, team loyalty, high level of training, and ability to make progressive changes in policy. In response to the growing nationwide movement toward managing emergency efforts using the Incident Command System, for example, the team has become the only Search and Rescue team in New Mexico with a fully certified ICS staff. Each SJCSAR ground team in the field on a mission is 'I equipped with a GPS, or ~( Global Positioning System ~ unit, that allows the (;\ team to know its location at all times with electronic accuracy through satellite technology. ff\ FACT: The team now has 18 Amateur Radio Operators, or Hams, significantly aiding in the communications efforts during missions. ~ \ ' 11 '?~ ...,..~ ~ V The team is ~ financed by contribud ~ tions from the College, ~ member dues and contributions from benefactors and appreciative rescuees. Due to tli.e high cost of, and absolute necessity for, specialized equipment to allow us to do the job we have chosen to undertake, contributions are very important for the success of our objectives. C'J.f A N 0 The team provides extensive training for new members and continuing education for all members. The Executive Board recently enacted significant changes in training requirements. Each member is now certified on a multitrack basis depending upon physical skills, gear required, and training completed. Ongoing efforts to enhance leadership skills have greatly improved mission safety factors. Over one-third of the members have achieved certification as Operations Leaders, Training Operations FACT: Over half the members carry digital pagers at all times to ensure a faster response time to a mission callout. It takes an enormous amount of time and dedication to be a contributing member of the team. The training never ends. A vital piece of equipment is always desperately needed. Some people undoubtedly think that SAR personnel are all crazy: Normal people simply do not enjoy wandering around in the middle of the night in the woods in the snow carrying enormous packs. Not surprisingly, it is a shared feeling among the members that they would not trade their experiences on the team for anything else. As our country fades into the twentyfirst century, there exist few chances to be a genuine hero, for fun rather than profit. There are equally few chances to freely give of one's time and efforts, without recompense or quest for personal glory. It is quite rare in 1996 to be part of an exciting group that undertakes some amount of personal risk for the good of one's fellow-man. St. John's College Search and Rescue Team offers those chances, and thus enriches the lives of the members while saving the lives of the victims. Uohn Tull is a Santa Fe attorney and writer. He is proud to be an Operations Leader for the team.) llil �SPRING l 996 L U M N I ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE J\ssoc1ATION N Ews MARK MIDDLEBROOK, A83 I EDITOR COMMUNICATIONS COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN THOMAS APRIL 1996 ELECTION OF DIRECTORS OF THE JOHN'S COLLEGE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION. In accordance with the Article VII, Sections I and II of the Bylaws of the Alumni Association, notice is hereby given that the following alumni have been nominated to serve on St. John's College Alumni Association Board of Directors: For three-year terms as Directors: M.A. Harvard, Ph.D., Columbia University; Professor of Philosophy and Comparative Literature at the City University of New York (The Graduate School and Research Center and Brooklyn College); author of The Ecstasies of Roland Barthes {Routledge, 1989); trustee of the American Society for Aesthetics (1984-87); consultant to the National Endowment for the Humanities (1979-80 and 1993-95) and the Department of Education of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (1986); Visiting Professor at the University of Paris VIII (Spring 1986); Member, St. John's College Board of Visitors and Governors (1986-92); Director, St. John's College Alumni Association Board of Directors (1986-92); Leader, alumni seminars at the Annapolis Homecoming, the New York Chapter, and The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; St. John's College Summer Alumni Programs (1990~ 1995); Recipient, St. John's College Alumni Association Award of Merit (1989). Paul Martin, '80(S) Austin, TX General Director, Martin Capital Management, 1988-present; Chief Investment Officer, Lone Star Portfolio, Texas Capital Value Funds, 1986-present; Stockbroker, Merrill Lynch/Oppenheimer & Co., 1985-88; U.S. Naval Reserve Officer, 1980-present (Commander); Executive Officer, Naval Reserve Special Warfare Team, 1994-present; Intelligence Analyst, U.S. Army Security Agency, 1973-76; Co-Founder and President, Austin Chapter, St. John's College Alumni Association, 1990-present; Vice President, New York Chapter, St. John's College Alumni Association, 1987-89; SF80 Class Leader, The Campaign for Our Fourth Century; Director, The Jung Society of Austin, 1995-present. Pedro '84(A) Miami, FL J.D., 1987, Columbia University School of Law, as a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar; igation shareholder with Greenberg Traurig Hoffman Lipoff Rosen & Ouentel, P.A. in Miami, FL, Greenberg Traurig is a 250-attorney firm with offices in Fort Lauderdale, Miami, New York, Orlando, Tallahassee, Washington, DC and West Palm Beach; Vice Chair, Florida Bar Code and Rules of Evidence Committee; member, Florida Bar Rules of Civil Procedure and Rules of Judicial Administration Committees. William '84(S) Albuquerque, NM J.D., University of New Mexico Law School, 1989; Attorney-at-Law, William J. Friedman, Albuquerque, New Mexico; General Counsel, New Mexico Organic Commodity Commission, 1990-95; Judge, International Court of Arbitration, International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements, present; Law Clerk, Hon. Chief Judge A Joseph Alarid, New Mexico Court of Appeals, 1990-92. Linda Stabler-Talty, '76(SGI) New York, NY BA, Scripps, Claremont, CA; M.A., St. John's College, 1976; M.E.D., Yale School of Architecture, 1991; multimedia producer for non-profit educational agencies; site photographer for American excavation in Sicily; Visual Arts Coordinator, Department of Cultural Affairs, New Haven, CT, 1988-89; Urban Planning Consultant for project for Public Spaces; New York, NY 1993; Director, Ninth Square Public Art Project, 1993-94; Currently working as a consultant to the local library and volunteer teaching at the elementary school where her daughter attends; Director, St. John's College Alumni Association, 1980-83; 1986-92; 1994- Co-Chair, Alumni for the Liberal Arts Annual Fund Campaign, 1982-83; Editor, Alumni Association newsletter, 1986-92. NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN THAT NOMINATIONS MAYBE MADE BY PETITION: Rules governing submission of nominations by petition are as follows: l . Petitions must be signed by no fewer than thirty (30) members of the Alumni Association in good standing. 2. Petitions must be presented to the Secretary of the Alumni Association prior to the Annual Meeting at which the election is to be held. Beverly Angel, SGl89, Secretary, St. John's College Alumni Association P.O. Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404 3. The election will be held at the Annual Meeting on Saturday, September 28, 1996, at 10:00 p.m., in the Conversation Room, Mellon Hall, Annapolis Campus. 4. The candidates for Directors receiving the highest number of votes for those The Alumni Association Newsletter is published in each issue of the Reporter. We welcome letters, capsule book reviews, and article ideas from alumni. Send submissions and suggestions to Mark Middlebrook at 73030.1604@compuserve.com (e-mail) or call 510/547-0602. GEYER, A68, offices shall be declared elected. Terms will begin on January l, 1997. APRIL 1 ELECTION OF ALUMNI REPRESENTATIVES TO THE ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE BOARD OF VISITORS AND GOVERNORS In accordance with the Article Sections II of the By-Laws of the Alumni Association, notice is following alumni have the Alumni Association Board Directors for election to St. College of Visitors and Governors. For his three-year term: M.D. '63(A) Annapolis, MD M.A. in English, Johns Hopkins l:Jniversity, 1964; M.D., Hahnemann Medical College and Hospital, 1970; Major, U.S. Army Medical Corps, Pulmonary Disease Specialist, 1974-76; Attending Physician, Anne Arundel General Hospital, Annapolis, MD, Pulmonary and Internal Medicine, l 979- , Director of Respiratory Care Services, 1983- ; Chief, Dept. of Internal Medicine, 1989-1994; St. John's College Physician, 1988-present; Member, Governors Council for Maryland, American College of Physicians; Member, St. John's College Board of Visitors and Governors, 1995present. For her second term: Glenda Holladay Eoyang, '76(S) Minneapolis, MN Graduate studies in education, technical communications, computer programming, and instructional design for University of Oklahoma, East Central Oklahoma University, West Texas State University, and the University of �REPORTER Minnesota, 1976-82; doctoral candidate in sociology, Union Institute, Cincinnati, OH, 1995; President, Chaos Limited, a management training and consulting firm, 1993-present; President, Excel Instruction, Inc., a technical training and documentation company, 1 986-present; Instructional designer and Director of Marketing, Quest Learning System, 1983-96; High school teacher of physics, mathematics; and chemistry at Casady School in Okta~oma City, OK, 1976-81. Author, The.NeY.' Manager: Chaotic Strategies for Cllaotic Times; Member, Advisory Boa~·f.J~ the CJlao~ Ne~~rk, · Urbana, I( l9,95: ;: Foundfug president, . Twin' Cities 'Al~~ntChapte(,, St John's College Alu~ni Association;~Ditedor and Chapters Chair, St. John's College Alumni Association; Class Chair, St. John's College Campaign for Our Fourth Century, 1993- ; Member, St. John's College Board of Visitors and Governors, 1995- . For her first three-year term: Paula G. Maynes '77(A) Santa Fe, NM J.D., University of New Mexico, 1984; shareholder of Montgomery and Andrews, P.A., specializing in litigation; Assistant Attorney General, 1985-1987; member, State Bar of New Mexico and the American Bar Association; President, Santa Fe Chapter, St. John's College Alumni Association, 1984-86; Director, St. John's College Alumni Association, 1984-present. 14 Dallas - Fort Worth Chapter Profile or How I Wiled Away 13 Good Years in the West BY SUZANNE G. DOREMUS, SF79, DALLAS - FORT WORTH CHAPTER PRESIDENT My aston.ishment was genuine ~hen · .Editqr'S:;,f)O~: This article. is fX!rl of an. ongoing series profiling_ loCal alumni cryap~fS:. Qur profile wiH fec,tvre tile Boskm·cfiaptet I descend~ into,.Texos fr0m tile 'NeW next " Mexican high plateau one 100-degree -day in 1981, crossing the Panhandle, with its twin claims to cultural fame-up-ended Cadillacs and a 72-oz. steak-and heading south to the asphalt labyrinth of the MetroPlex, hundreds of miles from the nearest decent book store. As far as I knew, I might never see another copy of Lordship and Bondage again, nor hear the siren ... 'Well, it seems to me ... " from any lips but my husband's. (It's true, by the way, that things are bigger in Texas. I've met several cockroaches sipping margaritas in bola ties and size-12 kicker boots; the trouble is, none of them has ever heard of Kafka.) Near the end of our second winter, we were on the point of intellectual starvation when Sam Larcombe, an alumnus and college liaison, sent word he was coming to town. Whenever two or three are gathered together, there is a seminar, I reminded myself, but I suspected his journey, whose purpose was to found an Alumni Chapter, would be in vain. . in February 1983, ih a room_ at the University of Dolla$r tfi~~ gathered more · ·. than half a doz~n.ordi~ary-IOC>ki·;.;g - MetroPlex·fofk~ of whom revealed themselves as disciples of the EtBll. They included Khalil Ayoub (S76), Jon (A76) and Marion (A75) Hustis, Eric Salem (A77), and Karen Bent (A75). We were cheered by one another's company. In coming to the home of J.R. Ewing and Mary Kay, we might have traded green chile for sour cream sauce, and crab cakes for biscuits and gravy, but we resolved to make the best of it. In the spirit of our adoptive state, we petitioned the Alumni Association for permission to style ourselves the Republic of Texas Chapter (there were no other competing claims at the time). As is so often the case when Texans fall under the yoke of continental government, the Board deemed this a pompous, self-aggrandizing display of hubris, if not outright land grabbing, and fenced us into a few paltry counties. Lawyer Jon Hustis was our Sam Houston, drawing up a charter (here again we skirmished with the Board, but Larcombe's diplomacy averted a second Battle of the Alamo and spared countless off CHAPTER CONTACTS Please call those listed below for information about alumni activities in each area. ALBUQUERQUE: Harold M. Morgan, Jr. (505) 256-0294 NEWYORK: Justin Burke (212) 228-8423 or (212) 620-3955 ANNAPOLIS: Joel D. Lehman (410) 956-2814 AUSTIN: Paul Martin (512) 477-5855 BOSTON: Alvin Aronson (617) 566-6657 BUFFALO/ROCHESTER/TORONTO: Hank Constantine (716) 586-5393 CHICAGO: Amanda Fuller (312) 337-4105 or Rick Lightburn (312) 667-0068 DALLAS/FORT WORTH: Suzanne Doremus (817) 496-8571 or Jonathan Hustis (214) 340-8442 PHILADELPHIA: Jim Schweidel (215) 836-7632 PORTLAND: Rachel Sullivan (503) 629-5838 SACRAMENTO: Arianne Laidlaw (916) 362-5131 or Helen Hobart (916) 452-1082 SAN FRANCISCO/NORTHERN CALIFORNIA: Cynthia Kay Catherine Hobgood (415) 552-9349 SANTA FE: John Pollak (505) 983-2144 or Elizabeth Skewes (505) 984-6103 LOS ANGELES: Julia Takahashi (310) 434-7624 SEATILE: Jim Doherty (206) 937-8886 MINNEAPOLIS/ST PAUL: Glenda Eoyang (612) 783-1405 or (612) 379-3883 ryv) WASHINGTON, D.C.: Sam Stiles (30 I) 424-91 19 or Bill Ross (30 I) 230-4594 lives on both sides) and becoming our first president. Since the chapter is governed by a sort of benign dictatorship (Plato in a 10gallon hat}, it has not seemed necessary to have more than one president since. (False modesty forbids my mentioning her name.) For the record, the change in leadership was attended by an election, fair and square, and if there was any tampering with the ballot box, it could not be detected by any of the survivors of the shoot-out arid fire. (These incidents ~ave been great~ ly exaggerated in the press.) As Marion and I were bOth pregnant at tbe time.of the'chap~(S, organjzotion, the _settfe~ent ~~the Trinity.b~9~ to grow in numbers almost immediately. By the foltowing year a pattern of meetings was established, with the Hustis home our most fre- ~ quent gathering-place, usually on a Friday or Saturday night. Attendance falls in a range from 4 persons to perhaps 12, with readings likewise short and to the point, since many of our members have growing families that require most of their spare time. (Nobody but Georgia O'Keeffe ever came to Texas for the scenery, so it's best to have something you can stay pretty busy at.) Texas levies no state income tax, and, well, we weren't Aggies: We could see the fiscal wisdom of this approach right away. So, with no hall to hire or newsletter to publish, the chapter collects no dues and makes no long-range plans. Each member brings refreshments to the meeting. and participants eat symposium-style, throughout the discussion. Between meetings, the Hustis' refrigerator is a United Nations of half a dozen brands of imported beer, the remnants of various six-packs left on the seminar altar. Our selections range widely from Program books. The reading and meeting date for our next seminar are almost always determined at the close of an evening together. (By tradition, the person who suggested the reading is responsible for asking the opening question.) We meet every four to six weeks, sometimes taking a month off in summer. Each December we have a festive meal together, and hang the reading. If there is a piano at hand, we may end the evening in song. Fortunately, citizens' arrests for disturbing the peace seldom hold up in court. (We may be more soffo voce though, since, it's legal once again to carry a concealed handgun.) Currently we have a mailing list of about 15 members, many of them couples, and roughly a dozen offspring between .1 and 14. Our lucky children have grown \JP equating the term "seminar night" with friends, computer games, videos, dress-up, goldfish crackers, grapes, cheese, juice boxes, and Oreo cookies. Every year, it seems, a few young misfits from the area are prevailed upon to pull up stakes and enroll at St. John's, a school whose alumni don't even have the sense to buy a good football team. In our more than a decade together, the Dallas ALUMNI NEWS CONT. ON PAGE 15 �15 REPORTER ALUMNI NEWS CONT. FROM PAGE 14 Fort Worth Chapter has had the pleasure of hosting a number of receptions for the Admissions Office. Prospective students (and current ones on vacation), parents and other guests are always welcome to attend any seminar. As individuals our members have counseled prospective students, stumped for the Old School at college fairs, planned Homecoming events for their classes, represented St. John's at local academic convocations, headed various college fund-raising efforts, and made themselves available in other ways to the Presidents and officers of both campuses. Over the years we have occasionally lost members to other parts of the country. If any of you should read this, we ask you not to give in to smugness, and above all not to believe yourselves forgotten. That dog won't hunt. Ex Libris Alumnorum CAPSULE REVIEWS BY ALUMNI OF FAVORITE BOOKS Send your one-paragraph reviews to the editor of this Newsletter. Mark Middlebrook e-mail: 73030.1604@compuserve.com 435 Clifton Street, Oakland, CA 946 78 THE TRINITY GENE, by Tim Newcomb 1995, Lagumo Corporation. 330 pages. SUBMITIED BY GLENDA EOYANG, SF76 The Trinity Gene is a fast moving thriller. It is a parable of spiritual renewal caught in the web of clerical, technical, and political high-jinx. Genetic engineering, passionate romance, international intrigue, and social satire are woven together in this first work of fiction from Lagumo Press (founded by Barbara Lauer, SF76, and Norman Newlon}. Fascinating characters wend their ways through a plot that lies somewhere between Jurassic Park and The Gospels. I could not put it down. Seldom does a book earn this cliche from me, but The Trinity Gene did. Newcomb has a gift for contrast that builds rich texture into his locales (Wyoming mountain range and plush rain forest), his characters (monks, cops, and Fanatical rebels), and his dialogue {personal transformation and dirty political games). The tensions between power and purgatory build toward a computer-generated Armageddon. The conclusion is the awakening of the Baby who may live to see a different world. The Trinity Gene is not widely available yet, but you can order your copy from Lagumo Corp., P.O. Box 1407, Cheyenne, Wyoming 82003, or call 1-800-448-1969. ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS: DUTIES TO AND VALUES IN THE NATURAL WORLD, by Holmes Rolston, Ill 1988, Temple University Press. 391 pages. LETTER FROM THE CZECH REPUBLIC BY MICHAEL GEORGE, A78 SUBMITIED BY OWEN GOLDIN, SF79. Much of the St. John's program focuses on goodness, beauty and obligation. As we were pondering these themes, many of us were of the belief that there was something terribly wrong with reckless development and destruction of the natural world in the regions of both campuses, even apart from the damage that environmental destruction works on other human beings. To some of us it seems as though the natural world itself is a good. How can we make sense of this? Do ethical categories apply, or are we merely registering our own displeasure at the changes we see? The books in the program do not address these issues directly. There have recently been a number of attempts to carry on the great dialogue of the Western philosophical tradition to make sense of moral obligations to the natural world. As to be expected, these are of varying worth. Rolston's book is the most balanced and profound treatment I've seen. The writing is elegant and informed by current biological thought. Rolston's account is non-technical but careful. Starting from a fundamentally Aristotelian position, he argues that nonhuman living beings, species, and ecosystems all have moral standing, but steers clear of the sort of biological egalitarianism that, if taken seriously, would make human life unlivable. MEFISTOFELE, composed by Arrigo Boito San Francisco Opera production, Public Media Home Vision video (1-800-262-8600), 1989. 159 minutes. SUBMITIED BY MARK MIDDLEBROOK, A83 Boito is better known to opera snobs as librettist to Verdi, but his own Mefistofele ranks first on my list of Italian operas. It has diverse musical textures, great tunes, heart-breaking duets, and some of the most powerful choral scenes this side of Beethoven. It also has drama aplenty and, for once, a duel between good and evil thars thought-provoking instead of hackneyed. This video of the San Francisco Opera production brings out all of these qualities, with excellent singing and acting and a touch of humor, especially by devil incarnadine Samuel Ramey. The show's sets are breathtaking, beginning with Rome-licked curtains and cherubim sculptures guarding the proscenium. Opera boxes built into the stage walls serve as homes to the Celestial Host and entry points for Faust and Mefistofele. Sacro attimo fuggenti / Arrestati, sei be/lo! sings Faust: "Sacred, ffeeting moment/ Stay, for thou art beautiful!" This video demonstrates what grand opera is all about. Ill /Se1fMichael George came to St. John's in 1974 he already had a master's degree in history, but he was so intrigued wiih the program he decided to enroll as an undergraduate. He stayed one year, then went on to work on a shrimp boat in South America and after that at a ranch in Wyoming. He also spent some time at a contemplative monastery. For the past three years, he has been employed by the Czech ministry of education as a teacher. He is currently living in the city of Brno teaching English and history at the State Language School. Although the time he spent at the college was brief, Mr. George considers St.John's his true alma mater. "My educational experience really occurred at St. john's," he says. As a student of history, Mr. George was always fascinated by revolution; spending time in the Czech Republic has given him a chance to see "how a culture changed itself." He counts Annapolis Dean Eva Brann among his regular correspondents, and he finds that writing letters helps him keep his thoughts in order. In the following letter he talks about his fascination with Eastern Europe. I've been here two and a half years, and I still don't have an answer when people ask me that most frequent of all questions, "Why are you here?" I tell them about being on the Czech-German border in '68 when the Russians rolled in, and about studying Russian and German history after that. I tell them how I always regretted not having been born 200 years sooner to have seen my own country's birth. I tell them that real revolution doesn't happen in the parliament or on the battlefield but in the kitchens, trams and bedrooms. And how times of the greatest upheaval call for uncommon courage from common people, and how I wanted to be here to see it. So that's become the stock answer, and it's all true, but even as I've listened to myself say it these past years, I knew it didn't reach down deep into the heart. Well, talking with two friends yesterday, a Czech attorney about my age and an American slavophile in his mid20's, I talked myself down to the truth, and it goes something like this: The four decades under Communism in Czechoslovakia was a life I couldn't imagine. My two years in Germany gave me some insight into the European mind and through reading I was able to finetune and expand that understanding into the pecularities that were unique to cen- tral and eastern Europe, especially between the wars. But then I was lost. I was cut off by a chasm that my mind couldn't leap across, couldn't even see across. I couldn't possibly imagine living in communist Czechoslovakia-a land of no escape where people simply waited for events that turned beyond their control. In such a place, there is no distancing from the strife. There is no ocean to cross before the fighting begins. That bombed rubble is your town, that burning building is your home, those piled corpses are your family. And after it all, you shrug and turn back and try to find enough undestroyed to thread back to your roots, and if there is enough, to prepare for tomorrow. And there was no way I could get hold of-get my mind around- what life must have been-, like in those eternal years of totalitarianism. I read history, fiction, newspapers, travel accounts, and still I couldn't imagine it in real time. I knew the people there were just normal people like me, but what was normal on the other side of the chasm? What did they eat? What did they think when they got up? Or talk about with their friends? What was fun for them? What would they think of my normal life? How did they love? What was their one secret wish? Could it be as mundane as mine? Was being a Communist like being a Democrat or Republican? .... or more like being a Shriner or on the school board? No matter what I did, I just couldn't relate. Whenever I could stand close to someone from "over there," I was like a fawning groupie around a rock star. They were so exotic and I was speechless. I hung on every word. They could be "dissidents" or "communists," it didn't matter, I wanted to be able to see myself in their place. I couldn't come to eastern Europe then. Oh, sure, I COULD have, but I had other lives to live, family, land, career. While now is certainly not then and I can never know the full force of what life was like under communism, there is still enough residue here that I can piece together what must have been. There are still enough landmarks that I can take back bearings and approximate the course that those lives must have taken. CZECH CONT. ON PAGE 17 �REPORTER 16 ALUMNI NOTES ••• Richard Woodman writes that he has been practicing law in a small upstate New York village since 1942, with three years off during World War II. "I missed the 60th reunion that wasn't held," he says. Dr. Robert Lewis was inducted as a member into the Academy of Arts and Sciences of Puerto Rico. He lives in San Juan. The Rev. Frederick P. Davis reports that he is finishing a book on his "27 years of full-time (i.e. paid) ministry, serving ten Episcopal churches in five dioceses (including three Indian tribes on two reservations)." His wife, Rita, is studying for an AA degree at a local college after working most of the past 42 years in hospitals as a nurse or medical records technician- "and my secretary and co-missionary." David B. Weinstein has resigned as assistant professor of pediatrics at Texas Tech Medical School. He was chief of the pediatric allergy clinic for 30 years. Dr. Weinstein will continue in private practice. "I have entered a degree program at Johns Hopkins University for a masters of liberal arts specializing in the history of ideas," reports George Wend. Amy Jobes was ordained deacon at All Saints' Epicsopal Church in Paragould, Arkansas. She is now serving as deacon-intraining at Holy Cross Episcopal Church in West Memphis, Arkansas, writes her husband, James Jobes (56). Barry Fisher is Associate Professor of Surgery at the University of Nevada School of Medicine. He and his wife Kame had a son, Joshua Nathanial, in March of 1994. Marcia Herman-Giddens writes that she received her DrPH from University School of Public Health, Department of Maternal and Child Health, in 1994. She is currently the medical director of the North Carolina State Child Fatality Prevention Team, and she also is an adjunct associate professor in maternal and child health. "I graduated with a BS in computer science in 1993-with my two daughters!" writes Constance Baring Gould (A). She has, been a software engineer at Evans and Sutherland in Salt Lake City for two years and had been an electronic technician for several years at the same company. 'Tm really enjoying my new job in software. Though I loved my old job, I relish the change," she says. Erica Udoff (A) writes from Guilford, Connecticut, that she is enjoying her antique house and her enchanting sixyear-old son Oliver, "who loves reading so much maybe he'll head for SJC when the time comes." She says she met up last winter with Carol Gruenburg (A75) and Y melda Martinez (A7 4) for a tiny reunion and peek at Annapolis. Sara Sanders (A) reports that she is in her second year of veterinary school at Cornell-and that "it's very exciting." Cynthia Walton-McCawley (A) and her husband Patrick had their third child, Coiin Walton McCawley, in November. They live in Columbia, South Carolina, and are all "doing great." Darrel Moellendorf (A) has just moved to Johannesburg, South Africa, with his wife, Bonnie Firedmann, and their ALUMNI NOTES Helen Hobart (A) reports that the Sacramento St. John's seminar group is currently focusing on women authors like Virginia Woolf and Mary Shelly. "I appreciate the recent alumni suggestions for more inclusion of women in SJC seminars-we all benefit by stretching to new possibilities," she adds. "I gave up my long-practiced bachelorhood in September, with journalist Allison Blake, late of Annapolis' own Capital," writes Joshua Gillelan (A). "Daughter Hannah (A96) was my 'best person' and contributed beautifully to our wedding ceremony with her declamation in Hebrew of a Song of Solomon passage." Hank Constantine (A) is now a product manager at Xerox. His latest product is the "Bookmark 35," a copier designed especially for copying books. Most of the customers for this product are libraries. Janet Nelson Berggren (A) writes, "We have moved to Washington Island, Wisconsin, a small island off the tip of the Door Peninsula on Lake Michigan. We live on a harbor directly across from Rock Island State Park and are enjoying the great outdoors in summer and winter." Wesley Sasaki Uemura (A) completed his Ph.D. at Cornell University in 1993 and was appointed in the history department of the University of Utah. Care of the Spitfire Grill, a film about a young woman just out of prison who finds redemption in Maine, won the feature film Audience Award at the Sundance Festival this year. The film--directed by Lee Zlotoff (A)--was sold to Castle Rock Entertainment. Frances Goodwin Vazquez (A) is living in Edgewood, Pennsylvania, two doors from Mary Hart (A80). "Mary throws a terrific Easter egg hunt every year, but her sons seem to be outgrowing the tradition and I'm afraid I'll have to step in some day," says Frances. She also says that she enjoys volunteering as a teacher's aide in her children's school. Sally Page Byers (A) married Tommy Lee Whitlock in 1992 and they are living in Reston, Virginia. She has a new job with PSI. Edward Burgess (A) and his wife Angelina had their third child, Cynthia Marie Burgess, in August 1995. William Salter (A), vice president, Controls Advisory Service, at Salomon Brothers, writes, "Teresa and I.have purchased an 1881 townhouse in ·Carroll Ceardeas (Brooklyn)' and will be renovating it for the rest of our lives." Karen Anderson Bohrer (A) has a new position as Library Director at the Oliver Wolcott Library in Litchfield, Connecticut. Diane Lamoureux Ciba (A) is a graduate student in marketing at Youngstown State University. She is a graduate assistant in the business school and hopes to complete her MBA by 1998. Evan Canter (A), with wife Ellen, reports the birth of Talia Sophie on October 12, 1995. CONT. ON PAGE 17 POSITION ANNOUNCEMENTS, ANNAPOLIS CAMPUS A new position, Director of Student Life, has been created on the Annapolis campus, and alumni are encouraged to apply. The Director of Student life will work with undergraduate students in day-to-day matters and will be responsible for the student housing program. The Director of Student Life will report to the Assistant Dean. Administrative duties will include monitoring absences from class, deciding sanctions for absences, investigating complaints of violations of college policy, assigning disciplinary measures, and handling party permissions. Housing duties will consist of managing room assignments, changes, and inspections; and leading student residents. The p~sition requires a B.A. degree; a St. John's degree and experience with college residence, counseling, or human services are desired qualifications. Optional residence in Reverdy Johnson is available. The Admissions Office in Annapolis has an opening for the position of Admissions Counselor for the upcoming academic year. Alumni are encouraged to apply. Responsibilities include talking and corresponding with prospective students, on-campus interviews, and extensive travel to secondary schools and college fair programs. The position requires a B.A. degree (preferably from St. John's). Admissions counselors must be committed to liberal arts and able to articulate the structure and goals of the St. John's program to prospective students, counselors, teachers, and others. Both positions will be available in August. Apply to the Director of Personnel at SJC, PO. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404. CONTAClTHE ALUMNI OFFICE BYE-MAIL! SANTA FE Laura Shach (A) just added a son, David, to her family. She and her husband, Kerry, live in Baltimore. When not changing dirty diapers, Laura is a prosecuting attorney. olumni@moiLsicstedu ANNAPOLIS 74637.2660@cmnpuserve.com �ALUMNI NOTES CONT. FROM PAGE 16 two cats, Elwood and X. "I will be lecturing at the University of the Witwatersrand in ethics and social and political philosophy. I expect this to be quite interesting in the new South Africa," says his e-mail'message. Darrel invites anyone passing through to contact him at the Philosophy Dept., University of the Witwatersrand, P.O. Wits, 2050, Republic of South Africa. Ann Walton Sieber (A) writes: "After three years as an editor at the Houston Press, Houston's alternative weekly, I quit to begin experimenting with voluntary poverty and non-busyness (I'm not kidding!) and also work half-time editing a quirky architecture quarterly, Cite. I also coordinate a volunteer program called the Alternatives to Violence Project and am quite involved in the Houston Quaker meeting." Connie Bates (A) was married in February to James Calloway of Nashville. "Christopher Reichert writes: After reading the Reporter for these many years, I am finally putting finger to typewriter and E-mail this hello to all and sundry. I have been living in Sydney Australia for six years now, and have dual citizenship through some loophole. (I just filled out the forms, I suppose.) I have been working in the computer industry working primarily on behalf of radio stations addressing their IT requirements. It has allowed extensive travel throughout OZ, and by hook or by crook, I have even schemed a few trips back home. I seem to get back to the US about once a year, albeit for all too brief a time at each visit. I must apologize for my pathetic correspondence habits. I do think about people often, but I just can t seem to find the time to write. However, if others are so inclined, I will endeavor to change my manner. My address is 3 Tiley Street Cammeray NSW 2062 Australia. My Email address is webmail(-mtec.com.au. I also keep in fairly regular contect with Edith Updike (A86)who is in Tokyo once again writing for McGraw Hill's Business Week magazine. She says she is both hating (Japan) and enjoying (writing/traveling) the experience. Her address (I'm sure she won't mind me telling) is edith.updikeWiac online.com." 1 Barbara Hum (SF) is a first-year medical student at Georgetown University. John Lavery (A) writes that for six years he has been working in Chicago in investment and commercial banking with Continental Bank and Bank of America. He cites some interesting things he's seen recently: the marriage of Anthony Nyberg (A89), the marriage of Siofra Rucker (A91) to a Lt. Nugent from Montana via the Naval Academy, and Mark Eubanks (A88) becoming a doctor. John is current! y in London working for Bank America in international corporate finance. John Bertram (A) completed a threeyear Master of Architecture program at Yale School of Architecture in 1994. He is living in Chicago and would enjoy hearing from any architects or visual artists. His address: 2318 West Augusta #3F, Chicago, IL 60622. Kim Paffenroth (A) received his Ph.D. in theology this August and is teaching. He writes, "Our son, Charles, is 18 months old and is a joy to us." James O'Gara (A) is halfway through a two-year sabbatical assignment advising the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee on drug control policy. He will return to the Department of Justice in March 1997. George Turner (A) graduated from the University of California at Berkeley, Boalt Hall Law School in 1995. He married Abril Bedarf, Princeton '91, a law school classmate. Mary Braden (A) was married to Michael Thorp in December 1993 and they are in the process of fixing up a handsome, but dilapidated old house in the tiny town of Liberty, Indiana. Says Mary, "Beautiful Alexandra Asenath was born on April 13 and has completely changed our lives. Michael is the associate dean of admission at Earlham College, a small Quaker-affiliated liberal arts college in nearby Richmond-a very congenial place for Johnnies! I'm loving full-time motherhood and the slow pace of small-town life ... friends please make contact at mathorp@halcyon.com, 317 /458-7785 or 106 S. Main St., Liberty, IN 47353." Timothy McNicholl (A) received his Ph.D. in math in May of 1995. He is now teaching at Ottawa University in CZECH CONT. FROM PAGE 15 Ottawa, Kansas. He welcomes correspondence from classmates at: 1301 W. 24th St., Apt. 0-21, Lawrence, KS 66046. Patrick Cho (A) entered Temple University medical school this fall. Kemmer Anderson (AGI) is taking a course in Jefferson in the political science department at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He sends a special thanks to Mr. Kuder and Co. for the politics and society seminar in the Graduate Institute. Boaz Roth (AGI) is teaching ancient Greek to tenth graders at the Thomas Jefferson School in St. Louis. "Life is wonderful," he reports. "I get to read Homer, Herodotus and Plato in the morning and then manhandle my colleague, Ken Colston (AGl89) on the basketball court in the afternoon!" Barbara Arnold (SF) is currently a Juris Doctorate candidate at the University of Maryland School of Law. Her address is: 1206 N. Calvert St., Apt. lA, Baltimore, Md. 21202; 410-727-6645; email: barnold@umabnet.ab.umd.edu.1994 John Dyer Lynch (A) is a clown for Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus. After parking cars for six months, Craig Sirkin (A) got a "real" job with Skye-Allend in the computer operations department. The company reports buyer satisfaction, primarily to auto companies. Emily Murphy (A) has been appointed Assistant Registrar of Special Collections at the Maryland State Archives. Her favorite aspect of the job is taking care of the state's extensive photograph collection, but she also handles personal papers, maps, flags and other historical records. Maggie Arnold (A) has an internship with a financial publishing firm in Alexandria, Virginia. Im Even from the beginning of my stay here, I have found myself curiously unvexed by what seems to bother most Westerners-when a five-minute task ends up eating up half a day, or a day, or even two days. Seemingly simple things like going to the post office, which you need to do to get money as there are no personal checks here, can take a great deal of time. It's happened so much, it just seems like the way things are now. I thought it strange I could be so nonchalant about it all. I've never had any patience with incompetence, and here it became institutionalized. Life here was absurd and tragic. I mean tragic in the way of deep personal tragedy times millions of people times decades. And what drives my compatriots mad-the waiting in line, the endless red tape-is just the tag end of that. And, you see, that's why I q.n't get angry for those (half) days lost, because they' re not lost. They' re exactly what I came for, they're why I wanted to live here, why I had to settle here and live as close to true a life as I, an American, could. Just before Christmas, our teacher's trade union chartered a bus for all of us to go to Vienna for the day and take in the Christmas sights. On the way down, a colleague told me of her first trip, five years to the day before, when the border had just opened after the '89 revolution. Czech buses are all blue and white, and almost never washed, but there was a special bus that made?- round trip from Vienna twice weekly, even during the "quiet times" of "normalization" (the repression following 1968). This bus was bright yellow and always spotless and became for my friend a symbol of what life must be like across the border. She watched that magic yellow bus come and go all her life, and the week after the border opened, she stood in a queue for two hours in order to buy her ticket. Her husband couldn't understand why she needed to go. "After all, it's only 100 miles away, and just for the day... what's the point?" And although the distance is farther and the stay longer in my case, I have had the same difficulty answering that question. In so many ways it just didn't make sense for me to be here. But now I know why. That yellow bus runs both ways. Or more to the point, maybe it was that muddy blue and white bus that I found irresistible. Communism came to this land the year after I was born. I'm trying to make sense of the part of the world that was inaccessible to me my first 45 years. After more than two years here, I know that more Western ways are coming. Already, that raw feeling of being under totalitarian rule is wearing away. Some of the rough edges of absurdity are being rounded off. You can buy dental floss now, and next year I'll have e-mail. User-friendliness could be just around the corner. Ii! �REPORTER 18 OBITUARIES AND MEMORIAM ••. ALUMNUS HELPING TO BRING SHAKESPEARE ALIVE FOR STUDENTS BY LESLI ALLISON who attend the ur:aelua1:e Institute, the day of graduation is one of mourning than celebration. It signifies the abrupt end of an exhilarating and lifechanging experience. As countless alumni will testify, two years of the great books is jusf enough to whet the appetite. Such was the case for Dustin Gish. Following graduation in 1992, Mr. Gish began looking for a way to continue his studies. What he found was the Institute for Philosophic Studies at the University of Dallas where he is currently pursuing his Ph.D. The program offers an interdisciplinary great books program similar to St. John's. He also is helping to run a University of Dallas program that takes high school students to Italy each summer to study Shakespeare. "If there was a Ph.D. program at St. John's College, I would be there," Mr. Gish said. "The only way to find something similar was to go to a place like the University of Dallas. In May, Mr. Dish will complete his coursework and begin his dissertation. In the meantime, he also is preparing for another summer in Italy. "For the past three years I've been .co··'''' ? 1!.iP,AA6nu 1 working with the Shakespeare in Italy, a high school summer study program," he said. "I go as a chaperon along with two professors from the University of Dallas, and also teach a number of the courses. The program is designed to open up Shakespeare to high school students in a way that schools aren't allowing Shakespeare to be read. It's a lot of discussion and the main objective is to teach high school students to think critically about texts and to develop conversation skills in a seminar setting." Mr. Gish said the reason the course is conducted in Italy is that a number of Shakespeare's plays are set there. Students visit Florence, Venice, Assisi and Rome, where the main campus is located. The program also includes discussion of art, architecture and religion. And while the University of Dallas is Catholic, the program is open to students of all backgrounds. According to Mr. Gish, tuition is $3300, which includes accommodations, meals and travel. This year the program runs June 21 - July 11. Anyone interested in learning more can contact University of Dallas, External Programs: Rome Office 1845 East Northgate Drive, Irving, TX 75062; 214-721-5225. B RICHARD BLAUI., A32 Richard Blaul died in Charleston, West Virginia, on February 3. A retired insurance broker for Independent Insurance Agency of Annapolis, he moved to West Virginia in 1988. Mr. Blaul was born in Cumberland, Maryland. After graduating from St. John's in 1932, he attended University of Maryland Law School. He was very active in the St. John's College Alumni Association, and his wife, Rosalie, who died in 1987, was a founding member of the Caritas Society. While living in Annapolis, he served as president of the Severn River Association, the American Field Service, the Chamber of Commerce of Greater Annapolis, the YMCA of Annapolis, and Civitan International. Mr. Blaul was also a member of St. Anne's Episcopal Church where he served on the vestry. Surviving are his daughter, Rosalie Marshall Blaul, and a grandson, both of Charleston. Memorial contributions may be made to the Rosalie CB. Blaul Scholarship Fund, Caritas Society, St. John's College, Annapolis. ISABELLE ........ .- ,. ...... SECRETARY TO PRESIDENTS Isabelle Simpson, who served for 30 years as secretary to St. John's presidents Richard Weigle and Edward Delattre, died in Annapolis on February 12. Before coming to St. John's, Mrs. Simpson was the personal secretary of the late Herbert R. O'Conor. She worked with him for 23 years-when he was state's attorney, during both his terms as governor of Maryland, and when he became a U.S. senator. Mrs. Simpson began her job as secretary to Mr. Weigle in 1955, The next two decades were crowded, as Key Auditorium and Mellon Hall were built, and Humphreys and Chase-Stone were renovated. As Mr. Weigle traveled back and forth across the country to Santa Fe, Mrs. Simpson often accompanied him to aid in the organization of the new campus. When Mr. Delattre came in 1980, he asked Mrs. Simpson to remain on the job. When she retired in 1985, Mr. Weigle told reporters that he admired her perpetual cheerfulness. "She was always ready and willing to forget herself and to give of herself to the job," he said. A charter member of the Annapolis Chapter of Certified Professional Secretaries, Mrs. Simpson was named its Secretary of the Year in 19 5 8. With the exception of two years after the birth of her daughter, Mrs. Simpson was professionally employed from her graduation from Baltimore's Western High School in 1927 until her retirement in 1985. She was involved in many activities in the Annapolis community; she served on the board of directors of the Colonial Players and sang with the Woods Memorial Church choir. She was also a member of the Caritas Society. The widow of]. Campbell Simpson, a St. John's graduate (1937), she is survived by her daughter, Janet Farrell, and a granddaughter. WILLIAM T. HART, PETER WEISS: ARGUING FORA SAFER WORLD BY BARBARA GOYETTE International Court held three weeks of hearings last fall on the question of whether the use of nuclear weapons is legal, Peter Weiss, A46, a civil and human rights lawyer in New York, was on hand in The Hague. Weiss is copresident of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms. The group has been working to organize a coalition of governments that oppose nuclear weapons. Along with other nuclear protest groups, they persuaded the United Nations General Assembly and the World Health Organization (WHO) to request the World Court hearings on the issue. Weiss helped draft and write arguments that were presented to the court. Coalition member states and WHO argued that nuclear weapons should be considered illegal under current environmental and human rights treaties. Other nations, those possessing the weapons, argued that they are essential in preserving international security, and that the court doesn't have the power to ban them. The court is an arm of the U.N. General Assembly; it can issue advisory opinions, which Weiss characterizes as "definitive pronouncements of international law." If the court decided the use of nuclear weapons to be illegal, it would not be a mandate, and the court's rulings are not self-enforcing. But, says Weiss, "it could be used by creative lawyers in a thousand different ways." And such a ruling would have international impact. For example, the new foreign minister of Canada has questioned the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's "first use" policy-that NATO reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in any situation it feels appropriate. The World Court's opinion that such use is illegal could strengthen Canada's reluctance to back the policy. Weiss was quoted in the New York Times of November 28, 1995: "It's a winwin situation. If the court says nuclear weapons are not illegal, there will be a tremendous push from nonnuclear states for a convention banning them. If the court says the weapons are illegal, many states will ignore the ruling, which would lead to perhaps an even greater effort to force the adoption of a convention." Weiss says an opinion is expected the last week of March. Weiss credits St. John's with leading him into the law. He's quoted in the Santa Fe Reporter (no relation to the St. John's publication) as saying that at St. John's, "you take a text and do battle with it. And most of what you read there is about ideas of justice and what it takes to make a decent society. I learned a certain kind of hard-headed thinking there." Iii William T. Hart, M.D., died on October 2, 1995, in Rochester, New York, of leukemia. He is survived by his wife Cynthia Allen Hart, and two daughters, Katherine Hart and Victoria Hart, and a son William Allen Hart. WILLIAM COLSON SCHAAB, SGl86 Following a long illness, William Schaab died at his home in Albuquerque on Tuesday, February 20. A prominent New Mexico attorney, Mr. Schaab was considered an expert in Indian, water and corpo,rate law. Particularly of note, he helped Taos Pueblo win back its sacred Blue Lake and also won a multimillion-dollar settlement on behalf of the Navajo Nation in a landmark claims case against the United States. Born December 28, 1927, in Wildwood, New Jersey, Mr. Schaab earned his bachelor's and master's degrees from Wesleyan University in Connecticut and his law degree in 1952 from Yale University Law School. He is survived by his wife, Judith; a son; two daughters; a stepson; a stepdaughter; and six grandchildren. a �RT ... I I BY JOHN SCHROEDER •••••••••••••••••••••"'•"''"''"'""'•••<1>••••'"'""'•••••••.,,•••0>•••••••••••••••G•••••••••••••••••••••••••ee'"'"'"'"''""'"'e•••••Geeeeeoeo"''""'""'"'"'•"""'"'"'"'"' student art display to an of cherished New Mexico santos, the Santa Fe campus art gallery is helping bring art and education together. This April, St. John 1s College students will have the opportunity to show their own work during the fourth annual Student Art Exhibit. In May, Santa Fe artist Gretchen Ballard Guard will present a collection of oil paintings. And, in June and July, the gallery will continue a tradition started earlier this year of featuring renowned private art collections with an exhibit of the Larry Frank santos collection. Formerly the assistant art director ... ·,,,,,., ... ,,.,..•u··~,c~ The Santa Fe staff of the Reporter would like to extend their-gratitude and thanks to Lesli' Allison, SGI94, who recently left St. John's for greener pastures in Colorado, for her hard work and dedication to St. John's College. Ms. Allison has been the director of communications and editor of the Santa Fe edition of the Reporter for the past five years. We wish her all the best in her future endeavors. Iii] for Sunset Magazine, Gretchen Ballard Guard always knew she wanted to be an 11 artist. To pick up some bright paint in a brush and watch it spread out on my paper was a simple process that I found immensely gratifying and wonderful in a mysterious way 11 she said. Ms. Guard attended Stanford University, where she was an art major, and studied with Nathan Oliveira and Frank Lobdell. Throughout the 70 1s, she worked as a freelance graphic designer, which led her to the position at Sunset. In 1977, she and her husband collaborated on a book based on an old Irish folk tale for which she produced more than 70 black and white illustrations. She later chaired the art department at the Community School in Sun Valley, Idaho, where she taught art to students in seventh through twelfth grade. She has dedicated the past eight years to her own artwork. Ms. Guard 1s exhibition of oil and watercolor paintings will begin with a reception from 5 to 7 p.m. on Friday, will 3 in the Fireside continue 30. June and will feature the private santos collection of Larry Frank. Considered to be one of the best collections of santos in the Southwest this is a rare opportunity to see cemuries-old museum quality pieces. Created by artists, and influenced by the southwestern culture, santos are carved or painted images of saints, or other religious figures. There are two different types of santos: Retablos are figures painted on flat boards, and bultos are three-dimensional carved figures. These works of art are now gaining national attention and have recently been featured in several maj<?_r shows throughout America, including New York and Los Angeles. This exhibition will begin with a lecture by Larry Frank from 6 to 7 p.m. on Friday, June 14 in the Junior Common Room, followed by a reception from 7 to 8:30 p.m. in the Fireside Lounge. Mr. Frank also will be autographing copies of his book New Kingdom of the Saints during the reception. Future artists to exhibit in the gallery will include local sculptor Betty Martin and painter Dennis Culver. For more information on any of the exhibits or about the Library and Fine Arts Guild, please contact Ginger Roherty at 505-984-6099. Ill � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The St. John's Reporter</em> Description An account of the resource College newspaper which started publication in 1974. Continued publication into 2000. Includes primarily historical content.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The St. John's Reporter" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=35">Items in <em>The St. John's Reporter</em></a></strong> <span>to view and sort all items in the collection.</span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 20 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context vol 22 issue 3 Spring 1996 Title A name given to the resource Reporter, Volume 22 Issue 3 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1996-04 Description An account of the resource Volume 22, Issue 3 of The St. John's Reporter. Published in Spring 1996. (Santa Fe edition) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Public Relations Office Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Goyette, Barbara (editor) Allison, Lesli (editor) Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf The Reporter https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/83a4d4499bd6fc7816329e60a7d1e1b4.pdf 44d113c816a2f49359944528364e5d71 PDF Text Text Volume 22, Issue 3 Annapolis, Maryland • Santa Fe, New Mexico Summer 1996 ST JOHN'S COLLEGE LIBRARY ~11IIllIllIIIllIWll~fml\l\f1 \(~[l ~IIIIllIIIIIIII 31696 01138 2189 St. John's College ANNAPOLIS EDITION SPECIAL SECTION CAMPAIGN SUCCESS The Campaign for Our Fourth Century concludes, providing a 300th birthday present for the college ............................ 12 Campaign conclusion keynote address: St. John's at 300 by Eva T. H. Brann .......................... 13 THE GREENFIELD LIBRARY Annapolis dedicates a new library .......................... 11 Architecture as dialogue: The building's symbols ........ 14 COMMENCEMENT '96 In Santa Fe, Philip Lader stresses responsibility .............. 9 In Annapolis, William F. Buckley recognizes the power of the classics .............................. 8 DEPARTMENTS From the Bell Towers: 300th events in Santa Fe, observing the final frontier, new vice president Harvey Morse, lacrosse makes a comeback ................................ 2 Scholarship: James Carey is appointed dean in Santa Fe .. 7 Alumni Association: The new register, alumni book reviews .. 15 Alumni Profiles: Two young alumni in the performing arts, down John Lynch and actress/ playwright Leah Ankeny .................. 17, 19 Campus Life: Job fair in Santa Fe, croquet highlights in Annapolis, the St. John's postal card ............................ 22 The Arts: Regional works in Santa Fe, classic photos in Annapolis ............................ 24 Stewart Greenfield, A53, accompanied by one of the ubiquitous newspaper reporters, leads the parade of book movers. Most of the library's collection of 90,000 volumes was hand-carried across campus from Woodward Hall to the new library. See story on page 2. Photo by John Bi/doh/. �From the Bell Towers EXEUNT LIBRI A n old borrower's card became a .i-lbadge of honor. Worn on a string about the neck, it symbolized participation in the great book move. A humble can"."as bag emblazoned with a "St. John's at 300" logo became the low-tech means to an end - 1000 of the bags, carried by about 400 members of the SJ C community during the course of some 4000 trips, brought more than 80,000 of the college's 90,000 books from Woodward Hall to their new home in the Greenfield Library on May 6. It was a moment in history. And it was really fun. "The most surprising thing was how many people participated," says librarian Kitty Kinzer. "We didn't really know how long it would take, but based on the numbers from the last book move in 1968 when they moved 42,000 books in two days with fewer people and over a longer distance, we thought it might take about that long." Instead, the job was done in about eight hours. Dean Eva Brann had plans for bringing out the troops. She cancelled classes and made sure that tutors stressed the importance of participating in the book move. She offered prizes for the most books carried and the most trips made. There was lots of lemonade and free lunch and dinner for those wearing the status-y borrower's-cardon-a-string. Stewart Greenfield, class of 1953, and his wife Constance led the parade of book movers. The new building bears the name "Greenfield Library" in honor of their support for the library construction project. Toting the canvas bags filled with volumes from the Thomas Bray collection, Mr. Greenfield strode across campus, at the front of a seemingly endless line of students, faculty, alumni, and community members. "We love St. John's and we love books and there's no place I'd rather have my name," Mr. Greenfield told the Baltimore Sun. (The Bray collection contains 2 the original books in the King William's School library, which were donated to the colony of Maryland by the Rev. Thomas Bray in 1697. They formed the first free public library in North America.) T devision crews and newspaper reporters mingled with the lines of people waiting to load books into bags in Woodward Hall. Bob Marley tunes wafted through the King William Room. Everyone was in a good mood, and the typical Johnnie inventiveness showed itself: Chris Simpson, a junior, loaded eight bags onto a pole to carry fore and aft; assistant dean Abe Schoener (A82) whizzed by on his mountain bike with a bunch of bags hanging from the handlebars; Gjergji Bojaxhi, a junior, used a wheelbarrow from his when he was a student. He remembered carrying canvas bags," he says. While Woodward Hall was being renovated, books were stored in Mellon. In 1968 they were moved back home. Assistant librarian Vicki Cone, who also participated in that move, remembered tape on the bags. From canvas bags and pieces of tape sprang an elaborate plan. The day In Woodward Hall, library student aides of the move, library aides load books into bags. loaded books into canvas bags in the old library. areas, so that we would be able to Each section of shelving was marked leave room where we projected with a number. That number was put growth would occur," says Plourde. on a piece of tape on the bag. In the (It's no surprise, but the philosophy new library, the shelves had been and literature sections add books the fastest.) The computer spit out a plan showing how much space the books, plus projected growth, would take up in the new library. That's how Plourde decided where to put each section. "It was almost like a freshman math problem - very straightforward," he says. The Greenfield Library appeared far from complete on the day of the move. Book carriers stepped over buckets of spackling and the main stairway was impassible with pieces of steel railing. But the shelves were filling rapidly. Kitty Kinzer was actually smiling by afternoon. By day's end, tired bookmovers bore witness to the truth of a quip from Miss Brann: "We make pretty worn out adults out of lusry- youths by means of books and a bag." B - by Barbara Goyette Hundreds of students, facully, and friends moved the books - great and small - across campus to the new library. student aide gardening job. (Senior Mark Whipple won for most bags carried - more than 126 - and junior Becky Lange won for most trips - she made 35, sprinting back and forth across campus in blue running tights and a tee-shirt.) There were at least four semi-nervous people overseeing the event: the library staff of Kitty Kinzer, Vicki Cone (A68), Wally Plourde (A89), and Brian Graney (SF93). They had been working on the logistics of the move for months. Mastermind for the organization was Wally Plourde. "It all started with Chris Nelson remembering Senior Peter Rispin takes a breather. the last library move, numbered with a corre..,. sponding system, so that in whatever order the bags arrived, they could be placed near the shelves where they belonged. "We mapped what we had in the old library by inches," explains Plourde. Then he and library assistant Brian Graney wrote a "primitive application" in Paradox that compared the map of the old library shelves with that of the new library. "I took into account how much space each call number classification should have. I looked back over the past ten years and compared growth in the various Keeper of the collection, librarian Kitty Kinzer. Photos by John Bi/doh/. �SANTA FE TO CELEBRATE 300 WITH A WEEKEND OF EVENTS by John Schroeder S anta Fe will celebrate the 300th anniversary of St. John's with a gala weekend on September 27, 28, and 29. The weekend will open with a concert by Yehuda Hanani on cello and tutor and musician-in-residence Peter Pesic on piano. The two will be playing pieces by Bach, who was 11 years old when St. John's was founded. Saturday will begin with the annual library book sale from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. in Meem Library. Special reference, out-of-print, and art books will be available, as well as music scores, sheet music and special collections. Prices range from 25 cents for sheet music to $2 for hardcover books, and all proceeds from the sale will benefit the library. In conjunction with the book sale, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on the Meem Courtyard, the Fine Arts Guild will be featuring the second annual Spanish Colonial Arts Exhibit and Market. Coming off of the success of last year's show, this year promises to be even better. Among the artists who have been Santa Fe celebrates the 300th with Bach, books, the Bard, and a barbecue. OBSERVING THE FINAL FRONTIER Studying Ptolemy, Copernicus, and Kepler used to mean understanding lines on the blackboard, but now students can see the phenomena. ittle known St. John's fact: There is a door at the top of the stairs by the pendulum pit in Mellon Hall that says "Observatory." The sign has been on the door since 1959 when the building opened, but it wasn't until this spring that there actually was an observatory inside. Thanks to the efforts of faculty member Jim Beall, and a $20,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, the observatory equipped with two state-of-the-art telescopes opened just in time for the appearance of comet Hyakutake in March. The telescopes are a 16-inch reflector and a 12-inch computer-operated Schmidt-Cassegrain. Mounted on concrete columns, they can be raised up through special sliding doors in the roof. The reflector telescope is operated manually, but the smaller telescope has 65,000 astronomical points programmed into its memory. Punch in a number and the scope will pivot and focus on, say, the Great Nebula in Andromeda, 1.5 million light years away. There's also a computer program that shows a map of the heavens on the screen. Point to a spot and dick and the telescope will go to it. "Actually observing phenomena in The Reporter (USPS 0 l 8-750) is published in the observatory complements many January and July by the Public Relations Office, parts of the program," says Jim Beall. St. John's College, Annapolis, MD, and in April and October by the Public Relations "The calculations and ideas dealt with Office, St. John's College, Santa Fe, NM. in math tutorial are no longer an Known office of publication: Public Relations abstract exercise." For example, he cites Office, St. John's College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800. Newton's notion that the moons of Annapolis: Barbara Goyette, editor; Sus3an Jupiter and Saturn can be seen as Borden, writer; Betsy Blume, Eva Brann, John miniature solar systems. "Using equipChristensen, Pamela Kraus, Benjamin Milner, Brother Robert Smith, advisory board; Adrienne ment in the observatory, we can conRogers, design. firm Kepler's laws of planetary motion Santa Fe: Elizabeth Skewes, editor; John using Jupiter's moons,'' he says. A Schroeder, assistant. CCD camera attached to one of the Second class postage paid at Annapolis, MD, and at additional mailing offices. telescopes can take a picture of Jupiter's POSTMASTER: Send address changes to moons in different locations and print Reporter, St. John's College, Box 2800, it out. "Another thing we can do just for Annapolis, MD 21404-2800 L invited are Eliseo and Paula Rodriguez, Felix Lopez, Ramon Jose Lopez, T omasita Gonzales, Charles Carrillo, and Monica Halford. These artists are considered to be among today's finest working in the Spanish colonial arts. Several have exhibited or have permanent pieces in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and several have won the Governor's Award, and the Grand Prize and First Prize award at the Traditional Spanish Market held every year on the Plaza in Santa Fe. Following June and July's show of ancient santos in the gallery, this will be an excellent opportunity to see and purchase the finest representations of Spanish art currently being produced in New Mexico. In addition, a silent auction will be held with proceeds benefiting the art gallery and the library. And, as an added feature, a mariachi band will be entertaining those who attend the market and book sale in the morning. Also featured will be a display by the St. John's College Search and Rescue Team, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary. There will be tours of campus, information booths on different aspects of the St. John's program, and an exhibit in the art gallery by the Robert Ewing and John Sloan Drawing Group, which includes some of Santa Fe's best known artists. Shakespeare in Santa Fe also will be performing a short piece by the Bard, as well as entertaining the crowd with magicians, jugglers, and minstrels. Other events in the planning stages are a poetry reading, a book signing, and demonstrations by several different student activities, including fencing and karate. At 2 p.m., local residents and others will have the opportunity to participate in one of 20 different seminars that will be offered. Among the books to be covered are Melville's Billy Budd, Sailor, Plato's Phaedrus, Rousseau's Discourse on the Sciences and Arts, Nietzsche's Twilight ofthe Idols and selections from Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground In addition, tutor Samuel Johnson will be conducting a seminar in sign language for the deaf members of the local community who would like to participate and for teachers from the New Mexico School for the Deaf. The seminars will be followed at 4 p.m. with a cookout and reception on the upper and lower placitas for everyone in the community. There will be a jazz band playing to provide entertainment and enough room on the placitas for the St. John's students to remind the residents of Santa Fe how to swing dance. The evening will conclude with the singing of "Happy Birthday" and the cutting of a 300th anniversary cake. Sunday will end the celebratory weekend with a continuation of the booksale from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the library, as well as the art gallery exhibit. Other events also are being planned for Sunday, including special activities in the newly refurbished coffee shop. Admission is free to all of the events throughout the weekend. For more information on any of the 300th anniversary weekend events or any other events that are taking place for the 300th anniversary, please contact the Public Relations Office at 505-984-6104 . • l.696 l.996 fun is to look at double stars. These show us that there are things orbiting around other things - confirmation of the idea that the earth is not at the center of the universe,'' he suggests. Mr. Beall, along with Jonathan Badger, a new tutor in '95-'96, has given new life to the Astronomy Club. In addition to the planetarium, which has been operating for several years, the observatory will enable students interested in astronomy to further explore the field. Mr. Beall hopes that the student observatory archons will carry their enthusiasm and experience back to the classrooms. An Internet connection to the observatory should be completed this summer. "There's lots of astronomical info on the Net. For example, the trajectory of the next comet, which will be coming next year,'' says Mr. Beall. Stargazing is scheduled for many Monday and Thursday nights after seminar.• Tutor Jim Beall with the 12-inch - by Barbara Goyette Schmidt-Cassegrain. 3 �From the Bell Towers SPEAKING VOLUMES Travel Program Heads for Italy Book and Author series revived in Santa Fe by Elizabeth A. Skewes C harlotte's Web author E.B. White was just seven years old when he first looked at a blank sheet of paper and thrilled at the idea of filling it with words and stories. And Truman Capote, who won acclaim for In Cold Blood, once said that he knew he was destined to be a writer because he could toss words into the air and know they would come down right. Harriet Doerr, author of Stones for Ibarra and The Tiger in the Grass, told these stories as a contrast to her own writing career, which didn't really begin until she was 65. Since then, however, Doerr's career has blossomed. Stones for Ibarra, her first novel, was published when she was 73 and it won an American Book Award. Now at 86, she is the author of three books and has a full schedule of appearances throughout the country. And to hear her tell her story, perhaps no one is more surprised by her success than Doerr herself "It never really occurred to me that I could write," she told a group of nearly 250 people who came to listen to her in Santa Fe on May 8. Doerr's lecture, which was followed by a book signing, inaugurated the revival of the college's book and author series, now called "Speaking Volumes." Doerr, who has volumes of stories to tell, opened the series by telling the audience that it's never too late to pursue a dream. When her husband died in 1972, after 42 years of marriage, Doerr needed some new challenges, so she returned to school in 1975 - first to Scripps College and later to Stanford University where she finally finished her history degree. While in school she began taking creative writing classes and several professors spotted her talent. With the support of a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, she entered the graduate writing program at Stanford. "You're there with your peers and they're all interested in what you're interested in," she said. Through writing workshops and critiques from her classmates and professors, Doerr honed her stories, finely polishing each word, until they came together into Stones for Ibarra. The program also brought her into contact with writers such as Eudora Welty, John Irving, Robert Stone, and E.L. Doctorow. She told about _one student who asked Doctorow how he wrote. Doctorow said that he would put his typewriter up against a blank wall and would sit there to write so that he could avoid other distractions. One day, however, despite the lack of distractions, the words wouldn't come. He sat there for 45 minutes staring at the empty sheet of paper. Then, staring straight ahead at the empty wall, he typed "wall." He started associating that with other words and wrote "room" and "house." "Then he remembered when the house was built, which was 1906," Doerr said, "and then he wrote Ragtime." She said that was an important lesson for'her as a fledgling writer. "You have to let things flow, one after another after another. And you have to love words. You have to love the words that you write and let them rattle around loose in your brain. You have to speak them out loud and love the way that you hear them and the way that they look on a printed page." In fact, Doerr said, her love for words is so strong that as a writer she places them above the plot of a novel. She said a writer also needs to be open to the ideas that are around them. "You have to eavesdrop and you have to spy. You have to listen to people on elevators. And then you add the rest. But the ideas are coming at you." Many of Doerr' s ideas have come from her years spent in small mining towns in Mexico, where she raised a family while her husband worked the mines. Those locations became the setting for both of her novels - Stones for Ibarra and Consider This, Senora - and they also show up in many of the stories in her new collection of essays and short stories, The Tiger in the Grass. Doerr' s lecture was sponsored by the committee of the college's Library and Fine Arts Guild, which was looking for a special project to work on in conjunction with the 300th anniversary celebration. Reviving the book and author series, which was a strong program in the 1970s, seemed like a natural, said Peggy Jones, who spearheaded the project. "We envision this as something that will start during the Harriet Doerr talks with one of her fans at a 300th year, which is a nice time to book signing that followed her lecture in Santa Fe. launch it, but it will continue beyond that," Jones said. "We want to bring in not only authors of literature, but perhaps authors of books on art that tie in with the gallery." a 4 "Learning is the enterprise of a lifetime," said Woodrow Wilson. St. John's alumni and friends who find that travel makes one of life's better learning experiences will want to know about the latest Travel Program destination: Italy. This trip to discover the Italian countryside and to learn about Italy's history, art, and culture will run from November 14 to 24 (note that this is a change from the previously published dates). The itinerary for this learning-cum-sightseeing trip includes five nights in Rome, four nights in Florence, and visits to the hills ofUmbria, Siena, and Venice. St. John's tutor Geoffrey Comber will accompany the group and will lead seminars on Italian and Latin classics such as Virgil's Aeneid, Dante's Divine Comedy, and Machiavelli's The Prince. Six educational sessions with the University of Rome will explore the rise and fall of the Roman empire, the Renaissance, and modern Italy. For more information, contact Pamela McKee in the St. Johns Advancement Office, 4101626-2506. by John Schroeder ~o St. John's juniors are among the 264 students nationwide to receive Goldwater Foundation scholarships this year. Taffeta Elliott and Patrick Nash have been awarded scholarships that will cover up to $7,000 in expenses for tuition, books, and room and board. Elliott and Nash were among the 1,200 students nominated for the scholarships by faculties at universities and colleges throughout the United States. The awards, which support students planning to pursue careers in the fields of mathematics, the natural sciences, and engineering, are given based upon academic merit. has Elliott, a Minnesota native who transferred to St. John's from worked as an intern at the HN Database at Los Alamos National Lab, which is under the direction of Gerald the husband of Santa Fe tutor Linda Her experiences at the HN Database resulted in her scholarship essay, entitled "Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)." After graduating from St. John's next spring, Elliott to take a year off to do an internship either in journalism or with a science museum. She plans to pursue a for her career in science in the future; biology and virology have the strongest right now, but she also is considering a career in science journalism. This fall, Elliott will be the head senior lab assistant on campus. She also has been editor-in-chief of the student newspaper, and a member of the St. John's College Search and Rescue T earn, the flute ensemble, and the chorus. Patrick Nash, from West Newfield, Maine, has been a teaching assistant with Bowdoin College's Upward Bound Program, and was a Community Service Seminar leader for St. John's, through which he led classes at several area schools. After graduation he plans to do research in and teach theoretical mathematics at the college level, where he can follow the two pursuits that he considers very important - "the acquisition of knowledge and its communication to others." Nash's scholarship essay was entitled "The Present Significance of Past Theoretical Developments." At St. John's, he is a member of the Search and Rescue Team and the soccer club. The Goldwater Foundation is a federally endowed agency that was established in 1986. The scholarship program, honoring former Senator Barry Goldwater (RAriz.), is the premier undergraduate award of its type for students entering careers in the fields of mathematics, the natural sciences, and engineering. To date the foundation has awarded 1,809 scholarships totaling approximately $19 million. a l �RUN SWIFTLY AND CARRY A BIG STICK Lacrosse Returns to St. John's College "\VJhen Barr and Buchanan started the New Program at St. John's, they W abolished intercollegiate sports at a time when the college was a national lacrosse power. This spring, thanks to a generous donation and a liberal reading of the sport's rulebook, Athletic Director Leo Pickens (A78) and Graduate Institute student Michael Barth have brought lacrosse back to the campus. Although Pickens had been toying with the idea of lacrosse at St. John's since last summer, two obstacles kept it off his roster. "We needed the basic equipment to play the game," Pickens says, "and we had to find a non-contact brand of the game, both to suit our style of play and to avoid the expense of additional equipment such as helmets and pads." By July, Pickens had solved the equipment problem: William Brill, former head of the Friends of St. John's, made a donation that enabled Pickens to buy 20 sticks and several dozen balls for the college. And in August, the search for a St. John's style oflacrosse came to a fortunate end. "AB luck would have it," Pickens says, "the Graduate Institute' s Michael Barth, an Academic All-American lacrosse player in his undergraduate life, heard of my interest in starting up lacrosse." Barth, a lifetime fan of lacrosse and connoisseur of its lore, had long known of a school called St. John's College that held almost a legendary place in the world of lacrosse. "No team in the history of college lacrosse has ever had such an impact on the sport as St. John's,'' Barth says. "The game is played as it is today because of how St. John's played it in the '30s they set the standard. They had a ten-year period of dominating the national lacrosse scene. During that time they placed 12 players in the Lacrosse Hall of Fame; no school has done so before or after." However, even after enrolling in the Graduate Institute, Barth had no idea that the St. John's oflacrosse fame was the great books school where he was now studying. One day, as he sat in the Little Campus, his eyes rested on an All American Lacrosse Plaque. "After years of thinking of the St. John's oflacrosse fame as a semi-mythical place, it dawned on me that I was at that place," he says. Shortly after this moment of revelation, Barth spoke to Pickens about playing lacrosse at St. John's. Pickens explained the gentler kind oflacrosse the college needed. Barth said, "No contact? No problem. We'll play Indian lacrosse." "Barth's vision has given us a classic version of the game as was first practiced by the North American Indians," says Pickens. In his version there are no boundaries on the 250-yard field and no limit on the number of players. The game is played in two hour-long halves. There is no stick checking except below knee level. Instead of shooting on goal, players score by running through a gate. At game's end, a final alteration of the rules custom-fits the sport to St. John's needs. "In the classic version of the game," Pickens explains, "something would happen to the losing team captain; for example his head would be cut off, or he'd be beaten to death. In the interest of upholding tradition, we take the losing team captain and hurl him into College Creek. So far we've hurled freshmen Josh Emmons and Ethan Press." Press reports that College Creek was cold, green, and left him feeling slimy. Would he advise other athletes to become team captains? "Only if they know they can win," he says. Pickens feels that the resumption of lacrosse on the campus has a historic justice to it. "This connects us to our athletic glory of the early '30s when we were the national champions. Even though our brand of lacrosse is nowhere dose to the official intercollegiate sport," he admits, "it just feels right to be playing on these fields again." "And,'' he point out, "it's great preparation for Spartan Madball." m - by Sus3an Borden St. John's was national lacrosse champ from 1930 to 1934. College archives photo. HARVEY MORSE BECOMES SANTA FE'S NEWVICE PRESIDENT A fter a long and extensive national .I"\.'.search, Harvey David Morse has been appointed as the new vice president for advancement in Santa Fe. Morse, who officially starts in his new position on June l, replaces Jeff Morgan, who left St. John's last October. "St. John's is a vital community of scholars that exists in the real world," Morse said. "I am tremendously happy to be joining the staff of such a wonderful and historic institution, and I welcome the opportunity to help promote its growth." Morse comes to St. John's from the Tilton School in New Hampshire, where Harvey Morse he was the executive director of developnew vice president for Santa Fe. ment and parent and alumni affairs. Prior to that, he held a number of administrative positions at Choate Rosemary Hall, an independent school in Wallingford, Conn. While at Choate, Morse was a regional director in the school's successful $27.5 million "Endowment Plus" campaign. He also served for seven years as the school's director of development, managing a staff of 20 and raising more than $60 million during his tenure. He also was responsible for the creation of a planned giving program that brought in $17.5 million in commitments between 1986 and 1993. In his final year at Choate, he served as director of capital programs and helped raise more than $45 million for a $100 million capital campaign. Before becoming an educational administrator, Morse taught history and interdisciplinary courses in American studies. President John Agresto said that Morse "brings great skills and a real devotion to education. We conducted an extensive national search and are very pleased to welcome a person with Harvey's experience to our campus." Morse has a bachelor's degree in history and a master's degree in urban secondary education from the University of Pennsylvania. He is married and has three children. m Founder's Day in Santa Fe Nearly 100 people gathered in Meem Library on Friday, March 29, to hear about the state of religion in America and to honor those who helped found the Santa Fe campus of St. John's College. In addition to cocktails and dinner, guests were treated to an insightful speech by Hugh Hewitt, host of this summer's PBS series "Searching for God in America" and the author of a book by the same name. The eight-part series includes interviews that Hewitt conducted with key religious leaders of our time, including the Dalai Lama, Charles Colson, Harold Kushner, and Seyyed Hossein Nasr. In addition to his work on the PBS special, Hewitt is the cohost of "Life and Times," a news and public affairs program on KCET-TV in Los Angeles, and he hosts a weekly radio program. He is a partner in the Irvine, Calif., law firm of Hewitt & McGuire and is a Visiting Distinguished Professor of Law at Chapman University Law School. Guests at the dinner included some of the college's founders, members of the Board of Visitors and Governors, friends and Hugh Hewitt, host of this summer's PBS series donors living in the Santa Fe "Searching for God in America", speaks to a area, and state and local political crowd of nearly l 00 at the Founder's Day figures. m dinner on March 29 in Santa Fe. 5 �From ·the Bell Towers GOING ... GOING .. ~ GONE Auction Weekend in Annapolis Raises Funds.for Mitchell Art Gallery There is something else that I avoid and that, ifyou are only a moderately rich millionaire, you should avoid, too: the chic auction . .. Ifyou should decide, out of curiosity, to be a spectator at one of these million-dollar orgies, the golden rule is to sit on your hands. One absentminded scratch ofyour ear might catch the auctioneer's eye and you could find yourself with a twelfth-century bleeding cup and a bill the size of a mortgage. Peter Mayle, Acquired Tastes T he Annapolis campus found itself transformed into a miniature Sotheby' s on the weekend of April 26, when it hosted two auctions to benefit the Elizabeth Myers Mitchell Art Gallery. Friends of the college rounded up over a hundred donated items, most of which were auctioned on Saturday, April 27, at an event called "An Auction of the Finer Things." A dozen of the more lavish items were offered on Friday night at "An Auction of the Finest Things." The Finest Things auction was part of a gala evening with the theme "An Evening in Provence," featuring a black-tie dinner in Randall Hall with a Provence-inspired menu, planned by friends of the college Chip and Barbara Bohl. Peter Mayle, author of A Year in Provence, was the guest speaker and, over coffee and dessert, read from his soon-to-be-published book, Anything Considered. The capacity crowd of 150 included many local friends of the college and art aficionados interested in supporting the gallery. After Mayle' s reading, attendees gave auction catalogs one last look, spouses consulted on prized items, and cellular phones popped up linking absentee bidders to the auction. George Young ofYoung Fine Arts Gallery in Portsmouth, New Hampshire stepped up to the podium and the auction began. Among the items under the gavel were a weeklong biking or walking trip in Provence with Butterfield & Robinson, a portrait sketch by artist and alumna Anastasia Egeli (A92), a handcrafted rowing wherry designed by master boatbuilder Clark Poston, and a mixed case of the legendary 1982 Bordeaux. Drawing top dollar were a weeklong luxury barge cruise of the waterways of France's Burgundy region, and a small nonspeaking role in St. John's graduate (A64) Jeremy Leven' s new movie The Double, being filmed in Paris this summer and starring John T ravolta. The Saturday morning "finer things" auction featured box seats to an Orioles-Red Sox game, sailing lessons, a week's stay in Capt. and Mrs. Harold Nutt, Melvin Bender, and Judi Kardash. Chris Nelson with wife Joyce Olin (left) and Maryanne Spencer, auction chair, being charmed by Peter Mayle. worked for over a year to coordinate a Taos condo, and a gala 4th ofJuly the auctions. Maryanne Spencer, a weekend in New York. Though the friend of the college and president of Saturday auction lacked the high the Caritas Society, chaired the events; stakes drama of Friday night, there was plenty of entertainment. Early in Judi Kardash was chair for the Saturday auction. The auctions raised the event the auctioneer caught col$80,000, which will serve as an endowlege president Chris Nelson trying to ment for the Mitchell Gallery. B up his own bid. "This is Saturday, - by Sus3an Borden sir," he said. "We don't let you bid against yourself on Saturday." Later, the bid-frenzied Nelson locked horns with college Vice President Jeff Bishop in an effort to be the winning bidder on a dozen rose bushes. Whether he pulled rank or offered to split the booty with Bishop is unknown, but Nels on was successful in his bid. A special Mitchell Jackie Camm (A98), ace book handler, with Gallery Committee Peter Mayle. Photos by Keith Harvey. As the wise old millionaire once said.· ifyou have to ask the price, you can't afford it." Peter Mayle, Acquired Tastes 6 -~---~-------1 �' 0 ' r 0tif0 RI ~ II I II 0 II r flit fi II t. ~I Scholarship ACADEMIC ALUMNI JAMES CAREY BEGINS SECOND TERMAS DEAN IN SANTA FE ROBERT HAZO: RAISING THE LEVEL OF POLITICAL DISCOURSE by Elizabeth A. Skewes Dobert G. Hazo, class of 1953, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh, is !\.happy he was able to find an educational nook where he can be "helpful to a university and advance St. John's ideas at the same time." He is founder and director of the Office of Special Seminars in the University Honors College, the main activity of which is the American Experience Program. Since the series began 25 years ago, in 1971, Hazo has brought area administrators and executives together to discuss issues in public affairs and to listen to lectures by politicians, pundits, editors, media figures, economists, and military leaders. This year's lecturers are Republican strategist William Kristol and economist John Kenneth Galbraith. "My model was St. John's," says Hazo. "I told participants that it would not be a historical seminar. Even though we were reading 'old' books, we would be discussing recurring ideas. I used the texts as springboards for discussing current political issues." Over the years, readings have included some of the staples of the St. John's program: de Tocqueville, the Federalist Papers, the Constitution and the Declaration oflndependence. Hazo has also used speeches by leaders such as Churchill, and other classic political texts like Thoreau's "On Civil Disobedience." "I would always try to raise the discussion to a higher level. For example, an opening question might be: 'Where should the line be drawn between the public and private sectors?'" says Hazo. He found that once participants in the discussions learned to not to talk to him as the teacher but to each other, they could carry on a St. John's-style seminar very successfully. Since 1992, the series has focused on the lecturers and the question and answer period following each talk, where Hazo' s aim again is to raise the level of political discourse. Hazo grew up in Pittsburgh, came to St. John's in 1949 ("because I was convinced it was the place for me - even though I had a scholarship to Georgetown"), graduated in 1953, and won fellowships to study at Princeton and the Sorbonne. He was senior editor for political, legal, social, and economic articles at the Encyclopedia Britannica before joining the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh. The author of numerous journal articles in Commentary, The New Republic, The Nation, and the New York Times Book Review, he is currently working on a book about the Arab-Israeli struggle.• Robert Hazo, A5 3 - by Barbara Goyette M oving into the dean's office inJulywill be a kind of homecoming for Santa Fe tutor James Carey, who first served as the college's dean from 1986 to 1991. Now, the dean's first floor office in Weigle Hall will be Carey's once again as he begins a second five-year term as the college's academic leader. But Carey said this term will be quieter than his previous one. After a first term that saw the addition of an art sequence to the senior year and the creation of the Eastern classics program, Carey said he's not planning any "radical changes" in the Santa Fe dean term that will take him through 2001. James Carey "I think the programs that we have in place are good ones, and I think they've developed nicely," he said. "During my tenure, I will continue to look for new ways to introduce the newer tutors to the college's traditions. Also, much of my attention is going to be occupied with the financial aid situation, which has become a huge financial burden to the college. I'll be working with the financial aid director and others to figure out how to address that." Carey said he'll also be working closely with President John Agresto on the financial aid and budget issues. He said that he's looking forward to working with President Agresto again and that he enjoyed the good working relationship they had during Carey's first term as dean. Carey, a tutor at the college since 1979, attended St. John's in Annapolis for two years from 1963 to 1965. He has a bachelor's degree in music from the University of North Carolina and a master's in philosophy from the New School for Social Research in New York. He came to St. John's from East Carolina University, where he taught philosophy, and has worked at both the Annapolis and Santa Fe campuses. He arrived in Santa Fe in 1984 and became dean two years later. He said that his previous experience as dean is what drew him to the position again. "I thought that my experience of having done the job before might be useful to the college, especially in tight financial times. I expect quite a conservative deanship, though," he added. "I don't anticipate any big changes." In fact, because of the emphasis on the college's budget and the growing needs for student financial aid, Carey said the job of the dean for the next several years will be largely managerial. "The main academic goal over the next five years will be to do the program as well as we can," he said. Carey also said that he will continue the push for tutor exchanges and other activities that will help preserve the unity of the college. "The more contact we have between the campuses and between the faculty in particular, the better. The kind of unity that has to be preserved is in the program and policies of the college. Unity, however, is sometimes better served by allowing differences between campuses." B THE BOOK ON THE MAN Scott Buchanan, one of the founders of the New Program, is subject of new volume. S cott Buchanan: A Centennial Appreciation ofHis Life and Work has been published by the St. John's College Press. The more than 20 recollections and essays in this volume were selected by Charles A. Nelson, A47. Contributors include Stringfellow Barr, Mortimer Adler, Mark Van Doren, Richard McKeon, Clifton Fadiman, Jacques Barzun, Jacob Klein, Harris Wofford, William Goldsmith, John Van Doren, Clarence Kramer, John Dewey, Curtis Wilson, Mary Bittner Goldstein, and more. Two essays by Buchanan, an introduction to Poetry and Mathematics and a talk delivered in 1958, frame the recollections and essays about this founder of the New Program. There is also an extensive bibliography and a series of photographs of Buchanan throughout his career. The book is available for $14.95 plus shipping from the St. John's College Bookstore. Proceeds from the sale benefit the Scott Buchanan Memorial Scholarship Fund. Call 410/626-2540 to order. Ill 7 �Commencement IN ANNAPOLIS, WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY AND RADOSLAV DATCHEV SPEAK ON THE POWER OF EDUCATION by Barbara Goyette William F. Buckley: In praise of etenal verities. onservative television commentator and columnist William F. Buckley, Jr., left politics aside as he addressed th~ 94 seniors and 51 master's degree candidates in Annapolis on May 19. Instead, Mr. Buckley praised the St. John's curriculum, which he characterized as offering "root knowledge." Under a sweltering sky (temperature topped 90 degrees), parents, friends, St. John's students, and graduates gathered under the Liberty Tree for the Annapolis campus' 204th commencement. Tutor Radoslav Datchev was the students' choice to deliver the faculty address. President Christopher Nelson began the ceremony by calling to mind the long history of the college. He said that the 300th anniversary of the college could be seen as an opportunity to "remember who we are, and what we were meant to be." Alluding 8 Lydia Rolita and a friend sport shades for dealing with the sun. to the Liberty Tree as a symbol of the nation's devotion to freedom, he called commencement a "new beginning" that gives St. John's students a sense of power and possibility." For only the third time since the New Program began in 1937, the college conferred the title of "Honorary Fellow." Stephen Feinberg, chairman of the Board of Visitors and Governors, was honored in Santa Fe, while Ray Cave, chairman of The Campaign for Our Fourth Century, was honored in Annapolis. Mr. Cave, who graduated from St. John's in 1948, is a journalist who served as editor of Sports Illustrated and editorial director of Time-Life, Inc. As chairman of the capital campaign, he oversaw the tremendous effort that raised $34 million as well as $50 million more in deferred gifts. "I was given a degree which in all candor I received out of the generosity of the faculty," said Mr. Cave, referring to his own graduation. He said he was touched by the college's award. "You think you're leaving St. John's," he told the graduates, "but St. John's never leaves you." an inattention, you remind me that, after all, even Homer nodded?" he continued. Why is it important to remember this formulation - that Homer once slipped up when he described a ship's rudder on the boat's bow end? Because, said Mr. Buckley, "by documenting an imperfection in the excellent Homer, we are reminded of the comparative magnitude of our own errancy. A knowledge of individual fallibility nudges us on to accept the probability of collective fallibility, and ... our mind then turns to such safeguards as government by laws, not men; to the concept of checks and balances; to human rights. And one is prompted to reflect that the knowledge of human fallibility may orient us to hunger after infallibility, which surely gives rise to the religious instinct. And seminar composed of the graduating class and posing an opening question: "If your commencement is indeed your commencement, what is it the commencement of?" Someone would probably answer valiantly, he said, by saying that it is the commencement of real life. "But don't you have to know what real life is? I would be happy someone had stepped into the trap," he continued, referring to the trap that every good question creates - that it inevitably leads to another question. Students at St. John's are everhopeful that their tutors will one day say what they really think, give some kind of answer - but this Mr. Datchev declined to do, saying, "You have learned to dismiss easy answers out of hand.. .I do not know what life is, but I think I know what it is asuc:k:IE!Y on ed1uc:cat101n "From quite early on, beginning when I was 12 or 13, I heard my father say that he hoped his sons, of whom I was the third, would, when reaching college age, attend the exciting St. John's," said Mr. Buckley. "This did not happen ... but my father's reverence for the idea that has animated St. John's lingers in the memory." Quoting from family friend Albert Nock, Mr. Buckley said, "Every subject that challenges the human curiosity and intimates the resources of the human mind is sitting there in the copious inventory left by ancient Greece and Rome. To ignore them as most curricula now do, is to ignore the primary deposits of western intellectual experience." Next, Mr. Buckley considered the proliferation of knowledge - the undeniable "knowledge explosion" wherein "twice as much 'knowledge' is charted with the passage of every decade." In contrast to the finite quality of what was thought and done between the time of Homer and Marcus Aurelius, today we recognize that "raw knowledge has to increase." But in the face of this ever-increasing burden to know, Mr. Buckley posited that there must be some things that "we are expected to keep on knowing," a common cultural vocabulary. "If we mean to continue to talk to one another, don't I have to understand what you' re saying if, to excuse Tutor David Townsend assists Ray Cave with his Honorary Fellow garb. Photos by Keith Harvey. this instinct acknowledges what some of us insist on calling eternal verities." Mr. Buckley concluded his remarks by reassuring the graduating seniors that they should not be overawed by what they do not know. "Everything over there, in the high galaxies of experimental science and indeed social surmise, is deracinated, except as it is rooted in what you have studied, and what you do know ...You have every reason to be proud of what you have learned ...You will not be easily surprised, standing on the shoulders of the giants ... " Radoslav Datchev poses an opening question Radoslav Datchev, a tutor since 1992 when this graduating class matriculated, taught many of its members. He began his address by imagining a not." He compared planning a dinner, which involves deciding on a menu, buying groceries, and using pots and pans, with the human reaction to the universe, which is to "question it, think about it." He asked, "Is your life more like dinner or the universe? ...A life treated like the universe is a mystery whose solution humanity is trying to extract from itself and its surroundings ... Anyone who tells you that you should make certain choices is treating your life like your dinner." Finally, Mr. Datchev offered advice. "Do a lot," he told the graduates. "Whenever you have a choice between easy and hard, take hard...You have read the books because they are hard... You have been discovering new worlds for years, don't stop now."• �IN SANTA FE, GRADUATES EXHORTED TO ACCEPT NEW RESPONSIBILITIES by Elizabeth A. Skewes Stephen Feinberg wears the medallion he received as Honorary Fellow. T oday's heroes are those who take responsibility for themselves and those around them, and those who are privileged enough to have an education like the one offered at St. John's have a special duty to accept that responsibility. That was the message that commencement speaker Philip Lader, a member of the Clinton cabinet and director of the U.S. Small Business Administration, brought to the 71 seniors and 37 Graduate Institute students who graduated from Santa Fe on May 19. Lader reminded students of the day last summer when Baltimore Orioles shortstop Cal Ripken broke the record held by Lou Gehrig for the most consecutive games played. "The nation went wild for this man who simply did his job day in and day out. He didn't forego achievement by putting responsibility first. What made him a hero was how he's lived out his responsibility each and every day, better than any other baseball player," Lader said. That lesson is one that all Americans need to take to heart, he said, especially in a world where most people think that society is dominated by a "winner-take-all" philosophy. He said that St. John's alumni need to "take the intellectual discipline and the sense of wonder learned at this college and dedicate them to new responsibilities for ourselves, our community and our country." Lader said that the liberal education offered to students at St. John's was made possible only through the actions of those from earlier generations who acted responsibly for their children and their children's children. "President John Adams once wrote, 'I must study politics and war so that my sons may study mathematics and science and my sons should study mathematics and science so that their sons may study painting,"' Lader said. The question he asked the graduates to consider is what they would do with the privilege of the St. John's education they received. "Perhaps we can best survive and prevail in this world by ordering our lives to what our families, community and country demand," he said. "Will we take responsibility to play every day, no matter how we feel? Will we take responsibility to make the little differences that we can make when Elsie Mata Abeyta and Francisco Abeyta are congratulated by their tutors. some around us are consumed by this 'winner-take-all' philosophy? It is your charge to seek responsibility wherever you find yourself and whenever it's presented and to live out your learning at this place. That's Cal Ripken's message. That's the heritage of St. John's." Lader' s words to the 108 graduates were echoed by the actions of Stephen Feinberg, chairman of the Mortarboards go flying as the final degree is awarded. college's Board of Visitors and Governors, who was named an honorary fellow of the college during the ceremony. Feinberg was given the award for his work on the college's highly successful $30 million fundraising campaign, The Campaign for Our Fourth Century, and for his long service to the college as a member of the board. Feinberg and Ray Cave, who chaired The Campaign for Our Fourth Century and who received a similar honor at commencement in Annapolis, join Paul Mellon as the college's only honorary fellows. Both Feinberg and Cave were presented with medallions and college hoods during the ceremonies. "I am made lighter, not heavier, by this splendid gold medal," Feinberg said in a brief speech. "ff I may humbly say so, you ennoble me with this honor. would like to tell you how grateful I am that you have seen fit to make me, on this a part of St. are prepared to understand and uphold the values ofWestern civilization in today's world. In addition to the honor for Feinberg, nearly 40 awards were given to individual students for various academic and athletic achievements and for community service. • 9 �THE REPORTER Commencement Awards and Prizes -Annapolis • To the members of the senior class who have written the best senior essays. Offered in memory of Simon Kaplan: Peter Rubinstein. Offered in memory of Susan Irene Roberts (1966): Soniah Naheed Kamal, Mikel-Meredith Weidman. Honorable Mentions: Matthew Caswell, Jean Carla. Echevarria. • To a senior, for excellence in speaking, the Millard E. Tydings award: Jeremiah James. • To the junior who has written the best annual essay. Offered by Mrs. Leslie Clark Stevens in memory of her daughter-in-law, Kathryn Mylorie Stevens: Matthew Braithwaite. Honorable Mentions: Judith Neely, Richard Schmechel • To the sophomore who has written the best annual essay. Offered in honor of Judge Walter I. Dawkins (1880): Jan Robertson. Honorable Mention: Dawn Shuman. • To the freshman who has written the best annual essay. Offered in memory ofJacob Klein and his wife Else: George Phelps. Honorable Mention: Maureen Gallagher. Ill To the Graduate Institute student who has written a distinguished preceptorial essay. Offered by the Alumni Association: Eric Brown. Honorable Mention: John-David Hardt. • To the student who submits the best English version of a Greek text, offered in memory of John S. Kieffer: Hannah Gillelan. Honorable Mention: Larissa Parson. 111 For the best English version of a French poem. Offered by the Board of Visitors and Governors: Honorable Mention: Luke Trares. • For the best original musical composition. Offered in memory of Mary Joy Belnap: Janice Cater. Honorable Mention: Weldon Goree. Ill For the most elegant solution of a geometrical problem. Offered by the class of 1986 in honor of Bryce Jacobson: Luke Trares. • For the most elegant solution of a problem in analytical mathematics. Offered in memory of James R. McClintock (1965): Derek Alexander. • To the student who carries out the best laboratory project: Jennifer Borrell and Heather Miller, Luke Trares. 111 To the senior man and woman who have contributed most to the college's athletic program. Offered by the Alumni Association: Matthew Carter, Dara Trought. • To a senior who has contributed outstanding service to the Greater Annapolis Community. Offered by the Caritas Society: Bryce Ferrie, Adrien Gehring. • To the senior who has demonstrated the greatest care for and service to youth residing in Annapolis. Offered by the friends and family of Marvin B. Cooper (1969): Orla.ndo Snead. 111 To the senior who submits the best work of visual art to the Community Art Exhibition, the Charles Vernon Moran Prize: Sharon Soper. • To the senior who has demonstrated excellence in the arts, literature, or sciences, the Walter S. Baird Prize: Aaron Silverman. Awards and Prizes - Santa Fe • Medal for academic excellence. Offered by the Board of Visitors and Governors: Angela. Cole, Amy Huberman, Kirsten Jacobson, Katherine Mulder. • To the senior who has written the best senior essay, the Richard D. Weigle Prize: Geoffrey Maturen. Honorable Mentions: Amy Maturen, George Senicz. • To members of the freshman, sophomore, and junior classes in recognition of academic acheivement and service to the college community: Mary Dietsch, Joshua Goldberg, Michael DiMezza. Ill To a member of the senior class, for excellence in public speaking, the Sen. Millard E. Tydings Memorial Prize: Angela. Cole. • The Throne Endowment Scholarship for summer study in preparation for medicine: Vida Day, William George, Mathew Strickland, Tallie Taylor. • To the seniors who have demonstrated achievements in the arts, literature, or science, the Walter S. Baird Prize: Amy Huberman, Andrew Van Luchene. • To a Graduate Institute student for an essay on texts in the literature or mathematics and natural science segments, the Graduate Council Essay Prize: Jeffrey Inman. Acknowledgements of Excellence • For his junior essay: Christopher Allison. • For his sophomore essay: Evan Skladany. • For his winning entry in the mathematics competition: Adam Weisberg. Honorable Mention: John Carone, Robert Howell • For his winning entry in the Greek translation competition: Peter Zachariadis. • For his first semester freshman essay: Anthony Fields. • For his mathematics paper: Robert Howell • For his poems, the Henry M. Austin Poetry Prize: Jacob McPherson. For outstanding performance in athletics: Sam Lueck, Heather Pool, David Stanton, Anant Vashi. • For outstanding community service: Robert Howell, Amy Stanton. 11111 HOMECOMING IN ANNAPOLIS: SPECIAL 300TH EDITION 10 J\ s befitting the special tercente.r-1.nary year, Homecoming in Annapolis will feature events that highlight the college's long history. Dates for Homecoming are September 27-29. Alumni from all eras can meet again their fellow classmates at seminars, luncheons, dinners, parties, picnics, and informal gatherings on the quad. It's a chance to re-connect with the college and with friends. The weekend begins on Friday with the annual Homecoming Lecture, delivered this year by Christopher Nelson (SF70), president of the Annapolis campus. Several parties are scheduled following the question period. On Saturday morning, the annual meeting of the Alumni Association will feature the burial of a time cap- sule - so that any anthropologists in the ranks of future Johnnies can figure out what this unusual college was all about during the 1990s. Saturday is reunion time for the classes of'41, '46, '51, '56, '61, '66, '71, '76, '81, and '86. Special seminars and luncheons will be held for reunion classes. Groundbreaking for the BarrBuchanan Centerf named in honor of New Program founders Scott Buchanan and Stringfellow Barr, will also be held on Saturday. Still in the planning stages, this ceremony will mark the beginning of a new life for Woodward Hall, the former college library. The building will be renovated to contain offices, classrooms, and a student center for the Graduate Institute as well as a computer center and offices for undergraduate activities. Saturday evening, the Homecoming Banquet will include Alumni Association awards. Jeff Bishop, vice president of the Annapolis campus, and Anna Greenberg, tireless advocate for St. John's and member of the Board of Visitors and Governors, will be made Honorary Members of the Alumni Association. Alumni Association Awards of Merit will be presented to Jonathan Zavin (A68), Harvey Goldstein (1959), and Peter Weiss (1946). The weekend's two final events are always among the most fun - the rock party after the banquet on Saturday night and the brunch at the President's house on Sunday. A special exhibit of St. John's photographs - including many by Alfred Eisenstaedt of Life magazine At Homecoming, alumni can pick their level of socialization, from seminars to lunches to rock parties. Photo by Keith Harvey. fame - will be on display at the Mitchell Gallery during Homecoming. And a book with many photographs and a comprehensive history of the college, Three Hundred Years ofLiberal Education in Annapolis, compiled by Emily Murphy (A95), will be available. Look for full details of Homecoming Weekend in the brochure being mailed this summer, or call the Alumni Office in Annapolis at 410/626-2531. • �GREENFIELD LIBRARY DEDICATION The great books find a great new home as the Annapolis campus celebrates 300 years. by Barbara Goyette D ecalling the primary focus of the 1'..college as reading and studying and discussing the books, remembering its long history, and joyously celebrating the opening of the new Greenfield Library, speakers at the June 1 dedication brought together all that is meaningful about St. John's for a crowd of 300 alumni, students, faculty and staff, parents, Board members, and local friends. Annapolis President Chris Nelson introduced Stewart Greenfield, alumnus of the class of 1953, after whom the library is named. Mr. Greenfield read a letter from fellow board member Stewart Washburn that he said summed up the reaction to the Greenfield gift: 'Tm pleased you could do it. I'm pleased you did do it." Mr. Greenfield thanked the college community for providing him with so much pleasure in the activities surrounding the new library. "My family and I have a passionate interest in old books and a passionate interest in St. John's. The new library is a wonderful opportunity to merge those interests." Librarian Kitty Kinzer spoke about the "fresh new building and an old, old collection." Books from the Thomas Bray collection, the first free public library in the North American colonies, are still housed in the St. John's library, as they have been since 1697. Mrs. Kinzer noted that there is a simple principle that determines what should be in the college's collection today: the best books on the most important subjects. Speaking on behalf of the Friends of St. John's College, Dr. Robert Biern, president of the group, said, "Annapolis would be a poorer place without St. John's." Under the direction of college vice president Jeff Bishop, the Friends set a goal to raise $1 million to renovate the large, elegant reading room in the new library. They raised nearly double that amount. The room will be called the Friends' Reading Room in honor of those in Annapolis who contributed to the project. Annapolis Mayor Al Hopkins continued the accolades for the college and its place in the community. Mr. Hopkins remembered his youth growing up in town, where there were no playgrounds or ballfields for local children. "But St. John's always made us welcome, and for that I have a place in my heart for the college," said Mr. Hopkins. In a dedicatory toast that moved alumni and students to laughter and engendered fond memories, tutor emeritus Elliott Zuckerman wove a speech around the notion of what it would mean if the Admissions Office claim that "the following teachers [the great books authors] will be returning to St. John's" were true. Elliott Zuckerman toasted the Greenfield Library (top). Tom Wilson, AGl90, with Vicki Cone, A68, assistant librarian (left). Jeff Bishop, Annapolis vice president, and Chris Denny, A92, in a celebratory mood (right). Photos by Keith Harvey. He said: "Think of having a teacher as amusing as Chaucer or as articulate as Jane Austen or as dear and complete as Saint Thomas. Think of being able to report to your friends what Montaigne had to say this morning in tutorial. Think of trusting the lab experiments to Faraday himself, with or without a lab assistant. Imagine a paper conference with the author of Middlemarch. Picture being badgered to perplexity not by some neophyte imitating the Socratic method, but by the Silenus himself. "On the other hand, what if Immanuel Kant himself were the only source of enlightenment about the Transcendental Unity of Apperception? What would it be like to find oneself in a seminar whose leaders were Nietzsche and Wagner? What if Baudelaire were to take an interest in what goes on in the dormitories? And would anyone ever be able to recover from a don-rag committee that included, say, Calvin and Sigmund Freud?" Expanding the image further to include a second admissions claim that "the great books are the teachers," Mr. Zuckerman hypothesized about the practical advantages of such a scheme. "They do not have to be fed, and the only new clothing required is an occasional rebinding," he said. "Only when they get very old or very decrepit or very precious do we have to place them in the glass cases of a retirement home. Otherwise, no salaries, no health insurance, no social security. They do, however, need a place to stay" - in the new library, of course. After praising the amenities and comforts of the old familiar Woodward Hall library, Mr. Zuckerman said, "I do not know the new building yet, but it seems to be happily provided with surprising vistas and interesting alcoves. There will be places to work and places to study and places to read. What is most important will not change. We'll still be learning from the books and the characters ... " He concluded: "Now at last you can raise your imaginary glasses. The tutors and their colleagues toast the teachers and their entourage, at the Green Fields of their new Place of Meeting." B 11 �CAMPAIGN SUCCESS The Campaign for Our Fourth Century tops $30 million goal present for its 300th birthSt. John's College received the assurance that it will in all probability have many more birthdays. Securing the future of the college is what The Campaign for Our Fourth Century was all about. At the dosing celebration for the campaign on June 1 in Annapolis, chairman Ray Cave announced that yes, the ambitious goal of $30 million set in 1991 had been met - had, in fact, been exceeded. The dosing celebration featured a number of speakers who addressed the 300 alumni, parents, friends, Board members, and faculty. A common theme was the unifying strength of the campaign inspired by the power of what St. John's stands for. Annapolis President Christopher Nelson called the college "a strange looking beast, with one body and two heads" - referring to the two campuses. He acknowledged the leadership of former president Richard Weigle, who served for 30 years. Mr. Weigle' s wife Mary and daughters Constance and Marta were in attendance. Alumni Association president Campaign chairman Ray Cave and Board chair Stephen Feinberg. Sharon Bishop said that she spoke "on behalf of all alumni past, present and future, old and new program, graduate and undergraduate, Annapolis and Santa Fe, who have demonstrated our love by donations and pledges of almost $20 million." The increase in alumni giving was one of the more encouraging phenomena of the campaign. At the start, St. John's ranked last among a group of small liberal arts colleges in the percent of alumni (24%) who supported the college. By the end of the campaign, participation rose to more than 50 percent, among the highest of similar schools. Santa Fe President John Agresto spoke about the kind of education that St. John's represents. "Most education cuts us off from the past and ties students to the present. We stand for the expansion of human knowledge. What you love and support is not a museum but a mission" to expand knowledge in new places and for increasing numbers of students. Representing the state of Maryland was Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Lieutenant Governor, (and wife of tutor David Townsend). Chris Nelson cited the state's commitment to education as important in the decision to grant the college $2.9 million in matching funds for the renovation of the Hall of Records. Mrs. Townsend praised the St. John's program. "Some would say St. John's is an anachronism ... But the great books are more than relevant, they are indispensable," she said. Annapolis Dean Eva Brann delivered the keynote address, which recognized connections in the 300 year history of the college (see page 13). Stephen Feinberg, Chairman of the Annapolis President Christopher Nelson celebrates the big total - Board of Visitors and Governors, in a "tricentennial moment," recalled Aristotle's idea that liberality consists in the use that is made of property. When Charles Carroll, Samuel Chase, Francis Scott Key, and others gave to the college, they began a long tradition of liberality. He also connected the success of the campaign back to Thomas Bray, who donated books which formed the basis of the St. John's library in 1697. Chairman of the campaign Ray Cave, alumnus of the class of 1948, was a neophyte at fundraising five years ago, he said. "It was a sense of unity and commitment that enabled us to carry on this campaign," he noted. "The college has been pledged 12 boats, six houses, and one farm. We have received numerous rare books, and some pretty rare stocks. Any day now I expect a partridge in a pear tree. We are immensely grateful for the millions of dollars they are worth," he said, referring to the deferred gifts whose value the college will realize in the years ahead. Mr. Cave recognized Presidents Agresto and Nelson for their "dedication and ability." "The campaign's success is a testimony to their energy and efforts," he said. He then singled $34,573,000. out several groups for their special efforts: The Annapolis Friends, who pledged almost $2 million toward the new library; the alumni and their team of 200 volunteers led by Warren Winiarski (A52); the faculty, whose initial pledge of $1. 7 million now exceeds $2 million; and the Board, whose support totals $13.5 million. He also thanked Annapolis Vice President Jeff Bishop, who, he said, "politely told me what I should do." The finale of the evening came when banners were unfurled from the running track above diners in Iglehart Hall. The first had this number: $34,573,000 - the total of donations and pledges that the college can reasonably expect to receive during the campaign period, which ends in 2001. The second banner had this number: $56,695,000 -the total of gifts the college can expect to receive after 2001 (deferred gifts of property or estates). The third banner had this number for a total: $91,268,000."This campaign is a beginning, not an end. It enables us to hope for a future of financial stability," said Mr. Cave. "The future will be assured, not because of this campaign, but because of what this college is and what it stands for in American education."• Santa Fe President John Agresto, Maria Coughlin !A73), and Ron Fielding !A70). 12 Photos by Keith Harvey. �ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE AND THE BEGINNING OF THE THREE~HUNDREDTH YEAR Keynote address at the Campaign Conclusion Celebration, delivered by Eva T. H Brann - I t is hard to express the honor and, yes, the elation I feel at being asked to talk to you at this triple celebration. This is the year we, St. John's College in Annapolis and Santa Fe, will be three hundred years old, and the day of the dedication of our new Greenfield Library, and the time of culmination of our capital campaign. There had been six attempts during the eighteenth century to turn the King William School into a college. This college, given the name of St. John's, was finally chartered in the year the Revolutionary War ended, in 1784, but the college did not become a living corporation until 1788 when it merged with the School by an Act of Consolidation. This act conveyed to the new college the funds, the furniture, the Board of Visitors, and presumably the professors of the King William school. So it is by rights that the majestic and haughty visage of King William looks down on all seniors undergoing their public essay examination in the King William Room of the Barr-Buchanan Center and that we celebrate 1996 as our year of birth and first founding. Our second celebration moves the focus across the campus to the new library. At our college especially, the library is a kind of book-dorm, where the most brilliant and well-conducted participants in the St. John's program are housed and have their physical being, and where we all come to hold quiet and concentrated converse with them, our books. It is lovely to see them so handsomely relocated under the names of our alumnus, Stewart Greenfield, Annapolis class of '53, and of his wife Connie. Stewart himself carried the first book bag in our all-college marathon move from the old to the new library, a bag filled with our oldest books that have been with us in Annapolis since 1696. The third celebration marks the successful end of our capital campaign, which will provide the foundation of our survival for the next hundred years. Giving to this college is an old tradition, as is shown in a letter written by the royal governor in 1763 to a benefactor who had participated in the effort to turn the school into a college. Governor Sharpe says: "Nothing remains for me but in the name of the Visitors to return you thanks for what you have done and intend to do for the Advancement of the School, to which I have for my part engaged to contribute ten pounds a year ... " It is the sort ofletter than might have come from Jeff Bishop's Advancement Office; one might imagine it signed by one of our two newly made Fellows and long-devoted friends, Ray Cave and Steve Feinberg. Believe me, such thanks have been, over the centuries, not mere dutiful formalities but the expression of heartfelt appreciation from the whole college community for the financial transfusions that keep us alive and going. I except our students who have the blessed right of the young to be perfectly ignorant of the generosity that keeps them here. They have no idea that this college is, as are all colleges, a charitable institution in two senses: We dispense charity, since no student pays the whole cost of this education, and we are objects of charity- yours in fact. You must forgive my tutor-like compulsion to enter at least one ancient etymology into every public pronouncement, but "charity" is a word too good to miss. For its original Latin meaning is "love,'' "affection,'' "holding something dear" - in sum, caring for it. Why should you have made us the . object of your charity and care? That was actually the question I was assigned for tonight: "Why St. John's?" Why were you right, in this world so full of great needs, to give to this little college, this fly on the elephant of American education? Well, first of all because this fly is not just any old fly but a gadfly. "Gadfly" is what our patron saint, Socrates, called himself - an irritating buzzing little thing in the hide of the big creature called Athens, goading it to self-awareness. We have found more modest and more collegial ways than Socrates used, because we're neither quite so inspired as he was nor quite so willing to be done to death, but we do keep civilly articulating our dissent from most current educational trends. And we are heard - way out of proportion to our size. I could make a three-page catalogue on matters on which we beg, politely, to differ. Happily this is still a coun- Dean, Annapolis Campus try where distinction is to be gained through difference, so we are not the losers by taking definite positions both on policy and on philosophy (though, I should hope, never on politics). Let me give you just one such position, which I have never heard out of any other secular college, but which informs all our learning and makes our classes absolutely distinctive: We no more know the answers to the great questions than anyone else, but unlike the rest of the world we do not make the illogical inference that there are no answers or even that there are no fundamental human questions. Instead we infer that we and our students must, come what may, search for truth, and we expect that many of us will sometimes find a little piece. Nothing we do is ever strictly academic. As our relations to the surrounding world are so often contrary in respect to theory, so they are almost always cooperative in respect to practice. This college engages in numerous outreach and volunteer activities, and we feel an especially strong obligation to the city in whose very center we live, and whose existence as the capital of Maryland is only two years older than ours. And our Siamese twin in Santa Fe feels the same toward their beautiful old city. These are the external relations that make this college worthy of your affectionate interest, but my heart, and probably yours, is really with the life that goes on within. Let me tell you the plain truth about that life, a truth which is an open secret, but is veiled for most colleges by all the prevalent talk of career goals and productivity which is so hopelessly wrongheaded because it is so impractical a notion in the life of learning: The first purpose of this college is to provide its students with four years of strenuous happiness. We operate under the prudent assumption that the preparation for life is itself a life, and that the best preparation for a happy life is to know where to find it and how to pursue it. Consequently we believe that the college should be a place for the roller-coaster exhilaration of learning, the difficult and recalcitrant company of great books, the disturbing intima- Dean Eva Brann: The preparation for life is itself a life. cies of conversational friendship, the guilty joys of goofing off, and the delights of well-used leisure. You will find few college officials these days saying such uneconomic, uncompetitive things, but I think it's their "learning outcomes," and "delivery systems,'' and "productivity enhancement" that will come to grief and leave students isolated, depressed, and without a model in their hearts and minds of the way things ought to be. Our plan will work better, for just as a secure childhood makes for confident adults, so a tight-knit, absorbing community of learning engenders in students courage for life - as our old college seal of 1793 says: "No way is impassable to courage." Now what do we actually teach these courageous practitioners of happiness, these students of ours? Well, as you know - and this may be yet another reason you found to show us affectionate benevolence -we don't pretend to be able to impart outright the knowledge that matters. Stated very minimally, here is what we do: We give students means and occasions for learning how to learn. The means are displayed on the new college seal that was adopted when the present program was instituted in 1937: seven books and a balance, surrounded by the claim that "we make free human beings out of children by means of books and balance." The seven books stand for the arts, skills and techniques of learning: speaking and also writing correctly and persuasively, reasoning well, thinking about figures in space, numbers in time and objects in motion, be they the strings of a musical instrument or the stars in their courses. The balance stands for continued on page 21 At the closing celebration from left: Orlie Reed with Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and David Townsend; alumni Allan Hoffman (A49) and Capt. Robert Cozzolino (A63); Alumni Association president Sharon Bishop. 13 �ARCHITECTURE AS DIALOGUE Travis Price, architect of the Greenfield Library; and his symbol-driven vision. by Barbara Goyette ''"\VJhen a student comes into the building, looks around, and says, 'This is W so cool' - that's what it's all about form-=," says Travis Price, architect of the new Greenfield Library. A collision of classic Greek Revival themes with ultra-modern shapes and materials, the library makes an architectural statement about time: "This building should speak to the past but also challenge it,'' says Price. A Johnnie who spent time on each campus in the early 1970's, Price came to the library project with an idea of what he wanted to accomplish but without a due about how to do it. His vision developed as symbol-driven. "I worked it out by drawing lots of pictures on napkins,'' he says, "but all along I was listening to what the people here on campus were saying about what they needed the library to be." From the outside, the $6.8 million makeover of the former Maryland Hall of Records looks to have made minimal impact. Still sitting squarely on the corner of College Avenue and St. John's Street, the 1934 Georgian Revival building seems spiffed up but essentially unchanged except for a low stone wall and a new terrace built on its western side. But the appearance of little change is deceiving, for once inside the building, no one would mistake what has been done over the past 16 months for a mere rehab project. The formerly dark and narrow entranceway now leads to a lightflooded, three-story atrium. A sweeping spiral staircase highlighted by steel railings and cherry veneer handrails links the levels. There are curves everywhere: the polished granite-topped counters in the lobby, the round "porthole" windows on a huge three-story wall adjacent to the stairway, the balconies of the defining levels, and - most spectacularly - the enormous skylight above. Price traces the origin of the curves to a symbolic source: the orbits of the planets as described by Ptolemy, Copernicus, and Kepler. "The classical Curving walls of stacked stone define interiors preserve the known rational the terrace. geometry of the past and are intentionally contrasted with the expansive paths above. The curvilinear shapes are a reminder of the unknown, the irrational,'' says Price about the dominant themes of the building. "Anything that was new, I wanted to be really new," Price explains about the addition built onto the Humphreys/Paca-Carroll side of the building. Although it is below grade on three sides, the space does not feel like it's underground - a huge wall of glass looks out on a terraced garden. Most of the collection (literature, science, math, art, and music) is in fact housed in the addition's stacks and there are comfortable chairs and sofas, plus study carrels along the sides of the room. The Greenfield Library doesn't have any obvious main reading areas like Woodward Hall did, where the reading room contained the periodicals and reference books and the King William Room had the Greek and Latin books. Instead, there are a number of smaller, more intimate spaces, some in each section of the building. On the first floor, the Friends' Reading Room will contain reference material, but it has elegant working tables and no lounging spots. The "guaranteed one copy of each Program book" feature ofWoodward's reading room is here transferred to the room just behind the Friends' room. The Stephen L. Feinberg Periodical Room on the second level is adjacent to the Stephen and Julia Ford Periodical Reading Room, which has comfy chairs for perusing the Times and current mags. This second floor is home to the philosophy, history, political science, and some of the religion books. The Joy and Bennett Shaver Reading Room provides couches and chairs, and there are carrels along every wall. (Each carrel in the Greenfield Library has electric and phone outlets for plugging in a laptop.) The Hall of Records: News 60 Years Ago 14 The Maryland Hall of Records was an innovative building when it was constructed in 1934. Designed by Baltimore architect Laurence Hall Fowler, it is in classic Georgian Revival style. The college had deeded the land to the state in 1934 for $10. Celebrating the 300th anniversary of the founding of Maryland, the Hall of Records was the first building in the country designed as a repository for state archives. Novelist John Barth did research there for his book The Sot Weed Factor and Alex Haley used Maryland archival records to trace his ancestry and develop the story behind Roots. Architecturally, the Hall of Records illustrated some original concepts. The archives were stored in a central core, made up of seven stories of metal shelves set on concrete floors. The perimeter rooms around the core were designed as vignettes in Maryland history, with replicas of various architectural features from throughout the Travis Price and Doris Sung helped state. Most spectacular was the Queen with the great book move. Anne Room, on the west side of the building. Rising a full two stories, embellished with round windows and intricate moldings, and painted a quiet yellow, the room was where patrons to the archives did their research. Archives librarians would descend into the stacks to find the materials requested, then bring the records out to the patrons, who waited in the Queen Anne Room. The state eventually outgrew the Hall of Records and built a new archives building on Rowe Boulevard in 1986. St. John's was able to purchase the building back at a cost of $700,000 in 1993. Then began the hard work of devising plans that would meet both the college's need for more library space and the historic preservation goals of the boards and commissions overseeing the Historic District. Since the steel stacks had been designed to hold archives - and to be inaccessible to users - Price knew that they would not work for the library's collection. He decided to gut the central core and re-connect the floors of the building. An addition of some kind would also be necessary. The perimeter rooms, considered historically important, were to be restored but not altered. How Concepts Became Reality Travis Price has been a maverick for years - he began his architectural career designing passive solar housing projects in Harlem, transformed the commercial district of his hometown, Takoma Park, Maryland, with innovative yet ultimately practical rehabs and new construction, designed a slew of contemporary private residences (with designs that draw heavily on Zen and other Eastern themes), and completed a provocative synagogue in Laurel. According to the Washington Post, he's "one of a handful of architects pushing avant-garde design in button-down Washington." Hallmarks of his work include a deconstructionist style, the fresh use of materials, and an awareness of energy conservation - with healthy doses of whimsy and symbolism. In the St. John's library project, it is the symbolism that he emphasizes. Price points out that the skylight illuminating the atrium corresponds to the light of day in the cave analogy of Plato's "Republic." The three levels he links to Dante's three levels of inferno, purgatory, and paradise. And the curves that predominate the design he attributes to the paths of the planets as described by Ptolemy, Kepler, and Copernicus. For Price the curves have a greater meaning as well: "they give you a sense that there's always more,'' he says. "The curves are incomplete, they lead you onward." The "something more" also applies to the building's historic place. "The Hall of Records had an inner stillness, like a temple. Its imagery was multi-faceted, I would even say eclectic. We are enriching its past by commenting on it with the new elements." The final step in the transformation of the Hall of Records to the library was renovating the perimeter rooms. Moldings have been restored; paint colors o.f "The curves of the building lead you onward." Construction photos by John Bi/doh/. apricot, yellow, sage continued on page 20 �THE REPORTER ALUM N Association News SUMMER 1996 St. John's College Mark Middlebrook, A83, editor• Thomas Geyer, A68, communications committee chair The Alumni Association Newsletter is published in each issue of the Reporter. We welcome letters, capsule book reviews, and article ideas from alumni. Send submissions and suggestions to Mark Middlebrook at 73030. l 604@compuserve.com (e-mail) or call 510/ 547-0602. Lost and Found: Keeping Track of 15,000 Alumni A New Alumni Register in the Works ne of life's recurrent pleasures is cracking open the new Alumni Register every four years and perusing the newly minted record of classmates' whereabouts and trades. The Alumni Association and the College jointly fund and publish the Register, a new 1996 300th anniversary edition of which will be mailed to all alumni this year. Corrections and additions from the Alumni Register questionnaire, which you received in the mail recently, will improve the accuracy and usefulness of alumni data even further. • The database contains the names of about 15,000 alumni. It might seem like a small task to keep track of all the alumni from a tiny college that graduates well under 200 students per year, but nothing could be further from the truth. The College's Alumni Offices on both campuses, with the help of the Alumni Association, recently completed a major reconciliation of the alumni databases. These databases are used not only for the Alumni Register, but also for many mailings each year, including chapter newsletters, homecoming brochures, the Association's dues mailer, The Reporter, The St. John's Review, and College fundraising communications. In addition, the databases help the Placement Offices locate alumni who can help students (and other alumni} with advice on graduate school, jobs, and living in specific geographical areas. • Approximately 3,500 of these alumni are deceased. • Roughly two-thirds of the 15,000 alumni graduated from Annapolis and one third from Santa Fe. • About half of the alumni are from graduating classes after 1980. • The Alumni Offices process 300 to 600 changes of address every month. • Most of these changes come in the form of mailings returned the post office. • The 1996 Alumni Register will include e-mail addresses for the first time. Add yours to the Alumni Register questionnaire if you want it listed. O In the past, each campus maintained a separate database of its alumni, and there were many discrepancies and duplications. Correcting and reconciling the databases was an enormous job. Some alumni were listed under multiple names due to name changes or misspellings. There was no uniform method of listing class year (matriculation year? graduation year, if any? preferred class year?}. The data for some alumni were obsolete. And of course the target continued to move throughout the reconciliation work period, as alumni continued to move and more address changes poured in. The Alumni Directors, data processing staff, and student aides on both campuses, with funding from the College and the Alumni Association, have completed the database reconciliation just in time for the forthcoming Alumni Register. Equally important, there is now a mechanism in place for ensuring consistent data on both campuses. Among the interesting facts about the alumni database are these: by The most efficient way to ensure that information about you in the forthcoming Alumni Register is current is to fill out the Register questionnaire. If any of that information changes in the future, you can submit the changes to either Alumni Office by e-mail, U.S. mail, phone, or fax. ANNAPOLIS: Betsy Blume, Alumni Director, St. John's College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404, phone: 410-626-2531, fax: 410-263-4929, email: 7 4637.2660@compuserve.com SANTA FE: Elizabeth Skewes, Alumni Director, St. John's College, 1160 Camino de la Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87501, phone: 505-984-6103, fax: 505-984-6003, e-mail: eskewes@shadow.stjohns-nm.edu 15 �Election of Alumni Representatives to the Board of Visitors and Governors John's College In accordance with Article VIII, Section II of the By-laws of the Alumni Association, notice is hereby given that the following alumni have been nominated by the Alumni Association Board of Directors for election to the St. John's College Board of Visitors and Governors. For his second three-year term: S. David Krimins, M.D. (A63). For her second term: Glenda Holladay Eoyang (S76). For her first three-year term: Paula G. Maynes (A77). Notice is also given that nominations may be made by petition. 1. Petitions must be signed by at least 50 members of the Alumni Association in good standing. 2. Nominations must be accompanied by a biographical sketch of the nominee. 3. The consent of all persons nominated must be obtained. 4. The petition must reach the Directors of Alumni Activities NO LATER THAN DECEMBER l, 1996; c/o 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 above will be considered elected. The term will begin immediately upon the conclusion of the election process. Letters More Women on the Program Mary Helen McMurran, SF87, argues for adding 15 books by women to the St. John's curriculum (An open letter to the St. Johns Alumni, Reporter, Fall 1995). I will go out on a limb and postulate that adding books to the Program will lead to subtracting others - dropping acknowledged classics to make room for, say, "Letters from a Peruvian Woman." Ms. McMurran skirts this issue. So let's get right down to it: What senior seminar reading should be discarded so that Johnnies can read a speech on feminism by Elizabeth Cady Stanton? One of those boring Hegel readings, perhaps? War and Peace? Simone de Beauvoir is a respected writer, but do we really want to drop, say, Beyond Good and Evil so that seniors can engage abook so recent and potentially ephemeral as The Second Sex? Ms. McMurran's letter to the alumni also anticipates the criticism that additions to the Program should not be made on the basis of sex that "they are not proon that basis." The text of the proposal ",....,,,...,,.,,...,...,,,"argues that "the St. 16 should consider a broader range of great works women." Why? to get the answer to that question you have to decipher the following sentence: "Since many works written by men included on the program engage in a discussion of women and femininity, works which portray the expressions of women and record their thoughts will allow for a real dialogue on gender to take place in the classroom, as it did in the Liberal tradition." Indeed, the Program encompasses many discussions of women and femininity. "The Bacchae," "Antigone," and The Odyssey come to mind, to pick just three freshman readings. The unstated implication, however, is that since men have written about women, we ought to have The Real Thing - women writing about women. That's odd. I thought the St. John's curriculum was based on the proposition that one can valuably study the writings of people separated from us in space, time, and culture. Space, time, and culture ... but not sex? Ms. McMurran might presume that books on the Program are fundamentally inadequate because of the sex of the author, but her argument lacks an explanation of why this should be so. Alas, this is too important for me to assume it as Ms, McMurran' s proposal continues should concern itself that St. with books that experiences" and "record ... thoughts." That's quite a low standard for greatness, it seems to me. Besides, since when has it been the purpose of the St. John's seminar to expose students to readings from every conceivable viewpoint? Again, what about greatness? Why elevate a tangent to primacy? A final observation concerns the law of averages. Nobody, least of all feminist scholars, disputes that until the beginning of this century, women were decidedly at a disadvantage in terms of contributing to the Western canon. Is it even a little bit surprising that at a place like St. John's, where we try to absorb the best that every age has to offer, our curriculum predominates with books by men? -James F.X O'Gara, ABB Vigilant Alumnus Two minor corrections for the last issue of the Reporter: 1. The Black Plague, mentioned in "The Seventh Seal," hit Sweden in the 14th century, not the 13th. 2. The cabinet position that Ford Brown claimed to hold was Secretary of State, not Defense. While the late President Weigle' s book contains the same mistake, I was at the Lamy train station 30 years ago, and heard Ford tell the story. - Steven Shore, SF6B Hats Off to Gl's At the graduation ceremonies in Santa Fe this spring, they ran out of hoods to present with eight of the Graduate Institute students still remaining. In response, several graduating GI' s removed their hoods to honor those of us who did not receive ours. I would like to express my gratitude to those GI' s who did remove their hoods. It was a very meaningful gesture and was greatly appreciated. - John Schroeder, SGI96 CORRECTION The number for the St. johns College Bookstore in Santa Fe was incorrectly listed in the spring issue of The Reporter. The correct number is 5051984-6056. �~ W \H 1 r ~ m 11 m~ o 11 r m 11 Alumni Notes & Profiles GRADUATE RUNS AWAY TO JOIN CIRCUS by Sus3an Borden t. John's grad John Lynch {A94) has run away to the circus. Granted, he didn't leave a note behind proclaiming "no one understands me." He didn't hop a boxcar. And he didn't sign on as an apprentice to the lion tamer. Running away to join the circus in this day and age turns out to be a somewhat less spontaneous act, involving a detailed application, an audition, and a two-month stint at Clown College. S In Search of Healing laughter For Lynch, the journey that ended at the circus began during his junior year at St. John's when he signed up to work as a children's party entertainer. From the start, Lynch enjoyed the contact with children and the chance to clown around, but a turning point came when he worked at a party for children with cerebral palsy. There he found that the pursuit of fun and laughter worked magic on everyone in the room, including himself. "It's not like I walked away thinking 'I've been able to brighten up their poor lives.' Instead, I felt that everyone's life was brighter, including my own. My troubles and worries had also disappeared for that hour and I thought this was significant and worthwhile, something I wanted to pursue," Lynch says. Lynch had already discovered an interest in the helping professions, but now he was struck with the feeling that his path in life would include a combination of helping and humor. "I realized that I wanted to spend my life pointing to moments of genuine laughter and constructive play and saying that there's something going on there that's worth watching, that's worth attention," he says. After graduating, Lynch looked for an academic program that would address his interest in humor and healing, but came up empty-handed. He resolved to meet his interest directly, by becoming a clown. Lynch called Ringling Brothers and received a lengthy application. Questions included "Why do you want to be a down,"' "When was the last time you cried and why?" "Name your five favorite books and movies," "What do you think about people from foreign countries," and "What do you think about small spaces?" In addition to the application, Lynch traveled to Cincinnati for a group audition. "There were about 15 of us. They wanted to see how we moved and how we thought on our feet. They look for good people who seriously want to be clowns," he says. "It's more than just liking to make people laugh. That's a part of it but they' re also looking for people who are willing to show themselves. There's a debate in clowning that's expressed in terms of makeup: do you hide the self, or do you enhance what's already there?" And You Thought Junior Year Was Hard Clown College, though it sounds like it should be a lighthearted locus of gaiety and mirth, turned out to be surprisingly stressful. For two months, clowns-in-training spend 14 hours a day, six days a week at the Circus World arena in Baraboo, Wisconsin, learning the skills and practices of clowning. Daytime classes focus on skills such as spitting water, falling down, putting on makeup, unicycling and stiltwalking, gag writing, physical comedy, acrobatics, dancing, and mime. Evening activities include lessons about circus history. Every Saturday for four weeks, the new clowns perform for the public, trying out gags they've written and their newly acquired skills. "I did learn to throw pies," Lynch says. "It's a very misunderstood art. You don't want to hurt the person, so you always let them know by a 'hup.' That's a clown word that means, variously, 'get ready for a pie,' or 'I'm going to punch you,' or something like that. At any rate, you say 'hup' so hopefully they'll close their eyes." On the last Sunday, Ringling owner Kenneth Feld watches the group's final show, then meets with Clown College directors to decide who gets the circus equivalent of honors on his oral-a contract with Ringling Brothers. This year, Lynch was among the 11 in his class who made the cut. Lynch joined Ringling on November 1 in Chicago and since then his life has been exotic, adventurous, and often surreal. "The first time I performed with the circus it was overwhelming. There are three hundred people working with you, not to mention the tigers and the elephants. The first night they put us in the finale. We were out there just waving, basically, but it was quite a feeling." Since then, Lynch has joined the Ringling clowns in a performance schedule that averages 11 shows a week. He takes the floor with the entire circus during the show's large "I did learn to throw pies," Lynch says. "It's a very misunderstood art." production numbers, and has his moment in the spotlight at the beginning of the second act. ''I'm in the fire gag," he says. "I play an old woman whose cat is stuck in a tree. The firemen come out and I grab the microphone from the ringmaster and yell 'My kittykat's stuck in the tree!' AB you can imagine, pandemonium breaks out, and it's not long before the firemen spray me with water from a fire hydrant. Eventually, they rescue my kittykat, but the joke's on them, because it's a tiger." Although Lynch enjoys his time in the limelight, he seems most at home on the periphery of performing. The hour before each show finds him on the circus floor joking with children, shaking their hands, and posing with them for pictures. At intermission he is often surrounded by youngsters tugging at his costume. By the end of the show, there's a line of children asking for his autograph. He continues his banter as he signs: 'Tm not just going to give you my autograph, I'm going to give you the secret of life," he says as he writes on a program. "Number 1. Laugh. Number 2. Floss. Number 3. When in doubt, see number I." 1111 John lynch can be reached at: Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus - Red Unit John lynch- Clown Alley 8607 Westward Center Drive Vienna, VA 22182 17 �~ r,m • A i "' 11 • 0 r Y o 1i Yfy"' ill 11 l t r m "' K "' & l ii 0 11 1Ji Bx « 'W l1bj$F-~W;(bl1jf%11J , I l0Zltl~.~~~ 0 ~,,! Alumni Notes & Profiles 1939 1962 E. Leslie Medford, Jr., who is Dean Emeritus at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, represented St. John's at the inauguration of Dr. Donald V. DeRosa as the 23rd president of the University of the Pacific. John F. Miller writes: "In March of 1995 I became president of Edsel and Eleanor Ford House in Grosse Pointe Shores, Michigan, after 15 years at Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens in Akron, Ohio. I am also serving on the board of the Library of American Landscape History." 1957 Mary Sullivan Blomberg reports that she is now chairperson of the Department of Classical Archaeology and Ancient History at Uppsala University in Stockholm. "An astronomer colleague and I are conducting archaeoastronomical studies of the Minoan peak sanctuaries," she says. "Our hypothesis is that part of the roots of Greek astronomy lie in the Aegean Bronze Age." 1960 A new edition of Mary Campbell Gallagher's book Scoring High on Bar Exam Essays, originally published by Arco in 1991, has just been brought out by Sulzburger & Graham. Mary is making a set of companion audiotapes, which will be distributed by National jurist magazine. 1961 Nicolas H. Ekstrom was married to Anne Cornell Lounsbury on February 24, 1996, in New York, N.Y. 1966 Two members of the Annapolis class of '66 have written books recently. Both are academics, and their subjects illustrate the wide range of interests Johnnies find in the real world: Ian M. Harris, a professor of educational policy and community studies at the University ofWisconsinMilwaukee, studied how men form their gender identities and how those identities affect their behavior in his book Messages Men Hear: Constructing Masculinities. The basis for the book is Harris' s study of 24 male messages such as "adventurer," "be like your father," "money," "superman," "scholar," "bosses," and "nurturer." He asked 560 respondents how important each message was to them at age 18 and how that influence changed over time. The books' first chapters describe how men learn these messages, how individual men respond to them, and how their influence changes over the course of a man's life. The second part of the book contains interviews with specific men that help explain how they relate to the messages, while the final part discusses diverse aspects of masculinity. Harris had taught a course on male identity at UWM for 15 years. He has written numerous articles for academic and popular journals. Messages Men Hear: Constructing Masculinities is published by Taylor & Francis and is part of the Gender, Change & Society Series. James Mensch writes that two new books of his will appear this fall: Knowing and Being: A Post-Modern Reversal, published by Penn State University Press, and After Modernity: Husserlian Reflections on a Philosophical Tradition, published by State University of New York Press. He is also the author of The Beginning ofthe Gospel ofSt. John: Philosophical Perspectives, Peter Lang Publishers (1992); Intersubjectivity and Transcendental Idealism, State University of New York Press (1988); The Question ofBeing in Husserl's Logical Investigations, Martinus Nijhoff Press (1981). Mensch, a full professor, was recently recognized by Maclean' s Guide to Universities for his teaching at Saint Francis Xavier University in Canada. In the last few years, he has been an invited lecturer at the New School for Social Research (the Hannah Arendt Memorial lectures), the University of Tokyo, and the University of Utrecht. His oldest daughter, Jennifer, is at Memphis State University doing graduate work in philosophy. 1978 Lawrence Osronovsky (A) reports that he is an assistant attorney general in the oil and gas section of the Alaska Department of Law. "I would be very happy to hear from anyone up this way," he says. "My address is 1200 West 6th #B, Anchorage, AK 99501." Terry Teachout' s (A) most recent byline is as music critic at Commentary magazine. His work has also been published frequently in the New York Times Book Review. 1979 Edward J. Burgess (A) and Angelina C. Kline Burgess (A83) would like to announce the birth of Cynthia Marie Burgess on August 14, 1995. She joins siblings Louis Burgess (seven years) and Genevieve Burgess (nine years). 1987 18 John M. Wack (AGI) sends a four- 1 word summary of news: "Still unable to golf." Joey Coxwell (SGI) left his teaching position at Eutaw High School in Alabama to teach at the University of West Alabama. He also is doing preliminary coursework on a doctoral degree. His wife, Patti Coxwell (SGI), continues to teach elementary music and band to 870 children in Sumter County, Ala. She also is taking courses in computer applications for the classroom and says she would love to have a few more e-mail addresses for St. John's alumni. The Coxwells are living in Livingston, Ala., and can be reached, via e-mail, at: uwa486@stumail.westal.edu for Joey or uwa590@stumail.westal.edu for Patti. 1988 Cat Mantione-Holmes (A) and Mike had a baby boy Orion Kessler in May 1994, who is "almost Irish twins" with sister Cloe, born in June 1993. Mike's band Five-Eight just finished recording a new album which should be out later this year on Walter Yetnikoffs new label. Cat is writing freelance, reading Dostoevski, and changing lots of diapers. 1989 Joseph Miller (A) reports that his judicial clerkship winds to a dose in mid-August. He will move back to Chicago straightaway, where he will practice intellectual property and antitrust law at the firm of Sidley & Austin. He will miss Washington's beautiful monuments, but not its gaping potholes. He requests that friends send him good Karma waves for the Illinois bar exam in late July. Linda Hamm (A89, originally A86) is working as a paralegal in Seattle. She and Aldon Schwimmer (SF79) share their home in a semirural area near Redmond with pets Kody and Chama. They met at a musical evening at the home of Daniel Gorham (St. John's Search & Rescue Team member) and continue to play bluegrass music together. Both would love to hear from classmates and friends. Will Clurman (A) is working on his MBA at MIT Sloan School of Business Management. A captain in the Marine Corps, Jeffrey S. Kojac (A) has been published in the Marine Corps Gazette, the Naval Institute Proceedings, and will be published soon in Naval History. Joshua Kevievsky (SF) is an independent computer consultant and freelance writer, specializing in JAVA and other web applications. continued on page 20 �METHOD TO HER MADNESS Leah Ankeny found St. John's a great training ground for her acting career. by Elizabeth A. Skewes Like I tells my cousins, you never know when your crisis is going to come. It may not be with the rock, it may not be with the heroin. You may hit the bottle or you might get offinto one ofthose relationships where it's brutal It comes, you just have to be aware of it and deal with it. I believe that this crisis is mandatory in our life. I done did my part and now I'm ready to live. T make it easier to deny the problems," Ankeny says. Money and education also give someone the power of choice, she says, which people who are caught up in II drug dealing or other criminal activity don't have. For the women she interviewed, the concept of choice simply didn't exist "because choice is a luxury that happens when you can stop focusing on surviving from day to day." "It seems like a real contradiction that I would come out of this 'white bread' environment at St. John's and go back to Detroit and talk to these women, but the program gave me a lot of tools and helped me find my voice - and my voice has a lot to say about these kinds of issues." Ankeny has always had strong opinions and a strong sense of what she wants from her own life. She knew early on that she wanted to be an actor and started her college career in the drama department at New York University. "I was learning a whole lot about acting, but I wasn't getting the sense that I was going to learn a lot about philosophy or language or anything else that was even more far afield," she says, "and I was incredibly jealous that my sister was graduating from St. John's that year." It was her sister, Rachel Ankeny Majeske, SF88, who pointed out that St. John's was a possibility- even for someone who wanted an acting career. For Ankeny, though, it still was a tough choice. But after a year at NYU, she decided that she wanted a St. John's education. "I started the following fall and never questioned my choice. I really saw a connection with theater in the subjects I was studying. And I was doing math and science, which I had discarded when I was 14." More importantly, she says, she was learning a lot more about the world around her than she would have in any of her acting classes at NYU. Coming to St. John's, she says, "changed who I was. All of a sudden there were a lot more possibilities. How was I going to play someone with a scientific mind ifI had this very myopic view of the world? They taught method acting at NYU, but most of us didn't have a lot of experiences to draw from." Since graduating, however, Ankeny has been collecting a vast array of experiences - and not only through her interviews with the women portrayed in her one-woman show. Her show has taken her to a number of cities, including Santa Fe, where she performed the play for a group of St. John's students and alumni in April. And she's taken some time to work on other projects, including a peer mediation project for young children. But the interest others have in her one-woman show always brings her back to it, and each time she comes back she finds something new in the tapes of her interviews to add to the show. She also learns a little more about herself. "The perspective is sometimes better from strangers than from those who are dose to you. They challenge you to really look at what's going on. Maybe the bag lady who doesn't have a house and a car and clothes and taxes to hide behind is better able to handle things than I am," she says. After a short break from the show so that she can move to Seattle, Ankeny will be back on stage with From Inside in late July and early June at the Northwest Actors Studio. She also plans to start work on a new project about a young social worker who was killed while working with women - much like those in From Inside- who are in the middle of a number of different crises. "Coming to St. John's changed who I I a he words belong to Mary, one of seven characters in Leah Ankeny' s onewoman show, "From Inside: Voices oflnstitutionalized Women," which Ankeny, SF92, also wrote. Mary is a homeless woman, but the show's characters come from a spectrum of experiences, including drug dealing, prostitution, and domestic violence. And each character is based on some of the 20 women Ankeny interviewed as part of her master's thesis project in theater at the University of Detroit-Mercy. Ankeny, 26, says she's "been interested for ¥ears inwhatliappens to the people who fall through the cracks - the mentally ill, the homeless, those who are going through drug detoxification. That led me to look at women specifically, because there are some very extreme examples among women." While Ankeny's script isn't taken word-for-word from her interviews, much of the dialogue is written as it was spoken to her. Some of the women Ankeny interviewed were people she had met previously, but many of them were complete strangers until she sat down with them. To fi!J-d her interview subjects, she put up notices in jails, social services agencies, and shelters and asked the people who worked there for names. Interestingly, she says, the women who responded most often were those who didn't have a lot of money or education. "The women who were more affluent or more educated wouldn't be interviewed. I think it's because many of them are in denial. We' re all very, very dose potentially to being in the same situations, but money, education, and status there I Your tape stopped.. .I guess that's it... is that what you wanted? I mean I didn't know what to say... So what's this for, anyway, like a movie? (In reponse} A play... So I'm gonna be in a play? Cool. ~ .... ,,,'°' ..''' is relocating, can reached at 1A@prodigy.com, or at her permanent address: Appoline, Dearborn, Leah Ankeny, a 1992 Santa Fe graduate, has made social issues the focus of her work in the theater. She is the author of "From Inside: Voices of Institutionalized Women and plans to begin work on a new project about a young social worker. 11 19 �Alumni Notes & Profiles 1990 Courtney Oakes (A) is in her second year as a veterinary medicine student at Washington State University. Her husband Bob (USNA 89) is a second year law student at the University ofldaho. Dimitri Kevievsky (SF) is a programmer/analyst for a large New York retailer. Sundance Metelsky (AGI) and Tom Oehser announce the birth of their son. Beta Wolfgang Zoltan Seadon Williams Metelsky Oehser was born at home on November 19, 1995. The event made Johnny Metelsky (A94) an uncle. Good news from academe: Kevin Graham (A) reports that he has successfully defended his PhD dissertation, "Philosophical Theories of Justice and Agency," in an oral examination at the University of Toronto. "My dissertation explores the Platonic idea that any conception of justice presupposes a conception of human nature in the context of contemporary political philosophy. I have recently presented portions of my dissertation research to the American Philosophical Association, the Canadian Philosophical Association, and the Twelfth International Social Philosophy Conference. I will receive the PhD in Philosophy from the University of Toronto in June," he says. He has received a tenure-track appointment as assistant professor of philosophy at Creighton University, the Jesuit University of Omaha. He will be teaching the theory of knowledge, moral and political philosophy, feminist philosophy, and a variety of introductory philosophy courses. Graham adds that his wife, Deirdre Routt(A9 l) received a Master of Library Science degree from the University of Toronto last year, and is about to complete a one-year appointment as a library cataloguer at the Ontario Library Services Centre in Waterloo, Ontario. She plans to continue her career as a librarian in Omaha. M. Grey Valenti (A) has completed her MS in ocean physics and has started working at NASA/Goddard. She hopes to relocate all her buddies in the DC metro area. 20 Ann Grabhorn Hunt (A) graduated from Sotheby' s American Arts Course in May. The course, a post-baccalaureate certificate program, simultaneously examines American fine and decorative arts, in addition to the business of the auction house. Lake Perriguey (SF) has been awarded a Public Interest Law Project stipend by the Northwestern School of Law to work for the National Campaign for Freedom of Expression. He writes, "NCFE is the nation's only advocacy group for free expression in the arts and for securing the enforcement of the First Amendment to the U.S.Constitution. I will be working with the attorneys involved in the lawsuit against the federal government for passing the Telecommunications Decency Act, which attempts to criminalize 'indecent' postings on the Internet, as well as sundry abuses of the First Amendment throughout the country." Lake can be reached at: National Campaign for Freedom of Expression, 1402 3rd Ave. #421, Seattle, WA 98101. His e-mail address is: jamesp@lclark.edu. 1992 A postcard from Elyette Block (SF) says, "Peace Corps pulled out of Nigeria completely, and since then, I've moved on .. .I will work for a business communications company in Seoul for the next year. Anybody coming through Korea should give me a call." Her address is K/H Business Communications, 12th FL Korea Herald Bldg. 1-12, Hoehyondong 100-771, Seoul, S. Korea. Kate (Griffis) Sullivan (A) and John Sullivan (SF92) and Madeleine (born 9/93) announce the birth of Jack Sullivan (formally John Jr.) on December 26, 1995. John teaches senior math and science at Brewster Academy, a small boarding school on Lake Winnipisaukee in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire. John is a dorm parent for 18 senior boys. He also head coaches varsity wrestling and JV baseball. Brewster is on the cutting edge of new teaching techniques and technology in the classroom - all students have laptops and use them in class. This has been exciting for John because he has been able to use his computer expertise in formulating policy and tools on the Technology Team at Brewster. He also enjoys playing bass guitar at church and fly fishing on the many lakes in the Wolfeboro area. Kate stays at home with the kids and teaches piano to Brewster students and a ballet class for preschoolers. Prior to the birth of Jack, Kate entered several art shows and won first and third place at the March of Dimes Arts & Crafts show in Dover, Mass. The Sullivans would love to hear from any Johnnies passing through or nearby. Their address is Brewster Academy, W olfboro, NH 03894 or though e-mail atJohn-M.Sullivan @BrewsterNet.Com or KateSullivan@BrewsterN et. Com. Anna-Barbara Heiniger (SGI) graduated from Sotheby' s American Arts Course in May. The course, a post-baccalaureate certificate program, simultaneously examines American fine and decorative arts, in addition to the business of the auction house. Michael Stevens (AGI) is writing his dissertation for the University of Dallas on T.S. Eliot's social criticism. He and his wife, Linda, now work at Grove City College in western Pennsylvania. As a distraction from academic labors, Michael also works as a DJ at a classical radio station. 1993 "After a terrible position working in a design firm in Soho, I'm working in a small bookstore in the West Village. Anyone interested in coming to New York, feel free to contact me,'' writes Gwen Pogrowski (A). Laura Harris (SF) is a law student at the University of Houston Law Center and expects to graduate in May 1998. 1994 Henry Povovny (A) is currently enrolled at the University of Toledo as a graduate student in the physics department. Ghina Siddiqui (AGI) and Marty Noss announce the birth of their son Shafiuddin Jilan Noss. "He was 9 lbs, 11 oz and the entire family is doing well,'' reports Ghina. 1995 Charles Weber (A) has moved to Israel and taken dual citizenship. He lives and works on a kibbutz. He hopes to begin graduate school in philosophy and Judaic studies next October. Architect, from page 14 green, and soft grey have been chosen. The two-story Queen Anne Room has been renamed the Friends' Reading Room, in honor of the group called the Friends of St. John's College, who raised $2 million toward the construction cost. Several other rooms in the new library bear the names of generous supporters: Mr. William Brock, Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Ford, Mrs. Lillian Vanous Nutt, Joy and Bennett Shaver, Dr. and Mrs. George R. Schroedinger, Ray Cave (A48), Stephen Feinberg. Outside, a stone plaque remembers Richard Weigle, who served as presi, dent of St. John's for 30 years. The Greenfield Library, at 29,000 square feet, can hold twice as many books as Woodward Hall. Compact shelving in the addition carries the class copies and college archives, with room to spare. The library staff has plenty of work space, the card catalogue has been replaced with a computerized listing, there's lots more study space for students, the windows provide fresh views of campus and Annapolis, the collection has room to grow - all practical advantages that a new library would have needed to meet. That this particular new library, the Greenfield Library, reflects a vision as well as fulfills practical needs will give generations of St. John's students something cool to think about as they look up from their reading. • �l Pl E R E P 0 R l E R Obituaries & Memoria LAWRENCE CAVE, TUTOR Lawrence Cave, 36, a tutor at St. John's College in Santa Fe since 1987, died from complications due to AIDS on April 12 at his home in Oberlin, Ohio. Mr. Cave, who also was a composer and a choral director and lecturer for the Santa Fe Opera, earned his undergraduate degree in composition from Oberlin College in 1981. In 1986, he received both a master's and doctoral degree in composition from Harvard University. His final choral work, Goblin Market, was premiered by the Santa Fe Women's Ensemble on April 26. Several additional compositions by Mr. Cave were performed at a memorial service for him held on the Santa Fe campus on May 8. Mr. Cave is survived by his partner of eight years, Ted Stark, who was with him when he died. He also is survived by his parents, Lawrence H. and Edna B. Cave Jr.; and two sisters, Catherine Cave Mobley and Elizabeth Cave Williams. SARAH K. OTTO, SGI70 Sarah K. Otto, SGI70, died February 7 in Santa Fe. A memorial service will be held in her honor at 3 p.m. on August 24 on the Santa Fe campus. WILLIAM ALBERT CLASS OF 1 'UA'-'-JLHH William Albert Gross, Jr., who graduated from St. John's in 1929 with a bachelor of science degree, died in Aberdeen, Maryland, on April 18. He was 87. Mr. Gross had been an engineer and chief of the automotive division at the U.S. Army facility at Aberdeen Proving Ground. He was retired with 42 years of service. Born in Jarrettsville, Mr. Gross graduated from J arrettsville High School. He was a member of the Aberdeen Lions Club, and of the of Automotive Engineers. He had received the U.S. Army Meritorious Civilian Service Award. Mr. Gross is survived by his wife, Helen Shortall Gross, and by four sons, two daughters, 13 grandchildren, and four greatgrandchildren. and scholarly articles and reviews. He is survived by his wife, the former Maxine Wenzler, and by three sons and two daughters. WILLIAM T. HART CLASS OF 1943 Lewis Archibald, a freelance writer and film reviewer, died in October 1995 from complications deriving from AIDS. A resident of San Francisco for the past two years, he had formerly lived on the Upper West Side of New York City for the previous 26 years. His writing had appeared in New York magazine, New Times, Film Clips, and the Christian Science Monitor. He also worked as a film publicist. For some time, he served as film editor for a publication of Arts Weekly, Inc., variously known as the Aquarian, East Coast Rocker, and Downtown. Since moving to California, he devoted his time to writing his first novel, Still Standing, which he completed shortly before he died. Mr. Archibald grew up in Pittsburgh and graduated from the Brooks School in North Andover, Mass. He received his BA from St. John's in 1965 and an MA in library science from Columbia University in William T. Hart, M.D., died in October 1995 in Rochester, N.Y., of leukemia. He is survived by his wife, Cynthia Allen Hart, and by two daughters, and a son. JAMES ASHLEY HOUCK CLASS OF 1964 James Ashley Houck, a professor emeritus at Youngstown State University, died in December 1995 of lung cancer. He was 54. Born in Indianapolis, he graduated from St. John's in 1964 and received a doctorate from Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, in 1969. Mr. Houck was a leader in library programs and development. The recipient ofYSU's Distinguished Professor Award (once for scholarship and teaching and once for community service), he was chairman of the university library committee and was instrumental in its founding. He was also a trustee of the public library of Youngstown and Mahoning County and had been active as the treasurer, chairman of the expansion and renovation programs, and founder and first president of the Council of Presidents of the Friends of the Public Library. He was also a secretary of the board of the Ohio Library Trustees Association and was named its citizen of the year in 1982. Mr. Houck was an authority on William Hazlett, a 19th centmy British essayist, and was a board member of the American Byron Society. He published several poems, a book, LEWIS EDGAR ARCHIBALD III CLASS OF 1965 1967. Pursuing a lifelong devotion to film and the theater, he amassed a personal library of many hundreds of volumes. He also had a sizable video collection. His theater books were donated to the drama department of Solano County Community College in Fairfield, California, where they will be preserved in a special collection. Mr. Archibald is survived by two brothers and an aunt. The family suggests that donati.ons in his memory be made to Project Open Hand, a food bank providing hot meals and groceries to home-bound sufferers of AIDS, at 2720 17th St., San Francisco, CA 94114. REMEMBERING SAM BROWN Former tutor Sam Brown passed away earlier this winter. His last years were not happy; he had been moved to Nashville to be near his daughter Rebecca (A78) and her children following his stroke. Dorothy, who had moved to the area following the death of her mother Adelaide Breeskin, was a frequent and faithful visitor. Tragically, and not without a bit of irony, Sam's major affiiction was the loss of his skills of communication. Those of you who remember the witty conversationalist of your college years would have been saddened to see him struggle for words that his brain could form but his mout couldn't say. He died basically alone, feeling very isolated from the St. John's community. To those of you who kept in touch, thank you. In accordance with is wishes, his ashes were scattered at the Santa Fe campus, where he had perhaps his happiest memories. To those of you who feel touched by the life of this man I offer a simple and effective method to convey a tribute. It is a shameful state of affairs that the Santa Fe Student Activities Center remains so long unbuilt. Open your checkbook, write a check for $100 to the St. John's College Santa Fe Student Activities Center Fund, and in the lower left corner write "In memory of Sam Brown." Perhaps someday when it is complete there will be enough money to fund a couple of comfy chairs in some sunlit window with his name on them just to remind us that conversation itself is a gift, and that the opportunity for great conversation (and terrible puns) is the major reason we care about St. John's. - Charles R. Brown Jr. (SF 75) 13 the fact that not all learning takes place from books, but some happen at the bench of the laboratory. These are all activities not amenable to passive infusion. What we provide are the occasions for self-learning: orderly sequences of study and classes that require participation. No more than we impart knowledge do we teach our students to think. We can't teach anyone to think anymore than mother birds can teach their fledglings to fly. But we can nudge them into the element of mental flight. Our helpers are the great books in their inexhaustible originality. It is an unpopular thing to say these days - and perhaps you care for us because we do say it insistently but some books are recognizably great, and we take responsibility for choosing them, and, moreover, we claim confidently that great books of long standing are better instruments of learning than small ones of current interest. For by means of these books our students learn at least three things at once: how to come reverently and critically to grips with intellects superior to their own, how to listen expectantly and responsively to their peers, and how to speak out and tell each other their own thought, tentatively yet clearly. And perhaps there is a fourth thing: how to be free of the bonds of time and space and how to be at home with every sort of excellence. To my probably not entirely unbiased mind, there's plenty to love in this program and this college. I can't resist adding two more points that never cease to move me. One is a kind of miracle: how this organism of a college that gets by the decade more tradition-laden, more rule-ridden, more policy-jigged, in short more organizationally intricate, yet grows ever more intellectually deep, daring and free. The other point is a kind of blessing: how in the face of ever growing demands on its energies, the faculty's ardent loyalty to the program has never flagged either in Annapolis or in Santa Fe, and how the faculty too, in spite of straightened circumstances, became a major donor in this campaign whose success we are celebrating. But here I am, preaching to the choir. You have already shown by your generosity that you understood what we try to do in this school. I own a book called The Gift (by Lewis Hyde) that inquires earnestly into the nature of giving. After three hundred pages the candid author comes to the conclusion that a gift is a mystery, not to be explained, but just, it seems, to be received with gratitude. I think he's got it about right, and so, in behalf of those of us whose daily lives are tied to this incomparable college, a college with one soul in two cities, I say: Thank you for making us the object of your affectionate care and for launching St. John's into its fourth century.• 21 �A 0 i M 1'. 0( ~ f'"i c I c fi? ~ ~ ~ c ~ Campus Life HOLLYWOOD ON THE SEVERN WALTZ PARTIES: ALIVE AND WELL L eonard Pinth-Garnell, the connoisseur of "the bad cinema," would have loved it. He's probably the only one. The movie "Boys" unutterably bad in terms of plot, characterization, acting, and just plain common sense - does have great scenery. McDowell Hall, a Mellon classroom, the criss-cross paths in front of Humphreys, and, most spectacular of all, the coffee shop. The movie was filmed at St. John's and in Baltimore in the fall of 1994. During the filming, students grumbled about the disruptions, but enjoyed meeting the stars and watching the production process. Money from the shoot was used for a new sound system for FSK auditorium and for dorm repairs. Starring Winona Ryder (the actress who played Jo in "Little Women") and Lukas Haas (the boy in "Witness"), and directed by Stacy Cochran ("My First Gun"), the movie played to mainly empty theaters in late May and early June. Its route to video will undoubtedly be quick While we wouldn't recommend paying money to sit through it in the theater, renting the video would make a fun evening. That way you could fast forward through the sections about the sensitive young man (Haas) who attends the exclusive Sherwood School (SJC campus) and who desperately wants to break away from the life his parents have set up for him - running the family fast-food businesses. Weird juxtapositions occur: after a classroom scene in Mellon, students exit the dining hall door in Randall. A Spanish class takes place in the Private Dining Room - the scene was filmed at night, but it looks like bright sunlight pouring in the windows in the screen version. After all, the film might be a lesson in the tricks reality and illusion play with each other.• - by Barbara Goyette Students dance the night away to the strains of Strauss and Sinatra. Photo by Mary Lynch. A ny waltz-loving graduate who ..l\.read the Gadfly (the Annapolis campus' student paper) this past winter would have been alarmed at an ongoing series of letters ostensibly addressing a problem of semantics. The question the letters posed: When the music at a waltz party is more swing than waltz, should the term "waltz party" still be applied to the event? The graduate, having the crictical thinking skills and general perspicacity that are the byproducts of a St. John's education, would immediately see through the semantic question to more important issues: What is the state of waltzing at St. John's? Are waltz parties in danger of extinction? Waltz archon Cindy Lutz and waltz committee member Chris Gillen (A90) report that all is well with waltz parties. Held every three weeks and attracting crowds of 150200, waltz parties at St. John's are thriving. Although swing is more popular than waltz these days, it is the eidos of the waltz party - the heightened formality, the occasion for fancy dress, and the elegance of the Great Hall - that brings the community together. "There has been a change in waltz parties since 1990," Gillen says. "Each year it's gotten noticeably more swing heavy. This year, for the first time, we found a resurgence of waltz demands from a small group, which tells us that the swing saturation point has finally been reached." And where, exactly, is the swing saturation point at St. John's? "Right now we' re down to between four and five waltzes for most parties, except the major ones," says Gillen. "The spring cotillion, alumni waltz, croquet ball, and commencement waltz are still waltz-heavy, which means partygoers will hear between ten and twelve waltzes a night." "The problem is that a lot of people aren't learning to waltz," says Lutz. "They find swing more exciting. They don't get the thrill of spinning around the room, which is the fun of waltzing." Gillen offers a likely explanation for today's diminishing interest in waltzing: "When you' re coming out of high school in the late 70' s, there's a lot of slow dancing. Waltzes are as fast or faster than music you' re used to. But these days, with kids coming out of rave dub culture, waltzes are deathly slow. Even swings can seem slow - we always get requests for the faster swings." Other oft-requested music includes all-time waltz favorites such as "The Blue Danube," "The Emperor Waltz," and the waltz from Tschaikovsky's "Sleeping Beauty." Popular swing tunes include "Sing, Sing, Sing," "The Coffee Song," "Bei Mir Bist Du Schon," and the perennial St. John's favorite, "Rum and Coca-Cola." "Basically, we play a lot of Sinatra, Glen Miller, Andrew Sisters, and Ella Fitzgerald," Lutz says. "Our CD collection is not as good as we'd like it to be." "We are accepting donations," Gillen is quick to add. Despite the state of the CD collection and the threat of swing encroaching on sacred waltz territory, waltz-loving alumni can rest assured that the waltz party tradition is alive and healthy. Thirteen waltz parties were held in Annapolis this year for enthusiastic crowds . "At midnight during the spring cotillion we served 100 pounds of strawberries and whipped six quarts of cream," says Lutz. It's an insane amount of strawberries but you wouldn't believe how fast they went. Lutz explains the enduring popularity of the parites: "It's another one of our Johnnie quirks, like croquet. It's the kind of fun people don't have at other schools. There's something really classy about standing on the balcony watching people dance. And the Great Hall is beautiful -it's made for dances. "People come from as far away as Villanova and V.M.I. to attend our waltz parties. I've had people call to ask me for an entire year's schedule so they can plan their social life around it. Although there's been a ballroom dance resurgence at other colleges, it's been for competition. We dance for fun here. That's why people come to St. John's to dance." "So many things change over the years," Gillen says, "but this remains the same. We've altered the ratio of waltz to swing, but we haven't changed the format. If you walk in during a waltz, you won't know what decade you' re in." • - by Sus3an Borden Job Fair Brings Opportunities to Santa Fe Campus 22 D ecruiters from 64 federal, state and local organizations came to Santa Fe's Peterson Center 1'.on March 28 for an innovative job fair that drew 289 people. Students from St. John's and several other area colleges were able to talk to recruiters and, in some cases, submit resumes and schedule job interviews during the fair. Companies or organizations represented at the job fair included the Albuquerque Police Department, the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, Citicorp Credit Services, the Federal Highway Administration, Girl Scouts of America, the Peace Corps, the Santa Fe Opera, Sprint Cellular, and the U.S. Marshal's Service. The job fair was sponsored by St. John's, the College of Santa Fe, Santa Fe and Northern New Mexico community colleges, and the Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce. The college's placement office already is working with the three other local colleges to plan a similar event for next year. Ill Students talk with a recruiter from the New Mexico State Department of Labor at a job fair held in Santo Fe on March 28. �VICTORY ON THE GRASS Croquet Team Breezes Past Navy on the Way to the National Championships by Sus3an Borden O n Saturday, April 27, before a crowd of hundreds, the St. John's Croquet Team won the Annapolis Cup for the 11th time by beating Navy four games to one in a best of five match. Senior Matt Caswell and Sophomore Hardison Wood claimed the first victory, barely an hour into the match. Seniors John Sifton and James Knerr (this year's Imperial Wicket) won the second game. These victories focused the crowd's attention on the court where Seniors Dara Trought and Jon Spooner (the team's Minister of Information) were finishing off the match-winning game. As friends and fans gathered at the court, they found Trought and Spooner poised to win. Anticipating victory, they brought the still-competing players a round of celebratory drinks. Before they knew what hit them, the pair found their skills faltering and their lead diminishing. "We were way out ahead, on the last wicket when they were just hit- Any excuse for a swing dance ... Victory within her reach, a focused Dara Trought lines up her shot. ting the stake," Spooner says. "But then people started bringing us drinks. It was almost our downfall." Almost, but not quite - Spooner and Trought pulled themselves together and won the game. Witnessing this year's victory alongside the usual crush of gardenparty attired spectators swirling champagne and nibbling on brie was a crew from CNN. A report on the match, featuring an interview with Imperial Wicket Knerr, aired the following Saturday on CNN' s sports program. Following an afternoon of celebration and a brief nap, the team collected in the Great Hall at 11 :30, in the midst of the Croquet Ball. Knerr made a well received, if brief, speech. "Well, we happened to win this trophy today," was all he could get out before the crowd erupted into cheers and applause. "And now we' re off to win the national title," he Beautiful, Wish You Were Here! St. John's has its own postage stamp. Well, sort of. It actually has a postal card with a color picture of McDowell serving as the stamp. The postal card, which costs 20 cents, can be bought at any post office and mailed - and you don't need to buy any extra postage. Kind of a combo deal. Unveiled at the June 1 library dedication, the St. John's postal card commemorates the college's 300th anniversary. The postal service doesn't issue stamps or cards in honor of colleges, but they will feature buildings. McDowell Hall, the college's most historic building, is on the St. John's card. The postal card measures 3 1/2 by 5 1/2 inches, leaving a small enough space for writing on the back that you won't have to worry about saying anything too profound. On the other hand, alumni whose concise penmanship skills have been honed by cramming comments onto the margins of Loeb editions have enough space on the postal card to expound freely. added when the noise died down. The team climbed into the polity van and drove to the National Championship Tournament at Smith College. "We told every toll collector on the way that we were off to win the National Championship in Croquet, " Spooner says. Though any freshman who's read his Sophocles would tremble before this display of hubris, the team had reason to believe they would win the nationals. Two weeks earlier, in the qualifying tournament (held at the Merion Cricket Club in suburban Philadelphia), they had beat Navy by 18 wickets, Penn by 13, and Yale by 15, losing only to Georgetown by one wicket. And that loss had mitigating circumstances. "We drove up to the qualifying match early and tumbled out of our car at 8:00 a.m.," Spooner explains. "As everyone knows, this is not a good Johnny time." In addition to this cleady detrimental factor, Penn (which St. John's beat by 13 wickets) won by 8 wickets over Georgetown (which St. John's had lost to by 1 wicket) leaving St. John's the winners of the tournament. At the championship at Smith, they were not so fortunate. Betrayed by an unlucky ball roll, they lost in the finals to Georgetown, again by a single wicket. "At the trophy awards ceremony everyone was congratulatory of the St. John's program. The Georgetown players said they were surprised they won," Spooner says. "Still, it was a somber drive home." Back in Annapolis, Minster of Information Spooner' s spirits revived enough for him to update the Croquet Team's web page to read:We Won!!!!! St. John's College crushed Navy; 4 games to 1* (*c'mon we want them to return next year - we can't embarrass them that badly). Iii Imperial wicket James Knerr (left) and teammate John Sifton (right) in action. Photos by Keith HoNey. �The Arts REGIONAL ART ON DISPLAY IN SANTA FE by John Schroeder nder the 300th anniversary theme of tradition and progress, an exhibit of the Larry Frank santos collection, considered the best privately held collection, will be on display at the Santa Fe gallery from June 14 through July 21. Created by Spanish artists, santos are carved or painted images of saints or other religious figures. There are two different · types: Retablos are figures painted on flat boards, and bultos are three-dimensional carved figures. This showing is a rare opportunity to view both bultos and retablos dating from 1780 to 1907. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Frank attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he received degrees in English and philosophy. Following his graduation, Frank lived in Europe for several years - mainly in Paris - studying _medieval architecture and art, particularly the sculptures, paintings, and frescoe" in medieval churches. After his return to the United States, he enrolled in UCLA's cinema school. Following his graduation he directed films for the school, eventually leaving to become an independent director and producer. Frank always had an interest in the medieval characteristics of santos and, after returning from Europe, he began visiting E. Boyd, the pioneer scholar of Spanish colonial culture, who was curating and restoring the Museum of New Mexico's collection of santos. Frank soon began his own collection. In a recent interview with Fine Arts Guild member Don Toomey, Frank said, "The pieces that remain in my collection are what I personally consider to be the finest aesthetic representation of the santero' s art .... The quality of the pieces is very high and the diversity is outstanding.... So if one observes the collection they will be able to identify the real flowering of the santero period at its finest." There are representative pieces from each of the significant santeros, including Pedro Antonio Frequis and Antonio Molleno. Seeing what he thought was a gap in the way that people viewed santos and santeros, Frank decided to use his collection as a reference and several years ago he published New Kingdom ofthe Saints. In discussing this book, Frank told Toomey that he views the santero movement as "a distinctive art tradition," and that we should be dealing with santeros as "unique artistic individuals as you would with, say, Rembrandt or Titian, who were as different as anyone could be. They are individual artists, they are great artists in their own right, but our New Mexico santeros also produced great art, notable art, and they deserve to be recognized as great artists." August will feature the work of sculptor Betty Martin and painter Dennis Culver. This exhibit will open with a reception from 5 to 7 p.m. Friday, August 2, in the Fireside Lounge, and will continue through August 25.0ther exhibits planned by the Guild include the Robert Ewing and John Sloan Drawing Group, which will present life drawings of "The Magnificent Subject HI." In addition, for Santa Fe's 300th anniversary celebration in September, the gallery will present the Second Annual Spanish Colonial Arts Exhibit and Market (see story on page 3). For more information on any of the exhibits, or on upcoming Library and Fine Arts Guild events, contact Ginger Roherty at 505-984-6099. • U Shakespeare in Santa Fe S hakespeare in Santa Fe, in associaiton with St. John's College, will present William Shakespeare's comical farce "Much Ado About Nothing," a captivating comedy of romantic conquests, verbal jousts, and scornful betrayal, in Santa Fe this summer. The play is being performed every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night from July 5 through August 18. General admission is free, and reserved seating is available for donations of $15 and $25. The opening of Shakespeare's eighth season begins with a gala event in the college's dining hall on July 5. The evening includes a cocktail reception with strolling musicians serenading the crowd, followed by dinner and the debut performance of "Much Ado About Nothing." The evening concludes with a champagne toast with the members of the cast. As a preview, Shakespeare in Santa Fe and St. John's presented an afternoon of tea and Shakespeare on Sunday, June 23. Special guest was Mark Cuddy, director of "Much Ado About Nothing" and artistic director of the GeVa Theatre in New York. Held in the new St. John's coffee shop, the event included tea and talk about the Bard - his wit and wisdom, his poetry, his truth, and his continued relevance in our lives today. Organizers hope this event will become a regular feature of the Shakespeare in Santa Fe program. Shakespeare in Santa Fe's summer intern program for high school students has a special event planned for later in the summer. At 6 p.m. on August 7 and 14, the group will present a "Children's Fairy Tale Hour." For more information on any of the Shakespeare events or to reserve seating, call Shakespeare in Santa Fe at 505-982-2910. • PORTRAIT OF A COLLEGE: Photographs by Warren & Eisenstaedt T he February 5, 1940 issue of Life magazine is famous at St. John's - because that's the issue that made St. John's famous. Playing more than an equal role with the brief prose description of the "Great Books" college - where "students now grapple at first hand with the great thinkers of intellectual history" - are the photographs. Shot by master documentary photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt with a large format camera, they capture the fragile essence of discovery during those first golden years of the New Program. Students scattered on the snowcoverd lawn taking diopter measurements. A pyramid of young men peering over one another at one of their fellows dissecting an ox heart. Row upon row of suitclad students listening to a lecture in the Great Hall (with one in plaid flannel and suspenders). The classics arranged in their elegant bindings, library shelves filled with Aristotle, Dante, Newton, and Freud. The Eisenstaedt photographs are part of the St. John's archival Marion Warren's striking use of light and shadow is illustrated in this portrait of tutor Winfree Smith. photography collection, and along with selected images by Marion Warren, an Annapolis documentary photographer who recorded images of college life during the 1950s and 1960s, they will be on display at a special 300th anniversary exhibit at the Mitchell Gallery. Dates for "Portrait of a College: Photographs by Warren & Eisenstaedt" are August 28 through November 3. The exhibit is being organized by co-curators and St. John's students Alexander Bowles and Sloane McFarland. • � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The St. John's Reporter</em> Description An account of the resource College newspaper which started publication in 1974. Continued publication into 2000. Includes primarily historical content.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The St. John's Reporter" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=35">Items in <em>The St. John's Reporter</em></a></strong> <span>to view and sort all items in the collection.</span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 24 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context vol 22 issue 4 Summer 1996 Title A name given to the resource Reporter, Volume 22 Issue 4 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1996-07 Description An account of the resource Volume 22, Issue [3] of The St. John's Reporter. Published in Summer 1996. (Annapolis edition) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Public Relations Office Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Goyette, Barbara (editor) Skewes, Elizabeth (editor) Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf The Reporter https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/8f29d079127d10e86c464d2015cd16a1.pdf da52b534a84754f22c914acdccac0f9c PDF Text Text VOLUME 23, ISSUE 2 ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND e SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO WINTER 1997 ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE LIBRARY 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1~nm1 imr1 m1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 31696 01138 2197 St. John's College ANNAPOLIS EDITION the changes wrought by the eiecrr·orntc revolution impact fundaway studen ts read, and discuss? Alumni and tutors examine the issue ................ 10 IN Graduates who enter medicine say their background in the classics has made them better doctors ............... 9 HOMECOMING NAPOLIS At a special 300th anniversary homecoming, ground was broken for the Barr-Buchanan Center and rain fell on afternoon picnics ................ 14 DEPARTMENTS Bell Towers: A new alumni director in Annapolis, the mystery of the missing Aphrodite, Santa Fe's Library & Fine Arts Guild, Annapolis stages a Lafayette Ball. ..... 2 Tutor David Levine to lead conference, "Does the Past Have a , review of Scott Buchanan, A Centennial Appreciation .............. 8 ...,...,,, ....... A.a. ... .,,Jl ...Jlll-"· h., ...... r,,.,... UiS4JCtarnon: The Santa Fe a new home for the Johnny ............................................ 16 Lee David Zlotoff on Mortimer on the combination of child and prison psychiatry...... 13, 24 The Program: The St. john's Review -not a typical academic journal; most popular senior essay topics .... 23 Forget the Internet, e-mail, faxes, interadive computer software, television. At St. John's, students still learn the old-fashioned way-by reading books. But will technology change the way they understand what they read? Alumni and faculty look at the question, beginning on page 10. The student here is Rebecca Christie, a freshman in Annapolis. For her work-study iob, she's the college webmaster. Photo by Michelle Baker, SF90. �From the Bell Towers ... NEW ALUMNI DIRECTOR FORANNAPOLIS The definitive woman-about-campus, Roberta Rusch Gable, brings legendary wit to her new appointment. •••••••••••••••••••••••••• •••••••••••••• Temple Iglehart, Pinkney Hall, the Randall dining room, Carroll Barrister House, the bookstore. In Santa Fe: the Graduate Institute office. All these St. John's places have the good fortune to have been transformed in some way, for some brief time, by the presence of Roberta Rusch Gable, A78. Gable has been named the new director of alumni activities for the Annapolis campus, following the resignation of Betsy Blume, A76. Gable most recently served as bookstore manager, but she's also left her mark on the college as a student (where she worked in the alumni office with director Tom Parran, A42), an active alumna, co-director of athletics (from 1986 to 1987), and assistant to the registrar of the GI in Santa Fe (the summer between her junior and senior years). Gable's wit and verve are legendary. Alumni and current students alike remember her song parodies at collegia and pranks-for example, the "Look for the St. John's Label" parody of the "Look for the Union Label" jingle during the 1978 Senior Prank. Sometimes her fun is more extended, like the time shearranged a "New Jersey" dinner in Randall, inviting students and tutors from the Garden State and giving out maps of the New Jersey turnpike as party favors. In the bookstore, Gable made the yearly sale into a liberal arts shopping event, with blue light specials, homebaked cookies, and helium balloons. Rivaling the sales in the degree of anticipation it elicited on campus was the monthly publication of "Book Chat," Gable's newsletter with info about new books, explanations of why books cost what they do, suggested summer reading for great-book-weary students, and contests. Says fellow '78er :uuica.v\.1H.'.). Leo Pickens, the current college athletic director, "Book Chat is one of the most wonderful publications we've ever had here." Now, upon finding out about Gable's new responsibilities, tutors have been heard to grumble that she can't be spared from the bookstore, where she is the fount of all wisdom regarding translations and editions of the great books. But the quintessential Johnny counters that she is looking forward to her new role in college life: "The alumni office is more intrinsic to the existence of the institution because it supports one of the most important relationships-people's lifetime relationship with their alma mater. For a lot of alumni, St. John's is one of the defining experiences of our lives. I hope to be the link to the college for alumni." The alumni office also serves the Alumni Association. It provides tech support for chapter activities, like lining up tutors for chapter seminars, printing and mailing newsletters, and contributing ideas and contacts. "We'll be doing homecoming and other events throughout the year. There's a lot of work with the placement office in helping current students meet or talk with alumni who might be able to offer them some direction. And I'll be serving on the board of advisors for The Reporter," says Gable. Helping Gable in the alumni office is Dennis Quinn, AGI96, who took the assistant position formerly held by Kim Kern, A89, when she moved to Chicago. Gable graduated in 1978. She returned to work in the bookstore from 1984 to 1988, then went to the University of Michigan to study communications. "I was under the delusion that I AMEETING OF THE AGES Learning for the future from the lessons of the past S t. John's alumni and students know the value of the legacy left to us by the past.Those not familiar with the St. John's program, however, often ask whether and how the accomplishments of the past are still relevant. An idea for a conference on the Santa Fe campus, as part of the 300th anniversary, arose out of a conversation between President John Agresto and a board member who wondered why anyone should care that St. John's is 300 years old. "Since we're so old-and study books a lot older-we wanted to raise the question why we (especially as good Americans) value the traditional," Agresto says. "We mean to take this as a serious question because the deepest criticism of traditional liberal education is that it is really antiquarianism. Knowledge, we're told, doubles every five or seven years. Why, then, spend time with what has been superseded?" On April 4 and 5,_ noted scholars, journalists, and public figures will come to Santa Fe to consider this question as part of a conference titled "Does the Past Have a Future?" The conference is funded by the desired a PhD," admits Gable. "I concentrated in social psychology and group behavior. I felt that field was unaddressed by my background here, and I wanted something worldly." Even in grad school, Gable used her St. John's experience as background. One term paper was a comparison of the Annapolis and Santa Fe campuses, a study of how physical structures affect social structures. "It was purely a speculative paper," says Gable. "Even though the campuses are the same academically, they are quite different socially. It's good and it's healthy." Strengthening the relationship between the campuses and their alumni is one of Gable's goals as alumni director. She's also got a number ofideas kicking around in her mind for activities. For example, she'd like to invite former Febbies andJFs to the campus at the end of Febbie summer, so that this special sub-group of the Johnny family can meet the newest crop. "They can pass along handshakes, secret decoder rings, whatever it is that Febbies do," she says. Gable plans to work closely with current students, something she already has done a lot in her role as bookstore Bradley Foundation, which also is a generous supporter of the Graduate Institute and Eastern Classics programs. The keynote speaker will be David Broder of the Washington Post. The conference will consider the title question from four different perspectives-education, politics, culture, and science and technology. Among the speakers will be Richard Bernstein, former education editor at the New York Times; Gary McDowell, director of the Institute for United States Studies in London; Hugh Hewitt of the PBS series "Finding God in America''; and Ellen Goldberg, president of the Santa Fe Institute. "This is a question that touches all our lives and, as alumni, perhaps more deeply," says project director and Santa Fe tutor David Levine. "Everybody is welcome." e Roberta Gable and Dennis Quinn, new denizens of the Alumni Office, get to know some of their constituents. Photo by Michelle Baker. manager. ''I'd like to write a column for the Gadfly (the student newspaper) to increase student awareness and knowledge about alumni. I want to keep up my contact with the students. I don't want anyone to graduate from this school without my knowing who they are," she says. That way, theywill feel right away that as alumni they belong to a larger group. In her goal of being the great communicator, Gable plans to become an active e-mailer and letter writer. She also hopes that visiting alumni will stop by her office to chat when they are in town. Changing relationships with the college is something Gable has experienced herself, and she's seen it in some of her friends, as well. "Some alumni from the 1960s and '70s left the college with a lot of anger. But I'd like to be a kind of liaison for them as well as for other alumni who have good feelings for St. John's. Your attitude and experience with the college can evolve over the years." -by Barbara Goyette e The Reporter {USPS 018-750} is published in January and July by the Public Relations Office, St. John's College, Annapolis, MD, and in April and October by the Alumni/Public Relations Office, St. John's College, Santa Fe, NM. Known office of publication: Public Relations Office, St. John's College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD21404-2800 Annapolis: Barbara Goyette, editori Sus3an Borden, writeri Roberta Gable, Eva Brann, John Christensen, Pamela Kraus, Benjamin Milner, Brother Robert Smith, advisory board. Santa Fe: Elizabeth Skewes, editori John Schroeder, assistant editori Lisa Donenfeld, art director. Second class postage paid at Annapolis, MD, and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Reporter, St. John's College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800 �St. John's Myths and Legends STEAD1\t\AN WINS NEW MEXICO ACLU THE MYSTERY OF THE MISSING APHRODITE o one is really quite sure when she arrived at St. John's, or when she disappeared. When she was here, she was at all the best parties, the dean's lecture for the start of the school year, and most of the commencements. And she decorated, quite literally, the lives of the students in Santa Fe who knew her. Some called her "Bountiful Harvest," while others knew her as "Aphrodite." She was short, standing only about 5 feet, 4 inches, including her pedestal. She was heavy, weighing enough that it took several students heiping out just to move her from one spot to the next. Oh, and she was bronze. "She really wasn't anything to look at," says Brendan O'Neill, a 1993 alumnus and the assistant student activities director in Santa Fe. "Rumor has it that she was donated to the college by someone local, but the college didn't know what to do with her, so she was passed down from class to class.,, Bob DeSilverio, a 1979 Santa Fe N alumnus, remembers the statue as "Bountiful Harvest" and says that she was standing on the deck of the Fine Arts Building when he arrived as a freshman in 1974. "I can envision Bountiful in several places besides the Fine Arts Building," he says. "I seem to recall that for Senior Prank in my freshman year, she stood in the bell tower ofWeigle Hall...By late spring of the same year, I recall that she migrated one Sunday down to the pond where she stood upon her head among the cattails and goldfish. I began to understand that not everyone revered the bronze goddess." In fact, the statue once donned a bikini for some campus event and was a regular during Reality. But she disappeared, O'Neill says, sometime around the spring of 1990. Again, rumors abound. Some say she was melted down; others say that she's buried somewhere on campus; still others say that someone-perhaps an Annapolis student-absconded with her in the I Aphrodite decorates the fish pond in front of Peterson Student Center in this 1975 photo by Bob DiSilverio. dark of night. "I don't think anyone from Annapolis stole her, although it would be great if they had her," O'Neill says. If she is still in one piece, O'Neill and the current contingent of Santa Fe students would like to find her and bring her back to campus. If anyone among the alumni has any dues about her disappearance, please write to The Reporter at 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87501. e -by Elizabeth Skewes n the classroom, St. John's tutors may avoid making references to modern politics, but that doesn't mean that they aren't interested in political issues outside of the classroom. Santa Fe tutor Jack Steadman is one such activist, and his work with the American Civil Liberties Union in New Mexico recently earned him that organization's highest honor. Steadman was given the Civil Libertarian award from the New Mexico ACLU in recognition of his long-standing commitment to the cause of civil liberties and for his work as the group's treasurer. ACLU Executive Director Jennie Lusk says Steadman "is the ideal spokesperson for us ... he's not bombastic or aggressive, just very eloquent and committed to justice." As treasurer for the past two years, Steadman has put the group's financial records on a computer system, and, in Lusk's words "is bringing them into the current century." Steadman often has made the hour-long drive to the ACLU-NM headquarters in Albuquerque several times a week to attend meetings and work with. the director. Although he only recently became an officer in the ACLU-NM, Steadman has been a member and staunch supporter of the ACLU since he was a teenager in Wisconsin. He has been motivated, he says, by the belief that "although the Constitution is supposed to be the supreme law of the land ... laws don't protect rights, only people can protect rights." e -by Caroline Knapp, SFOO LAPLUSCA CHANGE ... CROss:cuITURll DINlNGEXPlRlENCE This post November over 70 students, tutors, staff, and friends of the college gathered at the president's house in Annapolis for an international feast that included dishes from Mongolia, Korea, China, Russia, England, Spain, and the United States. The occasion was the F-1 dinner, an event started by the F-1 Club in 1992 and rapidly becoming a highlight of the college's social calendar. There is only one membership requirement for the F-1 Club: foreign citizenship. The name comes from the f-1 Visa, the most common visa for a foreign student in the United States. This year there are 18 foreign students in Annapolis, representing 15 countries. Co-sponsored by Registrar Nancy lewis and Reenie Craven, Assistant to the Registrar, the dub was originally formed to provide assistance with issues pertinent to regulations for foreign students. While this is still the club's raison d'etre, the group occasionally gathers for social or cultural events, such as the annual dinner. Guests at the potluck dinner bring tradition~I food from their native countries. Among this year's thirty-some dishes were a Korean beef dish made by senior Rema Choi (in the photo with senior Mary lynch); pirog, a Russian rice pie made by Graduate Institute student Tasha Kharitonova; Nancy lewis' Spanish dish, Chicken Marbella; meat and vegetable dumplings made by Baigalma Damdinsuren, from Mongolia; and spicy tofu with pork made by Hai Sun, from China. C urrent chant sung by companies of the brigade of midshipmen as they march down College Avenue on their way to the Navy-Marine Corps Stadium for fall football games: I want to study Aristotle; I'm a le.ft-wing kind ofguy. I wear socks with my sandals; All my shirts are tie-dye. I don't bring my books to class; I don't take no written tests. I don't want a real degree That's why I go to S]C. Alumni who remember chants from days of old are invited to send them in to The Reporter. We'll print "dean" ones in the summer issue as part of the coverage of the croquet match. e �From the Bell Towers ... I BRIDGES TO ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• by Elizabeth Skewes I t started as a mere notion a few years ago, but it didn't take long for the St. John's College Library & Fine Arts Guild to take shape. The group, which held its first meeting with the 12 members ofits new board in August 1.994, now numbers more than 180. More impressive than the growth in the membership, however, is the growth in the number and variety of exhibits and special events that the Guild has brought to St. John's. Within the past two years, the Guild has brought renowned artists such as William Lumpkins and Margaret Lefranc to the gallery and has brought well-known authors, including Harriett Doerr and George Johnson, to the Great Hall as part of a revamped "Speaking Volumes" lecture series. The response from the community has been tremendous. The lecturers are being greeted by standing-room-only crowds, and the gallery exhibit$ are drawing record numbers for the openi:11gs. Michael Shickich, a Santa Fe attorney and president of the Library & Fine Arts Guild, says that the response is what he was hoping for. "The idea, essentially, is to expand the Guild and to provide a stronger connection between St. John's College and the Santa Fe community," he says. The number of community residents who come to campus for Guild events, including the Spanish Colonial Arts Market that has been held for two years now each fall, is steadily growing. And, as community members become more aware of St. John's and what it has to offer, Shickich says the bonds between the two will only strengthen. But the Guild also is helping strengthen those bonds by broadening its membership and by getting more people directly involved with the college. Guild volunteers help staff the gallery so that it can be open more often, and they have helped catalogue some of the archival material in the library. Willard Lewis, who works at Los Alamos and heads the library committee of the Guild, says that this "gives people a chance to be a part of the college community, rather than just spectators. The community seminars are a great way to reach out to the Santa Fe community for some people, but they can be intimidating. Our activity is more benign." Lewis says that lectures, such as the one given by Harriet Doerr, author of Stones for Ibarra, are a way to welcome people to campus for an educational experience that doesn't require them to participate with the same level of intensity that a seminar would. This kind of outreach, he says, will help with community relations. Lewis' counterpart on the Guild's art gallery committee, Susan Kelly, says that the volunteers on the Guild are "veterans" who bring a lot of experience and a lot oflocal connections to the college. Kelly herselfis a local artist who has exhibited at several shows in the gallery. She and the others on her committee have worked hard to blend shows by respected local artists with those by nationally known painters and sculptors. They are also doing more to jury the exhibits. The committee members, each ofwhom is involved in the Santa Fe art community, sit down once every semester or so to review work by artists who want to exhibit in the college's gallery. The task, Kelly says, is to pick one to two artists out of the 10 or more who have submitted samples. The group also juries the annual student art exhibit, held each spring. "That's one of my favorite things," Kelly says. ''A lot of the students submit work for it. I love it because I know how much time these students put into their academic work, and I know that art takes a lot of time-but they are doing some really good work." By more carefully selecting the exhibits for the gallery, it has become a strong showcase for regional artists and mcreasmg numbers of themare anxious to display their work on campus. Kelly says that fits in with one of her main goals, "to make this more of a gallery that's on the map for art collectors." She's also trying to find ways to raise money for the gallery and the Guild, so that the gallery becomes self-supporting, a goal she shares with Shickich and Lewis. Lewis says the library committee wants to continue to help with the annual Meem Library book sale, but the group also wants to bring in additional revenue to support its activities. Whatever the group does, however, has to be done with an eye towards "integration with the traditions and history of the college," Lewis says. Shickich says that the Guild also is trying to find other projects, similar to the Spanish Colonial Arts Market and a special art auction and dinner held earlier this year, that can become annual events associated with the Guild. "The Guild will take its lead from the ANNAPOLIS Annapolis has one new faculty member this year, Michael O'DonovanAnderson. His background is in philosophy; he has a BS from Notre Dame, an MA and MPhil from Yale; and he received his PhD from Yale this year (dissertation tide: Content and Mr. O'Donovan-Anderson O'Donovan-Anderson also has edited a book, The Incorporated Self Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Embodiment, published in October by Rowman & Littlefield. Quoting from the publisher: "This anthology collects the works of scholars from abroad range of ,disciplines, each examining the college and faculty, though," Shickich says. "We have a high degree of openness in being involved with projects that will make St. John's accessible to the local community." Shickich is hoping that the Library & Fine Arts Guild, now that it has taken root, will be able to gain enough momentum to become an important addition to Santa Fe's cultural community. He says that the group is working on a long-range strategy to survive in a city that's brimmingwith art, opera, and other creative pursuits. "Santa Fe has a lot of competing interests," he says, "and even in light of that, the Guild has done well. There has been a high degree of acceptance in the community of the Guild and its work." e FACULTY NOTE nature of the body and the necessity of embodiment to the human experience-for our self-awareness, our sense ofidentity, and the workings of the mind .. .The essays offer a sustained attack on Cartesian dualism and methodological positivism." Comportment: On Embodiment and the Epistemic Avaikibility ofthe World). Mr. "The Orchard" by Margaret lefranc, on display al the gallery in Santa Fe through February 20. Dean Eva Brann addressed brand new U.S. citizens at a naturalization ceremony at the District Court in Washington, D.C., in October. Calling to mind her own arrival in this country, Miss Brann said, "Few of us would have come here if we hadn't been fleeing from deadly persecution, as I was when I left Nazi Germany in 1941, or from poverty, or from something else that makes life hard. When we were s leaving the old country we had our minds on getting away from a bad place and when we arrived here we thought mostly of getting along in a strange place. But to some of us something happened that perhaps has already happened to you, or might happen before too long. It's a little like entering into a marriage just for safety, security and convenience, and then one day waking up to find that you have grown to love your partner. So you may have come for utterly practical reasons, but one day you wake up to know that this is home and that you are in this country not only to make use ofits advantages and opportunities but because you love the place-the huge and beautiful land extending from coast to coast, the laws that by and large protect us rather than harm us, and the millions of hard-working people who tend to try to be decent and friendly in that particularly American way." �WINl"fER 1997 5 I n a whirl of elegance, St. John's staged a tercentenary social event to rival a great moment in its history-the ball held in the Great Hall in honor of General Lafayette. In 1824, Lafayette returned to America after his fortunes in France had fallen. Here he was greeted as the hero ofliberty; he visited cities and towns along the east coast, and received so many gifts it took three ships to get them all back to Europe. The ball in his honor was the social highlight of the college's second hundred years, just as the reprise-held on December 13proved an alluring event for localAnnapolitans and alumni, 250 of whom attended. The ball was organized by the Friends of St. John's College; committee chairs were Barbara Bohl and Peggy Sue Atterbury. Peter Duchin and his orchestra provided music. • Clockwise from top: Recent grads Matt Radbill and Rebecca Dzamov dance the night away; Tim McGuire, A91, presides over the punch under the watchful eye of President Hector Humphreys, who disapproved of wine and dancing; President Chris Nelson, in period garb, with Mary Lou Symonds; the Great Hail transformed. Photos by Keith Harvey. TWO "GREAT" BOOKS FOR THE 3001tt St. John's College 300thAnniversary Cookbook. $8.00. Compiled by the staff of the Annapolis campus, this cookbook contains the gamut of recipes from soups to nuts, contributed by staff, faculty, and students. Many have a St. John's theme, such as ''Adam Smith's Wealth of Nachos" contributed by the Marxist Writers Collective (a group of Gis), "Francis Scott Quiche," "Biscuites than which none greater can be conceived," and ''Aristotle's Parts of Animals" (it's chicken with limes and herbs). There's even Mrs. Klein's recipe for Datte! Bussed (meringues with dates). Order by calling Carole Clark in the Treasurer's office at 410/626-2518. A Complete and Generous Education: 300 Years of Liberal Arts at St. John's College, Annapolis. $50. By Emily Murphy, A95. A spectacularly beautiful 200- page hardcover book, with more than 250 illustrations, this volume offers a basic history of King William's School and St. John's College enriched with high-quality reproductions oflithographs and prints, photos dating from the 1880s, and images by documentary photographers Alfred Eisenstaedt and Marion Warren. The photos and art were gathered and the text was written by Emily Murphy, who, after graduating in 1995, got a job as the photo archivist for the state of Maryland. See McDowell burning (1909), coeds in their dorm room in the recently completed Campbell Hall (1954), a view of campus drawn by a French soldier on his way to Yorktown (1781), and the national championship lacrosse team (19 31). There are also evocative portraits of tutors and students. Order by calling the Annapolis Bookstore at 410/626-2540. The class of 1889, from A Complete and Generous Education. �Advancing in the Fourth Century... ST. JOHN'S FOREVER "\VJhat's the biggest challenge for the W future at St. John's College? Not a political or cultural swing away from the liberal arts; not encroachment by the Naval Academy or strained relations with the campuses' local communities-these are fine, will be fine. The greatest challenge is to secure the financial status of the college. With sound financial management, the college is getting by and will be able to make modest advances. But one transforming gift could secure St. John's forever. Following is a list of some of the 35 largest private gifts to higher education in the past 20 years (courtesy of the Chronicle ofHigher Education, Sept. 6, 1996). The list is interesting for a few reasons. First, these gifts were made by alumni, friends of colleges, and foundations. As many gifts were made by friends as alumni of their colleges. Second, the gifts were made in cash, securities, land, natural gas royalties, artwork, and deferred gifts. Third, and most important, these gifts in some important way transformed the recipient institution. Universities were able to create or invigorate academic programs, invest in medical research, provide the means to offer more financial aid to students, or build new buildings. A gift like one of these to St. John's College would transform the college, but not in any of these drastic ways. It would not change the program ofinstruction or add extraneous facilities. Rather, it would enable the college to raise and keep tutor salaries at the median of those at comparable colleges. It would provide more financial aid to more students. It would enable the college to maintain the buildings on its two campuses. And it would secure the future of St. John's College. Who will put St. John's College on this list?• Emory U.: from the Lettie Pate Evans, Joseph B. Whitehead, and Robert W Woodruff Foundations, $295 million; stock; 1996 New York U.: from Sir Harold Acton, art, real estate, and cash with a total value of more than $125 million; 1994 Princeton U.: from Gordon Y.S. Wu, $100 million; cash and stock; 1995 Rowan College ofN.J.: from Henry M. And Betty L. Rowan, $100 million; stock and cash; 1992 Harvard U.: from Edward Mallinckrodt, $7 5. 5 million; stock; 1982 Asbury Theological Seminary: from Ralph Walda Beeson, $58 million; stock and bonds; 1990 Brown U.: from Walter H. Annenberg, $50 million; 1993 HODSON TRUST OFFERS $250,000 CHALLENGE T he Hodson Trust, a generous supporter of private education, announced in November that it will provide a challenge grant to the St. John's College Annual Fund for 1996-1997. To help stimulate unrestricted giving, the Hodson Trust will match all new and increased unrestricted gifts to the Annual Fund on a dollar-fordollar basis up to a total of$250,000. Anyone who watches public television is acquainted with the concept of the challenge grant. At St. John's, though, givers won't receive an umbrella, just the satisfaction of knowing they are investing in an institution so that it can serve today's students. Here is what counts in the challenge: new unrestricted gifts of cash or securities (for anyone who did not make an unrestricted gift to St. John's during the 1995-96 fiscal year) made between July 1, 1996 and June 30, 1997; increased gifts over an unrestricted gift in 1995-95; and unrestricted gifts in honor or in memory of someone. Matching gifts from a company or firm, planned or deferred gifts, and pledges do not count as part of the challenge. The Beneficial-Hodson Trust was started by the founder of the Beneficial Loan Society, which today is the Beneficial Corporation, headquartered in Delaware. To begin the Trust, Colonel Hodson provided stock in the Beneficial Corporation in honor of his father and for the purpose of furthering higher education. Over the past 50 years, the Trust has contributed more than $50 million to private colleges in Maryland. "This is a wonderful opportunity to make a gift count twice-and an investment that goes to work right away for the college," says Joan Ruch, Director of Annual Giving in Annapolis. In 1996-1997 both campuses will incur more than $1.7 million in expenses that will not be covered by tuition income or by interest income from the endowment. Unrestricted gifts to the Annual Fund provide funds to run the day-today operations of the college; they keep tuition in line and help maintain the financial aid budget-all direct benefits to students. For more information on the Hodson Trust challenge, contact Joan Ruch at 410/626-2534. • Letters ... WOMEN ON THE PROGRAM, REDUX S t. John's is faced with a dilemma: is shallow; all of these books and their Should it perpetuate the canon of authors have clearly proven their merit Western literature with all its oversights, over the years. It is equally as shallow to or should it attempt to truly educate its assume that books by women are students in the humanities? Hisinadequate for the same reason; many of the meritorious tory is written by the victors, it is said, and this is borne out by works on her list that have stood the test of time the fortress oflanguage that is called Western Thought. simply need to be given a Unfortunately, an education chance to prove themselves on the program. that only tells half the story will not make you free. As far as "greatness," a Many women feel outraged few of the books are among the greatest I've at the injustice, for example, of the witch trials (the year Jane Austen ever read, but once again, Newton wrote Optics, 700 witches were in order for people to agree with me, burned in a single Spanish town), of the these books would have to be given a deliberate suppression of female thinkers chance. Mr. O'Gara also tweaks Ms. and mystics by the Roman Catholic McMurran for not being able to Church (such as the amazing Hildegaard appreciate "the writings of people ofBingen), and simply by the fact that separated from us in space, time, women were categorically denied the culture ... and sex." I would simply like to ask him to try. right to vote and own property until very recently in this country (thank you Ms. McMurran has made a fine start Elizabeth Cady Stanton). in narrowing down some of the greatest books by women. The tougher question, But outrage is not a good enough reason to grant the ladies a spot on the however, as rightly pointed out by Miss Program. Mr. O'Gara's interpretation of Brann in her original discussion on the proposal, is where to put these proposed Ms. McMurran's position as "books on the program are fundamentally inadreadings? My suggestion is to start by making room for one. I've also heard a equate because of the sex of the author" suggestion to reduce the readings of some of the authors by one or two: Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, Shakespeare, Descartes, Spinoza, Locke and Hume. But the readings must go in their proper places. Imagine if the program originally included the texts she proposes. Where would Barr and Buchanan have placed them? Or is it simply too ridiculous to assume that our founding fathers would have considered the 15 texts on Ms. McMurran's list seriously? Would they even have bothered to give a single one of them a thorough read? If not, then something is wrong with this picture. St. John's is broken. The center does not hold. Half the students who attend the school must live with the Western assumption that their minds are inferior and their ideas do not deserve the highest respect. There are many contradictions within the story ofWestern thought, and this is one of the most difficult.This is the beginning of a conversation that will rake many years to unfold. And, although the program is the embodiment, the debate is universal. Will the voice of women throughout the ages eventually intertwine with the voices of men in the opera? Or will it prove to belong to a separate realm altogether, like Eastern literature? Again, to quote Mr. O'Gara, "Is it even a little bit surprising that at a place like St. John's, where we try to absorb the best that every age has to offer, our curriculum predominates with books by men?" No, Mr. O'Gara, it's no surprise at all. And that's what worries me. -Kristen Baumgardner Caven, SF86 S hould women's works and particularly feminist literature be included in the St. John's reading list? The answer, of course, is the same as for the question whether to include works by Athenians or Ethiopians or lefthanded poets. It depends on the merits of the work. Why is any book in the program? Surely not because it was written by a Greek or a soldier or an anti-Semite. It's there because it articulates an idea or a perspective that illuminates an important problem in human thought: Justice, loyalty, love, patriotism, government, knowledge, evil, God, liberty, mathematics, science, language .... At St. John's we were expected to continued on next page �Letters ... WOMEN ON THE PROGRAM: MORE DIALOGUE ignore the biography of the author.We were asked to approach each author's body ofwork as complete unto itself. I recall the contempt expressed for those among our freshman class who read the translator's preface or the author's biography as part of the preparation for semmar. IfI am supposed to read the Meno for its ideas, and not from the vantage point of Men o's or Socrates' life, why should I agree to judge any work not by what it brings to the enterprise oflearning but bywho is bringing it (a woman)? And ifI relax this rule to correct the under-representation ofwomen authors on the list, do I not have to consider correcting the representation of black Americans, or of black Frenchmen, or of happily married men who loved their fathers?· Among the works with ideas worth bringing to the feast there are many good books by women. And I am sure that among them "Great Books" will be found in roughly the same proportion as they occur in literature as a whole-that is, rarely. But let the worth of those ideas be the only test of what is studied at this last bastion ofliberated intellectual discourse. -Charles S. Lerner, A53 benefits of such additions. Secondly, we should not assume that anything will be eliminated by the addition of a great book by a woman. The already common practice of excerpting a work could make room for a new one, and additions to language tutorial are easily made as there are fewer required books. Mr. O'Gara also says that gender is addressed in the works already on the program and that I am suggesting that we add books by women merely to present another viewpoint. Although writers on the program present concepts of gender identity and gender roles, never once was it addressed around a Virginia seminar or tutorial table while I was at St. John's. Adding one or two great books by women on my list (especially Wollstonecraft, de Beauvoir, or Woolf) is a means of making the dialogue on gender a fruitful one because these great works formulate new, original, and insightful ways of conceiving gender. I am very happy to have the chance to respond to those who are hesitant about the aims of my proposal. As long as this issue is fostering dialogue, we think more seriously and more rigorously about it. -Mary Helen McMurran, SF87 n the Summer 1996Reporter James O'Gara wrote a letter about read with great interest the spate ofletters about feminist literature my proposal to add great works by at St. John's. The enthusiasm of the women to the program. First I must feminist boosters, however, is not clarify the project .. .! have not proposed that 15 works by women be added to matched by the quality of their thought. the curriculum. I have proposed to the Lost somewhere in the argument is the alumni that they encourage the faculty ability to distinguish GREAT books to consider adding more great works by from good or interesting books. Over all women. As alumni, we cannot propose the years ofwhich we have recorded history a relatively small number of changes to the program, we can only ask that the faculty begin the process that authors have produced books that are undisputably GREAT. This obviously will lead to a change. The works leaves women in an extremely small appended to the proposal are suggestions minority. How could it be for the faculty. I have chosen works otherwise since few of them that are widely regarded as original, historically influential, had the opportunity? and well-written. The issue of Many women now, of course, "greatness" is complex and have the opportunity and cannot be reduced to simple many more will put forth criteria, but it requires more their best effort. But one than mere opinion; those should not expect a plethora unconvinced about the of GREAT works from women in such a relatively works on my list should read Mary Shelley short time, given all the time it them and do some research on took to produce all the previous their impact. It is also important ones. Should one then lower the to realize that the list of books on the standards? Certainly not. program is not static. Horace, the Song of The standard is neither patriarchal Roland, and Malthus appeared on the nor arbitrary. The GREAT books are part original 1937 list, and not on later ones, of world literature; they are transand Nietzsche and The People ShallJudge cultural. They raise the most basic did not appear on that original list. James O'Gara claims that I avoid the questions to which human thought has issue of potential deletions from the been devoted in a very special way. At St. current program. Again, adding and John's these books are not to be read as taking works off the program is a matter elements in a sweep of a history of ideas. for the faculty. Each work has to be The study of ideas and the study of the considered alone; arguments must be history of ideas are quite distinct. The latter is cultural; the former, philosophimade for its inclusion and suggestions for cal. a place to put it. That is why I say in the One has the opportunity at St. John's proposal that I am not making arguto devote four precious years to studying ments for the inclusion of more great the best books ever written. Good books, works by women. Instead, I point to the I I those that are less than great, and cannot be re-read with profit indefinitely, should come later or before these four years. Most of the books mentioned in the earlier letters are worth reading, of those I have read. More of the ones I have not read may be great. But even though I am an ardent admirer of Emily Dickinson I simply cannot imagine putting her on the same level as John Donne. The Second Sex is certainly basic to understanding the feminist movement. But the St. John's program was never intended as a study of successive waves of western Woolf culture but ofideas that transcend cultures. It is only a small step from gender literature to ethnic literature and an even smaller one from ethnic literature to multiculturalism. And multiculturalism is the enemy ofliberal education. Taken to its logical extreme it means that all cultures are equal and also that all thought is culture-bound. The former claim is prima facie ludicrous and the latter worthless since the assertion itself would, therefore, be culture bound. It is the duty of the citizens of the Republic of Letters to fight the creeping parochialism and relativism such seamless boundaries breed. -Robert Hazo, A53 I have been following with great interest the series ofletters regarding the inclusion of works by women in the program. I think that B. Meredith Burke (A67) and Susan Mattis (A75) have it right: feminism and the women's movement is one of the great international social movements of this century and has led to profound changes in the way men and women relate to each other legally, within social institutions, and within private relationships. While I certainly would support inclusion of either John Stuart Mill's On the Subjection ofWomen or Simone de Beauvior's The Second Sex, one objection to these works (particularly The Second Sex) is length. I want to point out that there are alternatives. A good one, in my opinion, is Mary Wollstonecraft's A The Reporter 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 to either campus: The Reporter, Public Relations Office, St. John's College, Box 2800, Annapolis MD 21404; e-mail: bgoyette@sjca.edu St. John's College, Alumni Relations, 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87501 email: eskewes@shadow.stiohnsnm.edu. Vindication ofthe Rights ofWomen. There are also a number of collections of important works. One of the best, The Feminist Papers (Alice S. Rossi, editor), has been a staple in women's studies courses for a number ofyears now. The Feminist Papers ranges from the letters of Abigail Adams to de Beauvior and includes important works linking the woman's suffrage movement to abolition. Reading from a collection like The Feminist Papers would provide a sound introduction to feminist thought, which, whether some of us like it or not, exists and will endure. In 1989 I taught a graduate seminar on diversity for a criminal justice program. Most of the students were employed by local law enforcement agencies. One of the course requirements was to read a book from a list I had compiled, to write a review ofit, and to present it to the class. I included The Second Sex because it is a classic, never seriously thinking that anyone would read it. One student, a sergeant with a small, rural sheriff's department, did decide to read it. He found it to be one of the most interesting and enlightening books he had read in his graduate program. So let's add some feminist works to the St. John's program. Maybe through discussing them we will all,like the sergeant, learn something. -Maya Hasegawa, A69 TRANSLATING THE MOTTO I 'm amazed that people are still debating whether "men" is an acceptable term for the whole human race, including the female half. How would people feel if we used ~'women" in the motto and added, "Oh yes, by that we mean men as well"? When it comes to the translation of the motto, the latest set ofletters to the editor implies that the only choices are "men" and "human beings." I'd like to point out that we have a perfectly fine English word for what children (not "boys," notice) become: ADULTS. - Marlene F. Strong, A77 ISLAMIC WRITINGS I am writing to urge the inclusion oflslam and Islamic writing in the curriculum at St. John's. Mohammed wrote, in the dark ages, that one hour in pursuit of knowledge was better than 70 years in prayer. Islam invented the university in 900 AD, Al-Azhar University in Cairo. The first curriculum in the world included about 50 years study. Algebra was discovered by Islamic writers. Muslims preserved and studied the writings of the ancient Greeks. Maimonides was a student ofAverroes, a Muslim philosopher. Averroes' intellectual challenge to the Catholic faith is partly responsible for St. Thomas Aquinas writing the Summa. -Mike Weaver, A66 �Scholarship ... AN ACCIDENTAL JOHNNY SCOTT BUCHANAN A Centennial Appreciation ofHis Life & Work 1895-1968 Santa Fe tutor David Levine came to St. john's (twice) by indirect routes ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Recollections & Essays Selected & Edited by Charles A. Nelson St. John's College Press 1995 by Maria Giordano, SFOO Reviewed by Sam Kutler, A54 D GREAT SCOTT! (BUCHANAN) T oward the end of Plato's Phaedo, Crito asks Socrates, "But how shall we bury you?" Socrates replies, ''As you wish, if you can catch me." Plato knew how to catch a living portrait of Socrates by placing him in dialogues as the main character in a sequence of conversations. Charles Nelson finds the right way to catch Scott Buchanan. Twenty-three contemporaries, students, and friends supply the material for a living portrait of Scott Buchanan, which is supplemented by eight photographs and a useful bibliography. Buchanan himself is represented at the beginning by an essay entitled "Awakening the Seven Sleepers;" and at the end by remarks made at a party to honor Stringfellow Barr. Editor Charles Nelson has titled this "The Last Don Rag." It seems outrageous to compare a modest man like Scott Buchanan to Socrates this way, but the writers couldn't resist the comparison: "I realized that Scott was the most Socratic man I had ever known" (Stringfellow Barr), and "The influence Scott exerted issued ... from Socratic charm" (Clifton Fadiman). Of course there are many repetitions in this book, and the repetitions make for a wonderful musical understanding of Scott Buchanan. We return in several essays to the double meaning of the Socratic dictum that was so dear to Scott Buchanan: "I know that (hott) I do not know," in which we also hear: "I know that which (ho ti) I do not know." This was Scott Buchanan's call for us to get to work on what we know that we still do not know. There are references to Scott Buchanan's wonderful sense of humor and laughter. For Jacob Klein it is the laughter "of an extra-ordinary man, in the strict sense of the word ... It was impossible to be indifferent to him; he inspired violent love and violent dislike, but never lukewarm feelings. He charmed and consoled, he provoked and teased." Mark van Doren explains how Buchanan interwove the humorous with the serious and says that the chief proof of Scott Buchanan's seriousness was his humor, which had understatement as its form of delivery. What kind of teacher was Scott Buchanan? At the University of Virginia, J. Winfree Smith was in a course of his entitled Metaphysics: "The discussion was guided or filled by the power of Mr. Buchanan's mind to illuminate doctrines and questions that strike the imagination. Even imaginative suggestions which approached the fantastic, none the less, provoked thought. What this did for me was to wake me up and to make me aware of what a big thing that small part of us called the intellect is." One of the qualities about Scott Buchanan that impressed William Goldsmith and his classmates when they met for their fiftieth reunion involved listening: "His ability to look at and listen to others as if they were his equals. He never talked down to you, but he frequently confounded you." The editor, Charles Nelson, and Jacob Klein both commented on Scott's search for hidden connections, his ability to see "in diverse things their hidden unity" (Klein). Curtis Wilson, in his forward to Buchanan's Truth in the Sciences, draws similar attention to Scott's search for a "dialectic that did justice to all the parts [of modern civilization] that had become separated, by showing their relation to the whole from which they are derived." This appreciation of the life and work of Scott Buchanan covers his life both before he began his adventure at St. John's College and after he left, but let me cite two more quotations from the parts that refer to his importance at St. John's College. Winfree Smith writes: "there is a sense in which this college owes its soul to Scott Buchanan." And John Kieffer said: Many of you now at the college never knew him. Yet not one of us would be at St. John's today if he had not come to St. John's. This sample from a very rich volume is insufficjent. Take it up and read. e To order a copy of Scott Buchanan: A Centennial Appreciation of his Life and Work, call the Bookstore in Annapolis at (410)6262540, or send a check for $23. 00 to: S]C Bookstore, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404. All proceeds from the sale of the book benefit the BarrBuchanan Scholarship fond. avid Levine was enjoying a sabbatical after ten years of teaching at Oklahoma State University, where he was tenured in both the philosophy and humanities departments, when he got a phone call out of the blue. On the other end of the line was the secretary for the dean at St. John's in Santa Fe. She asked if he would come to interview for a teaching position, even though he hadn't applied for one. In fact, it had been nearly a decade since Levine, a 1967 graduate of Annapolis, had even been in touch with the college. But he decided to come for the interview and then decided to take a teaching position at St. John's. It's a decision he hasn't regretted. He took a pay cut and gave up his tenured positions to join the Santa Fe faculty in 1986. "St. John's is a school where one can actually make demands on one's students, that is, set higher standards for them," he says. ''At such times one has to ask oneselfwhat is really important. Position, fame, fortune? At many places one can go through four years and be wholly untouched by the experience. St. John's, by contrast, is a place where students change. It's hard to be indifferent to the books we read." When his daughter, Nicole, a graduate of Boston College, was looking for colleges, his only advice was "to find a place where you'll grow." St. John's, he adds, is such a place. Levine grew up in the East and as he looked around for colleges, his older brother suggested St. John's. He chose the Ivy League and became a pre-med major at the University of Pennsylvania. But during his first year, he realized he wasn't growing. He rethought his brother's advice, and despite having to give up a year of college work, he joined the Annapolis class of 1967-the same class as Santa Fe Dean James Carey and Annapolis tutor Howard Zeiderman. At St. John's his interest in the classics became both a passion and his life's work In fact, last year he took a sabbatical from his teaching duties to continue his study of Plato. "Plato and Goethe are the two most formative influences on my thinking," he says. From Goethe, he says, he first realized the complexityofliving in the modern world. After graduating from St. John's, Levine went on to study philosophy at Penn State, receiving a master's in 1969 and a doctorate in 1975. He interrupted his graduate studies to live and study in Europe for 18 months. He did independent research at the Centre Universitaire International in Paris in 1970 and language study at the Goethe Institut in West Germany in 1971. Now, however, he is back "home" at St. John's and is planning to stay. "It's hard work and long hours, but it's some of the most gratifying teaching I've ever done," he says. And beginning this year, Levine is assuming even more responsibilities at the college. This spring he'll be serving as assistant dean, filling in for Don Cook who is taking a leave of absence. Levine is also heading up a two-day conference, "Does the Past Have a Future?," which is part of the college's 300th anniversary celebration. When he's not working on the conference or on administrative issues, teaching, or doing his own research, Levine often can be found playing racquetball. "The two things that keep me grounded are my daughter and racquetball," he says. In the classroom Levine is animated and at home. "Is life good or what?" he'll ask as he walks into class. His signature sound "Ou!" is often heard when a sentence works out nicely or a student comes up with a particularly intriguing question. In Greek class he is fond of quoting "the great philosopher" Sancho Panza: ''A lot oflittles make a much." What does he learn from his students? "Many things," he says. "One doesn't realize that other students always require that we begin at the beginning, never take for granted what we think we know. We underestimate how much we can learn from other people ... We ask why we think we know what we think we know," he says. "That's why St. John's is such a good school, that and a lot of very dedicated people." At St. johns his interest in the classics became both a passion and his life's work... Plato and Goethe are the two most formative influences on his thinking. e Levine will be leading the conference "Does the Past Have a Future?" on the Santa Fe campus on April 4-5. See related article on page 2 of this issue. �E HIS johnnies who enter medicine say their training in the classics has made them better doctors. Elizabeth Skewes elania Yeats, SF88, thought she wanted to be a veterinarian. Todd Peterson, A87, envisioned himselfin a biological research program. And Bill Gattis, SF88, had dropped out of high school swith plans to make his mark as a musician. All three ended up in medicine-and all credit St.John's with giving them the philosophical and scientific background they needed not only for medical school, but to make the right decisions about their lives. "What they learned at St. John's that is most useful, they say, is how to ask questions and how to listen to the answers. Peterson says that although he wasn't planning a career in medicine when he enrolled at St. John's, it was something that interested him. "Many people in my family are in medicine and have been for a long time," he says. "l was thinking more about going into biological research when I was considering careers, but I picked St. John's because I was interested in philosophy." Melania Yeats didn't realize until her senior year that medical school was her goal. Even then, she was considering veterinary medicine. After graduating she spent two years working with large animals and two years with small animals. "I found that I wasn't bad at talking to people. I knew that I was smart enough to do medicine, but I thought I wasn't competitive enough to do human medicine. Fortunately, the prerequisites are the same for both, so when I decided to apply to medical school, I didn't have to do more course work" Yeats, a third-year medical student at the University of New Mexico, finds that many medical students fit the diche "that when you' re six years old, you decide you want to be in medicine and you plan for that." Those students often end up looking for undergraduate colleges or universities with top-ranked pre-med programs and have undergraduate majors in biology or chemistry. But the better path, she thinks, is to go to a college that can provide a broader world view. "Doctors are not scientists, and we do need to have a background in human issues," she says. "Most of my classmates are kind of envious that I went to St. John's. I think it definitely helps you to have had something in your life other than a scientific bent." Gattis, who graduated with Yeats in the Santa Fe Class of 1988, said St. John's was one of the few colleges that would have considered accepting him, since he dropped out of high school ("I thought I wanted to be a musician") and never took the high school equivalency exam. But he also knew that the kind of broad education that he could get at St. John's would serve him well as a doctor. He's now a resident physician at the University of New Mexico's Family Practice Center. St. John's gave him a chance to pursue some of the philosophical questions that a pre-med program wouldn't have. "It also helped in terms of the science because it gave me a background to look at a problem and think about it," he says. "Every patient is a problem and you've got to use your scientific knowledge to address it and come up with an answer. And it's not nice and neat, like you're taught in Chem 101." Peterson says that the other advantage of St. John's is that it's not fiercely competitive, as many pre-med programs are. At some major universities, desperate and competitive pre-med students have been known to steal readings on reserve just to keep other students from having access to the material. "At St. John's, I led an incredibly leisure-filled life compared to life as a pre-med student at a major university," he says. Although St. John's graduates have a lot of math and science in their backgrounds, medical schools today are requiring more intensive preparation. "Certainly the quality of the St. John's liberal arts experience is something medical schools consjder an advantage," says Karen Holland, placement director in Annapolis. But students who have medical school as a goal need to take extra course work, and some find a postbaccalaureate necessary. The more prestigious medical schools have the most Bill Yeats (above), both a m11m-vec:u Todd Peterson Services University for medical school. Elizabeth Skewes and Don Bell stringent policies, but St. John's students succeed in gaining admission every year, says Holland. Gattis took three years between St. John's and medical school to get some work experience, volunteer with the college's Search and Rescue team, and do some pre-med work, including studying for the Medical College Admissions Test -the MCAT, as it is best known. Yeats did the same thing, taking six years to work, get a better feel for the medical profession, and study for the MCAT. "We both did well for our classes, and other people I've known from St. John's have done very well on these standardized tests," Gattis says. Gattis enrolled in a special medical school program at UNM called the Primary Care Curriculum, which he calls "med school for Johnnies." Instead of lectures, students learned in small tutorials and the tests were in the form of oral examinations. By the time Yeats enrolled, the PCC program had been folded into the regular medical school curriculum, so that her course work is a hybrid of the two. Peterson's experience was more like the medical school of the movies and television. "There was no talking about the answers. It was either A, B, C or D." He ended up at the Uniformed Services University because it was a good school and a good deal. Rather than paying tuition, Peterson received a Navy ensign's rank and pay for going to medical school. He has a seven-year obligation to the Navy, but his work as a flight surgeon means that he learned to fly. He also has a specialization in aerospace medicine, which deals with conditions like hypoxia (having low oxygen) and spatial disorientation. Peterson says that although it takes a lot of technical knowledge to be a doctor, medical schools are looking for students with a broad educational background. "It does you no good to be really strong at math and science if you're not able to talk to the patient," he says. Gattis says that his St. John's education also will help him with the social issues involved with medicine as he and other doctors look at the future of health care and consider policies in medicine. And Yeats says she found her St. John's background to be a saving grace, especially in that first year at UNM. "I really hated the first year of medical school. I think I would have slit my wrists ifl hadn't had Plato to read. In one of the dialogues, Socrates talks about how important it is to make yourself good and then to help others to be good ... That and The Leviathan got me through. I'm really into social contracts and the notion that people with brains have a social duty to use them to help others." e �THE FUTURE OF READING IN THE AGE OF TECHNOLOGY ·············································································~··· ERE'S HOWQUICKLYNEWIDEAS MOVED IN 1696, WHEN KING WILLIAM'S SCHOOL WAS FOUNDED. NEWTON'S PRINCIPIA-A GROUNDBREAKING WORK, FORSUREhad been published ten years before, but it wasn't translated into English until 1729. Almost 100 years later, what we would call "news" still moved at a glacial pace: On Wednesday, November 11, 1789, the King William's School students and their teachers, plus a score of dignitaries, marched from the Maryland State House to the new college of St. John's to officially begin the college's career. Reports of the event were published three weeks later in the Mary/,and Gazette-on December 3. Todaywe have instant access to "news"; we can find out what the stock market is doing on the Internet, we can see an up-to-the-second weather report on the weather channel, we are glued to CNN watching the eerie green light of American missiles as they fly toward their targets in Baghdad. The vast world comes right into our living rooms and unfolds before us. But information is not knowledge or wisdom. Learning is still an activity that takes place in the interior realm, fed by stimulation from the outside (books, teachers, conversation), and is nurtured slowly and carefully by meditation. The coin of the realm of education has always been books-and for us in the New Program, the books determine more than anything else what we think about. Books tie us to our culture's past; it is through them that we engage in the dialectic of the ages. Reading is our way of being. As the college faces its next 300 years, will the landscape of understanding remain the same? Some contemporary thinkers, for example Sven Birkerts in The Gutenberg Elegies, now claim that the substrate of our culture might be changing. Young people-St. Johnnies now and in the decades to come-live in a world different from the world of the King William's School boys, different from the world of the 19th-century students who read Tacitus and Ambercrombie's Intellectual Powers, different from the world of the early New Program students who grew up without TV, FedEx, video games, walkmans, and computers. Are these differences deep enough to change fundamentally the way students read, study, and discuss? We asked tutors with a variety ofinterests and alumni in a variety of careers to think about ways of discussing these questions. Their responses follow. -Barbara Goyette, A73 sive when addressed by a fellow human being? Do I want the chance, and soon the obligation, to access vastnesses of information, when m:y experience has taught me that next to passion, information most darkens counsel? Do I want to chat about Plato with a cyberpal in Uganda while I content myself with one yearly visit to my dearest friends, an hour's plane ride away? Do I want to fixate my eyes for hours and hours on tiny arid icons that print over the large spontaneous images of the soul? No, not really. I want to know just so much of this realm as I need to reflect on it as a human experience, and no more. 8 Eva Brann is dean ofthe Annapolis campus. She writes in longhand on a yellow legalpad VIRTUAL SPACE REAL TIME by Eva T.H Brann T he number of our days is finite, and will, before too long, become determinate. "So teach us," says the psalmist, "to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom." I distinguish three uses of computers in this college. The first is a foit accompli for us and concerns their use by competent professionals in the offices whose work ministers to the Program. The second is in the future; we may persuade ourselves that computers embody a genuinely new liberal art and find elegant examples of knowledge essentially dependent on speed of computation and complexity of structure, examples similar to those we now have for the arts oflanguage and nature. And then there is the third use, that of the personal computer for personal use-for instant communication, for accessing huge amounts and varieties of information, for novel amusements and recreations, for shopping, chatting, surfing, discussing. In that set of uses is enfolded a great human issue, that of the time-economy of our lives. For it is a documented fact that the diversionary uses of cyberspace, described as "a consensual hallucination" by the inventor of the word, William Gibson (in The Neuromanic, 1984), are timevoracious. It is easy to enter and hard to emerge. The space is virtual but the time spent there is real. When I try to apply my heart unto wisdom, I see that the question, at least when the days become all too numerable, is always and only this: Which of the world's multifarious offerings do I need and want in my heart of hearts? Can I detect there a spontaneous longing for this new electronic world, a desire coherent with the whole of my life? Do I want to be accessible to the cyberdenizen's every midnight expectoration and daylight ratiocination, so that I am forced into being selectively respon- ,.,, ........................................ ...... TRAVELS ON THE METAPHYSICAL HIGHWAY by Randall Rothenberg I went to a cocktail party the other night. I mixed a Negroni for Daisann, a music critic, and marveled at the building plans that Jam es, an architect and our host, had tacked to a wall. Pavia balanced a martini and discussed her ambivalence about her move from New York to Washington. Sipping on another of my Negronis, Spravka displayed little sympathy, noting that he'd survived a journalistic year in Moscow. And so it went. For St. Johnnies, who assume the existence of a metaphysical highway that leads from libation to interlocution to contemplation, this gin-soaked gathering would seem an organic part of the scholarly-let alone urban, or suburban, for that matter-existence. To me, though, it was a remarkable event. le exposed the hollowness inside the predictions of"neo-Luddites" and technophiles alike, yet still showed this new metaphysical highway-the one made up of information-to be revolutionary, indeed. You know the debate. While today's Nostradamuses agree that the Internet "changes everything," they disagree on the worthiness of the result. Those who vaunt the new communications technologies hail their ability to forge "virtual communities" oflike-minded souls, wherever they live, whatever their station. Those who fear the Internet forecast the withering away of physical communities, particularly cities, as telecommuting and telecommuning replace the desire for cafes and human commerce. Uh, no. What I've seen-in locales as diverse as Blacksburg, Virginia, and New York City-is a third way. The Internet is actually serving as a force to bring people together ... physically. In Blacksburg, home ofVirginia Polytechnic Institute and, on a per capita basis, the most wired city in the nation, various social organizations have formed, first on the Internet and then at meeting places around town. The same in New York, where regular gatherings-each is called an "F2F," for "face-to-face" -convene, around the virtual communities forged on Echo, a local on-line service. Thus it was with my cocktail party. The imbibers were all members of Echo's professional writers' conference, few of whom had ever set eyes on each other. Members of Echo's literature conference routinely hold book swaps and advertise readings and discussion groups. The food conference has had at least one �Indian-restaurant F2F, and the media conference had a bowling night last year. Which is why I don't despair about technology's impact on the future of intellectual life. The human need to touch skin, hear voices, and, yes, clink glasses will always override the drive to isolate ourselves in electronic gated communities. From this, the St. John's idea of community- "of the mind," abetted by "of the flesh" -can only go forward and prosper. • Randall Rothenberg, A78, is a senior writer at Esquire Magazine and the author, most recently, of Where the Suckers Moon: An Advertising Story (Knopf 1994). ........................................T···· CLASSIC OF THE ELECTRONIC MEDIA DEBATE by Grant Franks T he future of reading? The future of anything is difficult. According to Marshall McLuhan, whose works I read and discussed for three days with alumni in Santa Fe last summer, "most people live in the previous age, no matter what the period or what the culture." In McLuhan's view, our best artistiC and creative minds strive to live in the present. As for the future, as McLuhan says, "This is the future. It's now." When I recklessly agreed to lead a summer alumni seminar on the subject of"Reading in the Electronic Age," I only knew McLuhan from his cameo appearance in Woody Allen's "Annie Hall." But as I began to search for a reading that would support sustained conversation, McLuhan's name kept subtly reappearing. Lurking around the margins wherever I looked. Lots of books and articles have appeared recently about the "Future ofReading," most of which seem to fall into one or the other of two factions. There are the upbeat prophets (the "cheerleaders") who enthusiastically herald glad tidings of the new Electronic-Internet-CD-ROM-InformationSuperhighway Age. On the other hand there are the gloomy prophets (the "doomsayers") who point to the same events and foretell the destruction of literacy, culture, civilization, and JudeoChristian values generally. The cheerleaders tend to be geeky technophiles; the doomsayers are more often curmudgeonly technophobes. Their shouting matches seemed unpromising material for a St. John's seminar. However, behind their mere differences in taste lay an important question: whether the form of reading material, as distinct from its content, fundamentally alters our experience as readers and whether it even might-to use a word that is popular mostly with the doomsayer faction but which is familiar also to St. John's students-shape our "souls." To the extent that recent writers explicitly address that issue, both factions repeatedly point back to a single classic source: Marshall McLuhan. Following the time-honored St. John's method of going to the original sources, the obvious reading for the alumni, then, seemed to be Marshall McLuhan's principal book, The Gutenberg Galaxy. It felt a bit strange to bring McLuhan's work to a St. John's classroom. In the 1960s and early 1970s, McLuhan was generally perceived as a trendy guru of the television generation. The popular press had welded his name to his well-worn catch-phrases "Global Village" and "The medium is the message." References to McLuhan were common on Rowan and Martin's "Laugh- In." But now, only 30 years after its publication, The Gutenberg Galaxy seems to be playing the role of the "timeless classic" of the electronic media debate. In fact, trendy popularity was an uncomfortable role for McLuhan in the first place. Fundamentally he was, and never ceased to be, a conservative Roman. Catholic Canadian professor of English literature whose celebrity never derailed him from his academic life. He never advocated change, certainly not the chaotic changes that swirled around him. He wanted to understand in order to put an end to it, or at least to control it. "Most people think that if you talk about something recent you are for it," he told one audience. "The exact opposite is true in my case. Anything I talk about is almost certain to be something I'm resolutely against. And it seems to me the best way of opposing it is to understand it. And then you know where to turn off the buttons." McLuhan's way of viewing the present grew out of his study of the past. As its title implies, The Gutenberg Galaxy concerns itself principally with the introduction of moveable type printing in Europe in the 15th century. That change, McLuhan believes, did much more than make books cheaper. It altered the character of books, of reading, of readers and the world they inhabited. McLuhan's assertions are routinely sweeping to the point of being outlandish. "The Gutenberg Galaxy is concerned to show why alphabetic man was disposed to desacralize his mode of being," declares one chapter title. Another title states what seems to be the book's fundamental theme: "The printmade split between head and heart is the trauma which affects Europe from Machiavelli till the present." The introduction of typesetting, claims McLuhan, was not just a clever new way to do something--copying books-that was being done already slowly and clumsily. It was a wholly new phenomenon masquerading as a mere technical improvement. By the mid-16th century, books were no longer manually produced "performances" by individual scribes but commercial commodities. Authors acquired authority: only their words were in type while the reader's own notes, which had formerly been of equal handwritten dignity with the authors' words, were pushed irregularly into the margins. Readers of printed texts got used to seeing regularly spaced letters in straight lines and consequently began looking for regular intervals and straight lines everywhere in the world. "The passion for exact measurement began to dominate the Renaissance," says McLuhan. After Gutenberg, Galileo was inevitable. Moveable type created Isaac Newton. A bout a dozen alumni joined me J"\Jor three days to read large excerpts of The Gutenberg Galaxy and to spend two hours exploring a CD-ROM entitled "Understanding McLuhan," which includes two of his books together with video clips, pictures, criticism, a taped lecture, and an extensive bibliography. Judging from our experience, McLuhan's writings will not win over anyone predisposed to be skeptical or hostile. McLuhan himself anticipated this critical reaction. The Gutenberg Galaxy, he admits, does not represent a compelling, linear argument, but "develops a mosaic or field approach to its problems." Such a mosaic, he alleges, is "the only practical means of revealing causal operations in history." There is no sustained argument in support of this methodology, or rather this lack of methodology. Scoffers are free to scoff, but after a while I begin to feel my own demands for tightly reasoned syllogisms and tidy historical sequences to be almost embarrassingly linear and ...well... typographic. I begin to wonder whether McLuhan might not be sliding between the lines of my way of thinking. In 1965 Tom Wolfe wrote a piece for New York magazine on Marshall McLuhan entitled "What If He's Right?" in which he described the phenomenal continued on page 12 Photographs by Michelle Baker �continued from page 11 excitement that this rather staid-looking English professor injected into the selfconsciously modern world: There are many studs in the business world, breakfast-food-package designers, television-network creative department vice-presidents, advertising "media reps, " lighting-fixture heirs, patent attorneys, industrial spies, we-need-vision board chairmen-all sorts ofbusiness studs, as I say, wondering ifMcLuhan was... right? The tide ofWolfe's piece captures a lot about the present speculation on the future of reading and the effectswhether dire, benign, or beatific-of electronic media on our souls. The advent of electronic media may mean nothing at all for the state of our souls. Then again, perhaps the form of media that we use does affect how we exist as readers and even, maybe, as individuals. Maybe the transition from pulp to CDROM to Internet does change the character not only of how we read but who we are as readers. Judged strictly as a technical matter, the move to electronic media is comparable in scope to the 16th century's adoption of moveable type. Whether we believe that electronic media will change us can be gauged by whether we believe the transition to printed texts affected them, the inhabitants of the first Gutenberg generation. The first-person present tense question "Are our souls at risk?" rums to its third-person past tense counterpart, "Were their souls at risk?" McLuhan may have failed to make an irrefutable, iron-dad argument that Gutenberg was responsible for everything from linear perspective to the Protestant Reformation. His evidence may be scattered and his ideas overbroad. Bur then again, what if he's right?• Grant Franks is a tutor in Santa Fe. He's spending the 1996-97 year in Annapolis. Once our information and facts came from books. Now it is hawked from the Internet. Stored on floppies. Sold on CD-ROMs. *** One virtue of a book is its portability and size. Not to mention the aesthetic feel of the paper, the beauty of the type and the illustrations. What would Treasure Island be like without the images ofN.C. Wyeth? *** In the unlikely event that paper will become obsolete or scarce, perhaps we will be using "readers" instead, computers no larger than a legal pad which could display text or image. Like Stanley Kubric imagined in 2001. Or, we could have books individually printed on demand. You want Naked Came the Stranger or the Ion? They will run it off for you at the mall. *** Will books become collectible curiosities, high-minded antiques like derringers or codpieces? *** You can get the complete works of Shakespeare on-line, but dollars to doughnuts you can't show me anyone who has sat in front of a PC long enough to read "King Lear." And I'll bet that in some subtle way they won't be the same works as, say, found in the Penguin editions. 0orge Luis Borges, check your e-mail.) *** Neither books nor computers contain wisdom. Knowledge is pleasure. *** ·······································T····· RANDOM ACCESS THOUGHTS by Bruce Preston T he ability to process multiple stimuli does not push us farther along the evolutionary superhighway. Your walkman, your PC, your prime time playwrights simply increase the traffic flow. More data, more information, more noise. Gridlock becomes mindlock. *** The difference between information and wisdom is the difference between facts and meaning, data and understanding, perceptions and cognition, observation and analysis. Wisdom is the result of analysis and understanding of information. *** A 1950s episode of"The Twilight Zone" is set in a post-nuclear wasteland amidst the ruins of a vast library. An alien visitor gestures toward the books that are left and asks the aging earthling librarian how the humans who wrote them could destroy their own civilization. The old man shouts in reply, "Because the books lied! They lied and we believed them!" *** The Internet is a sort oflibrarywhich accepts any offering of knowledge or information or data which is posted. Everyone is his own Gutenberg. The surfer/reader must discriminate between the truth and the lies. *** The Internet is more in the service of the sciences than the arts or the humanities. Because scientific knowledge is cumulative (and verifiable), one generation can build on the work of the previous generation. Moral philosophy, however, must be re-learned anew by each generation through experience. Otherwise the books would show us how to behave. Has our behavior as nations or as individuals throughout recorded history improved? *** I remember as a student during lab discussions we would affirm some physical principle which we thought true.A few minutes later, when we pursued the matter more deeply, we realized we had been mistaken and that the law of physical reality which we had held as true a moment ago was, upon further examination, actually false. I have amused myself by pretending that during the time we affirmed the false principle it was indeed true and that, for a few moments, the laws of the universe responded to our beliefs in them. This thought is neither wisdom nor information nor knowledge but simply delight. And delight, for my money, is such a private and eternal part of our souls that no search engine or noisy fusillade of cyberdata can come dose to it. Thank you. • Bruce Preston, A65, is an architect in Washington, D. C. His writing has been published in the Washington Times and theWashington Post. A NEW LITERACY by Shannon May M y great-grandmother used to hang out the window as a little girl and shout down to people in new automobiles "Hey! Get a horse!!!" Technology transformed her life at a rate never seen before. She got her information through newspapers, radio, and books. Today's young people are experiencing perhaps an even more phenomenal rate of change than my great-grandmother and her peers did. We watched the GulfWar on CNN from the comfort of our living rooms. Television brought images from around the world into our lives and now the Internet is taking it one step further. Today's media call for a different kind ofliteracy. It's more important than ever to be able to distinguish between fact and opinion. If Forrest Gump proved one thing (aside from the fact that "Life is like a box of chocolates ... ") it was that you can't believe your own eyes anymore. Photographic images can be manipulated to achieve any effect and may bear no resemblance to reality. And you certainly can't believe what you read! The Internet is levelling the playing field because now anyone can publish. Writers can find an audience and are not impeded by limits of age, class, gender or race. High school students can publish newspapers. Grandmothers can run newsgroups. Eyewitnesses can report directly to others on what they've seen. To answer the question of how computers, the Internet, TY, and other instant communications and information systems affect the most basic activities that constitute education, we need to ask what those basic activities are. Reading, writing, reasoning, learning to think. Not memorizing facts, which has become a losing battle, but learning how to learn. Today we hear about the growing class of information workers. My work is characterized by constant learning: the tools and technology change so quickly (every two to three months I have to upgrade my knowledge) that I must know how to learn. As to the differences between information and wisdom-information or data, by itself, is nothing. Making meaning out ofinformation can be a movement toward wisdom. Making meaning is a process of making connections. That's the way it's always beennothing new here. The big difference is pace and quantity. In my greatgrandmother's day, information came into people's lives in a slow trickle. Today, there's a firehose of information, bur the proportion of valuable information to white-noise-type-data is very small. Still, the process of making meaning from information is the same as ever. With the democratization of publishing through electronic means, people's attitude towards content has changed. It used to be that the village priest was the only one who could read, so the information he delivered was accepted as wisdom. When there were fewer sources of information, they were vested with an authority that I don't think people invest publications with today. There probablywill be ways that the new technologies can enhance the kind of thinking and learning that go on at St. John's. But innovations will not change the process of education fundamentally. The activity oflearning how to be a critical thinker, I doubt that will change much. The question is how the Internet will change the way we communicate with each other. The Internet is a communication medium, that's where its value is. You could go and read great books by yourself in the library. What makes St. John's such a great education is that you have to talk to people. It's the bringing to light ofideas through discussion, and you need the human factor to do that. e Shannon May, ABB, is a producer of websites, AOL sites, CDs, and CDs with Internet links for America Online Productions. Her recent work has focussed on producing interactive comics. �. . unng seminar, n k Zlotoff used to iot down thoughts for movie screenplays in a r the sleeper hit The Spitfire Grill says still loo . r ins on. Borden, A88 ee David Zlotoff (A7 4) wrote and directed The Spitfire Grill, which won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival and was bought by Castle Rock for ten million dollars. Recently in Annapolis attending an information warfare conference as research on a new project, Zlotoff stopped at St. John's to talk with a group of 25 students interested in careers in film. As a student at St.John's, Zlotoff told the group, he started a film club, made a short movie, and wrote his senior thesis about film. He also spent a lot of time thinking about film. "Ideas would come to me when I was sitting in seminar and I would jot them into a notebook," he said. "I still have that notebook and still come back to it for ideas." Although Zlotoff knew that he wanted to work in film, he didn't know how he would get there. After more than 20 years in the entertainment industry, Zlotoff acknowledges that there is no certain path to success. "After all," he asked the group, "what are the odds that a Catholic charity would come up to a Jewish guy and ask 'Why don't you create a deep, sweet movie for us?' " place in the community while she tries to discover the identity of a mysterious figure who lives in the woods nearby. With a solid script and strong performances by Ellen Burstyn, Marcia Gay Harden, and Alison Elliott, Zlotoff knew he had made a good movie, but he wasn't prepared for the response at Sundance. "I wasn't anticipating that it would be embraced so enthusiastically, given what I had imagined audiences at Sundance were looking for: more urban and edgy and hip films," he said. The Spitfire Grills unpredictably positive reception mirrors the unpredictable path of Zlotoff's career, which began in earnest shortly after he finished St. John's. After Zlotoff's graduation, his wife, Becky (A75), still had one more year of school, so he spent six months earning money (he ran a small contracting and painting company) and then took six months to write a script. After Becky graduated, the couple moved to New York where Zlotoffknocked on doors trying to get his script read. Sitting in on a class at the New School about the entertainment industry, he met a woman "In my writing, I am always looking for mythic underpinnings or literary references." While the smart money might turn its back on this proposition, this is how The Spitfire Grill was born. In 1994, the Sacred Heart League, a Catholic charity, decided to make a film to raise money and present JudeoChristian values. Although over 150 scripts were read, none was deemed appropriate. Finally, through a friend of a friend, the group approached Zlotoff. "They asked ifl had any scripts in the drawer. I said I didn't but could write a script for them ifl could also direct. We had a couple of meetings, decided to go ahead with the project, I came up with the story, and we made the movie." The movie tells the story of a young woman who finds her way to a small town in Maine after being released from prison. She finds work in a local diner, the Spitfire Grill, and searches for her who worked on a soap opera and needed a secretary. A small lie about his typing ability got him the job. One evening, while working late, Zlotoff found himself chatting with the show's producer. When the producer learned that Zlotoffhad gone to St. John's, he was impressed. "I want you to know that going to St. John's got me my first job as a writer," Zlotoff told the group of students. "The producer was one of those people who had always wanted to go to St. John's." Zlotoff asked him to read his script, he saw potential, and Zlotoff became a soap opera writer. After a year on the show, Zlotoff moved to Los Angeles where, he says, he "wrote a script here and there" before finding work as a writer for "Hill Street Blues." From there he went on to produce "Remington Steele" and create "Murphy's Law" and "MacGyver"-the adventure hero who never carried a gun and managed to get out of scrapes by fashioning explosive devices out of"paper dips and a shirt button." Zlotoff said, 'Tm proud of the fact that 'MacGyver' is so popular they make fun ofit on 'The Simpsons.'" Eventually, Zlotofffound himself in need of creative nourishment and decided to pull back from television work. Not long after, the Sacred Heart League made its pitch, and today Zlotoff finds himself in the feature film business, involved in two projects with major studios. One of them, a political thriller for Tristar Pictures, Zlotoff will write and direct and Robert Redford will produce and star in. Even this far into his career, Zlotoff still draws on his St. John's experience. "I find that St. John's was an invaluable experience; the further away I get from graduation, the more valuable it becomes. In mywriting, I am always looking for mythic underpinnings or literary references." Zlotoff pointed out the Odyssey theme in The Spitfire Grill: "You have this young woman trying to find a way home, and a guy in the woods who clearly was a warrior who is still unable to find his way home." Hollywood meetings ore performance art, Lee David Zlotoff told a group of students interested in tinsel-town careers. No one asked him whether his senior oral exam prepared him for negotiating a film or television deal. Although he enjoys his success, Zlotoff advised students to cultivate a certain wariness of the Hollywood lifestyle. "While the entertainment business is very wonderful and exciting, it is not the place to look for your source of strength and substance. "I have four kids and just celebrated my 25th wedding anniversary. I see my success as due to the fact that my family is the most meaningful part of my life. My self-worth is not invested in the business. That is what I do, not who I am. If you want to see who I am, look at my family, my community, my congregation." Still, he encouraged the students to pursue work in film and television, and left them with a generous offer: "If you make your way to L.A., my door is open to you. You're good for a hot meal and all the advice I can give you." e �JJCC~ St. John's College HOMECOMING ANNAPOLIS ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• 1696 1996 Barr-Buchanan Center groundbreaking, time capsule dedication mark special 300th anniversary Homecoming in September. by Barbara Goyette, A73 M ore than 400 alumni, spouses, children, and friends came home to Annapolis this year to celebrate a special 300th anniversary edition of Homecoming. While the local papers marveled at the "football-free" nature of the event and commented on the unusual program of seminars, rock parties, and waltzes, alumni met old friends, revisited campus haunts, checked out the bookstore, and sat on the quad to read John Donne and Shakespeare. Friday evening began with lecture. President Chris Nelson (SF70) spoke about Virgil: "Foundation, Generation and Immortality: Images of Fatherhood in the Aeneid." After the lecture and the question period, there was a wine and cheese reception in Chase Stone, a class of '81 rock party in the coffee shop, and a class of'86 waltz in the Great Hall. Saturday brought the special 300th anniversary eventsand gray skies. The rain held off during the groundbreaking ceremony for the Barr-Buchanan Center. With the opening of the new Greenfield Library in the former Hall of Records building, the stage is set for the renovation ofWoodward Hall. Alumni from the decade of the 1940s worked during the Campaign for Our Fourth Century to raise money for this renovation-and to name the revamped building in honor ofNew Program founders Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan. The Barr-Buchanan Center will serve as the headquarters for the Graduate Institute, with administrative offices where the circulation desks used to be. The campus' favorite spot for reading the newspapers or snoozing over seminar readings-the old Reading Room-will become a common room for GI students. Upstairs, the King William Room will remain the same, senior orals will still be held there, and an informal paperback lending library will be housed on the shelves. Downstairs there will be rooms for student activities like the Delegate Council and the newspaper as well as several tutor's offices and seminar rooms. Tutor Tom May, director of the Graduate Institute, spoke at the groundbreaking about how the institute Clockwise from top: Caroline Christensen, AGl82, the college financial aid diredor, presides over a picnic in the driule; alumni from the 1950s still conferring about Ptolemy on the at the President's Brunch .. who says St. John's women aren't Charles John Scott Des;Jar·din.s, and John Van Doren-all from the decade of the a future the right idea about which book to Tom May, Chris Nelson, and Sharon use a real shovel for the syrr11>0111c groundbreaking in front of the BarrBuchanan (enter. Opposite page: Jon Hustis, A76, at the reunion luncheon in the boathouse. Homecoming photos by Keith Harvey. �is a "very natural extension of the mission of the college." He also recalled Barr and Buchanan as proponents of adult education. Briefly describing the renovations slated for the building, Mr. May noted, "The King William Room approaches the status of a chapel." Next, Sharon Bishop (A65). president of the Alumni Association, dedicated a time capsule to be opened at the college's 400th anniversary. Included in the capsule were letters from the chairman of the Board ofVisitors and Governors, the two presidents, the two deans, and the Alumni Association Board. ''Artifacts" included were a Jefferson cup, a glass mug with the SJC seal, and words to the song "St. John's Forever." An identical time capsule is being prepared for the Santa Fe campus. Allan Hoffman (A49) came up with the idea for the time capsules. Don't ask where the capsules will be buriedevidently they will be held for safekeeping in the libraries of the respective campuses. Just as the reunion and general luncheons were due to begin, the rain began to fall, so there was a mass exodus to the Coffee Shop, where the behindthe-gym, under-the-sycamores picnic had been set up by the counter. The class of' 81 took advantage of the cozy Coffee Shop atmosphere for their picnic; kids ran around and had fun trying to figure out the combinations that would open the mailboxes. The class of 1956 had a very Johnny luncheon in the Private Dining Room-they spent the first 15 minutes rearranging the tables and discussing the best arrangement so everyone would be able to talk to everyone else. Following seminars (winner of the most ambitious reading award to the class of'86, chaired by Ralph Stengren and Dan Schoos, for their pick of selections from The Structure ofScientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn; the seminar was led by Mr. Beall), there was a special edition of Freshman Chorus in the Great Hall. Tutor Elliott Zuckerman-attired in a black-andwhite striped referee's shirt-led a motley crew of alumni from all eras through some perennial favorites like ''Ave Verum" and "The Heavens are Telling." Fun was had by all. Secret revealed: Dean Eva Brann is a soprano. e �1996 s 11 Middlebrook, editor • ti s Thomas Geyer, A68, communications committee chair The Alumni Association Newsletter is published in each issue of The Reporter. We welcome letters, capsule book reviews, and article ideas from alumni. Send submissions and suggestions to Mork Middlebrook at 73030. 7604@compuserve.com (e-mail) or coll 510/547-0602. p I ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• by John Pollok, SGl80 Editor's note: This article is port of on ongoing series profiling local alumni chapters. By my accounting, we've covered almost all of the officially chartered chapters. If you participate in on informal alumni group (of whatever sort), please contact me. In a future issue, I hope to report on the kinds of alumni activities that arise spontaneously, outside of the formal chapter structure. f there is a word to describe an I activity which is a celebration of an institution, an institution whose very presence competes with that activity, then that word captures the Santa Fe chapter's relationship with St. John's College in Santa Fe. Consider this. The college offers the community free of charge two seminars annually, numerous lectures, musical events, art gallery receptions and, twice yearly for a nominal fee, groups of five or six seminars on such themes as Shakespeare's comedies and French novels. What is the chapter to do? Fortunately, in the face of all this, there are just enough alumni in the area who believe that enough of a good thing is not enough, and so they come to more seminars offered by the local chapter. The founding of the chapter was a triumph of friendship over suspicion and doubt, for it grew out of an uneasy hybrid formed by two distinct groups of alumni. From the late 1970s through the mid 1980s there was an extremely active, informal reading group constituted primarily of past and then current Graduate Institute students who were joined by several aggressive undergraduates during their summer vacations. Seminars on the New Program's books were held almost weekly, and within this group another sub-group met regularly to study and read Greek, from Homer to Xenophon. When in the early 1980s the college began to sponsor periodic alumni seminars, this informal group turned some of its energy to the more formal meetings and attended en masse. To this group, whose members had been reading together and arguing with one another intensely for several years, the other alumni seemed like hesitant neophytes; but to those others, this informal group must have seemed like a cabal of freethinkers bent upon mischief. Not surprisingly, there was a whiff of discord and doubt about the future •••••••••••••••• The founding of the chapter was a triumph of friendship over suspicion and doubt, for it grew out of an uneasy hybrid formed by two distinct groups of alumni. •••••••••••••••• of these seminars. Nevertheless, in time both camps made accommodations or became inured to the other; but only when casual acquaintance turned into friendship and respect becam_e mutual did this inchoate chapter begin to manifest an identity of its own. Paula Maynes, SF77, attributed the early antipathy in part to G.I. graduates who frequently exhibit the zeal of the converted, and for this audacious attempt to say something Members of the Fe Chapter of the Alumni Association gathered at President Agresto's house this foll. possibly true we chastised or rewarded her, as the case may be, by electing her our first president. The format which has been most consistently successful for the chapter's meetings features a seminar with a tutor on an accessible, medium to short work, followed by a reception with potluck hors d'oeuvres in one of the member's homes on a Sunday afternoon. Unlike other chapters whose members understandably invite established tutors with whom they wish to renew acquaintances, we in Santa Fe stumble upon them in the grocery store or stay in contact in more social settings, and so, periodically, we invite new, frequently untenured, and relatively unknown tutors to join us as a gesture of welcome and to establish a relationship. Throughout the chapter's history, the animating antagonism hos been the old, "What shall we read?" On the one side are the orthodox whose argument is, "Life is short and uncertain, energy is limited, so let's stick with the great stuff," and on the other are the heterodox whose guiding principle could be the expression, "Been there, done that, so let's try something new." In the futile attempt to appease both, we have followed a reading of Exodus with Freud's Moses and Monotheism, and Job with Jung's Answer to Job. Although the traditionalists seem to outnumber or are more vocal than the innovators, still, readings of Plato and Aristotle are kept from being perennial by occasional short stories and such things as a Japanese Noh play, a novel of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and periodic chats on paintings; and no one seems to mind a Montaigne essay or Moliere play every so often. Thus we muddle on, guided by the most persistent and present souls, only sure of the variety of the readings. The next one could be a deconstructionist assault, furious but ultimately self-vitiating, on the theoretical foundations of Western intellectual tradition and, by implication, St. John's College; but there is an equally good chance that the reading will be, say, the Meno, and a tutor, young or old, will cast us back to our student days with the familiar, yet ever new question, "So, can virtue be taught?" • Coming in the Alumni Association News in the spring /issue of The Reportera special thank you to Betsy Blume for her many yea rs of service to the college and the association. �0%10¥4:%.'!<J Wiiii~~ ~Ill ~I Alumni Internet Discussion Group on the Move by Mark Middlebrook A s predicted in the previous /-\Alumni Newsletter, the alumni Internet mailing list discussion group has moved. Thanks to Rich Green, SF87, who hosted the list on his server at Stanford for almost three years. Mr. Green is soon to receive his PhD from Stanford, at which time he will exchange the perquisite of an Internet server for the title of "Doctor." Fortunately for us, Bill Fant, A79, agreed to host the alumni list, and has been doing so since December. The new address for sending messages is johnny@charm.net. The new address for subscribing and unsubscribing is majordomo@charm.net. In Internet parlance, a "mailing list" is an automated mechanism for conducting a discussion among a group of people via ordinary e-mail messages. Software on the mailing list server (a computer connected to the Internet) automatically "reflects" a\\ messages sent to the list to each of the l•st's subscribers. There is no charge for subscribing to a mailing list, beyond any normal charges you pay for sending and receiving email. The mailing list for St. John's alumni has evolved into an electronic coffee shop in which alumni discuss all manner of subjects, whether related to St. John's or not. A list participant sometimes will subscribe johnny-digest to the Internet address suggest a book for discussion, and if enough assents are voiced, the majordomo@charm.net. This text must be in the body of the message. suggester will schedule a date on which to post an opening question. From that time forward, you'll The ensuing electronic seminar receive all the public messages unfolds unpredictably, sometimes from other alumni. You use the falling flat and sometimes inspiring majordomo address only for wide-ranging and fruitful conversainstructing the mail server in how to treat you. To send a public message tion. As in the real coffee shops in Annapolis and Santa Fe, the alumni to other alumni who are subscribed mailing list is an _,.._ _ _ _; , to the list, send it to ::.. 1 johnny@charm.net. unholy mix of high and low, inspired musing and juvenile If you later decide to :ii, end your participation in ranting, warm humor ~ the mailing list, send a and occasional heated exchanges. message that says: List subscribers unsubscribe johnny-digest to receive perhaps 10 majordomo@charm.net. messages per day on average. By default, these messages If you want more detailed instrucare bundled into one or more tions, send the message: "digests" for the sake of convehelp nience. The Page Down and Delete to majordomo@charm.net. keys on your computer keyboard are effective filters when the Mr. Fant also continues to host conversation drifts below your threshold of interest. Page Down is the Unofficial Alumni Home Page on the World-Wide Web. Its address is analogous to walking to a different corner of the copy shop. Delete http://www.charm.net/-bfant/ allows you to shut off the chatter johnny/johnny.html, and it currently includes a small but growing completely and return to your dorm directory of alumni who've asked to room for some peace and quiet. be listed, links to The Gadfly, To subscribe to the alumni mailing list, compose an e-mail Alumni Newsletters, and essays by message that says only: current and past deans. • ~ '> CHAPTER CONTACTS Please call those listed below for information about alumni adivities in each area. ALBUQUERQUE: Harold M. Morgan, Jr. (505)256-0294 NEW YORK: Steven Sedlis (212)289-1662 PHILADELPHIA: Jim Schweidel (610)941-0555 ANNAPOLIS: Thomas Wilson (410)263-2121 PORTLAND: Elizabeth Skewes (505)984-6103 AUSTIN: Homayoon Sepasi (512)416- 17 64 BOSTON: Alvin Aronson (617)566-6657 BUFFALO/ROCHESTER/TORONTO: Hank Constantine (716)586-5393 CHICAGO: Amanda Fuller (312)347-7099 or Rick Lightburn (847)475-7762 DALLAS/FORT WORTH: Suzanne Doremus (817)4968571 or Jonathan Hustis (214)340-8442 SACRAMENTO: Arianne Laidlaw (916)362-5131 or Helen Hobart (916)452-1082 SAN FRANCISCO/NORTHERN CALIFORNIA: Cynthia Kay Catherine Hobgood (415)552-9349 SANTA FE: John Pollak (505)983-2144 or Elizabeth Skewes (505)984-6103 SEATTLE: Jim Doherty (206)937-8886 LOS ANGELES: Margaret Sheehan (310)208-2013 MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL: Glenda Eoyang (612)7837206 or (612)379-3924 (W) WASHINGTON, D.C.: Sam Stiles (301 )424-0884 or Bill Ross (301 )320-4594 �\ 0 rnr 0 l { " t t r ~ :; '101ml 1 8 lllttH~i'1211 IB !~ Alumni Notes ... 1933 Henry Shryock, Henry Clay Smith ('34), John O'Donnell ('35) and Roland Bailey ('35) attended together the 1996 reunion in Annapolis in September. 1944 Carl S. Hammen is now teaching General Biology at Manatee Community College in Bradenton, Florida. He started teaching freshman biology at Mitchell College in Statesville, North Carolina, in 1949. "What progress! Will keep doing it until I get it right," he says. 1949 The Rev. Fred P. Davis has recently self-published a 200-page book about_ his 27 years of full-time ministry in town and country churches, including nearly ten years among Indians on two reservations. Copies cost $10. Fred's home address is 39-360 Peterson Road., Sp. 99/Rancho Mirage, CA 92270, telephone: (619)324-7172. 1951 William T. Roberts II writes: ''After retiring from the U.S. Marine Corps, the U.S. Department ofJustice, and the Metro Dade County Police, I was happy traveling, writing, and lecturing. Now, I discover I own three sloops, and am president of Far Horizons Offshore Sailing School and Charter Service. I offer big discounts to St. Johnnies. (305)944-8606." John Horne and wife Anne celebrated 53 years of marriage in November. He writes: "Whatever judgement, patience and love sustained this marriage had its foundation in the program 1947-1951." 1961 Harrison J. Sheppard writes to say that he has been named a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation: "an unexpected honor that may materially assist my efforts to help affect positive changes in American legal practice and legal education." 1968 Rick Wicks (SF) and his wife, Ellinor, have been living in Sweden for the past four years. Their second child, Hendrik, was born two years ago, and their daughter, Linnea, is six and is in preschool. Ellinor, who is Swedish, is at home with the children. Rick says that both children are bilingual and that he is "slowly'' learning Swedish, "besides studying economics and working in the economics department at Goteborg University, planning eventually to write a Ph.D. thesis." He also edits reports for the World Bank and Sida (Swedish foreign aid), and wrote a report for Sida entitled "Used Clothes as a Development Aid: The Political Economy of Rags," which focuses on whether Sida should subsidize used clothing exports by non-governmental organizations. His first published work in economics appeared in the December issue of Development Policy Review. 1969 Jonathan Sackson (A) says hello to all his St. John's friends and classmates. 1970 Edward Macierowski (A) is an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas. His new book, Thomas Aquinas's Earliest Treatment ofthe "Divine Essence" will be published in May, 1997. 1971 Vicky Manchester (SF) is a second-grade teacher at Helen Hunt Elementary School in Colorado Springs, Colo. 1972 Rev. Dr. Twyla Susan (Fort) Werstein (SF) has immigrated to Dunedin, Otago, New Zealand, where she serves as a Presbyterian minister and teaches bioethics and religion part-time at the university and medical schools there. Her husband, Paul, teaches computer science at the university. Their younger daughter, Claire, 13, is enrolled in a British-style, all-girl secondary school; and their older daughter, Amethyst, 26, is finishing her medical degree this year and beginning her residency in pediatrics. They welcome any Johnnies visiting "Kiwi-land" to e-mail them for information at werstein@es.conz. 1973 Bob Hampton (SF) and his wife, Lisa Attleson, have joined a private law practice in Wichita Falls, Texas. He says that Lisa was working with legal services for the poor for the past l 0 years and he was doing the same for the past 15 years, "but the combination of'New Democrats' and old Republicans has at last driven us out. We'd welcome any referrals or just friendly contacts. As for what sorts of cases we'll take: We'll eat what we kill." He repor~s that in the past year and a half they've seen Steve Goldman, Bill Blount, Kit Callender, Larry Dutton and Gary Wolfe, all classmates from Santa Fe's Class of 1973. They've also stayed in contact with Rick Griffin (SF70), Maria Kwong (SF73) and Eric Springsted (SF73). "They all remain wonderful, despite various vicissitudes, and life (if one ignores galloping facism) remains good. Come down and see us sometime; my girls (Kaitlin, almost 11, andAngela, 8) are worth the trip, whether we are or not." Richard Cohen (SF) is a journalist in Decatur, Ga., specializing in "the healthcare and pizza industries." He is the editor of Healthcare Marketing Report and Physician Referral and Health Information Update. He also writes for Pizza Today magazine. He says he credits "much of my success in journalism to the questioning and analytical skills learned at St. John's." 1974 Jon Hunner (SF) completed his Ph.D. in history at the University of New Mexico and is now working at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, where he is a history professor and director of the public history program. He reports that his wife, Mary Ellen, and his son, Harley, are enjoying life in Las Cruces. Roger Burk (A) retired from the Air Force last summer and went to work for Science Applications International Corporation, doing operational analysis for defense and intelligence community customers. "In short, I'm a 'Beltway Bandit,' " he says. Theodore Wolff (A) writes: "I have a new partner and a new company name: Wolff Clements and Associates. Our firm of seven landscape architects and one architect (my wife, Peggy) was the landscape architect for the just completed State Street renovation in Chicago." Ed Myers (A) called to say thank you to all who have e-mailed him recently and sent support during his illness. He says, however, that his computer was stolen at Christmastime and so he has no e-mail capability and cannot respond until he gets a new machine. 1975 Wendy I. Wills (SF) recently completed a job with the Cuyahoga w~.~'w nea/J, ll~ (X9.#W, ~ td:Jd, fflR, ·~ #Uf' lad,~ in Ute cka,nd, ~.V~~ o(r Ute ~ ofr Ute jnlt. alum+u U rme County Bar Foundation as a founder, grant-writer and Initial Director of a Juvenile Court Custody Mediation Program, serving indigent unmarried parents fighting over their children. Now she is the Initial Director of the Legal Assisting Technology (paralegal) Program at Kent State University in East Liverpool, Ohio. She writes: "I still remerrtber the Annapolis Friday night lecture/symposium in the spring of 1972 about student protests and college responses to the bombing of Cambodia." 1977 Bob McMahan (SGI) is teaching at The College of New Jersey, with "lots of projects in the works." His wife, Anne (SGI78), is teachingatThe Pennington School "and enjoys it very much." They would love to hear from other Graduate Institute students. 1978 Randall Rothenberg (A) and his wife, Sue Roy, after a year-and-a-halfin Europe have moved back to New York City. He writes: 'Tm back at Esquire, and Sue's back at Conde Nast, and all is well (if familiar)." Mark Fabi (A) has sold his book WYRA1 to Bantam. It should appear in bookstores as a trade paperback around mid- to late-1997. Roberta Rusch (A) was married on Christmas Eve to Le Gable, so she's now Roberta Gable, a name, she notes, with fewer consonants in a row. 1979 Carol Colatrella (A) writes: I'm giving a paper on Moby Dick at the Israeli Association ofAmerican Studies in Jerusalem, and anticipating the second birthday of my son Charlie. I teach at Georgia Tech and my husband, Rich Denton, teaches music at Kennesaw State University and Agnes Scott College, and we encourage Charlie's interests: drumming and building sandcastles." Ronald Dorris (SGI) has been named director of the African-American studies program at Xavier University of Louisiana in New Orleans. Dorris joined the faculty at Xavier last year as an associate professor in the English department, and he is one of five Mellon authors on campus. He has taught at the UniversityofNotre Dame, the University of Nebraska, Tulane University, and Talladega College. He was a 1992-93 Lilly Teaching Fellow at Notre Dame. His poetry and prose have appeared in the Louisiana English journal, The Griot and American Poetry Anthology. His scholarly works have appeared in the Western Journal ofBlack Studies and Perspectives ofBlack Popular Culture. In addition to his master's degree from St. John's, he has a bachelor's degree from Xavier, a master's degree from Boston �University, and a doctorate from Emory University. 1982 Pattie P. Swift (SF) and her husband, Dean, announce the birth of their second child, Dean Edwin Swift, on July 4, 1996. Their daughter, Lindsay Ann, is four years old. Pattie is a Costilla County judge and Dean is growing wildflowers for seed production. "We would enjoy visiting with any Johnnies who find themselves in our southern Colorado neighborhood," Pattie says. Gail Donahue Storey (SGI) has had her second novel, God's Country Club, selected as one of the top 20 books in the nation by Barnes & Nob le for their "Discover Great New Writers" program. Her first novel, The Lord's Motel, is now available in paperback. William C. Hecht (SF) married Katherine Page Spivey on Oct. 8, 1995, at an Alexandria Friends Meeting. He received a master's degree in humanities from California State University at Dominguez Hills in December 1995. His thesis is entitled, "Gilgamesh and Hippolytus: An Archetypal Explora- tion." He and Katherine live in Dahlgren, Va. Nathan Rosen (A) and Leslie Smith Rosen (A) are amicably divorced and have been sharing custody of Marielle (12),Alyssa (9), and Samuel (5). The children alternate weeks at each home. Leslie has custody of the cat. Leslie is the Middle School Head of the Krieger Schechter Jewish Day School, and lives at 205 Sudbrook Lane, Baltimore, MD, 21208, phone (410)653-1087. Nathan teaches English at Wilde Lake High School in Columbia, Maryland. This past summer he directed "As You Like It" at the Ellicott Theatre in Ellicott City. Nathan's address is 7906 Stevenson Road, Baltimore, MD 21208, phone (410) 6 5 3-6421, which he shares with Dr. Roberta Babbitt, a behavioral psychologist at the Kennedy Krieger Institute. They also have a puppy named Coco. 1983 Kimber K. Richter (A) received a Fulbright fellowship to study abroad for the 1996-1997 academic year. She is a doctoral candidate in human development and family life at the University of Kansas. She will investigate substance abuse treatment and prevention in Australia at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at the Australian National University in Canberra. Roxanne Seagraves (SF) is a doctoral student at the Graduate Theological Union at the University of California, Berkeley. She is studying the history of religions and cultural studies. "My current projects are highly esoteric and I compensate with stilt walking and storytelling. The more things change, the more they remain the same,'' she writes. 1984 Sue Price (A) is engaged to be married to Bob Gavrich on March 22, 1997 in San Francisco. She's working as a Technology Resource Teacher at Benjamin Franklin Middle School, a public school in San Francisco. Bob is a self-employed investment adviser. 1985 Tiffany Jan (SF) and her husband, Utzi, announce the birth of their daughter, Winnifred Claire, on Sept. 3. Jeffrey Wilson (A) is assistant professor of philosophy at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. He teaches Kant (all three Critiques!) ethics, the philosophy of art, and ancient Greek philosophy. He also serves, in a volunteer capacity, as public affairs director for radio station KXLU-FM, hosting a broadcast called Off-Center. The highlight of the 30-odd segments he has produced to date of this public interest interview show has been a 40minute interview with Franklin Sonn, Ambassador of South Africa to the U.S. Other guests on Off-Center have included former gang members from South Central, residents of the World War II Japanese-American internment camps, and counterculture guru Terence McKenna. Jeffrey invites Johnnies to contact him at (310)338-1856 or at his email address: jwilson@lmumail.lmu.edu. Anna Davis (A) writes: "In addition to maintaining my private practice, I am now an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland School of Law, teaching family law in the Clinical Law Program. My son, Aaron (featured in the Alumni Association Mailer) is now two and a half-and my greatest joy! I'd love continued on page 20 SANTA FE' s SuMMERALUMNI PROGRAM & HOMECOMING 1997 MIXING SEMINARS WITH SIMPLY CATCHING UP F. rom the enduring novels of Edith Wharton and Henry James to some of the great books of the 20th century to a celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Graduate Institute, this year's Summer Alumni Program and Homecoming Weekend will have something for everyone. Whether you come back to Santa Fe to attend a seminar on The Age of Innocence or just to see former classmates and good friends, you can start making your plans to be in Santa Fe for the Summer Alumni Program, which runs Pablo Collins, SF16, gets a hug from a classmate at Santa Fe's 1996 Homecoming. Looking on are Chris Graver and Khalil Ayoub, both from the class of 1976. from July 13 to 18 and July 20 to 25, and for Homecoming Weekend, which will be held on July 18, 19 and 20. Homecoming Weekend will feature special activities for the 1997 reunion classes-the classes of 1972, 1977, 1982, 1987 and 1992-including reunion class seminars and dinners. This year will also feature a few events to mark the 30th anniversary of the opening of the Graduate Institute in Santa Fe. The college would like to welcome back all Graduate Institute alumni to help mark this momentous occasion. The Summer Alumni Program also promises some interesting events, including field trips in northern New Mexico and a chance to attend the Santa Fe Opera. More importantly, however, the Summer Alumni Program is a chance to spend a week with some favorite tutors and favorite books in a focused series of seminars. The first week of the Summer Alumni Program, "Life in an Innocent Age," will examine the writings and film adaptations of works by Edith Wharton and Henry James, including Wharton's novel The Age ofInnocence.Tutors for the first week, which runs from July 13 through July 18, include Dean Eva Brann, Nancy Buchenauer, and Janet Dougherty. The second Summer Alumni Program week, which begins July 20 and runs through July 25, will focus on some of the great works of the 20th century, working from a list of books that was suggested by some of the finest scholars and political figures of our time. The list was honed by the St. John's College faculty, and includes works by Jorge Luis Borges, WE. B. DuBois, Albert Einstein and Max Weber. The program week, which is being coordinated by several Santa Fe tutors, will feature seminars on short essays or selections by authors including Borges, DuBois, Weber, Edmund Husserl and Leo Strauss. A brochure about Homecoming and the Summer Alumni Program will be mailed to all members of the reunion classes in March. Those of you who are not in a reunion class, but would like to receive the brochure, should fill out the form below and mail it to: St. John's College, Alumni Office, 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87501. • r------------------------1 I I I I I I I I I I ! I I I _ _Yes, I would like to receive a brochure and registration materials for the 1997 Homecoming and Summer Alumni Program in Santa Fe. Name: Class Year: Home Address: --------~----------------------------------- Phone: E-mail Address: - - - - - - - - - - - - L------------------------~ �2 0 THE REPORTER. Alumni Notes ... THE FARMER IN THE VIDEO BIZ Lyn Cronin DesMarais (A84) has, with four other women in her family, made a children's video on dairy farming. Set in her home in central Massachusetts, it blends education with humor as Geraldine, a cow, tells you all about her life on a farm. She also shows you how hard "her Farmer" works to provide food for her. "My grandmother (80), mother (60), sister, and I wanted to make a good, funny video with entertaining music that kids will watch repeatedly. So far it has succeeded. Kids have been delighted with the contrast between the farmers who use tractors and huge equipment and other farmers who still use draft horses for farm work." Lyn says that she will donate to St. John's a portion of profits from the sales to Johnnies of"Hey, That's My Hay." To order call (800)273-6648 or send a check to Farmer Small Productions, 1200 Hardwick Road, New Braintree MA 01531. The cost is $19.95 plus $1.00 Massachusetts sales tax and $3.50 s/h. to hear from Johnny friends. My e-mail address is adavis@umab.law.edu. The Habit ofThought: From Socratic Seminars to Socratic Practice, by Michael Strong (SF), has just been published by New View Publications of Chapel Hill, NC, 1-800-441-3604. Grant funding from the Still Water Foundation and the Lazarus Foundation established a Center for Socratic Practice at the Judson Montessori School in San Antonio with Mike as full-time director. The Center provides training and program development in Socratic Practice for public and private school clients. Socratic Practice cultivates intellectual and social virtues in order to develop sophisticated reading skills in a group context. A two-hour program on Socratic Practice produced by TI-IN Network, the nation's largest distance-learning network, was broadcast to 100,000 educators in December. Mike can be reached at 210I 344-31176 or michael@tenet.edu. Homer (8) and Jemima (4) Strong enjoy learning at the Judson Montessori School, which is led by Jim Judson (SFGI95) and staffed by Nevitt Reesor (SFGI95). Mike's wife Molly Mechau Strong (SF84) is working as a freelance journalist and editor, substitute teacher, mother, and poet. 1988 Jeff Smith (A) has taken the position of Library Director at the Walnut Hill School for the Arts in Natick, Mass. It's an arts high school for grades 9-12; students study dance, theater, music, and art. The library has 10,000 volumes and is a unique collection of arts resources. He and his wife, Natasha, want to announce the birth of their second son, Gabriel Zackary, on November 10. They also have a two-year-old son, Theodore Roman. 1989 Margaret Lamb is at the London School of Economics working on a master's in Philosophy of the Social Sciences. ljter email address is M.A.Lamb@lse.ac. uk. Brian Good (A) will host another black-tie soiree in the Great Hall on Saturday, April 19th as a benefit for the SJC gymnasium. For more information, e-mail b-good@sjca.edu or call (410)268-9173. Michael P. Cassady (SGI) married Kathleen Sabo in September 1996. The couple spent their honeymoon in Italy and now live in Albuquerque, N.M. 1990 Danilo Marrone (SF) is working on a Ph.D. thesis at Lund University in Sweden on the history of books and libraries. He is researching a collection called the Bibliotheca Walleriana, a famous collection of books and manuscripts dealing with the history of medicine and science that was donated to Uppsala University by Dr. Erik Waller in 1950. The collection includes first editions ofVesalius, Harvey, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Newton. He has a master's degree in the history of science from Uppsala University and teaches business English at EF Corporate in Stockholm. His mailing address is: Solbergsv. 51, 2 floors, 168 66 Bromma, Sweden, and his phone number is (+46)8-28 42 68. William G. Culley (SF) is now in the last quarter of a psychology internship at Ohio State University. He writes: "The hours are long, hut I'm learning a lot. I often think of St. John's and tell friends and strangers that while it's not for everyone, it is the best education in America. You, my tutors and friends that I have not spoken to, I carry you with me and would like to be wealthier so that I could donate cases of vintage wine each year for a festival to celebrate this awe-full tragicomedyoflife as a token of my appreciation for you, and to facilitate the reawakening of the Old Gold, who is forever a newcomer. Well, I don't have the funds now, but who knows what the future holds." William can be reached at 9 East3rdAve.,Apt. B, Columbus, OH 43201. His phone number is (614)298-0703. 1991 Bert Kiessling, Jr (AGI) was appointed director of alumni services for Archbishop Spalding High School in Severn, Md. Alexandra Edelglass Stockwell (A) writes that her daughter, Josephine Elizabeth, "was born at home on Sunday, September 29, 1996. Present were my husband Rodd, a midwife, and a labor assistant. She weighed 9 and a half pounds. When born, both her eyes were open and she arched her neck to look around. Her expression was totally peaceful, despite an extremely long and intense labor. She is a joy to be around." Kelly Koepke (SF) received her MBA with a concentration in non-profit management from the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis, Minn. 1992 Catherine Bauer (SGI) returned from Japan in February 1996 after three years of teaching English there. She recently moved from the San Francisco Bay area to Seattle to take care of her new granddaughter, who was born to her son, Karel Bauer (A88) and his wife, Nancy Harriss-Bauer (A85). Catherine says she would be glad to talk to any Johnnies who are interested in teaching in Japan. Mary Beth Brady (SGI) is not working on an MBA at the University of Chicago, as reported in the fall issue of The Reporter. She is on maternity leave with her son, Ambrose, who was born in June 1996. She and her husband, Blase Bickett, are both teachers in the Santa Fe public school system. Editor's note: We apologize for the error in the fall issue. Simon Bone (SF) received a master's degree in journalism from Northwestern University in Chicago in 199 3 and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in history at Viadrina University in Frankfurt, Germany. 1993 Dan W. Burin (SGI) is a Ph.D. student in the education school at the University ofVirginia. Prior to 1996, he spent a year studying at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and two years working in Denmark. He and his wife, who is Danish, would welcome calls from any Johnnies who are interested in finding out more about Israel, Denmark _or-the University of Virginia. They can he reached at 6 Copeley Hill, Apt. 1, Charlottesville, VA 22903. Their phone number is 804-977-1959. Alex and Vanessa Ellerman (A) have a new addition to their family-Mr. Bond, a 100 lb. Alaskan Malamute. "He's gorgeous!", they report. Brian Good (A89 and 93) will host another black-tie soiree in the Great Hall on Saturday, April 19th as a benefit for the SJC gymnasium. For more information, email b-good@sjca.edu or call (410)268-9173. 1994 Sarah Liversidge (A) is enrolled in the Masters ofArchitecture program at University of Illinois at Chicago. "It's an exciting program that's consuming ALL my time. And, for the little time left, there are plentyofJohnnies at University of Chicago," she says. Yvonne Belanger (A) has joined the faculty of the Middle School at Dana Hall School in Wellesley, Mass. She will teach math to sixth, seventh, and eight graders. She will also serve as faculty moderator of the Math Art Club and a member of the Dana Hall Technology Committee. 1995 Micah Pharris (A) has begun firstyear studies at The Dickinson School of Law. Tracey L. Werner (SF) is teaching full time at Atheneum Middle School in Alaska with Lydia Ossorgin (SF77) and Kevin Holthaus (SF83). She says she is "loving bringing to life the Great Books with students from the seventh to ninth grades." 1996 Susan Mittler (SF) is living in Portland, Ore., and is taking classes in quilting and surface design. She says she is "adjusting fairly well and enjoying life." Steven L. Wolford (SGI) completed the Eastern Classics program in August and says he "thoroughly enjoyed it. I highly recommend leaving your job to read for a year." The Reporter wants to hear your news! Contad us any way, by phone, mail, email, carrier pigeon-here are our addresses: In AnnapolisThe Reporter, Public Relations Office, St. John's College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404 phone: (410)626-2539 e-mail: bgoyette@mailhost.sica.edu In Santa Fe-The Reporter, Alumni Office, 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87501 phone: (505)984-6103 e-mail: eskewes@shadow.stiohns-nm.edu �Obituaries and memoria... Richard M. Ryan Hall R.M.R. Hall, Associate Professor at the Department of Linguistics, Queens College of CUNY, died in Mineola, New York, on November 11, 1996. He received his BA in German and classics from Johns Hopkins in 19 5 3 and a PhD in Linguistics from New York University in 1967. In addition to teaching at Queens College, he had also taught at City University of New York, was a Fulbright scholar at the University of Bayreuth, Germany, and had taught in Sudan and Venezuela. By training, Mr. Hall was a historical linguist and an Indo-Europeanist. Later in his academic career, he developed expertise in the structure of the Nilotic group of languages ofAfrica. According to his classmate Philip Lyman (A53), Mike Hall attended St. John's for one year but always thought of himself as a St. Johnny and returned for several reunions. Mr. Hall is survived by two daughters, a son, and two grandchildren. Richard Cunningham Richard Cunningham (AGl89), a professor of journalism at New York University, died in November 1996 in Philadelphia. Mr. Cunningham was the first ombudsman for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. He had also been a reporter for the paper. Since 1986 he taught at New York University, specializing in press ethics. He also served as associate director of the National News Council in New York City. Survivors include his wife, three sons, three daughters, and five grandchildren. She graduated from Springbrook High School in Silver Spring, Md. Survivors include her mother, father, and a sister. Marion Borsodi Robert Nichols Marion Borsodi, a long-time member of the Caritas Society and friend of the college, died in September 1996. A librarian for more than 50 years, she was the first librarian at Annapolis High School, worked for General Motors Corporation in New York and in Detroit establishing their specialized libraries, and also became a librarian at the Naval Academy Library after returning to Annapolis in 1966. In addition to the Caritas Society; she volunteered for the YWCA bookstore and the Auxiliary ofAnne Arundel Medical Center, sangwith the Annapolis Choral Society, and participated in the Colonial Players and the King William Players. Surviving are her daughter, Lorna Borsodi Cahall, who attended St. John's (A59), three grandchildren (including Sean, A83), and one greatgrandchild. A memorial service was held at the college in September. Robert Nichols (A48) died of cancer in San Francisco on September 30. Although he attended St. John's for only one year (1944-45), he was always an enthusiastic supporter of the college. After leaving St. John's, he joined the Washington bureau of the New York Herald-Tribune, which sent him to the South Pole with Admiral Byrd. Later he edited the house organ for Time-Life in New York. In 1953 he returned to his native California, where he was a freelance writer. He completed a volume of poems shortly before his death. He is survived by his wife Diana and three children from a previous marriage. Vikki Lianne Moritsugu Vikki Moritsugu, who attended St. John's (class ofl996 in Annapolis) and the U niveristy of Maryland at Baltimore, died September 6, 1996 in Fairfax, Virginia, ofinjuries suffered when she was struck by a car while crossing a street in Manassas. Ms. Moritsugu was born in San Francisco and had lived in Hawaii. -submitted by Bill Buchanan, A48 Paul Ollswang Paul Ollswang (A66), a cartoonist for several alternative newspapers in the Eugene, Oregon, area, died of heart failure in December. According to the Eugene Register-Guard, Mr. Ollswang never com-promised the ideals of the hippie era. His cartoons-which often depicted dogs- reflected his views. Mr. Ollswang was born in New York City, and after graduating from St. John's he moved to Oregon. He did graduate work in biology at the University of Oregon. Steve Hills, SF78, remembers him as "a terrific person, very original The Arts ... MARGARET LEFRANC BRINGS SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS OF ART TO SANTA FE'S GALLERY H er career in art has spanned three quarters of a century and took place in three countries. Now, for the second time, the St. John's College Art Gallery will feature the works of Santa Fe artist Margaret Lefranc. Her show, "Works on Paper," opened January 19, with a reception attended by Lefranc, and will continue through February 20. Lefranc, who was born in the United States, began her art studies in Berlin and Paris as a teenager, where she observed the beginnings of cubism, expressionism, and surrealism while attending the Ecole du Louvre and the Sorbonne. When the rise of Nazism made Europe unsafe, she returned to live in America and settled in the artist's mecca of 1930s New York There she founaed and directed the Guild Art Gallery, through which she helped introduce many talented artists. Lefranc first saw New Mexico in 1939 while visiting D.H. Lawrence and W H. Auden at the Lawrence Ranch in Taos. She lived in Nambe until 1956, editing and illustrating the books of Alice Marriott. The first of these, Maria: The Potter ofSan !Uefonso, won the 1948 American Institute of Graphic Arts/ Library of Congress "Fifty Best Books of the Year Award" for illustration. The book is still in print. Though she has lived in New Mexico for more than 50 years, a self-imposed seclusion has kept Lefranc from achieving the notoriety sought by other local artists. As she explains it, "My work does not shout." This show, displaying watercolors, etchings and monotypes, should serve as an introduction for many to her highly varied vision. Now in her 75th year as an artist, Lefranc resides in the east-side Santa Fe home she built herselfin the 1940s. She continues to work in oils and graphics, experimenting with the "marriage oflight with form, and its transformation into color... [to] free the canvas and paper from their limited boundaries." Lefranc's show will be followed in March with an exhibit ofWilliam Wright's photographs of the Kickapoo Noah Rodriguez Noah Rodriguez, the Santa Fe school teacher and 1985 Graduate Institute alumnus who was profiled in the fall issue of The Reporter, was murdered on October 13, 1996. He was originally reported to be missing, but police later learned from an informant that Mr. Rodriguez had been killed. His body was found on November l in a culvert south of Santa Fe. Police have made an arrest in the murder. A lifelong resident of Santa Fe, he was a teacher and educator for 20 years. He is survived by his parents, three brothers, and four sisters. A memorial service for Mr. Rodriguez was held in Santa Fe on November6. Indians. The exhibit will open with a reception on March 7 from 5 to 7 p.m. and will run through March 23. And late spring, the gallery will feature the annual student art exhibit, which will open April 4 and continue through April 22. For more information on any of the art gallery exhibits or the Fine Arts Guild, contact Ginger Roherty at (505)984-6099 . • -by Caroline Knapp, SFOO and creative, with a big heart." James G. Boss James Boss, class of1933, died on November 2, 1996. Mr. Boss was a lawyer who lived in Laurel, Md. He is survived by his wife, Lucy Boss, and daughter Ellen McKisson. Noted ... Hugh Mappin, A83, died on October 2, 1996. �Campus Life... EANUT BUTTER BLOOD & FFI Santa Fe's innovative ''Dracula'' ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• T he St. John's production of "Dracula," which played to good crowds in December in Santa Fe, showcased student creativity-not just acting ability. The driving forces behind the production were Scott Geib, a Graduate Institute student, and Josiah Mannion, a senior. Among other things, they scrambled to turn the Great Hall into a theater and to find innovative ways to transform scrap metal and a few yards of fabric into sets and costumes. It all started when Mannion showed up a few hours early for their regular Wednesday poker night, and Geib was reading a brand new script for "Dracula'' written by Stephen Dietz, a 1992 Santa Fe graduate. Mannion picked up the script and was captured by it. He and Geib talked about the script's possibilities late into the night. Junior Chris Reichman got caught up in the enthusiasm for the play and volunteered to be the set designer for the fledgling production. In a brief summary about the production, Mannion wrote: "We see a poignant depiction of the sensual and the intellectual, how they do and do not form parts of the whole .. .I wanted, in some way, to try and remain true to the human side of this. This means not portraying any one character as too perfect or too good, or even too evil... The story is, among other things, the story of the struggle to keep that which is deep within from surfacing and coming to life, in spite ofits life ... Truly this is a morality play in a rich, deep way. Above all, this is the story of the slowly crawling terror of a shimmering oflight, of truth, in a shadowy room-of the half-known, half-guessed." Dietz, the playwright, says that in order to make the play work "you need lots of blood and a great sound system." The students didn't have either. They considered buying the 16 gallons of stage blood that they would need for the six shows, but the cost was $1200 from a theater supply outlet; their entire production budget was just $1500. So they turned to the recipe books, cooking up stage blood out of food coloring, cornstarch, peanut butter, and mint. Why mint? For the taste, of course, since many of the characters have to keep the stage blood in their mouths. Innovation also was necessary when it Scott Geib (second from right) talks to Dancer Jensen-Starr (for right) during rehearsals for the production of "Dracula." Photo by Maria Giordano. came to the sets. Reichman took his crew to the local dumps to find supplies. Three discarded refrigerators became the foundation for the sets and a fourth became Dracula's coffin. Costumes were pulled together from thrift shops and second-hand stores. In one thrift shop Dancer Jensen-Starr (SF99), the costume director, saw the perfect dress for Lucy-just as another woman picked it up to buy it. JensenStarr told the woman that she planned to use it for the play. The woman bought it, but only to use as a Halloween costume. After that night, she donated it to the production. Other costume pieces, including Dracula's sweeping, black cape, were made by student volunteers. Jensen-Starr and her assistant, Penelope Benekos (SF99), had to choose the fabrics carefully, keeping in mind that the costumes had to be washed-to get rid of the stage blood-after each performance. Rixi Hyde (SFOO), who played Lucy, said Mannion and Geib complemented each other well with their different approaches to directing. "Scott is very organized and concerned with the technical side of things. He likes the blocking to be the same every time," Hyde said during the rehearsals. "Josiah is helpful, inspirational, comforting, but demanding. In one scene I had to writhe against a window. I thought, 'I can't do that,' but Josiah showed me how." Because the two directors had such a strong and unified vision for the play, the actors were enthusiastic about the production, despite being a little tired from all the late-night rehearsals. And despite the odds, the cast and the crew demonstrated through this successful production that a lack of money and supplies can be overcome with innovation, creativity, and determination. • ST SI LINGS FIND EACH OTHERAT SJC Clarence Wesley Alwan received his BA degree from St. john's in May 1993. That August, Jennifer Coonce crossed the stage at convocation to sign the college register. At the time, they had never met and were completely unaware of how much they had in common: Each had grown up in a blended family; each learned of St. John's from a parent who was greatly influenced by a college professor, Joseph Killorin (A47); each chose St. john's because of a love of books, a serious disposition, and a cherished idealism. And, though they didn't know it at the time, Wes and Jennifer are brother and sister. I Wes Alwan and Jennifer Coonce n the year after his graduation from St. John's, Wes Alwan was idly flipping through the campus directory when he came upon the name "Jennifer Coonce." He knew that before being adopted by his stepfather his last name had been Coonce, so seeing the name startled him. A few months later, his former classmate John Castro (A93) mentioned that he had helped Jennifer Coonce with her acting. Wes jokingly said, "You know, she may be my sister." That summer, Wes' mother phoned her former professor, Joseph Killorin, who had remained in contact with her ex-husband. Killorin updated her on the family: Wes' father had remarried and had a daughter named Jennifer who attended St. John's. Wes' mother called Wes to pass along the information, giving him his father's phone number. With great trepidation, Wes called his father. They exchanged some basic stories about themselves and their pasts, and Wes learned that he had three halfsiblings. Wes then spoke with Jennifer, who was home on break. "I was very impressed with what a nice person Jennifer turned out to be," says Wes. Jennifer remembers their conversation: "I kept telling him how excited I was, and how I was so happy that I finally could meet him." Wes arranged to meet his newfound family at a wedding in Texas, where he andJennifer had so much to say to one another they went for two nights with minimal sleep. "Within days I had gained a great friend as well as another big brother," says Jennifer. Since their initial meeting, the two have spoken regularly on the phone, exchanged frequent e-mail messages, and shared a winter, spring, and summer vacation. Aside from having St. John's in common, they've discovered a number of similarities. Jennifer says that both she and Wes are characterized by their softspoken manners and serious demeanors. Wes says that they have similar levels of sensitivity, stubborness about certain things, and basic idealism. As they've gotten to know each other, their relationship has been exposed to the true test of siblinghood: fighting. "We fight a lot," Jennifer says. "We fight as ifwe grew up together,'' adds Wes. The two speak almost sentimentally of their disagreements, which neither see as any threat to their long-term relationship. "We'll definitely always be close," says Wes. "When we first met there was an immediate kinship. It was like meeting someone who you know is going to be a good friend right from the beginning. But when you meet someone like that and it's your own half-sister, that's really a great experience." • -by Sus3an Borden �The Program... THE Sr. foHN's REvIEw.AN A-TYPICAL JOURNAL ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• by Barbara Goyette a way ofthinking John's? Read the college's own version of an that's an academic journal op quiz: How are Plato's Meno, the electric eel, and Michael Faraday connected? Answer: Tutor Howard Fisher gave a lecture, later reprinted in the St. John's Review (Vol. XLI, number 1, 1991-92), in which he examined the question of whether Socrates as the torpedo fish stung himself when he stung his interlocutors. The question was a sidelight to an examination of Faraday's experiments on the electric and magnetic properties ofliving beings. You wouldn't typically find this combination of subjects in any scholarly journal. That's because the St. John's Review, published twice a year in Annapolis, is not a typical academic journal. As immediate past editor Elliott Zuckerman says: "What I looked for were interesting articles that had some connection to the St. John's program, articles that would not find their way into scholarly journals and didn't require keeping up with secondary sources." The Review doesn't require a specific point of view from its contributors. Most essays do not follow scholarly conventions in footnotes and bibliography. But neither is the Review popular journalism with its "easy generalization P and simplification" (as its editorial policy states). It is a mix oflectures or reworkings oflectures, thoughtful papers, essays, bookreviews, occasional poetry and fiction, and translations. "The Review is supposed to represent the sort of thinking that St. John's encourages," says current editor Pamela Kraus. "It's a publication for a reading public." Traditional academic scholarship consists of a body of knowledge that scholars in the field need to know and try to add to. "But that approach looks at only part of the picture," says Ms. Kraus. "It's as if you were looking closely under a microscope. Yes, you can see things you can't see with the naked eye, but you lose something. Often the human questions can get slighted or the wholeness of a book can recede when you are too concerned with over-specialized inquiries." Essays in the Review, on the other hand, require the author to step back from this kind of examination. "Writers have to present evidence, to offer reasons by which they attempt to persuade," she says. Like the best, deepest kind of thinking that goes on for students of the college-and which it is hoped they will exhibit in their annual essays-essays in the Review draw on the program as a whole in their search for illuminating connections. Most contributors are tutors at the college or have some other connection to the program, but this is not a requirement. T he Review traces its origins to a magazine called The College, begun in 1969. Tutor Laurence Berns was the first editor. "The initial problem SENIORS STICKTO TRADITION FOR ESSAYS '"\VJhat makes a good senior essay topic? Freshmen, saturated with Socrates, might W think the key lies in a devotion to truth. Sophomores might be more likely to respond that faith is crucial; juniors that man's rational prowess rules all. But as the seniors in Santa Fe are working feverishly on this spring's essay, a glance at the topics chosen by seniors in recent years reveals which texts consistently hold the most fascination-the "Top Ten" of the Western classics. The undisputed overall winner is Plato, whose dialogues have generated, in the past five years, 26 senior essays. Shakespeare takes a distant second, with 16 essays, edging out Aristotle, who inspired a total of 14. Other favorites include Kant (12), Marx (11), and Tolstoy (1 O). However, when the focus turns to single works, the picture shifts. Now Kant and Tolstoy, both also-rans in the author comparison, and Cervantes, Flaubert, and Milton come from behind to create a five-way tie for the most popular single work. The titles that students selected were Critique ofPure Reason, war and Peace, Don Quixote, Un Coeur Simple, and Paradise Lost. Adam Smith's Wealth ofNations and Marx's Capital tied with four essays. The classic conflict between the Iliad and the Odyssey also settled in a draw, with three essays written about each. Freud, though a program author, failed to generate a single senior essay, but Jung, who is not on the program, produced one. Many students chose to eschew the literary scene completely, writing instead about music. Bach's "St. Matthew's Passion," and Mozart's "Don Giovanni" were each the was that they [the administration] wanted it to be a newsletter with campus news and they also wanted it to have substantive articles," he says. "I argued that the college should have a serious literary journal, with the kind of articles that might not be published elsewhere but would be ofinterest to a St. John's audience." In 1979 the campus news and alumni notes were moved to a new publication, the Reporter. Mr. Berns cites as an example of important material published in The College the transcription of a conversation between Jacob Klein and Leo Strauss called "A Giving ofAccounts." Other editors of The College included tutors Malcolm Wyatt and Beate Ruhm von Oppen. The College had a magazinesize format with a different cover each time, either a photograph, a reproduction of artwork, or an original drawing. The publication became the St. john's Review in 1980, with tutor Leo Raditsa as editor, followed by J. Walter Sterling. The St. john's Review gained its current six-by-nine inch size in 1988 when Elliott Zuckerman became editor. He also introduced crossword puzzles "in the classic British style-every due contains a definition and some sort ofword play." Although many thought Mr. Zuckerman made up the puzzles, he claims to have written only one. Most were set by Ann Martin, under the pseudonym of Cassandra. Articles for the Review are read by Ms. Kraus, who makes the ultimate decisions about contents, and by two other tutors. Book reviews are usually assigned. The current issue exemplifies Pamela Kraus is the current editor of the St. John's the variety of material carried: a lecture by tutor Eric Salem (A77) entitled "Sun and Cave," an essay on the films of Robert Bresson, Elliott Zuckerman's toast to the new Greenfield Library, and a translation by Pamela Kraus of a longignored piece by Andre Lalande that puts passages from Descartes' Discourse on Method side by side with passages from Francis Bacon. As Elliott Zuckerman says, when asked whether the Review is unique: "It's more uniquer than most journals." • subject of three essays, and Beethoven, Debussy, and Wagner each inspired one essay. Others students chose to brave the difficulties of writing about graphic art, and turned in essays about DaVinci, Titian, and the films of Fellini. Some students rejected seminar fare and wrote their essays about texts from the science and math tutorials. Darwin was the favorite in this category with four essays. Tied for second, spanning more than two thousand years of math and science, were the works of Einstein, Euclid, Goethe, and Liebnitz. Though the majority of papers stayed within the program, or within the works of program authors, some strayed into the realms of the "very modern," that is, works produced in the last half century; many were studied in preceptorial. So it was that books by William Faulkner and Gabriel Garcia Marquez were the subjects of as many essays as those by Thomas Aquinas and Chaucer. Lucretius, Plutarch, Epictetus, and St. Anselm found no favor with seniors casting their minds back for topic ideas. Also ignored were Berkeley's Principles ofHuman Knowledge, The Federalist Papers, Twain's Adventures ofHuckleberry Finn, and the poems of Paul Valery. This year the heavy hitters remain the same-Plato and Aristotle still lead the list for current seniors, with four proposing to write on the works by each author. Shakespeare also got the nod from four seniors, as did the Bible. There is a smattering of essays from the sciences, with Darwin and Kepler on the list; a few essays from political philosophy (Tocqueville andAbraham Lincoln); and several from literature, featuring works by Cervantes, Kafka, and Dostoevski. And, for a change of pace and a little comic relief, a half-dozen seniors say they will also be reading a few books by children's author Judy Blume for her insights on "crime and punishment." • -by Caroline Knapp, SFOO �2 4 Tl---IE REP©RTER WHERE WAS HEGEL HELP WHEN I NEEDED IT? ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• by Sus3an Borden L ife on the Annapolis campus looks positively posh to visiting alumni who remember how they had to tough it out "way back when." The gym has been upgraded. Ditto McDowell, the boathouse, and the conversation room. Senior enabling exams are abolished. The French exam is a thing of the past. "My goal is to keep students from going off in completely useless directions or pointless tangents during their seminars. " Retyping drafts of papers? I don't think so. On today's campus, the personal computer is king. And just when they are getting used to these changes, alumni are asked to absorb yet another painful innovation: Hegel Help. That's right. Hegel Help. Today's Johnny can now attend pre-seminar warm-up sessions on Hegel readings. "What happened to the good old days?" alumni might ask as they recall arriving at seminar awash in sentences like these: The universal Idea exists thus as the substantial totality ofthings on the one side, and as the abstract essence of free volition on the other side. This reflection of the mind on itselfis individual self comciousness-the polar opposite ofthe Idea in its generalform, and therefore existing in absolute Limitation. Tutor John Verdi, who conducted Hegel Help this year, elected to call it "Hegel Warm-Up," explaining that he wasn't sure he was capable of helping with such a difficult subject. "My goal is to keep students from going off in completely useless directions or pointless tangents during their seminars," he says. "I start with an overview of rhe reading and then I take questions." Out of concern that his warm-up sessions might detract from the seminar, Verdi keeps to a simple rule: "If it's a basic meaning question, we discuss it. If it's a seminartype question, I ask them to save it for seminar." Hegel Help is part of a growing network of academic assistance that helps students through the most difficult challenges of program life. Help is available on an occasional basis, through highlights such as "Kant Practice" and Mr. Zuckerman's annual Tristan lecture, and through four ongoing programs: language assistance, math assistance, music assistance, and writing assistance. The overwhelming majority of assistants in these programs are current students. Annapolis Dean Eva Brann explains that the help programs have their roots in the college's tradition oflearning through discussion. "Students have always worked together outside of class, but not all students feel that they have someone they can work with. This way we have students designated to fill in the gaps." While all of this sounds fine and dandy for current students, alumni reserve the right to grumble about the cushy life of"kids these days." They recall a time before the calculus manual, before the pocket calculator; a simpler time, perhaps a better time. They sigh and hold tight to their memories of the days when Greek, French, German, and Larin were on the program, when lab was four years instead of three, when the application demanded five essays, and when they trudged eight miles from Chase Stone to McDowell in the bitter, driving, Maryland snow. • Dale Mortimer, A75, is a child psychiatrist who also works with prisoners. tutor Leon Kass's example that inspired Dale Mortimer, A75. A student in Mortimer's sophomore biology lab class with Mr. Kass was depressed about a deteriorating romantic relationship. During a discussion ofwhether death is a process or an event, the student dramatically stacked his books together, stood up, said "It's a process," and left the room. Later, Mortimer saw Mr. Kass-a physician-knocking on the student's door to make sure he was OK. "That's the single event that made me think about medicine," says Mortimer. Today Mortimer is a doctor with a private practice in child psychiatry and also serves as the chief psychiatrist for the Oregon Department of Corrections. Mortimer took the job at the penitentiary when he finished his residency-as a stopgap until something better came along. Bur he found that the work fir nicely with his interest in child and adolescent psychiatry and once he established his private practice, he continued to work with the prisoners. He thinks he is one of only two doctors in the country with that unusual combination of specialties. It's the most difficult kids who end up seeing Mortimer, the last resort for parents after pediatricians, social workers, or counselors have failed. "In my practice I have a number of teenagers who I fear might end up in prison. Working with the inmates, I have a better idea of what it rakes to be a crook, and when I see those characteristics in a teenager, I say to him: Unless you stop drinking and smoking dope and assaulting your parents and start going to school, you are going to prison." If the patient doesn't believe him, he rakes the teen, along with the parents, to the prison, and has an inmate listen to the parents' account of what their child has been doing. Then the inmate gives an assessment to the patient and his parents. "When they hear it from the inmates, they believe it," says Mortimer. Mortimer's private practice informs his work in the prison as well. "Many prisoners have disorders that started when they were children," he says. "For example, 25% of inmates have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (AD HD). They have a lifelong difficulty with impulsive behavior, which gets them involved in criminal behavior. Once in prison, they continue with that impulsiveness, become difficult to handle, and get put in the hole-solitary confinement. I can often identify their problem and treat it." Mortimer evaluates and treats an average caseload of about 30 patients in the special management unit, which draws from 14 prisons around the state. Before deciding on medical school, Mortimer had five years of trying "Plan B," as he says. He wrote his senior essay on Darwin and thought it would be fun to travel around the world as a naturalist. After graduation he volunteered as a naturalist's assistant on Long Island (where his family is from), but found that his interests didn't overlap with those in charge, who tended to be forestry majors who liked to "hunt, fish, and read outdoors magazines." Next he was offered a temporary job with the U.S. Forest Service in Oregon; while there he also volunteered at a low-income community health clinic, rode with the ambulance, and took first aid courses. When he decided to "take the $60,000, nine-year plunge" into medical school, he applied to Oregon Health Sciences University. Even though the admissions board had never heard of Sr. John's, they were impressed with the curriculum and accepted him. Mortimer notes that he had to rake several chemistry courses at the local college before enrolling, bur that "medical school itself was pretty easy after St. John's." By his fourth year, Mortimer knew psychiatry was where his true interest lay. Most of the prisoners he treats have at least five mental disorders, some more treatable than others. When asked about the relationship ·of mental disorders to criminal behavior, and whether his idea of evil has changed with this job, Mortimer skirts the issue. "We see the underside oflife, and it's not a pretty picture," he says only half-joking. "There are sharks out there, psychopaths who do not appear to have a conscience. They are not treatable; no one knows what to do with them." Drugs are a growing problem among the prison population; Mortimer says that some inmates he's seen have been misdiagnosed as psychotic because they acted paranoid or hallucinatory, when actually they had "massive polysubstance dependence." However, Mortimer draws comfort from his work with children, who have a "natural tendency to please the people important in their lives. When something significant is blocking that, they can get in trouble. Ifl can find it, their personalities are self-righting." Although Mortimer didn't count on sticking with the prison work, he has found that the two kinds of psychiatry can be natural companions-insights gained in each contribute to his ability to puzzle out problems in the other. • � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The St. John's Reporter</em> Description An account of the resource College newspaper which started publication in 1974. Continued publication into 2000. Includes primarily historical content.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The St. John's Reporter" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=35">Items in <em>The St. John's Reporter</em></a></strong> <span>to view and sort all items in the collection.</span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 24 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context vol 23 issue 2 Winter 1997 Title A name given to the resource Reporter, Volume 23 Issue 2 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997-01 Description An account of the resource Volume 23, Issue 2 of The St. John's Reporter. Published in Winter 1997. (Annapolis edition) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Public Relations Office Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Goyette, Barbara (editor) Skewes, Elizabeth (editor) Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf The Reporter https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/678cc3288e2be7c408041e3e5f0cf728.pdf 1826513107599cac5c4db6e8c1f044c3 PDF Text Text ST JOHN'S COLLEGE LIBRARY \\\IIllIllIIl31696 01138 2221'\\\\\\\\\\I \~~~~\\~\\\l\i\i1 \ ' SANTA FE LESSONS FROM THE PAST HOLD PROMISE FOR THE FUTURE Noted writers and scholars gathered in Santa Fe for a conference that considered the role of the past in determining our future ................ 9 GREAT MINDS CONSIDER THE GREAT BOOKS OF THE 20TH CENTURY Justice Stephen Breyer, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and Dan Rather were among those asked about the great books of this century............. 7 JOHNNY LAWYER WINS SUPREME COURT CASE Margaret Wimer, A66, took a case involving prisoners' rights to the U.S. Supreme Court and won a unanimous decision from the Court in March .......................................... .12 DEPARTMENTS FROM THE BELL TOWERS: A new book in progress will look at the life and work of Stringfellow Barr; a new Parents Association is at work in Santa Fe .................. 2 SCHOLARSHIP: A new guide to Newton's Principia by Dana Densmore, A65, gets solid reviews ................ 6 CAMPUS LIFE: Annapolis senior David Haber has gone from painting to power drills in his work-study job; students who transfer to St. John's from other schools say that it's worth losing a year or two of college credits .......................................... 13 ALUMNI ASSOCIATION NEWS: Time capsules on both campuses will reach out to alumni in 2096; Betsy Blume's tenure as alumni director in Annapolis is marked with many successes; election notices .......... 20 c ED~TION �NEWS FROM THE BELL TOWERS THE MANY FACES OF STRINGFELLOW BARR COMMUNITY SEMINARS IN ANNAPOLIS SPREAD THE ST. JOHN S WORD 1 ( >tringfellow Barr, who became pres'\. ident of St. John's when the New /Program was instituted in 1937, was a man with so many faces it's hard to know how to begin describing his activities. His field was history, but as he said, "A field is for cows." Y~s, he taught history at the University of Virginia, wrote four significant volumes on history, and reviewed many books for The New York Times and other . . Stringfellow Barr pu blicanons. He also wrote fiction (short stories and a novel); helped develop a radical approach to learning that challenged the higher education establishment of the 1930s and '40s; served as president of St. John's College; served as president of the Foundation for World Government; and spoke out on political and educational issues in a variety of forums. He was accused of being a communist, and he was praised for his insight, fearlessness, and unconquerable spirit. He fought the Navy and won; he wore green suits with holes in the pants; and he received letters from the British Prime Minister addressed "Dear Winkie." Barr "defied the departmental confines throughout his life," says Charles Nelson, FACULTY STUDY GROUPS TO READ ENGLISH PROSE Some questions addressed by the Joint Instruction Committee of tutors on both campuses during the past year have led to the formation of faculty study groups on each campus to read English prose. Six faculty members from each A45, who is drawing together a book of Barr's writings, letters, radio addresses, lectures and reviews. It will serve as a compani<?n volume to the book he edited last year, Scott Buchanan: A Centennial Appreciation ofHis Life and Work. Like the Buchanan book, the book on Stringfellow Barr will contain essays written about Barr and his work. These essays will be contributed by those who knew him at St. John's and in his other activities. Because Barr was such a prolific writer (as opposed to Buchanan, who taught and talked more often than he put words on paper) this volume will have much more of the subject's own work. Nelson is weaving Barr's writings together with commentary on his life written by others to illustrate the range of this extraordinary man's interests. In his research, Nelson has unearthed some surprising material. In a box of letters, photographs, and other papers given to the college by William Barr, A42 and Stringfellow's nephew, Nelson found the originai of a letter from Thomas Wolfe, written on Harvard Club stationery, to thank Barr for his favorable review of Look Homeward, Angel in the Virginia Quarterly Review. "Your proud words fill me with joy and triumph, and I no longer feel in any sense of the word an exile from my home earth," wrote Wolfe. Stringfellow Barr: A Centennial Appreciation ofHis Life and Work is due to be published by the St. John's College Press in early fall, in time for the dedication of the Barr-Buchanan Center on the Ill Annapolis campus. campus will meet weekly during the next academic year to choose English texts, study them, and try to develop exercises that will help students to read and better understand their own language. "The real problem is that we don't do enough close analysis of English prose," explains Annapolis Dean Eva Brann. The language tutorials include a lot of poetry, but the Instruction Committee agreed that students need to do more extended analysis. Studying examples of excellent writing will help students with their own w;iting, and it will foster better discussions of the nature of language. The way a St. John's seminar proceeds-with members of a group calmly and rationally discussing a subject and trying to come to terms with it-is decidedly different from the way most public discourse is carried on today. At community meetings, political debates, town meetings, school board forums and planning committees across the land, the discussion about issues often becomes polarized: one side presents its case, then the other side offers its opposing version. Some pundits even trace the negativism of the current political climate to the kind of rudeness and lack of civility in public discourse that results from polarization of the issues. What would happen if members of a community who were trying to come to grips with a thorny issue used the St. John's approach rather than the polarizing approach? So wondered some members of the Board of the Friends, a group of local Annapolis supporters of the college. A series of three community seminars on the theme "Working for the Common Good: Toward Civil Discourse in Public Affairs" is the result of their fascination with the St. John's discussion model. Held one night a month in February, March and April, the community seminars brought 60 participants to campus to experience first-hand how seminars work. Most of the community leaders and interested citizens who signed up had not been to a St. John's seminar before and many were unfamiliar with the college's program. The project was spearheaded by Kathy Dahl, an Annapolis lawy~r who is involved with planning and development issues in the city and Anne Arundel County. "People get so acrimonious in public debates," says Dahl. "We thought that if they experienced how people at St. John's talked with each other, that might carry over." The Community Seminars have two parts. For the first 45 minutes, a reading selection from a great book is discussed. Participants learn how to offer their opinions and how to listen to others' thoughts. Then the seminar participants are presented with a practical, contemporary problem-a "hot-button" issue. They discuss the problem, using the first hour's seminar as a model. At the end of a halfhour, they vote on the issue. The hope is that seminar members will recognize discussion as a useful tool for solving actual problems. Three tutors-Geoffrey Comber, Bill Pastille and John Christensen-chose the readings and the practicum questions for this series. The subject areas were: the common good, with a reading from de Tocqueville; moral education, with Horace Mann's "The Republic and the School"; and property rights, with Tolstoy's "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" Bl The Reporter (USPS 018-750) is published in April and October by the Public Relations Office, St. John's College, Santa Fe, NM, and in January and July by the Public Relations Office, St. John's College, Annapolis, MD. Known office of publication: Public Relations Office, St John's College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 214042800. The Annapolis and Santa Fe faculty groups will read speeches, essays and novels. Eventually, the selections and the exercises developed to examine them might trickle down into language tutorials, but now the effort is simply to have the faculty become more familiar with this type of writing and how it might be dealt with in a St. John's' kind of way. "This is as open-minded a venture as possible," Brann says. "We're also hoping that the Student Committee on Instruction will do something similar." Ill Second Class postage paid at Annapolis, MD, and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Reporter, Office of Public Relations, 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87501. SANTA FE: Elizabeth A. Skewes, editor; John Schroeder, assistant editor; Lisa Donenfeld, art director ANNAPOLIS: Barbara Goyette, editor; Sus3an Borden, writer; Roberta Gable, Eva Brann, John Christensen, Pamela Kraus, Benjamin Milner and Brother Robert Smith, advisory· board. �' 1n lCKGIACONA uuuu.u5 35-26 victory in front of a noisy contingent of faculty, staff and student faithful, St. John's College defeated a team called the Psychos to earn its first ever tide in Santa Fe City League Basketball in March. The success of the basketball team followed by a mere nine months a first championship captured by Johnnies in city league softball. Both teams consisted of faculty, staff, students and alumni, and were managed by player/ coach Brendan O'Neill, SF93, who began his tenure as Santa Fe's assistant director of student activities in August 1995. Sporting jerseys that said "Great Books" on the front and "No Gym" on the back, the SJ C basketball team took the court for the title game at Fort Marcy Sports Complex on March 2. A few inches of snow remained on the ground outside the gymnasium that day, which may account for the cold shooting by both teams to start the game. Around the 15-minute mark of the first half, with the Psychos leading 5-0, St. John's got a lift when O'Neill and tutor Leonard Ortmann entered the game. Quick buckets by Ortmann and freshman guard Adrian Lucia brought the Johnnies back to within one point. With six minutes left in the half, a three-point play by O'Neill gave the Johnnies their first lead, but the first half ended with the Harvey Flaumenhaft, a tutor at the college since 1968, has been appointed dean of the Annapolis campus. He will assume the office in June when Eva Brann retires from the deanship, which she has held since 1990. After a sabbatical year, Brann plans to return to teaching. Flaumenhaft received his bachelor's The Great Books -Santo Fe's championship basketball team -consisted of: (back row) Jeff Huggins, SF97; Leonard Ortmann, tutor; Charles Brunn, SG186; Evon Skladnany, SF98; (front row) Adrian Lucia, SFOO; Torek Solem, SF99; player/coach Brendan O'Neill, SF93; and Shawn Watts, SFOO. Photo by Nick Giocono Psychos leading the Great Books, 11-10. (No jokes about the superiority of "madness" over "intellect," please.) The second half began with two degree in 1960, his master's degree in 1962, and his doctorate in 1980 from the University of Chicago, all in political CONT. ON PAGE 13 Harvey Floumenhaft, oMor ot Annapolis since 1968, hos been selected os the new dean for that campus. Photo by Keith Harvey quick buckets by the Psychos and a timeout was called by coach O'Neill. Successive buckets by forward Charles Brunn, SGI86, and senior center Jeff Huggins brought the Johnnies back in the hunt once again. A turning point in the battle came with 12 minutes remaining in the game and the Johnnies still trailing by tvvo points. Within 30 seconds, Ortmann blocked a shot, got a rebound, and helped break the Psycho's full-court press. O'Neill soon connected on two freethrows and a lay-up-with a superb assist from sophomore point guard Tarek Salem-giving the lead back to the Johnnies. With good defense by freshman Shawn Watts on the perimeter and junior Evan Skladany down low, the Psychos became rattled and frustrated, and St. John's maintained control throughout the rest of the contest. The Johnnies showed great confidence, patience and poise as they withstood each final, desperate Psycho attack. Cheers erupted and the stands emptied as the final buzzer -sounded victory for St. John's. "It was really a tale of two seasons," says O'Neill, since the final success of the team couldn't have been predicted from its early season record of three wins and six losses. "I got a firm commitment from eight guys around Thanksgiving, and things began to gel soon after. Special mention should also go to Steve Houser (tutor), Dan Farley (A94), Pat Sweeney (staff), and Nick Giacona (staff), who CONT. ON PAGE 12 �4 REPORTER NEW LIBRARIAN JOINS SANTA FE STAFF . . .................................................................. Deborah Cady joined the staff of the Santa Fe campus on March 21 as an associate librarian for systems and cataloging, a position formerly held by Patrick Emerson. Cady came to St. John's from Texas Tech University, where she was the school's automation librarian. She has a master's degree in library and information science from the University of Arizona in Tucson. In addition to managing the Internet connection for the Santa Fe campus and coordinating web pages and e-mail accounts, Cady also will supervise the student computer center and will oversee the library's network, automated system and cataloging. 111 The Caritas Society's Flower and Garden Show, held March 14-16 in Mellon Hall, proved once again lo be the group's best fund-raiser for emergency financial aid for Annapolis campus students. According to (aritas president Maryanne Spencer, the show raised about $10,000 this year. Twenty-five exhibitors, including seven nurseries, a bonsai group, artisans, landscapers, and antiques dealers filled FSK Lobby, and hundreds of Annopolitons viewed nursery stock, spring bulbs, tools, and just about everything gardeners need to inspire them for a new season. Even the youngest visitors, like the child at right, found something of interest. The event was choired by Joyce Olin, and a committee of many Caritas members worked for months coordinating the effort. Founded in 1969, the Caritos Society now hos more than 215 members; this year alone the group hos donated more than S12,000 to St. John's students who encounter emergency financial problems. Pholo by Keith Harvey SANTA FE CAMPUS WELCOMES THE HELP OFA NEW PARENTS ASSOCIATION ·hile parents have always been an )integral part of the St. John's ,, community, they haven't always had a clear voice in campus life. That's changing in Santa Fe, thanks to a group of volunteer parents who have come together to form the St. John's College Parents Association. This group of nearly 15 parents held its first meeting in February, and the members are already on a fast track to help the college recruit prospective students, coordinate Parents Weekend and other parents events, raise money for the annual fund, and review concerns about student life. Jack Poole, the president of the association and the father of Amanda Poole, SF98, says that the first priority for the new group is to create "an effective organization that will have continuity year after year... Undoubtedly, there are actions a~d programs that we, as parefi;ts, can undertake to improve student life simply be being more directly involved." Faye Ashley; the vice president and mother of Amber Boydstun, SF99, says she decided to become involved with the Parents Association to help support the college and to spread the word about St. John's. "My daughter's experience thus far at St. John's and media reports I've seen recently have verified the importance . of a liberal arts education," she says. "Contributing my energy and time seems like a good way to support that and also to help extend the opportunity to others." The association treasurer, Bruce Blankenship, father of Kevin Blankenship, SFOO, says his involvement with the Parents Association gives him the chance to learn more about the school and how his son and other students have adjusted to St. John's and its instructional program. The association, he adds, should "be an advocate for the parents and the students in the St. John's College community. Also, I think the association should serve as a communication link between parents and the college, especially the administration. By establishing this link, the parents, the college and the students should all benefit." At its organizational meeting in February; the association established several committees - one each on student life, parents events, fundraising, and nominations. Each of these committees is working to develop a specific list of duties and to define their missions. Poole says that task should be completed by the summer. "I am looking for tangible beneficial activities to be visible as soon as the 1997-98 academic year, and maybe sooner," Poole says. "President Agresto and the staff offer encouragement and support to the Parents Association. They want us to have a meaningful role in the life of the college." For more information on the Parents Association, or to volunteer to serve as a member of the organization, contact Elizabeth Skewes at 505-984-6103, oremail her at <eskewes@shadow.sjcs£edu>. El �TECHNOLOGY AND READING It was with great interest that I read Miss Brann's contribution to the "Future of Reading in the Age of Technology" in the winter issue of the Reporter. I was fortunate enough to enjoy several classes with Miss Brann while I was a student at St. John's, so it is with the utmost respect and admiration that I would submit a challenge to Miss Brann, and indeed to all members of the St. John's College community. I've spent the last dozen years working on "the bleeding edge" of technology marketing. Though the initiatives I've supported have been commercial in nature, I have learned much about the impacts of these technological advances on the way we think, the way we conduct commerce, and the way we communicate. I am firmly convinced that we are on the threshold of a change no less radical than the introduction of the Gutenberg printing press. And I would contend that as members of a community dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge we must embrace and guide these new tools so that they may best support the development of liberal thinkers. I offer three ideas for consideration: extension of the community of learning; democratization of information; transition from passive to interactive thinking. Much has been written about the "global town hall" that the Internet, or more properly the World Wide Web, has created. While one may argue about the effectiveness of this medium, the fact remains that it facilitates communications among a greater diversity of people than any prior medium. This change is happening at a remarkable pace, crossing boundaries of race, religion, education and income levels. In fact we are seeing a dynamic shift among developing countries that are leaping directly to the digital world as a means to educate and advance their societies. Singapore and China come to mind as examples of this phenomenon. What better tool to extend the dialogue of a community such as St. John's? What better means to challenge the traditional mass media machine than through a medium which allows the paruc1pant to become publisher? And what better catalyst to move a society from passive acceptance to interactive thinking than the move from the television to the computer? While I'm sympathetic to the dilemma of real-time communications and the overwhelming cycle of information exhaust it can create, I cannot accept it as a reason to discount the medium. Rather I would suggest that we must apply the same discipline of thoughtful conversation to our digital communications as we do to the "real world" analog. It is just as inappropriate to indiscriminately distribute a rambling, unfocused e-mail as it is to dominate a seminar with irrelevant chatter. We must learn to use electronic communications and publishing devices with the same consideration as we have their traditional counterparts. After all, who is to say that we cannot make free men out of children by means of books, a balance, and a microprocessor? -Leslie A. Jump, A84 I can make several definite statements concerning the future of reading and studying in the wake of technological innovations (Reporter, Winter 1997). The computer and its associated connectivity are neither savior nor anti-Christ, but simply another set of tools. My personal strategy with regard to all technology is to become familiar with the tools and to use whatever is useful, but to structure my life and my thoughts such that I am not dependent upon technology. In that regard, my attitude tends to be consistent with that expressed by Ms. Brann. Just because I can express myself on the Internet does not mean that I wish to do so (one must always consider one's audience). It is good to have possibilities; however, I would prefer to wait until I have a need to speak to someone in Uganda, rather than casting about for any excuse to communicate globally. Furthermore, I never "surf" the World Wide Web; whenever I use it, I am always searching for something definite. More often than not, what I am looking for is simply not there. In the current content-void state of the Internet, one of the rare useful endeavors that has remained free of the plague of commercial advertising is Project Gutenberg and similar projects which maintain electronic texts of works whose copyrights have expired. Furthermore, I have in my possession a CD-ROM of electronic texts containing the majority of works on the St. John's program, as well as literally hundreds of others. While I have not read Lear electroni- cally, I have read several books on my computer, including a collection of short stories by Tolstoy, which I have not seen in print. (Mr. Preston, I cannot claim to have found any "subtle" differences in the works compared with the print media.) What I have found is that reading texts electronically has increased my concentration and involvement in the works. Freed from the arbitrary limitation of physical and logical pages, I was able to follow the stories entirely based on the dramatic structure. However, increased eye-strain from monitor radiation, lack of portability, and of course reliance on electricity make this form of reading less desirable than printed media. One benefit of electronic media is its ability to search and locate particular words or phrases, which would be useful in seminars where time and attention can be consumed by paging through a book to locate a particular passage. On the other hand, having notebook computers on the seminar table may become too distracting (I'd be tempted to play games when the conversation became too boring). So it goes. Any perceived benefit in electronic media over print has a concomitant drawback. The same sort of arguments could be made concerning reading a work or hearing it read out loud. I hope that the issue would remain one of personal preference. Perhaps any statement advocating or condemning one media or the other is simply an expression of prejudice. In the end, I would say that with regard to the topics with which St. John's College concerns itself, the effect of technology will be negligible. After all, if the argument in the Phaedrus applies to books, it applies no less to electronic media or whatever else is going to develop in future years. What may develop, though, is an increasing gap between the sort of classical education encouraged by St. John's and a technology-based education which seems likely in other educational institutions. Whether this gap is a good thing or a bad thing, I have no opinion (that I'm willing to share). -Mark Ressler, A89 P.S. - I found it interesting that in the cover photo illustrating how St. John's students still learn by reading books vs. the new technology, the young lady pictured reading was in the section of the library which contains Dean Koontz, "Pogo," "Creator," and I believe Anne Rice. Not exactly pondering the great issues, is she? Always remain especially critical of images. · The following passage seems relevant to the issues raised in the letters on women's works in the program. It is from Scott Buchanan: A Centennial Appreciation ofHis Life and Work. ''A great book is the product of the liberal arts; the authors are liberal artists, masters of the arts. The great books improve the mind because they induce the formal habits of learning in the reader and discussant. The aim of the liberal arts is insight, understanding, imagination, and finally the transformation of the student into his own teacher and the teacher of others." -Charles Lerner, A53 I've read the frightening letter to the editor in the Fall '96 Reporter. I say frightening because the thought of St. John's becoming subject to the specter of feminism is just as disturbing as the specter of fascism, nazism, communism or McCarthyism - from the right or from the left. The problem with these "isms" is that they prevent open-minded objectivity and receptivity. If one does not have an uncluttered, open mind at St. John's, he/she is unable to adequately be affected by what the program offers. I suggest it would be far better never to get involved with St. John's than to go through the program viewing things through the feminist prism or through any such "ism" prism. I am very concerned that feminism may be the Achilles heel of St. John's. Unfortunately, this disparity in points of view has spilled over into the question of CONT. ON PAGE 6 �L I I " I , IS 's BY CURTIS WILSON ana Densmore's new guide to Principia is acclaimed as a "wonderful book" by Richard S. Westfall, the late professor emeritus of the history of science at Indiana University, in a review published posthumously in the December issue of Isis. A 1965 graduate of the Annapolis campus, Densmore is one of five Newton scholars whose books appeared in 1995. It was published by Green Lion Press, which she and her husband, William H. Donahue, A67, operate in Santa Fe. " ... [Subrahmanyan] Chandrasekhar is not the only guide to understanding Newton's dynamics," Westfall writes. ''Dana Densmore's Newton's Principia: The Central Argument comes out of the great books tradition of St. John's. It is addressed to studeµts, and it never forgets its pedagogical purpose. Section 1, the me(hod of first and ultimate ratios. As the tide states, the book confines itself to what it calls the central argument, that is, Section 1-3 of Book I and the early propositions of Book 3, the argument that concludes in the law of universal gravitation; and Densmore pursues that argument with all the intensity that the St. John's program encourages. Densmore's husband, William H. Donahue, has translated afresh all the propositions and other material from the Principia that the volume includes. "This is a wonderful book. Taking Newton on his own terms, it insists on the full rigor of the demonstrations and does not hesitate to point out where full rigor appears to be lacking. The flavor of the book can be sampled in its treatment of the phenomena cited at the beginning of Book 3, where Densmore pauses to explain in what sense generalizations not directly observable can be called phenomena (for example, Kepler's third law applied to the satellites of Jupiter) and how the date for them were collected in the late 17th century. She devotes no fewer than 40 pages, virtually a tenth of the book, to the careful examination of a passage essential to rhe argument that occupies five pages of the Principia. As she says in the 'Preliminaries,' 'we understand Newton only in understanding he proved things as he did ... Students are not the only ones who can profit from the exercise."' Included among the five books reviewed is Francois de Gandt's Force and Geometry in Newton's Principia, for which Curtis Wilson, an Annapolis tutor emeritus, did the translation. !Ell LETTERS CONT. FROM PAGE 5 the reading list in a way I don't think Scott Buchanan would have approved. The argument on what books trivializes the program. If (Buchanan) felt that deBeauvoir's The Second Sex, The Diary of Anne Frank, Emily Dickinson, Sappho, Virginia Wool£ Jane Austen, etc., belonged in the program, would he not have included them? I note that Pride and Prejudice is now on the third year list. I saw the movies of Pride and Gone With the Wind, so why read the books? Whatever they have to say was, I suggest, said in the films. There is a whole host of authors in the class of Jane Austen. The Buchanan list is obviously under siege. We can expect the siege to become ever more strident. Every Tom, Dick and Suzi author will have his/her constituents for placement on the St. John's list. The more said-constituents succeed, the more St. John's will become like every other college and university in the U.S. The vision of Scott Buchanan will have drowned in the lowest common denominator of mediocrity. If St. John's is to survive as a preeminently unique beacon of light for education around the globe, we must resist the onslaughts of the Jane Austen proponents and her "romantic" peers. A "romantic" perspective on the universe will not, I offer, achieve the educational intention .. Where Chandrasekhar's goal is to use analytic demonstrations to make Newton's geometry more accessible to the modern physicist, Densmore's goal is to help students comprehend Newton's demonstration in their own terms. The aim is not to tell students what Newton demonstrated, but to enable them to understand the force of the demonstrations by repeating them. Although attention remains focused on rnathrnetical demonstrations, the attitude is not ahistorical in any way. Rather, we stand as it were at the historical moment when Newton first elaborated the demonstrations and scientific thought attained a new level of understanding. "Densmore will not allow the students to take anything for granted. For example, she devotes no fewer than 74 pages to a penetrating scrutiny of we all aspire to. -George Caley, A45, SGI78 less sexism than this challenge to the God-like nature attributed to the list, the books and the men who wrote and picked them, that causes alumni to balk. Or maybe balking at change is part of any "ism" which oppresses and denies human rights and thought. That women have not had enough time to write something truly great is a bizzare argument. Do people really still believe that because women could not vote or own property they were not thinking or writing? Women were not just given rights. They fought for them and took them precisely because they were thinking and writing. Mr. Hazo's letter proves Ms. McMurran's point. ''Adding one or two great books by women (especially Wollstonecraft, deBeauvoir or Woolf) is a means of making the dialogue on gender a fruitful one because these great works formulate new, original and insightful ways of conceiving gender." If St. John's still has no works written by women on its official list of the great books read and discussed in seminars, it is a poor show for representation of Western thought-both ancient and modern-in my opinion. I defend the right of St. John's to define the boundaries of the education it offers to young people. However, if my children were going to be taught that women are inferior because there is no equally approved and formal access to the discussion of the best thoughts, ideas and opinions of women-especially in a school that holds itself out to be the best-then I would defend my right to send them to college elsewhere. -MaryTarail, M.D., SF73 -"''"'-~ ~~~- There may be many reasons why literature, philosophy and essays written by women already proven great-despite not already being on the list-are not officially read and discussed in seminars at St. John's. I hope it is not because the powers that be assume that it is a "small step from gender literature to ethnic literature and multiculturalism" to quote from Mr. Hazo's letter. It cannot be escaped; all literature has a form of gender (written by man or woman), and the literature read at St. John's is already from many different cultures, albeit Western. Indeed, the books we have considered great so far have helped define the culture in which they were written, which is one of the reasons we admire and protect them in the first place. We like to think the ideas transcend gender, race and culture, and perhaps, by the same token, we think the men who picked the books transcend them as well. However, great books and the list did not fall out of the sky. Books written by ~n-not women-were placed on the li~t by men-not women-influenced by their culture, just like any other men in any other time in history. Now these choices are being challenged. Perhaps it is THE ST. JOHN'S MISSION The original mission of the college was to bring students into the great tradition of the West by means of a serious study of its most famous and characteristic written works. One may reject this goal, but it can at least be accomplished reasonably well in four years. Over the years, however, both students and tutors have been tending toward the study of any works that could qualify as great or near-great. The program in Eastern classics and Mike Weaver's letter urging the inclusion of Islamic writings are symptoms of this tendency. Once "greatness" becomes the criterion, there is nothing to prevent us from adding the BhagavadGita, Confucius, the Qur' an, or The Tale ofGenji; in the end, we could have a curriculum based on great books of the world, not just the Western world. CONT. ON PAGE 16 �· hat do you think the Great Books of the 20th century might be? This was the question St. John's College, as part of its 300th anniversary celebration, put to more than 300 people, ranging from the President and members of the Cabinet to academics and nationally syndicated columnists. Respondents were asked to name their choices for the greatest works of this century on several criteria: that the work has had significant impact on human understanding; that it has addressed, in new and brilliant ways, fundamental questions of human concern; that it has changed the way in which we view the world; and that it promises, by virtue of these qualities, to transcend this century and endure. The responses were interesting and wide ranging. As President John Agresto, who initiated the inquiry, says, "Not one mention of Eurocentrism, phallocentrism, logocentrism or any other epithets of the modern intellegentsia came in the mail. Perhaps, they couldn't spare the effort. Or, perhaps, when no one's watching, even the most cynical think that there are some books and authors so central, so important, so lasting and intelligent that they deserve both recognition and study." Respondents ranged widely across the political and professional spectrum, and included Eugene McCarthy, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Charles Krauthammer, Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, Shelby Foote, Justice Stephen Breyer and Nobel Prize winner P. Sherwood Rowland. In the end, 89 works-many of them on several lists-and more than 100 authors were recommended for consideration. "Many of the works recommended were what we expected. Few would argue that Einstein and Freud don't meet our qual1t1cauons. Others us, such as a recommendation for the Beatles' Sgt. Hearts Club Band." says The decision for inclusion on the final that in fact turned out to be tvvo was made a committee co:mr)os:ea the deans of both campuses members. list contains those books or authors that the committee .saw as serious contenders as the great books of this century. The second contains those about which the committee was less sure, though positive that people will profit from reading them and that the books have made valuable contributions to knowledge and culture in the 20th century. Except for a few works in the sciences and mathematics that the committee felt were crucial, the list fairly accurately reflects the respondents' recommended texts. The committee members note that this list obviously does not contain all of the great works of this century, only those about which they are sure and confident enough to judge. MANN, THOMAS: The Magic Mountain PROUST, MARCEL: Remembrance ofThings Past RUSSELL, BETRAND AND WHITEHEAD, ALFRED NORTH: ELIOT, T.S.: Collected Poems ELLISON, RALPH: · The Invisible Man FEYNMAN, RICHARD: Lectures on Physics Principia Mathematica F. SCOTT: The Great Gatsby FITZGERALD, STEVENS, WALLACE: Collected Works HEMINGWAY, ERNEST: ALAN: On Computable Numbers TURING, FIRST LIST HUSSERL, EDMUND: VALERY, PAUL: ADAMS, HENRY: The Crisis ofEuropean Sciences Charmes The Education ofHenry Adams JACOB, FRANCOIS AND MONOD, JACQUES: WEBER,MAx: BORGES, JORGE LUIS: The Short Stories ofErnest Hemingway Science as a Vocation Genetic Regulatory Mechanisms in the Synthesis ofProteins Ficciones WELTY, EUDORA: CELAN, PAUL: Losing Battles }AMES, HENRY: The Ambassadors Poems ofPaul Celan D., AND CRICK, F. H.C.: "Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids" WATSON, J. CHEKHOV, ANTON: The Three Sisters KING, MARTIN LUTHER: "Letter from Birmingham Jail" MARQUEZ, GABRIEL GARCIA: CONRAD, JOSEPH: Heart ofDarkness WITTGENSTEIN, LUDWIG: One Hundred Years ofSolitude Philosophical Investigations LEVI-STRAUSS, CLAUDE: EINSTEIN, ALBERT: On the Electrodynamics ofMoving Bodies (The Special Theory of Relativity, 1905) WOOLF, VIRGINIA: Tristes Tropiques To the Lighthouse MUSIL, ROBERT: YEATS, WB.: The Man Without Qualities The Collected Poems of WB. Yeats FAULKNER, WILLIAM: O'NEILL, EUGENE: The Sound and the Fury Long Day's journey Into Night FREUD, SIGMUND: POINCARE, HENRY: Interpretation ofDreams GODEL, KURT: On Formally Undecidable Propositions of Principia Mathematica and Related Systems Science and Hypothesis BECKETT, SAMUEL: Waitingfor Godot BOHR, NIELS: "On the Spectrum NABOKOV, VLADIMIR: Pale Fire O'CONNOR, FLANNERY: The Complete Stories HEIDEGGER, MARTIN: and Time . BERTOLT: The Three WILLARD VAN ORMAN: Two Dogmas JOYCE, Ulysses CAMUS, ALBERT: The Plague SOLZHENITSYN, ALEKSANDR: The Gulag Archipelago KAFKA, FRANZ: The Castle CHURCHILL, SIR WINSTON: Marlborough: His Life and Times SHAW, GEORGE BERNARD: Man and Superman KEYNES, JOHN MAYNARD: General Theory ofEmployment, Interest and Money DuBOIS, W.E.B.: The Souls ofBlack Folk STRAUSS, LEO: Natural Right and History Ill �NANCY BUCHENAUER: LEARNING HER PARADIGMS BY BARBARA GOYETTE ·· J;xere's an old St. John's saying to the )effect that "a tutor is the most . advanced learner in the class." Nancy Buchenauer, with her devotion to N11ncy Buchenouer at her new "home" in Annapolis. studying across the curriculum and her constant striving to, as she says, "become a deeper and deeper reader," is a paradigm of that description. A tutor in Santa Fe since 1980, Buchenauer moved to Annapolis this semester. She attributes the change to two causes: curiosity and health. "I was simply curious about this other half of the college," she says of the Annapolis campus. "I thought 'Wouldn't it be lovely to go there and have seminars with the tutors I have met and talked with over the years?' Finding that I had become allergic to just about everything in Santa Fe pushed me over the edge to make the decision." Buchenauer's first academic love was ancient history. She has both a bachelor's and a master's degree from Cornell in that discipline-with Greece and Rome her primary areas of study. While reading TS. Eliot and Ezra Pound early in her college career, she realized that she was going to have to go back to the beginnings of the Western tradition to really understand the context of modern poetry. Once she got started in history, she was hooked. "I was interested in the origins of things, for example how democracy starts," she says. She still enjoys going back and forth between the earliest works and modern writings because each illuminates the other- "there's a certain way in which all the works that we at St. John's read after the first ones make us better readers of the early ones," she points out. At Brown, where she received her doctorate, Buchenauer studied in the classics department, where the ancient history courses were offered. "It wasn't as much a divergence as it might seem," she explains. "Being in the classics department broadened me out; it gave me the opportunity to see that reading literature and philosophy texts was as important to me as reading history texts." Buchenauer considered coming to St. John's to teach as an opportunity to continue to broaden and at the same time deepen her own education. During the course of her teaching, she has taken on some substantial challenges. The first was to learn and teach junior math and lab. "Physics to me was a great terror, an area I felt I never understood, so I decided early to take it on," she says. She found that the St. John's way of teaching calculus and physics really clicked for her-not only was she able to work through the classes and lab sessions, but she began to comprehend, really see things. "It was exhilarating to finally catch a glimpse of the world of Einstein's relativity. And electricity and magnetism-what a beautiful land!" A second chunk of time-from 1991 to 1994-was devoted to serving as director of the Graduate Institute in Santa Fe. "As an undergrad (at Cornell) I felt invisible; no one paid attention to me. I wanted to know whether it was possible to have an administration that would CONT. ON PAGE 12 EDO: ALIVE AND WELL BY SUS3AN BORDEN . w~n years after its Annapolis campus >debut, the St. John's-born band .· EDO returned to the college this winter to play a backstage concert. Alumni who were in Annapolis between 1987 and 1990 will probably remember EDO and its fearless leader, Eliot Duhan, A89. And some might even find, while digging in the back of their cassette box, the group's first release Waltzing With The Dogs, which featured classic EDO hits such as "The Anomaly Song," "Bad Piece of Business," "The Ice Cream Shimmy" and "Big Pizza." Today, EDO is alive and well and living in Philadelphia. The group plays between six and eight times a month, with usually only one of those performances taking place in the city of brotherly love. For their other concerts, the musicians travel up and down the eastern United States, playing in towns like Albany, Boston, Williamstown, Binghamton, Pittsburgh and Baltimore. As their promotional literature puts it, "EDO wants to play on your stage, perform in your city, whoop it up on your airwaves, and sleep on your couch." Also in their promotional literature is page after page of favorable reviews. From the Philadelphia Inquirer: "Truly touching and outright riotous, crammed with big ideas and clever asides." From the help pay his bills. In reference to its commercial plight, EDO has adopted a motto: "Bands that are funny seldom make money." But this is only one of the group's many mottoes. Others are: "House Band on Pluto," and a long-standing favorite, "EDO: The Joke's on Us." But jokes are not just a motto for EDO-they're part of the group's art and its identity. Duhan describes EDO as a "Marx Brothers Tribute Band." "We do musically what the Marx Brothers did on stage and film, producing a great sense of only mildly controlled chaos. It's music with a sense of humor, music that doesn't take itself too seriously," Duhan says. As part of its chaotic humor, EDO concert-goers have watched Duhan cook a piece of raw meat with a clothes iron ("It's enough to make you turn vegetarian!" one reviewer exclaimed), climb a tree (from which he later had to be rescued) Philadelphia Daily News: "A smart melange of punk-rock, funk and jazz ... not for the easily offended or musically EDO's Eliot Duhon, A89, is not usually known to shy owoy from the spollight. narrow-minded." From the Philadelphia City Paper: "Excellent kick-ass music." during an outdoor concert, toss food into "We have achieved some level of criti(or at) the audience, and smash up small cal success," Duhan says. "In Philly we get appliances. "We're living in a time when all sorts picked every year for things like the top five bands, the best unsigned band, things of appliances, from toasters to VCRs, are like that." more expensive to repair than to buy Unfortunately, however, being one of new," Duhan says, adding that he only the five best bands in the fifth-largest city smashes items that can't be fixed. 'Tm doesn't pay the rent. "I've held down varivery excited. I recently found a perfectly ous day jobs over the years in order to good looking, but not functional IBM finance my nighttime music habit," says Selectric typewriter." Duhan, whose consulting work for the From the group's roots in Annapolis Philadelphia Music Conference and parta decade ago, when Frank Alden, A90, time job as a mover of art and antiques CONT. ON PAGE 12 �LESSONS FROM THE PAST HOLD PROMISE FOR THE FUTURE Writers and Scholars Look at the Role of the Past During a 300th Anniversary Conference in Santa.Fe BY ELIZABETH A. SKEWES I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp ofexperience. I know ofno way ofjudging ofthe future but by the past. Patrick Henry Speech in the Virginia Convention, Richmond March 23, 1775 John's College was not even a century old when Patrick Henry spoke those words; and the new program, which owes its intellectual heritage to the past, was something that would come about only in the far distant future. But the message of Patrick Henry tells us that the lessons of the past are our legacy. Contemporary writers and scholars apparently would agree. In early April, 17 writers, educators, politicians and scholars gathered at St. John's in Santa Fe to consider the role of the past in our present and our future during a two-day conference funded by the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. As the capstone event of Santa Fe's celebration of the college's 300th anniversary, the conference, "Does the Past Have a Future," was a major success. A standing-room-only crowd attended the keynote speech by Washington Post columnist David Broder; and the panel discussions on politics, culture, education, and science and technology also were filled to capacity. Throughout the two days, those who attended heard that we can meet our obligation to the future only if we heed our past. "We are very future-oriented as a people, but in an odd way, we have a tradition of being future-oriented," Broder said in an interview prior to his speech. He said that in the world in which he works-that of journalism and politicsthere is a lot of tension between truth, which is permanent and universal, and events that are unfolding. "There are trade-offs that you make," he said. "The late publisher of my paper once called journalism 'the great rough draft of history' because there are things won't have the same speed of disfor the consumer to drive, have become covery in particle physics in the more difficult for a mechanic to diagnose and repair. next decade as you had in the He said that with all scientific and past. However, the history and technological advances, it's also important regulation of the earth's climate is an exploding field. All kinds of to understand the historical context of the discovery. "It's not a coincidence that mad things are being done regarding Gaia hypotheses and the field is cow disease and cloning occurred in the much more exciting than it has same country in a relatively short period ever been before." of time," he said. "Because of the German He said in the world of sciblockade during World War II, Britain ence and technology, researchers was a country afraid of starvation." As a are always working at the edge of result, much of the focus of research in that country has been on food and food what is technologically possible. And they often look to the scienproduction. tists who preceded them for For Catharine Stimpson, director of the MacArthur: Fellows Program and a inspiration. "These people were so clever and so ingenious that member of the education panel, new technologies mean new challenges for they are models of research given the resources available to them at educators. The Internet and computers the time," he said. are changing the way people learn, she New Mexico Attorney General Tom Udall speaks during the panel discusTenner also said that the said, in much the same way that genetic sion on politics. Photo by Alon Taylor advances of technology have engineering has changed biology.·"lt's like come at a cost. Each new technothe faculty sitting around after Gutenberg you don't know when you write a story." logical development adds an increasing and saying, 'What are we going to do However, it is the "rough drafts" of earlier layer of complexity to the world, he said, with these things called books?"' science that have paved the way for many which means that more training is She said one of the fundamental of today's technological advances, said required and more things can go wrong. questions for educators today is how to Edward Tenner, a visiting geosciences proLaproscopic surgery, for example, best use education and technology to fessor at Princeton University who was part "requires learning a kind of mirror-image study the problems of the next centuryof the panel on science and technology. technique" and even cars, which are easier CONT. ON PAGE 15 "Scientists have a surprising degree of interest in the past," he said. "Biologists at Princeton will go back to Darwin to understand how he phrased a question. Scientists regard the works of earlier scientists as part of a family tree." At times in history, he said, different parts of the tree have bloomed more fully. "From one period to the next, there are different areas or disciplines in which important discoveries can be made," Tenner said. "For instance, you Santa Fe Dean James Carey, who moderated the panel discussion on education, takes oquestion from the audience. Photo by Alon Taylor �BY ELIZABETH A. SKEWES 'tw<:1" a canoe trip with a college that first brought John Ruskey to Clarksdale, Miss. But it's the blues that brought him back after graduation, and it's the blues that have kept him there ever since. . Ruskey, SF90, decided to head to Clarksdale in the spring of 1992. He went to St. John's for a year and a half before transferring to the University of Vermont, where he graduated in 1991. After spending a few months at home in Silver N.M., and a few more months in Austin, Texas, trying to make it as a street musician, he realized that what he really wanted to do was study the blues. So he packed up his few possessions-a guitar, an accordian and his backpack-and headed to the home of the blues. For many, Clarksdale is no more · than a spot on Highway 61 between Memphis, Tenn., and Greenville, Miss. But for Ruskey and others who grew up listening to Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker, it is a musical mecca. "I first came through Clarksdale in 1991 just to see the land that they came from," Ruskey says. A year later he was back, hoping to find a musician he could study with and wondering how he'd eke out a living. "When I got here I was broke. For a while, I drove a tractor with the Mennonite farmers; and on the rainy days when weren't in the I volunteered at the museum," he says. "The museum" is the Delta Blues Museum, which opened its doors in 1979 as a division of the Carnegie Public Library and averaged 30 or so visitors a month in its first decade. However, the tide started to turn in 1988 when ZZ Top, a Southern rock band, took a strong interest in the museum and began staging benefit performances for it. A few years later, with additional funding from private sources and the National Endowment for the Humanities, the museum was ready to hire its first full-time curator. Since Ruskey had already been cataloging the collection and planning exhibits as a volunteer, he was a natural for the job. Today the museum takes up 5,000 square feet in the upstairs section of the old library. It houses thousands of photographs, records, CDs, videotapes and books-many of which are available for public use. It also houses hundreds of Education Program, which he co-founded in 1992 with Rex Miller, a New York photographer. It is the education program, now operated after school out of the museum, that brings new life and vitality to the blues, he says. Ciry, play an instrument and how to behave professionally in the music field. In fact, the application form tells them that the Delta Blues Education Program has "a zero-tolerance" policy for students caught fighting, lying, cheating, drinking, using drugs or being sexually suggestive. Infractions result in expulsion from the program, period. In addition, the application tells them they must be "good citizens in their community.... They will spread understanding and harmony throughout the world with their music. They will be examples of talent and cooperation. They will carry the Delta Blues trai1mon, which itself was born of African roots in the Mississippi Delta, with and courage. As children of an important cultural heritage, they will be serious, compassionate, and generous." Despite the ground rules-or perhaps because of them-the students come and many of them stay to learn from master blues musicians including Michael "Dr. Mike" James, Harvell Andrew Turner, Dione "Super Chikan" Johnson and "Mr. Johnnie" Billington. The children often are quick , ... Ruskey says. The museum is open for lessons every weekday from 3 to 5 p.m., and many of the students practice on their own. The result is a group of musicianssome to hold a or see over the drum set when they're sitting at it-that has enough talent to have opened for B.B. King and to have played at benefit performances in New York "They play good and they play hard," Ruskey says, "harder than a lot of adults I've seen. We've had real success with 'at risk' students. In fact, some of our best players come from a program, called Pathfinders, for kids who are at risk of getting into trouble." While the Delta Blues Education Program began through the public schools, providing music training as a part of the normal school day, Ruskey says they decided to make it an afterschool program last year "because a lot of CONT. ON PAGE 17 di. ....... ,,, John "River Rat" Ruskey, SF90, spends his days curating exhibits and running an edurntion program at the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, Miss. In his spare time, however, he takes up his real passion, playing the blues as a member of the Wesley Jefferson Band. Photo by lngbet Griiftner instruments, including a copy of"Lucille," B.B. King's guitar, and "Muddywood," a guitar commissioned by ZZ Top and made from wood taken from Muddy Waters' childhood home. But just as important as the collection to Ruskey is the Delta Blues About a dozen "core students" and others who show up for a few weeks or a few months at a time make up this new generation of fledgling blues musicians. The students, who come mostly from area elementary schools and who are charged no fees for the classes, learn to �SUMMER CLASSICS PROGRAM FILLS. IN THE GAPS BY JOHN SCHROEDER .ou've just finished a seminar on ii Homer's Iliad, and your mind is moving a hundred miles a miti'~te, but it starts slowing down as you walk through a narrow, adobe-lined street dating from the 17th century and enjoy the beautiful summer weather. There is a storm rolling in from the west, but you know it won't last long when it hits; and it'll be enough to cool the temperatures this evening. And besides, this life is a thousand miles from your everyday grind. It is exactly that scene that brings people to Santa Fe each summer for the Santa Fe campus' Summer Classics Program. John Agresto, the president in Santa Fe, initiated the program in 1990 and brought out 13 former students to discuss one of the great books and to explore Santa Fe for a week. In eight years, that small group of friends has exploded into a program that brought a record 130 people to Santa Fe last year, and will feature 11 different seminars held over the course of three weeks this summer. Program participants range in age from 20 to 80, cover all educational and professional backgrounds, and come from all over Non:h America. lt is this special combination of backgrounds, along with the close-knit community that is formed, that has made the Summer Classics program such a huge success. At nearly 40 percent, Summer Classics has one of the highest return rates of summer academic programs. One of those participants who returns year after year is Tricia Tiensch, a portfolio manager for a major New York Bank. "I saw an ad in The New York Times in the second year of the program, and came out and took a course on Shakespeare, fell in love with the place, and have been returning ever since," Tiensch says. Morning seminars form the core of the Summer Classics program. Led by members of the St. John's faculty and guests from other institutions, seminars meet for two hours every day over six days. Because Summer Classics participants cover in a week what is normally covered over a longer period of time, in many ways the seminars are even more intense then those taken by regular St. John's students. "You really live the book at that pace," says Claudia Honeywell, a Santa Fe tutor who has also led several Summer Classics seminars. "It almost makes the book unforgettable." Part of what adds to that intensity is the composition of all of the seminars. "You're surrounded by people of so many different backgrounds, and each one of them brings something different to the text. The conversations are so much better than I imagined them, and I always have high expectations for the seminars," Tiensch says. Another of those who attends the seminars is Pam Carter, a marketing professional from Tulsa, Okla. She found out about the program the way that many of the participants do-by word of mouth. "Cheryl Foote Thomas, who is my next door neighbor, attended one sum- mer and told me about it, and so we came together the next year. I was excited about attending, but I had no background in the great books," Carter says. "Now I love the classics. I'm reading all the time and I can't get enough of it. It's really amazing to have a group of people all read the same work and come up with totally different perceptions about what it's saying." Tiensch adds, "In the Dante seminar I took last year we had bankers, lawyers, doctors, entrepreneurs, teachers, a parts rep for one of the major car manufacturers, and even a producer for NBC news. It was a huge cut across the spectrum, and everyone combined to form a cohesive whole. What's really amazing is that every year everyone gets along, and that also is part of the magic." Carter has become such a convert to the St. John's method that she now has brought St. John's to Tulsa. Along with Cheryl Foote Thomas, who is also a member of the college's Board of Visitors and Governors, Carter formed the Tulsa Seminar Series, which brings tutors from the Santa Fe campus to Tulsa once a month to lead a discussion on that month's topic. "It's so much better when you can talk with someone about what you're reading and they're reading the same thing," she says. In addition to the morning seminars that are the foundation of the Summer Classics program, the college leads excursions to areas of interest around Santa Fe, which hav~ included a guided tour of Los Alamos and a gbological tour, as well as trips to Bandelier and Pecos National Monuments, to name a few. It is the mixture of the seminars with everything else that brings others to the program, including John Balkcom, a management consultant from Chicago. He originally heard about the program when he brought his daughter out for a visit when she was a prospective student looking at colleges. Balkcom was so enamored by the program that he decided to give Summer Classics a try. "The combination of reading, the dialogue, hiking, the opera and everything else that goes on during the week is deeply nurturing and recuperative to the soul, and so different from my everyday business experiences, that I have to come back every year," Balkcom says. "I love being a small part of a community of learners that I find wonderful, cooperative and curious. I can't imagine not being at St. John's during the summers for the next 10 years." Balkcom has come to love the St. John's program so much that he has since joined the Graduate Institute, one of two Summer Classics alumni to do so, and has also become a member of the college's Board of Visitors and Governors. "I could say this is about completing my education, but it's really about getting the education I missed studying philosophy as an undergraduate," Balkcom says. "I found that in my late 40s I had more to CONT. ON PAGE 16 �L I I A66, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union's National Prison Project, won a unanimous decision before the U.S. Supreme Court in March. The Court ruled that the State of Oklahoma violated the due process rights of an inmate who had been ordered back to prison after five months on an early release program. Winter argued that the early release program was similar to parole, which cannot be revoked without a hearing. The Attorney General of Oklahoma, arguing for the state, contended that the release program-which was designed to relieve overcrowding in the jails-was simply another, minimum security form of . incarceration that could be changed to higher security at any time without cause. When she found out that the Court had agreed to hear the petition, Winter thought it was a bad sign for proponents of prisoners' rights. "Usually when a prisoner has won in an appeals court and the Supreme Court agrees to hear the case, it is overturned," she says. Another hurdle in the case was that the prisoner himselfwith only an eighth grade education-had presented his pleas before the state trial court, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals and the Federal District Court, losing them all but finally winning in the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. "Many of the important prison cases decided by the Supreme Court over the years have been brought by prisoners, but in general the prisoners are not being helped out," says Winter. "Usually their cases get thrown in the wastebasket without a chance." The prisoner, Ralph Harper, is a convicted murderer who had served 15 years of a life sentence when he became eligible for the early release program. The program allowed the early release of a certain number of inmates when the prisons become too crowded. Inmates in the early release program live on their own, get jobs or go to school, and report regularly to a parole officer. After five months of freedom, Harper was told at 5:30 one morning that he should report back to prison by l 0 a.m. because his parole, which had subsequently been reviewed independently, had been denied. Although he had not violated any of the terms of his early release, Harper was not given a hearing or a chance to challenge the order. When the State of Oklahoma asked the Supreme Court to hear the case and the Court agreed, Winter was appointed to represent Harper. "I flew out to Oklahoma and asked him if he wanted me to represent him ... When he represented himself, he had found the essential analogy in Morrissey v. Brewer [a 1972 Supreme Court decision granting due process to parolees], which no lawyer would have missed. But the way he did his papers was lucid and simple. He has a wonderful mind and could have been a first-rate lawyer," says Winter, who received her law degree from Georgetown. Winter's office handles prison-related Supreme Court cases, so she had worked on briefs before, but never argued a case hersel£ It was intimidating. "All nine of the judges are asking you questions, interrupting you all the time during the half hour you have to present your case," she says. The justices were familiar with the case because they had studied the elaborate brief filed ahead of time. "What they are doing in asking the questions is dealing with issues in the brief that trouble them," she says. "I was elated when the justices were questioning the Attorney General from Oklahoma because I could see that they had understood the most difficult part of my argument." The heart of her argument involved persuading the justices that the early release program resembled parole. The state argued that returning Harper to prison was merely a change in his confinement status-that he had not been freed like someone on parole. In the opinion, written by Justice Clarence Thomas, the Court called the differences between Oklahoma's early release program and parole "phantom differences" and affirmed Winter's arguments about the nature of Harper's release: "that respondent's [the prisoner's] continued participation was conditioned on extrinsic events [i.e., overcrowded prisons] is illusory, and the analogy to furlough inapposite." Winter says that while it is too early to tell what the ramifications of the decision might be, she hopes it will "nip in the bud" the current "constitutional freefall...The states don't want to have to return people to prison only for cause...A number of state attorneys general were hopeful that this decision would be in favor of Oklahoma and would give them more license to do whatever they want to II prisoners. The Court said no." il"MU'.ll'll'Hn111::~ CIHIWIH CONT. FROM PG. 3 filled in while the students were gone during winter and started us on our run and one to finish the season." For the St. John's softball team, the start of the season was a lot smoother as the team easily defeated most of its opponents, winning its first city league division title with a record of seven wins and one loss. In fact, the team was so dominant that the mercy rule-which says that a game will be called if one team is leading by 10 runs or more after five innings-was invoked in four of the Johnnies' wins. Due to these four mercy killings, St. John's became known as "The Kevorkian" team. The cause for the winning season? "It's Gotta Be the Jerseys" was the team's rallying cry. The embroidered jerseys gave added inspiration to the team and were provided by David Elman, SF82, president of Right Now Productions in Kensington, Md. O'Neill said the successes in both softball and basketball this year resulted from a lot of practices and a comfortable atmosphere on the field or court. "I also stressed the team concept, and tried to make sure that everyone was relaxed and having fun," he says. And O'Neill is looking ahead to other arenas in which St. John's can make its athletic mark in Santa Fe. While a few people have suggested a Greco-Roman wrestling team, O'Neill has his own ideas. "City league bowling," he says. "We're gonna kill 'em!" St. John's College 1996 Division Champions Greater Santa Fe Softball MEMBERS: Dan Cortez, SF96, pitcher/ catcher Joe Shaffer, staff, pitcher/ outfield Pat Sweeney, staff, catcher Ted Gonzales, staff, first base Dan Farley, A94, second base Tim Quintana, official ringer, third base Nick Giacona, staff, shortstop Brendan O'Neill, SF93 and staff, outfield Tim Wolff, SF97, outfield Mark St. John, SF83 and staff, outfield Chris St. John, staff, outfield Tony Lovato, staff, outfield Steve Houser, SF79 and tutor, outfield II IUC:ltEINAlDH. CONT. FROM PAGE 8 further students' " says Buchenauer. What a program needs, she disco11.:>nc:fL is listening and attentive administrators, not lots of money. Buchenauer's third project at St. was helping to find a way to art in the program and the introduction of the fine art segment during senior year on the Santa Fe campus. She spent two sabbatical years in Europe studying and looking at art. "I felt there was a way to present and discuss paintings that would be unique to St. John's," she says. ''Art history programs can never look at a painting in its integrity and wholeness. At St. John's, we look at the artwork and ask, 'What kind of a whole do we have here?'" Buchenauer says that the fine art segment has helped her develop a new sense of sight-its primary purpose, as opposed to other art history classes which teach how to see a painting in its historical context. Now Nancy Buchenauer is ready to take on yet another challenge-becoming acclimated to a new campus, with new traditions, new personalities and a new group of students. Already she feels at home-a special St. John's home. "I felt enormously welcome," she says. "Right away, the tutors were encouraging me, showing me what was available, and helping me with my interests. I have found this to be a single college in the best sense." EDO CONT. FROM PAGE 8 Marshall McMillan, A90, Yanni Papadopoulos, A91, Karl Meyer, A90, and Jenna McKenna, A9 l, were among its members, EDO remains an important part of Duhan's life. And although Duhan is the only Johnny still in the band, he says he tries to remain true to the group's original spirit. EDO recently played an 11-day tour in Minneapolis, arranged by Pat O'Donnell, A88, president and founder of the group's record label, SKODA. The band's immediate plans include another CD and a lot more touring. "We're going to keep doing this for at least a while," Duhan says. "Over the last seven years we have gotten really good at putting on a live show and I don't want to give it up. IfI did, I'd have to find a whole new avenue for creative expression. My clarinet's not up to snuff, and my writing's kind of rusty... " For Duhan, that leaves the life of the musician as the most likely outlet for his creativity. Ten years after the inception ofEDO, Duhan continues to take the fame he's earned while leaving the fortune to fate, because, he says, "it's still artistically and emotionally satisfying to do what we're doing." ' EDO can always be contacted at (215)it-be-shy. Email: <eliot@p3.net>. II �CAMPUS LIFE A CARPENTER'S APPRENTICE For Annapolis Senior David Haber, it's Tool Time for Ten Hours a Week that some people never see-the attics and storerooms, the crawl spaces and structural innards, the smashed remnants of college furniture and the broken pipes twisting through the bowels of the college. He spends hours toiling over the things from which most mechanically-inept Johnnies immediately avert their eyes. When something breaks, Haber and his mentor, college carpenter Chuck Wallace, are the first ones on the scene. A 22-year-old senior from Poughkeepsie, N .Y., Haber has worked as assistant to Chuck Wallace for the past four years. He spends 10 hours a week serving as the college's handyman, doing everything from fixing broken classroom chairs to hanging sanitary napkin holders in lavatories. Whereas most work-study students are employed in the offices of the college's bureaucracy, in the depths of the dining hall, between the stacks of the new library, or behind the desk of Temple Iglehart, Haber wears a leather belt that jangles with tools as he saunters around campus. He came to Sc. John's with no carpentry experience and the expectation that he would be assigned to the dining hall dishpit for his student work-study position. However, apparently due to a conversation between Haber's mother and the financial aid office, in which she mentioned that he enjoyed "working with his hands," David found himself assigned to this unusual post. The initiation into his four-year stint as carpenter's apprentice was inauspicious. The bewildered freshman marched to the heating plant, home of Chuck Wallace's office. Wallace greeted him with a smirk, pointed to a pile of rusted window screens, and said, "Guess what you get to do?" David started a task with which he was to become quite familiar-pain ting. Besides painting screens and other worn surfaces on campus, Haber played gofer during much of his first year on the job. "At the beginning, Chuck wouldn't even let me touch the drills," says Haber. "That was probably a good thing. I dropped tools a lot." He followed Wallace around campus, fetching tools when he needed them, and, more importantly, watching him patch holes and fix door locks. It was from careful and constant observation, and by helping Wallace with the routine inspection of dormitory seminar entrances. This year, juniors in Annapolis carried the notion of javo just a step further when they constructed a "crown of cups" out of coffee cups according to the description of Assescmdro Volta. Each cup was filled with saltwater and had a copper and lead submerged in it. The chemical reaction that takes place between the plates and the solution generates an electric current that keeps on going and goinga perpetual battery. "Yes! The apparatus of which I speak...will doubtless astonish you ... " wrote Volta to Sir Joseph Banks, the president of the Royal Society, in 1800. led by tutor Grant franks, lhe junior lab doss arranged almost 90 cups to fry to generate enough power to run 11 light bulb. Not enough juice was created for that, but the brave who stuck their fingers in the cups did feel a tingly shock. David Haber, who spends his work-study time wearing a tool belt, checks on a door to Pam-Carroll that needs to be repaired. rooms over the summer, that Haber became familiar with the troubleshooting art of the handyman. In his sophomore year, Haber's tasks expanded with his increasing practical knowledge. He would occasionally work with Gordon Carlton, the campus electrician, and Sid Phipps, the plumber. By the spring of his senior year, Haber says he "learned how to fix anything that's broken." This includes a wide range of objects, many brought to a sorry state of disrepair by vandalism of students, drunken and otherwise. He has patched many holes in dorm walls. Sometimes, he says, he can even recognize the body prints of particular students. He has repeatedly been sent to Randall, a "well-known destruction zone," he says. Once he and Wallace found the front door to Randall kicked in three Il).Ornings in a row. "Stuff like that happens all the time," says Haber, "and all we can do is laugh." His attitude seems to be that since such behavior is inevitable, he might as well admire it when it is somehow ingenious. One memorable incident involved a former student who utterly destroyed the bathroom in Humphreys' basement. Haber says, "I looked at it the next morning, and I was thoroughly impressed. I didn't know a human body could perform such a feat. The sink was in pieces all over the place. The toilet was ripped out, along with three feet of pipe. It was really impressive-classic. It was one of the more incredible feats of destruction I have ever seen." And it took a couple of weeks to clean up. Besides piecing together the broken wreckage of college property; Haber also CONT. ON PAGE 16 HAUMINHAFT CONT. FROM PAGE 3 science. His dissertation was titled The Administrative Republic ofAlexander Hamilton. Before teaching at St. John's, he was a lecturer in political science at Roosevelt University, a lecturer in liberal arts at the University of Chicago, and instructor in government at Wheaton College. At St. John's, Flaumenhaft has taught throughout the curriculum and has served several terms on the Instruction Committee. As a Constitutional Fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities, Flaumenhaft was on leave during 1985 to work on a book about Alexander Hamilton, which was published in 1992 by Duke University Press as The Effective Republic: Administration and Constitution in the Thought ofAlexander Hamilton. With his strong interest in the early Federalists and the founding of the nation, Flaumenhaft has written scores of articles, chapters and lectures on these subjects. Typical of St. John's tutors, though, his interests have expanded considerably in his almost 20 years on the faculty. With a Sloan Foundation grant, he led a faculty study group on computers and subsequently delivered a paper on computer-aided humanistic learning at the Naval Academy in 1984. In 1987, he became editor of a series of guidebooks intended to bring the great works of science to a wider, liberal arts educated audience. Called the Masterworks of Discovery series and published by Rutged University Press, the books cover original material from the great scientists-Mendel, Aristotle, Maxwell, and Newton so far-along with commentary, explanations of terms, and background on the scientist. Flaumenhaft himself has been working several years on a volume about Apollonius. With his new duties as dean, Flaumenhaft says he is putting his work on the guidebooks on hold for the time being. a �CAMPUS LIFE TARTING OVER Transfer Students to St. John's Think the Education is Worth Beginning Again BY JOHN SCHROEDER Heather Elliott, SF96, came to St. John's became more aware of St. John's, but my M.I.T., Princeton, the U.S. while Taffeta chose to attend M.I.T. only real contact with Johnnies was with Academy and Columbia. The two would talk on the phone about those students who would throw nickels The list reads like a veritable what they were currently studying, and at us as we marched by." who of academic excellence in the Heather was always telling her about all After leaving the Naval Academy, he United States. Graduate from one of the great things she was reading and disshuffled through majors at Arizona State these schools and, the theory goes, doors cussing at St. John's. Taffeta decided that University in Tempe and had finally will be opened for you simply because of she was missing too much at M.I.T. and accumulated more than 150 credit hours, your diploma. Yet, every year St. John's College receives transfer students from these and other prestigious institutions who are not only willing to leave these schools to go to St. John's, but also to begin again as freshmen because transfer credits are not accepted. In every freshman class, anywhere from 20 to 25 percent of the students have taken college classes somewhere else before attending St. John's. One of those students is sophomore Sam Markham came to the Santa Fe campus via Princeton. "I hadn't even heard of St. John's before I went to college. My father was a Princeton alumnus and my sister was a student there, so it was the natural place for me to go," he says, "and I went straight there from boarding school." After his freshman year, Markham became Bob Schroeder !second row, third from right), osenior in Santo Fe, marches with his company during plebe summer at the Naval Academy in Annapolis. sick and was forced to take time off. It was during this left to come to Santa Fe. In the long run, time that he decided he didn't like but no degree, when he decided that Princeton, and started looking for anothshe feels that the education she is receivASU was not the place for him. As he er place to attend. He heard about St. ing is better for her future career in scimoved into more and more upper diviJohn's and decided that this was the only ence than what she would have received sion courses, he found that he wasn't place he wanted to go. at M.I.T. because her St. John's education receiving the type of education he really Another of the students who discovencompasses a full range of topics, not wanted. "I didn't want to be 'just an ered St. John's College later in his educajust a narrow scientific field. engineer,"' he says. "I wanted to be tional life was Bob Schroeder, a senior, Markham also finds the non-specialsomeone who could communicate with who started out at the U.S. Naval ization to be a good reason to attend St. people other than those who were workAcademy in Annapolis. John's. "St. John's forces me to do things ing in my field, whatever that might be." "I remember receiving a brochure that I otherwise wouldn't have done, like It is the broadening of educational from St. John's in my junior or senior science and math," he says. "I was leanhorizons that brings many of the transfer year in high school," he says, "but I really ing more towards the humanities and students to St. John's. Taffeta Elliott, also didn't pay any attention to it because I that's what I probably would have a senior, found that she, too, was not was set on attending the Naval Academy. majored in, but I thought the focus was receiving the type of undergraduate eduWhen I was in Annapolis, I obviously too narrow. I could have gotten a good cation she wanted. Her twin sister, education in a very specific area, but there would have been a lot of holes in my education. "When I decided to come here, my friends said 'Well, what can you do with it afterwards?"' Markham adds, "but right now I want to get a good education and try not to worry about what I do afterwards. I think that was too much of a concern at Princeton. I had friends my freshman year who were talking about what they were going to do after they graduated. I really think you should be concentrating on what you're doing now. Besides, because of what I'm doing now, I will definitely have a lot more leeway when I graduate about what I can do." Other than the dissatisfaction with the specialization of their educations, what would cause someone to give up all of their credits to come to St. John's? "Of course I was somewhat reluctant to give up everything I had done to that point," Schroeder says, "but I hadn't accumulated any educational debt, so who cared?" What made the decision worth it, however, was when he sat down to figure out the length of time that he had left in school. "I had two years of classes remaining to get a degree in history, as most of the credits I had were all lower division," he says, "but because ASU was so big, it would have taken me three to three-anda-half years to get all of the classes that I needed. Then I would have ended up doing a liberal arts program for part of my graduate study. "Or, I could give it all up, start over again at St. John's and spend four years getting the type of education that I wanted to get in the first place, and a far superior education to what I would have gotten CONT. ON PAGE 15 I �STARTING OVER CONT. FROM PG. 14 anywhere else. The only real difference was the accumulation of debt." For Markham, the education that he would receive was the biggest difference. "To tell you the truth, I felt that there were too many student-athletes on campus and everything was shifting away from the academic side," he says. "At Princeton you could hide from the professors. You can't hide at St. John's, and everyone here is more involved in their education, both in and outside of the classroom which is what I really like," he said. According to Larry Clendenin, director of admission in Santa Fe, the reasons given by transfer students for attending St. John's are not any different than the reasons given by the rest of the applicant pool: "There aren't enough other people around me who are sincerely interested in learning; there are too many fluff courses; mastering the facts is all that matters; and there isn't enough encouragement or time to delve deeply into serious questions." Clendenin adds that "because of their experiences, transfer students tend to know with a little more certainty what they are looking for. Having tried another college the typical transfer student is wiser about his or her education. And while I don'r have any proof of rhis, I would say that transfer students succeed at a higher rate, because they have lots of motivation and lots of incentive." Figures from the placement office support Clendenin's belief. Transfer students typically account for 20 to 25 percent of an entering class, but they accounted for 42 percent of the last two graduating classes. In addition to validating that the St. John's approach is the right way to be educated, transfer students also can help the admission office in getting the word out about what kind of education is really offered at other colleges. Caroline Knapp, a freshman, had narrowed down her college choices to Princeton and St. John's when she was given Markham's phone number. The two of them talked about his experiences at Princeton versus St. John's, and the conversation eventually helped her make the decision to come to Santa Fe. But in the end, transfer students come here for the education. Schroeder says that most colleges and universities don't require students to read very much to earn a degree, and they don't teach students how to think. "I think that's the real reason I came here-to learn how to read literature better and how to deal with reading things," he adds. "What's the point of an education if all you can do is recite facts at the end?" m PAST/ FUTURE CONT. FROM PAGE 9 for example, to further space exploration. "Star Trek is not just a television program," she said. Another problem for educators is how to assure equal access to good schools-a question that educators had to struggle with in the past, as well. Today, she said, the barriers are often financial. Poor school districts simply cannot afford to provide the same quality of education that wealthier districts can. But assuring equal access to a good education is "a fundamental social contract that we have all the way through a child's life." If that access cannot be guaranteed, society may be the biggest loser, she added. "A cow can be cut up for hamburger or filer mignon, but both the person selling the hamburger and the person selling the filet have the same interest in that cow not having mad cow disease," Stimpson said. She said one of the strengths of the American education system, which has to be preserved, is its variety. There are more than 3,500 colleges and universities in the country and many, such as St. John's, offer unique programs. "Obviously schools are the place where the past, present and future meet," she said. "Schools convey history, educate people in the present, and hopefully make people better in the future." And while Stimpson is concerned with the fundamental contract of education, Gary McDowell, director of the Institute for United States Studies at the University of London, is more concerned with the fundamental contract that is the foundation of the United States-the U.S. Constitution. McDowell, who spoke as part of the panel on politics, said that the last 40 years have been ones of serious erosion of the Constitution, particularly in the way that it has been misinterpreted by federal judges and Supreme Court justices who are more interested in making policy than preserving the law of the land. "The whole idea of a right to privacy didn't exist until Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965," he said. "There is no Constitutional text that assures a right to privacy. That was totally created by judges." He said the "constant drumbeat" from the extreme ends of the political spectrum have put judges in the position of making policy through Constitutional interpretation. Congress and the President have helped create the situation, he said, by abdicating much of the power of the legislative and executive branches to the courts. The fix, he said, is a Congress with the political nerve to retrain the courts, but he hasn't seen that kind of nerve in Congress recently. And while the U.S. Senate is considering a "litmus test" for Supreme Court nominees that would FASHION CONT. FROM PAGE 28 vacant look, sideburns, serious mouth. Torso: Mythical black turtleneck. ("Though I think they are still worn in spirit," one survey noted.) Shoulders: Earnestly hunched. Legs: Jeans-cleanliness not required. Feet: Barefeet popular, as are socks with Birkenstocks. Posture: Insouciant (or careworn) slouch; in some we note an intellectual strut. Other: "And don't let's discount the tattoo craze!" an enthusiastic respondent noted. "The careful guys go to Miss Brann for pre-tattoo proof-reading." THE FEMALE LOOK Catharine Stimpson, director of the MacArthur Fellows Program, answers a question from one of the 130 members of the audience at a panel discussion on education held as part of Sonia Fe's 300th anniversary conference, "Does the Past Have a Future? " Photo by Alan Taylor include a Constitutional view of the world, rather than an activist one, McDowell said that it will be a long battle to get the courts back to the point where they are out of the policy-making business. Broder, however, isn't as alarmed by the power of the courts and said that when the political branches can't reach consensus, the judicial branch does step in. "The benefits of having an independent judiciary, however, far outweighs the disadvantages of that." The bigger threat to government as envisioned by the nation's founding fathers, Broder said, is the increasing political clout of interest groups. "The management of public opinion is an important factor, and interest groups have become much more adept at doing that than either of the political parties," he said, pointing to health care as one issue where interest groups have had significant clout. Broder said that our biggest challenges into the next century are finding a workable health care system and a way to make quality education-especially primary and secondary educationequally as accessible to those in the cities as those in the suburbs. "But compared to what this country has dealt with in the past, these are not insoluble problems. I'm optimistic about our future ... We've never had a generation in which we've invested as much in terms of education, and that's what will prem pare them for the future.,, Hair: Short and chic (wet look currently "in''). Hat: Either the black SJC cap or some truly eccentric chapeau. Head: Cool, clear eyes of a seeker of wisdom and truth (but generally myopic); pensive pout at times; as many as five earrings discovered in a single ear. Torso: Shirts are ofi:en two sizes too big or one size too tight. Midriffs occasionally visible. Legs: Long, flowy skirt, blue- or blackbased currently favored. Black tights a timeless favorite. Feet: Socks are often a focus. (''Are we a nation of sock-fetishists?" one survey respondent wondered.) Second generation Doc Martins often spotted. Cross-Gender Accessorizing: "No books on person!" one survey read. "You should be able to tell-the books are implied." Cigarettes are held downward on palm side, protected by outside of hand. ("It might be interesting to note the high incidence of smoking among the undergraduates and the high incidence of agonizing smoking-quitting stories on the Johnny-net," notes one respondent.) Worth fhinkin2: About: One anonymous, though observant, respondent replied: "I honestly believe that if we did a thorough body-shape study of alumni, we'd find evidence of early seminar-chair shaping." la Flannel is a perennial favorite al St. John's. Senior Jeremy Melvin shows off one of his favorite flannel shirts. �CA.MP US LIFE SUMMER CONT. FROM PAGE 11 UTTERS CONT. FROM PAGE 6 bring to the texts than I did when I was in college, and they definitely have more impact now than they did before. "I remember being profoundly moved when reading a conversation in the Aeneid about the meaning of life and death, and that's just one of a hundred such instances that I've had." Carter found the same enrichment happening in her life. "Summer Classics has rounded out my life, and filled in a gap of living. I don't think you can realize rhis until you're middle-aged, when you have time and when your not focused solely on one thing, but can look around and analyze your life." Now, these are well worth reading, but let's not kid ourselves: such an approach would be a radical shift in the college's mission. The faculty as now constituted is hardly equal to such a task, and the danger of superficial reading would be even greater than it is now. The controversy over whether to read a few essays by women is nothing compared to this. It seems to me that the administration and the faculty must face this situation squarely. Without a clear focus, the program is doomed to implode, and financial anemia will follow. As for me, if I were asked to recommend a school where one could get a serious liberal education in the Western tradition, I would recommend Thomas Aquinas College. -W Geoffrey Rommel, SF81 1997 SUMMER CLASSICS SEMINARS AND TUTORS (Participants choose one seminar per week) Week I July 13-19 Dante, Paradiso Ron Herzman Michael Bybee Austen, Sense and Sensibility and Emma Victoria Mora Maren Cohn Conrad, LordJim and The Secret Agent Krishnan Venkatesh John Cornell Week II July 20-26 Swift, Gulliver's Travels John Agresto Ron Herzman Opera, Semele and Arabella William Fulton Robert Glick Homer, Iliad Nancy Buchenauer Barry Goldfarb Aristotle, Politics Warren Winiarski Laurence Berns Week III July 27 -August 2 Goethe, Elective Affinities Georgia Knight Werner Dannhauser Plutarch, Lives Jim Cohn Alice Behnegar Opera, Cosi Fan Tutte and La Traviatta William Fulton Robert Glick Dostoevski, Brothers Karamazov Jim Carey Samuel Johnson For more information, or to receive a 1997 Summer Classics brochure, please call the Office of Public Relations in IBI Santa Fe at 505-984-6104. caption, page 15): The waltz party tradition did not begin until academic year 1958-59. It was promoted by two women students, both natives of what had been the Austro_:Hungarian Empire. I think that the photograph must have been taken at the time The St. John's Story was being filmed. And those students were not waltzing. St. John's Fencers Excel (page 15): I am glad to see that fencing continues at the college. My congratulations to Dominic Castillo and Steve Maggitti. I invite them and all other St. John's fencers to visit Zaal Visser, the fencing club to which I belong, whenever they are in Amsterdam. -J.H. de Raat, A58 CORRECT COMMENTS ON E 1996 ISSUE E "RE What's in a Motto? (page 4): Why must ther.e be an official translation of the motto, "Facio liberos ex liberis libris libraque"? The motto is, after all, a play of words, and so David Starr's playful interpretation is apt: "I liberate lads and lassies with libraries and labs." Sometimes it is best not to take certain things too seriously. Unity Question Revisited (p. 13): The last sentence of Robert Haze's letter holds the basic question: Is St. John's to be one college with two campuses, or two colleges with the same name? The original intention was for the two campuses to comprise one college. That is how it should remain. One Instruction Committee should' manage the content of the academic program, and the program should be the same at both locations. I agree with all of Robert Hazo's arguments for maintaining the integrity of the curriculum, but I would not go as far as he does when he suggest that unilateral changes to the program be tried out on one campus for a set period of years. One way to provide for some variation is to have extracurricular courses of study. I am thinking of Simon Kaplan's Old Testament study group and Winfree Smith's extra classes on Ptolemy. There were others. During the academic year 1954-55, Clayton Lane, retired diplomat and husband of Bent Lane, who was then an artist-in-residence at the college, led a discussion group on religious writings of the East. Such an approach would allow for some variation, but not at the expense of the curriculum. St. John's would remain one college. Waltzing the Night Away (photo and 0 N The price of Scott Buchanan: A Centennial ofhis Life and Work (published by the St. John's College Press) was listed incorrectly in the last issue of the Reporter. The book sells for $14.95. It can be ordered from the bookstore in Annapolis-call 410-626-2540 or write The Bookstore, SJC, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404. El Xingyu Jiang, a Santa Fe freshman, took third place in the college's 5th Annual Student Art Show with this watercolor of a panda. First place was shored by Jarrett Zigon, a Graduate Institute student, and Dane Owen, a junior. Second place went to Inyo Laskowski, o Graduate Institute student. The show was curated by senior lee Munson and sophomore Dancer Jensen-Starr. More than 20 students in the show, which was juried by Susan Kelly, Pam Duncan, Patricio Adams and Ruth Pennycook, all members of the library and Fine Arts Guild. CARPENTER CONT. FROM PAGE 13 is a builder. He has helped with construction projects on campus, some conspicuous, others almost undetectable. He helped with the construction of doors for the observatory atop Mellon Hall. He worked on a pavilion that covers the airconditioning units on FSK and protects them from the elements. He also built new shelves in the housekeepers' closets all over campus. Like most seniors at St. John's, Haber groans when asked about his future. Although he doesn't plan to pursue carpentry as a career, he says that besides the obvious mechanical skill he has learned from his job, he has gained something that the program could never have given him. "In a way, I have learned more being a carpenter than being a student at St. John's .. .I think my common sense has increased," he says. He has also been able to participate in an integral part of the college community-the buildings and grounds crewthat he likens to "a big happy family." But considering the onerous burdens placed on Johnnies by both the program and the claustrophobic dorm life, Haber says the greatest thing he owes to the way of the handyman is his sanity: "If I weren't a carpenter at this school, I would have gone IBl crazy long ago." �,) BY CAROLINE KNAPP, SFOO most work-study positions on developing skills outside of the classroom environment, a few work-study students in Santa Fe spend their working hours in seminars. These community seminar leaders organize and lead seminars for children and adults in local schools and community groups. Last year, the group began working closely with area home-school coordinators to develop a program that would allow home-schooled children to read and discuss great works together. Today the program serves roughly two dozen children in three groups-one focused on literature, one on physics and one on Russian. Marjorie Roueche, a junior, who runs the literature seminar with junior Chris Reichman, says that "the whole process of breaking things down, of making things simpler" has helped her to understand familiar works in a new way. The group of six pre-teens just finished reading Antigone and Roueche says, "They loved it!" Reichman agrees that the homeschool students "are definitely getting something out of the books." He says that the students tend to eschew abstractions: "They want to know 'Why do I care?' And I want to know that, too, from time to time." Similarly, he says, the students generally are free from pretension about reading the great books. When required to turn in an essay about his favorite character from Antigone, for example, one student chose the guard. Peter Leaf, a senior and leader of the group studying Russian, says that unlike kids in conventional schools, "if home-school kids don't want to do something, they don't have to." In this sense, he sees a connection between the self-motivation of home-schooled children and the focus at St. John's on learning for its own sake. "Very few of us will ever earn a dime with our knowledge of quantum physics, but we do it anyway because we believe it has intrinsic value. Homeschooling requires that the children sense the intrinsic value of their studies. And that's sometimes hard to do," Leaf says. The other community seminar leaders agree that there are strong similarities between home-schooled students and St. John's students. Roueche says that rhe children in her classes are avid readers, reading "more than I ever read ar 13." Reichman says that their independent learning style makes them "more interested in knowledge in general." In addition ro these similarities in attitude, a sizable minority of homeschooled students are learning directly from the great books. Because good textbooks are often difficulr to find, many parents choose to teach from classics of literature and history. And though this is less common in math and science, Natalie Arnold, S94, an admission counselor ar the college, reports hearing of a program which teaches math to children using Euclid. Arnold feels strongly that there is a segment of the home-schooled students who may be good candidates for a St. John's education. Recent years have seen an upswing in the number of applicants who have been home-schooled for all or part of their education, she says, and two home-schooled students have already been admitted to next year's freshman class. In response to this trend, the Admission Office has taken out advertisements in several home-school publications within the past year, and Arnold will speak at home-school conferences in New Mexico and California this spring. However, as serious as St. John's may be about reaching out to the home-school community, the home-schooled students are not always serious. After finishing their discussion of Antigone, the students in the Roueche/Reichman seminar moved on to a unit of poems by Shel Silverstein to lighten things up a little. Ill When you move from o"ue town to another, filing a change of address card with the post office will make sure your mail catches up with you at your new home. But what happens when you move from one e-mail address to another? That was the problem that Michael David, SF87, set out to solve. His answer is "Find mE-Mail," a free service on the Internet that allows people to post their new e-mail addresses and link them to their previous addresses. "That way, if someone has your old e-mail address, they can find your new one," David says. "Find mE-Mail" has been operating on the World Wide Web since November. The service is free to subscribers and the expenses of the operation are funded by advertising that David has on the page. "Mostly we wanted to do it as a service," he says. For more information about the service or to register your old and new email addresses, visit David's web page at Ill <http://www.findmemail.com>. ind mE- •••• DELTA BlUH CONT. FROM PAGE 10 the kids in Clarksdale needed someplace to go when school got out." Funding for the Delta Blues Education Program has come from sources including the National Endowment for the Arts, the rock band R.E.M., and John F. Kennedy Jr., who spent some time in Clarksdale about five years ago and who often goes to the benefits in New York. For Clarksdale, the Delea Blues Education Program and the museum that sponsors ir have been important in preserving and promoting the blues traditions of the area. They also have helped build tourism into a $1.2 million business for the local economy. "The city of Clarksdale is finally seeing that there's some green in those blues," Ruskey says. For Ruskey, however, the museum and the education program have only fueled his passion for the blues. Ruskey himself was a student of "Mr. Johnnie" Billington when he first arrived in Clarksdale, and he now is a member of the Wesley Jefferson Band, along with "Super Chikan" and "Dr. Mike," who both teach in the Delta Blues Education Program. The other band members include Willie "Rip" Butler, Jessie "Jessie James" Holmes and Wesley "Mississippi Junebug'' Jefferson. Ruskey, who calls himself the "white sheep" of the group, has picked up a nickname in the process-"The River Rat"-although he's not sure where it came from. And while Ruskey loves playing the blues, he won't describe himself as a blues musician. He says he doesn't have the right experiences to be able to "feel" the blues the way that Wesley Jefferson does. Jefferson was forced to quit school when he was 11 and then had to work in the cotton fields to help support his 12 brothers and sisters. "The blues is a feeling-B.B. King says that. To really play the blues, you have to go. down deep to the human passions that bring out our worst and our best," Ruskey says. "I come to the blues vicariously. The music hits me in the gut, and I'm like a moth attracted to flame." And while Ruskey's not sure how long he'll stay in Clarksdale, he says he's held to the region by the smell of the land and the river, by the power of the wind that can bring a tornado through in an instant, and by the music that connects those forces to the people who call the Delta home. For more information on the Delta Blues Museum or the Delta Blues Education Program, write to john Ruskey, Curator, Delta Blues Museum, 114 Delta Avenue, Clarksdale, MS 38614, or call 601-6276820. You also can call up the museum's web page at www.deltabluesmuseum.org. Ill �CAMPUS LIFE IT'S NOT JUST A JOB, IT'S JOB TRAINING Work-Study Students Take on Real-World Responsibilities at St. John's BY CAROLINE KNAPP, SFOO first assigned to the workfreedom?' and they'll have an answer. It's store, library and switchboard all rely on of the program for students are those jobs program, most students amazing," Mannion says. work-study employees to keep their operdevoted to non-profit community service. probably envision four years In the high school seminar he leads ations running, sometimes without superThis category includes the student combehind a sink full of dirty dishes or eterwith junior Chris Reichman at the World vision. The visit coordinator for munity seminar team, as well as the stunities spent feeding prospective students, who arranges dent-run Outreach to Homeless Youth memo after memo all of the class visits, tours, student program, and the students who work at into the Xerox hosts and interviews for prospecRio Grande Elementary's after-school, machine. What many tives, also is a work-study student. day-care program . .are surprised to find is During the summer, a conference "Basically, I get paid to play foura program that allows services assistant, also a worksquare,'' says freshman Robert Cook. them to do substanstudy student, is on hand to help Other participants in the community tive work in occupavisitors with everything from service part of the program include freshtions far removed tracking down a few extra pillows man Abigail Weinberg, whose position from the dining hall to lining up opera tickets. with the City of Santa fe Community or the copy room. To encourage students to stay in Development Project allows her to work At the Santa Fe an office or position, the college from her dorm room, updating directocampus, almost half has created a three-tiered pay sysries of non-profit organizations. Though of the students hold tem for work-study. By staying the long hours on the phone are grueling, work-study jobs, her position within the project is crucial, with the same position for more doing everything than a year, and being recomand she is "involved with every single from landscaping and mended by their supervisors, step ... in all the decisions that are made." scheduling confer"entry level" students are entitled Jobs like Weinberg's, which give stuences to teaching high to be promoted to the "mastery dents a chance to be a part of the process school students and level" and receive a raise of $1 an and not merely a cog in the system, are playing in the snow hour. Beyond this, I 0 campus the reason that the work-study program with younger chilpositions require students to be really does work, Odell says. dren. directly responsible for other stu"I really believe that students can do Placement Office dents, and merit another raise to anything when they leave here," she adds. Director Margaret the "supervisory level." Odell "This is just adding personal experience Odell, who coordihopes that this incentive system to the strengths they already have." El nates the work-study . . . . . will encourage students to "stay Jed Miller 1s one of the lucky students who gels to play mthe snow as part of his work-study 1ob. .h . . i: h program, says that the . K wit one posmon 10r more t an Ph olo by (aro Ime napp ,, . purpose of the program one year, and lend consistency is to allow students to to their resumes. To this end, the "leave here with some experience that's Learning Academy, the class has tackled program also requires detailed yearly going to help them get a job." works as diverse as Montaigne, Plato, and reports on students' performances, Accordingly, many positions put stuthe Declaration of Independence. which prospective employers can later dents on a pre-professional track. The A job at Meem Library, the single use in background checks. five-person student community seminar largest "employer" on campus, means Off-campus workers are subject to team conducts St. John's-style seminars in more than shelving books for several of its the same guidelines as their on-campus junior and senior high schools and with workers. Junior Heather Maclean, who counterparts, but generally have very students who are home-schooled. Senior has spent the last two years as a workdifferent job descriptions. Three stuJosiah Mannion, a member of the team, study employee in the library, is seriously dents spend twelve hours a week each also spends several hours a week teamconsidering becoming a librarian after she at the nearby anthropology lab, catateaching a creative writing class at Santa leaves St. John's. In addition to having loguing and preserving artifacts for the Fe High School. extended responsibilities during regular collection of the Museum of Mannion, who hopes to pursue a work hours, she spent this summer workAnthropology. Though the nature of career in teaching, says that his work with ing full time among the shelves. the work means most of their time is younger students has helped him to "I got a feel for what it's like to work spent indoors, freshman Jody Mulgrew understand his own education better and in a library all day," she says. "I know it's says there are compensations. has added valuable credentials to his really what I want to do." Occasional field trips aside, he mainresume. He also has learned a lot about The majority of work-study students, tains that he has "seen more of New how children think and what is imporlike MacLean, hold jobs on campus. In Mexico from the basement of the lab Lloyd Cleek sifts through artifacts 111 the Museum of tant to them. fact, many campus agencies are run than anywhere else." Anthropology in his work-study position. "You can ask 4-year-olds 'What is almost exclusively by students. The bookAmong the most gratifying aspects Photo by Caroline Knapp - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -"-'-"'·'··-•c ---.~~-•,_._.,_ -- --- - - - - - �BY SUS Members of the Israel are: , left to right) Friedman, Daisy Goidwin, Bonnie Mel Kline {chapter president), Ezrn Harris, David Sackton, Malcolm Lowe, Rafoel Ben Association is starting out strong, claiming 15 active members of the Johnnies living in Israel. Of course, the chapter is new only in the official sense because the Israeli alumni have been meeting informally since 1985 when Santa Fe tutor Bob Sacks, on sabbatical Terusalem. first led seminars for the alumni. '-'napu::r Mel Kline reports that the group spans the decades of the beginning with alumni and Jerry Cantor, who came to Israel at the time of the War for Independence. The next group to emigrate to Israel included Joey Greenberg (now Yosef Gilboa), A62, Jeffrey Friedman, A70, Ezra Harris, A67, and two couples who met at St. John's: Nancy Goldwin, A67, and Steve Harvey, A70; and Deena Brodkin, A67, and Mel Kline. Graduates of the early days of the Santa Fe campus who made their way to Israel were David Moss, SF68, and David Sackton, SF69. After their arrival in Israel, Kline notes, there was a hiatus until the '80s when nearly a dozen alums arrived, including Sarah (Emi) Geiger-Leslau, A8 l, and Bonnie Linder-Waxman, A82. BORDEN Bob He says that there are about three recent graduates studying in Israel right now, but Hannah Gillelan, A96, is the only one participating in chapter activities. "It may that I used to play all night bridge with her dad Josh, A68," Kline suggests. Kline's own journey to Israel began at St. John's, and fellow alumni will not be surprised to learn that sophomore year readings triggered his commitment to However, it was not the Old Testament that led him to examine his religion, but rather the words of Paul in the New Testament. "I had an extreme visceral reaction to Paul and justification through Kline recalls. "Mr. Sacks, in his inimitable Hebraic manner, indicated to me that there was in fact a way which utterly opposed Pauline doctrines: Judaism. I was having a natural Jewish reaction to antinominism. In fact, he told me, there are Jews who keep the Law and seek The Good. He added that as far as he knew, there was no way for me to come fully to grips with my reaction to Paul, without learning more about being a Jew." Kline took Sacks' counsel to heart. Together, they read Chumash (Pentateuch) and the classic commentary of Rashi. Kline eventually moved off campus in order to keep kosher, and was excused from signing in to night lecture when he began following the Jewish custom of doing no work (including writing) on the Sabbath. ''As far as I have been able to find out," Kline says, "I was St. John's first born-again While his renewed interest in his religion might have distinguished him at St. it is a bond among members in Israel. "Our group must be very different from all because of its relative homogeneity," Kline says. "We are all Jewish, mostly orthodox, and have chosen to leave home and family in America to make 'aliya' (literally: 'going up') to Israel. Many of us appreciate the fact that we can discuss Hebrew classics (which we all can read in the original) which did not get on to the list." But works in Hebrew are not the sole focus of the group's activities. "We enjoy a broad range of readings. We recently read one of the forgotten Platonic dialogues, Theages, and our next reading is The Clouds. After that we will have a Purim symposium party following the reading of the Book of Esther." St. John's alumni who find themselves in Israel can contact the new chapter II through Mel Kline, 971-2-673-6914. Curtis tutor emeritus of the i\nnapolls campus, was in London in March for a conference devoted to Newtonian scholarship that has emerged in the last 30 years as the result of the publication of Newton's mathematical papers and his correspondence. Wilson spoke at the meeting sponsored by the Royal Society of London and the British Society.for the History of Science. His topic was "From Kepler to Newton: Telling the Tale." The meeting drew prominent Newtonian scholars from both Britain and the U.S. Additionally, Wilson recently was appointed by the Institute Della Encyclopedia Italiana to the editorial board planning its 19th-century astronomy volume. Two tutors the faculty in Annapolis for the second semester. a tutor in Santa Fe since 1980, moved to the eastern campus. She hopes that the weather and environment will be easier on her allergies. Linda Kem-Perets is a new faculty member. She received a B.A. from Georgetown University in religious studies in 1984, earned an M.T.S. in world religions from the Harvard University Divinity School in 1986, and recently defended her Ph.D. thesis in Islam (thesis title: "Umar ibn al-Khattab in al-Kutub as-sitta and the Early Islamic Imaginaire") with the Committee of the Study of Religion at Harvard. She has taught at the Bok Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard, at Brown University, and in the St. John's Graduate Institute in Sama Fe. KemPerets lists as her particular interests Islam, comparative world religions, and questions of language and literature. Ill TJIE INSTITUTE LIBERAL EDUCATION Faculty and scudents rogerher explore great works of rhe Wesrern tradition in S!Ilall discussion classes rhat emphasize free and open exchange. Approved for teacher re-certification by the New Mexico Stare Board of Education. Evening and summer classes compatible wirh part-time and, in some cases, full-time employment. The Graduate Institute, St. John's College 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca Santa Fe, NM 87501 • 505-984-6083 �The Alumni Association Newsletter is published in each issue of the Reporter. We welcome letters, capsule book reviews, and article ideas from alumni. Send submissions and suggestions to Mark Middlebrook at 73030. l 604@compuserve.com (e-mail} or coll 5 l 0-547-0602. Betsy Blume and the Rebirth of the Alumni Association The letter from Eva Brann, HA89 and Dean of the Annapolis campus is reproduced in this newsletter. The idea for the time capsule came from Allan Hoffman, A49. Special thanks are due to Betsy Blume, A75, and Elizabeth Skewes for their help in executing Allan's wonderful idea. The time capsule is dedicated on behalf of all the alumni who have gone before, in honor of all the alumni who are yet to come, and in gratitude to the administrators, faculty and staff who make the St. John's learning experience a day-to-day reality. For many alumni, Betsy Blume and the Annapolis Alumni Office are practically synonymous, but it was not always so. Betsy graduated from the Annapolis campus in 1976 and returned to her home town of Kansas City, Mo., for several years of bookkeeping and administrative work before returning to St. John's. In 1978 the call came from fellow alumni who had remained in Annapolis that the college was looking for an assistant director of admissions. Betsy was hired and spent the next three and a half years helping the college improve its haphazard admissions procedures and reduce student attrition. In 1982, then-president Edwin Delattre asked Betsy to apply for the position of director of alumni activities. She took over from Tom Parran, A42, who had excellent relations with the pre-New Program alumni and who worked well with the localized form of the Alumni Association that then existed in and around Annapolis. Delattre, however, had bigger things in mind for the Alumni Association and the college's relationship with alumni. As Betsy noted, "I was fortunate to become the alumni director when alumni activities finally became important to the college, and to have so much confidence reposed in me." This same interest in bigger things was welling up in local alumni groups around the country, thanks to people like David Dobreer, A44, in Los Angeles; Allan Hoffman, A49, in New York; and Harrison Sheppard, A61, and Tom Carnes, A52, in San Francisco. The early 1980s was a time of revolution in the Alumni Association, where insurgents sought to open up representation to Santa Fe and Graduate Institute alumni and the far-flung alumni groups, and in the alumni office, where increased BY MONIKAVIOLA SCHIAVO, A84, AND MARK MIDDLEBROOK, A83 Editor's note: In the foll of last year, Elizabeth (Betsy) Blume (A75) resigned after 15 years as Director of AlumniActivities and 18 years as an employee of St. John's College. This article is in appreciation of her unstinting work for alumni and her President central role in the re-formation of the BY SHARON BISHOP, A65, Alumni Association as a national ALUMNI ASSOCIATION PRESIDENT organization. The article is based One of the most significanton a written and certainly the most enduringJg/_[umni1 ii interview with things the Alumni Association did in r c:JeffawAufors an r rJe tiie many g ave b.ro ug.n 2099 ' 'lino a [effer, m ucn 11 . J Betsy, letters 1996 was to create .r Gr ss o{Z096 i r wfien we aa . tn 2096 ) 0{ tne 1a J r stfu t/iiag i 0 oe wrt .J from present and dedicate a r7\ cStuJenis Jate cerfatfl f anae t/iing veal' an gn 0 J. .rr n 11on a . fess s r J and past offitime capsule to rrf ems a strange u wfio w1"i1 ope ro t erfiaos ii is a .r ver ::JJ se Q)f{: fo yo r J. !}JU p t Ji· ec1 o 1!f 1 cers of the celebrate the ,r· '[)ean's 'j/ ce, r , been aea · .neak to us tr . {. om 1 ne . [i fiave 101110 600Js can sr College, and 300th anrnverwriifenrr .rr sfcerfa1nl.J ·i·rtfiafareaf cfiJl[erence w111 mo fat n J fiow mu U r reminissary of the col1 wlio JneCli us (' ·t /ias been our r i' ('e same-so . r ss afiosf1J GlJ rr wnere t slays n ·t. a JS a ie I cences of 1 1n1 lege. The ti me r f/iis co11ege, Irum an nature i' r. [etfer--wr . .r pJ;aedo to ao a1 r enfa n r f o p1s J Jll 1 Il.e alumni. capsule '.s to be . nia f;eca~se funaam afet7f.nJmayoe, o , arL¢ocrates' war s /iim ....... .:.,a::···· 1 opened 1n 2096, a ~1.!.{~~ · hundred years from now, upon the occa- .ret.w·.eenysf! · · · · . r..· oe t;. . e. ·.we.ref!().... ·····h. ... o ... .. ·.· · ···· Ia r······:f··.w · · · · sion of the 400th anniversary celebra- :na1(/:~e;c;epJ!lr!J1!': fu~ec[/'?fa.fipgfq4.e rµ:g,jQ!jfieVef~r, Y roµ;e,,uv..· . ·. · '.\)~9~ , . . . c...a··.··"' · · ~. . . Lffi.e ........ · 1 .·.· · · ng;r .·en.rbi.fi.rr c.. .o:.. ·Gu~ir:e~s/./i0f1f('E9.lf ·····. ;£isfife4.eMfrJ:JJjPU.; · . . ·.·.~~i~"ly'\)Y . . · · ·t ~~f§oqsPolio . · I ····· r ... o.n.. ··n is [(ls{ef<!JPP o "\. ;..."'o.s 'te~'.9YnQn · ·. . ·. t.o. .t.rat1sfq,/gjhP·. ' ·.··· ·nf, . uocrate§ .. . r· .. ~ NJ...J . . ..· ······· · · . . · · .· · · · ·· c;: go) ,. ng ··· .L~ ;,··· ··· ·.· ... ~i\~~Y "[[~l!fffe.fe.q,[!!f. · · .·····.··········f[()JE<!tfFl1;0. '# tion. Identical capsules are to be located on each ~ampus: the Annapolis capsule was de d. te d a t th e 1996 1ca Homecoming; the Santa 'II b d d" Fe capsu Ie WI e e 1coted at the 1997 1 o~b.§~Y~~~o0g,\~!}~?fJ:c[.e.ri.[J<! !Wf;~if hrJ/~t!.'.Y.?t!l!!if[waf!,, ·~:VO.~\~············· ·· · · ······. far. !J'!!ik fias;#i<>Jife.. w . •••.• 1 ,.v .·..· · · 0 ····· .. ······ · .····· · · . . [c9 m/orllft·· 1 ~.·.············· .· . tlie £ulu,.r;e. ()()F .. '·· 'f mafJrifP9!Pe. .·.··. if/fg,re.'sr.?4 .· usfI?J.faji§. 1~ , · ·. Jie§qp{fJ!e.Pg,fJ,.········· fq[fµe/i!f!Jf!JJ.}f!,fl ..·.· .Psaus, "t·£t'r....· conv.e.r~altC!P··········f' ·..···· t.o.....a<Je. . /i.<?:?!lf,11,p ... r.aos . . .fi . . .·.· 11e. .. ·. i fne JQI. 7 g~ J.() o/cf!?c, l , 9 1 w w ..• • . . . . . . . ... u· . [e~s..ghP~if!ffqr . e. fie.f!<?:P?. w ...······•·• '·.····· r.·r ,f' ...·.···· Jfoa t.~e. s1101.0Q h 1 1 7JJ)e. o{I .··· ..... r··.r.. be ···· . . .· .... ·.·.··sin o..rJ,t:.fr.e.ep P!J. w ·· .... ··· .· ancf.JJJ? q;:Jeril',y··· !'f- e w1M . . . ·.· · · · · fton wa · . . t4e fP<JtJ!flJ J rp J./s c:o.PYer:~a. · · . . derf<?}aQg t/ie· · [o!jPSv . . ~[e,qr(tJn!J ts .......·.· .. .. .. '"lfij[e tfie coffege an 1 teffecfuaf{aiihtfl or. nr fa true communtf!f () r enfraf Ull f. {es OJ/fl . t/iaf fne C 1011 ·, J.na Homecoming in July. J rr0wina ar ic ,r ·n some vers ucfip.face; al al" ' ·s one s fpe 011 ( 1 fnem 1 nt m · The ti me capsule i ndudes: /iofJ io .ry fif[ recogntze Ji' r al cSt. 'Jolin s 1 f;ouf funJa.IPe . · .r f au wtJJ s [J an fl esftons a r ·ju· • letters from the c hair/ione ffl.a J I 0( tiie war ) r· earcliin<J. ru I f I some cl.art J' r. cen er 'l C ptfl!J. s r t 1eas a man of the college Board of r riJs af J/ie verJ ·tu is tiiaf 0/as t swers1 tnen a ura6fe . . a1way r commun1 J . :fnof a an tflan meas V1s1tors and Governors, the Jf Jo{suc11a flrc, / foarr1ve, 11 af;Itimore . .reshap?) i an as e /or s . easur J i s in 1 n presidents and deans of the ar r ·na strenuous r t matters imm r wfio come 0 u r J oCma.Rt J sfuoen s f c.flers f{i s we oo two campuses, and the presiters an ~.· r 11rufness in our JoC common ea r J as canJimr;J. a · . tfiou<p1 r r · · nee ~·· r· flu an dent of the Alumni Association t§<:!ie.!!1!1?e., comlf!;°.fl: se.ar.<::f!HH! face.Jfi.e;~e; q~ atre.c 1 1 • Photographs of the letter ······· . ·encu; tfi.a/?.!lr . J tiiafa;e.1?.l1s ········ · menf fa orojic! ...... I · f ·me ai; . . . ·.·········· JC, a m0 writers and of the Association . .1 ·.···· · . / roo s o[a,i;!l L ··· L ·· .. ... . r . .a emerge l 9r . t ·an: 11av1nI . ,c fts ac t {f,r area o.· ... . . Board. o. 1!;~J.················· . ·.···· ·.··· .... ··· r,-rr s true /o!JO.U.1 we gap, . c:JjefJs ,111e Jw1fn sa • A Je~e~son. cup inscribed to eac:/! 0 1.fier::. ·n Me.'-Pi~ ~t.lf.~e.e.lf! . . ·.· · · · etur:.f1/9P'1[(){J~/'!!J . the Assoc1ahon m. 2096. 2b?.1!!e.f.fi1 g · · otfig;p!!/Ye,:r:§a£!/1 r · · • A 300th anniversary glass £ .. uof!{!l!OYF'!:P·· eaP W!. J ·· C f{eae. sp . c1 r .... mug . ... cSf ilonf1 '.s.. . .01~. 1 ..... ... • Words to the school song: 9t_'s~{!I[?.t!r. · ······ :r. f fi ii. w· funding and a renewal of emphasis on alumni implied far higher expectations of the alumni office staff. Delattre described the renaissance of the alumni office and revival of emphasis on alumni relations thusly: "We did not make fund raising ..·.. ··.t.'ii.. w ~....-E-~..--. ........ -·- ~_,...-~~ -·-~-·· ·- ~---~-~-- -- ~~ ·=---·---... . -~ ~=---·-·~ ...- "": �ALUMNI the center of our efforts. Instead, we emphasized alumni assistance to students seeking to pursue advanced education, explore career prospects, find employment and meet people of kindred interests. We also engaged alum-· ni in the college's policy deliberations -such as moral and fiduciary questions related to financial divestiturewhile establishing and enlarging alumni chapters throughout the country. "Betsy helped to design and implement much of our reform 1 and also to coordinate new fund-raising practices that we treated as subordinate to the most important forms of alumni participation in the life of St. John's. Her work broadened and deepened St. John's as an intellectual community and helped to overcome a certain provincialism that had done St. John's no credit." Those were heady, though not always easy, days for the Alumni Association and Betsy. The insurgents enioyed widespread support from alumni1 and succeeded in taking over the Alumni Board. But Betsy had to limit the political damage occaisioned by the takeover, since other important alumni had been bruised in the process. She also had to clarify her position as the intermediary between two constituencies who did not see eye-toeye on all matters: the college administration and the alumni. The alumni director is employed by and answerable to the college. But she is also an ex officio member of the Alumni ASSOCIATION often leading) seminars. Association and handles many of its day-to-day affairs. As former Alumni As Sharon Bishop 1 A65 and curAssociation president Harvey Goldstein, rent president of the Alumni A59, pointed out, the alumni director Association, points out, it was during this time and thanks in large measure in practice must serve two masters. At the same time, Betsy was to Betsy's "assistance and support, attending to the day-to-day necessithat the Alumni Association grew from a small 1 ties of profesrather sionalizi ng the alumni office. parochial, With copious group into a unpaid help national, truly from her husrepresentative organiband1 Michael David Blume 1 zation." Or, A78, a profesas Jeff sional writer, Bishop, vice she designed president for or redesigned advancement all alumniBetsy Blume, who recently resigned as Annapolis's alumni director, in Annapolis describes it, related publica- speaks up at a meeting with Alumni Association Baard. tions and revamped Homecoming. She also turned the alumni office into an indispensable resource for the alumni chapters which began to form around the country. Alumni Board member Mary Bittner Goldstein, A58, asserts that the nationwide network of chapters wouldn't have gotten started, or certainly wouldn't be as extensive as it is today, without Betsy. Betsy arranged tutor visits, helped develop local newsletters, and provided guidance and encouragement to befuddled chapter presidents. She and Michael remained close to her constituency by visiting many of the local chapters and participating in (and Betsy "was instrumental in the formation of the modern day Alumni Association of St. John's College." Betsy instigated several hallowed alumni traditions, including the yearbook and senior dinners hosted by Alumni Board members. For a large and diverse group of alumni around the country, Betsy's efforts fostered a real feeling of acceptance by and involvement in the college that was lacking earlier. She also took on other duties outside the normal scope of the alumni director's responsibilities. She was secretary of the board of the Friends of St. John's and initiated fund raising for the Mitchell Gallery. During the last CHAPTER CONTACTS Please call those listed below for information about alumni activities in each area. ALBUQUERQUE: Harold M. Morgan, Jr. (505) 767-0543 NEW YORK: Steven Sedlis (212) 289-1662 ANNAPOLIS: Thomas Wilson (4 10) 280-5478 PHILADELPHIA: Jim Schweidel (215) 836-7632 AUSTIN: Homayoon Sepasi (512) 416-1764 PORTLAND: Elizabeth Skewes (505) 984-6103 BOSTON: Alvin Aronson (617) 566-6657 SACRAMENTO: Arianne Laidlaw (916) 362-5131 or Helen Hobart (916) 452-1082 BUFFALO/ROCHESTER/TORONTO: Hank Constantine (716) 586-5393 CHICAGO: Amanda Fuller (312) 337-4 105 or Rick Lightburn (312) 667-0068 DALLAS/FORT WORTH: Suzanne Doremus (817) 496-8571 or Jonathan Hustis (214) 340-8442 SAN FRANCISCO/NORTHERN CALIFORNIA: Toni Wilkinson (415) 550-1280 or Mark Middlebrook (5 l 0) 547-0602 SANTA FE: John Pollak (505) 983-2144 or Elizabeth Skewes (505) 984-6103 SEATTLE: Jim Doherty (206) 937-8886 LOS ANGELES: Meg Sheehan (310) 379-5320 MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL: Vicki Wilson (612) 535-0055 or Glendo Eoyong (612) 783-1405 or (612) 379-3883 (W) WASHINGTON, D.C.: Som Stiles (301) 424-0884 or Bill Ross (301 J 230-4594 NEWS few years, she ran Parents' Weekend on the Annapolis campus and took over chairmanship of commencement. Betsy was a tireless and someti mes outspoken advocate for the role of alumni in the life of the college and for our influence as a constituency. All members of the St. John's community, including students, alumni, faculty, and administrative staff, share a desire to see the college thrive, and share similar ideas of what it means for the college to thrive. But these groups don't always share less global goals, principal worries, or urgent needs. As the only permanent members of the college community, alumni have a unique duty to nurture the college and to remain vigilant to actions or attitudes that might compromise it. At the same time, we can claim a unique importance to the college. Betsy often reminded us of our special relationship with the college, and always encouraged both alumni and the college to live up to our mutual obligations. On this note, we asked Betsy what she saw as the most significant challenge for alumni. "It seems to me that unless the college is prepared to make a renewed commitment to alumni relations, the alumni have reached the apogee of their programs and influence. As it was, the resources of my office were strained to the limit. Furthermore, there is a danger that there will be significant erosion in alumni activities even as they currently exist, without a greater degree of vigilance on' the part of the Alumni Board, and of alumni on the Board of Visitors and Governors. "Because the Alumni Association has such a limited budget, it depends on the goodwill of the college to fund alumni programs. To ensure that goodwill during a time of austerity and transition, it is necessary that the alumni influence be strong and persistent on both boards." Betsy has been interviewing with the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the University of Maryland. She hopes to remain in the Annapolis area, and to continue her participation in the Alumni Association and in the life of the college. We who have known and worked with Betsy over the past 18 years share those hopes. la �ELE I I E 1992 to present; second district, 1 to rnr1arn.orc:r'\n in 1982. 1 In accordance of the St. Section II of the College notice is hereby ing alumni have been nominated by the Alumni Association Board of Directors for election to the St. John's College Board of Visitors and Governors. " For her first term: JEAN K.. A73 Scottsdale, AZ; married to Dr. lee Fischler, A68; member of the law firm of Johnston Maynard Grant and Parker, P.l.C. in Phoenix, practicing primarily in the areas of bankruptcies and reorganizations; a contributing author for Collier on Bankruptcy, 15th Edition; author of numerous articles on bankruptcy issues; regularly speaks on a of bankruptcy topics; tr"lrl"nt:>r'IU worked for U.S. Department Justice in Washington, D.C., and Chicago in a of legal policymaking, legislative and litigation chair an Bar Force, 1989 to on Monterey Bay Pollution Control 111.•..--....vu;:.1 Health Systems Agency, library Oversight Committee, and the Santa Cruz County Bond Finance Committee; community-based activities include being a governor's appointee and public member of the California Central Coast Regional Coastal Commission, a member of the Santa Cruz County Grand Jury, a member of the Santa Cruz County Planning Commission, a board member and consultant for the live at Home Foundation, a board member of the Cabrillo College Foundation, and an organizer and first president of the league of Women Voters of Santa Cruz County. For his first term: SF80 chief investment officer of Capital Management, 1988 to present; stockbroker at lynch/ rrunmnn1'ior & Co., l U.S. active duty 1 to 1Yts4, reserve 1985 to present; commanding officer, Reserve SEAL Two, 1 nominations are as 1. Petitions must be signed by at least 50 members of Association in good standing. 2. Nominations must be accompanied by a biographical sketch of the nominee. 3. The consent of all persons nominated must be obtained. 4. The petition must reach the Directors of Alumni Activities NO LATER THAN DECEMBER l , 1997 c/o Alumni Office St. John's College 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca Santa Fe, NM 87501. 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 1998. Sections I , Association, notice is hereby following alumni have been nominated to serve as officers and/or directors on St. John's College Alumni Association of Directors. Forties class members; recipient of Alumni Association Award of Merit; governor of The Lawrence Association for two terms; singer the Oratorio Society of New York. For Vice President: BARBARA LAUER, Laramie, WY; J.D. with honors, University of Wyoming, 1984; l.l.M., University of Edinburgh, 1988; partner, Lauer & Newlon, 1993 to present; of counsel, Cook & Associates, 1995 to present; editor, legal publications division of lugamo Corp., 1994 to present; lecturer in jurisprudence and labor law, University of "'",,..., ..,.,, College of law, 1989 to present; appellate counsel and assistant lie defender, Wyoming State Defender, 1989 to 1 · judicial clerk, Wyoming Supreme 1987 to 1 · administrator, St. John's College, Santa 1976 to 1981 ; serving second term as member of St. John's College Board of Visitors Governors; '"'"""'-'"'"'"" member of the St. John's College Association Board momhor of associations. ry; cons.ultant in governmental a manager, tor B. Gertz unit of Allied Stores, 1 to 1 a fifth-term member of the St. John's and physics teacher, Michael's Catholic Academy, 1992 �to present; science and mathematics teacher at various public and private secopdary schools, 1977 to 1992; secretary of St. John's College Alumni Association Board Directors, 1995 to present; vice president, founding member, former president and former secretary of the Austin Chapter of the Alumni Association; president 1989) member of St. John 1s College Graduate Institute Council, 1987 to 1989; volunteer community activities include the Kerrville Folk Festival, 1 to 1997, Habitat For Humanity, 1994 and 1996 to 1997, and adult literacy tutoring, 1995 to 1996. For Treasurer: JASON TODD WAl.1'1!1H, Business School, 989; vice presiof operations/ general manager, long Island Region of Quest Diagnostics Inc. (a leading healthcare testing company), 1996 to present; associate director for strategy and development for the Opto-Electronics Group of Corning Inc., 1993 to 1995; business manager, television components, Corning Asahi Video Products Company, 1990 to 1993; member of the St. John's College Alumni Association Board of Directors, 1990 to 1996; class co-chair for The Campaign for Our Fourth Century. Election of Directors of the St. John's College Alumni Association For his first term as a director: ROBERT BllNINFILD, SF80 long Beach, CA; project manager for electric and natural gas-powered vehicle projects at American Honda Motor Co., responsibilities include strategic planning and project ·management for Honda's environmental products in the U.S.; previous responsibilities at Honda have included positions in sales, marketing, product development in the U.S. and Japan, procurement and information systems; past president of Southern California Chapter of the St. John's College Alumni Association; worked with alumni fund-raising during Campaign for Our Fourth Century. For her second term as a director: SANIHA BUIND'f... fiAR.4lH,. Silver Spring, MD; in biology and the philosophy of religion, William Penn College, 1968; teaching certificate, University of the of Columbia, 1985; mentor/internship program, Howard University, 1986; graduate study in science education, The George Washington University, 1988; graduate study in biotechnology, The National Institutes of Health, 1990 to 1992, and 1994; middle school science teacher, grades 5 through 8, Sidwell friends School, 1990 to present; physical chemistry laboratory technician, The National Institutes of Health, 1994 and 1995; science and geography teacher, grades 7 through 9, Garnet Patterson Junior High School, 1987to 1990; science teacher and science department chair, grades 7 through 9, Bertie Backus Junior High School, 1986 to 1987; educational aide, grades 5 and 6, Giddings Elementary School, 1985 to 1986; administrative aide, grades l through 6, Giddings Elementary School, 1980 to 1985; mathematics tutor, grades 1 through 6, West Elementary School, 1978 to 1980; substitute teacher, grades pre-K through 6, Neval Thomas Elementary School; 1970 to 1978; first-term member of the St. John's College Alumni Association Board of Directors; member of the District of Columbia Science Education Association, the National Science Teachers Association, and the Biotechnology Teachers Association; consultant for the National Geographic Society. for her first term as a director: ANN CRUSI, A76 Huntingtown, MD; married to Bryant Cruse, A73; B.S. in marketing, the University of West Florida, 1976; M.A. in liberal studies, Georgetown University, 1981; senior associate, Moore and Associates fundraising and development counsel, 1990 to present; special assistant to the capital campaign, St. Mary's College of al firms in Colorado California; ran an design won national ning consultjng awards for the Yerba Buena Casa Loma Affordable and Project; has taught at rll!l"l"\rni,.., and has conl\11n:r·\f11-..nr1 1989 to 1993; publicati~ns editor, National Asphalt Pavement Association, 1987 to 1989; fundraising consultant, 1984 to 1987; development director, St. John's College, Annapolis, 1979 to 1981; member of The Fairhaven School Board of Directors, 1995 to present; vice School chairman of The Board of Trustees, 1993 to 1 member, the SPCA of Arundel County Board of Trustees, 1 to 1 member, Annapolis Symphony Orchestra Board of Trustees, 1982 to 1985. For her second term as a director: MONIKA A82 Reston, VA; married to John Schiavo, A81; mother of Hellena Schiavo, 7, and Anthony Schiavo, 4; certificate in appraisal studies, New York University; co-chair of Decade of the Eighties fund-raising efforts for The Campaign for Our fourth Century; volunteers with son's cooperative preschool class and daughter's school; director of fundraising for Hunters Woods Preschool for the 1995-96 school year; former manager of a private label sportswear company in New York City. For her first term as a director: JULIA TAKAHASHI, SF74 Santa Fe, NM; bachelor's degree in environmental design, University of Colorado; master's degree in architecture, University of Colorado; executive director of Sustainable Communities Inc., a group working to develop socially responsive prOjects in an ecologically sustainable manner; has worked with architectur- ducted workshops focusing on plandesign and child care design issues; former president of the Southern California Chapter of the St. John's College Alumni Association; former member of the John's College Alumni Association Board of Directors; former planning commissioner the of Redondo Beach; served on a number community boards including the long Beach Museum of Art; the Long Beach Housing Development Company, Legal Services Commission of the California State Bar, the YWCA of Los Angeles; member of the Community ~ Institute at the Center for the Study of Community; received the 1991 Centro de Ninos Service to the Community award; graduated from the 1985 CORO foundation-leaders in the Asian Pacific Community Program. Notice is also given that nominations for lhe positions as officers or directors of the Association may !be made lby petition Th~ rules governing submission of nominations by petition are as follows: 1 . Petitions must be signed by at least 30 members of the Alumni Association in good standing. 2. 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: Beverly Angel, SGl89, c/o St. John's College, Alumni Office, 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87501. 3. The election will be held at the Annual Meeting on Saturday, July 19, 1997, at 2 p.m. in the Junior Common Room, Peterson Student Center, Santa Fe campus. 4. The candidates for officers of the Association and directors of the Association receiving the highest number of votes shall be declared elected. Terms will begin in January 1998. • �Alexander Koukly (A) sends the following report: "After 3 5 very happy years living in Long Island, N.Y, I convinced my wife to start a new adventure and live in Boynton Beach, Fla., where we have been for two years. I am semi-retired, maintaining my broker/dealership in investment counseling. We have two daughters who are happily married, and we are blessed with five marvelous grandchildren. If any of my classmates are traveling through the area, please call me and we can re_minisce." Paul Westerbeke, who is living in Blue Poinc, N.Y, has retired from the health service field and has published a book of poetry, Silhouettes, Shadows, Sunbeams. .;· · . 62 --~t:;l Michael Elias (A) writes: "I have recently completed a screenplay for Mel Gibson's Man in the Maze," based on Robert Silverberg's novel, which in turn is based on Sophocles' Philoctetes." Michael, who lives in Beverly Hills, also is working on an adaptation of Anthony Burgess' novel A Dead Man in Deptford about the life of Christopher Marlowe. Miriam Duhan reports, "I've had a wonderful 1996. This part of life is very satisfying. I love my work at NetSoft, a small software company; I love living in New York City and I welcome guests; I completed the New York Marathon in November in a respectable time; and I'm expecting my first grandchild at the end of April. Four years ago I remarried; my husband's name is Terrill (Terry), but I still call myself Miriam Duhan." ti:tl6cf John Farmer (A) finished his first ultramarathon, the 50-mile JFK in Washington County, Md. His comment: "Phew!" He also sends word that the American Medical Association acknowledged his participation in a research study as part of ASPN, the Ambulatory Study Practice Network. Currently several more projects and papers are in the pipeline. And two of his boys received their Eagle Scout awards. Byron Wall (A) has been appointed Director of the Division of Natural Science in the Faculty of Pure and Applied Science at York University in Toronto for the 1996-97 academic year. Catherine Allen (A) is living in Silver Spring, Md., with her husband, Andras Sandor, and their nine-year-old daughter, Andrea. "Andras retired last year. He spends about half the year in Hungary; Andrea and I spend summers with him-we have a house in a village in a lovely wine growing region," she says. Catherine teaches anthropology at George Washington University and is currently chairman of the department. Her book, The Hold Life Has: Cultural Identity in an Andean Community (Smithsonian Press, 1988) has done very well. Her latest book, an ethnographic drama, was due out in December. ··70 Maureen Barden (A) is working , part-time as an Assistant U.S. Attorneyin the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Gerry teaches English at Santa Catalina School and Daphne is completing a Ph.D. in applied physics at the Naval Postgraduate School there. Eric Scigliano (A74, SF7 5) reports: 'Tm still a senior editor (a glorified staff writer) at the Seattle Weekly. But I've finally acquired the seniority, or orneriness, to avoid routine assignments and concentrate on the environmental and natural science stories I find most urgent and interesting. I still dabble in freelance-a few small-tomiddling pieces for the New York Times and New Yorker and an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal that does not signal a sea change in my politics. And a first semi-scholarly publication is due out soon, for Yale's Viet Nam Forum: translations (done with a friend who really knows Vietnamese) of songs by Trinh Cong Son, a writer of wartime protests and postwar love songs who's sometimes called 'Viet Nam's Bob Dylan.' I'm also trying to figure out what to do with a children's book I wrote, in a recent fit of distraction, about the squirrels in my backyard. I won't go on about the charms of Seattle, about which everyone has heard too much. But old friends who come to enjoy them should give a call." Eric won a journalism award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science for his articles in Seattle Weekly, "Holy Cedar" and "Salmon Saviors." ,l. .,..ll .:~;,;:,73 Prudence Davis (A) was recently reelected for a second six-year term as Mother Prioress of the Benedictine Priory, Turvey Abbey, Geus, England. David Allison (A), a curator at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, was quoted in an article on the Internet Archive in the March 1997 issue of Scientific American. He has used the archive-a permanent "snapshot" of the web--to set up a presidential election web site exhibit at the Smithsonian. He compares the project to "saving videotapes of early television campaign advertisements." Some of the web sites (for example Phil Gramm's presidential campaign site) have already disappeared from the Internet. 11 74 Mary Geoghean Jolles (SF) has obtained a principal's certificate in New Hampshire and says she will soon be looking for an administrative position. She expects to receive her Certificate of Advanced Graduate Study from the University of New Hampshire in December 1997. Gerry Kapolka (A) and his wife, Lieutenant Commander Daphne Greene Kapolka (A 7 6) are in Monterey, Calif. :it Z"JL:;' Peter (A) and Mary (Rogers) Kniaz (A) announce the birth of their fifth child, Catherine Regina Kniaz, born Aug. 22, 1996, at home, attended by a midwife. They report: "We continue to home-educate our children. Currently our 15-year-old is studying the Iliad in a book club Mary organized, and he is studying Euclidean geometry over the Internet." Peter continues to enjoy his work as Director of Information Services at Bell and Howell, Publication Systems Company. Jim Jarvis (A) is still at Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit. He was promoted to associate professor this year. 'Tm busy running my laboratory, raising my children, etc., etc." he says. · Michael Hendry (A) is teaching Latin classes part-time at the University of Montevallo in Alabama, and he continues to teach Latin and Greek at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa. Sam Atwood (SF) and his wife, Irene, announce the birth of their first child, Andrew Lee Atwood, op Oct. 28, 1996. Andrew weighed 7 pounds, 13 ounces when he was born. The family lives in Claremont; Calif. Pamela (Maxon Lobdell) Hrunger (A) was married on October 19, 1996, to James Brunger. Both work in human resources with the National Imagery and Mapping Agency. Susan Herder (SF) writes that she has "survived" her first year in private practice as a marriage therapist, "business not being my forte." She expected to complete her bachelor's degree in March and says she would love to take the Graduate Institute program sometime. She also says "hello" to all her St. John's friends. .,/. }&O .'.'.>l Anne Ferro (A) has been appointed Motor Vehicle Administrator of the Maryland Department of Motor Vehicles. Previously she served as Associate Administrator for Vehicle Services for four years, managing three divisions with 400 employees and a $29 million operating budget. She also served as the MVA's legislative liaison. Prior to joining the MVA, Anne spent six years with the Maryland General Assembly's Department of Fiscal Services, where she was a legislative and fiscal analyst for the House Ways and Means Committee. Her early career was varied: she earned a master's degree in public management from the University of Maryland, served in the Peace Corps in the Ivory Coast, joined a Fulbright program in Sri Lanka, and studied Arabic in Egypt. She worked as an economic development specialist in southern Maryland, as marketing director for a publishing company in Baltimore, and as a recruitment officer for the University of Maryland's School of Public Affairs. Guy Jennings (A) is a tax attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice. He lives in Rockville, Md., is married, and has two boys, ages 7 and 3. His e-mail address is <paxjen@mnsinc.com>. Rosamond Rice (AGI) is in Saipan in Micronesia for two years. The Library of Northern Marianas College invited her to return to work on the U.S. government publications collection and services to outlying islands. !';;',:i&2 Elizabeth Stuck (A) writes that after spending a couple of years in Pittsburgh and Ottawa, Ontario, her husband, Mike Beaupre, and she have returned to their "old stomping ground, Minnesota." She says, "I am raking this opportunity to reevaluate my career choice (research in computer science) in the hope of finding somethfog more satisfying." �REPORTER .f"\~J i~:;i Edward Sutton (SGI) and his wife, Lynn, announce the birth of their daughter, Anne Parrish Sutton, onJune 9, 1996. The family lives in Burlington, Vt. Richard Morehouse (SF) married Shawn Boben iri March 1996. Kent _Dayton (SF84) was his best man. He says chat Shawn is the administrative director of Mind, Brain, Behavior, a Harvard University incerfaculty initiative. Richard and .Shawn live in Brookline, Mass., with their two cats. Lyn DesMarais (A) and her husband, Jim, and daughter, Connie (who will soon be 3 ), welcomed K yran Raymond, born in February 1996. Jessica Wolff (SGI) writes chat St. John's "reawakened my love for antiquity, especially Minoans and Etruscans. Since then I've taken my daughter to Greece and participated as a volunteer in archeological digs. I've also traveled a lot and learned even more languages." .fic54 Elizabeth Twyford (A) graduated from Georgia Tech with a PhD in electrical engineering. She is currently doing research in. the field of photonics for TRW in southern California. :/ ; _() .e; ··:···uJ Camilla Pisk Donoghue (SGI) is working as a foreign service officer in Washington, D.C. She and her husband, Dan, had a son, John Paul James Donoghue, on March 24, 1996. She reports that, "Mom, dad, and big sister Hope are adjusting nicely." Lisa Kirkpatrick (SF) is doing consulting for educational software companies in the San Francisco Bay area. Linda Sullivan Shea (SF) writes that her daughter, Maria Elizabeth, recently celebrated her first birthday. "She continues to find new ways to delight her father, Peter Shea, and me, especially as she shows the passion for books one would expect from Johnny offspring. Since Maria's arrival on January 4, 1996, I have been busy juggling new motherhood and my screenwriting career. I presently have two scripts under option in Hollywood. One of them, titled Something Cool, is in preproduction as a low-budget, independent feature. A late-April shoot in Mexico is planned. My current work in progress is a thriller with a spiritual slant set in and around Santa Fe. (I even managed to work in a reference to Plato)." She says she would love to hear from other Johnnies, especially those in the Charlotte, N.C., area or those in the film business. Laura Finnegan (A) writes: "I am currently living in Chicago and have been for the last ten years. I am going to be married on May 18 to David Smith. David is finishing his Ph.D. in human development and also is training to be a clinical psychologist. He is a great person and is appreciative of my undergraduate education. "Since I left St. John's my life and how I perceive what is important has changed in many ways. One thing that has not changed, though, is that I still believe that my choice of St. John's was a good one even though I was young at the time. What I have learned is that the education was important, but the vitality of the program came from the St. John's· community and their commitment. I could have studied many of the same ideas at other schools, but St. John's offered an important human connection to the ideas that gave them life. I have learned over the years that for me it is the connections to the people, not the books alone, which gave the experience meaning. "I am a lawyer practicing mainly labor and employment discrimination law. The labor practice is on the union side. It is interesting and exciting work. It would be nice to hear from classmates. They can reach me for the meantime at: 6935 N. Oakley Ave., Chicago, IL 60645. E-mail address is<dps3@dura.spc.uchicago.edu>." cr6 _::,;;;1 Heather Peterson (A) has published a number of articles in children's magazines on subjects ranging from astronomy to church history. "I just write about what interests me," she says. She has just completed a history of Greenbelt, Md. Laureen Sutton-Borgilt (SF) and her husband, Brint, announce the birth of their second child, Raven, on Sept. 6, 1996. Raven joins her sister, Tara, 4. Laureen reports that Raven was born at home, "most appropriately, as I am now a home-birth midwife practicing in Ashland, Ore. Life is sweet - what a shame it is not more lucrative also!" Diana Martinez (SF) and Ted Merz (A89) are still living in New York City. Ted is the emerging markets editor for Bloomberg Business News and Diana is in her residency at New York Hospital. Joey Coxwell (SGI) and his wife, Patti (SGI92), are now living in Phenix City, Ala. Joey is a chemistry teacher at Central High School and Patti is the attendance officer/registrar. "This move happened very quickly," Patti writes. "No time to warn anyone. We went from 'Can you come for an interview?" to moving in 19 days! ... We are happy here and would like to keep in touch with all our Johnny friends. You can reach us at falala@mind- spring.com on line (guess who picked that!) or via snailmail at: Joey and Patti . Coxwell, 501 16th Ave. #6J, Phenix City, AL 36869. And to Larry Davis: We lost your address ... Please contact us!" Edith Updike (A) returned to New York in December after 2-1/2 years in Tokyo as a correspondent for Business Week. She will be an editor at' Enterprise magazine,· another McGraw Hill publication. Anne Slakey (S"f'.) is attending ·Marquette University, where she is studying historical theology and "enjoying life." Her e-mail address is: 5xi2slakeya@vms.csd.mu.edu. She says that her brother Bill is in Moscow and enjoying his time there, "although he says his Russian is still at the 'I Tarzan' stage." Michael David (SF) will graduate from the University of New Mexico with an MBA in technology management this May. Michael and some of his colleagues at UNM have created a web page that enables people to post new e-mail addresses and link those addresses to previous ones. The free service can be found at http://www.findmemail.com. Michael recently bought a house outside of Albuquerque and says, "I miss everyone and hope to see you at the reunion this summer. Anybody passing through has a place to stay." He can be reached at 5 . Derek, Sandia Park, NM 8704/. Katharine Bond (A) is selfemployed as an access consultant for museums and arts organizations. She has worked for the Smithsonian Institution Access Advisory Committee setting up panels and workshops and training staff; for Arena Stage doing "touch tours" for visually impaired audiences; and for Congressional Special Services writing and producing an audio description tour of the U.S. Capitol for visually impaired visitors. Katharine is on the National Board of Audio Description International. Alumni interested in technical advice, workshops, etc. can contact her at < kbond@galileo.gmu.edu >. Irene Laporte Plenefisch (A) and her husband, Tom, now have a daughter, Elena Adele Plenefisch, born Feb. 21, 1996. "We're having the time of our lives taking care of her, introducing her to the world, and watching her learn-she's wonderful!" writes Irene. Claudia Probst (A) is working at UNC-Wilmington and living in a small town about 17 miles to the north called Rocky Point. "Horses impelled me to come to North Carolina," she says. "I have my own little farm here where I live with my horses. It's a bare-bones operation but I enjoy it." Claudia notes that the quest for better communication with horses has been the primary path for her 25 spiritual and intellectual development since she left St. John's. She earned a master's in education (science curriculum development) from Harvard. Currently she works as an academic adviser in the department of biological sciences at UNC-Wilmington. She is co-authoring a book of science activities for the middle school classroom, and ~lso has written some articles on horse training. Her address is P.O. Box 525, Rocky Point, NC 28457, and her phone is: 910-675-2287. Jeff Falero (A) has just become registered as a professional civil engineer with the state of California. A design engineer with HNTB Corporation, he just completed his first bridge design for the State Route 30 extension though Ranch Cucamonga, and is active with the American Society of Civil Engineers. He currently resides in San Bernardino and would like to start a network of Johnnies interested in engineering/construction/ non-profit organizations. Contact him at work at 909-884-6884 or via e-mail at <jfalero@hritb.com>. :;;~go Fritz Hinrichs (A) is working to develop a great books program on the Internet for students who are being homeschooled. He wi:mld like to hear from classmates, and suggests they contact hin~ through his web site at http://www.gbcorg. Kelly Koepke (SF) received her MBA with a concentration in non-profit management from the U niversi ry of St. Thomas in Minneapolis, Minn. She is a member of the Class of 1990. This information was incorrectly reported in rhe Winter 1997 edition of the Reporlt!r. We apologize for the error. Courtney Oakes Williams (A) is a third-year veterinary student at Washington State University in Pullman, Wash. Her husband, Bob, will graduate in May from the law school at the University of Idaho. Alexandra Kincannon (A) has entered the University of Virginia graduate school. William Culley (SF) writes: "This is a response to a misquote in the winter Reporter, which I'm sure was due to my poor handwriting. It concerns the word 'gold.' I wished to sponsor an annual 'festival to celebrate this awe-ful tragicomedy of life as a token of my appreciation for you, and to facilitate the reawakening of the old god, who is forever a newcomer.' The quote said 'old gold' which made me think of cheap bourbon and Moses' dismay that golden cows could hold such sway. Actually this fits-let's roast some cows, drink lots of bourbon and celebrate the spring-Salute." CONT ON PAGE 26 �LU NI NE s CONT. FROM PAGE 25 Lisa (SF) and Phil (SGI92) Hopkins announce the birth of their son, Isaac, on Aug. 20, 1996. Isaac joins his sister, Rebecca, who is 3- l/2. Phil has finished his doctoral degree course work in philisophy at the University of Texas and has started working on his dissertation. Andrew Piet.rus (A) received an MA in education from North Carolina State University in December 1996, and is now teaching sixth- and seventh-grade language arts and mathematics at Our Lady of Lourdes School in Raleigh, N.C Anne Schuchman (A) and James Be.r.rettini (AGI93) were married on Dec. 21, 1996; in Setauket, N.Y. Johnnies in attendance included: Shelly Nicoll (A91), Tim McGuire (A91), Anja Wase (A94), Steven Matrick (A92), George Dolan (A92), Jennifer Accardo (A92), Cecilia Bailliet (A91), Alexandra Edelglass Stockwell (A90), Scot MacLean (A91), and John Capps (A91). Anne, who will retain her maiden name, received her master's degree in Italian from the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign in 1994. She currently is finishing requirements for a doctorate in Italian studies from New York University. Before receiving his master's degree from St. John's, Jim earned a bachelor of arts in physics in 1985 and a bachelor's of science in electrical engineering in 1986, both from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a software engineer at AT&T in New York. The couple lives in Manhattan, and can be reached at: 5 E. 22nd St., Apt. SM, New York, NY 10010 or by e-mail at <ams8050@is.nyu. edu> or <jberrettin@aol.com>. Gregory Brokaw (SF) is working for an architecture firm in Eugene, Ore. He recently received a master's degree in architecture from the University of Oregon and now is preparing for the licensing exam. Cynthia Evans Wilson (SF) lives in San Francisco with her husband, David. She says she is "a mother of two angels and a small business owner." Navy Ensign George M. Dolan (A) received his commission as a naval officer after completing Officer Candidate School in Pensacola, Fla. Elliott Callahan (A) and Amy (A) have a son, Phineas, born in August 1996. They live in Arlington, Va., and Elliott works as a pastry cook at the Ritz Carlton Hotel. James E. Cachey (SGI) is a law student in Chicago, Ill. Gabe Preston (SF) is in a graduate program in geography at the University of Colorado in Boulder. He is working at the university as a teaching assistant. Marchelle Porter (SF) married Stephen C Brain on April 6, 1996. The couple lives in Bishop, Calif Laura (SF) is working on a master's degree in forensic sciences at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. She also has a fellowship at the National Center for Biotechnology Information at NIH, where she's working on DNA sequence ..;malysis. This semester she has an internship with the Northern Virginia Medical Examiner's office and this summer she has an internship with the D.C. mobile crime unit. Brian Satterfield (A) is in graduate school at the University of Chicago. Ivy Turkington (A) reports: "I am just about finished with a master's in public policy, with environmental and finance concentrations, at the University of Chicago. I decided not to go for the Ph.D. because: (1) I found the most perfect man in the world and married him on Dec. 28, 1996; and (2) I hate living on the edge of gang territory in Hyde Park. Fortunately, my husband, John Ruhl, is a physics professor and astrophysicist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He thinks up, designs, implements and flies satellites from North America and the South Pole. In June, I am moving out to our beach house there, where I feel I deserve to be afi:er suffering through Chicago's cold and wet atmosphere. "To earn my bread and butter, I am working as a consultant with the Great Lakes Protection Fund, an environmental grant-making organization, doing research on socio-economic factors involved in environmental activism and decision-making, acting as a research associate with the Harris School on the structural components of education reform-a big business here in the windy city; and writing web pages. If anyone is interested in applying for a grant to fund a Great Lakes Basin-area environmental project, tell them to please contact me by e-mail at <iturking@midway.uchicago. edu> or phone 773/752-0432." Only in Santa Fe and only this summer will you be able to catch up with old friends and former classmates, while immersing yourself in the turn-of-thecentury writings of Edith Wharton and Henry James or sampling some of the great writings of the 20th century. The 1997 Homecoming and Summer Alumni Program will bring together St. John's alumni and some of their good friends and favorite tutors for two weeks of seminars and a weekend of simply kicking back. The programs begin on July 13 with a week of seminars on "Life in an Innocent Age." Seminars on Edith Wharton's timeless novel, The Age of Innocence, and two of her short stories, "The Reckoning" and "The Letter," will be led by Annapolis tutors Eva Brann and Nancy Buchenauer. Preceptorials on two Henry James works, The Spoils ofPoynton and The Europeans, will be led by Santa Fe tutor Janet Dougherty. The week also will feature screenings of the film adaptations of The Age of Innocence and The Europeans. Special activities for the week include a field trip to see the ruins of the Pecos Pueblo and to Fort Union and a trip to the Santa Fe Opera to see Semele by George Frideric Handel. The second of the two program weeks, "Timeless Themes, 20th Century Texts," begins on July 20 and will feature seminars on some of the readings that made the St. John's College list of "Great Books of the 20th Century." (See related story on page 7) Among the authors whose works will be studied are Edmund Husserl, Willard Van Orman Quine, Max Weber, Leo Strauss, WE.B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King Jr., Wallace Stevens, Paul Celan and Jorge Luis Borges. Tutors for the second week include Tom Scally, Linda Wiener, David Bolorin, Joshua Kates, Sally Dunn, Jim Forkin and Janet Dougherty. The second week also will feature a guided tour of Los Alamos and the opportunity to see Richard Strauss' Arabella at the Santa Fe Opera. Sandwiched between the two program weeks on July 18, 19 and 20 will be the 1997 Homecoming Weekend. There will be picnics, seminars, dinners, parties, waltzing and brunches for all alumni, with special events for this year's reunion classes -1972, 1977, 1982, 1987 and 1992. A special feature this year will be a dinner on Friday, July 18, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Graduate Institute in Santa Fe. All Graduate Institute alumni are invited to share in this celebration. A brochure about Homecoming and the Summer Alumni Program was mailed to all members of the reunion classes and Graduate Institute alumni in March. If you did not receive a brochure and are interested in Homecoming or the Summer Alumni Programs, please call the alumni office at 505-984-6103, send an e-mail message to eskewes@shadow.sjcsfed.u, or fill out the form below and mail it to: St. John's College, Alumni Office, 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87501. r-----------------------------_ Yes, I would like to receive a brochure and registration materials for the 1997 HOMECOMING AND SUMMER ALUMNI PROGRAM IN SANTA FE Sara Harris (SGI) is working in Tokyo for The japan Times. Last year, she was a Rotary International Ambassadorial Scholar. Name: Class Year: Campus: Home Address: Frank Guiseffi (SGI) is teaching ancient and Western civilization at Olney Friends School in Barnesville, Ohio. He also coaches boys basketball and is a member of the boys dorm staff. lml I I I I Phone: E-mail Address: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~· L--------~--------------------- I I I I I I I I I I I �OBITUARIES ALUMNI OPPORTUNITIES FROM THE ANNAPOLIS PLACEMENT OFFICE Whitman College, a liberal arts college in Walla Walla, Wash., is searching for qualified candidates to fill two senior staff positions: Applications are invited for the position of chief technology officer. The chief technology officer reports directly to the president, and provides the leadership and the practical experience to implement a strategic plan for technology. The chief technology officer is responsible for computer services, the Language Learning Center, instructional media services, and telephone and voice mail services. In addition, the chief technology officer works closely with the dean of faculty and the college librarian on technology matters relating to library service. "Whitman seeks candidates who possess successful experience in managing all or part of a technology organization in higher education and who demonstrates an understanding of the value of a liberal arts education. Leading candidates must be excellent communicators. Applications are also being accepted at Whitman College for the position of vice president for development and college relations. The vice president for development and college relations will report directly to the president and will be a member of the President's Council, which has oversight responsibility for the management of the college's academic and administrative functions. The vice president will supervise the activities in alumni relations, major gifts, annual fund, corporate and foundation relations and communications (all college publications; operation of printing services on campus and off-campus contract printing and mailing services; etc). Whitman seeks a person who possesses successful experience in leading higher education fund raising, including experience with major campaigns. Individual must be an excellent communicator, both verbally and in writing. Review of applications for the positions of the vice president of development and college relations and the chief technology officer will begin March 31, 1997, and will continue until the positions are filled. Materials submitted should include a letter of interest, a detailed resume and a list of four references (with phone and fax numbers and e-mail addresses). Address correspondence to: Dr. Patrick Keef, Chair, Search Committee, Whitman College, Walla Walla, WA 99362; e-mail: m keef@whitman.edu. the King Family Orchestra, along with his three brothers, twin sister and parents. He also worked at his grandfather's store, Feldmeyer's Book Store on Maryland Avenue. His father taught mathematics at the Naval Academy. King graduated from St. John's in 1939, where he played lacrosse and was a member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. A veteran ofWorld War II, he fought in several campaigns in th~ South Pacific and was awarded the Bronze Star. In 1962, he retired from the military and began teaching mathematics at New Hanover High School in Wilmington, where he taught for nearly 20 years. He is survived by his wife, two sons, two daughters, eight grandchildren, his twin sister, and a brother. STEPHEN CHARLES OWEN, Santa Fe Graduate Institute, Class of 1983 Stephen Charles Owen, 41, of Santa Fe, N.M., died on Dec. 18, 1996, from cancer. He was a staff counsel member for the New Mexico Public Utility Commission from 1987 until the time of his death. He received his bachelor's degree in philosophy from Texas Lutheran in 1978, his master's degree from St. John's in 1983, and a law degree from the University of New Mexico in 1987. He was a member of Holy Faith Episcopal Church, the New Mexico State Bar Association and the American Bar Association. He is survived by his wife, Sandy Swartz Owen; two daughters, Courtney Quinn and Brooke Lynn; his parents, Charles and Evelyn Owen; a brother, Thomas Owen; two nephews, Daniel and Michael Owen; and numerous other relatives and friends. KATHLEEN ANN COLE DYKSTRA Class of 1994 Kathleen Cole Dykstra, who attended St. John's Annapolis campus in 1990-1991, died in January in Sacramento, Cali£ She held a Coast Guard License and was co-owner, with her husband, Jacob John Dykstra, of the Janileen, a 72-foot commercial fishing vessel. Dykstra received her bachelor's degree from the University of California at Davis and a master's degree in library and information studies from the University of Rhode Island. She worked for the U.S. Census Bureau before quitting to join her husband as a commercial fisherman. In the past decade, she had been an activist in the fishing industry; she and several other women founded Rhode Island Women Ashore to represent the interests of Rhode Island fishermen before the state and federal governments. She is survived by a stepdaughter, three brothers, three sisters, and a grandchild. JOH DIHMO ARCHULETA former Santa Fe staff member Jose Delma Archuleta, 59, who . worked at St. John's in Santa Fe for nearly 26 years, died March 12, 1997. Archuleta was the chef on campus for 20 years, from 1967 through 1987, when he became an assistant groundskeeper. He served in that capacity through April 1993. He was a member of Our Lady of Guadalupe parish in Pojoaque, N.M. Archuleta is survived by his wife, Isabel. Those who would like to help the family in Archuleta's memory may send donations to: Isabel Archuleta, c/o St. John's College, 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87501. ERIC SHOEMAKER OBITUARIES TILGHMAN BEVERLY PRICE Class of 1933 Tilghman Beverly Price, a retired personnel specialist with the Defense Department, died in July in Annapolis. Born in Easton, Md., Price was raised in Baltimore. He was in the St. John's class of 1933, and worked for businesses in Baltimore and as a social worker before World War II. He served in the Army in Europe during that war and again in Korea during the Korean War. Price did personnel work at the Defense Department from 1946 to 1972, when he retired as a brandio; chief at the Defense Contract Audit Agency. His wife, Anne Maloney Price, died in 1986. Survivors include a sister. WILLIAM ROSS, SR Class of 1938 William Ross, Sr., of Rock Hill, S.C., died in January 1997. He was born in Cumberland, Md., and graduated from St. John's in 1938 and later from Johns Hopkins University. He was retired from Celanese, where he worked as a production planning manager. Ross was active in the Golden K Kiwanis and the St. John United Methodist Church, where he was past chairman of the administrative board and a longtime adult Sunday school teacher. He is survived by his wife, a son, a daughter, and four grandchildren. WILLIAM KING Class of 1939 Retired Marine Lt. Col. William King died in January 1997 at his home in Wilmington, N. C. King was born in Annapolis and grew up on Prince George Street. In his youth he performed with Class of 1985 Eric Shoemaker, Annapolis class of 1985, died in an accident on Dec. 31, 1996, in San Francisco. Eric worked as the customer service manager at Laissez Faire Books, in whose New York offices he had started working in 1988. He is survived by his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Franklin Shoemaker, his brother Kurt, and his sisters Laurie and Nancy, as well as many friends. Eric as one of the most benevolent and decent people I have ever known. Everybody who came in contact with him became aware of his fundamental goodness. He was also a stalwart defender of liberty, who embodied the values of openness and toleration that St. John's College represents, and a dear friend who is missed by all who knew him. 'Classmates and friends wishing to write to his family may write to Mr. and Mrs. Franklin Shoemaker, c/o Laurie Shoemaker, 29862 Emmett Road, Caldwell, ID 83605. - by Tom G. Palmer, A82 NOTED: J. GLASGOW ARCHER JR. A24, died in October 1996. ARMIN BENDINER A6 l, died in November 1996. AMY LOUISE COUGHLAN A80, died in December 1996. HOWARD LEGG A34, died in July 1996. ROBERT NICHOLS A48, died in September 1996. FREDERICK SCHUCHMAN JR. A50, died in June 1996. IRA F. WEISS A79, died in January 1997. R �ARTS F I Everything from mixed media and sculpture to photography and student works have been on display at the Art Gallery in Santa Fe this spring. The annual student art exhibit, which opened April 4, features pieces by St. John's students. The works for the exhibit were juried by members of the college's Library and Fine Arts Guild. The show itself is a time for Santa Fe students to express themselves visually, rather than through a seminar discussion. The exhibit runs through April 26. May will bring a dual exhibit by painter Merryl Berner Cicourel and sculptor Charlie Miner. The exhibit will open with a reception from 5 to 7 p.m. on Friday, May 2, in the Fireside Lounge, and continues through May 25. Both of these shows come on the heels of the March exhibition of the works of doc- Q.J u f:E 0 VJ c .s .._, ..:s ...... 0 Q.J ~ cd 11""\ r--c 00 e<:! u .'.=: :a :l 25 p... N Q.J :l 0 u -~ Q.J Q.J OJ:) ..... ...c:: ~u ~ .._, ,,..., ........ g Q) ~ ...0 ""d Q.J ...c:: -~ ::0 :l p... Black 0 "§ e<:! c u ...c:: VJ 0 0 - . \0 ...; ...... Cf) ...... z oJ r:.r.. cd c ci Cf) umentary photographer Bill Wright. "The Kickapoo: Keepers of Tradition'' featured 30 black.and-white, gelatin print photographs, and focused on the unique cultural and spiritual life of the displaced American Indian tribe. The exhibit of the Kickapoo grew out of a book by the same name. Work on the project took Wright to the homes of the Kickapoo in Eagle Bend, Texas, and Naciemineto, Mexico, as well as to their summer farming Eyebrow ring? That timeless classic-the flannel shirt? An investigation of jobs in communities as far north as Wyoming. For more information on the exhibits or the Library and Fine Arts Guild, contact El Ginger Roherty at 505-984-6099. fashion scene at SJ C in Annapolis BY SUS3AN BORDEN Is there a johnny look?-We know from our readings of Plutarch, Lucretius, Cervantes, and William James that this question has baffled sociologists and fashion experts throughout the ages. So in the St. John's tradition of confronting an issue without the on the Annapolis campus by means of an ingeniously designed and meticulously crafted questionnaire. But just as we were tabulating .the data and analyzing the results, the campus was stunned by a startling discovery that shed light on the timeless quality of the question. A student aide, assigned to sweep out the former library in Woodward Hall uncovered a remarkable manuscript (written in Ancient Greek) as she dusted behind the bookshelves in the Rare Books Room. Though tattered with age and smudged by use, the manuscript was (fortunately) perfectly preserved by the former library's legendary climate control system. Judging from the dates of newspapers found with the manuscript, it seems to have been hidden away around the time of the New Program's founding. Upon its discovery, the manuscript was rushed to the freshman language archons, who assigned its translation to their able pupils and are presently considering it for inclusion in the Greek manual. Although the full translation will not be Senior Maura with her while blouse ond available until the end of Febbie summer, the freshmen have just released the following fragments "for scholarly purposes only," they caution. Here, then, for the first time in print in the English language: fragments from the dialogue "Stringfello." The text opens: Stringfello: I went down yesterday to College Creek with Scott, the son of Buchanan, that I might offer up my prayer to the goddess; and also because I wanted to see in what manner they would dress to celebrate the festival, which was called Reality. Here the text breaks off, taking up again with: Stringfello: Can you tell me, Socrates, whether fashion is acquired by teaching or by practice; or ifneither by teaching nor practice, then whether it comes to man by nature, or in what other way? Socrates: 0 Stringfello, there was a time when the johnnies were famous among other Annapolitans only for their wisdom and their learning; but now, ifI am not mistaken, they are equally famous for their fashion, especially at Santa Fe, which is the native city ofyour friend. Scott. The remains of a substance not unlike coffee stain tke rest of the passage. I imagine it is now obvious to all readers that the nature of fashion at St. John's is indeed a question for the ages. Yet, it is equally obvious that our attempt to answer the question, while admirable and courageous, is doomed to failure; for how can we succeed when the world's greatest minds have yet to settle upon an answer? Indeed, upon showing the results of our meager questionnaire to the faculty, many tutors made reference to the newly discovered dialogue, to wit: Socrates: How fortunate I am, Stringfello! When I ask you for one fashion, you present me with a swarm ofthem ... And the tutors are correct, for what we have to report in this article is not the eidos of the Johnny look, but instead, a swarm of characteristic elements of that elusive fashion. Nevertheless, in the hope that perhaps greater minds will take up the cause and investigate this subject further, we report below the findings of our humble survey. THE MALE LOOK Hair: One requirement: messy. Head: Incipiently furrowed brow, slightly CONT. ON PAGE 15 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The St. John's Reporter</em> Description An account of the resource College newspaper which started publication in 1974. Continued publication into 2000. Includes primarily historical content.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The St. John's Reporter" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=35">Items in <em>The St. John's Reporter</em></a></strong> <span>to view and sort all items in the collection.</span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 28 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context vol 23 issue 3 Spring 1997 Title A name given to the resource Reporter, Volume 23 Issue 3 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997-04 Description An account of the resource Volume 23, Issue 3 of The St. John's Reporter. Published in Spring 1997. (Santa Fe edition) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Public Relations Office Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Goyette, Barbara (editor) Skewes, Elizabeth (editor) Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf The Reporter https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/0a44b818b44ed1eb58b8414b82a58443.pdf 08d5a92db2354fc61a3e3cc17713b00b PDF Text Text ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE LIBRARY 11111111111111111~~mn1mr1m111111111111111 3 1696 01138 2247 St. John's College ANNAPOLIS EDITION COMMENCEMENT '97 Ray Cave and Eva Brann in Annapolis ............................................ 8 Nancy Buchenauer in Santa Fe .......... 9 ALUMNI AUTHORS A semi-sci-fi thriller, a war-time tale, and a handbook on Socratic practice-Johnny authors show their versatility........................................... 12 REAL WORK-REAL PLAY The big three spring events-Reality, prank, and croquet-break the yearlong great books tension and demand real-world skills ................................. 14 DEPARTMENTS From the Bell Towers: Eva Brann retires as dean; a unity resolution; report on the fire in Santa Fe; SJ C says no to rankings ..................................... 2 The Program: Report on the Dean's Statement of Educational Policy................................................ 26 Scholarship: A new translation of the Sophist............... · ................................. 7 Alumni Association: The North Carolina Chapter; a report from the Treasurer........................................... 18 Alumni Profiles: Fritz Hinrichs conducts a virtual seminar; a Graduate Institute alumna tells her story.......... 10 Campus Life: Behind the scenes in Santa Fe with scholar-gardener Pat McCue and in Annapolis with the print shop .................................................. 24 Letters .............................................. 17 Class Notes ...................................... 20 Remington Kerper and Joseph Manheim are prepared for commencement: they've read the books, they've written the papers, and they've proven themselves on the croquet court. St. John's extracurriculars are not only a recreational release for academically frazzled students, they also demand real-world organizational and planning skills. See story on page 14. Photo by Keith Harvey. �From the Bell Towers ... DESCRIBING THE ORBITS OF THE PLANET BRANN RESOLUTION LINKS UNITY, TRANSFERABILITY Eva Brann's deanship is celebrated with a party and speeches. •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• BY BARBARA GOYETIE Board agrees on importance of ''one college" D ean Eva Brann finished up knows what future path will be taken her seven years (one for each by the planet Brann, chartable by of the liberal arts) as acaneither the hypothesis of eccentricity demic head of the college with a party nor the epicycles of her revolving at the President's house in early May. interests." Hundreds of students, tutors, staff, Miss Brann's speech stressed her alumni, and friends came to honor the thanks to faculty, staff, and students. woman who has given so much of her She recounted a story about when she intellect and energy to the college. came to St. John's as a prospective tutor Organized by a committee headed by some 40 years ago. "I was put up in tutor Sam Kuder, the event included Campbell and opened the dosed door speeches by representatives from the to find a red-painted skeleton with the students, staff, alumni, and faculty; Greek legend 'Gnothi Sauton,' 'Know presents (binoculars for bird-watching, thyself.'" a teapot and cups for leisurely enterThe departing dean thanked a list of taining); songs by a student chorus people at the college, including the and a faculty chorus; real food from a students. She told about her long "love real caterer; croquet; good conversaaffair" with the college and then tion; spectacular broadened that views. appreciation to Speaking for the include even more: students, senior "It has been one of Lynette Dowfy the delights of my talked about how life that this college Miss Brann had seems to be made helped her to stay at by and for this the college when she country, that it is at thought she wanted the same time one to leave-as an of a kind and yet an unhappy freshexpression of the man-and three essence of America years later helped as I see it. I am her to stay when thinking of the she thought she companionable would have to leave egalitarianism of for financial our seminars, of the reasons. Dowty said un-resentful she didn't mean to republicanism give a speech filled (small 'r' of course) At the retirement party for Eva Brann, the dean reads with surprise al a galley with personal of our Polity, and copy of her newest book, The Past-Present, delivered by Mor Pamela Kraus anecdotes, but that of the fresh and designer Adrienne Rogers (below); entertainment was provided by a when she canvassed immediacy of our chorus of tutors (above). Photos by Keith Harvey. her fellow students learning."• about what to say, said, she has the "fullest knowledge of all had similar stories about Miss the college, both historical and firstBrann's compassion, or her wit, or her hand." Second is that she has been the intellectual vigor. finest possible speaker for St. John's, a The Reporter (USPS 018-750) is published in "She is unwavering in her guardianfaculty derived from her "command of January and July by the Public Relations Office, ship of what she thinks is important every aspect of that rich word speech: St. John's College, Annapolis, MD, and in April for the good of the students," said Leo and October by the Alumni/Communications the knowledge of what to say; the Pickens, the college athle~ic director, Office, St. John's College, Santa Fe, NM. instinct for how to say it to a particular about his boss. Also speaking were Known office of publication: Public Relations group of people; the grace to put it Sharon Bishop, president of the Office, St. John's College, Box 2800, Annapolis, well; the pointedness of her words." Alumni Association, who praised Miss MD 21404-2800 Third is "the wealth of her interests and Brann's range of interests and her Annapolis: Barbara Goyette, editor; Sus3an the intensity of her enthusiasms ... Some devotion to alumni across the land; Borden, writer; Roberta Gable, Eva Brann, John of us know that there are certain Chris Nelson, who spoke of how she Christensen, Pamela Kraus, Benjamin Milner, interests in the world only because Eva has guided him in his presidency; and Brother Robert Smith, advisory board. has had them." Zuckerman's fourth Santa Fe: Elizabeth Skewes, editor; John tutor Pamela Kraus, who presented reason for Brannian excellence is her Schroeder, assistant editor; Lisa Donenfeld, art Miss Brann with a galley copy of her abilities with people. "[She] has been a director. newest book, The Past-Present, friend to all ages-as advisor, as Periodicals postage paid at Annapolis, MD, and currently "under construction" at the sponsor, as admonisher, as family at additional mailing offices. . St. John's Press. favorite, as godmother, and as guardian POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Tutor Elliott Zuckerman praised angel." He then likened the four Reporter, St. John's College, Box 2800, Miss Brann's excellence as dean in four reasons to the four elements, and added Annapolis, MD 21404-2800 ways-harkening back to her own that the fifth element that enlivens the penchant for making lists. First, he other four is unpredictability: "Who I thought we needed to reaffirm unity as the star guiding all deliberations," says Warren Winiarski, A52. As a member of the Board of Visitors and Governors, Winiarski proposed a Board resolution that passed unanimously at the January 1997 meeting in Santa Fe. The text of the resolution is: RESOLVED: that the Board ofVisitors and Governors reaffirms that St. john's College is dedicated to one and the same Program ofInstruction on both ofits campuses, that this is the Program founded in 1937, and evolving as published in the yearly catalogue ofthe college, and that students may .freely transfer berween the campuses within the rules set by the Presidents, Deans and the Instruction Committee. Before proposing the resolution at the Board meeting, Winiarski had submittted it to the Joint Instruction Committee and two Board committees-the Executive Committee and the Visiting Committee. All approved it. "I thought it was important to have consensus," says Winiarski. "It's a . faculty issue, a matter of instruction, so the Joint Instruction Committee, with tutors, presidents, and deans from both campuses, needed to approve." Winiarski's commitment to the idea of the unity of the campuses stems not only from his status as alumnus, and husband and father of alumni, but from his awareness of how the college is perceive4 by others. , During The Campaign For Our Fourth Century, Winiarski noticed that alumni and Board members were expressing concerns about the unity of the program. It seemed to those not entirely familiar with the inner workings of the college that the program of instruction might be growing different enough between the campuses that the ability of students to transfer between them would be affected. Such issues as tuition and tutor salary differentials, as well as the differences in senior year language tutorials (in Santa Fe there is a fine art segment), signaled a warning note for some-"They didn't want the college to start down the slippery slope that would lead to an eventual effect on the ability of students to transfer between campuses," says Winiarski. Since transferability can be seen as a kind of evidence of unity of instruction, Winiarski thinks that with the resolution, the Board has strengthened its commitment to a single college. • I �WINNING JOHNNIES from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The award provides $4500 for each fellow and placement in a research laboratory. This year's winners are Hai Sun, Cindy Lurz, Melissa Coleman, Olivia Morgan, Christine Love, and Nathan Greenslit. e S tudents on both cam~uses garnered prestigious awards this year. In Santa Fe, senior Kathleen Eamon was awarded a Fulbright grant to study philosophy at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, Eamon hopes to use her year in Germany to help her pursue a university-level teaching career in philosophy. The Fulbright grant will provide for round-trip transportation, language orientation study, tuition, book and research allowances, room and board for one academic year. Eamon's Fulbright project was entitled "Idealism: The Unification of Objects and Mind." At St. John's, Eamon has been the leader of a German study group, a writing assistant, a resident advisor, and a writer and designer for the school newspaper, The Moon. She was previously honored with the 1996 UPS Scholarship and the 1995 National Endowment for the Humanities Younger Scholars Grant. Elizabeth Trice, a Santa Fe junior, was awarded a Goldwater Scholarship for study in the sciences. Trice was one of 282 Goldwater Scholars selected from a field of l, 164 undergraduates. The Goldwater Scholarship, which will provide Trice with $7,500 for her senior year, was established to encourage outstanding students to pursue careers in the fields of mathematics, science, and engineering. Virtually all of the winners intend to pursue a Ph.D. Trice's Goldwater essay was entitled "On the Development of the Scientific Mind." Trice says her goal is to become a math teacher and "accelerate the progress of modern science by developing in myself and others well-trained minds, equally creative and mathemari- Heather Deutsch, a junior in Annapolis, won a Truman Scholarship. cal." She is a member of the college's Search and Rescue Team, a layout editor for The Moon, and previously was a lab assistant and GRE math tutor. Heather Deutsch, who is currently a junior in Annapolis, has been awarded a Truman Scholarship. She was one of 75 students nationwide chosen for the award. Scholars are elected on the basis of leadership potential, intellectual ability, and likelihood of "making a difference." Each scholarship provides up to $30,000-$3,000 for the senior year and $27,000 for two or three years of graduate study. Recipients must be committed to careers in government, education, or the not-for-profit sector. Deutsch would like to become a city planner; as part of her application she wrote a public policy analysis that recommended restructuring the city codes that regulate growth in her hometown of Santa Maria, California, to ensure equity for all residents. Deutsch is the volunteer coordinator for Project Politae, the student volunteer organization. She has been involved with study groups working on Heidegger, biology, and the German language. Rachel Davis, a graduating senior in Annapolis, has been accepted into the Peace Corps. She will be assigned to work in western Africa next year. Five summer research internships have been awarded to students in Annapolis as part of a $1 million grant CAVE TO HEAD ST. JOHN'S BOARD T he college has named Ray C. Cave, former editor of Time magazine and Editorial Director of Time, Inc., as Chairman of the Board of Visitors and Governors. Cave, a graduate of the class of 1948 in Annapolis, began his journalism career in Annapolis after graduation, working for the Southern Maryland Times. For eight years he was a reporter and assistant city editor for the Baltimore Evening Sun. He was also a writer and editor for Sports Illustrated before assuming the editorship at Time in 1977. He retired from Time, Inc. in 1989, and is at present an adjunct professor at Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism. On accepting the Board position, Cave said: "St. John's, with its 'great books' program, is in the forefront of the resurging interest in liberal ans education in America. It is dedicated to the concept that, even in a technological age, it is better to learn to think before you learn to do." Cave has served on the St. John's Board of Visitors and Governors for 16 years. He was chairman of The Campaign For Our Fourth Century, which raised more than $35 million for the college. As Chairman of the Board, he succeeds Stephen Feinberg, who leaves the Board after 18 years of service and five years as Chairman. e SHAKESPEARE UNDER THE STARS S hakespeare in Santa Fe, in association with St. John's, will again offer a summer of Shakespeare under the stars on the Santa Fe campus. This year the theater group will be presenting one of the later works, The Winters Tale, a heroic fairy tale filled with adventure, romance and spectacle, encompassing magical sea voyages, castaway princesses, young love, and joyful miracles. The opening of Shakespeare in Santa Fe's eighth season began with a preview performance on July 4. The summer season was officially kicked off, however, with a gala celebration on July 5. That evening included a cocktail reception, the debut performance of The Winters Tale, and a champagne toast with members of the cast following the play. Also, as a preview to this year's performance, Shakespeare in Santa Fe and St. John's again presented an afternoon of tea and Shakespeare. The June 21 tea was "officiated" by special guest Nagle Jackson, the director of this year's production. Held in the college coffee shop, the event included a talk about the Bard-his wit, wisdom, poetry, truth, and continued relevance in our lives today. Shakespeare in Santa Fe's summer intern program for high school students will also present a production of their "Children's Fairy Tale Hour" at 6 p.m. on Wednesday; August 6 and 13. Since its inception, Shakespeare in Santa Fe has presented the free productions of Shakespeare to more than 120,000 patrons. In addition, the company has also provided educational opportunities to more than 50,000 children and teens through the Shakespeare in the Schools winter tour and workshop program, as well as the summer internship program. The Winters Tale is being performed every Friday; Saturday and Sunday night through August 18. General admission is free, and reserved seating is available for donations of $15 and $25. For more information on any of the Shakespeare events or to reserve seating, call Shakespeare in Santa Fe at 505-982-2910. e -john Schroeder �From the Bell Towers ... £l/Jatt SEQ!JEL LETTER FROM THE ED RS I n looking back over past issues of The Reporter, we discovered that it has been a long time since a statement of editorial policy explained the publication to its readers. So here is some background: The Reporter's mission is to inform alumni and other readers about news of the college, to describe and explore the relationship between the college and the world, and to stimulate and sustain interest in the St. John's curriculum. The Reporter is published by St. John's College four times a year: in October and April in Santa Fe and in January and June in Annapolis. Stories and news about both campuses appear in each issue. It is distributed free to alumni, parents, friends, faculty, and staff of the college. More than 70% of the readers are alumni, so alumni communication is the focus of our stories. The Reporter has two editors: Barbara Goyette in Annapolis and Elizabeth Skewes in Santa Fe. Barbara graduated from St. John's in 1974, studied philosophy at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and worked as a feature writer and editor at several magazines before returning to work at St. John's. In addition to producing The Reporter, she is the college's public relations director (this involves trying to get stories about St. John's into local and national media and lots of explaining about the program to reporters) and oversees many of the other St. John's publications. Liz Skewes graduated from UCLA in 1979, has a master's from Ohio State University, worked as a reporter for newspapers in West Virginia and Florida, and edited the alumni magazine at Dickinson College before becoming the director of alumni relations and communications in Santa Fe. We editors are ably helped by Sus3an Borden (A87), a freelance writer, in Annapolis, and John Schroeder (SGI96), the assistant to the communications director, and Lisa Donenfeld, the art director, in Santa Fe. There is a special two-page section in the middle of The Reporter called the Alumni Association Newsletter. These pages are funded by the St. John's Alumni Association and edited by Mark Middlebrook, A82, a member of the Alumni Association Communications Committee. We don't need to wax poetic to remind alumni of the special bond they share. Freshman math with proposition 47, junior seminars struggling through Kant, Reality, Coffee Shop rendezvous, fall evenings on the quad after seminar-unlike alumni at other schools, everyone who went to St. John's shares in the same set of experiences. Our lives have interpreted those experiences in myriad ways, and looking at the interaction of our common intellectual background with the individual personalities we became is part of the mission of this publication. We always welcome news from alumni and other readers of The Reporter. Our phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and mailing addresses are printed below. Many of the stories you read in The Reporter were suggested to us by fellow alumni, so please keep the ideas coming. Speaking of ideas, we'd like a more formal way of finding out what readers of The Reporter are thinking, so we will be mailing a survey to every 20th name on the Reporter mailing list a week after this issue is published. The responses we receive will help us plan stories to write and topics to explore during the next year. If you don't receive a survey and would like to participate, please give us a call and we'll send you a copy. Barbara Goyette St. John's College Box 2800 Annapolis, Maryland 21404 410-626-2539 bgoyette@mailhost.sjca.edu Elizabeth Skewes St. John's College 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 505-984-6105 eskewes@shadow.sjcsf.edu Lost winter, the Friends of St. John's College staged a tercentenary social event that was worthy of a 300-year history-the Lafayette Boll. Alumni and townspeople tumed out in their finest to dance to the strains of Peter Duchin's Orchestra. This spring, a second Lofoyelte Boll, this time open to students, foculty, and staff, was held in Randoll. The invitations read 11 black tie or equivalent," which had, of course, a wide range of interpretations among the student population. Hundreds came in their fondest, or mosf fanciful, attire. Music was provided by Crabtowne Big Band. Waltzing and swing dancing in Randoll can be a hazardous activity (remember those pillars) but no iniuries were reported. Photo by Colby Cowherd. FACULTY NOTES: ANNAPOLIS AND SANTA FE Santa Fe tutor Lynda Myers (SF71) received her doctorate degree in philosophy, with distinction, from the Catholic University of America in February 1996. Her dissertation was entitled Aristotle on the Role ofFriendship in Choice. Myers earned her master's degree at the University of North Carolina in 1975. She became a tutor at St. John's in 1977 and served as the Director of the Graduate Institute from 1985 to 1988. During his last sabbatical, Santa Fe tutor Peter Pesic was able to locate two long-lost manuscripts of Francois Viete (1540-1603). These documents show . the methods by which Viete solved many diplomatic ciphers for the French King Henry IV "These methods show why he should be considered not only the founder of modern algebra, but also of modern crypt analysis," Pesic says. Pesic published an account of these methods, with translations of the manuscripts, in Cryptologia in January 1997. Pesic has been the Musicianin-Residence for the Santa Fe campus since 1984. During the 1996-1997 school year, he presented the complete solo piano works of Franz Schubert in 12 concerts at St. John's, including some of the four-hand works with pianist Maya Hoffman. This series coincided with rhe 200th anniversary of Schubett's birth on Jan.31, when he performed an all-Schubert concert at the college. Annapolis tutor Cordell Yee's book, The World According to James Joyce: Reconstructing Representation, was published by Bucknell University Press in March. Departing dean Eva Brann has decided to have the papers accumulated during her seven-year tenure in office sealed until the year 2090. Important documents and letters have been xeroxed and filed, but the six cartons of letters, lectures, memos, and notes will be put away until it's time to start thinking about St. John's 400rh birthday. "Someone will undoubtedly want to write something for chat occasion, and if they find this stash, they might be pleased to have a good starting point for their research," she says. �RANKLED BY RANKINGS •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• The Presidents decide to "let the college speak for itself" rather than participate in ranking surveys where numbers dictate status. S t. John's has decided to withdraw from all collegiate ranking surveys, including the US. News & World Report rankings published in early fall. The decision not to participate reflects the conviction of the presidents and the admissions directors that the rankings do a disservice to students and their parents who are searching for the best college. It's not that St. John's doesn't fate well-we've been ranked by US. News everywhere from the third tier to the second tier to the top 25. But, since St. John's hasn't changed its mission or its program in 60 years, the college should speak for itself rather than be a part of a fluctuating outside analysis. Every year US. News & World Report sends out a questionnaire to more than 1400 colleges and universities. The answers provided by the schools form the basis for the rankings. A second questionnaire is mailed to about 4000 college presidents, deans, and admissions directors to assess_ "reputation"; they are asked to rate schools in their own category (for example, national liberal arts colleges or regional universities). The various attributes (reputation, selectivity, faculty resources, financial resources, etc.) indicated by the data are weighted; i.e., reputation counts for 25%, selectivity for 15%, and so on. The school with the highest "score" is number one, or 100%, in its category. The rest of the scores are converted to a percentage of that top score and ranked. In a letter to Mel Elfin, editor of US. News' "America's Best Colleges" issue, presidents Christopher Nelson and John Agresto said, "We are concerned that the distinctiveness of each individual college and the diversity among them tend to be lost in a scale of 'best-good-worst.' We know there are some colleges in the lower tiers that are exactly right for some students-their missions, their modes of teaching, their concentrations, their location, their moral or religious nature, might make them far superior to colleges in 'higher tiers' or in the 'top 25.' Yet all the student sees is that his prospective college is 'ranked lower.'" Rankings assume that the value of an education can be quantified, said the presidents' letter, "but measuring quality requires the exercise of judgment, a considerably higher function than the ability to count." Furthermore, the kinds of data used to rank schools in the U.S. News survey are not indications of educational excellence. Some results highlight competitiveness, particularly in admissions. Others are indications of fiscal status. The reputation rankings are also misleading because while they may point out a good college, they do not tell students for whom that school is a good choice and why. Admissions directors Larry Clendenin in Santa Fe and John Christensen in Annapolis agree that there will be minimal impact on admissions as a result of not participating in the rankings. "The kind of student who is interested in St. John's is looking beyond these kinds of conventional listings," says Christensen. ''As far as we know, no prospective student has ever come to us because of our place in any ranking.'' The college will continue to participate in surveys for guidebooks that do not rank colleges-such as the Fiske Guide to Colleges and the Prine- eton Review. The "Best Colleges" issue of US. News & World Report is among its top sellers every year, and the public seems anxious to invest the rankings with meaning. "The guide purports to tell parents and students something that will help them make this important, expensive decision," says Christensen. "It holds out a kind of hope, but it doesn't in fact deliver." While some schools have altered policies to boost their place in the rankings, college officials at other schools have begun to question the value of the rankings. Reed College pulled out of the survey in 1995, and this year Stanford University is setting up a web site to present data directly to students and their parents-the numbers without the interpretive rankings promulgated by US. News. St. John's has asked not to be included in the rankings and has not provided data this year, but in the past, US. News has sought alternative sources of information about colleges that refused to return their survey. -by Barbara Goyette e IN HONOR OF "THE RIGHT THING" •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• A committee ofalumni is working on a way to honor both the college's decision to desegregate and the man who broke the color barrier. W en Martin Dyer first heard his high school vocational ounselor describe St. John's College, his reaction was typical of many alumni: he was excited by the idea of the college and decided to apply. Here's what was unusual about his experience: Marrin Dyer first heard about St. John's in 1948; he was a high school student in an impo~erished east Baltimore community; and he was black. By the- following fall, he was enrolled at the college, the first African American student at the first private college south of the Mason-Dixon line to decide to break its unwritten rule of segregation. Dyer graduated in 1952, received his law degree from the University of Maryland in 1959, and has had a distinguished career in the federal government. Now several people, including Everett Wilson (A56) and former tutor Harvey Poe, are forming a committee with the aim of starting a fund that will honor the college's commitment to desegregation and Dyer as the first · to take advantage of that decision. The Martin Dyer Book Fund will provide money for St. John's students who are not able to afford to buy program books. ''At first, this was a committee of one," says Wilson, who last year returned to St. John's for his 40th reunion and began talking with other African American alumni about how to thank the college for its commitment to "do the Martin Dyer: "St. John's believes, as I do, that books are an important part ofour lives. " right thing" in 1947. That was when the students and faculty insisted St. John's admit black students and the Board relented. "Not only did the college decide to admit these students," says Wilson, "it went out to recruit them-something no other school had even thought of." Indeed, the vocational counselor at Dyer's school had been visited by several St. John's students in their effort to find black applicants. Wilson wanted a way to honor both the college for its action and Dyer for his perseverance and courage in coming to the college as the first African American student. "The books are the lifeline of the college, and we felt this fund would be a most fitting tribute to Martin and the college," says Wilson. "[President] Chris Nelson and I worked on the idea for it together, and Martin himself is behind it 100 percent." Today's St. John's students need to spend about $800 per year on books, a figure many cannot afford. Rather than purchasing the Plato, Shakespeare, Kant, Einstein and other "great books" volumes for use in class, many students must borrow them from the library. Still others buy the books but then sell them at the end of the year to help purchase the next year's books. The committee hopes to establish a fund that will provide money for students to buy program books and keep them. • For information on the fond, call Joan Ruch at 410-626-2534. �From the Bell Towers ... MATTRESS FIRE INJURES STUDENT ••••••••••••••••••• BY ELIZABETH SKEWES A n early morning fire in Jones fl.Dormitory on April 29 injured one Santa Fe student and sent another to a local hospital for smoke inhalation. The fire also damaged one room in Jones and smoke damaged the other rooms in the building. Jacob Blakesley, the freshman who was injured in the fire, was taken to the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center in Albuquerque, where he was treated for burns. He was in the hospital for several weeks, but is now recovering at his home in Seattle and plans to return to St. John's in the fall for his sophomore year. Chris Reichman, a rising senior, was taken to St. Vincent Hospital in Santa Fe, where he was treated for smoke inhalation and released. The fire broke out about 5:30 a.m. on April 29 and was caused by a burning mattress, says Bryan Valentine, the college's treasurer, who is working with the insurance companies on the investigation. He said that one of the students living in Jones noticed the mattress fire and tried to extinguish it. The student thought he had successfully put out the small fire, so he propped the mattress on its end, opened a window to air out the room, . and left. The mattress reignited, however, and Blakesley, who roomed with the student, was burned as he tried to get out of the room and the building. Blakesley's shouts woke up Mike Rozak, a rising sophomore who lived next door. Rozak then started knocking on doors to wake up the other students in Jones and make sure that they got out safely. The remaining nine students living in Jones were not injured, although all had to be relocated to other dorm rooms for the remainder of the school year. The college still is receiving estimates on the cost of repairing Jones Dormitory, but Valentine said that the building will be ready for.occupancy when students return for classes in August. As word of the fire reached alumni, there was support and concern for the students involved and even some tangible help toward the work to come. In the wake of the fire, George Graham, SF73, donated $500 to the college to help pay for the repairs and renovations to the building. Graham says he wants to encourage his classmates and other alumni to consider making or increasing their gifts to the college this year to help with the renovations. e GI E-MAIL T he Graduate Institute in Santa Fe has a new e-mail address so that students and alumni can more easily stay in touch. David Levine, the new director of the Graduate Institute, says that he also hopes alumni will use the e-mail address-or call or write a letter-to provide him with suggestions about how to improve the program and how to increase the involvement of graduate students in the life of the college. The new e-mail address for the Graduate Institute is: GI@shadow.sjcsf.edu. e ADMINISTRATM SHIFTS IN SF l une 1 saw three administrative changes on the Santa Fe campus. avid Levine, who has been acting assistant dean, took over as director of the Graduate Institute from Cary Stickney. Stickney, who has been director since 1994, is now on sabbatical in Italy with his wife, tutor Susan Stickney. Basia Miller will replace Levine as assistant dean. In addition, Elizabeth Skewes, director of alumni and parent relations, has taken on the additional role of being director of communications for the college, following the departure of Lesli Allison, SGI94. Skewes will now oversee both offices. She came to the college in 1995 from Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, where sh_e worked in the alumni and public relations offices. e ANNAPOLIS HOMECOMING '97: BooKS, Music, Acr10N BY ROBERTA GABLE ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• eptember in Annapolis: the summer humidity is gone, classes are back in session, there's a hint of ~utumn on the campus, and reunions are in the air. Homecoming will be held this year the weekend of September 26-28. It will open Friday evening with the Class of'94 Homecoming Lecture: John Lindsay Opie, A47, an internationally known scholar of sacred art, will travel to Annapolis from Rome to present "The Icon of the Holy Trinity by Andrej Rublev" (and to celebrate his 50th reunion!). After lecture, talkers can repair to the Chase-Stone Common Room for a wine and cheese reception, and dancers can head over to the Great Hall for a waltz party. On Saturday morning the Alumni Association w~ll have a special meeting, during which Annapolis tutor Benjamin Milner will be made an Honorary Alumnus. At 11 :00 a.m., the dedication ceremony for the BarrBuchanan Center will be held on the steps of Woodward Hall, the former library; tours of the Barr-Buchanan Center and the new Greenfield Library will be conducted throughout the afternoon. After lunch (reunion classes will have special luncheons: '77, for example, strolls down to the Little Homecoming in Annapolis features a number of special programs, but it's also a time to catch up with old friends, revive intellectual interests, and remember the glory days. Camp~s to celebrate their 20th), seminar will be held at 2:00 {tutors include Jim Beall, Eva Brann, Michael Comenetz, Nick Maistrellis, Tom May, and Thomas Simpson). Then at 4:00, the Soccer Classic will pit alumni against current students, in back campus's second most famous annual spectacle. For chose not pursuing seminar or soccer on Saturday, a variety of diversions awaits. First, "St. John's Forever," a special show about the preBarr/Buchanan days of the college; then, "Three Centuries in Sixty Minutes," a slide show history of St. John's by Emily Murphy, A95. Finally, Harold Anderson, A72 (celebrating his 25th reunion), will present "Misterioso: Thelonious Monk, Dialectic, and the Blues," a performance/lecture introduction to the dialectical side of African American culture and its musical nature. Also on Saturday afternoon the golden throats of yesteryear will harmonize once more at "Freshman Chorus Revisited" under the expert direction of Elliott Zuckerman. And the bookstore will be holding a major autograph party with many of our alumni authors: Charles Nelson, A45; Thomas Simpson, A50; Mark Fabi, A76; Eva Brann, A89, and Emily Murphy, A9 5, will all sign their books. Following the late afternoon cocktail party, the gala Homecoming Dinner will feature Alumni Association Awards of Merit presented to Roland Bailey, A35; George Van Sant, A47; Martin Dyer, A52; and William Tilles, A59. After dinner there's a rockin' boathouse party (d.j.'ed by the inimitable Robert George, ASS), and Cafe Liberal Arts, an espresso and dessert affair in the coffee shop. First thing Sunday morning, Taylor Waters, AGI96, will lead a 5k fun run; then at 11 :30 President Chris Nelson invites all Homecoming participants to his house for a champagne brunch. Homecoming brochures will be in the mail in July. If you have questions about any aspect of the event, please contact the alumni office at 410-6262531 or alumni-office@sjca.edu. e �Scholarship ... TRANSLATING THE SOPHIST: A. REVIEW •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• BY OWEN GOLDIN, SF79 Eva Brann, Peter Kalkavage, and Eric Salem, Plato's Sophist or "The Professor of Wisdom'': Translation, Introduction, and Glossary. Newburyport, Mass.: Focus Philosophical Library, 1996. Pp. 93. $6.95. F or many years, the standard English translation of Plato's Sophist was that of F. M. Cornford, printed, with running commentary, in P/,ato's Theory ofKnowledge. Though Cornford's commentary greatly advanced the understanding of the dialogue, the translation was deeply flawed in a number of respects, most notably in the shift in the translation of ov from "being" to "real." This made it difficult for the reader ro follow the line of the argument. Recent years have seen three worthy successors to Cornford, in translations of the Sophist by Seth Benardete, W S. Cobb, and N .P. White. Cobb and, to an even greater degree, Benardete, strive for a highly literal translation, with consistent rendering of Greek terms, and attention to the details of expression. Proponents of readings of the dialogues as dramas have argued that such translations are necessary if the translation is not to erase the suggestive details that Plato inserted in his writing as indications for the careful reader, and if readers are not to be misled by a translator's facile interpretation of Plato's difficult views. We now have an outstanding new translation by St. John's tutors Eva Brann, Peter Kalkavage, and Eric Salem, which has virtues of its own, and in most respects easily rivals the other translations. The translators, squarely in the camp of those paying close attention to the dialogue as drama, have striven for as accurate, literal and translation as possible. Care is taken to render one Greek word (or root) by one in English. (Of course this has not always been possible in an accurate and intelligible translation, but in the present translation deviations from the principle are remedied by an excellent glossary which gives both Greek and the various English alternatives, and explains the etymological and semantic relations that hold among clusters of important words.) Particles are translated or reflected stylistically. Care is taken in giving exact renderings of even the slightest of Theaetetus' replies. Thus the reader, instead of the translator, can be the judge of the significance of the details of drama and expression. Literal translations, especially of literary works like the the dialogues of Plato, often strike the reader as unduly difficult and stiff, rife with odd locutions. This is certainly a problem faced by the translations of Benardete and Cobb. In contrast, the translation of Brann, Kalkavage, and Salem reads naturally and gracefully, preserving the freshness and clarity of the Greek. On almost every page, the reader is struck by particularly felicitous renderings. I must be content to give only one example Consider 236dl-3: 'dA,'A,' o\rtro~ 0cx:uµacr't0~ 'cxv'rp Km' Ka'ttbEl. V nayx'a.Af:no~, 'rnEt Kat VW µ'ex.A.a EU Kat KOµ'lfc:O~ Et~ cirtopov Ewo~ bt.Eprnvtj::mcr0m Ka'tan'gprnyEv. Brann, Kalkavage, and Salem render this as "But the man is wondrous in his very being and utterly difficult to keep in our sights, since even now he's fled, in very good and clever fashion, down into a form that leaves no passage for our tracking." Compare Benardete: "But in his being, the man's amazing and very difficult to be caught sight of, since even now he has very skillfully and elegantly fled into a species that affords no way for a definite tracking" and White: "He's really an amazing man-very hard to make out. He's still escaped neatly into an impossibly confusing type to search through." Benardete's translation is literal, but the rendering of ei'dos as "species" is questionable, on account of the technical use to which Aristotle puts it, and the sentence is wooden to the point of being painful to read. White's breezy translation has a pleasant conversational tone, but loses the metaphor of the downward pursuit that has been prominent throughout the Stranger's divisions. Brann, Kalkavage, and Salem preserve the best of both approaches. Unlike the freer translations of Cornford and White, the language sometimes seems odd, but this is only when there are good reasons for believing that something can be learned from preservingthe way in which the interlocutors actually express th~m­ selves. As the translators tell us, "the translation of the most frequent and weighty words should be as unrestrained and nontechnical as possible, preserving the still fresh root meaning and suggestive connotations of a Greek vocabulary just on the point of becoming fixed and philosophical in the technical sense." Thus µE0'oyo~ is rendered "way," 'iliea as "look," OpXrl as "beginning," dmt.'cx. as "beinghood," a11µa{vn v as "point to" and so forth. Though perhaps inspired by Heidegger's insistence that the vocabulary of Greek thought must be uncovered from the later theoretical accretions, the present translation nowhere in this regard falls prey to Heideggerian excess. The edition has an admirable introduction, primarily written for the able undergraduate and general reader. The focus of the introduction is the teaching of the dialogue on the distinction between the human activities of sophistry and philosophy, and how the way of inquiry taken by the Stranger bears on this issue. A word should be said on how Brann, Kalkavage, and Salem deal with one of the most difficult issues they face. The phrases 'tO' ov can refer to either a particular thing that is, or to that feature that all things that are have in common. The translator must avoid Cornford's mistake of switching the translation of the phrase midway through the argument. In accordance with most of the current interpretations of Parmenides' poem (to which the Stranger refers), recent translations of the Sophist usually have opted for the translation "that which is" or the like. On the other hand, this poses problems when translating the passage discussing the five great Forms, when the phrase primarily refers to something in which a thing participates. Thus, Brann, Kalkavage, and Salem, alone among recent translators into English, opt for "Being." Consistency then demands that 'to' µ11' o"v be rendered as Non-Being. But the questions that the Stranger raises concerning 'to' µ11' ov are not in regard to a Form of Nonbeing, in which things participate; they concern the possibility of a thing which is not anything at all. This is one case in which there is no wholly satisfactory option. This translation of the Sophist excels in lucidity, accuracy and style. This is the best English Sophist for both student and scholar, and promises to be the standard for many years to come. • Owen Goldin teaches at Marquette University. This review appeared originally in a somewhat longer version in the Bryn Mawr Classical Review. COMPUTERS AT SJC: AN IDEA I n the summer after my freshman year, 1968, I got a job as a technical aide at the Naval Academy, working as a coder in computer-aided instruction. I coded courses in stoichiometry, Russian, naval operations, and game theory. The technique that the Naval Academy used, which I have not seen repeated successfully, was programmed instruction. It probably hasn't been repeated because it requires considerable pre-planning and just plain hard work on the part of the instructors. But it seemed to me that it was also very successful. At the start of my sophomore year I had a brief conversation with Mr. Kuder, in front of the Pinkneys, about computer aided instruction. His comment was that it just wouldn't work at St. John's. After close to 30 years in the computer racket, I agree-to a degree. For the core of the St. John's program (and what else does SJC teach?) computer-aided learning has no place. The essence is human interaction, with fellow students, with tutors, and with the authors. But there might be a use for computer-aided learning in the math and lab programs. After I graduated from St. John's and moved to Seattle, I enrolled in a Ph.D. physics program. The theory was no problem. What I couldn't do was the math. I had forgotten so much since high school, and at St. John's we just don't do the number-crunching, equationgrinding hard math. It seems to me that, at least in mathematics, where repetition in problem-solving is the essence of fluency, computer-aided learning could have an extra-curricular place for those students who were serious about their math. It will never replace tutorials, seminars, and the lab, but it could augment them for interested students.• -Thomas Day, A74 �~-~~~-~~-~~-~ ~! •.9.7. •. ••. •. •. •. ••. • . •: • •• ••~ • In Annapolis, Ray Cave and Eva Brann talk about stories, happiness. BY BARBARA GOYETTE It y Cave spoke about beginings and endings and Eva rann spoke about St. John's as paradise as each addressed the 93 seniors and 26 master's degree candidates in Annapolis on May 18. Cave likened the beginnings and endings that the graduates will face with the beginnings and endings of stories, which, as editor of Sports progress there are changes, and the acceleration of the rate of change is ominous." But after four years at St. John's, he assured the graduates, "you are well-prepared to deal with the lack of permanence." Beginnings may be important, but Cave humorously used some of the first sentences from program books to show that an inauspicious beginning can lead to a more interesting fulfillment. Aristotle's Ethics and Kant's introduction to the Critique ofPure Reason are "not so engaging" at the start as, for example, The Iliad or Don Quixote, he said. Cave talked about how he rewrote the first sentence of his first piece for Sports Illustrated many times, and even then hesitated to turn it in to his editor. His point: Don't be afraid to chuck what you've done and start again. "If beginnings promise us, endings teach us,'' Cave said. "So many hints of our future reside in our past." Hemingway wrote 39 different endings to Farewell to Arms-an indication of the importance of crafting just the right ending, but also of the extent of possibilities. Cave ended his own speech with a wry anecdote. When he was in London at a dinner party with Dennis Healy, who would have been Prime Minister had his party mustered a majority, Cave was expounding on "something I didn't know much about, like the nuclear arms race." Healy asked him whether he knew the first law of holes: "When you're in a hole, stop digging." Paradise or Real World? Illustrated and later of Time magazine, the 1948 graduate of the college has built a career on analyzing. He cited Newton's first law, that a body in motion continues in motion unless compelled otherwise, and called it wrong- "It's wrong because you are bodies in motion, and you are going to change directions many times without being compelled to do so," he told the graduates. Cave provided three rules for life's beginnings and endings: First, begin every enterprise with zest; second, if what you have begun proves unrewarding, do not be afraid to begin again; and third, at each ending, reflect. "Know that each beginning is an opportunity," he said. "You live in an unstable society. In the name of Eva Brann, in her final commencement appearance as dean, talked about St. John's as a paradise, in contrast to the "real world" that students speak of as the world outside, the world they will be living in after their graduation. Brann elaborated the paradise metaphor when she called the campus "as dangerous a place as was Eden to our ancestral couple" because of the "severities and intensities" of these four years- "here depression and sloth played tag with each other, a term of exhilaration was followed by a semester of dust and ashes, the faces of friends became provocations and irritations ... Here your souls were continuously confounded and kept off-base by a program that subjected your studies to near-total prescription while inciting your intellect to almost complete freedom." Brann then offered five theses about happiness, which she claims to have learned something about from the books and the college community. First, she said, "We ought to want happiness." The Kantian duty with respect to happiness, said Brann, is based on Aristotle's notion that happiness is in fact the end of all human action. We have to choose happiness. "Everything in this program is directed by the idea that it is possible to make some sense of life, and that that sense is the ground of a possibility for happiness," she said. Second, we need to realize that happiness and pleasure are truly different. "Happiness is the good feeling that runs deep and steady and knows what it knows, always. Pleasures, which certainly should regularly punctuate every life, pass on with the waxings and wanings of our desire." Third, happiness should be a "settled state" and as such requires regular maintenance-we need to "learn what our own meaning is" and keep it in view. Fourth, "all else comes and goes, but active devotion to a good thing, from the raising of a child to the service of your community, from the discovery of a truth to the worship of a divinity, is a steady center of life." We should always find ways to be "fully at work," as Aristotle says. Finally, Brann laid out an aspect of happiness that is especially important to her: imagination. "Your imaginations have been well stocked by our books, books of truth-seeking theory and books of likeness-making myth. They have furnished your memories with scenes of significance and of splendor, scenes onto which to project your lives." • Ray Cave addresses the graduates {fop left); Juan Villasenor and his mom remember an earlier graduation (bottom left); President Christopher Nelson and Dean Eva Brann look out over the sea of mortarboards (top); graduate Judith Neeiy and her family enjoy the day-her father, The Rev. Jerzeel Toliver, gave the Baccalaureate address (center); Graduate Institute student Robert Gamble, age 86, prepares to receive his master's degree (bottom). Photos by Keith Harvey. •••,I �•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• In Santa Fe, Nancy Buchenauer celebrates beginnings and endings. BY ELIZABETH SKEWES I t was a day approached "with both joy and sorrow, hope and regret," in the words of commencement speaker and St. John's tutor Nancy Buchenauer. And that mix of emotions could be seen on the faces of each of the 87 seniors and 24 Graduate Institute students who collected their diplomas on May 18, surrounded by friends, family and tutors who had seen them through their St. John's years. It was also a day for warm memories, which is why they asked Buchenauer to come back to Santa Fe from Annapolis to speak at commencement. And it was a day for warm laughter, which Buchenauer provided with her words, which invoked many of the authors so familiar to the graduates. "To find myself back in Santa Fe reminds me once again that there are few one-way streets in life; motion, as Ptolemy saw so dearly, is always in a circle," she said. "It is a truth, known not only to the world's Offices of Alumni Affairs, that every deparJure is at once die beginning of a return. This is worth thinking about, especially by any of you who suppose that you are about to make a clean getaway." Buchenauer said that it is "especially appropriate" that commencement ceremonies occur in the presence of family and friends, "since the continuity of our relationships with them testifies to the fact that life is not really a linear progress, but a series of circles by which we return from the new to the old over and over again. "By these circles we expand to include that which makes us deeper and wider, but we must always take these new acquisitions back home and test them against what we have known and been previously before the process of change can be complete," she said. And just as she encouraged the graduates to risk being changed by their education and experience, she also encouraged them to actively live their lives. "If life is not just to pass us by dreamily without our noti~ing, maybe we have to make ourselves into livers of it, as one becomes an athlete, by discovering the rules that govern cause and effect in human actiC?n," she said, adding, "Integrity is just this-to have found the courage to order ourselves into beings who act and are not merely acted upon." These are lessons learned in some of the first books read in the St. John's program. Buchenauer cited both Socrates and Aristotle as philosophers who "stress the immense importance of habit in human life, the curious field where plays out the battle between fate and freedom for possession of the soul. miracle that is seen by anyone who has ever put a seed into the ground and waited for it to grow. It is our work to foster such seeds in ourselves and to sow them plentifully in one another, since as the Phaedrus shows us, other people are the best ground for writing. I wish you all strong hearts and minds, and this hard-won maturity of delight," she said in closing. e Nancy Buchenauer and Charles Fasnaro look on as Santa Fe's commencement ceremony gets underway (left); Zack Jemison double checks his diploma following the ceremony. Photos by Alan Taylor. We make ourselves by what we do." Part of that, she said, is accepting the sorrow that comes with loss, which is an essential element of being mortal. "But some losses we bring upon ourselves, and others we allow because we have to go forth into the world to _.continue growing. We hope that these losses are temporary, and that the firm roots of friendship can withstand separation, holding onto the hope of return, the faith in the lastingness of bonds. "That life rises up again after disaster, after separation and sorrow, from the littlest beginning, is the AWARDS AND PRIZES ANNAPOLIS To the members of the senior class who have written the best senior essays. Offered in memory of Simon Kaplan: Lynette Rae Dowty. Offered in memory of Susan Irene Roberts (1966): Heidi Jacot, Lydia Frances Po/green. Honorable Mentions: Jesse Roth Berney, Matthew Alexander Braithwaite, Malinda]. Campbell. To the junior who has written the best annual essay. Offered by Mrs. Leslie Clark Stevens in memory of her daughter-inlaw, Kathryn Mylorie Stevens: Collomia Karen Charles. Honorable Mentions: Nathan Paul Greens/it, Danielle Mercedes Tabela. To the sophomore who has written the best annual essay. Offered in honor of Judge Walter I. Dawkins (1880): Samuel Bryant Davidoff. Honorable Mentions: Derek Preston Alexander, Nathan Joseph Zweig. To the freshman who has written the best annual essay. Offered in memory of Jacob Klein and his wife Else: Alan Howard Rubenstein. Honorable Mention: Jessica Alice Brotman. To the Graduate Institute student who has written a distinguished preceptorial essay. Offered by the Alumni Association: Lewis S. Klatt, Eugenia S. Skarstrom. Honorable Mention: Jill C. Nienhiser, Paul W. Steitz. mathematical construction. Offered by the class of 1986 in honor of Bryce Jacobson, of the class 1942: Christian Michael Moser, Alan David Pichanick. To a senior, for excellence in speaking, the Millard E. Tydings award: Judith Toliver Neely. For the most elegant proof of a mathematical theorem. Offered in memory of James R. McClintock of the class of 1965: Erin Wells Bonning. To the student who submits the best English version of a Greek text, offered in memory of John S. Kieffer: Markus Christoph Glodek, Alan David Pichanick. For the best English version of a French poem. Offered by the Board of Visitors and Governors: Ellwood Haller Wiggins, Jr. Honorable Mention: Felix Samuel Leslie. For the best original English poem. Offered by Dr. George Austin in memory of his brother Henry: Alexandra Diana Elizabeth Boozer. Honorable Mention: Abigail Lisa Gibbs. For the best original musical composition. Offered in memory of Mary Joy Belknap: Dominic King Crapuchettes. For the best essay on a piece of music. Offered in memory of Mary Joy Belknap: Maura Kathleen Tennor. For the most elegant solution of a To the student who carries out the best project related to astronomy and astronomical observations. Offered by Richard Tompkins: Anna-Clare Milazzo, fill C. Nienhiser. To the senior man and woman who have contributed most to the College's athletic program. Offered by the Alumni Association: john Matthew Freitas, Christopher john Stevens, Erin Leigh Monberg, Pia Zara Thadhani. To a senior who has contributed outstanding service to the Greater Annapolis Community. Offered by the Caritas Society: Richard Scott Schmechel. To the senior who has demonstrated the greatest care for and service to the youth residing in Annapolis. Offered by the friends and family of Marvin B. Cooper (1969): Judith Toliver Neely. continued on page 10 �To the senior who submits the best work of visual art to the Community Art Exhibition, the Charles Vernon Moran Prize: Mary Jessica Duncan. Honorable Mention: Kevin Neal Gardner. VIRTUAL SEMINAR ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• To the senior who has demonstrated excellence in the arts, literature, or sciences, the Walter S. Baird Prize: Rana Choi. SANTA FE Offered by the Board of Visitors and Governors to a senior, the Medal for Academic Excellence: Taffeta Elliott. To the senior who has written the best senior essay, the Richard D. Weigle Prize: Peter Leaf, Patrick Nash. To a deserving student to help with the continuation of work at St. John's College through the cultivation of the liberal art of thinking, the Robert NeidorfMemorial Scholarship: Jennifer Rogers, Class of 1999. To members of the Freshman, Sophomore and Junior classes in recognition of academic achievement and constructive service to the college community, the St. John's College Community Scholarship provided by faculty, staff and students: Matthew Johnston, Heather Maclean, class of1998; RaefHusseini, Jennifer Rogers, Tallie Taylor, Class of 1999. To a member of the Senior class for excellence in public speaking, the Senator Millard E. Tydings Memorial Prize: . Kathleen Eamon, Patrick Nash. To a student in recognition of academic achievement and of talent in writing of poetry, the Henry M. Austin Poetry Scholarship: Moira Russell. To the Graduate Institute student who submitted a distinguished preceptorial essay in 1995-96. Offered by the St. John's College Alumni Association: Kathryn Brewer. The Thorne Endowment Scholarship for summer study in preparation for medicine: Arna Elezovic, Jacob Keller, Class of 1998. To a member of the senior class who has demostrated achievement in the arts, literature, or science, the Walter S. Baird Prize: Alison Bamert. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS OF EXCELLENCESANTA FE For her Junior essay: Margaret Ross For his Sophomore essay: Michael 01Joyle Honorable Mention for his Sophomore essay: Omar Rivera For her Freshman essay: Emily Johnston For her first semester Freshman essay: Caroline Knapp For his mathematics essay: John Michael MacDonald For her Graduate Institute in Eastern Classics seminar essay: Loana Hoy/man For outstanding performance in athletics: Timothy Wolff, Class of 1997 For outstanding contributions to the college community: Taffeta Elliott, Joshua Goldberg, Kira Heater, Kelly Stirman Fehervary Fencing Award: Stephen Maggitti, Class of 1997. To the senior who, by his participation, leadership and spommanship, has contributed most to the athletic program. Offered by the Alumni Association of St. John's College: Jeff Higgins Fritz Hinrichs uses the Net to teach homeschooled kids the classics. BY BARBARA GOYETTE L et's define a seminar as a readings," he says. In the formats homeschoolers in the Escondido area. discussion with fewer than 20 Hinrichs uses, students can all input Once he hit on the idea of using the participants about an original Internet, Hinrichs could expand his audio in the classes. He uses a text, wherein students and teachers services. He now has more than 45 "whiteboard" for math classes; a work together to try to discern the students in the great books tutorials student will e-mail hiin a proof, which meaning of the text. The paradigm for and others in math (pre-algebra, he will put up on the board for all the St. John's alumni is the undergraduate students to see. There are no testsalgebra, Euclid), physics, and both seminar, but seminars have many koine and "St. John's" Greek. parents do that part-but he will incarnations: Graduate Institute "I devised a reading list appropriate evaluate written papers for the stuseminars; dents. Touchstones A large Discussion percentage of Project seminars parents who teach for middle school their children at or high school home do so students, seniors, because they feel or prisoners; that a Christian alumni seminars perspective is at chapters lacking in the around the schools. Hinrichs country; seminars says that he does in high schools take a Christian led by teachers perspective; his who've graduated brochure says that the tutorial "has from St. John's. Fritz Hinrichs, been designed to develop Christian who graduated from the minds that will Annapolis understand and Fritz Hinrichs, A90, in his studio with homeschoolers, leads a great books seminar. Other discern the campus in 1990, influences that has started students participate via the Internet. His web site address is www.gbt.org. have shaped our another kind of cultural history" When asked about · for the ages I'm dealing with," he seminar: an Internet discussion for the fundamentalist slant of many homeschooled high school students. explains. "The number of readings is Hinrichs' virtual seminar is a wellhomeschooling parents, Hinrichs notes smaller, and they are shorter. The that "somebody who's intersted in orchestrated, highly organized affair. homeschooled students are really reacly reading Marx and Kant doesn't fit the Fifteen students from all across the for a rigorous, challenging program. profile of fundamentalist. But in the country can talk to each other and to families who use my service, the him in the real time but unreal space of parents are devout Chri..stians who are the Internet. He holds conference calls trying to bring a Biblical perspective to and has begun videoconferencing so "You just throw them in the works." There's a contingent of that the students can see him as they with all the difficult Johnnies who homeschool their work together through the books. The children, but Hinrichs is not aware of Escondido Tutorial Service, which readings. Some sink but any using his service. Hinrichs started four years ago, leads some rise to new levels. An article in Homeschool PC homeschooled students beginning at magazine proclaims Hinrichs "the most the age of 12 in a seven-year course amazed at how many of wired teacher in America." He has two centered on the great books. The them have taken to the computers for broadcasting both tutorial begins with Homer and RealAudio and CU-SeeMe audio. A progresses through (among others) philosophy readings. " · mixing board, two speakerphones, one Thucydides, Plato, Anselm, condenser mike, and an announcer's Shakespeare, Dante, Machiavelli 1 mike complete his studio/classroom. Luther, Bacon, Descartes, Milton, With all this technology, do the Kant, Swift, Twain, Lincoln, Freud, They don't have the distractions of students-of different ages, located in and C.S. Lewis. states from California to Georgiastudents in public or private junior After St. John's, Hinrichs attended high schools and high schools. And in teract with each other like in a "real" Westminster Seminary in Escondido, their parents are dedicated to helping seminar? "I do use the Socratic method California, to earn a master's in them. One mom is so interested, she to draw students out," says Hinrichs. religion. "I had planned .to teach at the does all the readings too." Sometimes he sets up a debate, with a college level," he says, "but most Hinrichs teaches more than a St. topic for each side like whether teaching situations were unstimJohn's tutor does-he wants to make Odysseus or Achilles would be a better ulating-j ust lecturing and publishing, sure the students are getting the hero for today's youths to emulate. But with little interaction with students. meaning of the readings. "You just he does admit to being "more aggresAnd the students were mass produced, throw them in with all the difficult sive" than St. John's tutors. "After all," cookie-cutter fashion." he says, "the students don't have much readings. Some sink but some rise to Reasoning that he needed to start in their heads to start with. I am filling new levels. I'm amazed at how many of earlier and reach high school students, them have taken to the philosophy them."• Hinrichs began working with Im �"A JOURNEY TO THE MOON ,, • • • How a Russian medieval history student found her way to the Graduate Institute in Annapolis ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• BY SUS3AN BORDEN I n August, 1995, Natalia Eugenia Kharitonova left St. Petersburg, Russia, for Annapolis, Maryland carrying two suitcases of clothes and three books: an English- Russian dictionary, a Russian-English dictionary, and a copy of the Bible in Russian. This July, she'll return to St. Petersburg with all she brought, plus several boxes of books, an electric blanket, a cowboy hat, a cap and gown, and a master's degree in liberal arts from the Graduate Institute. Kharitonova, (called Tasha for short) first learned of St. John's College in the summer of 1992, when Annapolis tutor Jim Beall brought a group of students to St. Petersburg for a summer program to study astronomy and absorb the newly accessible Russian culture. Classes at the Pulkozskaja Observatory were arranged through a Russian colleague of Beall who was also a friend of Kharitonova's family. When the students needed an Englishspeaking guide to show them around St. Petersburg, Tasha was enlisted for the job. As she got to know the students, she became intrigued with what they told her about St. John's. "The program In the most naive way, !just wanted to know: uWhy do people think so differently?" sounded too good to be true," she says. But when Beall suggested that she apply to the Graduate Institute, Kharitonova, then 19 years old and a student of English literature and medieval history, was convinced that attending St. John's was far beyond her reach. "I didn't believe it was possible. For a Russian girl just finishing her freshman year, it was like proposing a journey to the moon," she says. Despite her reservations, she applied to the college in May of 1993. Although Kharitonova was eager to come to Annapolis, there were obstacles blocking her way: she had to pass TOEFL (the test of English as a foreign language), get accepted to St. John's, obtain a visa, and find a way to finance her schooling. Another issue for Kharitonova was her Christianity. She had converted in the fall of 1992, and she wanted to make sure that any decisions she made about her future were compatible with her religious beliefs. "I felt compelled to ask myself: is this God's plan for me? I'd be doing this for myself, leaving my parents and my grandmother, and not spending as much time with the Bible," she says. As time passed, she found herself less concerned with whether or not she would be able to study at St. John's. She decided to let the decision make itself She was accepted into the program in May of 1995, but was told there would not be enough financial aid to enable her to attend the summer semester. On August 4 (she remembers the dates very clearly), she received an e-mail from GI director Thomas May, instructing her to be in Annapolis on August 22 for the start of the fall semester. "Everything happened magically," she says. "I got my visa in one week, my ticket was ready for me immediately, I passed the TOEFL, everything went beautifully. As these doors started opening, I felt that maybe God wanted me to go. I thought about what the experience would give to me, how it would be helpful. I would be able to hear people speaking about what's important to them." She was also eager to pursue the work of the program. 'Tm in love with philosophy and see a lot of beauty in the way people think," she says. "I wanted to come back to all the philosophy that I was introduced to before I became a Christian and look at it with new eyes. In the most naive way, I just wanted to know: 'Why do people think so differently?' " When asked what was the best part of her time at St. John's, Kharitonova answers, "it's like when you ask what is the best thing about your lover. You want to say everything." When pressed further, she says that her favorite readings were Aristotle's Physics, Plato's Republic, and Homer. She cared less for Hobbes. She struggled to understand Kant, William James, and the Supreme Court readings, while Aristotle was the author whose thoughts were closest to her own. "His Physics, that is. I hated Tosha Khorilonovo at commencement in Annapolis, a long way from her native St. Petersburg. Photo by Keith Harvey. his Ethics," she says. In addition to her studies, Kharitonova sang with the small chorus, took voice classes, played basketball, and participated in monthly play readings. She traveled as much as she could, visiting Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, New York, Niagara Falls, and Miami (where she read Dostoevsky on the beach). Despite her enthusiastic travel schedule, Kharitonova fell in love with Annapolis. When she compares the city to St. Petersburg, she notes that they are both beautiful, but the similarities end there. "St. Petersburg is a city of five million people. They are very busy and remind me of New Yorkers. No one is smiling, and everybody is in a hurry." "Absolutely shocking" was how she describes the contrast of her native St. Petersburg with Annapolis. "I don't think anybody can imagine chis city before he comes here, because it's out of a fairy tale-too dean and charming to be real. People are smiling on the streets and saying hello. This is possible only in Annapolis, where there's an atmosphere of roses flying in the air," she says, and then apologizes for her English. Kharitonova currently has no firm plans for what she will do when she returns to Russia. She is considering finishing the program in medieval history she started at St. Petersburg State University. Other than that, she says, 'Tm not dear about God's plan for me. I was considering the ministry before I came to St. John's. If I feel a calling, I will do it. If not, not." Reflecting on her experience at St. John's, Kharitonova says, "It really changed my life. I learned a lot about myself and I am not the same person I was. I'm grateful for it. I have this feeling that my life has been special, that I've lived a full and interesting life thanks to this experience, that I've had something really incredible in my life." While she makes it clear that she lives her life focussed on God, she says that her experience in the Graduate Institute enables her to feel that, "if there's anything worldly that's worthy of experiencing, I have experienced it."• �Alumni Authors ... REVERGE ANSELMO: THE CADILLAC OF SIX-BY'S T he latest figures from the admissions office show that 77% of students start St. John's fresh from high school. In 1984, when Reverge Anselmo enrolled, he was fresh from a very different experience, having served three years in the U.S. Marine Corps and survived the expedition sent to Lebanon. In the years since Anselmo left St. John's, he has pursued a world of interests, including living in Paris, doing business in Latin America, writing two screenplays, and building monasteries with an order of Carthusian monks and nuns. It is perhaps only now, thirteen years later, that he has come to terms with the impact of his experience in Beirut, an experience he has transformed into a novel, The Cadillac of Six-By's, published this spring by Harper Collins. "The Cadillac ofSix-By's, "says Anselmo, ''is a love story set in a fallen city. " The flap copy describes Anselmo's lively cast of characters: "Cazetti, a young Intelligence man with a bad record ... Hitman Hitchins, a loose agent with a lurking in his heart; Sardine, a treacherous vamp; Philomena, a direct, endearing nun determined to save Cazetti's soul; Cercio, a playboy lieutenant; and Minovich and Davey, hanging on since Vietnam to do it all again." Obligation drove Anselmo to write the book. "The song of that time had never been sung," he says. In 1982, President Reagan sent U.S. Marines to war-torn Lebanon as part of a multinational force. They tried to keep order in Beirut and the surrounding area, but were constantly under attack. In October, 1983, a suicide bomber drove into the headquarters of one of the Marine Battalions, killing 242 people. "It was the fifth bloodiest Marine Corps expedition in history and I survived it," says Anselmo. "I was working for Intelligence and we were the people who provided the disinformation about the fighting, so that nobody had any realistic notion about what was going on with the Marines in Beirut. Even though I was part of the crew that made sure that happened, it irritated me when I came home and found a distorted profile of those events." While his commitment to the topic was personal, his book has garnered praise in its journey to the public eye. James Webb, former Secretary of the Navy and author of Fields ofFire, calls it "a moving, beautifully written book that will pierce your soul with an uncomplaining, lilting honesty." Peggy Noonan says it is "told with all the color and authority of one who has been there." Anselmo worked on the book for eight years, rewriting it six times. But writing is not his sole passion. Since he left St. John's, he's taken a path that has led him through much of Europe and South America in the company of pilgrims, monks, nuns, satellite experts, and telecommunications specialists. After spending three years at St. John's-with time in both Annapolis and Santa Fe-Anselmo left the college. During his subsequent travels, he experienced a conversion. "All of a sudden, with the eyes of my soul, I saw the mother of God, and so I wanted to go to Lourdes as thanksgiving and penance. "Then I moved to Paris for five years, which was accidental. I didn't mean to move to Paris. I was in Lourdes, got drunk, got on a train, and wound up in Paris," he says. He stayed in Paris for five years, writing his book and short stories, and working for his father's company, Panamsat, the first private global communications satellite company. "The next thing I know, I'm slamming myself away in monasteries," he says. "Now, I'm a monastery builder, working with French Carthusian monks and nuns." His work with this order has taken him to countries throughout Eastern Europe and Latin America. After working in Panamsat's European operations, Anselmo moved to the Latin American market, and then wound up in Miami, where he currently lives. He continues to travel with the order, having just recently returned from a trip to Peru, Chile, and Argentina. "It's a young order and they build," he explains. "They have places to go and things to see and do." Through his involvement with the order, Anselmo regularly calls on his St. John's education. "I use those years all the time with the monks and the nuns. I still use Greek and my Latin is pretty good. I look at the histories a lot. Herodotus and Tacitus are on my mind a great deal, especially now, because this country's doing a lot that Tacitus writes about: everybody's heroes are the criminals, and the more fantastically beastlike the personalities are, the higher they are exalted. I study with a monk named Agapetos, who tutors me in Aquinas. I use that stuff daily, not just the Aquinas, but also writers like Shakespeare, as nourishment and a sort of flavor guide." As an ex-Marine trying to leave Beirut behind, Anselmo could never have guessed that life's road would take him to Europe, Latin America, and Miami, and into monasteries, corporate offices, and publishing houses. As a freshman at St. John's, Anselmo had chosen a college free from vocational training. And yet, sitting in his Miami office the day of his book's release, Anselmo is able to say of his college years, "When I look back, I see I didn't know it at the time, but that was exactly what I needed. It had a tremendous impact on me. It was the most useful thing I ever did, and if I wasn't too old and too busy, I'd go ha.ck." • -by Sus3an Borden MICHAEL STRONG: THE HABIT OF THOUGHT "\VJhile you won't find Michael W Strong's new book, The Habit of Thought: From Socratic Seminars to Socratic Practice, on the shelves at Waldenbooks or Barnes & Noble, it may well be worth the phone call that it takes to order a copy. Strong, who graduated from Santa Fe in 1985, wrote the book for teachers, but he says that it's also for parents or anyone else who might benefit from learning about Socratic practice and the value of independent thinking. In fact, Strong dedicates his book "To Independent Thinkers Everywhere." The time is right for a book on Socratic practice, says Strong. "My sense is that in the next 20 years we will see more new schools using these methods in the U.S. than ever before," he says. Already there are a number of programs-at all educational levelsthat are using Socratic inquiry to teach: the St. John's program, Paideia, Touchstones and the Junior Great Books programs. In his book, Strong writes that Socratic practice "is both easiest to implement and most effective in achieving its own goals in schools where thinking and independence are valued across the curriculum." However, he also says that the nature of Socratic practice is such that "there is no reason that Socratic practice could not be applied to any academic study whatsoever." He defines the method as "the daily group work of constructing meaning from texts and developing a healthy social environment for intellectual conversation."An important component of the method is that students are "responsible for understanding and group process." Socratic practice is based on educational techniques that Strong and some of his colleagues, who also are St. John's College alumni, developed during their work in Alaskan public schoolsthrough the Alaska Paideia Projectfrom 1990 to 1994. They drew on their experiences in seminar, but even more on St. John's tutorials. He also explains that "Socratic practice offers a means of addressing issues of intellect, culture, and identity that are not currently addressed in our schools." His book both illustrates the philosophy of Socratic practice and gives recommendations and encouragement for others wishing to employ these methods. The book has earned the praise of many, including Eva Brann, a tutor and former dean in Annapolis. Brann is quoted on the back of the book: "I am impressed .. .I like the common-sense practicality combined with very high pedagogical ideals." �MARK FABI: WYRM S tatistically speaking, you're more likely to be drafted by the NFL than to have a first novel published by a mainstream American publisher; but Mark Fabi, A76, has foiled the odds. His first novel, WYRM, was published this May by Bantam Books, who contracted with Fabi as part of the deal to publish his second novel, as yet merely a gleam in his eye. Whence this success? "Writing was a long-time ambition held in abeyance by procrastination," says Fabi. "Then I got a great idea for a novel with a millennial twist, which gave me a built-in deadline." What followed was a patient and dedicated burning of the midnight oil: he wrote a little every night, being busy by day as a practicing psychiatrist at Jefferson Although Strong has not formally studied education, he got a lot of onthe-job training through positions with the Alaskan Paideia Project and as a co-founder of the Atheneum Middle School in Anchorage. He. is also a member of the National Paideia Faculty. Currently he is the director of the Center for Socratic Practice at the Judson Montessori School in San Antonio, Texas, where he has been working to develop a model program. He also serves as a consultant to public schools in Socratic practice. Just last month, however, Strong accepted the headmaster's position at a new private middle school for gifted students opening in Miami, the Winston Academy, where the humanities portion of the program will be entirely Socratic practice. Medical College in Philadelphia, a psychoanalyst in training, and a husband and father of three. "Like psychoanalysis," he says, "writing reinforces your belief in the power of the unconscious." Partly in order to slay the procrastination dragon, he started out writing the novel before doing any of the extensive research that WYRM, with a story that ranges from chess tournaments to online role-playing games, would eventually require. It took a while for him to trust the process, but soon enough characters started to do things he didn't expect them to, and, he says, he was "amazed at how stuff popped out of my mind." And just as he hopes in his work as both a psychiatrist and a psychoanalyst to dispel the dichotomy between analysis and psychopharmacology, in WYRM he vexes dichotomies right and left: games/reality, thinking/doing, and (God help us) mind/machine. But how to end up on the right side of the old hapless scribbler/published author chasm? Having done a "fair amount of research" into the matter, Fabi concluded that unsolicited submission of his manuscript was the way to go, finding recursive difficulties with the agent issue: publishers wanted to read manuscripts submitted by agents, but agents wanted to Mark Fabi, A76, with sons Strong and his family will soon move to Miami. While his children, Homer, 9' and Jemima, 5, will probably attend the Winston Academy when they reach middle school, .Strong and his · wife, Mally, SF84, are considering homeschooling until then. "Learning should be completely natural," he says, and in a family where conversation and thinking play such a handle manuscripts written by alreadypublished writers. Over-the-transom success isn't entirely unheard of, but Fabi eventually received enough "Dear Author" letters in response to convince him to seek other avenues. He consulted with a colleague at Jefferson, who had published several medical thrillers (not to speak of screenplays for the old Dr. Kildare television show), who counseled him to query agents. Good advice, as it turned out: in October '95 he sent out queries, and the fourth response he received was from Lucienne Diver at the Spectrum Literary Agency. Diver loved the book, and once Fabi had made some revisions she pitched the book to publishers, receiving in March '96 not one but two offers. Bantam got the nod (and we like to imagine the other publisher now gnashing teeth), and the rest is history. WYRM looks kind of like science fiction, but genre-loathers will be glad to hear that the characters are human (very human!) and the tale is not about "other" but about ourselves. Throughout the story there are deft in-jokes, hilarious red herrings, a charming loveinterest sub-plot, and a serious threat of apocalypse-which is to say that it is a tremendous page-turner and a delight. It is (if a certain campus grammarian will forgive me) the classic "good read." Fabi is as proud as a new parent, with good reason. And he enjoys not only the success but the irony: "It took me a tremendous amount of effort at St. John's stretching my annual essay out to ten pages. Then I wrote a novel that in manuscript form ran to seven hundred pages." Frustrated authors, take note. • -by Roberta Gable prominent role already, Strong says that homeschooling, or "making learning a part of daily life," is very natural. • -by Amber Boydstun, SF 99 The Habit of Thought: From Socratic Seminars to Socratic Practice can be ordered through the publisher, New View Publications {800-441-3604), or write to P.O. Box 3021, Chapel Hill, NC 27515. �REAL WORI( •REAL PLAY 1V:IH YHOAJ. 1V3ll AV1d •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• If Reality didn't exist, would St. John's have to invent it? at is Reality? That which is, Sein or Dasein? The other-world ip side of St. John's, the world into which seniors must venture? A big excuse for a drinking party? A release from the burdens of eight months of daily confrontations with "the great questions of the Western tradition"? A St. John's ritual dating back to the early 1950s, featuring quirky games based on themes from program readings? One more possibility: a career counselor's bonanza, wherein college students demonstrate real work skills like leadership, problem-solving ability, creativity, organizational skills, teamwork, presentation skills, analytical skills, negotiation skills, global awareness, and interpersonal skills. Real play is real work. While Reality is the ur-event of a St. John's spring, there are two corollary activities that show the same work-is-play-is-work characteristics: prank (like Reality, staged on both campuses) and croquet (in Annapolis). Many years Reality is no more than a revel, and recently prank has lost the luster of imaginative parody (argue some tutors). Croquet is so frivolous a sport that it is not even included in the college athletic program. But all three events are completely student-run, and some years-on either or both campuses-th~y are examples of how future real-world denizens will cope with all those demands of working life. Probably Realiey's.Alcohol Archon won't put that particular position on his or her resume, but he or she will remember the negotiation and leadership necessary to get beer to 150 or so legal-age fellow students for a weekend. And the author of a successful prank show can rest on his or her laurels for years to come, as alumni fondly remember its cunning inventiveness and imaginative spirit. Here, then, is our salute to the big three of spring-Reality, prank, and croquet-with reports from the front lines. W! GLUTTONY, LUST, AND SLOTH PLAY KEY ROLES IN PRANK BY ABIGAIL GIBBS, A99 I n the April 15 Gadfly (the Annapolis student paper), Mr. Verdi submitted a letter condemning the senior prank as "a pointless and harmful practice." He claimed that, in recent years, prank has neither been remarkable-like the notorious disappearance of every chair on campus-nor worth the sacrifice of a seminar, especially for seniors. He claimed that many tutors agreed that the prankish atmosphere stemming . from the anticipation of prank was harmful even to the seminars that weren't disrupted. But in the face of such opposition, the seniors struck once again on the last Thursday in April. Seniors carrying coolers across the quad. Piano music in the Great Hall at 9:15 p.m. A black-out at 9:35 p.m. Senior prank had come. Groups of seniors interrupted seminars disguised Malinda Campbell and Kate Glassman as responsible citizens-picking up trash at the prank picnic. Photo by Abigail Gibbs. as terrorists. One group acted out "Philoctetes" on the seminar table. Another group had prepared a series of love letters between Mr. Datchev and Ms. Kronsberg, which they read to the class before "marrying" the two tutors. Another class was serenaded by .a masked accordion player. Students' hands were bound and they were herded to back campus where bonfires had been prepared. Water guns were · used to calm unwieldy Johnnies. After the masses had been subdued and several students (plus alumnus Mark Whipple) had been sacrificed to the crowds, seniors directed everyone to the prank show in the auditorium. The show opened with a committee meeting in which members chose the theme for prank. The committee, after much deliberation-The Nature and Essence of the Universe? God, Freedom, and Immortality?-decided on "Seven Deadly Sins." The curtains dosed and the lights came up on Josh Murbarger at a podium giving the first of seven soliloquies. "Look at yourselves, St. John's," he ranted. "Hot sin and cold sin alike. This is your soul..." What lay within St. John's soul was revealed in seven skits, each devoted to a different sin: *A fashion show included artful commentary on the day-to-day apparel of four freshmen and tutor Carl Page. Mr. Page was, of course, wearing linen and toting his usual stylish umbrella. * In a meeting of the college tenure committee, a Spanish-accented Mr. Datchev was denied tenure after he _ _J �admitted that he was indeed from Bulgaria. * Gadfly editor Nelson Hernandez revealed his quest for glory as he planned out the next Gadfly, debating between a 16-page letter from the editor and an entire issue devoted to himself. * Delegate Council Secretary Derek Alexander claimed to have murdered dean-to-be Flaumenhaft, married Mrs. Flaumenhaft, and taken over the entire campus. * A dance sequence represented lust. *A "Jeopardy" episode hosted by Peter Kalkavage featured categories such as "Who's Who on the Annapolis Campus," "Sc. John's Geography," ''Abe Schoener," and ''All About Beer." * A tour gt.1;ide led a group of tourists through the campus, where Middies were chased by Johnnie croquet players. Music and dancing followed the prank show. On Friday, the festivities continued at the president's house in west Annapolis. Some students arrived by foot and polity van; others were ferried co the party by boathouse stewards in St. John's College launch~s. Senior prank was a definite success, especially because it was only the start of a jam-packed weekend. The return of Coffee-House took place Friday night in the Great Hall and Croquet '97 was the next day. Though seminar was interrupted, even Mr. Verdi couldn't have asked for a nicer weekend.• CROQ!JET VICTORY SWIFT AND SURE BY SUS3AN BORDEN F ive easy wins," was pretty much all junior Aaron Pease would say when asked about this year's croquet match. When asked to elaborate, he added, "Jon Andrews and Kit Linton-won easily. Remmington Karper and Drew Keenan-won easily. Anne Marie Catania and Todd Streigel, a slow but steady win. Hardison [Wood] and Josh Rogers-some late game tension-but recovered well and won. Rich [Bravo] and I-we won easily." Now the series stands at twelve St. John's wins out of fifteen matches. In addition to dominating the Naval Academy games, St. John's sailed through the nationals, with team SANTA FE'S DESERT BECOMES A REAL TROPICAL PARADISE BY CAROLINE KNAPP, SFOO T "Chess on grass," as croquet is sometimes referred to at St. John's, calls for thoughtful planning before each move, as illustrated by Jonathan Andrews (top). Acrowd of recent alumni showed up for croquet (below). Photos by Keith Harvey. members Andrews, Linton, and Wood going undefeated at the championship tournament held this year at Smith College. What accounts for St. John's extraordinary success at croquet? Some claim that hours spent with Ptolemy and the music of the spheres give us an unparalleled understanding of the motion of the croquet ball. Some note that our study of Euclid, Newton, and Einstein give us an understanding of geometry and physics crucial to the game. And some say that, in a game chat i~ usually won on the merit of a team's strategy, St. John's proves once and for all that the study of the great books (such as Herodotus and Thucydides) is superior to four years of textbook study in modern battlefield methods. Finally, there's our strong croquet ethic. Whenever weather permits, Johnnies can be seen under the Liberty Tree, practicing their shots and sharpening their strategies. As one Middie told Sports Illustrated, "They're out practicing croquet every afternoon! Alabama should take football this seriously." This year's croquet match adhered to tradition on several counts: we won, the weather was absolute perfection, and the crowd was attired in its garden party best. Two notable additions brightened the festivities: the dedication of the match to outgoing dean Eva Brann, and the inaugural appearance of the tent for young alumni. The match was dedicated in a short ceremony where alumni paid tribute to Brann, their beloved cutor, with a rousing rendition of "God Save the Dean," written in honor of the occasion by alumni director Roberta Gable. The tent for young alumni (those from 1987 on) served as a meeting spot for returning Johnnies, who are showing up at the annual croquet match in increasing numbers. They were treated to strawberries and cucumber sandwiches, as well as bottles of Chateau Dean Brann, one of which sits proudly in the Brann's home at this very moment. • wo cyclists passing by campus one Saturday afternoon in May on their way to the Atalaya Trail stared in astonishment. Unable to believe what he was seeing, one turned to the other and said, "I thought this was a school." Technically, yes. But the Santa Fe campus in the middle of Reality Weekend looked more like a tropical paradise gone sour and filled with a lot of rather loony natives than it did its normal staid self. The fish pond in front of Peterson Student Center housed not only the usual koi, but what seemed to be the remains of a jet airplane. Shouts and music rang through the Placita. The tree near the entrance to Weigle Hall had a "body" strung in it, and the entire campus was dotted with bamboo torches, tropical birds and pig heads stuck on posts. Under the leadership of sophomore Honor Moody, Reality Archon, and committee chairs Britta Reilly and Liz Borshard, Lord ofthe Flies came to Santa Fe this Reality. It was, by all accounts, an extremely successful party; more relaxed than in past years, but with more than a few moments of high hilarity. On Friday afternoon, as the party began, the natives were restless. The sophomores had spent nearly all of the previous night festooning the campus and the dining hall with decorations calculated to bring out the heart of darkness in even the tensest of students. Many sported animal skin attire to that night's dinner, catered by Horseman's Haven. Not to be outdone, some seniors, using the time-honored white t-shirt and indelible marker method, costumed themselves as The Pirates, and peppered the meal with presumably piratical shouts of "Har-Har-Har!" Senior John Grant knew what was really scary though, and sported a shirt reading "The Pirates' Lawyer." The schedule for the next day featured traditional contests, including epicycle races and the sophistry competition, as well as a few new additions. The most popular of these continued on page 16 �Dean Brann gets a baking lesson from John lynch, A94, at the Reality ledure. Photo by Sandra Cohen. was indisputably mud wrestling, which turned out to be less of a contest than a free-for-all. Held in a pit dug in the center of the upper dorms, the wrestling began as strictly one-on-one, but quickly escalated into a full-scale battle between six slippery and barely identifiable students'. Earlier in the day, tutor William Kerr won the sophistry contest by refusing to speak about the assigned topics. Sophomore Ming Fu won the epicycle races on a tricycle, which comes as no surprise to anyone who has seen him speeding on and off campus on his bicycle. Rain on Sunday dampened both the picnic and Spartan Madball, but it did not seem to deter any of the usual rowdiness or enthusiasm. No word yet as to who "won." In the novel Lord of the Flies, order is restored to the island in the final chapter. Likewise at St. John's, as classes resumed on Monday morning. However, in the novel the children are completely chastened by the end, and at St. John's the spirit that motivated Reality has only gone underground, licking its wounds until it can return next year. TRADITION TRIUMPHS IN THE 11 "REAL WORLD BY SUS3AN BORDEN Annapolis juniors chose Exodus as the theme for Reality '97 and set out to bring back what entertainment archon Felix Leslie (A98) calls "the glorious past of Reality." But another, perhaps unintentional, motif stood out during the weekend's festivities: Dean Eva Brann. (Then again, perhaps there is a connection-Braun's personal exodus from the deanship took place soon after Reality.) Brann took center stage (quite literally) in the Reality weekend lecture, traditionally reserved for a performance of some kind. This year, '94 graduate John Lynch (now a Ringling Brothers down) was signed up to provide the entertainment. Lynch's show was part lecture, part skit, part audience participation, and part Brann. The scene from his show that will probably linger longest in St. John's collective memory was the pie-making act, in which he and Brann started out with pie shells, flour, and shaving cream, and ended up face-deep in pie as the audience roared with laughter. Brann also took part in the Real Play, later that evening. The Real Play, which takes place on the quad late, usually meshes the plot from a wellknown script with St. John's characters and allusions. Sometimes the script is from the classical oeuvre (one year ir was "The Bacchae"), sometimes the source is more modern (as in the recent hit "Aqueduct Dogs"). This year, the rereleased Star 'Wars provided the plot. Among the meshed elements in this year's production were Umphrey-Wan, Midshipmen playing Imperial storm troopers, Matt SkyCarter, and the triumph of philosophy over sophistry. Those familiar with both Brann and the Star Wars trilogy need only a moment to figure out which role she played. Clues: Whos the wisest one ofall? Who speaks with the cutest accent? While Brann was not a cast member of the Real Show (the Saturday night production) she was an important character, the plot of the play featuring a battle over her soul. The sophistry contest, which occurs during the Real Show's intermission, turned out not to be a sophistry contest at all, but rather a haiku contest in which participants were required to compose (on the spot) and recite a haiku on the subject of deanship. The winner was sophomore Gary Temple, whose haiku, though inventive and amusing, is inappropriate for publication in a forum as decorous . as this. While Reality was heavy on Brannmania, the Exodus theme was played out in many areas. The Real Olympics,included a Tower of Babel competition, in which teams of participants competed to build the highest possible human rower without talking in any intelligible language. The decorations committee created pyramids, a cardboard Tower of Babel, and a. golden cal£ Reality's glorious past was honored in many ways, according to Leslie: "The Real Olympics were the things that we were trying to get going. The idea of assistant dean Abe Schoener (A82) coming out and giving the opening address, getting the faculty reinvolved, putting up old ideas for games, having the dean give the speech before Spartan Madball, all of these things going towards making this special, rather than just another party."• �Letters ... EXISTENCE UPDATE I' Robert B. Pool, class of 1975 Santa Fe, am not dead. Please correct the misinformation in the alumni register. I received a panicky telephone call from a classmate. I reassured her that I am alive. .. Now for an update. I dropped from the Santa Fe campus in early 1973 due to illness. Later that year I enlisted in the Army; was graduated from both the Defense Language Institute at Monterey, California, and the USAF School of Applied Cryptology with honors; parlayed that into a job with a major electronics firm; used the G.I. Bill to attend the University of Texas; and have just considered a job as announcer/archivist with KPAC-FM, our local 24-hour classical music station (Texas Public Radio in San Antonio). The house is paid for, the cars are paid for, and I keep pulling down the nests that the chipping sparrows (spizeUa passerina) build. I'm rather lively for a dead person. -Robert B. Pool, SF75 ALUMNI'S FAVORITE TOPIC: WOMEN ON THE PROGRAM T he letter of George Cayley in the Spring Reporter is astonishing. He fears "the spectre of feminism," which he lumps in with nazism, McCarthyism, etc. This reactionary posture is far from that of Scott Buchanan, despite Mr. Cayley's claim to act in Buchanan's name. Buchanan envisioned St. John's as a vital, resonant, continuing dialectic, committed most of all to questioning. This letter offers but a cruder version of the rhetorical strategy of John Agresto, which appears in the article "Great Minds Consider the Great Books of the 20th Century'' in the same issue. The article presents a (pretty underwhelming) list. With virtually no living authors on it, it is heavily weighted to the first half of the century. This list retreats from the contemporary world into the (safer and more malleable) historical past. That may be inevitable to some extent. But what is most striking about this list is Mr. Agresto's introduction to it. He states with satisfaction that "not one mention of Eurocentrism, phallocentrism, logocentrism or any other epithets of the modern intelligentsia came in the mail." Even though prescribing an objective assessment of past works, Mr. Agresto is actually most interested in using the list for a highly partisan purpose. This sort of reactionary, right-wing bullying is common to both state- ments. Both justify gratuituous denigration of other positions because of the threat of some vague liberal bogey-men (even though Mr. Agresto wryly admits their absence immediately after invoking the threat of their presence). The tone of these comments hardly bespeaks the rich environment of intellectual inquiry envisioned by ScottBuchanan. The central questions to which the St. John's program is dedicated are not the exclusive property of a band of idealogues. -Fred Bohrer, A78 T he thesis of some of those who claim the curriculum needs more books by women is that the insights to be had from the program currently come from "outside" and, more important, that they address only "half the story," the masculine half. The assumption is that there is a special inside view that can only be conveyed by women. Great artists, however, can transcend their own age, their era, their ethnic group as well as their gender. Examples of this kind of power of the imagination abound. Shakespeare crafted a brilliant character study of Othello, a North African moor, and did so while never leaving England. Dostoevsky never murdered anyone, but his account of the pangs of conscience suffered by a murderer is brilliant. The only source Mary Shelley had in creating Frankenstein was her imagination. The best book on America was written by a French nobleman who was only here for about a year and a half. One of the best books written on the race problem in America was authored by a Swede, Gunner Myrdhal. Count Tolstoy never gave birth to a child, but his account of what a woman feels in doing so has been validated by many mothers. At the level where the artistic imagination recognizes no boundaries, the level of transcultural ideas, the historical contact, including the author's gender, don't matter much. Those who think that the context has overwhelming importance can find it in any of the better colleges and universities in Western Civilization 101, but not at St. John's. -Robert Hazo, A53 I. was struck by George Cayley's comment in the spring Reporter that he had seen "the movies of Pride [and Prejudice] and Gone With the Wind so why read the books? Whatever they have to say was, I suggest, said in the films." I assume (hope?) that Mr. Cayley had his tongue in his cheek, but nonetheless his comment deserves comment. I'll ignore Gone With the Wind, but Austen's masterpiece must be defended. The movie-by which I assume that Cayley is referring to one of the two recent BBC productions-was indeed well done. But no movie can capture the subtleties and the many penetrating insights of the novel. Though the novel's dialogue provided the basis for the script, the latter was a faint echo of Austen's own language. Unlike the movie, the novel incorporates the many voices that exceptional authors, such as Jane Austen, hear and are able to duplicate. It is built up oflayers of irony, suggestion, observation and biting humor that are some of the marks of exceptional writing. It is a mistake to suggest, as Cayley does, that Jane Austen's novel is little more that an eighteenth century version of a Harlequin romance. Speaking of which, Cayley should hesitate to condemn the "romantic perspective of the universe" with one sweep of the sentence, because in doing so he will eliminate many of the books in Buchanan's original list. One would have to include under the rubric of "romantic" most of Shakespeare, Goethe's Faust, most of 19th-century Continental philosophy, and much that is noteworthy in postmodern thought. To be sure, the quarrel over what books should and should not be included in the St. John's list, as Cayley suggests, should not be a matter of ideology. Rather, it should rest on the question of aesthetics-in the case of fiction-or the seminal importance of. the ideas expressed in the case of non-fiction.The postmodern attack on the canon of Western literature, which is echoed in many of the letters recently in The Reporter, is based on the rejection of values and the question of the legitimacy of value judgments. All value judgments, it is suggested, ar.e basically ideological: everyone has an axe to grind. In this regard, the argument for "representation" hinted at in MaryTarail's letter in the same issue rests on the assumption (seldom acknowledged and even less often argued) that "greatness" is a bogus concept and invariably "privileges" majority perspectives and "marginalizes" works by minorities. It is said that white males (chiefly) will invariably prefer works written by authors of their own persuasion and they are somehow incapable of judging works on their merits. It is even suggested that merit is never deserved but always attributed (arbitrarily) by white male critics who relegate works by minorities to the attic or the basement. Thus our only option is to select readings democratically, making sure that every point of view is "represented." This may happen, in fact. But I have never been persuaded that it must happen in principle. It is possible to avoid prejudice by means of open and honest dialogue among contending parties and the dash of opposing points of view. We hope that this will lead us out of our prejudices and into the open air of truth-to the extent to which it can be known to us. It can be done because there are features in certain books that "require" the epithet "great" and command our preference. That determination is difficult, to be sure, but it is not impossible. It must center, in the end, on the books themselves after we have laid aside our axes to grind and exposed our hidden agendas. -Hugh M. Curtler, A59 G eorge Cayley's letter in the spring 1997 Reporter contained one of the most intellectually bankrupt comparisons that it has been my misfortune to read. Mr. Cayley writes, "the thought of St. John's becoming subject to the specter of feminism is just as disturbing as the specter offascism, nazism [sic], communism, or McCarthyism." To paraphrase Katha Pollitt, ..... feminism is the radical notion that a woman is a human being. Nazism, in contrast, promotes the idea that certain classes of people are sub- or anti-human-an idea that led to the deaths of 10-12 million noncombatants, the virtual elimination of pre-war Jewish culture from central Europe, and devastating world war. The comparison is not only ludicrous, it is irresponsible and partakes of the worst kind of anti-intellectualism. -Rich Green, SF87 continued on page 23 The Reporter 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 either campus: The Reporter Public Relations Office St. John's College Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404 or e-mail: bgoyette@mailhost.sjca.edu The Reporter Alumni/Public Relations Office St. John's College, 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca Santa Fe, NM 87501 or e-mail: eskewes@shadow.sicsf.edu �The Alumni Association Newsletter is published in each issue of The Reporter. We welcome letters, capsule book reviews, and article ideas from alumni. Send submissions and suggestions to Mork Middlebrook at 73030.1604@compuserve.com (e-mail) or coll 510-547-0602. The Alumni Association Board gathered in April in Annapolis. Front row: Peter Huidekoper, Rick Lightburn, Barbara Leonard, Steve Bergen; second row: Bev Angel, Sam Stiles, Steve Sedlis, Allan Hoffman; third row: Glenda Eoyang, Tom Geyer, Paul Martin, Pedro Martinez-Fraga, Homayoon Sepasi; fourth row: Barbara Lauer, Liz Skewes, Harvey Goldstein, Mary Goldstein, Jason Walsh, Dave Krimins; back row: Sharon Bishop, Jim Schweidef, Roberta Gable, Mark Middlebrook, Bill Tilles. No Longer in Dispute: the New Triangle Circle in North Carolina ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• BY SUSAN EVERSOLE, SF79 nee upon a time, there may have been an alumni chapter in North Carolina. Or there may not have been. This question is under dispute, and has not been resolved. Not many people can claim that they are native to North Carolina's Research Triangle Park. This Triangle is formed by three major universities: Duke in Durham, UNC in Chapel Hill, and NC State in Raleigh. Chapel Hill is known for bleeding heart liberalism, Raleigh is the state capital and home of Jesse Helms (need I say more?), and Durham is plagued with an inner-city and all the problems thereof, while it is blessed with a world-class medical center and university. Drawn to the area by the schools, technology firms have set up shop, and the EPA has headquartered air research in the vicinity. Magazines that make it their business to rate such things have rated the Triangle a great place to retire, so a large number of people have planted roots in this Faulknerian Southern clime (bars in Chapel Hill claim Faulkner regularly staggered out their doors). The Triangle has also attracted a large number of St. John's College alumni. As diverse as the three areas composing the Triangle, so are the professions of the members of the new alumni group. So far, no two individuals within the group seem to be in the same profession despite overlapping interests or avocations. Additionally, the group draws on the entire Piedmont for membership with Jim Scott (A84) driving all the way from South Carolina to attend seminars. Out of respect for the diversity of the group, it seemed logical to keep organization at a minimum, and simply get a chapter started. Upon applying for a charter, the nascent alumni group was granted official status contingent on the selection of a president/representative. The group succumbed to the formality, but in the voting frenzy, also elected a vice-president and chapter representatives for the Annapolis and Santa Fe Alumni Board meetings. We.also re-named our chapter after a suggestion by Amy Clark (A78). The new name for the chapter is the Triangle Circle of St. John's College Alumni. The Triangle Circle has held 3 seminars in the past 6 months, with a tiny group of new alumni faces appearing at each event. Our first seminar, on Plato's Meno, was led by Annapolis tutor Grant Franks at the National Humanities Center. The second seminar, on Friendship-Chapters 8 and 9 of Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, was led by Annapolis tutor Sam Kutler. The day before the seminar, several alumni met with Sam at the Fearington Market for brunch. The most recent seminar, on a poem by Sappho and a sonnet by Shakespeare, was held in a used bookstore-four gatherings, four locations. For our next seminar, on The Prince, September 7th, we will return to the wonderful, eclectic, and well-stocked used bookstore called the Readery in the not~so-lovely downtown Durham area. The owners are truly accommodating and the price is unbeatable-free. Our current schedule calls for a seminar every other month, with tutor visits in the fall, winter, and spring. Social events, outings, and business meetings are in the planning. Despite the ambiance, a bookstore is a dangerous place for Johnnies to gather; we may have to move again if we find it too expensive (I walked out with three books last time). This group is in the formative stage. If you are local to the area, please give a call/e-mail to one of the chapter representatives. e President: Susan Eversole (SF79) 104 Silver Cedar Lane Chapel Hill, NC 27514 sfe@mindspring.com 919-968-4856 (h) 919-549-1179 (w) Vice-president Barbara M. Smalley (A84) 103 St. Paul Street Durham, NC 27704 bsmalley@mindspring.com 919-383-8773 (w) Ladyslipper Music 919-220-7781 (h) Annapolis Representative Gene Thornton (A45) 100 Cherrywood Circle Chapel Hill, NC 27514 919-967-8949 Editor's note: This article is part of on ongoing series profiling local alumni chapters. By my accounting, we've covered almost all of the officially chartered chapters. If you participate in an informal alumni group (of whatever sort), please contact me. In a future issue, I hope to report on the kinds of alumni activities that arise spontaneously, outside of the formal chapter structure. Dean Carey's Statement of Educational Policy Available to Alumni E ach year the dean who is serving as chair of the Instruction Committee of the College is charged by the Polity'with writing a statemenf of educational policy and program. Santa Fe Dean James Carey wrote this year's statement and in it addressed whether the college should take seriously the Polity's charge "to develop the moral and intellectual powers" of its students (emphasis added). Carey's Statement of Educational Policy and Program is available to alumni on the World-Wide Web or by mail. You can view and print the statement at the Unofficial Alumni Web site: http://www.charm.net/-bfant/ johnny/johnnyl .html (or http:// www.charm.net/-bfont/johnny/ sepcarey.html to go directly to the Statement). Alternatively, you can receive a copy by mail by calling Santa Fe Alumni Director Elizabeth Skewes at 505-984-6103. See the article about different points of view on the Statement on page 26 of this issue of The Reporter. e �How We Spent Your Money: Treasurer's Report for 1996 ••• • • • •• • •• •• • • •• • •• • ••• • ••• ••• •••• •• •••• BY RICHARD UGHTBURN, SF76, ALUMNI ASSOCIATION TREASURER I n 1996, the Association received nearly $35,000 rn dues from its members. In addition we earned about $1,000 in interest on our bank balances. What did we do with the $36,000? First of all 1 we supported Alumni activities. We spent about $ l l 1000 to subsidize the homecomings on both campuses, and the summer alumni weeks in Santa Fe. We also spent $3 ,500 to welcome new members of the Association through the Senior dinners and Graduate Institute graduate gifts. We reserved another $3,000 for the alumni chapter workshop scheduled for the summer of 1997, which will provide an opportunity for leaders of the various alumni chapters to share ideas and to enhance the local programs they present to alumni. The Association split the cost of the recently published Alumni Directory with the College 1 and in 1996, we added about $6,000 to our reserve for this. Because of the Association's support 1 this directory has several useful indices that it wouldn't otherwise have 1 and it has been made available to all alumni 1 without charge. Another $7 ,000 was spent to support communications with the alumni, including printing, mailing 1 and newsletter production. The Association has for many years supported memorials and archives of the college. In 1996, we spent about $2,500 in this function, most of it going to our project to produce archival quality photos of the tenured faculty. These pictures 1 done by several talented photographers/alumni 1 have done a wonderful job of capturing the special character of the tutors. We made a special contribution of $2,000 to the endowment of the College: Several years ago the Association set up a Scholarship Fund for the benefit of the children of alumni, and this fund has not grown as much as the cost of what we want to fund. In addition, the Association had some $ l 1000 in administrative expenses-mostly for meeting expenses and for the awards the Association gives. That is how the Association spent your dues. e Capsule Reviews by Alumni of Favorite Books Send your one-paragraph reviews to the editor of this Newsletter. U.S.A., by John Dos Passos First published in 1930, 1932, and 1936, Signet Classic, approx. 1,650 pages. Submitted by Peter A. Melka, SF87. This trilogy is most striking stylistically for the innovative segments. Three types of shorter segment appear grouped together at intervals. In between these is a conventional novel, or at least as conventional as a novel can be with many protagonists. The theme of the title holds together both innovative segments and conventional novel. But it seems fair to ask what the stylistic rationale might be. The types of innovative segment are very different from one another, almost polar opposites, but generally they seem concerned with the moment. On the other hand, like Heraclitus's concern with the stream, concern with the moment perhaps epito- CHAPTER CONTACTS Please call the alumni listed below for information about chapter activities in each area. ALBUQUERQUE: Harold M. Morgan, Jr. 505899- l 33 l NEW YORK: Steven Sedlis 212-289-1662 ANNAPOLIS: Thomas Wilson 410-263-2121 PHILADELPHIA: Jim Schweidel 610-9410555 AUSTIN: Homayoon Sepasi 512-416-1764 PORTLAND: Elizabeth Skewes 505-984-6103 BUFFALO/ROCHESTER/TORONTO: Hank Constantine 716-586-5393 SACRAMENTO: Adrianne Laidlaw 916-3625131 or Helen Hobart 916-452-1082 CHICAGO: Amanda Fuller 708-705-1143 or Rick Lightburn 312-34 7-7099 SAN FRANCISCO/NORTHERN CALIFORNIA: Toni Wilkinson 415-5501280 or Mark Middlebrook 510-547-0602 DALLAS/FORT WORTH: Suzanne Doremus 817496-8571 or Jonathan Hustis 214-340-8442 SANTA FE: John Pollak 505-983-2144 or Elizabeth Skewes 505-984-6103 LOS ANGELES: Meg Sheehan 310-379-5320 SEATILE: Jim Doherty 206-937-8886 MINNEAPOLIS/ST.PAUL: Vicki Wilson 612-5350055 or Glenda Eoyang 612-783-7206 or 612-379-3883 (W) WASHINGTON, D.C.: Sam Stiles 301-4240884 or Bill Ross 301-230-4594 mizes the realistic technique of the conventional novel. Given the limitation that the techniques do more to conceal the author than reveal him. This means that concern with the moment must be the characters' concern with the moment. And all this is fitting, if the subject is a period of U.S. history when perhaps the moment had a relatively great importance compared to some more far reaching destiny. This analysis seems anyway relevant to why I enjoyed the novel. Spanish with Ease, by J. Anton and John Smellie 1987, Assimil, Chennevieres sur Marnes, France (1-800-ASSIMIL in the U.S.), 47 4 pages. Submitted by Mark Middlebrook, A83. What do you call someone who speaks three languages? "Trilingual." What do you call someone who speaks two languages? "Bilingual." What do you call someone who speaks one language? "An American." Years of grade school Spanish and the French tutorials at St. John's did little to make me any less the butt of this quip. But thanks to a tip from language-loving alumna Christine".Robedson~.A9·0;.1. now can aspire afleast to being 1.Slingual. Assirnil·· publishes book/tape (or CD) language . packages for French, German;· Spanish, Italian, :.: Dutch, and Ara- ·· · · bic-all with the title [Language] with Ease. I've been working through the Spanish with Ease book/tape set, which is well thought-out and inviting, without descending into the simplistic phrase-book pap that characterizes many language learning tools. The Assimil method is conversational, but they aren't afraid to teach you grammar along the way. The lessons introduce idioms early on, the later lessons have you reading real poems, and there's a pretty good grammatical appendix of verbs. An added bonus is that the book, though compact and lightweight 1 has a sewn binding and a sturdy cover-unlike most modern paperbacks, it should hold up to repeated use and the rigors of the rucksack. (Note to travelers: The speakers on the tapes use a Castillion accent of the sort you'll encounter in most of Spain, but not in Latin America.) �Alumni Notes and Profiles ... 1921 1951 1963 Dr. Thomas Turner celebrated his 95th birthday in January. He was awarded a Governor's Citation in recognition of his "exemplary record of outstanding service as a distinguished scholar of medicine" and "the lifelong dedication, support and commitment" he has demonstrated on behalf of Johns Hopkins University Dr. Turner served as dean of the Johns Hopkins Medical School from 1957 to 1968; he still spends four days a week in his office, writing memoirs and answering the many requests he receives for information on Hopkins history. Dr. Turner is also a Visitor Emeritus on the St. John's Board of Visitors and Governors. Stewart A. Washburn was elected a fellow of the Institute of Management Consultants. Washburn, a management consultant with offices in Lakeville, Massachusetts, serves on the Board of Visitors and Governors of St. John's College. Mary McCutchan is a historian working for the National Register of Historic Places in Washington, D.C. She married Don Singer, an archivist at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, last June. Between them they have four children: Selina, a Latin teacher; Matthew, an architect; Amanda, an editor with Associated Press; and Valerie, a graduate student in anthropology at Syracuse. 1950 Tylden W. Streett recently completed an eight-foot bronze memorial figure for firefighters who have lost their lives in the line of duty. This stands across from Baltimore City Hall. He also just completed, for the Jewish Historical Society of Maryland, a 40" x 50" bronze bas-relief of Zanryl Krieger, who, says Streett, "has given over $100 million to various institutions to start great changes and. perhaps transform society." 1955 Peter S. McGhee has received a 1997 Columbia Journalism Alumni Award, given for "outstanding journalistic achievement or a distinguished career in journalism or journalism education." McGhee, vice president at WGBH in Boston, was executive editor of the public affairs series The Advocates, which won Emmy and Peabody awards. He was executive producer of the documentary series Arabs and Israelis, which won an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award. 1959 Hugh M. Curtler (A) has recently completed his book, Rediscovering Values: Coming to Terms with Postmodernism. It will be published next month by M.E. Sharp, Inc. of Armonk, N.Y. IN VINO VERITAS? • Larry Turley is famous in the wine world for his zinfandels and petit syrahs, but few people know that, until 1996, when he struck it big in the wine biz, he was a full-time emergency room doctor, producing beer and wine as a sideline. St. John's is proud to claim him as an alumnus; although he only spent two years with the great books (and the Santa Fe class of '69), he managed to get into medical school without a bachelor's degree. It was during med school that he started making beer ("You can always make much better than you can buy," he says.) Turley started Frogs Leap Winery in 1981, sold the label in 1994, and then started his own label, Turley Winecellars. His wines ha~e received top ratings from connoisseur Robert M. Parker in The Wine Advocate. Meanwhile, Turley's sister Helen (A67) is achieving phenomenal success as perhaps the top wine consultant in the country. In addition, she and husband John Wetlaufer (A67) are bottling their own label, "Marcassin." The "Wall Street journal reported that "more than 4000 people are on the waiting list for Marcassin, hoping to pay about $100 for each bottle." In vino veritas? Larry Turley says yes. But among wine cognescenti, the word is beginning to spread: In familia vinum. e -by Sus3an Borden 1970 Susheila Horwitz (SF) is still a staff member of Madonna House and is now assigned to that organization's house in Washington, D.C. She would love to see any alumni who are in the area. Madonna House is located at 200 C Street, NE, Washington, DC 20002. John Dean (A) has been kicked upstairs from his post at the Universite Strasbourg II to Universite de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines. His field of study remains History of Ideas, American Studies, with a strong bias toward what has come to be called Cultural Studies. He has just published European Readings ofAmerican Popular Culture (Greenwood Press). Over the last few sum1;llers he's been working in the graduate school at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He writes that "any Johnnies coming through Paris from my own Annapolis alumni time-zone are welcome to make contact." E-mail: dean@monza.u-strasbg.fr or (Paris tel.#) 01.43.336.36.16. 1972 Dana Nether ton (A) married Robin Goldman in 1990. They have two children: Graham, born in 1993, and Roger, born in 1996. He is a principal with American Management Systems in Fairfax, Virginia. His specialty is "Reliability-Centered Maintenance," about which he has written several papers. His e-mail address is dana_netherton @mail.amsinc.com. 1975 Thomas J. Myers (SF) and Moors C. Myers (SF) report that they now have five children: Toby, 21; Emma, 16; Paul, 12; Peter, 11; and Tamsin, 6 months. Dr. Dale Mortimer (A) writes that "after serving nearly a seven-year, parttime 'sentence,' " he has left his job as the main consulting psychiatrist for the Oregon Department of Corrections. He served as the psychiatrist for Oregon State Penitentiary (the maximum security prison in Salem) and its psychiatric unit housed there. He is now gearing up for full-time private practice in Vancouver, Washing- ton, focusing on assessing and treating behavioral and anxiety disorders in children and adolescents. 1977 Michael Levine St. James (A) writes: "I am one of the few happy attorneys I know. Last month, I was named chair of the executive committee of Rosenblum, Parish & Isaacs, where I practice bankruptcy law. My business bankruptcy practice lets me work with a wide variety of businesses-this year, I concluded my most unusual case: a successful reorganization of San Francisco's largest chain of adult theaters! The current spring soccer season consumes all our Saturdays, with my 13-year-old daughter Sara, 9-year-old Liza, and 6-year-old Noah all avid players. My eldest was mortally embarrassed when I concluded a presentation on Ancient Greek for her language class by chanting the first part of the Iliad. I'm looking forward to seeing classmates at the·reunion this September. If anyone from the class of '77 comes to San Francisco, give me a ca11 at 415477-9422, or e-mail me at stjames@rosenblum.com." 1978 Karen Gasser (SGI) received her Ph.D. in English from the University of Denver in August 1996. It has come to the attention of David Woolwine (A) that two works by Eric H. Wefald (A) have been brought out posthumusly. Eric matriculated with the class of 1978 and was at St. John's for one year. The books are Truth and Knowledge: On Some Themes in Tractarian and Russe/Lian Philosophy ofLanguage, published by the University Press of America in 1996, and~an earlier work, Do the Right Thing: Studies in Limited Rationality (Stuart Russell, co-author), published in 1991 by MIT Press. David has looked at chem and says that they are technical works in philosophy and may be of interest to alumni and faculty of St. John's. Eric was considered one of the most promising philosophers of his generation. He died in 1989 in a car accident and an obituary was printed in The Reporter. David also notes that he himself is the author of a short essay entitled "Reading Science as Text" which was published in 1991 in a book titled Vocabularies ofPublic Life. It is on the use of deconstructionist notions in the study of science. David believes that it is of no interest to anyone. 1981 Major Michael A. Cross (A) is now a major serving as an Infantry Brigade Operations Officer in the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division. Soldiers from his brigade are currently �serving in peacekeeping operations in both the Sinai and Bosnia. He recently graduated from the Army's Command and General Staff College and prior to that completed an MPA at Harvard's JFK School of Government. 1982 Married and a mother of three children (ages 4, 7 and 8), Sara. E. Van Wassenaer-Matson (SF) works part-time at the Fine Arts Academy in New York City. She says she is "painting and sculpting and being 'mom' and 'wife' to a top-notch management consultant and living in a big, beautiful house in Amsterdam with our golden retriever." 1984 Lori Maness (SF) writes, "I will marry my friend, Ron Morris, August 16 at a small lodge in Wyoming's Medicine Bow National Forest. I would really love to see the friends I have lost touch with and for them to take part in this celebration. The beauty and simplicity of the setting allows for the addition of guests, even on short notice It would be a great thing to bless this union with reunion. Please contact me at P.O. Box 4171Casper,WY82601 or call 307-577-0919." Joie Goodwin Munda (A) writes, "I am single Mom to four-year-old Sara, who is a budding artist and tennis player, and am blessed to work for an employer that allows me to work from home. As a researcher/writer for "Ttie 700 Club," I have the great privilege of interviewing people about the transforming power of the risen Christ in their lives. Of the two or three testimonies that air daily on the Family Channel show, I have o&en had something to do with one of them. God is good!" You may reach Joie via email at josephine.lmunda@cbn.org or by writing to her at 1689 Dylan Drive, Virginia Beach, VA, 23464. Dana Darby Johnson (A) and her husband Robin write: "We send the rather belated news that we became parents a year and a half ago. Our daughter, Rhiannon, was born at home, and we have been completely besotted ever since. Meanwhile, Robin is teaching and writing about the Tai Chi Internal Arts at The Center for Classic Tai Chi Chuan in Santa Fe. Dana is writing a dictionary for a British publisher, taking a leave of absence from the environmental illness field. The alumni office has our phone/ address/ email." Lisa Ross Thedens (A) and her husband John had a son, Peter John Thedens, on April 1, 1996. Lisa continues to pastor her church in Coggin, Iowa. Leslie DeSimone (A) married Ken Descoteaux on October 5, 1996. They are living in Stow, Massachusetts and would be glad to hear from any Johnnies in the area. Lisa N urcombe Walling (A) and Karl Walling (A) and their children, Alexandra, age 7, and Ian, age 4, will be moving to Ohio this summer, where Karl will continue as a professor political science for a small liberal arts college. Barry Hellman (A) and Cynthia Keppel Hellman (A) moved to Norfolk, Virginia in 1994, after Barry completed his residency training in anatomic pathology at Stanford University Hospital and Thia finished her PhD in Physics at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. Barry is a staff pathologist and director of the immunodiagnosis lab at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital, and director of the Eastern Virginia Medical School pathology residency program. His main areas of work are hematopathology, gynecologic pathology and breast pathology. Thia is currently an assistant professor with Hampton University and a staff scientist at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (formerly CEBAF). Her area of focus is quark structure. She has landed an NSF career development grant and has an approved experiment pending at the accelerator.Their children, Barry III and Joel are currently 10 and 3 years of age. , Barry rep6rts that "the best friend anyone could ever have, Joel Bennington (A), has taken a position as assistant professor in biology at St. Bonaventure University in Olean, NY. He is leading the life of the benign eccentric and therefore finds himself very much in demand (my interpretation, not his) in those wild climes. He has a better music collection than most colleges and drives faster than most undergraduates." 1985 Maggie Kinser Saiki (A) sends a beautiful card announcing that ''At precisely 5 a.m. on the first day of September 1996 Molly Grace Saiki slipped from darkness into light. She was welcomed by her parents Hiromu and Maggie and her siblings Hannah and Tom." Kinser lives in Japan and writes for Graphis, a quarterly published in New York and covering design around the world. Guy Thmister (A) and his wife Lara live in Amsterdam, Netherlands, where they both work as computer analysts. On December 29, 1996, Lisa F. O'Brien (A) married Adrianis B. Olde Daalhuis in Potomac, Maryland. Lisa and her husband now reside in Edinburgh, Scotland, where she teaches grade school and he is aprofessor of mathematics at the University of Edinburgh. Her address is: Lisa F. O'Brien/ 10 Balderston Gardens/ Edinburgh, Scotland EH16-STF. continued on page 22 �Alumni Notes and Profiles ... continued from page 21 1986 Susan Read (SGI ) writes: "I have a wonderful baby boy, Harrison Webster, who was born on May 12, 1995. He loves to garden, ride bikes and eat. I'm still .teaching at Santa Fe Indian School and enjoying southwest life." Kristen Caven (SF) and her husband, Dave, recently had a baby boy. Kristen writes: "On May 14, 1997, Donald Max Caven entered the world at 4:01 am PST with onlookers Grandma Louise and Papa Dave and the Goddess of Fertility Mama Kristen in tow. He weighed 7 pounds, 2 ounces, and was 20 inches long. His first words, though not confirmed, were 'How are the Cubs doing this year?'" Charles F. Beckman (A) is an undergraduate student in engineering physics at Oregon State University. He says: "I participated on a city league basketball team in Santa Fe during the 1983-1984 school year, we did not do nearly so well as last year's team (which won the city league championship). I believe we won three games, at least one by forfeit. Jamie Hayden (SF) was our captain and I drove the team to games and played shooting guard of sorts." 1987 At 9:03 pm on Thursday, March 27, 1997, Melissa Johnson (SF) and CJ Dallett (SF88) welcomed their daughter, Liliana Ione Dallett, into the world, "more specifically into the world of Espanola, New Mexico." CJ, Melissa and Liliana can be reached at P.O. Box 203, Ojo Caliente, NM, 87549. Their e-mail address is reddlines @roadrunner.com. Melissa White (SF) and Ron Strauch (SF85) welcomed their third child, Asher White Strauch, into the world on Jan. 23, 1997. Melissa writes: "He was impatient and barely waited for the midwife. He was born into air, unlike his sister, Talaya, 8, and brother, Colin, 6, who were water babies." Melissa is a production manager at Indian Artist Magazine in Santa Fe and Ron's business, Milagro Compost, has leased five acres at the Santa Fe Downs. Melissa and Ron invite friends who are in the LaCienega area to visit. Melissa's e-mail address is 105616.1666 @compuserve.com, or Ron and Melissa can be reached at 505-473-5398. 1988 Kim Paffenroth (A) and Marlis (A86) report that they will finally be leaving South Bend, Indiana. Kim was just awarded a three-year teaching fellowship at Villanova University to teach in their Core Humanities Program: "Great Books for the masses," the director of the program calls it, since it is a required course for all first year students. Kim's first book, The Story ofJesus according to L, will be out this September from Sheffield Academic Press. Kim and Marlis' son, Charles, is now three and they are expecting another child soon. 1989 Molly Porter's (A) artwork is being displayed at the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, Miss., this summer. The exhibit shows oils, watercolors and pastels that she completed during a recent stay in the Mississippi Delta. Her work has been described as "full of light and maelstroms of color and subject and subtle rhythms." 1990 Gerard Sparaco (A) finished his academic requirements at the Gettysburg Lutheran Seminary and will begin an internship at St. Paul's Evangelical Lutheran Church in Orion, Illinois in September. This will lead to ordination in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. · Alexandra Kincannon (A) is working toward a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology at che University of Virginia. Jonathan G. Ying (A) received his master's degree in theological studies, with a focus on Confucian thought and modern Chinese literature, in 1994 from Harvard University. He is now a lecturer in the department of sociology and an assistant dean of students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He says his assignments "include teaching and developing an Asian American studies curriculum and working with the 3,800 Asian American students." He would love to hear from friends, and may be reached at 110 Turner SSB, MC-306, 610 East John Street, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL 61820. His e-mail address is jying@uiuc.edu. His phone numbers are 217-333-0050 at work and 217-356-7941 at home. Joshua Kerievsky (SF) and Tracy Reppert (SF91) were married on May 25, 1997, in Boca Raton, Fla. F. Thomas Luparello (SF) is now the vice president of Wood River Technologies. His address is P 0. Box 6639, Kerchum, ID 83340. 1991 In 1993, Jonathan Skinner (SF) received a master's degree in English literature from Oxford. He also earned a master's degree from the University of London in comparative literature in the fall of 1996. After working for three years as an associate producer at CNN in Los Angeles, Richard Mar.ks (SF) is now the story editor for the new feature film division of National Geographic. He says he hates news, loves film, and is· now "facing the desire to make movies." 1992 J. Elizabeth Hubert (SF) has been accepted to the University of Nebraska College of Medicine and will begin there as a medical student in August. She also is engaged to Dr. Alex Osawa · of Nigeria. She says, "I would love to hear from any Johnnies trapped in Omaha." She c~n be reached at 328 S. 37th St., #2, Omaha, NE 68131. Her phone number is 402-341-7115. 1992 Stacy Vennema (A) reports that she should complete her M.A. in history at the University of Oregon in June. 1993 Julia Beth Graham (SF) .is completing her master's degree in comparative religions at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Owen A. Kelley (A) writes: "In January, 1997, I earned a master's degree in applied physics from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. I now work at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center on the Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission. I have played folk music on my cello as part of the Hauntingly Beautiful Trio, which performed several times in Annapolis." Kevin Johnson (A) is living in Boston and studying counseling psychology at Lesley College, which is feminist and multicultural in its orientation. He is living with a composer/poet/psychic. He would love to hear from alumni or current students. His phone number is 617524-2669. His address is Apt. 3/16 Spalding Street/Jamaica Plain, MA 02130. In May, Laura Anne Stuart (A) received the degree of master of public health from the University of Michigan. She is now working as an analyst at Abt Associates Inc., a research and consulting firm in Cambridge. Her phone number is 617- 629-2470. Her address is 402 Highland Avenue, Apt. 21/Somerville, MA 02144. James Lank (A) graduated from Harvard Law School where he was editor-in-chief of the Harvard Journal ofLaw & Public Policy. He has passed the Texas Bar and now practices corporate and securities law with the firm of Liddell, Sapp, Zivley, Hill & LaBoon in Houston, Texas. His e-mail address is james.lank@juno.com. Matt Wright (A) reports that he and his family have moved to Philadelphia, where he has a new position as the head baker for Fresh Fields. "Both kids are a year older," he adds. 1994 David Brooks (SF) has been awarded a three-year scholarship to pursue his doctoral degree in existential psychology at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. He plans to do research in gender identification. After graduation from St. John's, David worked at the Philadelphia Hospital for two years as a pharmacy technician. He is finishing his master's degree in psychology at Duquesne this summer. David lives at 426 N. Taylor Ave. #2, Pittsburgh, PA 15212. 1995 Bruce Grigsby (SGI) was one of 16 teachers in Colorado who was recognized recently by the governor's office and the Colorado Endowment for the Humanities. He says that "a primary reason for being nominated by my principal for the recognition has been my inclusion of St. John's style Socratic seminars in my teaching. So the outreaching effect of what we do at St. John's continues, and I am continually grateful for having been able to be a part of the GI program." KeUyn Vandenburg (SF), who spent three years at St. John's, is now completing her degree at the University of New Mexico. The Reporter wants to hear your news! Contact us any way, by phone, mail, e-mail, whatever-here are our addresses: In AnnapolisThe Reporter Public Relations Office St. John's College Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404 phone:410-626-2539 e-mail: bgoyette@mailhost.sjca.edu In Santa FeThe Reporter Alumni /Public Relations Office St. John's College 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca Santa Fe, NM 87501 phone:SOS-982-6103 e-mail: Eskewes@shadow.sicsf.edu �0 bituaries ... EDWARD CORNELL CLARK FORMER TUTOR Edward Cornell Clark died on May 21 in Los Cerrillos, N.M. He was a tutor at the Santa Fe campus from July 1974 through June 1977. He came to St. John's from the University of Texas at El Paso, where he taught Western Civilization for five years. Prior to that, he was at Princeton University, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1969. He had an undergraduate degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and worked for several · years as a geophysicist in Montana, Wyoming, Turkey, and Spain before going to Princeton. He is survived by his wife, Mary Gilman Clark; four children, Sarah Clark Davis, Susan Louise Clark, William Gilman Clark, and Daniel Howard Clark; and a sister, Jeannette Gibson. LOUISE TRIGG FRIEND OF THE SANTA FE CAMPUS Louise Trigg, who, along with her former husband Robert McKinney, was instrumental in bringing St. John's College to Santa Fe, died on June 2 in Santa Fe. She was 84. She was a founding member of the Santa Fe Opera, Santa Fe Preparatory School and Sama Fe Chamber Music Festival. She graduated from Amarillo High School in Texas in 1930 and married Robert McKinney, who later became the owner of The New Mexican, in 1943. She and McKinney had a daughter in 1954 and later divorced. Trigg served on the boards of St. John's College, Santa Fe Preparatory School, and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. She also served on the New Mexico Arts Commission under Gov. Bruce King and was a member of the National Endowment for the Arts. She is survived by her daughter, Robin; son-in-law Meade Martin; a brother, Steve, and his wife, Ann; two grandchildren; and numerous nieces, nephews, and cousins. NOTED ... Alan Eckhart, A43, died on January 13, 1997. Toni Karen Nelson, SF70, died in April 1997. Gregory Scott Burbey, A86 David F. Crowley, Jr., A28 William Jack Ely, A82 Jerome Lansner, A50 Richard B. Sellman, A36 Henry R. Weeks, A35 Letters ... continued from page 17 I t is a truth universally acknowledged that there are more Great Books than can be fit on the Program; the "argument on what books" comprise our list is a constant reality. Mr. Cayley believes that "if [Buchanan] felt that ...Jane Austen, etc., belongd in the program, would he not have included them?" and feels that "the Buchanan list is obviously under seige." However, suggestions are made to change our list regularly, and such a suggestion quite properly receives a thoughtful, practical response like Dean Brann's. Though the recent suggestion in these pages to include the works of more women authors was reasonable in tone and rational in argument, its authors seem not to understand that no circumstance of an author's being is worth consideration in the decisions of the Program Committee. Several books by women are worthy of inclusion, without recognition of the sex of the author, but worthiness apparently is not the only standard by which the Program Committee must judge. Middlemarch is a greater. book than 1-Vtir and Peace, but the later has long been a standard for the educated person; besides, the seminar does better with a novel that's got huge chunks of philosophy in it. The list is steeped in philosophy, whose analytic method routinely and notoriously butchers literature, as well as music and visual art. As a result, contempt for literature is endemic among my fellow Johnnies. It is demonstrated by Mr. Cayley's characterization of a flower of English prose as a" 'romantic' perspective on the universe"; moreover, it is convincingly cloaked in his letter as comtempt for the works of women. I am not particu- lady fond of Miss Austen, but to suggest that "there is a whole host of authors in her class," to equate her with Margaret Mitchell, is to display with pride an appalling lack of education and a corresponding lack of objectivity. I would offer that the educational intention to which we all aspire, and to which Mr. Cayley makes ungrammatical reference, is not well represented by one who feels he "saw the movies ... so why read the books?" -Barbara Hahn, A88 CORRECTIONS Y our obituary on tutor Ralph Harper (Fall 1996 issue) states that he was at St. John's from 1943-45. However, he was there in 1945-46. That was my sophomore year. My seminar leaders were Richard Scofield, Simon Kaplan, and Ralph Harper. My Latin tutor was Ralph Harper. In January 1946, Mr. Harper invited his students to his house and told us Dean Scott Buchanan had informed him that he was making an "intuitive judgment" that Ralph was "simply not a teacher." Some of us, recalling that years later (Vernon Derr said I might use his name), think that on that occasion Scott Buchanan was wrong. While I was teaching at Olivet College in the 1970s, I organized an annual film festival. Harper gave excellent lectures on Bergman and Antonioni. On another subject: I am sorry that the seminar readings of the various alumni chapters are not listed in The Reporter. In view of the current controversy on women authors on the reading li~t, I should think alumni chapters might discuss some of the books proposed and report opinions. -Bill Buchanan, A48 Mr. George Cayley's last name was misspelled in the letters section of the spring edition of The Reporter. We apologize for the mistake. 20TH CENTURY GREAT BOOKS In reference to the story in the Spring issue about the great books of the 20th century, here are some thoughts: Drop Freud. His theory of the mind is based on the workings of the reducing steam turbine (the technological wonder of his day). Currently, the theory of the mind is increasingly based on the computer (the technological wonder of our day). Both are attempts to make something subjective and nonquantifiable seem more "scientific." With an increased understanding of how the brain really works, chemistry is replacing psychology. If you must include something about psychology uy Jung (though he has his flakey moments). Watson and Crick is certainly a true account of how modern scientific research takes place but not of much interest beyond that. Replace it with "Silent Spring." DNA technology will be very important, but environmentalism will have an even greater impact. I'd prefer "Makland Field Force" by Churchill, though that may be a few years too early for the 20th century. It conveys as few other books can the concept of death before dishonor and the ideal that a good name was to be valued above anything else in this world. Not by preaching about it but by describing, from the inside out as it were, a life lived according to these precepts. In our cynical age, it would certainly provide a contrast worth discussing. Have you ever seen a sunset that reminded you of a patient etherized upon a table? Neither have I. However, T.S. Eliot did write a substantial essay on what makes a masterpiece and how all former masterpieces become re-interpreted in the light of a new masterpiece. I can't dredge up the name of the essay but it sheds light on not just the art of poetry or writing but on all of the arts and could provide a framework on which to hang a considerable discussion on the state and meaning of contemporary art. Poincare. YES! YES! YES! This is the book that SJC needs as a framework for its lab program. The lab, as it existed in 1967-1972, was just a series of "great discoveries," which we duplicated, without any rationale as to how they came about. This book will help the student understand that science is very much a human endeavor and that discoveries do not occur in a vacuum. Solzhenitsyn is important historically, especially since if we don't learn from history we may repeat it. Students could only read snippets of this "mega" work. Most of it is mind-numbing in its detail. Might there not be some other, more readable work that captures the "great" ideas presented in this book? Are there any books that I would propose? I would recommend Hawking, A BriefHistory ofTime. Nothing there that any Johnny shouldn't be able to handle and it may suggest a few interesting experiments for Lab. On a similar note, I'd suggest Fladands. This is a short work, I don't remember the author's name, that will get you thinking "outside the lines." -Thomas Day, A74 �Campus Life ... BEHIND THE SCENES SANTA FE PAT, THE GARDENER •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Pat McCue, the Greek scholar and landscaper, believes in cooperating with nature. BY CAROLYN KNAPP, SFOO 0 n the surface, Patrick McCue's story seems conventional-at least by St. John's standards. Disenchanted with his course of philosophy at the University of Minnesota, McCue came to Santa Fe, discovered St. John's, enrolled in the Graduate Institute, and maintains an active relationship with the college community. The difference is that McCue also maintains an active relationship with the college's buffalo grass, its aspen trees, and its daffodils. McCue is not only a graduate of the master's program and a current student in the Eastern Classics program, but the head landscaper for the Santa Fe campus. McCue never intended to end up in this rather unusual position. When he arrived in Santa Fe in 1980, he had a background in philosophy and had done work on his own garden in Minnesota. He heard about St. John's because he was interested in ancient Greek. Assuming that it was a Catholic school, McCue came by to check out the collection of Greek texts and realized that opportunity had knocked. While completing his first master's degree, McCue met Gail Haggard, SF71, who owns Plants of the Southwest, a local landscaping firm. Haggard's philosophy of "co-operation with nature, learning its principles" intrigued McCue. While working for Plants of the Southwest, he learned the techniques of native plant use, water conservation, and soil development that became his trademark in landscaping. When the mother/son team of Ben Haggard, SF79, and Gail Haggard was selected to design and create the landscaping for the campus's suites and apartments in 1992, McCue was chosen as the foreman for the project. While working on that project, he met John Agresto, also a committed gardener, and president of the Santa Fe campus in his spare time. The college had just lost its chief gardener, and, as Agesto says, "out of heaven came Pat McCue." The landscaping that McCue designs and maintains for the Santa Fe campus reflects his belief that in gardening, as in Heraclitus, all is one. He works to conserve water by ensuring that rainwater from the roofs waters the plants, and not concrete. He collects scraps from the kitchens, manure from horse ranches, and clippings and chips from Buildings and Grounds to make a rich compost used all over campus. Agresto says, "He's brought a kind of wholeness to this place that I never dreamed of... he can take the garbage from the kitchens, the things that kids throw away, and turn it into black gold compost, and then turn that into beautiful green vegetables and plants." Under McCue's watchful eye, campus water for landscaping use has Pat McCue takes a breather from his work as Santa Fe's landscape and grounds supervisor. His theories of gardening stem from his scholarly pursuits in philosophy. been reduced by a third, partly because of his choice of native plants like buffalo grass, and partly because of carefully planned watering. His campaign of soil development is helping to reduce the effects of years of stripped, dead soil. The campus blooms with his bulbs and flowering trees, and every summer the vegetable gardens spill over with his carefully nurtured produce. The massive effort of supervising 263 acres of land has not prevented McCue from doing academic work as well. Though he will not comment, campus rumor has it that his scholarship in ancient Greek equals that of much of the faculty. Not content with one dead language, he spent this past year learning Sanskrit as part of the Eastern Classics program, and plans to continue with the program this fall. The last word is perhaps best left to Agresto: "Pat loves hard work, and there doesn't seem to be anything he can't do. He has a sensitivity to landscaping, and to ideas, and to how all things flow together to make a whole." • ALUMNI OPPORTUNITIES FROM THE ANNAPOLIS PLACEMENT OFFICE PSI Services, Inc., a provider of health, education and training located in Easton, Md., is currently advertising vacancies for several Case Managers and a licensed Psychologist Consultant. The Case Manager II/Mental Health Therapist II has the overall responsibility for assessing the needs of those referred to PSI foster homes. Candidate also has case management and therapeutic responsibilities for assigned cases. Qualifications: Master's degree in Social Work; licensed as a LGSW in the state of Maryland; clinical social work training; two years direct clinical experience desired; and excellent writing, organization and case management. The Psychologist is responsible for ensuring that all home-based and dinicbased psychological services are implemented in a manner consistent with good clinical practice. Candidate will conduct psychological evaluations and interpret tests and observation results using DSM IIIR/IV. Candidate will provide psychological consultation to PSI foster care programs and conduct individual and group therapy sessions. Qualifications: Psychological license and at least two years experience in completing assessments, providing clinical services and writing and implementing behavior management programs. Write 342 N. Aurora, Easton, MD 21601, attn: Paula Johnson, fax #410-819-8867. Cornell University invites applications for its 1998-99 Young Scholars' Program on Ethics & Public Life. Young Scholars visit the Ithaca, NY campus for a weekend of intensive discussion of their own work with leading scholars from Cornell and other universities. The purpose is to provide sustained criticism and constructive suggestions to the most promising young people engaged in interdisciplinary normative analysis of contemporary social issues. Young Scholars receive an award of $1,000. Candidates must have a Ph.D. in Political Science or aJ.D. and must not yet have tenure or be formally under review for tenure during the year they apply. An application must include three copies of each of the following: one manuscript article in preparation for publication; a 2-3 page letter outlining the general plan of research indicating the submitted article's place in the plan; current curriculum vitae; and the names of three persons whom the candidate has asked to send letters of reference with one being a former teacher. Send application materials, including three letters of reference, before November 18, 1997 to: Young Scholar Program, Ethics & Public Life, Cornell University, 119 Stimson Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853-7101. �BEHIND THE SCENES ANNAPOLIS CHRIS, THE PRINTMEISTER ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• The print shop, under the helm ofChris Colby, feeds the campus need for paper and ink in many forms. BY TRAVIS DUNN, A98 he St. John's print shop, tucked away in an obscure corner of the Annapolis back campus, doesn't call much attention to itself. Likewise for Chris Colby, its manager of almost 20 years. The print shop, housed in the brick heating plant behind Mellon, is stark and featureless, seemingly void of light and joy. The small sign next to the loading dock door is the only indication of what lies inside the brown metal door. Inside, however, the print shop belies its somber facade; it hums with xerox machines and printing presses. The telephone rings constantly. Student aides punch holes in soon-tobe lab manuals. The walls are adorned with "Far Side" cartoons; various kites, including one bearing the image of Mighty Mouse, dance near the ceiling. Appearances are likewise deceiving with respect to Chris Colby, whose impish wit betrays his melancholic demeanor. To hear his almost-plaintive Minnesota accent, you would be surprised to discover that this is the same man who once masterminded a prank to kidnap and ransom the pendulum in the Mellon pendulum pit. Chris has been with the print shop since its inception in 1975. That's when the college bought a small printing press so that the Collegianthe student newspaper-could be printed on campus. Robert Schmidt, A72, was hired to oversee the printing. Print shop manager Chris Colby checks admissions material printed on one of the "olmostantique" presses. Photo by Keith Harvey. Schmidt called Colby, a childhood friend from Minnesota, about becoming his assistant. Two things about the job intrigued Colby: the college-he had applied and been accepted but couldn't come up with the tuition-and the idea of learning the printing business. "I had been a designer and done commercial art work. I'd also worked on student publications as an undergrad at the University of Minnesota. But I was intrigued by the printing business," he says. He and his wife Mary, who now works in the Annapolis admissions office, packed their suitcases, got on a bus, and-with just a few hundred dollars-set out to find a new life in Annapolis. Schmidt and Colby established the print shop in the basement of the Carroll-Barrister House in a room about 10 by 15 feet. In addition to the Collegian, they printed handouts and program manuals. Shipments of xerox paper were brought into the shop The Guild has also reinstituted the "Speaking Volumes" lecture series, which features authors talking about their work. In June, Chris Wilson, a cultural historian and professor at the University of New Mexico, spoke about his newest book, The Myth ofSanta Fe: in the art gallery and the speakers for the "Speaking Volumes" series, the Guild donated a new mace to be used at college functions, such as graduation and convocation. The mace, unveiled at this year's commencement ceremony, was designed and carved in Spanish Colonial style by renowned local santero Ramon Jose Lopez. Made of ebony and silver, the new mace is three feet tall with silver bands and an orb at its top; it replaces an older pine mace. e continued from page 28 July brings another exhibit of oil paintings, this time by local artist Peter Ruta, who will be exhibiting a retrospective of landscapes of Santa Fe and the surrounding area that he has created during the past 15 years, providing a time capsule history of Santa Fe's growth in that time. Ruta's exhibit continues through July 27. Two more local artists will exhibit in August. Kathleen Schallock combines her landscapes with the photography of Sylvia Aronson in a show tentatively titled "Synthesis." Their exhibit will open with a reception from 5 to 7 p.m. on Friday, August 8, in the Fireside Lounge, and will continue through August 28. Tourism, Ethnic Identity, and the Creation ofa Modern Regional Tradition. The book recounts how Santa Fe reinvented itself-turning this town in the middle of nowhere into a fantasy at the heart of international tourism. Charles Montgomery from the University of Florida will talk in July about the creation of Spanish heritage on the upper Rio Grande. In addition to selecting the exhibits Santa Fe ceremonies will have a new element--a mace designed by Ramon Jose Lopez. th.rough a small window in the basement. By the late 1970s, Schmidt had left, and Colby was churning out admissions materials in addition to campus work. When space became tight, the print shop moved to the basement of Randall, and finally to an annex of the heating plant (in place of a giant pyramid of broken seminar chairs) in 1987. Now there's a camera and developing room, a plate-making room, two presses (both aging and crotchety), computers for typesetting, a super-speed xerox machine, and lots of miscellaneous binding equipment. The print shop still handles the student paper, now called the Gadfly, as well as countless other campus projects. A "benevolent business" that doesn't seek a profit, the print shop under Colby's stewardship is on-call for student projects like theater programs as well as the more sophisticated publications put out by the admissions and advancement offices. Tutors rely on the print shop for xeroxing (St. John's goes through two million sheets of xerox paper a year) and for the publication of manuals. Then there's the commencement programs, stationery and envelopes, the St. john's Review, and even books like the newest St. John's College Press book on Stringfellow Barr. Inside that brown metal door, the print shop hums with life--on a campus where books and paper are the lifeblood. e �The Program ... DEAN'S STATEMENT EXAMINES LIFE OUTSIDE THE CLASSROOM •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• BY ELIZABETH A. SKEWES T o some, James Carey's "Statement of Educational Policy and Program," written in March, is an indictment of a student body that has grown increasingly unruly and apathetic. That's not, however, the message the Santa Fe dean intended in his statement. Instead, he said, the statement is a challenge to tutors and administrators to reconsider student life outside the classroom and the role that they should play in that aspect of campus life. ''A lot of people seem to think that because I am convinced we could become a better institution, I have failed to appreciate how good we already are," Carey says. "I think St. John's offers the best undergraduate education in the country, but that leads me to think also that we could be a better institution than we are in terms of non-academic life. It's the discrepancy between the academic and nonacademic life that is the problem." That discrepancy, he says, includes a classroom civility that is not carried into the dorms. Instead of adequate respect for others, he says, dorm life is often characterized by, for example, students who assert an assumed right to play music loudly over someone else's right to study. Santa Fe campus life, he says, also has been marred in recent years by vandalism and coarse behavior, most often instigated by excessive drinking. The failure, Carey says, may be in the college's unwillingness to inject itself into the moral develolpment of the students. "The college has a dearly defined and well understood intellectual center," Carey wrote in his statement, "but if the college has a moral center it is neither clearly defined nor well understood." . He argues that in the absence of a religious foundation, which he indicated in his statement would be inappropriate for St. John's, it may be difficult for any college .to teach morality. But it is not impossible, he says, and the challenge still remains the same-for students to have a life outside the classroom that more closely mirrors what they encounter in the classroom in terms of civility and mutual respect. And while others would agree with Carey that some parties do get out of hand and some students do get drunk, they say the college exposes students to moral thinking through the books that they read, which Carey acknowledged in his statement. More importantly, the college exists in the real world, where people sometimes do behave badly. Yet bad, says Santa Fe President John Agresto, involves degrees of compari- son: "I recently saw something from the University of New Mexico that noted that they were celebrating the fact that in the last five years they've only had one murder," he says. "We're different. Our kids will take chairs out of the lounge, but usually they'll return them. On the other hand, we do have many of the problems that come with alcohol and we have some of the problems that American society has with self-indulgence and hedonism." In a community as small as St. John's, he says, students regularly have to think about the needs of others before they think about their own wants. And sometimes, he says, that doesn't happen. "If we could translate the kind of respect they have for each other in the classroom into their private lives, we'll have done a great thing," Agresto adds. For Annapolis President Chris Nelson, that is really the crux of the problem. The students, he says, constantly examine moral issues in the classroom and through the books. But outside the classroom, these studies meet up with "youthful zest. The question is whether we are serving our students well, and I'd say we're doing better than most. But in the classroom we are exposing moral opinions to intellectual scrutiny, which seems to open us to the charge that we don't care about moral virtue," Nelson says. Amber Boydstun, a junior in Santa Fe, says that even if students do take the texts seriously when they read them, because the works are approached primarily from an intellectual perspective, the readings are not integrated as quickly into students' daily lives. But the classroom discussions would suffer, she says, if the students took a personal approach to the texts and tried to read them as lessons to be learned, rather than ideas to be examined. 'Tm sure I'm developing my moral system as a result of St. John's, but I'll need some perspective to see that," she says. Derek Alexander, an Annapolis sophomore active in the Delegate Council and also head of the Political Forum, thinks that a real moral education occurs less often when there is a lot of effort ac "building character, like at the Naval Academy. You are given less of a chance to think about what morality might mean because you are focused on rules. A moral education is more than what rules should not be forgotten, broken, or ignored. It needs to be more about 'why,' which St. John's provides the opportunity to discuss," he says. Carey argues that tutors could play a larger role in that moral development by being more candid, "especially in conversations outside of class, about their own ethical convictions. The students look to the tutors for guidance. This doesn't conflict with their role in the classroom." Boydstun says that may not be especially effective because one reason students come to St. John's is that they want to learn for themselves. And because St. John's asks students to read a broad variety of religious and ethical texts, "It's not right at all, no matter what a student is doing, to say, 'That's wrong.' At St. John's, a tutor would only have the option of saying, 'Are you sure you want to be doing what you're doing,' and to have a discussion about it. With each year, it's becoming more and more appropriate and crucial to ask that, however," Boydstun says. Agresto disagrees. "It's hard to speak with passion about the intellectual virtues and feign indifference in public to the moral virtues," he sa.ys. Nelson notes that the faculty members are aware of the roles they can play in the non-academic lives of students. "There are some fine models of what Jim is talking about among the faculty, but each does it in his or her own way. Some do it in an intellectual way, some by example and some by being more like a parent," he says. "The students will seek out the advice of those faculty members who resonate with them." N elson says it's also important to realize that while each campus has occasional problems, which tend to come in cycles, often the biggest behavior problems are among the freshmen, who are frequently away from home for the first time and have not been exposed to much of the program yet. "When I look at the behavior and responsibility and civility among the upperclassmen, I'm impressed by their growth over four years," he says. "Ifl saw it the other way around, I'd be a lot more concerned." Eva Brann, an Annapolis tutor and outgoing dean, says that while some of Carey's concerns are valid, "I don't quite believe that the situation is so terrible on either campus. Things are cyclical. They come and they go, and it's usually because some bad folks get in positions of leadership in the student body. But the students do a lot of very effective self-monitoring." She says she understands Carey's assertion in his statement that without a religious foundation, it's difficult for a college to have much moral influence on its students. But at St. John's, she says, the program requires students to be respectful, intelligent, and honest. "These are very powerful moral rules because it means you have to treat others as human beings and listen to what they say," Brann says. Alexander agrees about the role of die program in developing a moral foundation for students. There's a connection between the academic process and moral development, he thinks, because at St. John's, students are "accustomed to seeing mistakes get made in the classroom. We all have our wind eggs, and realizing the possibility of failure is part of the academic excellence of the college. There's a parallel with the moral realm in that it's impossible not to make mistakes. But we have to learn to think about these situations." Boydstun says that while students do seem to be suffering from a lack of respect for each other at the moment, it's up to the students to take responsibility for resolving the problem. "l would like to see higher academic expectations on the part of the faculty. That might require a greater maturity on the part of the students," Boydstun says, which would benefit the students in their non-academic life as well. Nelson also says the solution lies in a dear set of expectations for student behavior and rules that are enforced. That's required, he says, for living in any kind of community and especially in one as small and dose-knit as St. John's. "Sure there are going to be some problems and sometimes they are going to be more stark and severe, but we have rules and they're.pretty good ones," he says. "They were thoughtfully arrived at and they are enforceable in ways that are understandable to the community. It takes courage, sometimes, to enforce them, bur the rules define the mean for a good community life." The real success of the dean's statement, everyone seems to agree, is that it has fostered a much-needed examination of the non-academic side of St. John's and resulted in discussions that few other schools would be willing to undertake. "Jim has raised all the questions in a powerful way and it's been an interesting discussion on both campuses," Nelson adds.• Ifyou would Like a copy ofDean Carey's "Statement ofEducational Policy" please contact the Alumni Office at St. John's in Santa Fe. You may call 505-984-6103, send an e-mail message to eskewes@shadow.sjcsfedu or send a note to the Alumni Office, St. John's College, 1160 Camino Cruz Bl.anca, Santa Fe, NM87501. �The Arts ... CLASSICS IN CLAY IN ANNAPOLIS St. john's claims the talents oftwo Annapolis potters MITCHELL •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• BY REBECCA WILSON W abandoned it to devote herself entirely to hand-building. They even prefer different products: "Rick likes to make pitchers. I like to make bowls," says Ebby. Her pieces in stoneware and porcelain are one-of-a kind, favor earth tones, and frequently borrow a motif from nature. Recently she has begun incorporating stained glass into her high-fire pieces .. Rick's dean-lined, functional pieces are influenced by Asian pottery, and the graceful, almost lyrically fluid lines of his vases suggest the Greeks. He has a heart-felt love of Scandinavian modern shapes, not altogether unexpected in someone whose parents are of Norwegian and Swedish ancestry. The quality of day lies in its infinite capacity to be whatever the maker wants it to become, Ebby points out, adding, "I get a lot of ideas from Rick." The son, a great admirer of his mother, says, 'Tm so amazed by my mom's work, which continues to change and grow in different areas and to connect but all the while with no disjuncture of expression. She's gone so far. I would hope when I am as old as my mother I would have as many ideas and be able en Rick Malmgren was en years old, he used to orne home from school and watch, mesmerized, as his mother, Ebby, shaped pottery. That was the . beginning. Later, after considering several professions-medicine, like his father, and the ministry-he became, like his mother, a potter, turning out elegant, tall vases of classic design with walls so finely formed that blindfolded, a student of his said, you could tell which ones on a shelf were Malmgren's just by feeling them. Today St. John's can claim both Rick and Ebby. Rick has been a pottery instructor in St. John's studio art program since 1990 and this year was named as an advisor with the college's continuing education/fine arts program. Ebby is a member of the Mitchell Gallery Committee, particularly concerned with its education and public relations programs. During the Rick Malmgren (top) and his mother Ebby (above). Both St. John's Community are potters and both contribute to the arts scene at the Art Show this spring, college. Rick teaches pottery in the fine arts program surrounded by and Ebby volunteers for the Mitchell Gallery. spectators, she expertly demonstrated hand-building with day. She also to bring them to light." It's the volunteers one morning a week in the particular nature of day-its allibrary's book bindery. chemy-that excites Ebby. "I like the Both Ebby and her husband, Dick, feel of day, the responsiveness, the fact hold degrees from the Graduate that day is not precious. Working by Institute, hers earned in 1988 and Dr. hand as I do, I can re-wedge a piece if Malmgren's earned in 1991. "I read something doesn't work." faster than Dick," she quips. Both exhibit regularly in the St. Although day is the medium Rick John's annual community shows and in and Ebby share, they do altogether juried and contractural shows at the different things, their pottery differing, Maryland Federation of Art's Gallery Ebby notes, as do their signatures on the Circle. Although they pot although both use the same alphabet. independently, they Jointly own a day Rick produces his pieces on the wheel; mixer housed in the studio at the home after deciding she could never use the of Rick and his wife, Judy Burke. wheel to her own satisfaction, Ebby A 1972 graduate of Cornell University, Rick studied at the Penland, N.C., School of Crafts, which Ebby also attended, and received his master of fine arts in 1977 from the Columbia, Md., Visual Arts Center, then associated with Antioch University. In addition to St. John's, this former president of the Potters' Guild of _ Annapolis teaches classes in three levels of ceramics along with drawing and design at Anne Arundel Community College. The St. John's studio art classes, open to both students and local community residents, are taught at several levels. "Rick has a deep appreciation for what St. John's is as a college," says Thomas May, a tutor and The quality ofclay lies in its infinite capacity to be whatever the maker wants it to become. the director of the fine arts program. "He's really wonderful about introducing students who have never done any art work to pottery and encouraging them to continue until their work becomes sophisticated and advanced." Rick is a mainstay of the fine arts program, says May. He's always there to make sure everything in the studio is in order and has been responsible for improving the facilities, which always face tight budgetary constraints. The gifts he has secured have included more powerful electric wheels so that using the kick wheels becomes a matter of choice. With the assistance of experienced students, he has kept the studio open during the summer months for any student who might want to paint or pot. Rick also has helped lead college-sponsored trips to Washington and Baltimore museums. Even in coming up with ideas for St. John's students, Rick and his mother share a desire to help out. He designed a master class series that has brought distinguished ceramicists to the college. Ebby volunteers with the Mitchell Gallery's education efforts. Together, they are making arrangements for Malcolm Wright, a Vermont potter trained as a traditional Japanese apprentice, to come in February in connection with a Mitchell Gallery exhibit of Asian ceramics. e GALLERY FALL EXHIBITS NANCY GRAVES: EXCAVATIONS IN PRINT, 1972-1992 August 28 - November 1 Archaeology, astronomy, botany, cartography, paleontology, and zoology served as just a few of the sources of inspiration for contemporary artist Nancy Graves (1940-1995). This is the first comprehensive exhibition of Graves's printmaking. Each of the prints in this exhibit has a relationship to the entire body of her work; Graves often recycled images from her older prints, translating them into a new form. SOUTH SEA IMPRESSIONS: TWO ARTISTS' VIEWS OF WORLD WAR II November 7 - December 12 In 1944, artist Jason Schoener, a newly commissioned Naval Officer, found himself stationed on Eniwetok Atoll, a small island in the South Pacific. A keen observer, Schoener captured the . dramatic colors and shapes of the island, producing over a hundred watercolor paintings and countless sketches in his eighteen-month stay. The following year brought Donald McBride, also a Naval Officer, to the South Pacific, where he painted scenes depicting the island of Peleliu as it recovered from battle. During his time on Peleliu, McBride also developed Lively the Lizard, an allegorical children's story depicting the rise and fall of the Japanese Empire. This exhibition, guest curated by James W Cheevers, Senior Curator at the United States Naval Academy Museum, 'and on loan from Donald McBride and the United States Naval Academy, provides an insider's view of the beauty and tumult of the South Pacific during World War II. FROM EARTH & SOUL: THE EVANS COLLECTION OF ASIAN CERAMICS January 7 - February 25, 1998 Organized by the University Art Gallery at the California State University, San Bernardino, this collection of ceramics from China, Korea, Vietnam, and Thailand spans the millennium from 3500-2500 B.C. The ceramicmaking traditions of different time periods and regions will be comrasted. Each carefully crafted day vessel reflects the unique Asian appreciation and high regard for ceramics. These pieces are more than functional pots and jars; Asian potters concerned themselves with the color, proportion, and shape of their work. �ST. JOHN'S FOREVER ""O ·;;; 0.. Pix from the Past ~ £ I Vl -;;; u :tj 0 ·c ~ "I don't know of any human being in the world with such a memory," said Jacob Klein of Miriam Strange. Miss Strange, who worked at the college for 52 years as secretary, registrar, and archivist, retiring in 1980 at the age of 79, was legendary for remembering the names of alumni whom she hadn't seen in years. Tutor Sam Kutler I I I (A54) remembers that she was always able I I ) to extricate a needed document from the <U piles and stacks and heaps of papers, u f:E 0 13 0 ~ ~ ~~ 0 !:! ~ ~ 0 ~u ~ ~~ :a ::I :a ::I '<:I' 0 '<:I' ...... c:i... N <U -s >.. Cl ..0 ~ -0 0 .~ <U l:-: :a f-t V) efficiency doesn't equal a cleared desk. O"' .~ ~ -§ ...c .~ and notebooks on her desk, proving that -0 ~ 0 00 N ~ - 0 ~ c:: ::I 0 c:i... i:Q ~ ~ c:: Photo by Marion Warren, from the ~ collection of the St. John's College library. 0 ·e .... 0 u "' ~ -a ~ LIFE'S A STAGE Recent grads steal the scene with their own production company T he first years out of college, when you don't have much except dreams and some ambition if you're lucky, are sometimes called the salad days. For some, those days are crunchier, greener, and have more radicchio and arugula than iceberg. Consider John Castro, A93. By day he's a graphic designer for the credit union at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in Washington, D. C. By evening, though, he's a director of theater, with his own little company-Sedentary Productionsfull oflots of fellow Johnnies. At present, he's working on doing a little ("I mean there are not many seats") show. The play is "Oleanna'' by David Mamet, and it will be performed July 10-12 and 17-19 at the District of Columbia Arts Center (2438 18th St. NW). "I've been doing theater for about five years now," says Castro. "Our first performance was 'Equus' in Annapolis in 1992; since then we've done 12 productions in cities from Annapolis to Richmond to D.C." Other St. John's friends involved in Castro's company are John Daniel (AGI93), Christian Parr (A95), John DeShazo (A94), and Kathy Stoltzenbach (A95), who've been The crew at Sedentary Produdions: Jenn Larson (not a Johnny), Sara Hamilton, Jack Daniel, John Castro, Jean Holman, and Christian Parr. actors, and Jean Holman (A95) and Sara Hamilton (A94), who've worked behind the scenes. All have day jobs to support their theater habit. "Oleanna'' is about a professor at a small university who is falsely accused of sexual harassment by a student, according to Castro. When the professor begins to negotiate with her, he ends up actually going down the path that he was accused of taking. · 'Tm reading it as a tragedy," says Castro. "But the tragedy doesn't just apply to his character. Both of them knowingly or unknowingly assign themselves to social worlds and are thus unable to communicate with one another. It's about communication, and about how we are all placed in cultural boxes."• � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The St. John's Reporter</em> Description An account of the resource College newspaper which started publication in 1974. Continued publication into 2000. Includes primarily historical content.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The St. John's Reporter" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=35">Items in <em>The St. John's Reporter</em></a></strong> <span>to view and sort all items in the collection.</span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 28 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context vol 23 issue 4 Summer 1997 Title A name given to the resource Reporter, Volume 23 Issue 4 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997-07 Description An account of the resource Volume 23, Issue 4 of The St. John's Reporter. Published in Summer 1997. (Annapolis edition) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Public Relations Office Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Goyette, Barbara (editor) Skewes, Elizabeth (editor) Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf The Reporter https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/a8893f8af24ea1413d1d65f90f119d76.pdf 9d6405519a0b7f6e11082b31682a4641 PDF Text Text -""::: ---- ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE LIBRARY u rnlf~ru\11~m~~~ 111111111111 \Ill II111111 III II 31696 011381470 S!JOHN'S COLLEGE "WE'VE REALLY DONE SOMETHING GOOD HERE" As the Graduate Institute turns 30, those who were involved in its beginnings and those who are charting its future talk about the program .......... 9 BABY RAT EYEBALLS AND BACTERIAL DNA STRANDS This summer, six.Annapolis students worked as research fellows at medical laboratories. For most the """T'"'"''"'n""' was eye-opening ............. 5 MAKING MUSIC OUT OF MELODY Michael MacDonald. SF76, has made a living turning songs and performances into music that you can take home and enjoy.............................. I I DEPARTMENTS FROM THE BELL TOWERS: St. John's adopts a new logo and a new look; Santa Fe's Peterson Center gets a face lift ......................................... 2 CAMPUS LIFE: Annapolis Gls celebrate Greek Night; Johnnies bring honor to the college in an Annapolis regatta ...................... I5 ALUMNI ASSOCIATION NEWS: Annapolis alumni write the next chapter; Bill Tilles, A4.g, receives an Award ofMerit......................................... I8 �NEWS FRO HE BELL T WERS ST. JOHN'S ADOPTS NEW LOOK FOR PUBLICATIONS '·}:re strength of the St. John's ,:!:iadmissions program has · · · always revolved around texts. Alumni remember being persuaded about the college after reading some article (Life magazine in the I94os, Saturday Review in the rg6os, Washington Post in the rggos), or after reading the catalog. Now the college is focusing more effort on the look of admissions materials (without, of course, changing the primary emphasis on what the materials are saying), and in the process, the college is adopting a single graphic "identity" for the two campuses. Some of you may have seen it already. It's on the college stationery and business cards, and it's being introduced into the college's publications. The new St. John's logo, name treatment and ~olor we:re d~signed by NeustadtCreative Marketing, a Baltimore-based consulting firm. S!JOHN'S College ANNAPOLIS • SANTA FE The firm, owned by Mark Neustadt, works with colleges and universities on their recruiting and publications. The designer for the St. John's wordmark is Claude Skelton. Called a wordmark, the new logo design will be used by both campuses on brochures, letterhead and publications. "A solid identity system reduces clutter and builds awareness of an institution through repetition of clear visual elements," says N eustadt. Bodoni, a typeface designed by the International Typeface Corporation, has been chosen for college publications. Neustadt chose it because it is inspired by I8th-century book design models. The printer's device for abbreviating "St." - using a bar under the "t," instead of a period after it was adapted from the treatment of the name on the official r793 (preNew Program) seal. The books and balance New Program seal has been reworked for the new identity system; the motto appears in a serif type and the borders of the seal echo the double-line treatment that appears under St. John's College in the new wordmark. 1111 EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN: PETERSON STUDENT CENTER DOORS GET A FACE LIFT BY CAROLINE KNAPP, SFOO Suzanne Cooper's critical eye and steady hand rescued them, 25 works of art housed on the Santa Fe campus were being pushed, pulled, slammed and otherwise mistreated by students and staff on a daily basis. None of which seems too surprising - these recognized pieces of folk art are the doors of the Peterson Student Center. Santa Fe alumni will remember the distinctive geometri·cally patterned doors, with their bright colors in often shocking combinations, that marked the entrances to the Great Hall, the common rooms and the art gallery, among others. Recently however, the accumulation of chips, scratches and dents of more than thirtyyears of opening and closing came to the attention of Suzanne Cooper, assistant to President John Agresto. During the board meeting this July, Cooper noticed that the doors needed a new paint job, and promptly volunteered herself for the huge task. Cooper explains that she finds painting "very therapeutic ... I think through a lot of things while I'm painting. It's relaxing." Though her previous painting projects have never been more complicated than rooms and porch railings, she is rising to the task of restoring the Peterson doors with patience and attention to detail. The doors were originally painted by Alexander Girard, a celebrated folk artist and textile designer, when the school first opened. Girard died in I994, but the Museum of International Folk Art, down the ( street from the college, has an entire wing permanently devoted to his collection. Unfortunately, Girard was less successful with record keeping than with interior design. No written records exist which list the colors he used to paint the doors. As a consequence, every door must be removed from its hinges by the Buildings and Grounds staff and taken to Valdez Paint Supply in town to have each color matched and mixed before Cooper can begin to re-paint. A single color almost never appears on two dif:. ferent doors. Each door takes approximately IO hours for Cooper to sand, prepare and paint, working before and afterwork hours, and often all day on Saturdays. Ill 1998 SUMMER CLASSICS PROGRAM p l~s for the I998 Summer Classics Program are well underway. The program, which is entering its eighth year, offers seminars on the Santa Fe campus with college tutors, on works of literature, philosophy and opera. This year's program will take place between July I2 and August I. Participants may choose to attend one, two or three one-week sessions. The opera seminar for the first week will be Wagner, Die Meistersinger van Nurnberg; for the second, Mozart, Magic Flute; and for the third, Strauss, Salome, and Berlioz, Beatrice and Benedict. Other offerings include Dostoevski, Crime and Punishment; Homer, Odyssey; the New Testament; Tocqueville, Democracy in America; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics; Dante, Inferno; Plutarch, Lives; Pascal, Pensees; and Shakespeare. A more detailed schedule and brochure will be available soon. For more information, please call the communications office in Santa Fe, at 505-984-6rn4. Bl The Reporter {USPS 018-750) is published in April and October by the Communications Office, St. John's College, Santo Fe, NM, and in January and July by the Communications Office, St. John's College, Annapolis, MD. Known office of publication: Public Relations Office, St. John's College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 214042800. Periodicals postage paid at Annapolis, MD, and at additional moiling offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Reporter, Office of Public Relations, 1160 Camino Cruz Blanco, Santo Fe, NM 87501. SANTA FE: Elizabeth A. Skewes, editor Lisa Donenfeld, art director ANNAPOLIS: Barbaro Goyette, editor Sus3on Borden, writer Roberto Gable, Harvey Flaumenhaft, John Christensen, Pamela Krous, Benjamin Milner and Brother Robert Smith , advisory board. �THE HARDEST H R U' BY JOHN SCHROEDER, SGI96 John's students have been involved in the Peace Corps and other similar programs since many of those programs began. So it was no surprise that Johnnies would also participate in the newest service program, AmeriCorps. In fact, Johnnies have been involved in the AmeriCorps program since it was created by President Clin~on in I994· AmeriCorps, which is overseen by the Corporation for National Service, was founded to be a service program similar to the Peace Corps, except with a focus on helping citizens of the United States. Elizabeth Bryer, SGI95, worked on the proposal that instituted the AmeriCorps program in Santa Fe. "I got interested in doing something in education and came to Santa Fe Community College and got started as a tutor in the developmental studies pi:ogram at the college," Bryer says. "One day l had a no-show, and the head of the developmental studies program asked me to help her on a grant proposal, which was the original AmeriCorps grant proposal. So I started on that, and ended up working on that for the next six weeks and coauthoring the grant proposal. "Through the experience working with her, I got hired as a general staff member for developmental studies, but I didn't have enough experience to coordinate the AmeriCorps program, so somebody else coordinated the program forthe firstyear," Bryer says. "But he decided to leave, so I was hired on and have been coordinating it for two years now." The AmeriCorps program now numbers 25,000 people nationwide in 430 different programs that focus on public safety, education, human services and the environment. The Corporation for National Service also oversees a program called Learn and Service, which is an initiative to get schools at all levels to integrate community service into their curriculums. The grant that the community college received was unique in that it included both programs. "It is called a demonstration grant," Bryer says. "There are onlyr2 of them in the country, and we're the only community college to get both Learn and Service Higher Education and AmeriCorps funding. So it was a really big honor, and I think that we're doing things here that aren't being done at a lot of other places." "When service learning started as a field, people thought of it as uppermiddle class college students and fairly gifted college students sharing their economic and intellectual wealth with more needy members of the community," Bryer says. "But what we're doing here is saying if we gethigh school drop-outs working on their GEDs or pre-college level students, they also have something to offer their community and we 're going to involve them." "So our AmeriCorps members have been a really wonderful mix of people from all educational levels, all ethnicities, all socio- and economic classes," Bryer adds. "Last year we had a Johnny (Robert Margolis, SGI96) who was working on his master's degree and who had graduated from Yale, and we had two ex-gang members who were working on their GEDs. We also had a married couple in their 40s who had been in the restaurant business in California and a 60-year-old woman who had raised five children in Espanola and decided to come back to college to get certified to teach early childhood education. So it's been a really broad mix of people in the program, which has been really fun and interesting, although challenging at times, because it makes for a lot of different ideas for how to work with kids." Since its first days in the Santa Fe area, four Johnnies have participated in the local AmeriCorps program. One of those participants was Ray Rascon, SGI96. Rascon got involved with the AmeriCorps program after his graduation from St. John's, when he had a year to fill before entering law school at Northeastern University in Boston this fall. "I was one of 20 people picked to participate in last year's AmeriCorps program," Rascon says. "Our particular AmeriCorps group here in Santa Fe worked with the public school system. There were three branches to the group, and seven of us were put into three different schools. I was put into went on the air on KSFR, the local Ortiz Middle School along with Faith public radio station. Echele (SF95). The other people went "It was really beautiful," Rascon into Agua Fria Elementary and Santa says. "It was a group of about eight to Fe High School (including Margaret ro students, and they did everything. Gaffney, SF95). Faith and I started off They hosted it, they ran it, they protheyearworkingwith seventh graders, but that didn't work out because of duced it, they set up the sound equipment. They did everything from the scheduling conflicts, so we chose to work with special education because time we came into the studio until we that's were we saw the most need." left. The program was a roundtable discussion with adults of their choosing. Unlike most programs where there are specific tasks that each mem"They started off interviewing Cliff Cisneros, who is the assistant ber is required to undertake, principal at Ortiz, AmeriCorps and I think it was approaches its one of the best situations differently. "For the interviews they did," Rascon last three years says. "We also our program has '' ( 7 J he skill you develop had on Debbie been a tutoring and mentoring Jaramillo (the in the St. John's program ofbeingvery program," Bryer mayor of Santa says, "but our Fe); Eric Serna, present and really responding to each members have who was then the chosen how they front-runner for learner as an individual serves have wanted to the congressional Johnnies well in this program. interpret that. seat vacated by Some members Bill Richardson feel more comwhen he went to -<~·: !) fortable in the the U.N.; Heather classroom and some feel more comWilson, who is director of Health and Children Services for the state; and fortable outside the classroom. We try to be really flexible with the members John Agresto (president of the Santa and let them follow their own interests Fe campus). They really produced a under the umbrella of the tutoring and sound, quality piece of work, and they mentoring program." did it all themselves. That flexibility allows the mem"People always asked me how the students were able to do these interbers to undertake what they think is best for the students they are working views," Rascon says, "but the birth with. "When we moved to the special place of that was really here at St. education program, we started them John's, because we started doing semoff doing seminars, and we conducted inars with them at the beginning of them just like we do at the college," the semester. What that really Rascon says. "We introduced the stuamounted to was rehearsing them for dents to Frederick Douglas, Aristotle, the whole first semester to have group dialogues." and Mary Wollstonecraft. It took the students some time to adapt to the semIn payment for their involvement inar method, but they really got into it." with the AmeriCorps program, parOne outgrowth of the seminars ticipants like Rascon receive a stipend was a radio program that Rascon and of$ 5 an hour and, at the completion Echele put together. The program of their goo hours of service, they also was a way to expose Ortiz Middle receive an educational stipend of School and its students to the greater $2,363. "I always tell our applicants Santa Fe community and to give them that you'll never work so hard for a $5 a forum in which they could discuss an1hourjob," Bryer says. their concerns. Rascon submitted a But it is more than the money that proposal to the community college, gets people involved. "AmeriCorps and in January the radio program CONTINUED ON PAGE 6 ~ " �T homas Day makes some good points in his piece on computers at SJC in the summer issue of The Reporter. Because I haven't spent very much time in the "computer racket," but have spent considerable time and effort on "number-crunching, equation-grinding hard math," I thought I could chime in with a possibly useful complementary perspective. I could not agree more with Mr. Day when he says, "in mathematics ... repetition in problem solving is the essence of fluency." But this raises two questions, which I introduce in ascending level of detail: l) The sort of symbol manipulation developed in, say, full-blown freshman computational calculus involves more than one operation, so it would seem such skills could not be acquired through flash card methodofogl.es~;~Afe'today' s bomputer systems capable of anything more than flashcard instruction? As I implied above, the latest in whiz-bang instructional software is not the area in which I'm an expert. However, being a perennially amazed casual observer of such things, I must leave this question open to further discussion. 2) Is there anywhere in our fouryear program, including summers, sufficient time to accommodate the labor intensive and time-consuming course leading to a facility for solving systems of differential equations with the speed and aplomb ofJohnny Von Neumann for example? Offhand, I would say there seems to be no such free time, and I'm sure manywould agree, but of course I can't close without leaving a maddening paradox: Ifyou want something done, ask a busyperson. The conversation must go on. - Joseph Berg, A8o I n 1543 Nicolaus Copernicus transformed man's understanding of the cosmos and man's place here by publishing a heliocentric version of Ptolemy's mathematical map of the solar system. Similarly, William Harvey's research into the function of the human heart and lungs forever discredited Galen's erroneous theory that there are tiny holes in the wall between the two halves of the heart. No modern reading of Ptolemy is complete without attention to Copernicus. At St. John's we read Harvey, not Galen. Woman, like the stars, and the mysteries of biological structure and function, has long been a subject of the Western Canon, an object of contemplation for men - Aristotle in 350 B. C., Milton in 1667 A.D., Racine in the 1670s, and Freud in the early19oos. Imagine that the stars or the beating heart, like woman, could speak.for themselves, participate in the Canon, and expound on their own nature. In 1691 Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz contemplated the ability and power of a woman to interpret Biblical scripture. In 1792 Mary Wollstonecraft composed the companion volume to Paine's Rights ofMan and Rousseau's On the Origins ofInequality; Vindication of the Rights of Women. In 1949 Simone de Beauvoir penned the words, "It is for men to establish the reign of liberty in the midst of the world of the given. To gain the supreme victory, it is necessary, for one thing, that by and through their natural differentiation men and women unequivocally affirm their brotherhood." Like Copernicus and Harvey, Sor Juana, Wollstonecraft and de Beauvoir transformed the Western Canon's conversation about women by destroying myth, ciifi<J.Uing inadequate analysis, and proposing a more accurate view of their subject. Over the years, the Western Canon has undergone several disruptions and changes. That we end senior year with a study of Einstein and nonEuclidean geometry instead of Newton and more in-depth Euclid shows that St. John's recognizes disruptions that have occurred in the last 2,000 years. Why, then, do we read Aristotle and Paul without reading Sor Juana; Paine and Mill without reading Wollstonecraft; and Freud without reading de Beauvoir? If St. John's prepared students as poorly as it does in women in other subjects, we would be dusting off Galen and blown back in shock when we turn on our televisions to see robots on Mars. Or shall we toss off Einstein, Marx and Hegel, along with their fellow revolutionaries Sor Juana, Wollstonecraft and de Beauvoir? -Tequila J. Brooks Ag1 \lfhy does Sus3an Borden quote I I Reverge Anselmo as saying that the Carthusians are a "young order" with "places to go and things to see ... "? Surelythe orderis an old one, among the most stable of monastic societies. - Brent M. Adam, SF70 Editors Note: Mr. Anselmo was referring to thtt age ofthe members ofthe order and commenting on their vitality. He was not referring to the age of the order itself A lumni savaging in the summer I997 Reporter of George Cayley's letter in the spring issue singles out more than once Cayley's comparison of feminism to Nazism. One indignant writer (Rich Green) asserts that the comparison is "ludicrous" and "irresponsible," and that Cayley is guilty of "the worst kind of anti-intellectualism." To Nazism, which "promotes the idea that certain classes of people are sub- or anti-human," Green opposes a "feminism [which] is the radical notion that a woman is a human being." Hmmm. Passing over the strange implication here that only in our time has it been discovered that women are human beings, I would suggest that Cayley's comparison possesses the truth of experience. To be shouted down in faculty meetings by radical feminist advocates, to have one's writings censored by feminist administrators, to be informed that one's mention of certain Shakespearean plays offends a colleague's "feminist sensibilities," to have one's overall career as a college teacher severely impaired because of one's non-feminist and hence "incorrect" views - what is this but to be treated as sub-human, to be treated to a Nazi-like repression. All this and more has the writer experienced in dealing with academic feminists in a large university system. Ah, but wait. No doubt these feminist-minded men and women have merely been celebrating their discovery of their shared humanness. The outcry over Cayley's dreadful comparison may remind one of the often acrimonious controversy over Michael Levin's essay" 'Sexism' is Meaningless," in the autumn 198I edition of St. Johns Review. While some approved, others disagreed violently, including a number who felt that Mr. Levin should never have been given the opportunity to express his thoughts in the Review. Evidently, certain viewpoints then and now are so terrible and threatening that they must be forbidden expression! This intolerance, this readiness to consign writers with unpopular ideas to oblivion, is most disturbing - especially in the publications of an institution like our college, which is dedicated to freedom of thought. But the expression of intolerance is itself an instance, I suppose, of freedom. And who would have suspected the intolerant letter writers of being intellects and writers were it not for the college's publication of unpopular ideas that call out those writers' intolerance? - John Gorecki, A6o I n every alumni magazine in the nation, class notes arethe favorite section for readersand here at St. John's, The Reporter is no exception, according to a recent survey of randomly selected readers. But at what other college would the curriculum be the second most readabout subject? The Program - the mother that gave birth to our intellectual strivings; that nurtured us through seminars that dragged and math tutorials that soared; that was the subject of endless misunderstandings with high school friends, parents, and future spouses - has defined the college for the past 60 years. And it's what alumni and others interested in the college want to read about. Toward the end ofJune, we mailed almost I,ooo surveys to readers on our mailing list. We received a response rate of about I5 percent, which is good for tl1is klld of survey. Our thanks to all who filled in the form to let us know what they like and dislike about The Reporter. According to the survey, after class notes and stories about the program, alumni profiles, history, and faculty stories are the most popular sections. You'd like to hear less about sports on campus and the art galleries. You'd like less "petty sophistry in letters" and less about" glittery society women at gala openings." Some respondents wanted more coverage of campus controversies; others felt the stories presented were a good mix of topics. CONTINUED ON PAGE 6 �What six Annapolis students learned as fellows in medical research labs BY BARBARA GOYETTE St. John's students from Annapolis spent the summer as research fellows at medical laboratories, thanks to a grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The award provided $4,500 for each fellow and placement in the research lab of a doctor who served as mentor. The fellowships were part of a $I million grant package from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which also funded renovation of chemistry and biology labs in Mellon Hall, a science education program based on St. John's principles at a local middle school, and faculty development (at St. John's, that means study groups) in biology. Students for the research fellowships were chosen by a faculty committee at the college on the basis of their potential and commitment to careers in science research, science education or medicine. You might think that putting ethereally-minded Johnnies into a real lab situation would cause culture shock, but all of the students found that while life in the medical research world is surely different, their St. John's background enabled them to adapt and at the same time helped them to keep a clear perspective. At a round-table discussion of their summer, they described their projects and compared experiences. Confidently using terms like "immunofluorescent antibody method" and "recombinant envelope protein gp I6o based on the sequence of HIV strain SF-2," the Johnnies radiated the enthusiasm they felt about the excitement of doing lab work. Although they described much of what they did as grunt work, they agreed with senior Cindy Lutz when she said she experienced the "thrill of setting up a new experiment, of thinking about what might happen and why, of just seeing nature in action." Fellows Olivia Morgan, a junior, and Christine Love, a senior, both worked at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health in the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology in a project to develop a vaccine against HIV. "Patients in a high risk group had been vaccinated with a protein," says Love. "We were trying to find out whether the experimental vaccine had butnotlmmans. Morgan's project involved testing the response of human white blood cells to the bacterial DNA. When they began working at the lab, neither Morgan nor Love had any more biology than freshman year at St. John's provides. ''They gave us things to read, lots of history and basic information about HIV and in general about biochemistry. I had to scramble any effect on viral evolution." She studied blood samples from one patient, looking at the effects over time on one of the HIV genomes. Morgan worked on a project that is examining the effect of bacterial DNA strands on HIV infections. Since bacterial DNA causes greater immune response than mammalian DNA, it could possibly be used for HIV vaccines. Testing has been done in mice, Cindy Lutz and Dr. Peggy Zelenko at the Notionol lnsfifute of Health research lob. Lutz analyzed a protein that controls cell division in the lenses of rat eyes. Photo by John Bildohl a lot to learn," says Love. As the project began to take shape, Love kept asking questions, trying to focus on the big picture. "It's hard to remember that what you're doing relates to a patient," she says. "You don't even know the name - only a number." "Designing the experiments was fun and difficult," says Morgan. She read all the current journal articles and tried to become familiar with the high-tech techniques. "For the first fewweeks, there was no immune response that we could detect. It was a little discouraging." She and Love both noticed that in the push to get papers out, and in the press to be the first with some result or set of data, which would help ensure more funding f~r th~ prnject, the lab personn~I seemed to lose sight of the problem HIV infection - and particularly of the people who are affected by the disease. "I really learned about the politics of scientific research," says Morgan. Heather Miller, a senior, also worked at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, but her project was in a completely different areashe studied a freshwater parasite that infects humans, Cryptosporidium parvum, and the Asiatic clam that is a biological indicator for its presence. "The protozoa is a genuine health hazard, particularly for people with compromised immune systems like the elderly. The infection can persist for years," she says. Since the clam is a filter feeder, the presence of the oocyst, the transmissible stage of C parvum, can be found in its gills, circulatory fluid, and sediment. In a lab environment, Miller measured levels of the parasite in the three sites of a set of clams. Hai Sun, a senior, interned at Johns Hopkins, but his was a purely medical project - the doctor he worked with was involved with several pain studies. Sun worked mainly on a study of patients with post-herpetic neuralgia, a condition that occurs when people who have been treated for shingles continue to experience intense pain. Sun examined the sensory neurons of CONT. ON PAGE 10 �, E LE college is of 13 schools recognized by the Templeton Honor Rolls BY JOHN SCHROEDER, SGI96 John's College was one of 13 ""distinguished" colleges recently recognized by the Templeton Honor Rolls for Education in a Free Society for its demonstrated "excellence in teaching the interdependence of political freedom, a market economy, and the moral principles that sustain a free society." The program, administered by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute on behalf of the John Templeton- F~undation, id~ntifies outstanding universities, departments, scholarly books and individual professors. In this first year, the Templeton program honored 126 individuals and institutions, which were selected from among more than 800 nominations in the various categories. The awards were formally announced by former Secretary of the Treasury William E. Simon, who also was chairman of the selection committee. The committee included such academic luminaries as George Schultz, former Secretary of State; Jam es Buchanan and Gary Becker, Nobel laureates in economics; Lynne Cheney, former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities; and William Bennett, co-director of Empower America and the former Secretary of Education. "Race, ethnicity and gender have replaced Aristotle, Shakespeare and Dante as the core curriculum at many of America's institutions of higher education," Simon said in announcing the awards. "By recognizing those scholars and institutions that favor genius over agenda, we can strike a blow for excellence in higher education," Simon added. The committee selected honorees in the colleges and universities category from more than 800 nominations based on six criteria: (r) commitmenr.to a liberal education~· evidencedby'aoroad core curriculum and classroom teaching; (2) commitment of faculty to serious intellectual discourse; (3) commitment of academic departments to the principles of a free society; (4) absence of ideological propaganda and manipulation; (5) rigorous curriculum that promotes an understanding of the Western tradition; and (6) evidence that faculty members pursue their own intellectual development. Other honorees included Boston College, the University of Notre Dame, Claremont McKenna College, and the University of Chicago. In addition to the 126 honorees, two $25,000 prizes were presented - Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman was given the Lifetime Achievement Award, and historian Gertrude Himmelfarb was given the Outstanding Contemporary Book Award for The De-Moralization ofSociety. RI JOBS ON THE WORLD WIDE WEB The Annapolis Placement Office now posts job opportunities appropriate for alumni on the college's web site. The address is www.sjca.edu.placejob.html. Listings are updated weekly and include internships, scholarships and alumni network opportunities, as well as position openings that Karen Holland, the placement director, thinks would be good for St. John's graduates. The Placement Office also offers career counseling, graduate and professional school guidance, and resume help. Alumni can contact Holland at 410-626-2500, or at k-holland@sjca.edu. II Annapolis president Chris Nelson (third from the left on the for side of the raft) will go to any lengths to spread the St John's word and conduct seminars. This summer he and his wife, Joyce Olin, went white-water rafting in West Virginia with diplomats from New Zealand, Sierra Leone, Germany, Lithuania and Chile. Along with tutor Joan Silver, he also conducted a seminar for the diplomats. Under the aegis of the Executive Council on Diplomacy, Nelson took part in a program that brings together foreign !mbossy ~epre~ntatives ond corporate l~aders. LETTERS CONT. FROM PAGE 4 When asked to name an article that they particularly liked in a recent issue, most respondents cited a "people" story- the profile of Mark Fabi, A76, the story about Eva Brann's retirement as dean, and the philosophic gardener in Santa Fe were all mentioned. Many readers were unaware of The Reporter's arrangementwith the Alumni Association to include the Association's newsletter. Most said they would not read The Reporter if it were on the Internet (and although we'd eventually like to put The Reporter online, we just don't have the time or personnel to do it right now). When asked about the possibility of changing The Reporter to an easier-tohandle magazine format, rather than the present tabloid format, most readers were in favor of the change - as long as the content remains the same. Many respondents sent ideas for future stories. We're using some of these ideas right now. Which brings us to our final comment: thanks for telling us what you think, and please continue to let us hear from you. Our names, addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses are listed in every issue. Barbara Goyette, A73 Annapolis editor Elizabeth A. Skewes Santa Fe editor HARDEST $5 CONT. FROM PAGE 3 was a really great experience," Rascon says. "I would recommend it to anyone who has the time. Overall, it was probably the greatest job I ever had in giving you a sense of accomplishment when it was done." AmeriCorps might also be a good way for alumni and current students to become active participants in the local community while increasing the strength of their St. John's education. "Our Johnnies have really done great and I think they've really been able to connect their experiences with AmeriCorps with their experiences at St. John's," Bryer says. "I remember Rob Margolis telling me a story about a student who asked him a question. He led them through the answers like Socrates leads the slave in the Meno, and the student was following the script perfectly and he was so excited about that. I think that everything in Plato about the learning process and what makes learning happen has been vividly displayed to a lot of those Johnnies who have been involved in AmeriCorps. "The skill you develop in the St. John's program of being very present and really responding to each learner as an individual serves Johnnies well in this program," Bryer adds, "and I've always heard very good things about theirwork. St. John's andAmeriCorps are a very good match." Ill �SCHOLARSHIP p THE L SI NO ELL MAGNETIC FIELD BY CURTIS WILSON ''"' yenty-nine years ago my col;league, Tom Simpson, complet· · · ed a doctoral dissertation for the Johns Hopkins University entitled A Critical Study ofMaxwell's Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field in the Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism. It has never been published, but can be obtained from University Microfilms as reproduced from the original typed copy - all 580 pages of it. It was enough to stagger the dissertation committee into whose hands it was first placed, as well as later browsers who have run across it. Often, over the years, finding myself once more as tutor trying to help seniors (and later juniors) through this initiation into the mysteries of electromagnetism, I have wished that the insights of that dissertation could be in a more easily accessible form. To accomplish just this is the aim of Maxwell on the Electromagnetic Field: A Guided Study by Thomas K. Simpson (Rutgers University Press, Ig97). The bookispartofthe Masterworks ofDiscovery series, edited by Harvey Flaumenhaft, the current dean in Annapolis. What" our Tom" here seeks to engage us in is the very process of Maxwell's thought, as it moves from an appreciative understanding of Faraday's way of thinking about electromagnetic phenomena to mathematical formulation, and thence to the demonstration that light is an electromagnetic wave. The project is to read (with some omissions and simplifications) three essays by Maxwell: "On Faraday's Lines of Force" (185556); "On Physical Lines of Force" (I86r-62); and "ADynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field" (r864). Along with the texts, Simpson provides interpretive notes and discussions, keyed to the lines of the essays. An initial chapter sets before us the young Maxwell, age 25 at the time of the first essay, and sketches the then state of electrical and magnetical science. A postscript describes his later work on the establishment of electrical units, and in particular on the measurement of the ratio of the electromagnetic to the electrostatic unit of charge, a ratio which has the dimensions of "distance over time" and turns out to be equal to the speed oflight. For whom is this "guided study"? Simpson dedicates it to the memory of Scott Buchanan, "who set the goal: the rediscovery of the liberal arts in the modern world." Buchanan in the r94os (so he informed this reviewer 20 years afterward) formed the project of assembling in the St. John's laboratory the apparatus that would exhibit the essential Faradayan modes of electromagnetic connectedness. We putative liberal artists, he contended, needed to earn our iptellectual right to th,~ techn~logi~al niarvels (all of them electromagnetic in one way or another) amidst which we lived. It would require a retracing of steps - Maxwellian steps. Just that is the project Simpson proposes. The path, for many a reader - let us not conceal it - is beset with briar patches of technicality. But there are rewards for keeping an eye on the overall goal and persisting to the end. "Paradigms, once launched," Simpson remarks, "know no bounds." Well, they can be surprisingly powerful. The pre-Faradayan paradigm in electrical and magnetic science was action-at-a-distance in accordance with the inverse-square law. Faraday, untrained in mathematics and unpersuaded by the ruling paradigm, conceived that electrical and magnetic effects were brought about by "lines of force" forming a kind of immaterial continuum. This conception, as Maxwell demonstrates in the first of his three essays, can be mathematized by means of an analogy, admittedly fantastical. In place of the stressed continuum we are to imagine a spacefilling, incompressible, massless fluid, flowing from point sources and disappearing into point sinks, and passing at each point through a copresent medium that resists its motion. The premises, unbelievable as they are, imply velocities of motion and variations of pressure that have strict analogues in electric and magnetic fields. The second and third essays take us around a hairpin turn, spiraling upward. In the second essay, Maxwell elaborates a model of the electromagnetic field in which he no longer postulates anything contrary to the laws of physics. The pervading aether is no longer massless, or undergoing creation here and annihilation there; but its vortices and idle wheels are fantastical in the manner of a Rube Goldberg mechanism. If the effect is comic, as Simpson suggests, it nevertheless shows that we can think up a mechanism (or many mechanisms?) that will produce the electromagnetic phenomena. In the third essay, Maxwell relinquishes the goal of efaboratiirg,any such explicit mechanism. Using the abstract formalism of Lagrange's mecanique analytique, he presents the electromagnetic field as a medium bearing energy, with its modes of manifestation so interrelated as to be subsumed under Lagrangian mechanics. The properties of this field are, all but one, those that Faraday had ascertained empirically. The exception is the production of magnetic field not just by ordinary electric currents (the familiar Oersted effect), but by "displacement current" - a change, any change, in an electric field, even in empty space. For the would-be comprehender of Maxwell, here is the crux. How did Maxwell understand "electric charge" in such a manner that this extension of a known empirical property seemed to him natural? The assumption implied that changing electric and magnetic fields could reciprocally produce each other, and electromagnetic waves result. Tom Simpson's commentary conduces to a thoughtful reading, and clarifies much. I question some of his formulations. How far, for instance, should we go with his claim that Maxwell, by reverting from atomism to the continuum, is restoring cosmos? (I take the discrete and the continuous as ineluctably complementary, and the unity of knowledge as a necessary but likely unachievable goal of human knowledge.) But I would join with him in celebrating Maxwell as hero. Indeed, Maxwell's patient attention to Faradayan "facts," his combination of boldness with modesty, his aiming at the heart of the mystery while recognizing that our powers may be only those of analogy: these are virtues worthy of emulation, for those of us who dare to think about the nature of human knowing, or who try to peer into the strange world that modern physics has opened up. There are a few typographical errors (I have compiled a list); most of them will cause no difficulty. The explanation of stellar aberration on pp.34r-2 is mistaken; see Feynman, Lectures on Physics, I-34-ro, II _:,'" PROGRAM CHANGES Bible readings rearranged in Annapolis' sophomore seminar BY BARBARA GOYETTE the early days of the New Program, sophomore seminar began with the Romans and then moved on to consider the Old and New Testaments. This sequence seems coherent to many who consider the Bible as a unit that makes its appearance in the Western tradition at the dawn of Christianity. But last year the Instruction Committee in Annapolis began thinking about whether a more strictly chronological sequence to the sophomore seminars might be better. After a lively discussion involving the entire faculty at a spring faculty meeting, the committee - comprised of six tutors, the president, CONTINUED ON PAGE 8 �ADVANCING IN THE FOURTH CENTURY FUNDS ESTABLISHED FOR SPECIAL NEEDS ., '' ''"';'.: number of unique funds have /'../: been established at the col+ l Iege, both to assist students and to improve life at St John's. Thanks to the thoughtfulness of those who established these special funds, and to the generosity of those contributing to them, the college benefits in unforeseen ways. *BooKFuNns: Currently there are three book funds to aid students in Annapolis. The Harry S. and Vivian Spector Book Fund and the Lenore and Andrew Steiner Book Fund have both been endowed. They provide students with the means to purchase all of the program books, rather than borrowing them from the library. Each is funded at a level of $8,500, and generally a student is awarded the grant each year for four years. The Martin A. Dyer Book Fund is being established this year. Named in honor of the college's first black graduate, the fund will provide money for students to purchase program books. Dyer says that the fund is a good way for alumni and others to remember the college's 1948 decision to desegregate. St. John's was the first private college south of the Mason-Dixon line to admit black students. *WILLIAM O'GRADY FuND: Spearheaded by tutor Joe Sachs, this fund honors the memory of tutor Bill O'Grady, who was known for his compassion and for his generosity to students. It is a corporate endowment that benefits students on both campuses. Currently the fund is valued at about $50,000 and the income is used to support students on both campuses who have critical or extraordinary needs. *MITZVAH F'uND: This fund, contributed by an anonymous donor, enables the college to give no-interest loans to students with unusual financial needs. Like the William O'Grady Fund, this money is not primarily for paying students' tuition but rather for critical or unusual needs - for example, for plane fare to attend a family member's funeral, or for rent if an injury prevents a student from working. *ENDOWED SCHOLARSHIP FUNDS: The Marvin Brent Cooper Fund, in memory of a graduate from the class ofI969, every year awards a prize to the senior who has contributed most to the youth of Annapolis. The Leslie Milton Abrams Fund was established in memory of a graduate from the Class of 1954· The J .J. Salovaara Scholarship Fund was established by a member of the Board of Visitors and Governors in honor of his father, who served in the government of Anne Arundel County for many years. *CLARE EDDY AND EUGENE V. THAW FINE ARTS LECTURESHIP ENDOWMENT: Money from this fund helps bring guest lecturers to the Mitchell Art Gallery and to the college every year. Thaw is a member of the class of 1947· *PROJECT POLITAE FuNn: Contributions from Annapolis businessman Hillard Donner (owner of Mills Liquors) established this fund, which goes to support Project Politae, the student volunteer organization. Two students receive stipends for administering the program, which provides Johnny volunteers for local schools and hospitals, for an on-campus tutoring program for disadvantaged youth, and for environmental projects and Habitat for Humanity. Almost 70 percent of Annapolis students participate in some Project Politae activity during their time at the college. *RETIRED TurORS FuNn: An anonymous gift to the college established this fund to help elderly faculty members in Annapolis. Students are paid to drive, help around the house, or otherwise assist faculty members and their spouses who have reached a point where such tasks are difficult. An added bonus is that when students meet and work with these tutors, relations between the generations are strengthened and college traditions are underscored. II NEW GIFT BRINGS SANTA FE CLOSER TO BUILDING A STUDENT CENTER student activities center in Fe is a giant step closer to reality thanks to a $soo,ooo lead gift from Donald and Joyce Rumsfeld. Mrs. Rumsfeld is a former member of the college's Board of Visitors and Governors. The Rumsfelds' gift brings funding for the project to more than $1.5 million and puts Santa Fe on target for groundbreaking sometime in spring. "The Rumsfelds are wonderful friends of the college," says Santa Fe President John Agresto. ~Their gift '" comes at an important time for the college and the student activities center, and it has generated other gifts and real excitement for the project." However, fundraising for the first phase of the student activities center, which is estimated to cost $3·75 million, is ongoing. The first phase~ include a gymnasium, fitness room, two squash/racquetball courts, the Student Activities Office, an equipment storage area, men's and women's locker rooms, and a plaza. The initial phase also will include site work for the later phases of the project. The second phase, projected at $1.6 million, will include studio space for photography, pottery and dance; an office for the Search and Rescue Team and storage space for the team's equipment; a game room; and a lounge. The final phase of the project, which is part of the college's longrange plans, will be the construction of a pool. Construction of this phase is expected to cost $800,000, and the college will need to raise an additional $I million in endowment funds to cover the annual costs of maintaining a pool. Agresto says that he is confident of a spring groundbreaking for the first phase. So confident, in fact, that "Pat McCue (the campus landscape supervisor) and I are going to start clearing out trees. This project is going to happen and happen soon." !Ill 4 PROGRAM CONT. FROM PAGE 7 and the dean - decided to re-work the order ofreadings. Beginning this fall, sophomores in Annapolis read the Hebrew Bible - Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, I and II Samuel, I Kings, Psalms, II Chronicles, Amos, Jonah, Isaiah, and Job - in nine seminars, and then take up Virgil (Aeneid in three seminars) Plutarch (Caesar and Cato), Tacitus (Annals in two sessions) and Epictetus (Discourses and Manual). Only after the Roman readings are completed is the New Testament scheduled for six sessions, covering Matthew, Luke, Acts, John, First Letter ofJohn, I Corinthians and Romans. The rest of the first semester remains as it has been, with De Anima followed by Plotinus, Augustine and Anselm. The Romans are now "in a Judeo-Christian sandwich," says junior Derek Alexander. Students and faculty alike wondered about beginning the year with Bible readings, because students tend to polarize in seminar according to their individual religious upbringing or lack thereof. What would it be like to initiate a new seminar dynamic with such a potentially explosive set of readings? Faculty members who considered the integrity of the sequence instead thought about the virtue of reading the Hebrew Bible separately from the New Testament, and not treating the Bible as one book. "There's a conception in this country, since America is a Christian country, to see the Old Testament as leading into the New Testament, and maybe we ought to take some steps to counteract that," tutor Henry Higuera recently told the Gadfly. An informal poll of sophomores showed mixed results in the conduct of seminar participants. "My seminar has been great," says_ Rebecca Christy. "Everyone is really respectful and we haven't had any conflicts." Other students and groups report that differences of opinion and interpretation arose, as usual, in the early weeks of reading the Bible. However, this arrangement of sophomore seminar readings has been followed in Santa Fe for several years, and, according to Dean James Carey, it seems to work well there. !Ill �"WE'VE REALLY DONE ETHING G HE ,, 3 BY many people, turning 30 is of the first milestones for evaluating one's life. For the Graduate Institute, which got its start in Santa Fe in Ig67, this birthday and the evaluation that it has brought, have been cause for much celebration. Commonly known on campus as the GI, the Graduate Institute in Liberal Education is open to college graduates of all professions and backgrounds. It is accredited for teacher recertification in both New Mexico and Maryland and offers two different programs - the Master of Arts in Liberal Arts and the Master of Arts in Eastern Classics. The Eastern Classics program, which is available only in Santa Fe, is a program that requires one full year of intensive study, and students must matriculate in the fall. The program in Liberal Arts is divided into semester-long s~gments that may be' completed in any order Wi,th matriculation taking place in spring, summer and fall. Still honoring its beginnings as a program primarily for teachers, classes take place in the evenings throughout the academic year in order to accommodate working students. The summer is more intensive, consisting of eight weeks of classes meeting throughout the day. The Graduate Institute was started by Richard Weigle just three years after the launching of the new campus in Santa Fe. Weigle, who was president of both the Annapolis and Santa Fe campuses at the time, had to face a great deal of resistance to create one of the first graduate programs in liberal studies. Many considered it a radical and risky change in American education. At a dinner in honor of the Graduate Institute anniversary in Santa Fe this July, Laurence Berns, a Cover photos: Upper: One of 1he early Graduate Institute classes Lower: Graduate Institute Seminar, 1973 J tutor in Annapolis and one of the founders of the program, spoke of the GI's early history: "In the summer of r965, Richard Weigle saw an advertisement in the Chronicle ofHigher Education asking for grant proposals for adult education. He quickly dashed off his proposal and was quite " says Goldwin. Shortly after the announcement to the faculty, Berns received a call from Weigle asking for his help in planning the first curriculum for the program. While Weigle only asked for his help in planning the Politics and Society segment, Berns knew that surprised to receive what I believe was a $75,000 grant to start an adult education program at St. John's." After receiving the grant, Weigle announced his idea for a new program to the existing faculty. He faced some resistance from tutors who felt that the format of St. John's should not be changed and that his idea would be a discredit to the college. Weigle already had contacted Robert Goldwin, an Annapolis graduate in the Class of Ig50 who was a professor at Kenyon College and is now serving on the college'sBoard ofVisitors and Governors. Weigle asked Goldwin to oversee the administrative side of the new program. "He thought it was terrible to have all these marvelous facilities that weren't being used during the summer. The program was initially thought of as solely a summer program, but it evolved as we worked on Graduate Institute Graduation, 1971 unless he created a plan for all of the segments in the program, the faculty would not be satisfied. "It is a credit to the fairness of the St. John's communitythatwhen the plans were presented to the faculty, even the objectors, when they saw our reading lists, were able, like the faculty as a whole, to say, 'That's pretty good.' Everyone I spoke to, and the faculty as a whole, seemed to think that that it was a good program," Berns says. The faculty approved the program and Goldwin became the first director. The initial sessions of the Graduate Institute program took place in the summer ofr967. With the Santa Fe campus still struggling for financial survival in those early years, the new graduate program was help- ful. Just as importantly, it also was highly successful. Berns recalls shaking hands with Robert Goldwin after the first summer was over, "and I don't remember which one of us said it, but someone said, 'Well, we've really done something good here,' and that kind of summed up the program. You set goals for yourself, but you usually set them high and you never quite meet them. In this case, however, it really worke4_ out~~a~ .the P~?g!i:tIR.. ~W-: passed everyone'~s e~.ectaijons<~ . . .· That sentiment still is being · voiced today. The Graduate Institute in Annapolis currently has 79 students and the Santa Fe campus has 88 students in the Liberal Arts program. There are an additional rg students the Eastern Classics program in Santa Fe. These numbers are close to an. ideal number for enrollment for both campuses. "Due to size limitations of the campus and our current undergraduate enrollment, we are about as full as we can be," says Thomas May, the director of the Graduate Institute in Annapolis. "But there currently seems to be enough interest for the institute to grow. Our strategic plans for the next IO years have us possibly increasing by two seminars, while not increasing our enrollment past onefourth of what the undergraduate population is." Talk of increasing graduate enrollment is taking place in Santa Fe as well. David Levine, who became the program director in July, says that "interest in the liberal arts program is certainly growing, and the Eastern classics program has continued to grow and also looks very promising." While the future is very bright for all of the graduate programs, it took time for all of the programs to reach this point. The program was not always accredited and it has had difficult financial times. CONTINUED ON PAGE IO �GI CONT. FROM PAGE g In the early days of the program, recruiting focused on school teachers in urban areas, says Goldwin. "We found that we could get funding ifwe incorporated inner city school teachers. But then we found that even with a scholarship, they could only come if they could get credit for the classes. So then we had to work with the New Mexico Board of Education to get the classes accredited for teachers. It was a continual learning process from our end." "The creation of the program really was both for teachers and also for continuing graduate students," Berns adds. "I remember when Bob Goldwin went before the New Mexico Board of Education to have the program approved for teachers, I wrote a short statement for the board saying that although the program was not created simply as an education program, it should qualify as one. But what the program really was, and the reason we created it, was as a way to make it possible for people who had a B.A. to get a grounding in the great books and also the St. John's method. We wanted to pick up those people who didn't know that this type of education was available, but who were craving for it." That craving has been voiced by students from the very first class of the Graduate Institute to those who are currently in the midst of seminars today. The participants in the very first summer of the program said, "-why didn't anyone tell us that you could do something like this? Why didn't we know about reading and discussing these books?" Today, 30 years later, the same sentiments are being expressed: "I joined the GI to get the type of education that I didn't get as an undergraduate," says Nick Giacona, a computer researcher, a father of two and a current student, "'I wanted to get exposure to those things that I missed before, because I had no idea that this type of education was even out there." Judith Genova, a chairperson in the department of philosophy at Colorado College, recentlywrote to the institute after her summer here. "My experience as a Bradley Fellow at the Graduate Institute this past summer could not have been more wonderful, nor more exciting," she wrote. "Unexpectedly, I have found myself thinking about teaching and learning. I have made some plans to grant more time to discussion in my classes and less to covering material. Since most curriculums cannot resemble St. John's, one must make compromises. Yet, I would like to try to become more of an occasion for the occurrence oflearning; that is, for the creation of a group of people who come together for some temporary period of time and let learning happen." The students are not the only ones who find the program a wonderful experience. Goldwin says that the tutors also enjoy the program, which was important to its early success because they helped spread the word about the Graduate Institute. Berns, who was one of the tutors in the first year, remembers one student in particular who made the class a joy to teach. "I had a very fine teacher from Baltimore after the second week come up to me and tell me, 'Mr. Berns, that idea of the rational life sure clears up a lot of things.' His language was very simple, but within two to three weeks he had incorporated the classical language into his vocabulary. It was nice to see. I also remember getting papers that year on the preceptorial I was doing on Aristotle's Politics. I asked them to write on contemporary political issues using Aristotle. I got back a paper where Aristotle was giving advice to the mayor of Detroit about the recent race riots, and I also received one setting up a complete welfare system based on Aristotle. It was quite good." Despite its successes, that first summer could not foretell the changes that were in store for the new program. "I don't think anyone envisioned the program ever goingyearround; it was instituted mainly for teachers," Goldwin says. "I also don't think we foresaw that it would ever move to the Annapolis campus. "The main feature that made the program viable and helped with the success was the ultimate structure," Goldwin says. All of the segments in the liberal arts program are offered in the summer, providing a student with gTeater flexibility and choice. However, books are read chronologically within each segment, thus maintaining the essence of the St. John's program. Since that first summer in Ig67, a lot of things have changed. The liberal arts program is now a year-round program and has made its way to Annapolis. The introduction of the Eastern classics program on the Santa Fe campus in the last four years has brought similar successes. A master's essay has been added as an option for both programs and a language class is now available in Annapolis. The Graduate Institute has indeed done what some once thought impossible it has become a credit to the school and an integral part oflife at St. John's College. '"It has been a process of continual surprise," Levine says. "The range of interest in the program is broader and from a wider range of ages, walks of life and occupations than people first thought. It was a teacher's institute in its earliest days, but it soon became clear that the interest and value of the program was much broader than they imagined. "Everyone is very optimistic about where things are going, and we are improving upon what we do best," Levine continues. "There are lots of signs that things are very healthy. Thomas May and I inherited healthy programs from all of the previous people who have been involved in it. We've had a lot of good luck over the years, but nothing lasts for 30 years without a lot of good people working very hard to make sure that it is successful, and as the current director, I would like to thank all those who have helped make the GI what it is today." Bl ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE GI PROGRAM OFFERED IN ALBUQ!JERQ!JE Once again the Santa Fe Graduate Institute in Liberal Education has undertaken a satellite program in Albuquerque. From Ig83 to Ig87, an extension of the liberal arts program was located at the Albuquerque Academy. Starting this fall, and again with the support of the Albuquerque Academy, St. John's is offering one of the main segments Politics and Society - of the liberal arts program to students in the Albuquerque area. ''Beginnings are difficult, but it is a good beginning," says David Levine, director of the Graduate Institute in Santa Fe. "Albuquerque is undergoing a boom and the metropolitan area is growing quickly. The numbers in the program are small, but the tutors teaching the program this semester are encouraged by the quality and energy of the students." Levine says the Graduate Institute is putting more effort into recruiting for the spring and has already received a large number of inquiries for the second semester. !Bl BABY RAT CONT. FROM PAGE 5 the skin at the site of greatest pain and also at a control site. Two students, Cindy Lutz and Melissa Coleman, received fellowships at the National Institutes of Health. Coleman, who worked with Dr. Steve Holland, A19, is currently taking a year off to live in South America, and did not participate in the discussion. Lutz worked with Dr. Peggy Zelenka on a project to determine how certain proteins in the lens of the eye develop. She looked at sections of rats' eyes from I6 weeks to two days after birth. The lens of the eye is made up oflayers of cells; the front layer is always dividing throughout life, while the inner layer of cells, which are in place before birth, don't divide. Lutz studied the cell cycle regulatory proteins, which determine how cells divide, in the inner layer. The research could have implications for developing treatments for cancer. "This was a basic research project, not a medical one," says Lutz. "I learned to use a lot of high-tech methods. I also read biochemistry textbooks and a lot of aTticles. TheTe was a library right in the building, and I used the down time waiting for the next stage of each experiment to read and study." The interns were surprised by certain aspects of research: being able to order up a mouse with a certain genetic make-up to study; the "tons of money" spent on equipment, computers and materials; the drive for grant money that sometimes seems to determine the scope of experimentation; and the devotion of the best doctors to their work. Sun also was surprised to learn about all of the professions involved in research: psychologists, computer scientists, biologists, and physicians all worked on the pain project he was a part of. Lutz, Love, and Morgan were bothered by certain ethical issues that arose - Lutz by transgenic animals ("I didn't realize they could actually engineer an animal, but they can.") and Morgan and Love by the experimental vaccination of people at risk for HIV. All felt that they had to constantly ask about the overall aims of the research they were working on. "It was our St. John's background that always made us question," says Love. "I certainlywouldn'thave been able to learn what I did, absorb what I did, ifl didn't know how to learn. And thatI got from St. John's." Although the students found that St. John's provided them with no prac- CONT. ON PAGE 12 �LE MA. NG MUSI OUT OF MELODY BY ELIZABETH A. SKEWES i:cnael MacDonald, SF76, got his start in the music industry like most people. He played in "a million bands" during his high school years at Berwick Academy in Maine. And because he was looking for a little more challenge musically, he picked up an album by jazz saxophonist John Coltrane. x . Michael MacDonald Photo by Ellen Zochos "It was recorded very late in his career, just before he died. I knew it was an important record, butitwas incomprehensible to me," MacDonald says. It wasn't until he got to St. John's and met up with Rick Lightburn, SF76, that MacDonald found out how to learn about jazz. Lightburn first introduced MacDonald to some pre-I945 artists. "We started with Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, and it became the foundation of my jazz education," MacDonald says. His interest in music also led MacDonald to an interest in sound equipment and tape machines. "If people have any memories of me from St. John's, they'll remember me hauling around a huge tape recorder and setting up microphones," he says. The experience, however, led him on a career path that he didn't anticipate. Today, MacDonald makes a living as a "recordist" - someone who not only is the engineer in a recording studio, but who has both the technical skills and the creative and aesthetic appreciation for music to get the most out of a performance. It's something he does well, which is evidenced by the fact that four of his recordings have been nominated for Grammy awards and two have won Grammys. In part, it's a job that takes understanding the kind of music that's being recorded. A chamber orchestra will sound best ifyou're not too close, but not too far back, either. "Probably somewhere in Row M," MacDonald says. "Jazz, though, is a lot more immediate. Your best sound might be only IS or 20 feet from the stage. It's more dynamic in that the loud stuff gets really, really loud. There's a much closer aspect to the sound. You should be close enough to almost see the guy sweat." It's that knowledge that MacDonald brings to the recording studio, and it's that knowledge that he uses to create CDs that put the listener in the concert hall o:r jazz "The idea in producing a recording is to convey an illusion ofreality," MacDonald says. "It's much more like sculpting or painting than it is taking a photograph. I feel very much like a sculptor because sound is a physical thing. It happens in space and time." It's the space and time that can pose the greatest challenges for MacDonald, especially when he's recording a live performance, as he did with two concerts performed at St. John's by jazz pianist Fred Hersch. The first, a September I995 concert, is available on CD through the college and the second, a concert held in July, will be produced as a CD early next year. But a jazz concert in Santa Fe's Great Hall creates some acoustical problems. With the I995 concert, "I had to mike the piano very close to avoid the room and audience sounds, and then enhance the recording later," MacDonald says. What that meant was using his studio to recreate an "artificial" Great Hall in New York City. The New York version had the same dimensions, "but without all the glass and the hardwood floors. The listener should feel like they were in the concert," MacDonald says. Creating good music and better recordings isn't always a matter of using the most state-of-the-art technology. To do his job well, MacDonald has to know how to use the vacuum tube equipment of the Ig3os and' 40s, the solid state technology of the I95os and '6os, and the digital and computerized technology of the I98os and' gos. "It becomes a subjective question as to which one is the most pleasing and most enhancing for the piece that you're recording," MacDonald says. MacDonald learned his craft working first with chamber groups and large orchestras, then with rock artists and finally, in the early 1980s, in jazz recording studios. Through that work, he met Hersch, a jazz artist who wanted to open his own studio. MacDonald auditioned for him and got the job as Hersch's chief engineer, getting the chance to work with artists such as Art Farmer, Manhattan Transfer and Kenny Burrell. "Almost everybody in the New York jazz scene recorded there," he says. Hersch closed his studio several years later, and MacDonald went to work for himself. He's in the process of building his own studio - a post- production or mastering house which he plans to open after the start of the new year. The emphasis on post-production work is partly due to MacDonald's interests and partly due to changes in the music business as technology has made it easier to record performances. 'Tm getting fewer calls about recording and more and more about getting a recorded tape with someone asking, 'Can you fix this?' And it's absolutely astounding what can be done now," MacDonald says. But in the end, he says, his job is simply that of a translator - except he's translating music, not words. "There are the same problems and limitations as translating the Iliad," MacDonald says. "What do you push to the foreground? What must you leave behind? These are questions I first encountered at St. John's and they are questions that I'm still strugglingwith today." El Renowned jazz pianist Fred Hersch performed a concert in Santo Fe's Great Hall on July 28. Hersch delighted those on hand with both original compositions and other jazz tunes. Hersch's performance was a return engagement; he first ployed at the college in September 1995. Comport discs of Hersch's 1995 concert are available through the college for a $15 donation to the Southwest Scholars Program. If you would like to receive a copy, please send your contribution to the Southwest Scholars Program, c/oSusan Metts, St. John's College, 1160 Camino Cruz Blanco, Santo Fe, NM 87505, or coll 505-984-6106. Photo by Ellen Zochos �ARTS SANTA FE'S ART GALLERY HAS A SUCCESSFUL FALL SEASON BY CAROLINE KNAPP, SFOO he Santa Fe art /gallery exhibited a · new series of oil paintings by Bernique Longley in October. Longley, one of Santa Fe's most distinguished artists, has been living and painting in Santa Fe since Ig47, and has attracted national attention for her realistic and vital portrayals of everything from flowers to pueblo life. This new series, entitled "Mythic Journey," celebrates the mystery and power of mythology. As a teenager Longley received art instruction through an Art Iristitute of Chicago scholarship for gifted children. She graduated from the Art Institute in Ig45, moved to Santa Fe shortly thereafter, and has worked fulltime as an artist in the Southwest ever since. Her work has been featured in many prominent local galleries and is held in private collections around the nation. In "Mythic Journey," Longley combines contemporary figures with mythological, archaic and symbolic settings from the Western and Eastern traditions. Many of the details of the paintings stem from her travels in Greece, Italy, East Africa, Egypt and Mexico. In addition to these pieces, the show featured several "Iris Prints" created using a new Giclee process. October also brought to campus the Third Annual Spanish Colonial Arts Market, featuring works bywellknown artists Ramon Jose Lopez, Charlie Carrillo, Debbie Carrillo, and Monica Sosya Halford. Held in the Great Hall on Oct. II, the Spanish Colonial Arts Market brought hundreds of visitors to campus. September saw one of the most successful exhibits in the history of the Library and Fine Arts Guild in Santa Fe. The luminous still-life oil paintings ofJudith Tobin, entitled "Still Lives -Quiet Places," metwith tremendous local interest. At the most recent count, six of the paintings had been sold to Tobin's admirers in the Santa Fe arts community. Tobin's paintings of fruit, vegetables, flowers, churches and other "quiet" subjects are alive with subtlety and intensity of color and texture. Tobin says that in creating the series she was drawn to "the way light and shadow transform simple objects into things of mystery removed from human presence." The playful titles of some of the paintings, with names like "Orchid Contemplating Dive into Papaya," show the hidden life that Tobin discerns beneath the surface of everyday perception. Tobin's most recent major project was a book entitled Symbols ofFaith: A Visua!Journey to the Historic Churches ofNew Mexico. Her oil paintings of dozens of small remote churches were paired with the photographs of Joan Brooks Baker to pro- duce a record of these characteristic New Mexican structures. She also designed the cover for the Ig95-96 Santa Fe Symphony and Chorus programs. Tobin was born in Australia, attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and became a United States citizen in Ig65. In August the gallery featured paintings and pastels by Kathleen Gray Schallock and black and white photographs by Sylvia Aronson. Kathleen Gray Schallock says that her Midwest background taught · her to see more colors than just green in a landscape. Now settled in Santa Fe, Schallock paints works that reflect the vibrancy of color and form that she has found in the Southwest. She currentlyworks mostly in landscapes, explaining that, "I love being outside ... I just show up and something happens, like it's channeled h . . through me." Her oils and C arhe Camilo pastels have been displayed in exhibits throughout the Midwest and at the Ganymede Gallery in New York City, and are held in national and international collections. Sylvia Aronson, who recently finished an eight-month stint in Santa Fe, has worked extensively in photography since Ig88. Her portion of the exhibit consisted of mural-sized blackand-white portraits of parts of hot air balloons. The size and design of the prints is intended to remind viewers of prayer scrolls. Like most of her photographs, this series uses clear, solitary images to achieve a feeling of balance and simplicity. Aronson explains that she seeks to create, through her works, a place from which "the sacredness of everything may be seen." The exhibit at the St. John's College Art Gallery was her first show in Santa Fe. The next gallery opening is scheduled for February, when the works oflnya Laskowski, SGI96, will be featured. Ill BABY RAT CONT. FROMPAGErn tical expertise of use in a research lab, they agreed with Sun when he talked about the importance of critical thinking. "You can use those skills to interpret the phenomena, to set up the experiment, and to interpret your data," he said. How did the summer's events impact their future plans? Lutz knows she wants to pursue a Ph.D. and probably be involved with research. Love wants to be a doctor, but "something more directly involved with people. The most meaningful part of the summer for me was thinking about the project's possible impact on people a friend with HIV, or someone I pass on the street who is likelypositive." Sun also aims for medical school, where he would like to combine clinical work with research. Miller wants to teach. She was inspired by a trip out on the Chesapeake to gather and test oysters for parasites. "It made me realize how exciting the hands-on aspect of science is. I know I can use things like that to teach other people." Even with all the grunt work, and even with all the slow and painful learning about techniques and the endless recording of minute amounts of data that didn't seem to lead anywhere, the Hughes interns all felt their experiences worthwhile, particularly when they mirrored the kind of learning that is most meaningful. "Perhaps the nicest thing about the summer was experiencing the pure excitement of doing research," said Morgan. "I was constantly reaching into the dark hoping to stumble upon some great treasure." R N.E.A. HONORS MACE-MAKER The college had its good taste confirmed in September when santero Ramon Jose Lopez was awarded a $rn,ooo prize from the National Endowment for the Arts. Lopez created a new ceremonial mace for the Santa Fe campus last year, and has participated in the Spanish Colonial Arts Market for the past three years. Lopez was one of only I2 recipients of the award, which recognizes outstanding contributions to folk and traditional American art forms. The award was presented in a ceremony at the White House. In addition to creating his art, Lopez finds time to serve on a committee of friends of the Santa Fe campus. Ill �A RYS SUMMER "SPEAKING VOLUMES" SERIES FOCUSED ON NEW MEXICO'S DEVELOPMENT BY CAROLINE KNAPP, SFOO the summer, Santa Fe's and Fine Arts Guild brought two distinguished scholars to campus as part of the college's "Speaking Volumes" lecture series. Chris Wilson, from the University of New Mexico, and Charles Montgomery, a Santa Fe native and professor at the University of Florida, both spoke about the cultural history of Northern New Mexico. Wilson, a cultural historian, addressed a large crowd on the subject of his latest book, The Myth ofSanta Fe: Tourism, Ethnic Identity, and the Creation ofa Modern Regional Tradition. AB Wilson explained, the book details the way in which Santa Fe reinvented itself to create today's tourist mecca. In 1912, Santa Fe was the shrinking capital of an orphan territory - one that Congress had repeatedly refused to admit into the Union. The city's population had fallen to slightly more than 5,000. It had no tourist or art industry- in fact it had only five hotels and two curio shops. But during the course of that year, Santa Fe's future was changed forever. New J Mexico became a state, with Santa Fe as its capital, and under the auspices of the newly created Museum of New Mexico, the city created a plan to reverse the 30-year decline. "The Plan of 1912 entailed creating a homogeneous, romantic city by eradicating all signs of change since the coming of the railway in I88o and promoting an image of tricultural harmony - all with the objective of turning the town in the middle of nowhere into a fantasy at the heart of international tourism," says Wilson. An adjunct associate professor at the University of New Mexico, Wilson received a bachelor's degree in philosophy and psychology from Yale University, and a master's in art history, with specialization in American architectural history, from the University of New Mexico. He writes widely on architecture, tourism, and the politics of culture in the Southwest. La Tierra Amarilla: Its History, Architecture and Cultural Landscape, a book he co-authored with David Kammer, won the I993 Downing Award from the Society of Architectural Historians. He recently co-wrote and produced a PBS documentary entitled Spanning the High Desert: Historic Highway Bridges of New Mexico. Later in the summer, 1he focus turned to the whole of Northern New Mexico, with Charles Montgomery's lecture, entitled "The Creation of Spanish Heritage on the Upper Rio Grande." Montgomery grew up in Santa Fe, but left New Mexico to attend Princeton University in I982. After earning a bachelor's degree in political theory, he spent some time in Washington D.C., then earned his Ph.D. in U.S. history at Cornell University. He currently teaches American history at the University of Florida in Gainesville. The American West is one of Montgomery's areas of concentration, primarily its more recent history. This lecture is adapted from his Ph.D. dissertation of the same name, for which he won Cornell University's award for the best dissertation in an American field. He has twice been a fellow of the Andrew Mellon Foundation, and has been the recipient of several other major fellowships and honors. El FRESHMAN CLASS CONT. FROM PAGE 24 Martinez, who has seen 16 classes through the registration process, says that, "they are a class that has their act together." This sentiment is echoed by Mizrahi, who says that while she "doesn't know quite how to put [her] finger on it," she has heard positive comments from "staff members with work-study students, from food service, and all across campus." In contrast to last year, this year has been unmarked by any riotous party scenes or major disciplinary action. Even the S&C dance, which opened the school year, was remarkable in its calmness. Resident assistant Chris Chew, whose dorm is entirely freshmen, is thrilled with the ease of the adjustment for the students in his dorm. "The kids are all interested in what goes on in the campus ... They are excited to be here, and I think that's the case for most of the class." Most importantly, the freshmen themselves, feeling the eyes of the school upon them as school begins, are positive about their class and their place within the school. Kathryn Andrews is amazed by the friendliness of the rest of the school. "The upperclassmen have been very nice ... one of my closest friends so far is a senior," Andrews says. Emily Kasten adds that, "everyone is interested in learning ... it's the best." The freshmen also are not unaware of the clout that their size gives them in school policy. Steven Mickelsen, confident of the strength in numbers, notes that, "we control more Polity money than they do." Bl BEHIND THE SCENES AT THE START OF CLASSES IN ANNAPOLIS BY SUS3AN BORDEN you a camp counselor you read the IliadJ On a coffee break from a summer job when you read the Aeneid'? Did you read Don Quixote while traveling cross country? Did you sandwich chapters of War and Peace between afternoons at the beach and evenings on the boardwalk? Students today somehow find the time to do those hefty first seminar readings, just as Johnnies have done for the past 50 years. But there's more to starting up the academic year than the first seminar readings. Here's a look at the opening days of school from the viewpoints of the faculty and staff in Annapolis: Who Goes Where When The registrar's office spends weeks completing the undergraduate master class schedule, and finishes it by mid-July. Registrar Nancy Lewis, ABsistant Registrar Reenie Craven and a student (Zach Swindler, Agg) coordinate the scheduling of 25 seminars that meet two times a week for two hours each; 33 language tutorials that meet three times a week; 33 mathematics tutorials that meet three times a week; 24 laboratories with either two double class time meetings or one double class time and two single class time meetings a week; and nine music classes that meet for one double class time and two single class times a week. In the undergraduate program 56 tutors are scheduled in 25 time slots a week. All of the above - and an additional four seminars, seven preceptorials, and six tutorials for the Graduate Institute - are slotted into 28 classrooms and six meeting areas. Once the classes are determined, the registrar and her assistant place 450 undergraduate students in tutorials, laboratories, seminars and music classes so that they are in different core groups from previous years and do not have repeat tutors. The scheduling is done the oldfashioned way - without computers because there's no software that can handle the "only-at-St. John's mix of classes." A computer consultant was once hired to automate the process. His recommendation: remain manual. Other responsibilities covered by the registrar's office: purchase 500 lollipops. Candy helps ease the tension for students waiting to see their grades kept on file in the office. The Mother of All Manuals The bookstore stocks 150 copies of the Greek Manual. Written by tutors Robert Williamson and Alfred Mollin, it is used by every freshman at the Annapolis campus. In addition, the bookstore receives requests for copies from all over the country. What does this magic book contain? Among its pages are: 470 pages; CONTINUED ON PAGE 23 �E 11 PH FU ' A GREEK NIGHT SAMPLER BY SUS3AN BORDEN ' ''e[haps highest among the tonight! "Michael decides to stop sleeping privileges bestowed upon a We read great books, tutors hold with Amanda, Sydney and the girl at member of the St. John's comcourt the Bait & Tackle shop in order to win munity is the opportunity to watch Hope it's not nasty, brutish, or short back the love of his ex-wife, Jane, who A.E. Houseman's Fragment ofa Greek Theories presented are sometimes is accused by her boss of stealing fashTragedy numerous times. This sumdemented ion designs from a competitor." My mer, Malcolm Wyatt's philosophy and theology tutorial in the Graduate Institute staged an elaborate and hilarious version featuring tutor Tom May as Eriphyla and a chorus dressed in togas, laurel wreaths and dark sunglasses. At the drama's end, when the body of Eriphyla lay lifeless on the stage, David Reber, AGI97, stood above May's floral-sheet-clad figure singing "Where are the Simple Joys of Maidenhood?" The occasion for this outburst ofthespianitywas Greek Night, a summer tradition at the Annapolis Graduate Institute. Now in its 20th year, Greek Night features Greek food, Greek dancing, and homegrown entertainment from the Graduate Institute. While only Gis and their tutors are invited to Greek Night, they've agreed to share some TRAGEDY TOMORROW, COMEDY TONIGHT: Gls laugh it up at the annual Greek Night extravaganza in Annapolis. of the frivolity with the rest of the college community. "Seminar" (to the tune of"Camelot") A law was passed some distant moons ago here In 1937 to be exact We've nought to do with preface nor footnote here In Seminar! No editors shall ever hold no sway here Nor outside sources ever get a glance Your tidy universals will hold hearts here In Seminar! ~'Seminar Tonight" (to the tune of "Comedy Tonight" fromAFunny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum) Homer is glorious, the Prince is notorious Something for everyone in seminar tonight! Euclid draws straight lines, Rome's on the decline Something for everyone in seminar Still it will all turn out all right Orals in the morning, but seminar tonight! Skit: Melrose Republic by Mark Phaneuf At the beginning of the skit, the narrator announces that the Mathematics and Natural Science segment of the GI program has been eliminated and replaced with the vital study of Modern Day Culture. Due to the success of that program, the board is considering phasing out the Philosophy and Theology segment in favor of a Recreational Sports and Popular Board Games segment. "To demonstrate what a wonderful change this is," says the narrator, "we now look in on one of the ModCult classes, the TV Guide Preceptorial." Tutor: Very well. Ifyou would all turn to page 45, or Monday, g p.m., if you have another edition. I want to read a little bit from the description of that night's episode of Melrose Place. question is: Should Jane take Michael back? Awkward silence Student A (finally): When you say "take Michael back" what does that mean? Are we talking about unconditionally? Or is there some sort of subjective criteria Jane must evaluate? Student B: It seems to me the question is notwhether Jane should take Michael back, but can any of us choose our actions? Do we have free will to make such decisions? Because if you read a little further, it says "Once again, Billy declares his love for Allison." Billy has been doing that every week. Student A: I wonder if you are right, Mr. Campbell. It seems like Billy is caught up in some never-ending cycle. Maybe this will go on for infinity. And if that is the case, there is no free will. Tutor: If that is so, that there is no free will and that Billy will fruitlessly tell Allison he loves her, what space is left in that type of existence to allow for a supreme being? StudentA: (laughs) That was a question we struggled with last week when we studied the reruns of The Dukes ofHazzard. Awards Ceremony ManyGreekNights feature presentations of awards to Gis and their tutors. The awards cover a wide variety of attributes, irn~1Ud.n1g: Most likely to turn the Great Books into a money-making scheme Most likely to turn Hobbes Leviathan into a sitcom Most likely to book a cruise on the stream of consciousness Most likely to star in the movie version of Dostoevski 's Demons Most likely to color Euclid inside the lines Most likely to lap Hector around the walls of Troy Mostlikelyto get a P.O. Boxin the State of Nature Most likely to read great books in the first person Most likely to crown him/herself tutor Most likely to have a booth named after him/her at Chick & Ruth's Most likely to fall into the Heracleitan river twice Most likely to find the jokes in Kant Most likely to live in denial of the Fifth Postulate Most likely to mistake computer games for reality Most likely to chose "predestination" as the answer to absolutely everything Descartes' evil twin, Skippy Decor A long-standing Greek Night decorating tradition has been the "Chick & Ruth's Wall," where paper plates hang with St. John's-styles specials written on them. Among the favorites are: The Freud, the hot dog - just a hot dog (and a bagel); the Oedipus Special, just like Mom used to make; the Augustine, poached pears; the Harvey, blood pudding; and the Lobachevsky, a slice of pi. B �CAMPUS LIFE ST. JOHN'S SHIP, "JE NE SAIS PAS," BRINGS HONOR TO COLLEGE Euclid, Apollonius and Archimedes play role in victory BY SUS3AN BORDEN Melissa Jo Frank, A98, Eve Gibson, A99, and Cindy Lutz, A98, (left to right} in the "Je Ne Sais Pas." Of these, the St. John's boat, christened "Je Ne Sais Pas," placed third in the first heat and won the prize for using the least material. Team member O'DonovanAnderson designed the boat, which he and his teammates worked diligently to assemble in the allotted four hours (they finished with two minutes to spare). The building process was complicated by a steady parade of derision for the Johnny craft. "I think we were the butt of giggles for most of the day," says Lutz. "People thought our boat would sink because we had a radical design compared to the other teams," explains Gibson. "The fastest boats were the outrigger kayak models. We had this long, shaped canoe with a very shallow middle. No matter how far we leaned it over, we never sank the boat. Mr. O'DonovanAnderson calculated that it would displace about I,400 pounds. He definitely had the engineering aspect in mind," says Gibson. Although only two team members were required to race the boat, all five builders did climb in briefly to satisfy their intellectual curiosity about the vessel's seaworthiness - a curiosity sharpened by a chorus of doubts raised by onlookers during the building segment of the challenge. "Everyone who came by said it was a beautiful boat - that it looked very nice, that it was a very Johnny thing to do. They all said, 'How Johnny of you.' But they also said it would never float. The people next to us were also building a beautiful boat. They laughed more than anyone, but theiT boat sank," says Emmons. Lutz sums up: "Revenge was sweet fm the intellectuals that day." The team plans to compete again next yeaT, and event organizers are encouraging the St. John's crew to challenge a team from the Naval Academy to participate. Apparently, the mids chose to sit out this yeaT's event. Gibson Teports a rumoT she heard about last year's Acad,~myteam: "Their boat sank right off the dock." Emmons thinks the mids' participation is an idea whose time has come. "It would be the ultimate contest of foTm versus function," he says. "We'll tell them something like, 'We can see that this croquet thing isn't working so well for you guys. Maybe you'd like to try your hand at building pen the Annapolis Yacht Club 'sounded the call for teams to ·.· compete for the club's BuildA-Boat Cup, a group ofJohnnies quickly rallied to the challenge. Boathouse steward Eve Gibson, Agg, assembled a five-member Johnny team, with Gibson as captain and Cindy Lutz, Ag8, Melissa Jo Frank, Ag8, Josh Emmons, Agg, and tutor Michael O'DonovanAnderson as the crew. On the first day of the two-day event, teams were required to build a boat in four hours or less, using three sheets of plywood, two 8-foot 2" x 2" planks, and four Io-foot I" x 2 planks. No nails or screws were permitted in the assembly of the boat. Only wire and an adhesive sealant could be used to join the wood, and once the sealant cured, teams were required to remove the wire. The tools approved for use were limited to a tape measure, pliers, drill, saber saw, saw horses, extension cord, four clamps and one caulk gun. Any other tools used had to be carried in the boat during the regatta. The Johnnies, however, were not penalized for using tools from math tutorials and lab classes. "We didn't directly use the propositions we studied," teammate Lutz says of the endeavor, "but we did make use of our Euclid, Apollonius and Archimedes. And the boat ended up looking like something out of Newton." "We worked on the Archimedes principle that if you had itwide and shallow enough, it would float," adds Emmons. The second day featured a regatta in which the boats were required to traverse the onerous distance between the Eastport Bridge and the Chart House. Of the 25 boats that were built, I8 made it into the water for the races. rye Moon, Santa Fe's student dnewspaper, is offering subscrip· •· tions at $35 a year for anyone interested in the events, issues and literary life of students. Evan Skladany and Carisa Armendariz, the editors of The Moon, say that in addition to broadening the paper's readership, the subscriptions will help make the paper more accessible to the college community. Plans for this year include creating a web page for the paper and upgrnding the computer equipment used to produce it. Any funds raised from the subscriptions will help support these projects. To subscribe, fill out the adjacent 1 0 Yes! I would like to subscribe to one year (I4 more issues) of The Moon. : :~~:~~----=----==:::-=::::_-=::::_-=-=--=-=-~======---==----=======--==== I: coupon and mail it to The Moon. L 11 Ill The Johnny team tests the waters in their boat, which was assembled in just under four hours. boats.' Iftheywere to beat us, we would just say, 'Sure, it's the Naval Academy.' But if we weTe to beat them, we would neveT stop reminding them of it." Bl r------------------- I I I I ------------------~---------------------------------------~ Please enclose a check or money order with this coupon for $ 35 made payable to: The Moon, St. John's College, u6o Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 ------------------- I I .J �HOMECOMING , 9 7 SEEING OLD FRIENDS, MAKING NEW ONES BY ELIZABETH SKEWES nearly 160 alumni who to Santa Fe for Homecoming in July, the weekend was a collage of time with old friends, time to make some new friends, and time to simply take in another New Mexico sunset or make a quick hike up Monte Sol. Of course, there was the usual Homecoming fare - seminars for each of the reunion classes, a picnic on Saturday afternoon, and a dinner and waltz party on Saturday night. And after dancing until dawn, most alumni still made it to the p1·esident' s house some more bleary-eyed that others for a brunch on Sunday morning. For most, it was a magical time. "I was, once again, moved by the richness and diversity of my fellow Santa Fe '92 graduates," said Leah Ankeny, SF92. "The continuingcloseneso·ofthe St; John's Collegecommunity has had a lasting impact on who I am and who I strive to be. Jeanie Redus, SF87, liked having the opportunity to revisit a part of her life.·" I especially enjoyed sitting in Santa Fe Hall, watching the rain fall and smelling the chalk dust, while listening to old friends discuss abstract Homecoming is about more than just catching up with old friends. Here the daughters of two alumni form o new St. John's friendship. Photo by Lesli Allison concepts like justice and piety." For many, however, just seeing old friends made the trek to Santa Fe worthwhile. "Many of us were unsure, at first, about coming, and then we Members of the Closs of '92 reminisce over quiche, pastries and mimosas during the brunch at the president's house on Sunday morning. Photo by Lesli Allison found o?t just ho~ enjoyable.itwas to becoill°e' re'acqu~:litted," said Father Christopher Hanson, SF86. Homecoming Weekend also was an occasion to honor members of the St. John's communitywho have served both the college and their local communities. This year, the St. John's College Alumni Association selected Don Cook, who retiredin the spring as Santa Fe's assistant dean, to be an honorary alumnus. Cook, a tutor at the college since 1965, first served as assistant dean in the 1981-82 academic year. He took the position again in 1990 and served as assistant dean until he retired. Awards of Merit were presented to Tom Stern, SF69, who contributed to the college's recent capital campaign and was a tutor during the 1996 Summer Alumni Program. Lynda Lamson Myers, SF72, received an Award of Merit for her service to the college as a tutor in Santa Fe since 1977 and director of the Graduate Institute from 1985 to 1988. Robert S. Bart, a tutor at the college since 1946, was recognized for his 5oyears of service to St. John's. Bart taught in Annapolis until 1975, came to Santa Fe for the 1975-76 academic year, returned to Annapolis for the 1976-77 year, and then came back to Santa Fe in 1977 as the dean. He was dean for five years, after which he returned to teaching. He retired in 1990, but continues to teach at the college part-time. The college also recognized Noah books of the 20th century, including Leo Strauss' Natural Right and History and WE.B. DuBois' The Souls of Black Folk. Plans are underway for the I998 Summer Alumni Program and Homecoming Weekend. The first week of the Summer Alumni Program will begin on June r4 and will run throughJuneig,andthe second week will run from June 21 through June 26. Homecoming Weekend will fall in the middle, on June 19, 20 and2r. For 1998, the first Rod_riguez, SGl85, an tliW~winning"'''.i ""'. . . . Summer Alumni S'anta"Fe school 'teacherwho was mifr'._ · ., ·Program week will cover readings from · dered in October 1996. Gulliver's Travels and from travel jourHomecoming Weekend was sandnals of early explorers. Tutors for the first week again include Eva Brann and wiched between two weeks of the 1997 Summer Alumni Program. The first Nancy Buchenauer. The second week week, on the novels and short stories will focus on the human brain and how of Edith Wharton and Henry James, it works. In January, all alumni will receive proved to be so popular that a second a postcard mailing about the prosection of the program was added. grams and HomeconlingWeekend. It Taught by Am;iapolis tutors Eva Brann, Nancy Buchenauer and Gisela will include a card to mail back to the Berns, and Santa Fe tutors Janet college if you want to receive a brochure and registration materials. Dougherty, Philip LeCuyer and Peter Pesic, the week examined life at the Brochures will be mailed in early turn of the century through Wharton's March to all Santa Fe alumni who are The Age ofInnocence and James' The members of a reunion class - the Europeans and The Spoils ofPoynton. classes ofI968, 1973, 1978, 1983, 1988 The second week of the program and 1993 - and to anyone else who Bl requests one. took a close look at some of the great Susan Friedman Eversole, SF79, is all smiles os the Triangle Circle Chapter, located in North Carolina, is approved as 11 chartered chapter of the annual meeting of the St. John's College Alumni Association. Steven Sedlis, A73 and president of the New York Chapter, looks on from the left, and Association board members Paulo Maynes, SF77, and Bill Tilles, A59, look on from the right. Photo by Lesli Allison �PROFILE ORDER FROM CHAOS Glenda Eoyang, SF76, finds we all can learn from non-linear dynamical systems BY BARBARA GOYETTE o, when the name of your business is Chaos Limited, what do you do? Even though Glenda Eoyang, SF76, deals with systems that are so complex they defy predictability, she tries to ''use lessons from complexity to help people work more effectively in their day to day lives." She's been fascinated by chaos theory, also called non-linear dynamical systems theory or complexity, for manyyears. Now Eoyang has combined her expertise in computers and her teaching background with that interest. Her Minneapolis-based consulting firm works with businesses, government groups, and non-profits to help them understand and cope with organizational behavior, which she views as a complex system. After graduating from St. John's, Eoyang taught high school math and science in Oklahoma. When she moved to Minnesota, where the teaching certification process was more involved, she switched to developing training programs with computers. "The computer is used to deliver information. It interacts with the user and inspires the user to respond," she says. "I worked on programs to teach basic literacy, for example, and programs to cover the first two years of engineering school, so that faculty would be more available for advanced research during the final two years." But then came chaos. Eoyang began to study the new field in the physical sciences that was born i:h the mid-r97os. "Chaos theory deals with phenomena that are highly complex and unpredictable," she says. "For example, the weather. There are lots of interdependent thinking that becomes necessary, And she has stayed involved with the variables: presand that's what she deals with in her college, first on the Alumni sure affects temwork. She studies what is happening Association board and now on the perature, for in the physical sciences and applies Board of Visitors and Governors. "My example. You can those ideas metaphorically to organiloyalty is both to the friendships I see patterns over zations. developed there and also to the books a long period of Eoyang first helps people and the process that is embodied in time - the seabecome familiar with the language of the work of the college," she says. sons - but you chaos, so that they can begin to see "A St. John's background is realcan't make prehow it might be at work in their lives. ly helpful for dealing with this kind dictions about Next she teaches tools and techof thinking," Eoyang explains. "You what the temperaniques, mechanical things people have to be able to think logically and ture will be can do to survive more effectively in in a structured way, but you also have tomorrow. When a complex system. to be able to think outsige yo11r OWJ! " you look at such a' She.continues to e~pand her systems." ,,_ system it may own understanding of complexity She likens the shift necessary to seem to be a ranthrough her work on a Ph.D. at the work with non-linear dynamics to the dom mess, but when you consider it Union Institute, a universitywithout shift Johnnies make when they begin over a long period of time, or walls in Cincinnati, which offers a to work with non-Euclidean geomethrough filters (like the mathematiprogram for mid-career adults who try. Another interesting feature of cal analysis of data), subtle patterns know clearly what they want to her studies is that the language is not emerge." study. She's working on the history yet settled. "Incredible metaphors Other areas Eoyang considers of management and organizational are used to deal with things, because chaotic are astronomy, economics, theory, arid trying to master more you are just searching for how to sociology, organizational behavior rigorous and more qualitative methunderstand it. I am reminded of and cognition. While she thinks it is ods of understanding dynamical sysNewton's letter to Haley... You are optimistic to call chaos theory a tems. Computer simulation models looking at things in an immediate science, she does way without an find chaos a useful accepted vocabmetaphor to ulary to refer describe a set of to," she says. behaviors that all Should of these fields Yor those interested in reading more about chaos, Glenda chaos theory be share. The frestudied at St. Eoyang suggests the following: *The Turbulent Mirror, by Briggs and Peat - "A quently cited examJohn's? Eoyang ple of the butterfly is of two minds. graphical introduction to the science; a fun, romping read." *Leadership and the effect - a butterfly "In some way, flapping its wings Johnnies already New Science, by Margaret Wheatley- "A collection of poetic essays about what in, say, Argentina, study non-linear it would mean to think of an organization in terms of chaos theory." can cause a hurridynamics in a cane in the wide sense, *Coping with Chaos: Seven Simple Tools, by Glenda Eoyang - "A practical, Caribbean - is usebecause they ful because it illuslook at nature nuts and bolts book." tr '.1 te s the huge outside a incongruity Cartesian framebetween cause and work," she says. -<~·: !;) effect in complex "On the other systems. and time series modeling (taking hand, it is such a different way of Because the future can't be prestrings of data and analyzing for patlooking at the world, and the tools dicted in a complex system, there is terns) are two more traditionally sciare so different from what we have in no way to control results. "'You have entific methods she has been learnjunior year. I don't think you would to trade prediction and control for ing about. be able to do justice to chaos unless anticipation and adaption," says Eoyang credits her St. John's you were able to go into the current Eoyang. There's a kind of shift in education with a profound influence. studies in depth." B ~ �Annapolis Alumni Write the Next Chapter As you might expect, Annapolis has long had an active alumni chapter that draws on the considerable number of alumni who remain in Annapolis after graduating or return later in life to en;oy a steady diet of crab cakes, Little Campus confabulations, and Friday night lectures. Chapter member Howard Zeiderman A67 sent in this report about recent activities and new directions for the chapter. last fall, chapter President Thomas Wilson, AGl89, Vice President Howard Zeiderman, A67, Secretary/Treasurer Dorsey Rose, A68, and long-time member Jack Ladd Carr, A50, embarked on an effort to increase local interest in the chapter. They sent out a questionnaire to 500 area alumni and held an organizational meeting attended by 30 people interested in suggesting activities. Out of the questionnaire and meeting came a seminar series that began last December. Ran Lincoln, A50, led a seminar on Melville's Benito Cereno. In succeeding months, tutors John Verdi led a session on Dostoevski's The Gambler, Elliott Zuckerman, H95, on Kafka's The Hunger Artist; Sam Kutler, A54, on Mann's Mario and the Magician, Chester Burke, A74, on Dostoevski's Notes from the Underground, Nick Maistrellis on two articles on cloning, and Brother Robert on the icons "The Trinity by Rublev" and "The Vladimir Mother of God." The attendance at the seminars ranged between 20 and 30, including alumni passing through town and some others from Washington, D.C. luncheon talks were given by tutors Andre Barbera on Horace Silver, and Brother Robert on icons. The traditional sym'phony evening was held in March. The year ended with an election meeting in July attended by 65 alumni. This was the first annual boathouse bash with a buffet dinner, chapter elections, and a disc jockey. Rebecca Dzamov, A95, is the new president, and the other officers remain as before. This year, the seminar series will start in October with Zuckerman doing another Kafka story, Josephine the Singer, followed by Chris Nelson, SF70, in November with a session on The Apology (which, be it noted, is neither by Kafka nor Dostoevski). In December, the holiday gathering will be a nostalgia evening at the little Campus, filled with half truths. We in the Annapolis chapter hope you will consider us the chapter of your second home and, as room permits, we welcome all alumni passing through the area. Alumni Board Members on the Web Quick: Who are your duly elected representatives on the Alumni Association's Board of Directors? What are the committees that do most of the Board's work? And what exactly are these directors and committees doing? One place to find out is the new Alumni Board member listing on the World-Wide Web: http://www.charm.net/-bfant/johnny/a aboard.html This page contains a complete list of Alumni-Soard;officer"SJ .and members, along wlth e"mail addresses for many of them. You can learn a bit more about what the Alumni Association does, and, more importantly, send messages directly to Alumni Board members. The Alumni Board member page is part of the Unofficial Alumni Web site, where you'll also find many other pages and links of interest to alumni. As always, thanks go to Bill Fant, A79, for maintaining this site. I think that no pleasure exceeds that that I have tonight in being able to present to Bill this Alumni Award of Merit. We all have our own story about how we came to be students here at St. John's. Some, I suppose, like Bill's, must have been the cause of their parents' worst nightmare. And it's all Joe Cohen's fault, because it was Joe who talked Bill into leaving the University of Baltimore two years shy of a law degree to start over as freshman here. Thus comes the first clue that we are face to face with a quintessential St. Johnny: a thoughtful man, always ready with the insightful question, always ready to engage in the ongoing conversation that exemplifies the St. John's program, always willing to listen to what other people said. Because the willingness to listen to others is a quality rather rare in our world, Bill was a popular figure on campus. Of course, it didn't hurt that he had a convertible. Between his junior cthd~'senior years Bill had his greatest persuasive accomplishment - he got one of our classmates, Carol Phillips, to marry him. Even more evidence of his persuasive abilities, he got her to stay with him all this time. After graduation, Bill, sensing the impending computer explosion, and BILL TILLES: f rem Convertibles to Computers, via Verse BY HARVEY GOLDSTEIN, A59 Editor's note: Each year at the Annapolis and Santa Fe homecoming dinners, the Alumni Association confers Awards of Merit on notable alumni or other people who are close to the college. At this year's Annapolis homecoming dinner on September 27th, Harvey Goldstein made the following presentation to Bill Ti/Jes. Bill Tilles, liberal artist, musician and poet. Classmates in the late '50s, we have been good friends for nearly 40 years. We have enjoyed many happy times, wonderful conversations, and yes, a few of life's trials. But no matter how much pleasure I have had from our friendship, and it has been a great deal, Bill Tilles at Homecoming in Annapolis this year. Photo by Keith Harvey armed with an introduction from Jim Frame, did what many St. Johnnies of that era did: he embarked upon a career in the computer industry. At that time, the word "computer" was synonymous with IBM. After what can only be characterized as a distinguished career with IBM span- ning some 30 years, including stints at American University, the Wharton School of Business, and Georgetown University's Graduate School, Bill retired from IBM and created his own computer-related consulting companies. Notwithstanding a full slate - a corporate career, three children to help raise, and community service to render - Bill found time to devote to his beloved St. John's. Almost immediately after graduation, Bill began to participate actively in the Alumni Association. In the early 1960s he was elected to the Board of Directors, and by 1970, after serving as Treasurer of the Association, he became its president. Given his interest in things of the mind, it comes as no surprise that Bill is a regular participant in the Washington Alumni Chapter. In 1992, he came back to the Association's Board as a director. The Alumni elected him to the Board of Visitors and Governors, where he has served with distinction; becoming an officer of the Board and member of its Executive Committee. It is particularly at this time, having retired From the constant requirements of corporate life as an employee, that Bill began to use his knowledge of computers to benefit the college. He has volunteered untold amounts of his time and talent to help the college make its long awaited accommodation to the computer age. He has been, and still is, giving the college his expert opinions about how it can integrate its computer system for the administration of day to day business, one that can be used in every office of each campus, and can be easily accessed by each campus. This work goes on even as I speak of it. And there can be no doubt that Bill's patient persistence and insightful approach to problem solving are responsible for much of the progress to date. Before I end this catalogue of Bill's accomplishments, as an active alumnus and successful graduate, I would be remiss if I didn't mention his great love of poetry. If it were Bill now standing here speaking about an award recipient, he might very well do so in verse. But I'm not much of a poet and Roberta has promised dire consequences for anyone who speaks too long, so you are spared my meager attempts at rhyme as I close by saying: Thank you very much for this opportunity to be involved in the honoring of my friend. El �ALUMNI Harold Milstead writes, "I am completing 57 years in the active ministry of the United Methodist Church. I took my first pastorate in June of Ig40. Retired in Ig8o. Serving Shiloh U.~. ChUTch, Bryans Road, Maryland, ever since. Will be 84 years ofage Oct. 9, Ig97." 52 Warren and Barbara (A55) Winiarski were among those at the "Diner des Trente," a dinner held in France on Sept. 8 to honor the 30 greatest wines in the world. The dinner was held to celebrate Jean-Claude Rouzaud's 30th anniversary as managing director of Champagnes Louis Roederer. The Winiarskis, who own and operate Stag's Leap Wine Cellars, were honored for their Cask 23. An early harvest in Napa - the earliest in the 25-year history of Stag's Leapmade it -possi"Q\e for th~ Winiarskis to attend the dinner. K,53 "'' ..3 :::::-,.••_.,:> Charles Powleske will retire from the Business Council for International Understanding in September after 37 years, most recently as president and CEO. He plans to continue as BCIU's vice chairman and a member of its Board of Directors, acting as a consultant. Long term, he wants to spend about half his time in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, and still maintain his New York City apartment. 58 Marianne D. Brann is living in Lewes, Del. She also reports that the Alumni Register incorrectly lists her occupation. She is no longer the director of career counseling at St. John's in Annapolis. 64 "I've changed jobs and am now the development officer at Philadelphia's history museum, the Atwater Kent," writes Christine Kubacki Davis. 66 Constance Bell Lindgreen has been in Denmark, her husband's country, for five years. "After living here and in England, life is changed - by other forms of history and honor; and it's the same - books, music, gardening," she says. She's re-reading War and Peace, Jane Austen, Trollope, Willa Cather, and Peter Hoeg, "who seems the sensation after 'Frozen Smilla.' " 67 Larry and Hazel (A69) Schlueter write from New Orleans that Hazel has a new CD out, Hazel and the Delta Ramblers Live at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival 1992. She has had her radio show on WWOZ for 25 years; it now has a web site at www.wwoz.org. 68 Stephen Shore (SF) is currently a financial analyst with the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation in Washington, D.C. Dean Hannotte (A) says, "After working with the Ninth Street Center for 25 years I have created a web site that describes our work and that of the Center's founder, Dr. Paul Rosenfels. Paul was a classically trained psychoanalyst who broke with that tradition and became a leading humanist psychotherapist. The site iswww.geoci- . ties. com/A:.thens/Delph:i/5T79·; :·.' Dean's e-mail address is dhannotte@msn.com. .'1:, ·.:·:..i~ 69 Joseph Baratta (A) organized two panels on the history of federalism (Athens, European, and the world) at the annual meeting of the Society for CHAPTER CONTACTS Please call those listed below for information about alumni activities in each area. ALBUQUERQUE: Harold M. Morgan, Jr., 505-899-1331 NEW YORK: Steven Sedlis, 212-289-1662 ANNAPOLIS: Rebecca Dzamov, 410-263-4291 NORTH CAROLINA: Susan Eversole, 919-968-4856 AUSTIN: Homayoon Sepasi, 512-708-8360 PHILADELPHIA: Jim Schweidel, 610-941-0555 BALTIMORE: David Kidd, 410-614-2260 PORTLAND: Elizabeth Skewes, 505-984-6103 BOSTON: Alvin Aronson, 617-566-6657 SAN FRANCISCO/ NORTHERN CALIFORNIA: Deborah Farrell, 415-561-6100, ext. 123 CHICAGO: Amanda Fuller, 847-705-1143 SANTA FE: John Pollak, 505-983-2144 DALLAS/FORT WORTH: Suzanne Doremus, 817-924-7184 SEATILE: Jim G>oherty, 206-937-8886 DENVER: Janet Dampeer, 303-972-490 l LOS ANGELES: Meg Sheehan, 310-208-2013 MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL: Vicki Wilson, 612-535-0055, or Glenda Eoyang, 612-783-7206 WASHINGTON, D.C.: Sam Stiles, 301-424-0884, or Bill Ross, 301-230-4594 N 0 TES Historians of American Foreign Relations in Washington in June. 7I John Stark Bellamy II (A) will be publishing his second book this fall, The Maniac in the Bushes, "an anthology of vintage murders and disasters in Cleveland, Ohio." Don Brady, a former tutor in Santa Fe (although not an alumnus), is living in Berlin and invites any of his former students to get in touch with him, especially if they plan to be in Germany. He can be reached at Botzowstrasse I?. Io407 Berlin, Germany. His phone number is 303428-7I35; fax number is 030-4285rn93; and his e-mail address is 0304287I35-000I@T-online.de. 72 Ellen HeMne (SF)wtite:s that she is still working al the SandyMhsh:Herb , Nursery in North Carolina. Her daughter is attending college at United World College in New Mexico and her son helps out at the Herb Nursery, "as does Vanessa Campbell (SF89), whowentto both UWC and St. John's! Small world ... " 73 Michael B. Aaron (SF) received a graduate degree in commercial bank management from Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, and is now a senior associate of the Australian Institute of Banking and Finance. He won the Institute's prize for best banking student of the year in Igg6. He is working for IBM Australia Ltd. as an electronic commerce manager in banking and insurance. In this position, he manages the growth of electronic commerce over the internet, especiallyin banking. Lee Perlman (A) sent the following news for The Reporter- the first he's ever submitted: "On June 26, mywife Deborah Abel and I had a son, Caleb Seth (first of those I've ever submitted also). Other than that, I teach philosophy at MIT and have a little side business consulting in gender relations. Mywifeis a dancer/choreographer." CONTINUED ON PAGE 20 �AL UM NI N 0 TES ALUMNI NOUS CONT. FROM PG. Ig Bill (SF8o) Day, with Helen and Peter, are heading north once again. Bill will be teaching philosophy at Le_Moyne College in Syracuse, and Kate will be vicar of Christ Church in Jordan, New York. f.'!1~77 8 Peter Grubb (A) reports: "I still live in beautiful Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, with Betsy, mywife of 13 years, and our two children, Mariah, 6, and Jonah, 3. We run Idaho's· largest whitewater rafting company, ROW, offering trips from one to seven days. We also raft the Rio Upano in Ecuador from November to March. In the footsteps of Odysseus, we operate yachting trips along Turkey's southwest coast. And we offer barging in France. Our number is 800-451-6034." · . .i't:-.~····N ~., ..t Jack McArdle (A) reports that he is a certified Novell instructor, and has also fulfilled all the requirements and exams of the Irish Dancing Commission in Dublin. He is now a certified Irish dancing teacher (TCRG - Teachers in Commission Rinci Gaelacha); rn years ago, when his first child was old enough to need lessons, he started an Irish dancing school in Torrington, Connecticut. Bill Malloy (SF) reports that he has been quite ill. He asks his classmates for their prayers and kind words. He can be reached at P.O. Box 570822, Houston, TX 77257~0822. 978 Chris Currin (SF) and his wife, Holly Hope, had a daughter, Flannery, on May 5. Chris reports that everyone is healthy and happy. :~:::]1'~79 Nathan Ellis (A) is an associate member of the Department of Human Genetics at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. 982 Mich~el Moore (A) expects to graduate from the Traditional Acupuncture Institute in February. He is currently in practice in Baltimore, Md., and "sometimes also in Wheaton and Columbia. Acupuncture is really wonderful. It has help my allergies and asthma. It is good for many chronic illnesses, aches and pains that Western medicine can't treat well .... I have a sliding scale for Johnnies. Call me at 4rn-823-6553." Miriam Huaco Komanomy (A) has just become the director for the primary care internal medicine residency training program at San Francisco General Hospital, a public hospital run by the University of California, San Francisco. She also has "two wonderful little boys, Gabriel, 3-1/2, and Isaac, 22 months." 83 Anne Braswell Heldreth (A) has moved to Charlottesville, Va., with her husband, Steve, and children, Sarah and Nat. They hope to live there for a long time and would love to hear from old friends. 84 Damon Ellingston (A) will spend the year teaching math in Okinawa. "No," he says. "It's not in Oklahoma. Get out the atlas and investigate!" 985 Eric Burman (A) e-mailed from Botswana, where he works as an asso- ciate director for the Peace Corps: Lydia Gabriele was born on January 4, I997· and joined Abigail Claire, age 2. I/2. Eric may return to the U.S. in December, but until then his e-mail address is eburman@info.bw. Will Fischer (SF) and his wife, Janette Hradecky Fischer (SF85), announce the birth of their son, Isaac Oak Fischer, on July 29, I997· In addition to a loving family, Isaac has his own web page at: www.bio.indiana.edur wfischer/Isaac. 987 Barb~raAlexandra Hum (SF) reports that she and her daughter, Anna, 7, are doing well. Anna is in the second grade, and Barbara is starting her third-year rotations at Georgetown University Medical School. She would love to hear from St. John's alunmi and can be reached, via e-mail, at humb@medlib.georgetown.edu. Wayne Anderson (A) and Joy AndreaLarkin (A88) announce the birth of their second child, a son. Julian Francis Anderson Larkin was born on November 20, Igg6, in San Francisco. "After five wacky years of teaching high school English, I have left the classroom," writes Sally Fine (A). "Thanks to my SJC background and two recently published articles, I was offered a position with an educational internet company, American Cybercasting Corporation, in the Cleveland area. As one of two language arts coordinators, !design, write, and edit curricula for grades KI2, work with a team of graphic artists and html lords to get it online, and train teachers to use our product. The switch from the public sector to the private sector is relatively painless, but there are days when I really miss my students. My e-mail address is sal@amercyb.com." Elizabeth (Elspeth) Kovar Burgess (A) sent an e-mail to update classmates: ""I spent three years working for Jeff Crigler (A79) at Mead Data Central, doing everything and anything on their legislative database. Since then I've been a consultant or part time staff, first doing database design and development, especially for libraries, and then research, teaching, and most recently selling books. I've also done a fair amount of volunteer work, both for libraries, and for the past couple of years as a division head for a 700-person science fiction convention. I really did intend to have a career, and still plan to, but I was diagnosed as having bi-polar affective disorder in I990. While this was something of a relief, as I'd knm'fil for years that something was seriously wrong, it also shifted my focus from getting ahead to getting well. That has been my full-time job ever since. We seem to have found the right combinations of this and that to mostly stabilize the situation and now I'm in the happy process oflearning to live. I have a lot of help from my husband, Dan, and our three cats, plus nieces, a nephew-by-heart, and more siblings, cousins, and in-laws than I can count. It's not the life I'd hopedfor, but it has been an extremely interesting one. I've missed out on more than I can imagine, including much of my St. John's education, but I've also experienced and learned a great deal. I've gotten over most of the regrets over what I've missed, and have dealt with the anger at those who could have said something but didn't. Instead I have that awareness available to help others, and have the wisdom(?) of someone a decade out of college combined with the fun of a whole new world to explore. On the whole it's been a good life thus far and, for the first time, I'm really looking forward to finding out what happens next." 88 Jennifer Lapham (A) and Paul Sacaridiz were married on July 2, 1996. Jennifer is finishing a threesemester position in the art department at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pa. "I am looking forward to returning to Chicago in January 1998, where Paul and the cats are holding down the fort," she says. "'In the spring of' 98 I will be teaching at the school of the Art Institute of Chicago in the ceramics department and pursuing studio work. I am having a show at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts this summer entitled 'Sightings.'" DianaM. Shaw(A), who is working as an editorial freelancer at Standard & Poors in New York City, was married in August to Jonathan P. McCarthy. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is a research �REPORTER economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The couple is moving to Switzeriand for a year, where Paul will work at the Bank for International Settlements. Following this, theywill live in New York City. Rick Craven (A) was married to Debra Hayzen in June in Knoxville, Tenn. He's entering the MBA program at the University of Tennessee in the fall after seven years of teaching at private schools. 89 Wendy McDonald (SF) received her medical degree from the University of New Mexico on May 17. She has started her internship in internal medicine at the University of Washington's Boise, Idaho, program. go James Kolsky (SF) received his Ph.D. in statistics from Oregon State University and is now the senior statistician at Infosense Inc., a private research firm in Corvallis, Ore. Classmates who would like to be in contact can write to him at 1545 Beaver Court SW, Albany, OR 97321, or can e-mail him at kolsky@infosense.com. ~r:::·191 Jonk:o Lawson (A) married Amy Freedman of Toronto on October 26. His first book of poems, Love is an Observant Traveller, is due out through Exile Editions Ltd. in Toronto this November. 92 Siofra Rucker Nugent (SF) and her husband, Andrew Nugent, announce the birth of their daughter, Tinsley Noreen Nugent, on Aug. 2, 1997· Siofra writes: "Here is my reason for not making it to the homecoming this year. Tinsley is a joy and I just love being her mother. Nugent and I are moving back to the U.S. in December. I'm hoping to move back to the Santa Fe area." Don Bell (SF) spent the summer working for Goldman/Sachs in New York and is attending the Wharton School of Business. He and his wife, Sabrina, live in Philadelphia. J. Claire Darling (SF) lives in Brattleboro, Vt., with her fiance and their dog. She says they are all doing well. "I'm trying to learn the organ; it's very difficult." Claire is trying to set up a western Massachusetts alumni group. Those interested should contact the Alumni Office in Annapolis at 4rn-626-253I. 93 David Jennings (A) married Carla Billings of Baton Rouge, La., on June 7. He is working concurrently toward a master's in philosophy and a master's in artificial intelligence at the University of Georgia. He plans to graduate by the end of the 1998 academic year. UGA is, to his knowledge, the only school in the world to offer a graduate degree in artificial intelligence. His e-mail address is djenning@ai.uga.edu. He also sent his web page address: www.ai. uga.eduF djenning. Jennifer Rychlik (SF) received a master's degree in molecular biology from New Mexico State University in May 1977 and has started work in a Ph.D. program in microbiology at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. In addition to her coursework, she is working as a research and teaching assistant under a fellowship she received from the university's microbiology section. Alexander Ellerman (AGI) is a lieutenant in the Navy and has recently departed on a six-month deployment to the western Pacific Ocean with Helicopter Anti-Submarine Squadron 8, embarked aboard the ships of the USS Nimitz battle group. Deva F. Kemmis (SF) and Matthew Hicks (SF) were married on June 21, 1997, at St. Tim's in Southern Cross, Mont. The couple now lives in Chicago. 994 Josh Silberstein (A) is living in Burlington, Vt., where he released his first CD of original music in June. Both he and his group go by the name ofMagis. The CD is called In the Middle. Josh's address is P.O. Box 8525, Burlington, VT 05402. Jeffrey Wright (SGI) writes: "I had the wonderful experience of studying with the Institute of Irish Studies at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, during the summer ofr996. 'T'was grand!'" Ben Feldman (A) writes that he has finished a master's in developmental psychology at Columbia UniversityTeachers College. "After a number of years studying (post-baccalaureate and master's), working with mentally retarded adults and psychiatric patients, and conducting research on simple phobia and panic disorder, I now know that I do not want to be a clinical psychologist, but rather an industrial/ organizational psychologist. Before pursuing a Ph.D. in this field, I will be spending one year in Jerusalem, studying at Ohr Somayach, an Orthodox Jewish Yeshiva (Judaic school), where I received a scholarship. I will be learning Talmud, Tanach, Hashkafa, Halacha, Language (biblical and modern Hebrew and Aramaic) and modern issues." 95 Will Wendt (SF) is working on a master of fine arts degree in photography at Yale University. Rebecca Dzamov (A) writes in: "Terry Moore and I have been recently e-mailing and decided that our class needed a secretary (or two) to gather info and keep everyone in the know through the medium of The Reporter. Unfortunately, the deadline was very close so we did not go about this in anyway that could be called aggressive. However, this will be a model that we will try to improve upon, and maybe even help or encourage other classes to set up a similar system. We want everyone to appear in the annals of The Reporterif possible, so please write or call either Terry (4I5-648-9332 in San Francisco; email fterrym@usa.net), or Rebecca (410-263-4291 in Annapolis; email: dzamov@aol.com or P.O. Box1902/ Annapolis, MD 2I404), or Barbara Goyette at the Public Relations Office at the college. In no particular order this is our preliminary report: "Ned Freemen is living with his sister, Lori (A97), in an awesome house in Richmond, Va., where they each have a separate wing. They had a great housewarming party in the beginning of the summer that many Johnnies attended. Among them were Mike 2 Gaffney, who just helped Becca Michael (A97) (also at Ned and Lori's) move to Washington, D.C. Mike is entering Marine Corps Officer Candidate School this fall. Craig Sirk.in drove down to Richmond from D.C. He is going to be starting a new job as an Information Systems Coordinator at George Washington University, which means he'll work at maintaining their computer network. Ned also got promoted; he writes that he is the 'associate creative director of a national marketing agency specializing in undergraduate and adult student recruitment for colleges and universities. Writing. Writing a lot. Having much fun.' Kathy Stolzenbach and Addie St. Onge dropped by the party as they both live in Richmond, as well. Many others were in attendance, alums and current students, but we won't mention them in the hope that they will be so motivated to write to The Reporter themselves. "More from the nation's capital: Jill Kasparekis in Washington, D.C., working as a financial consultant and living with a younger man with an old mone;itrlistfund. lnhe:t sparethne· she raises exotic animals and collects artifacts from the Yves St. Laurent Ig67 Fall Collection. And, of course, Aaron Lewis sends official word that upon graduation, he studied political science in Athens, Greece, on a fellowship from Georgetown University and the Fund for American Studies. He now works in Washington, D.C., for California Governor Pete Wilson's Executive Office. "Annapolis is a very exciting place, simply crawling with tourists and old Johnnies, of which I count myself. I am working at The Touchstones Project. Since I am in town, I extend a general invitation to you all should you be here for one of the college's events, like croquet. Dina Dineva is indexing in Eastport. Cora Sterling is keeping all the young Johnnies in line in the assistant dean's office and just returned from an extended trip in Italy with her husband, Walter (A93), where he was studying this summer. Out in Santa Fe, I ran into Shana Hack, who had just recently moved there from somewhere else in New Mexico where they build bombs. I recently spoke to Alex Lomvardias who is in the Merchant Marines and is now driving a ship somewhere exciting, but I cannot remember where. He was only briefly in Fairfax, Va., (on leave) with Amy Thurston, who is living and working there. DanNelson, CONTINUED ON PAGE 22 �ALUMNI NOTES ALUMNI NOTES CONT. FROM PAGE 21 also on the high seas, is following the phantom of Moby Dick. Tracy Whitcomb, continuing to inform people about gourmet cheese while deciding what to do next, lives in Burlington, Vt., with Josh Silberstein (A94, who just cut a CD and is playing in clubs up there). In Bayou country, we hear that Southern belle Rebecca Trumble is Medicare Compliance Coordinator for an HMO in New Orleans. Erin Toomey also makes the south her home, living in Nashville with Mike Reid (A94). Erin is doing art restoration around town while soaking up the city's outstanding country music scene. "There is a Johnny contingent in Asia, represented by Kate Feld and Matt Radbillin Tainan, Taiwan (and Donald Eubank and John Bennett, both Ag3) where all of them are teaching the Taiwanese the hip language of our land. Word has it that Kate, Matt, and Donald are in a band - check MTV's New Artists. China Williams is in Thailand-I think Kate is now visiting her there even as I write this. In other international events, Sarah Burke was last heard of in Prague with Mike Miller, Ag3. They were both teaching English there. Reuben Marshall is in the Peace Corps in Africa. And modern guru Matt Baum is traveling the world in search of Truth. Alka Kothari just returned from studying international relations at Oxford and is now recovering from the horrid food while she plans her next step. She tells me that Wes Donehower, also abroad in that strange county that Faulkner wrote about in Mississippi, is learning ebonies as he finishes his two-year stint in the Mississippi Teacher's Corps. "On the midwestern front, Zena Hitz is studying ancient philosophy at the University of Chicago. Jake Kosseffis manager of Luigi's in Madison, Wisconsin. And from the city that never sleeps, we hear that Jon Crimmins is living in NYC under the watchful eye of the FBI. After a tour of duty in Seattle, he withdrew to Massachusetts this past summer where he taught at the prestigious Cushing Academy, where the legendary Bette Davis once attended. Giles Anderson maintains that the stories circulating about him are, 'Lies, lies, lies. Whatever you have heard: lies. The truth is I work for a literary agent. It is scary. I love it. You should hear me sing "Free Fallin'." ' Sarah Schladen, also worried about what we would put in here (please, this is a large circulating periodical, we have no intention of printing the really interesting gossip), tells us, with great trepidation, that she resides in NYC with the new love of her life, Hollis. Hollis is a beagle puppy, by the way, and named in honor of her favorite rap star LL Cool J, born in Hollis, Queens. She writes, 'I proll}Ote cartoons and other licensed features for United Media (the parent company of United Feature Syndicate and The Newspaper Enterprise Associates). The list of syndicated cartoons I work on includes: Peanuts, DilbertandMarmaduke.' Exercising a bit of the Greek ideal, Sarah idled away her summer hours on the tropical beaches of Aruba with her good friend Victoria Prinz. Victoria is currently in Georgia promoting world peace. And to prove that some things never change, Heather Lockhart is still having a good time. She divides that very time between NYC and San Francisco, and is hoping to expand her monthly travel itinerary to include Denver or maybe Dubuque. Sharon Dinitz is doing social work in Harlem and living in Brooklyn. Micah Pharris just married Erin Monberg (A97) - congratulations! They have moved to Carlisle, Pa., where Micah is going to law school. "Out on The Left Coast, we find Zach Rasmuson and Michelle Sitton living in the lush wine country of northern California. They have a dog named Lucky and are fond oflong walks and lazy afternoons. Gwen Pogrowski is learning to blow glass in a small seaside town in that same area. Of course, the honorable F. T. Moore is also outthatwayin fashionable San Francisco working for a financial firm and getting up at the crack of dawn each day to do it. Even though he has yet to follow the advice of his classmates and run for mayor, from his 29th floor office he likes to pretend that he is lord and master of the denizens of the city that he now calls home. That is really all we have for now. We take no responsibility for this information, it seemed true and reliable when we heard it, but you never know. Hope to hear from you soon, especially ifyou weren't men- tioned above." Alumni and friends from the Class of '92 stake out a spot under the trees on the soccer field to catch up with each other during the 1997 Homecoming in Santa Fe this summer. More than 160 alumni and their families returned to campus for Homecoming this year, 1997 the largest Homecoming Weekend the Santa Fe cam· pus hos had. The weekend provides alumni with on opportunity to see old friends and to participate in some traditional Johnny activities including attending a seminar and going to a waltz party. The 1998 Homecoming Weekend is scheduled for June 19, 20 and 21. All alumni are welcome to come back to campus and special activities are being planned for those in the "five-year" reunion classes of 1968, 1973, 1978, 1983, 1988 and 1993. For more information on Homecoming Weekend, contact the alumni office at 505-984-6103. �BITUARIES 996 Lucille Elleanore Ward (AGI) and Carl Martin Salker were married in May 1997· They are living in Athens, Ga., where Marty is studying for his Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Georgia. Lucille is a grant writer at the university. 97 Alexa Van Dalsem (SF) married Michael Behmer on June 7, 1997, at Woodside Priory Chapel in Portola Valley, Calif. Alexa and Michael are living in Huntsville, Ala. El In addition to his wife, Heloise, he is survived by seven children and their spouses - Matthew, A73, and Patricia Frame, A10; Margaret, A14, and Russ Lipton, A13; James Jr., A83, and Kate Frame; Shannah, A19, and Dennis Whitney; Martha and Eugene Lynch; David, A85, and Clara Frame; and Ruth, A87, and Michael Zinkievich - and 20 grandchildren. Donations' may be made for the establishment of a scholarship fund for children of Delaware County to attend St. John's College. Donations should be made payable to St. John's College and should be sent to the family at RD l, Box 537, West Kortright Church Road, East Meredith, NY 13757· EDWARD MYERS Class oh974 HENRY D. BRAUN Class of 1959 Henry Braun, class ofI959, died in Lewes, Del., on July 4, 1997. Born in St. Louis, he served in the Navy during the Korean War. After St. John's, he graduated from the School of Social Work of the University of Maryland. He was a regional supervisor in the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services until he retired in 1987. Survivors include his wife, Marianne Braun; a daughter, a son, his mother, one grandson, and two sisters. JAMES H. FRAME Class oh950 James H. "Jim" Frame, 69, died on Oct. 4 at his home in East Meredith, N.Y., following a brief illness. Frame was a member of the college's Board of Visitors and Governors for 15 years and served as its chairman from 1986 to 1988. After earning his degree from St. John's, Frame took graduate courses in the classics at Harvard University. He was a lSt lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps and served in the Marines during the Korean War. Following his military service, he worked at IBM in computer programming for 22 years. In 1978, he took a position with ITT in New York City as the firm's corporate vice president of programming. In 1985, he formed his own company, James Frame Enterprises Inc., serving as a consultant in large computer programming systems. Edward Myers, class of 1974, died Sept. 8 in Albuquerque, N.M. Myers was diagnosed with myelogenous leukemia in 1995 and he also suffered from other serious ailments. He had been in contact with many St. John's friends who found out about his illnesses on the Johnny . net. Last year he said, "I have received tremendous support, both emotional and financial, from my compatriots at St. John's. Some of the people I've heard from I haven't seen in 20 years." Fellow St. John's graduates even helped line up practical support about where to stay and how to make arrangements in Seattle, where Myers considered undergoing a bone marrow transplant. After graduating from St. John's, Myers earned a second bachelor's degree in journalism from George Washington University. He then enrolled in law school at the University of Pittsburgh, in his hometown. He worked in Erie, Pa., for legal services before moving to New Mexico in 1982 and going into private practice in 1992. He worked in Albuquerque until becoming disabled by his illness. In a memorial written on the day of his death, St. John's friend Howard Meister, A15, wrote on the Johnny net: "Ed loved to laugh, but above all, Ed loved to make others laugh. He was the single funniest human I have ever known. His humor was his shield and his continual gift to us." Myers is survived by his wife, Faith. Classmate Wesley SasakiUemura, A14, suggests that contri- butions in Myers' name be sent to the Morris Animal Foundation, 45 Inverness Drive East, Englewood, CO 8on2. CHARLES ELZEY Former Treasurer Charles Tull Elzey, the treasurer of St. John's for 22 years, died in July in Baltimore. Elzey was born in Baltimore, where he graduated from City College. He attended Johns Hopkins University until he enlisted in the Army Air Corps in 1942. He received his wings in 1944· Elzey entered the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in 1949· He later received his master's degree from George Washington University. He established the Admiral Laundry and Dry Cleaners Inc., in Annapolis, which he owned and operated for seven years. In 1960 he became the treasurer at St. John's. In 1983 he became financial officer of the newly established Johns Hopkins School of Nursing apd remained there until his retirement in 1990. . . Survivors :lnclu'de his wifo, Lillian Wotzbacher Elzey, one son, one daughter, and three grandchildren. NOTED: DAVID R. CROWLEY JR., 1928 DR. RICHARD VERNER HAUVER, 1928 DR. RICHARD COMEGYS, 1929 A THANK YOU TO THE COLLEGE COMMUNITY Isabel Archuleta, the widow of Delmo Archuleta, would like to thank everyone in the St. John's College community for their gifts, money, and letters of sympathy. The memories that have been shared with her have helped her through the months since her husband's death and she greatly appreciates the outpouring of support from the college, its alumni and Delmo's friends. Ill BEHIND/SCENES CONT. FROM PAGE 13 20 lessons; three readings -from Plato's Meno, Aristotle's Physics, and Aristotle's Ethics; four appendices phonology, word formation, morphology, and syntax; and two vocabulary lists """'.Creek-English and EnglishGreek; two indices - syntactical and· morphological. A Price for Every Pocketbook Bookstore manager Anne Pantalone, A89, says that the least expensive item in the store is an envelope, which costs only two cents. "There's no excuse for not writing home. We supply pencils, paper and stamps. We will even mail the letter from the store," she says. Atthe opposite end of the bookstore "expense-o-meter" is the Liddell Scott Greek Lexicon, priced at $125. TILGHMAN B. PRICE, 1933 JAMES P. BRADLEY, 1936 CHARLES W. ELGIN SR., 1936 WILLIAM T. ROSS, 1938 STANLEY A. WILKINSON, 1938 CHARLES H. MESSICK, 1947 HARRY W. SIPPLE, A65 NANCY EILEEN KAMER OW, A16 JERI LEA HOOKS, A84 ELAINE ELLIOTT, former administrative assistant in the Dean's Office in Santa Fe Bl The Flowers That Bloom in the Fall College horticulturist Blythe Woods says that the following flora brightened the campus this fall: abelia ("Bees love it," says Woods), asclepias tuberosa ("Butterflies love it."), Brazilian verbena, eupatorium (mist flower), flamingo feathers, geraniums, heliotrope, hibiscus, impatiens, lithrum, petunias, plumbago, roses (taboo, pristine, all-American beauty, dainty Bess), Russian sage (Perovskia), vinca and vitex. Index from Iglehart Hall Athletic Director Leo Pickens, A19, gears up for the fall season by ordering 240 team T-shirts and schedules no athletic events. The question he is asked least frequently: "Do you have an equestrian team?" The question he is asked ad nauseam: "Do you have a swimming pool?" Bl �SANTA FE WELCOMES ITS c LARGEST F SH '"d 'Ci! ~ ~ ell -1-1 rfJ ~ rfJ ~ ~-- BY CAROLINE KNAPP, SFOO 0 <l,) I:) ~ i:S E-- 0 Cfl ~ = rfJ ;::i 0 ...... 0 ~ 'Cil U H = ...... 0 ell ~ = ~ ~ 0 ~ ~ = = Q s d ell >;;;; - Q) I:'-> 00 0 u ~ ·~ 0 u l/') Q) ~ <l,) bD .... ~ '5 ~ u ~ :>-,oOv ,..0 '"d Q.) .s z r.n s u ~= ~,;::: ct: u CJ'} ~ - 0 E-- u ~ ~ ~ 0 u ~ CJ'} CJ'} Q.) ~ ~ ~-2,o~ ""§ ~ c.o § p.. ~ z CJ'} 0 :;a sentiment when the news announced in the spring on the Santa Fe campus that I42 freshmen would be matriculating in the fall may be summarized in three words: It's an invasion! However, the arrival of St. John's largest freshman class of the New Program was something more of a groundswell than a tidal wave - of applications, of entering students, and of good will in helping to assimilate the new group into the college community. By the end oflast year, the Santa Fe campus was facing a serious downturn in enrollment. The class oh998 had only 68 members, and total undergraduate enrollment had fallen to 350. However, in the Admissions Office, the news was more positive. Last year both campuses received a record number of applications for this fall, and Santa Fe alone had almost two hundred submissions. Natalie Arnold, SF94 and an admissions counselor, attributes the swell in to several factors. She, Kirk ::-irrwtneirs and Kim Rascon, SGI96, had been covering their respective territories for some time, and had developed valuable contacts with high schools and guidance counselors. The increased of alumni in the admission process was also a major advantage. Santa Fe has been TEMPORARY TATTOOS Showing their true SJ( spirit are tutors Robert Goldberg and Adam Schulman, who acquired special powers when they had the college "books and balance" seal tattooed on their biceps. Actually, the tattoos are temporary, and they were only available during Homecoming in Annapolis, held on Sept. 26, 27 and 28. In addition lo being wise in the ways of Euclid and Heidegger, the tutors found they could arm wrestle for hours in the Coffee Shop after donning the lattoos. An ambitious Homecoming schedule of events allracted hundreds of alumni to campus, where, in addition to receiving tattoos, they ollended seminars; danced in the Great Hall; dedicated the Barr-Buchanan Center; listened lo Harold Anderson, A72, lalk about jazz; enjoyed programs about the history of the college; and caught up on friendships. look for the full story in the winter issue of The Reporter. working more closely with alumni admission volunteers, who talk to prospective students about the college, come to college fairs, and otherwise promote the college in their hometowns. Lastly, Arnold notes that prospective students seem deeply impressed by the genuineness of the approach to admissions. In the cutthroat world of student recruiting, most liberal arts colleges are scrambling to distinguish themselves from the crowd. The St. John's approach is a contrast: "We aren't slick and students appreciate that ... We haven't ever compromised our image, and our message is consistent," Arnold says. Although this freshman class in Santa Fe is larger than most, there are few qualitative differences. The same percentage of students was admitted as in previous years, roughly 75 percent. Most of the students once again came from California, Colorado and New Mexico. They are slightly younger than previous classes, and 25 of them have done some college work before comine.- to St. John's. the class did slightly earlier than in the past, and there was an increase in the number of students who came after having had direct contact with a St. John's representative. The freshman orientation program, "Homilia," continued the emphasis on the uniqueness of education at St. John's. Matt Johnston, SF98, the freshman orientation director, explains that he realized while planning the program, and later after the freshmen arrived, that "no one comes here being a good student in the St. John's sense ... butwe cater to people who want to be." Accordingly, his attitude in designing the program was to help the incoming freshmen prepare themselves to live and study at St. John's. To prepare themselves for this task, the resident assistants arrived three days before the freshmen and spent that time training in communication techniques, planning activities for the freshmen, and coming to an understanding of their function within the community. In a new addition to the orientation program, the group went to the Santa Fe Mountain Center, where they played games, climbed through a ropes course, and did the "trust fall." Santa Fe's new assistant dean, Basia Miller, participated in the entire resident assistant orientation program, including the ropes course and trust fall. Once the freshmen arrived, they were put through the paces with a mock seminar on Stringfellow Barr's "Notes on Dialogue," and meetings with important staff members and resident assistants. In one new addition to the program, they also held seminar-style discussions prompted by different scenarios of community life, from roommate disputes to date rape. The scenarios, written by a faculty-staff-student task force on perceptions and boundaries, were designed to acquaint students with the difficulties of communal life before they arose. The program culminated in Community Day, which was held on Saturdaywhen nearly all of the rest of the school had arrived. Organized by head gardener Patrick McCue, SGI83, Arnold and Johnston, all the students joined forces to sweep out the gravel beds in the upper dorm area, and to prune bushes, mulch plants, and build a much needed path benveen the suites and main campus. After the intense first week. the freshmen how easily that assimilation has been. Certainly, the sheer size of the group posed some logistical lems for staff members. Jones which normally would have housed freshmen, is still being reconstructed from the fire last spring. This forced housing director Kathy Mizrahi to put two students in the undivided doubles in Kirby and Murchison - an option that had not been exercised in at least four years. For Registrar Diane Martinez, the biggest crush came during registration, when the photography equipment broke down and she was left with I42 freshmen and no way to take their pictures. Tutor meetings for freshman classes are now rather crowded, as there are nine sections of both language and math. The Student Activities Office faced a minor crisis during the first two weeks of class trying to arrange transportation for the conifer specimen trip for lab class. SAO ultimately ended up renting a mini-van and a Dodge suburban for two days to accommodate the group. But quantitative data aside, the class seems to h:ive settled right into place within the community. CONTINUED ON PAGE 13 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The St. John's Reporter</em> Description An account of the resource College newspaper which started publication in 1974. Continued publication into 2000. Includes primarily historical content.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The St. John's Reporter" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=35">Items in <em>The St. John's Reporter</em></a></strong> <span>to view and sort all items in the collection.</span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 24 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context vol 24 issue 1 fall 1997 Title A name given to the resource Reporter, Volume 24 Issue 1 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997-10 Description An account of the resource Volume 24, Issue 1 of The St. John's Reporter. Published in Fall 1997. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Public Relations Office Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Goyette, Barbara (editor) Skewes, Elizabeth (editor) Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf The Reporter https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/09ce5b5521144890dc8bfc5f877cef13.pdf e84a31fdddae18d04efc8a0f5dc6deaa PDF Text Text ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE LIBRARY \Ill~IIII l\"~\i~ll~\~I~IllII~Il m 31696 011381512 _[\ S!JOHN'S COLLEGE ANNAPOLIS •SANTA FE BREAKING THE COLOR BARRIER How St. John's College chose to desegregate 50 years ago ............. 14 HOMECOMING '97 Annapolis events included somefor everyone ...................... 12 BACK. Santa Fe students bake bread and clear trails in their community service efforts ............................... 9 THE TUITION SPIRAL Why does it cost so much to send a studentto St. John's today? ......... IO RTMEN S From the Bell Towers: The new Barr-Buchanan Center; ping-pong highlights; Hector Humphreys looks at stars; new tutors ............... 2 Scholarship: Andre Barbera on masteryvs. amateurism; David Bolo.tin's new book on Aristotle; William Darkey review of Stringfellow Barr........................ .6 Alumni Profiles: AJefferson V\;.l!I.. i:ll.ill, all 20,28 l.;llllflJmS Life: lo.n.n<> ... ~u,..1-..,, ............. ters, mini-book reviews ............... 16 GE.ITING STRAIGHT WITH BARR AND _ Port-»40s alumni BUCU.AN.AN~ the New lbll'rnarnm wonder which is which. ~tr·1nate11ow was the president. The more soberly dressed Scott Buchanan. had red hair and wore green suits. He on the right. was dean. Photo by Keith Harvey. �Frotn the Bell Towers ... BARR-BUCHANAN CENTER A new home/or the Graduate Institute, space/or student activities buildingwas opened for classes at the beginning of the second semester in January. Named in honor of the first president and dean of the college undertheNewProgram, the remodeled building will serve as a center for the Graduate Institute and for student activities. Administrative offices were built in what was formerly the lobby; the reading room on the first floor is now used as a common room; upstairs, there's the King William Room, which has been refurbished. a seminar room. and a robing room (for senior orals) and conference room. The lower levels contain several classrooms, T he building formerly known as Woodward Hall-or to Johnnies since Igoo, the library-was rededicated at Homecoming in Annapolis as the Barr-Buchanan Center. In 1996 the new, larger Greenfield Library-was completed across campus, and in 1997 a $z, million remodeling began on the vacant old library building. Finally, after many construction delays mostly related to the presence of water under the foundation, the student activity offices, tutor offices, and a student computer center with 15 stations. From their earliest days in Annapolis, Barr and Buchanan led adult seminars for members of the community-they were dedicated to the ideals of continuing education fo:r adults as well as to the radical notion of non-departmentalized undergradate liberal education. Alumni from the decade of the 1940s raised funds during the Campaign for Our Fourth Century to create a lasting tribute to Barr and Buchanan. Significant support from Graduate Institute alumni also contributed to the effort. • Charles Van Doren. A41. gave the dedication Chris Nelson and Graduate Institute director Tom May at Now open. the Barr-Buchanan Center :'1 provides four much-needed ~ w ~ z seminar rooms, including the § ~ King Willlam Room AT HOME IN THE WORLD OF BOOKS ~ ~ w ~ ~ Robin Dunn (lefr) and Rich Schmidt (A96), his assistant, survey their domain In the bookstore. I n Ig72, Robin Dunn began working in a university bookstore. In 1997, he became the manager of the St. John's bookstore in Annapolis. "I've come full circle. It's been 25 years since I first began to do exactlywhatl'm doing now," he says. Since his early days at the university bookstore in his native Scotland, Dunn has remained in the world of books, eventually becomdirector of Element, a publishing company in England, which specializes in works on spiritual matters, eastern religion, and psychology. While he enjoyed his wo:rkand was proud of it, after I I years some aspects began to wear on him. "I didn't like waking up at 5 a.m. and. worrying aboutwhethe:r some guy,fo Australia was going to give me an · · order that day. One time I actually flew to Australia to get an order. Of course, I was single at the time, and I liked living out of a suitcase." But when Dunn turned 40, he spent his birthday in Kenya. While on safari he found himself thinking, "this is just too much like real lifelife at home doesn't seem right." He was ready for a change. "At the time, I was hitched up with an American girl, and we decided to staytogether. But coming to the U.S. for weekends gets old," he says. Three weeks later, he moved to the United States, got married, became a resident alien, and got his green card "which is actually, pink," he notes. Dunn and his wife, Cathi MacRae, settled in Colorado, where he worked at The Boulder Bookstore, before moving to Annapolis last April. Dunn's association with the CC>;llege began when he visited the bookstore this past November and casually asked assistant manager Taylor Waters if there were any jobs available. Waters mentioned that, in fact, the college was looking for a bookstore manager. Dunn was hired soon after. In addition to managing the bookstore, Dunn is a commercial aviation historian, writing articles for aviation journals and magazines. He's also written two novels: The Last Balloon and Rivers ofthe Sahara, which he (jokingly) describes as "drearypsychological sagas about miserable people." As for life at the college, Dunn calls the bookstore job one of the most congenial he's ever had. "Everybody is extremely friendly and helpful," he says. "Because the bookstore is so well integrated with the college, and because it has a history of good relations with the tutors and the students, it is a very pleasant place to work." • -bySus3anBorden �FroID the Bell Towers ... A TALE OF TWO . . . . . . . .PADDLES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . .. . Santa Fe students take ping-pong to a competitive high by Caroline Knapp, SF 00 I nformal athletic competition on the Santa Fe campus generally extends no farther than groups ofhack.y-sackers in front of the fish pond, or the spring craze for foursquare. But this fall, students were engaged in a competition of a pitched fervor that was almost, well, Annapolitan. For a competition that lasted from September to January and had at least two dozen entrants, its scope was remarkably limited. All those fierce egos and bright minds clashed over an area scv-cely half as large as a seminar table-a ping-pong table. The tournament was the brainchild of sophomores Lance Kirmeyer and Alan Rubenstein. Rubenstein, who spent his first year in Annapolis, was possibly inspired by the martial tradition of the croquetwars. Kirmeye:r, amembe:r of the Search and Rescue Team, was doubtless influenced by hours spent trekking through the snowy woods, searching for a hiker far from the comforts of civilization: food, shelter, a good reading light and ping-pong. Both cite the example of student activities director Mark St. John, who is something of a local legend for his ping-pong prowess. In fact, Kirmeyer and Rubens~ein first applied to St. John for aid after r Andrei Israel. left, and Allan Rubenstein square off for championship ping-Pong matches. the idea for the tournament struck them one night in early September. Original plans included a demonstration game by St. John and a table tennis Olympian from Albuquerque in the Great Hall before the championship. In the months between Kirmeyer and Rubenstein• s illumination and that championship, the common room of the lower dorms became a constant battleground of wits and wrists as the contestants played themselves and their friends in games that often took place long after the rest of the campus was asleep. There are no official records available, but anecdotal evidence suggests that sales at the common room soda machine at least tripled during this period, as contenders poured libations to the ping-pong gods. As the list of competitors slowly narrowed, spectators began to gather to watch the play-off games. With junior Ming Fu barred from competition for being so good as to discourage competition, a list of persistent favorites for the title began to emerge. Freshmen Tona Pellizzi and Andrei Maciag both excelled, as did sophomores Ben Shook and Andrei Israel. The field was entirely male, which prompted some to, biting remarks about the correlation between the Y-chromosome and the ability to take pingpong seriously. Still, spirits were high in the common room as the tournament entered the final stages. Though all concerned had hoped to wrap up the tournament before the winter~ vacation, scheduling problems interfered. A second blowwa:s suffered when the organizers were unable to secure the Great Hall for the final match, because it was then being occupied by the Board of Visitors and Governors (prompting some to remark about where the college's real priorities were). So at last the few faithful gathered in the lower dorm's common room to watch the final match between Pellizzi and Maciag. Though competition had been on hiatus for a month, neither competitor had lost his edge, and in a superb match Pellizzi defeated Maciag by a narrow margin. After a period of such fine sportsmanship, campus table tennis enthusiasts are understandably feeling post-tablum depression. The lower common room is generally empty at night now, and the few games that do take place do not have their former excitement. However, they need not despair. Plans are now being made to lobby for the addition of a ping-pong wing to the proposed Student Activities Center. 8 0 THE X· FILES OF SIC HECTOR HUMPHREYS, CELESTIAL OBSERVER S t. John• s prides itself on not being a prestigious research institution-no defense contracts, no high-profile research studies gobbling money away from undergraduate teaching, no bigname professors who never appear in a classroom. But there was a time, long, long ago, when the president of the college (who bore the title "principal"), Hector Humphreys-, contributed significantly to an ongoing scientific study. In November of I833, people all around the country observed a meteor shower that appeared to radiate from the constellation Leo. Newspapers carried accounts of the phenomenon, and mathematicians and astronomers worked to explain it. In a new book, The Heavens on Fire: The Great Leonid Meteor Storms, to be published next summer by Cambridge University Press, Mark Littmann, a professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. describes the quest to understand the event. Littmann says that Hector Humphreys contributed to the research with his "observation and wise interpretation of the epic meteor shower." Humphreys' wife Marie awakened him just before dawn on November I3, I833, because she thought there was a fire-through the window, she could see that the skywas bright with sparks. Humphreys rushed outside, saw that a celestial event of great importance and mysterywas underway, and spent the time until daylight watching the meteor shower. Later that day he wrote down his observations, which were published in the Annapolis Republican. When he read that Denison Olmsted, a professor at Yale, was collecting accounts of the shower, he sent him a copy. Humphreys wrote of the meteors: "They all appeared to move outward from a common centre, at or near the zenith. At times, they completely filled the whole heavens with beautiful brilliant streams oflight, extendingto the horizon. I do not mean that all the trains actually extended from the zenith to the horizon, but that the lines oflight were so directed that if extended backwards, theywould all converge to a point in the zenith ... "It is said that some of the meteors were seen to fall upon the earth and to rebound into the air. As Hector Humphreys: He outfitted the college's first science lab with lodestones and chemicals brought from Europe. His strong Interest in science came through when he correctly analyzed the causes of the Leonid meteor shower of 1833. no vestiges, however, have been discovered upon the ground, it may be presumed that this was an optical deception ... .I am convinced that [the paths of the meteors] were in the upper and rarer strata of the atmosphere, since optical principles show that in darting away to the horizon, they would appear to descend and to strike into the earth. The usual theory of meteors-that they are caused by inflammable gases high in the atmosphere-does not appear to explain the phenomena. Ifwe admit that the gases are generated and diffused sufficiently to kindle up the whole heavens with light, the combustion of them would not present those innumerable distinct sparks which shot from the region of the zenith with such perfect uniformity of direction. This uniform direction of motion was in fact the most :remarkable point in the whole phenomenon." "Humphreys' observations and his interpretations of them helped lead astronomers to the conclusion that meteors were of celestial rather than atmospheric origin," says Jim Beall, an Annapolis tutor who also happens to be an astrophysicist. "It's really interesting that he thought the meteors were radiating from a central point on the celestial sphere. That's a crucial link to the 'correct' interpretation of the phenomena." Beall says that the current hypothesis about meteor showers is that they are associated with the residue of old comets that have broken up. The comet, even in its disintegrated state, keeps going in its elliptical orbit, which periodically passes within sight of earth. The Leonid showers that Humphreys observed are due again this summer.8 -byBarbara Goyette �Frolll the Bell Towers ... MONEY MATTERS ANNAPOLIS TO WIRE DORMS S t. John's College has received a grant from the Hodson Trust to wire all dormitory rooms on the Annapolis campus for internet access. The grantfor $873,857.50 also includes funds for an endowment to support technology at the college. "Without this grant, it would have been several years before we could have completed the wiring," says Chris Nelson, president in Annapolis. The Hodson Trust, established more than 75 years ago to support higher education in Maryland,c awarded $6.6 million to four private colleges this year. The money went to The Johns Hopkins University, Washington College, Hood College, and St. John's College. The schools have earmarketl the funds for student scholarships and large capital improvements. The trust was established in 19:.2.0 by Col. Clarence Hodson, founder and president of the Beneficial Corporation, in honor ofhis father's interest in education. Since then, the Hodson Trust has given more than $77 million to fund academic scholarships, research grants, campus building improvements. computer network upgrades, endowment funds and library improvements at the four Maryland schools. The private trust holds Beneficial Corporation stock as an investment, and uses the earnings from that stock and other investments to fund educational programs. The Hodson Trust and the Beneficial Corporation also provide St. John's College with scholarship endowments that support student financial aid. Other projects on campus made possible by Hodson funds include the Beneficial Hodson Boathouse, the computer system in the Greenfield Library, and the new student computer lab in the BarrBuchanan Center.• $1 MILLION FOR AID T he Annapolis campus has received a $1 million grant from The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation. The money will go to establish an endowment for student financial aid. Each year, beginning next September, four students will receive a Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Scholarship. The foundation was established according to the will of the late American artist Joseph Cornell. The college is able to continue to offer financial aid to students based on need because of the generosity of individuals, corportations, and foundations. • SF ACTIVITIES CENTER CLOSE T he Santa Fe campus has received a $500,000 challenge grant from The Kresge Foundation for the student activities center. The grant, along with nearly $400,000 in gifts from friends of the college, brings the total to $2..8 million in giftsforthefirstphase of the $3·75 million project.In addition to the Kresge grant, the college has received a gift of $250,000 from Paul Tierney, a member of the Board of Visitors and Governors, and $60,000 from the M.A. Healy Foundation.In order to receive The Kresge Foundation grant, the college must complete fundraising for the first phase by June l, 1999· Santa Fe President John Agresto says the college hopes to break ground on the center in late spring, but that may be delayed due to the permitting process. The college is seeking a zoning variance from the city to build on a site near the tennis courts and soccer field. The first phase of the center, which includes a gymnasium, fitness room, two squash/racquetball courts, the Student Activities Office, an equipment storage area, locker rooms, and a plaza, should be ready for use by the fall 1999 semester. 9 The Little Campus-home of memories. We ask alumni of Annapolis: how often did you imitate the Persians by reliving a sobering seminar there? Where did your best college conversations take place? When the going got tough. did the tough go to the LC? 39 of those who spent their formative years trekking to Maryland Avenue to the Little Campus gathered there again in December for an Annapolis Alumni Chapter event dubbed "LC Nostalgia Night. n Alumni from all eras (pictured above are Jack Ladd Carr, •so» and his wife Lois with Peter Whipple, '50, and Michael Brown. •s I) partook of Angy's Howard Greek Buffet; listene.d to Abe Schoener; A82, and tutor Sarkissian offer toasts; and Director Roberta and As Alumni dlehard LC 11'11111oulnll' remembered those and ;;,wn.uu•"· and that hardly lasted the weekend•., I N THINKING TO FUNDRAISING A t the first meeting ofNADEC, J-1.rhe National Alumni Development Executive Committee, in Annapolis in October, alumni representing both campuses, all decades of the college, and all regions of the country gathered to brainstorm about how they feel about St. John's. Why would a committee formed to promote giving among alumni first talk about "feelings"? "We asked the group to think about making the most compelling case for support, the most persuasive arguments for their fellow alumni," says Jeff Bishop, vice president in Annapolis. Ideas about the emotional as well as the intellectual link with the college that alumni feel - or don't feel followed from the opening question. The group of about 25 alumni then discussed communication, and offered suggestions about how the college can communicate with alumni to strengthen their connection with the college. The aim of communications efforts is to give alumni a greater awareness of the college and thus develop a sense of responsibility for it. NADEC members brought up the question of how St. John's might talk about the "careers" issue: is the program a preparation for one's chosen life's work, or is it an end in itself? NADEC was formed as a subcommittee of the Development Committee of the Board of Visitors and Governors. Altogether 35 alumni are currently members; some are active in the Alumni Association, others served as class leaders during the Campaign for Our Fourth Century, others have not been deeply involved with the college. Ray Cave, A.48, chairman of the Board of Visitors and Governors, told the committee that theywere chosen to "bring fresh thinking to how we organize alumni for fundraising." The ultimate goal of the committee, he said, is to transfer some of the responsibility for alumni fundraising directly onto alumni. At St. John's, says Bishop, alumni fundraising has always been staff-driven. During the campaign, a class agent system was put into place, which helped personalize as well as organize alumni fundraising. As a measure of the system's success, Bishop points out that of the $35 million raised during the five-year campaign, $20 million came from alumni, and more than 50% of alumni participated, a significant increase over previous involvement. NADEC members are busy putting pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, and are sending Bishop ideas about communication to help the college figure out better ways to tell alumni what it is doing and why, so that it can build its case more strongly. Their next task is to identify 200 more alumni to join the National Alumni Development Committee, who will then be responsible for trying to increase alumni giving to the college.• The Reporter (USPS 018-750) is published in January and July by the Public: Relations Office, St. John's College, Annapolis, MD, and in April and October by the Alumni Office, St. john's College, Santa Fe, NM. Known office of publication: Public: Relations Office, St. John's College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD l 14M·l800. Annapolis: Barbara Goyette, editor; Sus3an Borden, writer; Roberta Gable, John Christensen, Pamela Kraus, Benjamin Milner, Brother Robert: Smith, Harvey Flaumenhaft, advisory board. Santa Fe: Elizabeth Skewes, editor; Usa Donenfeld, art director. Periodicals postage paid at Annapolis, MD, and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Reporter, St. John's College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800. �Froin the Bell Towers ... NEW TUTORS IN ANNAPOLIS S even tutors have joined the faculty in Annapolis this year. Four are new to the college and two transferred from Santa Fe. Michael Grenke received his BA from the University of Chicago and his PhD from Boston College, both in political science. His dissertation was titled Nothing is True, Not $verything is Permitted: A Study of Nietzsche :S- Opinion ofHistorical Political Leaders and the Order of Rank. Nietzsche held a number of famous historical political leaders in "surprisingly high esteem," says Grenke. He used Nietzsche's opinions of these leaders as a wayto examine the status and place of politics and political leadersh~p. Before coming to St. John's, Grenke taught at Michigan State University, Boston College, and the University of New Hampshire. Stephen Larsen studied history at Pomona College and at Princeton, where he earned an MA and expects to complete his PhD this year, with a concentration in modern European Intellectual History. His dissertation is titled Platonism and the Human Sciences in the Age of German Idealism. Larsen also studied at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and the College International de Philosophie, both in Paris. He was a lecturer in history at Princeton. Paul Ludwig studied for his doctorate at the University of Chicago, with the Committee on Social Thought and the department of classics. His BA is from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in mathematics and English, and his MA is from Oxford University in English and modem languages. Ludwig's dissertation is titledEros andAmbition in Greek Political Thought. "A feature of the political psychology of both Plato and Thucydides is their use of erotic terminology to describe ambition for office, tyranny and foreign conquest," he says. Using the Symposium and the political satire of Aristophanes, Ludwig developed a theory of "politicized eros." He has been a lecturer and teaching assistant at the University of Chicago. He was awarded a Bradley Foundation Fellowship, a John M. Olin Fellowship, and a Rhodes Scholarship. Susan Paalman received her PhD in biophysics from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Her BA is from Rice University, where she studied biochemistry and biology. Her thesis research examined the binding and reaction properties of a DNA repair protein, methylguanine methyltransferase. Paalman taught graduate student classes and seminars at Johns Hopkins, and she volunteers at the Maryland Science Center doing informal presentations and handling unusual animals. She is an editor for Genomics, a scientific peer-reviewed journal focusing on the human genome and genetic diseases. Mark Lutz joined the faculty for the second semester. He has a BA from the University of Chicago, and an MA and PhD from the University of Toronto, all in political science. His thesis was titled The Erotic Dimension ofPolitical Psychology: Plato :S Symposium. Lutz has taught at Notre Dame, Hiram College, and the University of Toronto. Santa Fe tutors Margaret Kirby and Joan Silver have joined the Annapolis faculty. Kirby has taught at Santa Fe since Iggo. She received her doctorate in German literature from the University of Toronto, where her dissertation was titled The Concept ofTatigkeit in Goethe's Later Writings. Her BAand MA were from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and her MLitt was in German literature from Oxford University. Before St. John's, Kirby taught at Dalhousie University and at the University of Toronto. Joan Silver has been a tutor in Santa Fe since Ig8g. She's also taught in the Integral Program at St. Mary's College. She received her BA from the State UniversityofNew York, College at Old Westbury, and her MA from St. John's, where her thesis was titled Hegel and God: Philosophy, Religion and the 'World. ' Her doctorate in I993 was in theology and the arts from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley; she looked in particular at the role of the fool in spiritual life. From Ig85 to Ig87 she performed as Bernice, a clown in the tradition of the village and holy fools, at schools, churches, Buddhist centers, libraries, colleges, and universities. e FACULTY NEWS Wilson wins astronomy award Curtis Wilson, tutor emeritus in Annapolis, has been named the first recipient of a prize honoring the late LeRoy E. Doggett, former head of the Nautical Almanac Office of the Naval Observatory in Washington. The award was made by the Historical Astronomy Division of the American Astronomical Society to recognize distinguished works and writers in the history of astronomy. It was given atthe annual meeting of the society in January in Washington during a special symposium honoring Doggett's life and scholarship. Wilson gave a talk titled "On Bradley and Lacaille: Praxis as Passionate Pursuit of Exact Science," dealing with two I8thcentury astronomers who did the most to make astronomy of the solar system accurate to arcseconds. In selecting Wilson, HAD said: "Professor Wilson is cited for his decades of rigorous and exemplary work in the history of I 8th and Igth century celestial mechanics, for his editorship and original contributions to Curtis Wilson visited with Stuart ... the General History of Boyd, a retired Santa Fe tutor, on a recent Astronomy, and for the visit to Scotland. generations of students he taught and inspired through the reading and study of the works of Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton ... " Berns drguesfor appreciation offoundingfathers Laurence Berns, tutor in Annapolis, has published a chapter in the most recent edition of Great Ideas Today: Reconsiderations ofGreat Books and Ideas, published by Encyclopedia Britannica. His selection is titled "Our Political Situation: Good Government, Self-government, and American Democracy." He argues that the promise of American democracy "has not lost its luster, despite widely publicized misgivings about its directions and coherence ... The illusion of great progress in matters psychological, social, and political has .. .led to a serious failure to appreciate the subtlety and depth of the political thought of the American founders. Important misgivings about the American way of politics, some justified, some unjustified" can be traced to this failure. New book collects works by Eva Brann The St. John's Press has released a new book by tutor and former dean Eva Brann. Titled The Past Present: Selected Writings ofEva Brann, the volume includes essays, speeches, articles, and lectures on the following subjects: Prose and Poetry, Philosophical Texts and Subjects, Political Texts and Subjects, Current Issues, the College Community, and reviews of books and movies. Alumni and other friends of the college who want to know what one of the most insightful minds they've ever encountered thinks about the Odyssey, Kant's imperative, multiculturalism, or Patrick 0 'Brian can order a copy from the Bookstore (4rn-foi6-2540) for $I9.95 plus shipping. Areviewwill appear in a future issue of the Reporter. Elliott Zuckerman presents talk at the piano on Schubert and Chopin to benefit Caritas Society I ~ Annapolis tutor emeritus Elliott Zuckerman presented "Music by the Yard: Streams, Spinning Wheels, and Organ Grinders," a talk at the piano about Schubert and Chopin, on February I. The talk was a benefit for the Caritas Society of St. John's College, an organization that provides funds for students of the college who encounter emergency financial problems. Zuckerman illustrated his talk with his own piano accompaniment. In typical Zuckerman style, he charmed the audience of I20 with his comments like: "this is a note of great mystery, which leads to religion," and by his playing of Chopin toward the end of the program. Shown in the photo at left is Zuckerman with tutor Howard Zeiderman, chairman of the event. �Scholarship ... NOT. .JUST. .DESSERTS. . .. . . . . . . . . ... . . ... . .. . . . . .. . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . .. .. . . . . . . Does St. John :S- sacrifice masteryfor amateurism and dilettantism? Tutor Andre Barbera weighs the arguments. by Suslan Borden ndre Barbera came to St. John's in Annapolis in Iggo ter teaching music at Cornell University, the University of Notre Dame, and Saint Mary's College in Indiana. Although his teaching slate ranged from courses in medieval music to tutorials in blues, rock, and reggae, jazz has become his primary musical interest. His most recent Friday night lecture, "Birdland: February 2.I, 1954," was about a jazz performance that included saxophonist Lou Donaldson and pianist Horace Silver. The lecture drew heavily on talks that Barbw:a has had with both musicians. Barbera has brought the world of to St. through four other lectures on the He has also contributed to the college's musical life sophomore music five times and freshman chorus twice. But he didn't come to St. for the music program. "The attraction was the mathematics." he engage in mathematics at an amateur level without a chance for I've enjoyed minute of it." Hints of his future at St. can be found on Barbera's resume. His from the of North Carolina at in ammor in his thesis was called "The Persistence of Pythagorean in Ancient Musical " Barbera devoted last summer to a ,...,.,.,.,..,,,.,,.,1- •ATh·•.nh came out of a conjecture he made during a Graduate Institute math tutorial. He speculated (and thinks he has demonstrated) that postulates about parallel lines are interchangeable with postulates about the angular sum of triangles in Euclidean, Lobachevskian, and Riemannian geometries. "I guess I've really acclimated myself to this place if I can squander a whole summer thinking about triangles and parallels," he says. If that's how a tutor spends his summer vacation, you can only wonder what he'll do for his sabbatical year. Barbera found himself wondering about this, and even in late August, he still wasn't certain. His deliberations seemed to hover around his ongoing search for a balance between deed and thought. "The right combination of reflection and action-I'm always tweaking that," says Barbera. "St. John's has given me a great push toward reflection. I'm wondering if I need to move for a period of time more into action. Does that mean playing the piano? The St. Vincent de Paul Society [a charitable organization for which Barbera has volunteered for four years]? I thought at one point that I would continue talkingwith Donaldson and Silver, maybe start compiling interviews, and even get them together to talk about the 1950s and jazz and the 1990s and jazz," he said. "But I haven't done anything in because the more I Caribbean and the Riviera. Although his daughter is currentlyin seventh grade, she'll travel with her parents the whole time. Barbera couches her travels in vague terms of homeschooling before hitting on the proper expression: "This will be her oceanographic year," he says. After his sabbatical, Barbera will return to an environment-the college-that he finds himself ambivalent about. He expresses this ambivalence in terms of two qualities that underlie much of the work at St. John's: amateurism and his classes for signs of mastery, and is often disappointed. "That's not to say that I want us to start introducing drill to take the place of speculation and conversation," he is quick to say. But as much as he applauds St. John's direct and immediate approach to the greatest ideas, he occasionally longs for a level of mastery that will never be a college priority. "I think it was Miss Brann who said that to really be a good tutor here you have to be incapable of being embarrassed," Barbera says. "To be an effective tutor you must let your guard down to allow for the free flow of ideas. Embarrassment in the classroom might arise if a tutor expected himself to be an authority but was then discovered by students to be an impostor. The tutor must be willing to take chances in class, and fear oflosing face will inhibit the taking of risks." This said, Barbera is the first to admit that his longing for mastery sometimes overtakes this understanding of the role of the tutor. 'Tm often embarrassed in the cla.ss1·oom," he says. "I still want to P•Vt:J•Mrthn11 and rd like to be able to answer all of the aw8st1lons. ....."""'.., ............ of course, knows it is imuoss1hle to answer all the questions. He enjoys the college's no:siti.onthat the tutor is the most advanced student in the class and its commitment to requiring all tutors to teach and all students to entire curriculum. Yet he often longs for knowledge that is deep and detailed, even as he enjoys the active learning and intellectual honesty that stem from the tutor's chief-learner status. Barbera recalls a favorite saying of tutor Jon Tuck: "At St. John's, we eat our dessert first." Tuck explains: "In many programs you have to earn your right to talk about important things. You need to serve a kind of annoying apprenticeship. Before you're allowed to discuss what Oedipus the King means in human terms, you have to serve nine years of cleaning pot shards and parsing verbs. Here, we try to talk about the important things right away." While there is a side of Barbera that understands the thrill of knowing your paradigms cold, and that sees how nine years of shard duty can enrich your understanding of Oedipus. he agrees that the eating-dessert-first mentality is part of the best of St. John's. Overall, he is happy to teach at a school where important matters come first. • Cl' ~ iiS ~ Andre Barbera combines his thought the more I that maybe the world doesn't need a book on Donaldson and Silver talking to one another about jazz." As theyeartakes shape, Barbera is moving toward the St. Vincent de Paul Society, where he has agreed to be the president of the Annapolis chapter. "St. Vincent de Paul is about to absorb me entirely," he says. "It will take a lot of work this year, reinvigorating and redirecting the chapter." But all work and no play make a rest-less sabbatical, so Barbera has programmed a strong beach element into his year. He spent September and part of October at the Rehobeth, Delaware, beach with his wife, Mary, and daughter, Erica. Future seaside plans include the . interests In mathematics with a devotion to music. dilettantism. "These two words have developed negative connotations," says Barbera, "but they are at heart positive words indic'ating a love and delight in learning and practice. It seems to me that at St. John's we are amateurs and dilettants in both the positive and negative senses of the words simultaneously." For St. John's, the positive sides of amateurism and dilettantism enable us to enjoy a high level of discussion of the most important subjects without demanding expertise. But on the negative side, he says, "the thrill of achievement is underappreciated at the college in general." Barbera often examines �Scholarship ... SANTAF. . . TUTORAUTHORS.BOOK.ON. ARISTOTLE. . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . .. .. . . . . . .. . . . . .. . . .. . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . David Bolo tin's analysis ofthe Physics shows that Aristotle~ real views ofnature have not been refuted by modern science. avid Bolorin, a St. John's tutor since 1974 and at the Santa Fe campus since 1982, has written a new book on Aristotle's Physics. The book, An Approach to Aristotle :S Physics: With Particular Attention to the Role ofHis Manner of Writing, maintains "that Aristotle's writings about the natural world contain a rhetorical surface as well as a philosophic core," accordingtq the publisher, the State University of New York Press. "To that end, he presents a number of'case studies' to show that Aristotle deliberately misrepresented his views about nature - a thought that was commonly shared by commentators on his work in late antiquity and the middle ages," the publisher continues. "Bolorin demonstrates that Aristotle's real views have not been refuted by modern science and still deserve our most serious attention." An Approach to Aristotle Physics has received glowing reviews from academics across the country. Christopher Bruell of Boston College gives particular praise to the task Bolotin has undertaken. "This remarkable work addresses with an open mind the question of the validity of Aristotle's natural science, in full awareness of the very great obstacles which stand in the way of an informed acceptance of its validity, obstacles stemming both from modern natural science and from the complexities and obscurities of the Aristotelian text itself." The book is available from the publisher for $14.95 in paperback or $44.50 in hardcover. It is carried in the bookstores on both campuses. For more information, call the State it is living in the "Bell Towers," maybe there are bats in their belfry. Request s University of New York Press at 607277-22II or vi.sit the company's web site athttp://www.sunypress.edu.• Letters ... New Wordmark No lmprovement Let .me express my dismay at the recent decision to alter the College's wordmark. The quiet and tasteful simplicity of the traditional design has always drawn me to St. John's, even when I applied to the college twentyyears ago. The new wordmark is jarring and discordant. In case no one has noticed, "ST JOHN'S" is lettered in large case while .. College" is in small case. The Bodoni typeface seems too rigid and commonplace compared with the graceful curves of the traditional word.mark. I am not clear why -S. Buchanan, A82 Notes on Nazism: Metaphors and Intolerance A response to a letter from the fall issue: Though I too would feel enraged to be unjustly treated by feminists in such a manner as John Gorecki described in the Fall '97issue, "Nazi-like repression" is not how I could term such an experience. Though some of us may use the name "Nazi" as a metaphor, as we do so, we should not fail to remember that for many people Nazism was a real-life experience, and for many others, their last. Let us respect metaphors for what they are, and experiences for what are, then even feminists will not have much to be so vociferous about. -Rana ANNAPOLHI • SANTA FE anyone thou!!ht svmbolizin.!! an ,.....,..,.:i,,,,.,..1" ... ... to Luuugmm1, almost handwritten style I still associate with St. I feel somewhat like the child asking aboutthe King's new clothes ... I don't see the wordmark change as an improvement, only a loss. Ifyou have a chance, please pass along these observations to whoever In the fall issue of the states that my was intolerant. This view cannot be sustained as my ar~(U.1ne1ut ~!Vas aga:mst the quality not his right to believe or express it. If all criticism is to be viewed as intolerance, Mr. Gorecki' s criticism is equally intolerant. -Rich Green SF87 Stephen Whitehill, SF72, wonders whether anyone taped the famous presentation of"Trial by Johnny," the spoof staged in 1972 in Annapolis. The library will copy the tape for its archives and return the original. Alumni who have a tape (and can find it) can send it to Kitty Kinzer, the librarian, care of the Greenfield Library, SJC, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404. I was pleased to read the article about the Graduate Institute in the recent Reporter, and I recognized the two people sitting on the couch facing the camera in the cover's lower photo. They both live in Santa Fe. The man on the left is Martinez, who has been retired for 12 years after an active career as teacher, coach official. a successful high school basketball coach at and Taos; he also and served four years on the Santa Fe Commission. The to heme. I attended GI classes while I was information office from to (I think the date for the cover , have been 1971 instead of 1973.) I came to Santa Fe in 1958 as a UPI reporter and was press secretary to Governor Jack Campbell (19631966), who later served on the college's Board of Governors for several years; I have always been grateful for my association with St. John's and the Institute. The students, tutors, staff members and administrators, including President Weigle, were all first-class people, worthy of the great program in which theywere involved. -MauriceE. Trimmer, SGJ(o Because of an awkward line break in the story about the Annapolis Placement Office's web site (Fall 97 issue), the site's address can be interpreted two ways. AB web users know, the internet is unmerciful when it sees a stray fleck of punctuation. The correct address is: www. edu.placejob.html. R~nnrt.i:u• welcomes letters on issues interest to readers. Letters may be edited for under Santa Fe The m D .............+...... Alumni St. U160 Camino Cruz n1am::a, NM 87501 or e-mail eskewes@mail.sjcsf.edu. �Scholarship ... BOOK REVIEW STRINGFELLOW BARRAS TEACHER HISTORIAN, STORYTELLER GIANT SLAYER harles Nels on has just published at the St. John's Press a book entitled Stringfellow Barr, A Centennial Appreciation ofHis Life and Work. 'IWo years ago he published another book entitled Scott Buchanan bearing the same subtitle. Any likely reader will, of course, recognize the two men as the founders in 1937 of the St. John's College "New Program" of liberal education which is still going strong, though in a nation that is still confused about the subject, and seems to think that the Internet may be the answer to the question which has not been asked seriously for many years. The education industry does occasionally acknowledge the existence of St. John's as a persistent survivorin the market, but neither as a competitor nor as a critic. The St. John's community of alumni, students, and faculty; and the large community of friends and admirers of St. John• swill be grateful to Mr. Nelson for giving us these two books. Mr. Barr and Mr. Buchanan are worthy to be remembered not only for what they succeeded in actually doing, but also for putting forward reasoned principles aboutwhyitoughtto be done. Mr. Nelson's method in this second book is to introduce the whole book and each chapter with a brief prefatory chronology and explanatory notes where these are needed. Then follow selections from Barr's own words as drawn from addresses, lectures, radio speeches, letters of correspondence, or quotations his published books. The volume also includes summaries of taped conversations 1nt,f'rv1p111;~ some photographs, memc1rrs oy Jtne:nU;s, students and collle:iLgu.es. In effect this selection constitutes a kind of extended dialogue with Mr. Barr himself, and without intrusion or com~entary by the editor, except, of course, implicitly in Mr. Nelson• s sensitive selections from available documents. The result is highly successful. It is important to realize that these documents are not mere words, and that they had their effects in action. First of all, the college with its curriculum that was invented by Barr and Buchanan has survived and graduated hundreds of students in the past sixtyyears. Probably few readers will remember the extraordinary attempts of first the Annapolis Housing Authority and hard upon this of the U.S. Naval Academy across King George Street to take over the St. John's campus. Both attacks were :repelled under the rigorous and eloquent leadership ofMr. Barr and the Navy promised never to do it again. Nor has it. Few. perhaps, will wish to read the account of this battle-it was very long ago, in the middle of a World War. St. John's was in a very frail health and the maneuvers were complex. Mr. Nelson details the whole engagement, but summarizes it this way: "Winkie got out his sling shot and slew Goliath, whose name was Admiral Ben Morrell ... " This may seem a small victory. But so mayThermopylae. "Throughout his life Mr. Barr displayed a keen and lively interest in government and politics, nl!-:tional and political." He greatly believed in Montesquieu's principle that "a good government should make it possible for its citizens to do what they ought to do, and that it is only by a sound liberal education that the citizens could free their minds to discover what they ought to do." Mr. Barrwaswillingto argue this point publicly in any context. That view, however, was no more popular in 1937 than it is today. Mr. Nelson prints in full a report by President Barr to the Board of Visitors and Governors from May 1941 in which he argues for this view and concludes with Churchillian reasoning: "Tyrants forbid citizens to do their free men. Free governments permit them to do it. Liberal education enables them to do it." A remarkable prE3slC1en1t· But I continue enumeration of how Mr. Nelson's book proceeds. Read it and find out. Anyone who turns from this review to the book itself will surely end up reading it all. But also, almost surely, he will begin at the back and read towards the front. And he will dwell with especial delight in the final pages. Chapter seven, headed "Teacher, Colleague, Friend," is made up of some 24 personal memoirs and letters. These other voices oflove and admiration constitute such a rich variety of individual responses to the impact ofWinkie's person-to his visible, audible, energetic physical presence, to his "style," his wit, his generosity-that anyone who knew him will experience sudden recognition upon hearing episodes unknown to him until now, will respond with "Yes. that is Winkie" or "I didn't know that, but it is certainly he, and certainly true." And he will end with fresh gratitude from having known Winkie and a sudden shaft of sadness that he is gone. In these last memoirs we know that we are not so much at the center ofWinkie's thoughts as at the center of his person. We know, of course, that he could write good histories, that he was a wonderful storyteller, a great giant slayer, an incomparable teacher; that with Scott he got St. John's off the ground. We know all these things and more such. But in the final chapter unforgettably right touches move our hearts with love for the man himself: Mr. Lewis' wonderful memoir ofWinkie' s every night at bedtime carrying a little, very old cocker spaniel named Eliza up a steep flight of stairs to her sleeping place. Of his escorting the two very young Lewis boys, his nephews-to-be, from Aix to London with dog leashes attached to their wrists so as not to lose them. And singing and telling them stories. Mrs. Alice Parker's memoir, in which she tells of Oak and Winkie, the married couple, in a style that cannot be excerpted, except perhaps for her last paragraph- "AJ;, I grow older, the Barrs• unlikely friendship has become increasingly significant for me. Rich accretions and :reverberations have gradually accumulated in my mind. When Winkie Barr was in a room with me, my perceptions, and irh-r,., ur.o-r<> stretched and illuminated. When the Barrs were alive, they were larger than life." Douirlas '' AJ;, a did not isolate, emotionally or the 'slow' student. I often saw him in seminars energize and draw out of Meno's 'slave boy' true recognition and growth." Harvey Poe writes: "Winkie Barr no doubt changed my life. I cannot imagine thadt would have been without his stimulatingno, I should say exhilaratinginfluence during my freshman year at the University ofVirginia long ago." I have heard the very words of Mr. Poe's first sentence from many of Barr's students. Winkie Barr changed my life. I humbly add my _repetition to them. These are only fragments of the first four memoirs of the last chapter. There is so much more. I should conclude with final words of Stringfellow Barr, the teacher. This is the end of his preface to The Mask ofJove: .. I owe thanks for various forms of help in writing this second volume of history ... Finally I must mention the many students I taught over more than fortyyears. Their insights convinced me long years ago that Socrates was right in his apparent assumption that one person can teach another only if he is constantly ready to learn from him and that the condition of teaching is full of intellectual encounter." e Stringfellow Barr: A Centennial Appreciation of his Life and Work is availablefrom the St. John's College Bookstorefor $19.95. Call 410-6262540 to order. Due to an error while the books were_ being bound, some copies ofthe Barr volume sold at Homecoming are defective-thephotographs are too dark. Ifyou received a copy with unrecognizably dark photographs, please return it to the bookstore and they will send you a good copy. The Barr-Buchanan _ Which are true of Scott Buchanan, which of Stringfellow Barr, which of both, and which of neither? Answers on He abolished intercollegiate sports at St.John's. 2. His timely loan saved the Little Campus from financial ruin. 3. He wrote ten books during his life, im~luidin1g a novel Academic. 4. He smoked incessantly. 5. He did not answer mail. 6. He was a Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford. 7. He was assistant director of the People's Institute at Cooper Union. 8. Mark Van Doren said of him, "He is the one man in the world that I simultaneously love and fear." 9. He had red hair. IO. He went to college at the age of 15. I. �A SIMPLE BALANCE .................................................................................... Santa Fe students find giving to the community gives them perspective by Caroline Knapp, SF 00 I n a city crowded with non-profit organizations, St. John's might simply seem out-classed in the bid to contribute substantially to the needs of the Santa Fe community. After all, St. John's is a place of study, an ivory tower where academics can contemplate the great ideas, leaving the day-to-day concerns to town-dwellers. Right? A large number of students are saying no to both of these propositions, and are quietly making a difference in Santa Fe by volunteering the St. John's way. As Student Activities Director Mark St. John, SF82 explains, Johnnies don't volunteer in the ways that most peopfe do. In general, people who wish to donate time or skills to a cause seek out an organization, or wait to be sought out by one. By contrast, "students like to do things on their own," he says. "There are probably a lot more people volunteering than I'll ever know about." In the past, this independent spirit has led students into ventures as diverse as rebuilding dilapidated churches in northern New Mexico, starting a program to deliver food to Santa Fe's homeless, and baking bread for the house-bound. Junior Jimmy Tim Fry takes dinners to homeless people. Junior Erin Jakowski sang opera for a senior center concert. Freshman Noah Ledbetter will spend this summer building houses for Habitat for Humanity in Costa Rica. This list of individual students goes on. More formally, the Student Activities Offices traditionally leads several volunteering efforts. For the past three years, the spring break rafting trip has included working on maintenance or clean-up ofwhatever area the group is in. Working with the Bureau of Land Management and private organizations, the rafters have cleaned petroglyph sites, built trails and bagged trash. The 20 or so students on the trip spend a half or full day of the eightday trip on these 'wilderness cleanup' efforts. In one of the more exciting volunteering options open to students, SAO brings a group to southern New Mexico each year to volunteer at the Candy Kitchen Wolf Refuge. St. John first became acquainted with the group, which rescues wolves improperly kept as pets, when he bought a wolf-dog. For the past two years, groups of 20 students have spent weekends at the refuge, building fencing for the wolves and trails for their human visitors. In addition, SAO spearheads student work with the National Forest Service on the nearby Atalaya Trail. Perhaps most importantly, SAO makes every effort to aid independent volunteering efforts, providing vans and helping to coordinate students, even though school resources to aid these ventures are limited. Students involved in both individual activities and more formal efforts organized by SAO agree that volunteering is a powerful addition to their St. John's education. Sophomore Anne Berven brings meals to the housebound with a local organization called Kitchen even if the Navy never finallywon the campus. They were wrong. but their judgment at the time is hard to fault. No one who can recall those days will forget how powerful the Navywas, a triumphant factor in an immensely popular and successful world war. Winfree Smith's unsympathetic account of this period in his x983 history entitledA Search for the Liberal College is flawed, in my judgment. He was a fine tutor and one of the bright stars in the New Program firmament, but he had no experience, and I think, very little understanding of the responsibilities and burdens of the founding president and dean. He was quick to find their faults-and especially the anger of Buchanan expressed in private letters at the time-while failing to acknowledge their swift recovery and faithfulness to the Search. .. .In "The Dean's Nine-Year Report," issued in Ig46 shortly after Paul Mellon pledged his millions [to found another college similar to St. John's but at another site], Buchanan describes the grand scheme that he and Barr propose to carry out at Stockbridge [Massachusetts] with the gift. He sees that it will be difficult but not impossible. The last words ofhis report are "Nowayis impassable to courage." He puts the words in quotation marks but · doesn't identify the source, which happens to be his translation of the college motto on the old college seal "EstNulla Vialnvia Virtute." But the events which transpired in the year after his report prove that the old motto of the college is false. There are times when courage is not Working with the Bureau ofLand Management and private organizations, the rafters have cleaned petroglyph sites, built trails and bagged trash. Angels. She says thatmeetingthe disabled and aged clients of the 'kitchen' reminds her every time of "what a gift it is to be able to do this thing, to get this education ... what a gift it is to be able to use your mind." One client with a walker showed her his library, two walls full of books. Back on campus, she remembers seeing Meem Library and thinking how "unbelievably gifted and lucky we all are." Sophomore Abigail Weinberg's name is almost synonymous with volunteering for many students. Under her leadership, student groups have worked consistently with Habitat for Humanity and the Community Farm. Characteristically, she praises the student body for its response to her flyers on the volunteering_board. "Interesthere is really high -- it's really impressive," she says. "And it's mostly · freshmen, which is great." Weinberg sees volunteering as a crucial contrast to some elements of the program, and as a complement to others. The simple physicality of building an adobe house, weeding rows ofvegetables or watching plants grow is an antidote to hours of reading in the library or staring at a computer screen. But volunteering als9 works as an illustration of problems that the program raises and tackles hypothetically. Of her volunteering Weinberg explains that "there are things that need to be done within a community and people need to do them." Likewise within the program she thinks ofwhat she's studying "as the study of the development of community." Whatever form their contribution takes, Johnnies who volunteer in Santa Fe are performing one important service over and above their chosen effort. They are showing Santa Fe, and the St. John's community itself, that this "ivory tower" has windows, and doors. • continued from page U unceasing struggle and nearheartbreak served only to bring Barr and Buchanan closer together. I find no evidence during this period of the personal strains between them that occasionally surfaced· during their earlier friendship and collaboration. When there were harsh words, theywere directed, not at each other, but at the Navy, occasionally at the townspeople of Annapolis, and at their academic critics across the country. ... The period leading up to and following the resignations of Barr and Buchanan from the college, roughly I945 to Ig48, is full of disappointments, false starts, and near chaos. Their decision to leave Annapolis grew from a conyiction that the N avywould never accept final defeat and would distract and deplete the leaders of the College enough. In my just-published memorial volume in honor of Winkie, which some of you have seen, I place the old seal with that motto on the dedication page. When I did so I was thinking of the extraordinary courage Barr and Buchanan repeatedly exhibited in their long and noble partnership. It was only after my book had gone to press that I found the motto in the last words of Buchanan's last dean's report. I see now that a corrected motto would have read: "With much courage and a couple of other virtues and a few million bucks almost anything can be accomplished." Try putting that into Latin. I will settle for Buchanan's motto for the New Program: Facio Liberos Ex Liberis Libris Libraque. It's elegant. And besides, it's true.• �THE TUITION SPIRAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . Why does it cost so much to send a student to St. John's? by Barbara Goyette en I was a senior in I974 and it was time to pay tuition, I walked into the business office on the first floor ofWest Pinkney one afternoon before Mr. Kutler's math class. I took out my checkbook and wrote a check for my last semester at the college-$1450 (half of the yearly tuition of $2900 ), an amount I could have earned in a job that paid a little more than minimum wage ($3 per hour) over the course of about six months. I had worked and saved, and with contributions from my parents and grandparents I was able to afford tuition. Next fall, my oldest son starts college. Ifhe were to go to St. John's (alas, he's not), tuition would be $21,990, • not an amount a could earn easily. And it's not an amount that I can whip out my checkbook and write a check for either. The high price of college education has been the subject of press attention in recent years, but lessthan-thoughtful analysis and a tendency toward sensationalism have led to some common miscon- Michael Wiiiiams. heating plant engineer. ceptions: that middle income families are being priced out and cannot afford private liberal arts colleges, that colleges have huge endowments which they spend lavishly on facilities and noneducational luxuries, that colleges and universities are inefficiently operated, with bloated administrations and a misplaced emphasis on research. Even the wealthy experience sticker shock, say the newspapers, notwithstanding the "Chivas Regal phenomenon" in which schools market themselves by implying that the more expensive, the better-leaving consumers to draw the conclusion that the cost of tuition is determined by what the market will bear rather than by how much it actually costs to educate a student. Most of these misconceptions are easy enough to dismiss at St. John's (luxurious facilities? research?), but a fundamental puzzlement about how college could possibly cost so much remains. People my age who are sending their children off to campuses across the land compare costs with those of 25 years ago and shudder; families who have never considered the option of college before are overwhelmed at the prospect. Since 1980, tuition at private four-year colleges has nearly doubled while family income has grown less than m%, according to data from the College Board, which compiles a yearly summary of private and public school tuitions. Indeed, the cost of higher education has risen faster than the Consumer Price Index every year since 1949. Why does tuition, specifically tuition at St. John's in Annapolis, cost what it does? Why has it risen at such a breathtaking rate, some years double the rate of inflation? How closely is tuition related to the cost of running the college? "St. John's can'thelp but be money went: 30. 5% was for instructional and academic support (tutor expensive if we are doing our job well," says Chris Nelson, president salaries and benefits, teaching of the Annapolis campus, who has materials); 26% was for "institujust finished paying for 23 years of tional support" (staff salaries and college education for his five benefits, maintenance); 23% was for children. "Only human beings who student financial aid; 8% was for are themselves educated can · student services (health service, educate others." At the college, the counseling, athletics, etc.); I2.5% faculty to student ratio is I to 8, and was for what are called auxiliary the largest classes are 19 or 20 expenses (running the dining hall, students. Teaching is the laborthe dorms, the bookstore). Not intensive activity at the heart of included in these totals is the money what makes the program work. The the college spends for capital biggest chunk of the yearly budgetimprovements: building projects, more than 30%-goes toward the restoration, repairs, etc. The people (tutors) who teach and the expenses for these projects are stuff they use to teach with, like spread out over a number ofyears; books for the and gear for the the college receives gifts to cover a laboratories. substantial portion of the costs and At St. John's, tuition is largely borrows money to cover the rest. determined by the college's budget, The 23% of expenditures figure for financial aid signals one of the so there is a direct correlation between what it costs to operate the most difficult problems facing St. college and the amount the college brings in with tuition. But there are other factors. "Wedo also consider what other colleges set as their tuition," says Bud Billups, the treasurer and chief financial officer. "St. John's is at the low end of our comparison group, which ~ includes 34 ;;; other private ~ liberal arts --. The library c:ollectlon contains I 00,000 volumes. colleges." Because the John's and other colleges. For St. college has sources of income other John's, the $3,684,000 spent in than tuition-notably gifts to the financial aid for students represents annual fund and earnings from the a 350% increase since 1986. During college's endowment-setting the the same period, tuition and fees tuition charge is not a simple matter increased 200%. Everyyear. of money in-money out. financial aid represents a larger and larger share of the "expenses" pie. Where the money goes The college is committed to making As a first step toward understandthe education it offers available to ing tuition, then, consider the all students who are qualified to college's annual expenses. For 1996'undertake it, regardless of their 97, when the tuition was $19,840, family income, stresses Chris the operating budget was Nelson. All financial aid awarded in $16,109,000. Here's where the �_Annapolis is need-based, and, according to Admissions Director John Christensen, the college is one of only a handful that considers need alone as a criterion. "We do not try to entice families who could pay more to send their students here by giving them a discount; all of our financial aid awards go to students whose families cannot afford full tuition," says Nelson. During the current (1997-98) academic year, 62.5% of students receive financial aid. Tuition is $2.0,980. The average St. John's grant award isJ;u,308; this is money that comes directly from the college to the student. The average aid package, which includes student work-study job money, loans, and federal and state grants in addition to the St. John's grant, is $19,774. Students from families of very modest means can afford St. John's, although they do incur debt since 21.5% of the average aid package is in the form ofloans. The federal government is providing less aid in proportion to the total needed than in the past, and colleges have made up the difference-one reason their aid budgets have increased so much. A second reason for the increase in the amount colleges spend for financial aid is that average family income has remained flat in comparison with growth in the economy, so more students qualify for aid. Where the college's money comes from College revenues were $16,273,000 in :r996-97. Money came from the following sources: 6:r% from tuition and fees, 8.5% from private gifts (mainly the annual fund), 7.5% from the endowment, 83 from federal and state sources (in the form of financial aid for students), I5% from auxiliary enterprises (dining hall, bookstore, rental of college buildings, etc.). Significantly, tuition at St. John's covered only 7I. 63 of what it cost to educate a student, a typical number for private colleges. The difference between the tuition amount and what it really costs to educate a student is met through gifts to the annual fund, return on the college endowment, and other sources. The endowment is a fund composed of donations and established to preserve the college's future; the money is invested and a certain amount of the earnings are withdrawn to be used everyyear to operate the college. On the Annapolis campus, the draw from the endowment is about 5% of the principle balance. This is well below the endowment's earnings (which were about 2.0% last year), enabling the fund to grow. As of December 3:r, I997, the Annapolis endowment was $42 million. Gifts to the annual fund are also used to help pay for the day-to-day operation of the school, making up some of the cost that tuition doesn't cover. In 1996-97, the annual fund raised $892,000 or about 5.5% of the total revenues. Another way that gifts to the college help keep the cost of tuition down for current students is by beefing up the amount of financial aid available. "Alumni and friends of the college are increasing their 1996-97 REVENUES 1996-97 EXPENDITURES 7.5% DRAW FROM ENDOWMENT 30.5% 8% INSTRIJCTIONAl & ACADEMIC SUPPORT STUDENT SERVICES 8% (athletics, counseling, health center) FEDERAL & STATE (financial aid) c:==-=-- _____ 8.5% PRIVATE GIFTS ') -~ ~--~ 12.5% AUXILIARY ~ ENTERPRISES ( support for financial aid," says Jeff Bishop, vice president in Annapolis. Most of these gifts go into general endowment funds for financial aid, some of which are established in memory of an alumnus or a tutor. Others are outright gifts stipulating that the aid go to a student from a certain region of the country, for example. Why tuition has increased so much Even if it's clear that tuition correlates directlywith the college's yearly budget, that still doesn't explain why it has increased at a rate greater than the rate of inflation. One reason has already been cited: family incomes have not grown at the same rate as the economy, with the result that more students qualify for financial aid. The college is meeting the needs of these families and is spending more on aid. A second reason is historical. In the early :rg8os, college tuitions did not match the very high rates of inflation (more than IO% some years), says St. John's treasurer Bud Billups. Tuition is still catching up. But the good news is that tuition increases are stabilizing. The rate of increase from Ig96-97 to 1997-98 was 5.7%. The increase from I99798 to :r998-99 will be 4.8%. Thirdly, let's blame computers. The cost of technology is high. In order to comply with federal regulation, colleges have to computerize financial and student records. Students, faculty, and staff want to participate in modern innovations like the internet and email. u .. -~... ~~"' ,,..,. these systems is expensive. St. hasn't increased its adminis- Tutors, St. most valuable resource, receive salaries below the median ll"nmhnrl~nn group • '{dorms, dining hall, bookstore) 23% 15% ROOM &. BOARD FEES, FACILITIES RENTALS (faculty salaries, libraries) STUDENT FINANCIAL AID 26% INSTITUTIONAL SUPPORT (office operations & salaries, maintenance) trative staff much over the past IO years or so except to add people to deal with computer systems and databases. The fourth reason for tuition increases is that the college has improved student services, adding a full-time counselor, improvingthe writing assistance and other student-help programs, strengthening the Placement Office so that it can effectively assist students with graduate school admission, job placement, career counseling, and internships and fellowships. Classes are as small as or smaller than ever, and more tutors are on hand to teach and to help students as essay advisers. Tutor salaries are increasing to a level that is no longer embarrassing-although they are still IO% below the median of a comparison group of 34 select liberal arts colleges. Unlike a business, a college can't introduce efficiencies that would reduce costs Without affecting the quality of education. And while St. John's works hard to keep tuition increases reasonable through intelligent fundraising and handson management, the college remains committed to its first priority-maintaining a community oflearners despite the expenses that accompany this mission. No onealumni, parents, those concerned with education-wants to sacrifice for the sake of mere economytopflight teachers, the ability to bring students of all economic backgrounds to the college. or the atmosphere devoted to learnin!!. This article deals with tuition on .A1:imzp<.>Us campus, and uses the .A1znczp(>Us campus because the is easier to see numbers. 97 academic year unless otherwise indicated. �..................... -~ 9.M.~.~q M~.~.9.. :.9 7...................... . by Barbara Goyette, A7l ature abhors a vacuum, and so does Roberta Rusch Gable. Her orchestration of Homecoming in Annapolis this year adhered to that law of physics but appeared to another: that matter can neither be created nor destroyed. It seems law of physics doesn't apply to ideas-ideas about what to schedule for Homecoming weekend. Gable (A78), the Annapolis alumni director. came up with these novel notions: a ja.Zz mini-concert/talk/ lecture, a memory fest of pre-BarrBuchanan St. John's glories, a' mellow Coffee Shop soiree, a soccer classic with completely nonclassical cheerleaders, an extravaganza of alumni authors signing books, even-sacrificing to the gods of health and the demons of approaching physical decrepitude-a 5Krun. "I wanted to make Homecoming less like Commencement and more like Reality," says Gable. "Ceremony is OK, but people want to have fun." The 400 alumni, along with family and friends. who came home to St. John's September 26-29 encountered no vacuums of silent, what-should-I-do-now moments during the weekend-unless they wanted to. There was something to do every minute, someone to talk to, someone to meet, someone to remeet, someone to try to remember. Alumni could carry on the usual Homecoming activities, which included seminars, luncheons, the banquet, the lecture, the Boathouse party. They could talk quietly on the quad or visit old haunts like the Little Campus. Their kids could kick around soccer balls on back campus. But never before had there been such a variety of activities to choose from. Even a moment that was formerly a non-event-the emergence from seminars at 2 p.m. on Saturday-was transformed by the presence of hundreds of orange and black balloons on campus, which the balloon elves (led by Carl McLaughlin, Ag6) had used to decorate everything from cars to stair bannisters. Homecoming was Thomas Turner. dass of ,21, and john Owens, class of '31, look at memorabilia during "St. John's Forever.,, the antithesis ofboredom. One of the fun-and yet somehow incredibly scary-things about Homecoming is meeting up with that you knew however many years ago in class. tells us that for every action there• s an equal but opposite reaction. but sometimes it's hard to know how to react. Back in student days, everyone was doing the same thing: trying to find a way through the thicket of junior lab, agonizing about the choice of a topic for senior essay, thinking about what state they'd be in after Reality. Now, thatguywho never talked in language class is a management consultant, the woman who demonstrated Euclid 1-47 is a physician doing AIDS research, the friend who listened to your love travails teaches high school English. Some ofthevarietyofSJC careers was apparent at Homecoming. Harold Anderson (A72 & 89), along with Thee Smith (A75) gave a talk/ performance on jazz master Theolonious Monk to a packed Great Hall audience. Emily Murphy (A95), who spent more than a year putting together a 300-year commemorative history of the college, presented a spiffy slide show called "300 years in 60 minutes." A bookstore authors event featured Mark Fabi (A78), author of the sci-fi thriller JVYRM; Charles Nelson (A45), editor ofStringfellow Barr: A CentennialAppreciation; Eva Brann (H8g) and a tutor, author of The Past-Present; Tom Simpson (A50) and a tutor, author of Maxwell on the Electromagnetic Field: A Guided Study; the aforementioned Emily Murphywith her college history; and Bob Goldwin (A50) and a former dean. author ofFrom Parchment to Power. The party scene offered some staple Homecoming events and added some new twists. Robert George (A86) dropped his political hat to serve as DJ at the Boathouse party. Chester Burke (A74 and a tutor) serenaded a party in the Coffee Shop with his flute. Alumni at the Waltz Party on Friday night found that current students played Sharon Alumni Association, with Barbara Lauer. The balloon elves (right) de~orated the campus. Cheerleaders (below): Sharon Bishop, Caroline Christensen, Jeff Bishop, Barbara Leonard, Glenda E.oyang, Barbara Lauer. All Homecoming photos by Keith Harvey. �Harold Anderson and Thee Smith (far bo1~lal1Iners alumni E.va Brann, Robert Goldwln, Mark fabl, and Charles Nelson (above); soccer classic action (left). more swing than waltz. John Van Doren (J47) joined President Chris Nelson and Graduate Institute Director Tom May at the podium at the dedication of the Barr-Buchanan Center, the former libraiywhich h'hs been renovated during a two-year make-over (see story on page 2). In an effort to include the senior alumni group (pre-New Program graduates) and the Graduate Institute alumni, special programs were held for these groups. St. John's Forever-examples of cheers, songs, etc.-celebrated the old days for.the senior alumni group. For the Graduate Institute alumni, who helped mark the 30th anniversary of the founding of the Institute in Santa Fe, and the 20th year in Annapolis, there was a seminar on Simone Weil' s essay "The Power of Words" led by tutor and GI director Tom May. A special luncheon, held in the Great Hall, drew 35 alumni. And Graduate Institute alums were especially interested in the dedication of the Barr-Buchanan Center, which will be the new "home" for the offices, classrooms, and common room for previously untethered Graduate Institute students. Special reunions were held for a number of classes. Celebrating their 5oth was the class ofr947, with salutes to John Lindsay Opie, who gave the Homecoming lecture on Russian icons; George VanSant, presented with the Award of Merit; and Barr and Buchanan, who were the topic of a luncheon talk by biographer-editor Charles Nelson (see excerpts on page 25). The classes of 52 and 57 sponsored Cafe · Liberal .Arts in the Coffee Shop on Saturday night. The class of72 gathered for a reunion lunch and then heard classmate Harold Anderson present his lecture/ concert on jazz. The class of 67 met at the home of Howard Zeiderman, A67, and Margaret Winter, A66, for a garden party lunch; they also formed the nucleus of singers for Freshman Chorus Revisited, which was led by tutor Elliott Zuckerman (Hg6). The class of 77 celebrated their 20th with a Greek buffet at the eidos ofJohnny hangouts, the Little Campus. Fifteen years out meant a picnic on Back Campus for the class of 82, with plenty oflittle ones running underfoot; theywere joined by the class of 92 and the ten-year gang from the class of87, who also had a seminar on Aristophanes' Lysistrata with Nick Maistrellis. College memories seem to be encompassed by the principle thata body in motion tends to remain in motion-when alumni walk across the quad again, or sit around a seminar table again, thus stimulating some initial recollections, others are bound to follow. e �EI I story decision 's vv1c,t,c;.~;::c;. desegregate segregation was simply wrong." The next chapter in the shows the true determination of St. John's students to see the college integrated. A policy statement wasn't what theywanted-they wanted justice. They went out to schools in nearby cities to find black students and recruit them. Poe says that he and Winfree Smith supported the students in their enCl.e~Lvor: they themselves didn't know how to make the contacts necessary to inform school students about the college. Two who remember these efforts are Bob Goldwin (class and Peter Davies wentto .., and talked to the counselor there. He told us about several likely candidates, one of whom was Martin Dyer," says Davies. iftyyears ago in Annapolis, life was highly segregated by race, and no black person ate at a restaurant on Main Street, went to movies or churches downtown, or attended St. John's College. No matter what our age or background, we're deeply embarrassed by this now, even horrified. When the college voluntarily decided to desegregate and to admit black students it was Ig48- six.years before the Suoreme Court ruled that Rock was and the schools in Anne Arundel L.oun1cv-ine elementary, and high schools all around the college-we.re integrated. St. may have been the first private college south of the MasonDixon line to make a policy decision to desegregate; it was almost certainly the first to recruit black students, accept them, and welcome them to campus wholeheartedly but without special acclaim. Martin Dyer, a straight-A student at all-black Dunbar High School in Baltimore, was the first.African American student to apply and be admitted to St. John's. The story behind his arrival on campus involves many players, not the least of whom is Dyer himself. It has to do with the kind of school St. John's isone built on principles-and with those young men who composed the student body following World War II. It has to do with the will of several tutors and the persuasive powers of the president of the college. A of1948,thestudentbody passed a resolution <>.T'l1T1TI1ff t·h•:irt Hu> '-''V·'-'"''"'-'"' Should not more than a straw vote, since "an expression of sentiment does not constitute a resolution of the dilemma somehow to live peaceably within the bounds of an unenlightened town. On the other hand this vote did create a situation which might have been more profitably exploited. To have done so might have been a way of reasserting the position of St. John's as a pioneer institution even if it did not enshrine the college in the hearts of loyal Annapolitans. In the past St. John• s has won support and a loyal following of students and others because it was dynamic and in its own way courageous. To be too unassuming, too careful at this juncture might be to maim rather Martin the first black student to enroll after the college pledged to Integrate, graduated In 1952. In honor of his accomplishments and of the college's decision, a special book fund has been established to assist current students who cannot atfOrd to buy program books. than to secure the new program." Why did the students press for this kind of reform? First of all, many of them were veterans who had fought in World War II and were attending the college on the GI Bill. Some had worked alongside black soldiers. Many had developed a liberal political stance as a result of their backgrounds or war-time experiences. Peter Davies, who interrupted his college career to spend a year in the Merchant Marines, says. "I was appalled by the segregation I saw as I walked in Annapolis. I became very concerned that there were no African Americans at St. John's and that we were a h lu·uri1i,1-o School, like the rest of them in the south. I was from a different background, had grown up and this was unbelievable to me." Many other students shared his feelings. Some were more vocal than others. Carr (class of Ig50 and also a veteran) remembers that "many of us supported the cause of desegregation, but we weren't the instigators. We were relieved when it came to a vote and we could vote in favor." The college's admissions policy did not explicitly deny admission to black students, but by unwritten rules would not allow it. Several times during the early Ig4os there had been discussion about admitting black students to the college. Stringfellow Barr, president at the time, was fearful about what the reaction of the town of Annapolis would be to black students at the college. St. John's was in very fragile financial health, and Barr was also involved with fighting for the college's life against the Navy (who wanted to take over the campus for an expansion of the Naval Academy) and the city (which wanted large pieces of the campus for a housing project). Although Barr personally befriended local black leaders and helped establish seminars in town with black adults, he did not think that black students could succeed at the college because of the nosUJl1tv he felt the town would show toward them. By Ig48, however, Barr had left the college and John Kieffer was serving as president. His views on race would be tested, beginning with the students' resolution. Dyer knew as soon as he heard the students talk about St. John's that he was interested. He applied in June Ig48 and came to campus for an interview that summer. Any student would have been intimidated by the admissions committee for it was composed of the president, John Kieffer; a tutorI assistant dean/ admissions director, Harvey Poe; and the dean, Raymond Wilburn. "Scared as I was, Mr. Kieffer's calm, relaxed and thoughtful demeanor soon put me at relative ease, and the interview seemed to go well. Whether or not St. John's was interested in having me as a student, that interview completely convinced me that this was the college I wanted to attend," Dyer says. While Kieffer was me:eone:wi1:h a CUlftfltUftU ...,,..,.,.,,,...,,,,,,was The tutors soon followed the lead of the students in endorsing a change in the admissions policy. At a faculty meeting Winfree Smith (a tutor from I94I until his death in Ig89) moved "that the faculty go on record as favoring the admission of negro students as a matter of college policy." It passed unanimously. AE, Harvey Poe, assistant dean and admissions director at the time, now says, "The students and faculty, surveying the present scene, came to a community realization that black student. At its the Board polled its members and the vote was 9 to 3 against admission. In August, the Executive Committee of the Board re-convened at the Baltimore law office of chairman Richard Cleveland. A majority of Board members contacted had agreed that the Executive Committee should re-examine the admissions question. This time. the committee voted in favor of the policy change. What persuaded these men to - �I change their minds? Something Kieffer wrote in letters to them must have brought the issue new urgency. and certainly people at the college, perhaps Harvey Poe and Winfree argued in favor of a reconsideration. A letter dated September 24, I948, that .Kieffer wrote to the alumni explaining the Board decision contain clues to the arguments he used with the Board. he said, black students were colleges like the vn~su.m~UJ.l.'Vl · "There is considerable doubt in ......~,, .,.......,,.,.. r1 College could suc~ce:ssh1ll11' re:s1st: a legal action to require admission of negro students." .Kieffer's third argument hit a loftier tone: "The faculty and student body have expressed themselves as overwhelmingly in favor of the admission of negroes. It would be hard for us to teach if we had on our conscience a flagrant breach between principle and practice. The St. John's principle of liberal education for all who are qualified would be mocked by refusing a young man of excellent scholastic record and good character because he is a negro ... The provision of educated leaders for the race is a responsibility not to be refused and not to be satisfied merely by financial support for negro colleges. St. John's has a unique program to offer." Although Dyer had already started at Coppin Teachers College in he came to St. John's within two weeks of being notified that he was accepted. The black community in Baltimore rallied in his support, raising money to pay his tuition. room, and board. experiences at the - at most The Baltimore American of October 2, Ig48, carried a story about Dyer and St. its main point was that this first black student was being treated as "just one of the gang ... accepted by the faculty and his fellow students as just another freshman." St. John• sis now 302 years old. In such a long history there are bound to be decisions that proved wrong, incidents that proved regrettable. The Ig48 decision by the college to desegregate was not one of them; it was, as Dyer himself says, "a deliberate act of conscience and will.". embers of the Alumni Association, other ladies and gentlemen, I am truly overwhelmed to think that anyone would believe that there has been anything in my life worthy of the award you are conferring upon me this evening. As pleased as I am to receive this Award of Merit, I find it difficult to believe that I am receiving it for any reason other than my having been the first black student to attend St. John's. In accepting it, therefore, I must insist that it also be rec:o~:m~~ed as an alumni tribute to this College for the justice and boldness of its decision to admit black students. That decision made for me and subsequent of black students to have an educational experience that has enriched our lives bevond measure. ..., here in itself is not at all no1te"\l\rol'lthv The decision of this that possible, however, was an historic action which richlywarrants this recognition. Even more, it warrants the belated recognition of a state and nation for which St. John's set an example. In electing to lower its color barrier, St. John's heralded the 1954 Supreme Court school desegregation decision and placed itself in the vanguard of the civil rights movement that, two decades later. would change the face of this nation. No other institution of higher learning had done what this small, almost unheard of, College dared to do. Indeed, I would venture the guess that the College's action was without precedent among institutions of any kind. Having taken that bold step, the College, as if moved by some institutional moral sense, then took the further step of seeking and recruiting black applicants. That, in my opinion, speaks most eloquently of the character of this institution. It insisted upon doing the right thing both in principle and in deed. Had it not done that, I might never have known of St. John's, for my world, like that of most blacks of that era, was narrowly circumscribed by race. Race determined day-to-day :realities. Race defined aspirations and opportunities, which did not include attending all-white colleges in the south. Intrigued by the possibility of coming here, I applied for admission on June 15, 1948, never :really believing that I would be accepted and, I suspect, secretly hoping I would not be. To ensure my being able to attend college if St. John's did not accept me, I applied at Coppin Teachers institution in Baltimore. Two College, weeks after Labor when I had !ll 1r P!lln1v classes at Coppin, St. John's informed me of my acc:e1Jtance. As that startling news spread :rapidly cmmrmnlltv many groups marshalled their resources to raise the money needed for tuition and even at Ig48 costs, were much more than could afford. Within two . the Baltimore Urban the Elks and others raised sufficient money to cover the first semester's expenses, and I arrived on campus on September 27 to become a member of the class Despite the apprehensions which attended my the years here proved to be among the best of my life. I was warmly welcomed but without any unusual fuss or ceremony. Jacob Klein, Simon Kaplan and Victor Zuckerkandl played no small part in that. Mr. Klein became a surrogate father, available to help with any problem no matter how small. Through the music tutorial, then just starting, Mr. Zuckerkandl integrated me into the community and, while doing so, opened me to the music of Palestrina, Bach, Monteverdi, Schutz and De Lassus. That wonderful music is, to this day, an integral part of my life. Both Mr. Klein and Mr. Kaplan forced me from my 1 reluctance to speak during seminar by pointedly directing their comments and questions to me, leaving no choice but to join the conversation. They and Winfree Smith pushed me into the world of ideas. The pleasure it brought them showed in their eyes and their smiles as they gently coaxed me and others to shed inhibitions, dare to think and share our thoughts and enter without reservation into the wonderful and exciting adventure that this school is. As long as I remained on campus, I lived in an idealized world. Returning to Baltimore or even venturing out into the city of Annapolis quickly returned me to the stark reality of black-white relations in 1948. Whenever I left the campus for things, such as a u ....... .., ....... which the College could not provide and which law or custom closed to me elsewhere, I had to take refuge in those parts of Annapolis in which blacks were segregated. I remember three different occasions when fellow students induced me them in futile challenges of the segregatory policies of Annapolis restaurants. One place was that still familiar St. John• s watering hole, The Little Campus. Having a low threshold for embarrassment, I quickly reached the point that I would not participate in those ventures. Although we were soon to learn how powerful sit-in demonstrations could be, it was clear in Ig48 that one black student and a fewwellintentioned white students were unlikely to have any impact upon entrenched segregation in Annapolis. Not until my graduation in Ig52 was my race ever again an issue. To allow me to participate in the President's reception and dinner for the senior class, the College had to obtain a special dispensation from Carvel Hall, then Annapolis• biggest hotel. In mentioning life for blacks in I947 Annapolis, I want only to highlight the dramatic contrast between life for me here on this campus and life for me and other blacks elsewhere in Annapolis. From the perspective of fifty years later, it may be difficult to understand the extraordinary impact of the College's desegregation decision. Everywhere else in Annapolis, the state of Maryland and much of the nation, I was a second class citizen, and my second class status was legitimized by laws at all levels of government. Only here on this campus did my race seem not to matter. Even though blacks today are probably more isolated in American cities than theywere in 1947• our plight has cmm~~ea so dramatically that it is difficult for blacks or whites to how much worse things were then. No longer does there exist anyplace in the country, restaurants, churches, schools, stores, taxicabs, or theaters, which blacks are forbidden to enter. Nowhere are blacks forced to sit in the back of the bus or in the last rows of a .,.,.,.,,,..,.,.~.... u;tu.1..:1.Jnv to drink from separate water fountains or to use Nowhere are there legal obstacles to blacks' voting, being elected to office, or living in certain neighborhoods. No longer does skin color foreclose eligibility for a large number of employment opportunities. All of Annapolis is open to black students here today, as only St. John's was open to mein1948. Yes, progress is undeniable and significant. What has yet to be achieved in America, however, is something St. John's achieved fifty years ago through a deliberate act of conscience and will: the warm acceptance and loving embrace of blacks as brothers and as social equals and partners in the democratic experiment in which America is still engaged. This is something in which the entire College community can take justifiable pride on this 5oth anniversary of that noble and historic decision. St. John's gave reality to an American ideal. e �I The Alumni Association Newsletter is published in each issue of the Reporter. We welcome letters, capsule book reviews, and article ideas from alumni. Send submissions and suggestions to Peter Huidekoper at 2395 S. Milwaukee St., Denver, CO 802 I 0, call 303-151- I 225, or e-mail pet.erhdkpr@aol.com. Three New Association Chapters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. SJC alumni expand to worldwide organization ~ the winter meeting in Santa e of the Alumni Association's oard of Directors, three new chapter were officially welcomed injoining the 15 other chapters-and bringing the grand total around the world to 18. Yes, we did say world: the new chaptets are in Baltimore, Denver, and Jerusalem-the first community outside the United States to form an official St. John's chapter. What has been taking place in each of these communities for some time-most of all seminars and social events-now gains official stature, and will only strengthen the ways these groups can stay connected to the. college, play a helpful role with recruitment and placement activities, and carry on other johnny-inspired events. The group in Baltimore is led by David Kidd (ASS). Baltimore's Charter will be presented at Homecoming next fall. They plan to have seminars and parties; forthe present, they are meeting at the houses of various alums. Meetings will be held every month or so but always on the 12th of the month. Denver and Boulder have supported a small but loyal group for many years. From five to 12 have met quite regularly--often now inside a church in either Denver or Lafayette--to reflect on a variety of program and non-program books. Last a seminar in Denver led out the full co111tir1~ent--near·1v 25 showed up for a terrific discussion Woolf's "How to Read a Book." summer the group decided to take the plunge and join the Association as a formal chapter. Janet Koin (SF69) was elected as president of the Denver A group of Johnnies have collected themselves in Jerusalem. The Spring '97 told the diverse and group, and the accompanying article (at right) recounts a fall 2e1H.:c>2e1tm~r: Mel Kline (A66) is president of the chapter. As noted above, the formal charter of the Jerusalem chapter establishes the Alumni Association as an international organization! Each of these groups will welcome local alumni to meetings, and the Association welcomes the chapters into the growing fold of local groups that exist to provide living connections among members of the St. john's community. If you live in the Baltimore or Denver area and want more information, call: Baltimore - David Kidd - 410-7284126. Denver - Janet Koin Dampeer303-972-490 I . So where will the next chapter come from? Can we turn the page and find out? As they say (or do they?) the next chapter could be your own!• - by Peter Huidekoper and Glenda Eoyang otes the ast October the New York Chapter hosted its third annual .ecent Graduate Reception at The National Arts Club on Gramercy Park. More than 65 alumni turned out to network and socialize. Justin Burke (A87) summarized the evening in the chapter's newsletter: "This year's event was a great success - drawing a diverse group of alumni well representative of the decades of the '40s through the '90s. The mood of the evening was less formal than the previous two years; the gathering had a coffee shop party atmosphere. Many new faces were added to the burgeoning NYC alumni network, and it was evident that many alumni had been looking forward to coming out to mix things up and reacquaint themselves with the SJC community in a social setting. Thanks to all who came out to support the recent grads." In the fall the New York Chapter also hosted tutor Nancy Buchenauer to lead a seminar on The Odyssey. The report by Amy Wuebbels (A94) in the chapter's newsletter makes us all wish we could have been there. Following Buchenauer's opening question, "Why did Odysseus need to journey to Hades before he could return home to Ithaca?" the discussion "quickly evolved into a discussion of what Odysseus learned while he was in Hades. One of the more compelling points for seminar participants was the significance that the dead placed on being remembered in the present. This led to questions of what true immortality means and the role that heroism played in achieving this distinction. Many alums felt that in our mediasaturated age it was no longer possible to become a mythic hero like Achilles or Odysseus." Wuebbels' account continued: ''.A.n interesting side note, raised during the dis,cussion, was how many seminar members felt that Odysseus should not be regarded as a heroic figure. These alums felt that the bloody deaths of the suitors (Chapter 24) were indicative of a warrior and not a hero. This point was vigorously contested by many other members of the discussion - especially those who had written their senior essays on The Odyssey."• �Capsule Book reviews from David Schiller, A62 Calvin, William H. The River That Zeldin, Theodore. An Intimate History of H~manity. New York: Harper Collins, 1994. Feeling alienated from current ...... ,.. ~...,· interests? Find your soul mates across time and 2eo2raohical borders in the Flows Colorado River canyons and into the of human evolution and consciousness. 'h ........+ .......«" Reading And Discussing (In case your travels bring you to these vicinities, and you want to show up,' but need to know what books to pack!) Boulder-Denver - Chaung T::z:u, Basic Writings; The Seven Story Mountain (part 2)~Kafka's "The Metamorphosis"; Shaw's Saint Joan (many are also attending the Colorado Symphony's performance of Voices of Light, accompanying Dreyer's classic silent film, The Passion of Saint Jocm ). New York - Macbeth; Harold Bloom's Omens of the Millenium; Linco\n, Se\ections; (April) Verdi's Dennett, Daniel C. Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life. New York; Simon & Schuster, 1995. Tufts University's incredibly original and outrageous philosopher takes on Creationism, Darwinism and everybody in between: an intellectual and scientific romp. L. and Rover T. Amers. Thinking Through Confucius. Albany: Hall, David State University of New York Press, 1987. A wonderful and original reanalysis of the thought of one of the greatest political philosophers ever (note: maybe even bigger than Aristotle!). "Othello." Machlup, Fritz. Knowledge: Its Washington - Chaucer's "Geneal Prologue," "The Pardonner's Tale," and "The Prioress' Tale"; The Tales from the Thousand and One Nights; In the Heart of the Heart of the Country, by William Gass; "Mrs. Mean," from "Progress or Return?" by Leo Strauss; Gide's The lmmoralist; and Robert Goldwin's From Parchment to Power. c Creation, Distribution, and Economic Significance, Vol. II: The Branches of Learning. Princeton: Prim:eton University Press, 1982. Description and discussion of the major schemes for the classification of all human knowledge, from Aristotle to St. John's College. .PTE Senior Din ers Alumni treat their soon-tobe fellow alumni anuary 17 - It was a pleasant but cool mid-winter Saturday night in Santa Fe, and all over town St. John's seniors were dining out with alumni, courtesy of the Alumni Association. They gathered in groups, five to nine seniors, hosted by one or two members of the Alumni Association board, at La Tertulia, II Piatto, La Casa Sena, Ore House, Julian's, Santa Cafe and the Pink Adobe. They ate well, drank well, and, yes, they talked well, sometimes far into the night! These annual dinners at each campus give members of the Alumni Association a chance to talk about the chapters around the country, about the potential job-hunting value of both the chapters and the Register, and about other ways the Association might help these soon-to-be-alumni connect to this large world of fellow alumni. In the firm belief that all will go well for these seniors in their final J T CTS Please call the alumni listed below for information about chapter or other alumni activities in each area. ALBUQUERQUE: Harold M. Morgan, Jr., 505-8991331 MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL: Vicki Wilson, 612-535-0055 or Glenda Eoyang, 612-783-7206 ANNAPOLIS: Rebecca Dzamov, 410-263-4291 NEW YORK: Steven Sedlis, 212-289-1662 AUSTIN: Homayoon Sepasi, 512-708-8360 NORTH CAROLINA: Susan Eversole, 919-968-4856 BALTIMORE: David Kidd, 410-614-2260 PHILADELPHIA: Jim Schweidel, 610-941-0555 BOSTON: Alvin Aronson, 617-566-6657 PORTLAND: Dale Mortimer, 360-906-1 190 CHICAGO: Amanda Fuller, 847-705-1143 SAN FRANCISCO/NORTHERN CALIFORNIA: Deborah Farrell, 415-561-6100, ext. 123 DALLAS/FORTWORTH: Suzanne Doremus, 817-924- 7184 SANTA FE: john Pollak, 505-983-2144 DENVER: Janet Dampeer, 303-972-490 I SEATTLE: Jim Doherty, 206-937-8886 LOS ANGELES: Meg Sheehan, 310-208-2013 WASHINGTON, D.C.: Sam Stiles, 301-424-0884, or Bill Ross, 301-230-4594 semester - i.e. that they will make it across the finish line by June-seniors are welcomed into the Alumni Association these dinners. But for the members of the Alumni · · ··nners the amners orovide a occasion in which can meet the young men and women who have made their way the _ Association members learn about St. _ these seniors. Their candor provides a most helpful window on the school. They reveal their spunk and character and humor and interests - and suddenly the abstraction of 70 or so seniors becomes the real issue of how Jason and Kiki and Chris and Melissa have fared, and what this education in the Great Books has meant to them. Amidst all the nice food and drinks, it is a reminder for the aging board members of a time when they, too, were preparing to finish their years at St. John's - and to wonder, with a mixture of anxiety and excitement, what would come next. As "discussion is what we do," few get-togethers seem to be short of topics .. Members of the Alumni Association board reported the next morning on the wide range of issues they covered at their dinners. the topics mentioned were: · Plans after graduation; ·Assisting students in the transition to life after graduation; · Writing at the college; · The art program at the college; ·Hosts' career paths; · Alumni Association chapters especially how they operate in the hosts' communities; ·Morality; · Dean Carey's 1997 Statement of Educational Policy and Program; ·Cloning; · Public versus private schools; · Student government/polity; · Senior essay topics. It was this last item - a shared interest in Joyce's Ulysses - that kept one of these conversations going on well into the dark Irish night under the New Mexico stars! The dialogue among alumni old and new continues. e -by Peter Huidekoper �AluIDni Notes & Profiles ... 1931 Dr. Edwin Lotz celebrated his 8?th birthday on August 27, 1987 and is looking forward to reaching 100 in the year 2010. in theoretical physics from JHU and his other son J. Gary Elliott (A8 5) has a PhD from LSU in English-Folk & Oral Poetics and Music. 1949 1936 J. P.Morraypublishedhis Charles T. Westcott has moved again. His new address is: The W!ndsor at Savoy/401 Burwash Ave./Savoy, IL 61874-9576. He says that he hopes to live long enough to visit St. John's once again. Gil Crandall is undertaking a campaign to make the history of Annapolis more accessible to visitors by placing descriptive signs around the city's historic sites. 1943 Burton Armstrong writes to say that he hopes to make it to the 55th reunion. 1944 Howard L. Sorenson writes: "After a family reunion in Steamboat Springs, we stopped in Boulder to see Vern (class of' 44) and Mary Derr for a couple of days. It was great to see them again-a wonderful couple-we've been friends for 57 years." Roberti. Myerson writes: "I have been ill for a spell, but have now pretty well recovered and am learning to walk again. Perhaps next year0r '99 I'll be able to get down to Crab Town for the reunion. My best to all." 1945 Laurence Levin is currently "the oldest living inteme" at the Sandlers Substance Abuse Facility at St. Lukes-Roosevelt Hospital. George A. Cayley (A45 and SGI78) is portraying Benjamin Franklin. An exhibit of paintings by Robert Arner was shown at the DobbsFenyArtWorkshopinNewYork from October 15-November 9, 1997. 1948 Peter J. Davies writes: "Phyllis and I are off to Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, and Malaysia for five weeks over Christmas and New Year's to visit our five gnmdlchlld.Jren in Phnom Penh, and son who works UNWoddFoodl'rogrammte. It will be return to Southeast Asia since we lived in Donald S. Elliott has retired as the chair of the Humanities ment at the Garrison Forest School in Owings Mills. Md. He notes that his son Bruce Elliott (A82) is a PhD eighth book in I997= GrandDi,sillusion: Francois Mitterrand and the French Left. The publisher is Greenwood Press Group, Westport, Conn. 1952 In March, 1995, George Udell founded and has since run "Cinema Sundays at the Charles" -a brunch, first run independent, foreign, or offbeat film, and a post-film discussion led by a prominent and/ or informed speaker (e.g. "Shine" discussion leader Leon Fleischer). The series has run for 11 seasons, totaling 70 films, and over 20,000 attendees, with an average audience of over 300 per show. 1955 Dorothy Olim (Krone) received the 1996 Lee Reynolds Award from the League of Professional Theater Women/NY, given annually to a woman in the American theater whose work in the theater has affected social, cultural and political change. She was the operating manager of ATPAM (Association of Theatrical Press Agents and Managers). a theatrical labor union in New York City. Prior to that ~he was President of two businesses: Dorothy Olim Associates, Inc., a theatrical management firm; and Krone-Olim Advertising, Inc., an agency specializing in theatrical advertising. Currently she serves as a professional consultant and as board member to several theatrical organizations. She recently completed a year as an Antoinette Perry Tony Award Nominator. husband, Mort, in the Florida Keys, where Mort runs an in-patient substance abuse recovery program and Gay lectures at th~ local community college. 1960 Lt. Col. George Jones III writes: "My wife Norma died of scleroderma on 4 June 1997. We were married 36 years. I have decided to retire, sell everything, and move. I will send my new address when I have one." 1961 Eyvind Ronquist presented papers this past summer on the innumerable in medieval encyclopedias, learning and teaching in the circle of Pope Innocent III, and mathematical proportions in Aristotle's Rhetoric. Maryland Governor Parris N. Glendening appointed Joel Lehman a member of the Advisory Committee to Study Funding Mechanisms for the Maryland Insurance Administration. 1963 BillRumppwrites: "Pleasevisit myweb site: http://brumpp. home.mindspring.com. It has a current picture of my "family" and a profile ofmycompany-CyberNet Solutions. In the personal section there is a link to St. John's. I visited the Santa Fe Campus in May-first time since '65. Wow, what a place, spent lots of time in the bookstorebought coffee mugs and t-shirts ! " 1965 Thomas D. Harvey is enjoying · his two-year-old grandson Brendan. Tom sees Allennaleonard whenever she comes down from Canada. 1966 1956 Joseph Jay Wase is retired, studying French and computer science, and actively engaged in many other activities. Retirement is wonderful, he says, except there's never enough time left to sleep. .!LJvLJUJL•: . Hall retired from the USAF in 1995 as a colonel in the News Corps. She lives with her Dr. Ian Harris was selected as '-'Peace Educator of the Year" by the Peace Studies Association at its annual meeting at Georgetown University in June I997· He was named a Distinguished Teacher by the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Norma E. Williams visited the Santa Fe campus to the National Trust for Historic Preservation's annual meeting. Fred Feddersen writes: "Please pass to classmates, some of whom I do , after all these years. Let them know that I am well with my 18-year-old daughter Valie (born in England from my late wife Linda). mynewwife Ntombifikile, and our 2-month-old son Simangaliso, born here in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa." 1968 George F. Bingham (SF) hopes to see classmates in Santa Fe at next year's 30th anniversary. "We're living day to day after the loss of our son Daniel in a swimming accident last summer. The empty nest came too soon and in the wrong way. Our son Josh (22) is in the bay area working toward a degree at Hayward ~tate. Our daughter Abigail is in Kathmandu, Nepal, working with Educate the Children. Vicariously exciting." George W. Partlow (A) is currently seconded from doing mainframe programming to doing network support for the Alaska State Dept. of Labor-but much ofhis energy is going into being Board Chairman ofHabitatfor Humanity, GreateI Juneau Area; they'll be building their first house next spring. He is also enjoying his first grandchild, Serena Ray, and his second, born this past December. Harold Morgan (SF) writes: "At the end of 1997, after nearly three years of tumult, Harold Morgan hopes most of the changes are in place. A summary: long deteriorated 28-year marriage ended in divorce; layoffwith six months severance after I6 years following acquisition of New Mexico's largest bank by NationsBank; deal with NationsBank to own Progress, a business newsletter he produced for the New Mexico bank; restart of Progr.ess as a paid circulation newsletter; a move with Susan Bennett back to the University of New Mexico ~eighborhood; plans to marry Ms. Bennett toward the end of 1998, after they have been together two years; joining Bosque Technologies as marketing vice president. Bosque produces a liberal arts based computer simulation. Daughter, Kathy. 17, has St. John's on her college potential list. Son, Tom, is IS. The new house, at 1708 Vassar NE, 87106, (505-255-4919) solves the problem of a place for Albuquerque alumni gatherings. Nowto get things in gear ... " Charles Watson, MD (A) writes: "#1 son, Ivan, graduated with a degree in international relations from Brown that we Anymten~st1ng experience in the press pool of the vacation White House on Martha's Vineyard and is contemplating a future either in business followed by an MBA or in journalism. I work and Masha is campaign manager in a �local grass roots school board contest." DonaldJ. Schell (SF) writes: "After seventeen years at St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco, I had the pleasure and adventure of guiding the congregation through the project of building a new church (we'd been meeting in rented space). Our new church buildingwas featured in the New York Times and just won an American Institute of Architects 'Best Religious Building of the Year' award." Antigone Phalares (SF) "My father George died 5/7/ 96 after living with me in Carmichael for three years, the happiest family years of my life. He was 97. My mother died 9h:4/92. She was a great fan of Robert'Hutchins, president of her Alma Mater, and his interest in Barr and Buchanan's "experiment" led her to suggest St. John's for me. They were longtime supporters of SfC. My daughter. Heather, is a senior at Bryn Mawr College. We backpacked for two months across Europe this summer: Greece, Italy, France, the Netherlands, and England." EfuabethA. Aiello (SGI) is currently employed at Los Alamos National Laboratory Bradbury Science Museum. She is also the editorofTheMain Gate, the Laboratory's Retirees' Quarterly Newsletter. Shewrites, "I have recently had poetry published'Enigmas and Dilemmas.' " William Wade Douglas (SGI) is now a retired teacher after 23 years and is currently the executive director of a conference center. His wife, Linda Douglas (SGI83), is the coordinator of the gifted education program for Middlesex County Schools. Their daughter, Laurie Marie-Troye Douglas, is now a junior in high school, and their son, John-David. Lloyd Douglas, is a sophomore in high school. Both children hope to attend St. John's. 1971 Amanda Fowler Stimson (SF) writes: "I am enjoying unemployment and living more simply in the country. Working on the land, being part of the natural world, my eyes are open to the migration of birds, the transition of seasons. I am wrestling with how still to give back to restless and suffering hµmanity." 1972 Anne Kelleher (A) has joined �Aluntni Notes & Profiles ... KPMG Peat Marwick as a senior manager, working in the public services practice, specializing in government financial management systems. She is leading the system implementation team for the District of Columbia's new financial management system. Susan Shlifer, MD (A) is happy to report a successful move to the n_orthwest. She is opening a new office in Kingston, Washington, and getting to know the local school district well, with her son, Eric in first grade and daughter, Beth, in ninth. Another son, David, is framing houses and learning to make his own way in the world. She writes that old friends and classmates are always welcome. Irv Williams (4) writes: "My daughter Hannah has enrolled in Westower School in Middlebury, CT as a Mandeville Scholar. Westover awards two full tuition, room, and board scholarships annually to daughters of teachers. One of the best fringe benefits I have encountered in fifteen years of teaching. " Leslie Starr (A) was sorry to miss the Annapolis Homecoming but had a board of directors meeting in southern Maryland in the morning and an opening night concert in Wilmington that evening. She is the land management chair for the American Chestnut Land Trust and the principal oboe for the Delaware Symphony. Matthew Mallory (A) is still in Brussels working as the U.S. representative to the NATO budget committee. He would love to hear from any Johnnies in his area. (Matthew won the prize at Homecoming in Annapolis this year for traveling the greatest distance.) His phone number is 322-726-8558. 1974 RandallO. Pen<lleton (SF) writes: "Mywife, Martha Mackey (SF), and I are not the only Johnnies in this household. Our son, Walk.er Thomas, is presently a junior on the SantaFecampus-andhelovesittoo." 1975 Nancy Coiner (A) is teaching part time at Smith College and Mt. Holyoke College. She is working on a book about spiritual autobiography and would like to hear from anyone who is writing one. Robert B. Pool (SF) writes: "I'm still dreaming of a vacation in Praha in the Czech Republic and Wien, Austria. Jak se ma? (How are you?)" Erica Udoff (A) writes: "I've finally had that moment when my St. John's education seems like the perfect preparation for what I'm doing. I've recently joined the staff of the Eli Whitney in Hamden, Conn., as a teacher and curator. Our collections and programs celebrate the ingenuity of inventors and problem solving by creating an environment where kids from 6-I2 can conduct the experiments of Leonardo DaVinci, try the construction techniques and thinking of Eli Whitney, learn how Galileo's marbles will behave by building marble mazes, and on and on. I welcome your favorite contributions to use in developing new programs. E-mail me at eu@eliwhitney.org." 1977 Walter Featherly (SF) and Carol Stolpe, his domestic partner, enjoyed visiting Lincoln Quintana (formerly Smith) (SF78) and his THE MAKING OF MAGIS by Suslan Borden s a student, Josh Silberstein (A94) Magis is Born played guitar in scores of bands in both As Silberstein was immersed in his composing, anta Fe and Annapolis. Now working at the back of his mind he was searching for a name toward his goal of being a full-time musician, he for his new band. He found it outside of Chicago, has spent the years since graduation playing in where he saw a neon sign with a huge pair of lips. nightclubs, forming a band, and cutting his first "The sign said 'Magic Kiss' and I thought that was CD. He says that at St. John's he learned not only a great name for a band," Silberstein says. "But I Euclid, Dante, Newton, and Hegel, but also how to figured it was already being used so I shortened it be a professional musician. to Magis." Magis became both the name for his "I know that everyone says that St. John's is an band and his own stage name. impractical education, but for me, St. John's is the "I wanted the name to be a sort of third person most practical education because it breaks down thing, something that wasn't directly attached to everything into basics and addresses the question me. It's such a personal endeavor and I put so much of how you pursue something that you want to do effort in it, it would be hard to read reviews and to but that is difficult," Silberstein says. "St. John's see my name in print being so closely associated inspired me, taught me to have no fear about with music. This heips me be more objective about pursuing something that really interests me and it," says Silberstein. that I care about. At St. John's, the level of work From January through April, Silberstein and the difficulty of the readings showed me that I brought the songs he had wntten to Low-Tech could be capable of anything." Studios for recording. Although most bands are Josh Silverstein, on the c:over of his CD This lesson learned, Silberstein took his fully formed before they enter the studio, ••in the Middle." diploma in one hand and guitar in the other, and Silberstein worked backwards, hiring musicians to headed to Burlington, Vermont, a city he'd heard was developing a friendly play different parts on the CD. and supportive music scene. The group that is now Magis plays about four gigs a month in Burlington, southern Vermont, and New Hampshire. Coat-Checking, Band-Hopping, and Bob Dylan's Laundry To build his music career, Silberstein planned to find work-any kind of work-in one of Burlington's nightclubs. However, he settled for a job in a laundromat, a reasonable compromise for an art~st who'd rather not starve. But with Burlington being a town on the move, ifs laundromat was not merely a suds-and-spin joint. "This laundromat sold snacks and beer and had a pool table and a TV," says Silberstein. In the year that he worked there, he met many of the town's movers and shakers, including the manager of a nightclub· who hired him as a coatchecker and bartender. In addition to that practical advantage, the laundromat also yielded a good omen for Silberstein's musical career: "Bob Dylan came to town and I got to do his laundry, which seemed to me like some kind of rite of passage." Once Silberstein started working in the night club, he found a place in the Vermont music scene, getting to know many bands and playing with several of them. Ever the student, Silberstein used this time to learn about playing with different bands, the process of incorporating a band, putting together CDs, and marketing them. When, finally, none of those bands worked out, Silberstein took eight months off from playing to write songs and develop ideas for a band of his own. In the Middle The CD, "In the Middle," is an elegantly packaged collection of eight songs in a folk-rock style. Its reviews in the local press were favorable. Seven Days (a Vermont weekly) wrote:" [This] collection of originals has a clean, spare, overall sound and gets its energy from the gentle accompaniment ... Magis wins points for scaling the vertiginous cliff of a record with a deft touch for arrangements and melodies." Vox, (another Vermont publication) wrote: "With crystal clear vocals running high above the light-handed instrumentation, there's a strange hint towardXTC ... Maybe it's Mary's presence [the Virgin Mary is the featured subject of the cover's artwork] or the reference to "walking in the shadows," but there is something almost sacred about this CD. It ~eems Magis refers to a person, rather than a band-an interesting and cryptic personna." His debut behind him, Silberstein' s goal is to support himself through music. "Ma.king a living from music doesn't mean that you have to shoot for rock stardom," he says. "It's just a matter of whether you make enough money to payyour bills every month. I would be a very happy person if all I had to do was related to music."• To order a copy of ''In the Middle, "write to Magis/P. 0. Box 8525/Burlington, VT 05402. �family at their home in San Diego. He writes: "I am still lawyering in Alaska and still out of politics. Carol and I are designing the home we plan to constructnextyear. It will double as a B & B, so all are invited." Judy Kistler-Robinson (SF) completed her master's in writing in December, I997' with an emphasis in technical/professional writing and teaching ESL Composition. She is currently teaching ESL part time and hopes to return to the Land-ofthe-Fully-Employed soon. Pom (A) andllita (A82) Collins are still enjoying the vvinters and mountains of Montana. Porn runs a rural health clinic and plays fiddle as often as possible. Rita teaches at the local K-8 school and is owner in a bakery/ cafe. Dr. KarenGasser(SGI) currently teaches ifi the University Writing Program at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Clinton and Marta Lively (A) are pleased to announce the birth of Grace Ann on September 7. 1996. She joins brothers Evan, 13; Bryce, 10; and sister Cora, 8. JeffMcElroy (SF) has recently been named vice president for advancement at TreePeople, a Los Angeles environmental non-profit. He is working on his MBA in nonprofit management at the University ofJudaism. His life partner of seven years, Enrique Noguera, continues to pursue family business interests in Caracas, Venezuela, and the Caribbean. They reside in Hollywood and are expecting their first child in January. He welcomes email at TreeJeffMc@aol.com. Jeff(SF) and Diane (SF79) Olsen passed a milestone in September that reminded them of some St. John's classmates. Jesse, their son who spent the first months of his life on campus, is now a freshman at Yale. Their other five children are doing fine at home in Kansas "Time flies?!" they write. Glover (SF) finished her ..., ~~ and moved back to Santa Fe to start a also as at the College of Santa Fe and the Santa Fe Comnn.mity College. The Rev. Frank St. Amour (A) is currently serving as Associate Rector at All Saints Episcopal Church in Lakeland, Fla., where he and Sue have bought a house complete with orange, grapefruit, and palm trees in the yard. Diane Lamoureux Ciba (A} received an MBA degree from Youngstown State University on August 30. She has a one year faculty appointment at Youngstown State. She will teach marketing and management classes, and vvill manage the computer lab in the business school. In November, she will present a paper at a conference in Boston about marketing strategies for colleges and universities on the World Wide Web. Cowley (SF) is enjoying life in Santa Fe-working for the National Park Service in the Cultural Landscapes Program and taking classes at UNM. Danielle Hatfield (A) is currently working at St. Alban's Episcopal Church, located on the Washington National Cathedral Close at Mount St. Alban in Washington, D.C. "My son Daniel Douglas Hatfield is a retired Washington National Cathedral Chorister, now in 9th grade at St. Albans School for boys," she writes. She is the wedding coordinator. registrar, and database manager for St. Alban's Parish. Occasionally, she says, she combines calligraphy and desktop publishing in the production of special liturgy covers. "Those who remember hearing Gregorian chants echoing from my dorm room and who referred to me as 'Brother Daniel' may be amused to learn where life has led me. Former and current Johnnies cross my path from time to time P.t ~t. St. Alban, and I would welcome hearing from others who might be inclined to get in touch." 1981 Carla Meeske (SF) was remarried to Don Person in the summer of Ig96. She is teaching sports and entertainment marketing at the University of Oregon. Robbyn Lea Jackson (A) and Timothy Przygocki were married October II, Ig96 in Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii. A baby girl was born on September 29, 1997· to (SF 82) and (SF). Named three older sisters: Emma, Io; 7; and Anna, 4. The ,\ccianis •i. .......h ......... New York. Gail Donohue (SGI) was named a finalist in the PEN Texas Award and won the Violet Crown Book Award for her second novel, God's Country Club (Persea, 1996). In addition to working on her third novel, she teaches fiction and memoir writing at workshops Devices, is coming out this February nationally. Cathy Randall (A) moved to Baltimore in Igg6 and had her third baby in 1997· She says she is loving life. Teresa Politi (A) is the mother of four: Panayotis, 14; Edward, 12; Sebastian, 7; and Dionysius, 2. Cary Renfro (SF) and Kenneth Ballew were joined in holy union February 8, I997· They honeymooned in Hawaii and make their home in Salem, Oregon. Peter Fisk (SF) and Natasha Walter Fisk (SF 84) are livingin San Francisco. Their daughter, Gioia, is almost two years old, and Peter's practice, Mind Body Chiropractic, is doingwell. Gertrude E. Koch (AGI) has retired after 28 years of teaching English and I4 years of teaching Latin. She still plans to sail down the Nile and live for a summer on a Greek island. Sara Yarnall Sanders (A) is looking forward to receiving her DVM degree from Cornell in May of 98. Her husband, David Sanders at St. John's from 83-85), and their children Gabe (12) and Rachel (g) share her feeling of accomplishment. A vice president with Donovan Data Systems in New York City• Robin Lavlin (SF) lives with his in Brian Peterson (SFGI) recently completed his PhD in geology at the University ofldaho and is currently teaching at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. Liz Waldner (SF) reports that her poetry collection, Homing and is full of "St. Johnsian stuff." Interested alumni can order a copy through Liz (email: ewaldner@ emeraldtufts.edu) or through Small Press Distributors in Berkeley. Katherine O'Malley (A) writes: "I get a sabbatical next year (from being head of the English department at Cate School, a private boarding school in Santa Barbara, California) and am going around the world (again). Anyone out there wants me to visit them, let me know." She adds that she barely survived a hyena attack in Africa the last time she did this sort of thing. J.B. Ault (H83), an honorary member of the alumni association, writes: "St. John's College has been an extraordinarily meaningful part of my life." Anne Braswell Heldreth (A), her husband Steve, Sarah (6), and Nat (3) have retired from Navy life and are settling in a new home in Charlottesville, Virginia. Any Johnnies wishing to visit her home or Thomas Jefferson's should call 804-975-0264. Katherine Ertle (A) and John Ertle (A) write: "We are pleased to announce the arrival of our second son, David John, born October 7th· He joins his brother Matthewwho was four on New Year's Day." Kathy will be on leave for six months from her job in the language, literature, and history department at the Akron Summit County Public Library. John continues his solo practice of law in suburban Cleveland, where he practices general civil law. David Walworth (A) got his master's in naval architecture and engineering from MIT in May, I996. He married Michelle Peterson in April, sailed to Bermuda, then Nova Scotia, -Cape Breton, and PEI in June -August 96 on their 26' Atalanta Sailboat, Le Bate au Ivre ("Yes, named for the poem," he says). He is now designing boats in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, at Gold Coast Yachts. (A) was laid off by the National Air and Space Museum in December, 1996, as part of a Federally-mandated reorganization, after working there for more than twelve years. He reports that he took his good old time looking for another job, but finallv decided to newsletter servmg '"'"'""T""'' The first issue has gone out to about roo sulosc:nt>er·s, and shows signs a success. Friends and classmates are invited to call 4rn-997-2784, e-mail (jhyder@cinergetics.com), and/or visit the newsletter's Web site: www.cinergetics.com. Adrian Trevisan (A) writes: �Aluntni Notes and Profiles ... "After six.years in Milan, Italy, my wife Anne and I have moved to Princeton, N .J. I now work for the US office of my Italian employer, a pharmaceutical company specializing in contrast media for radiology and magnetic resonance, doing international market assessment and competitive intelligence. Anne, who worked as a portfolio manager (or an American bank in Milan, is now in its New York headquarters. If moving back to the U.S hasn't changed our lives enough, on August 5, I997 our son Philip was born, and life has suddenly taken on a new dimension." 1985 Jewell L. Hall (AGI) writes; "I'm not teaching this year because I have carpal tunnel. It would be nice to hear from Gis, classes of Ig83-I985. I moved from center city [Philadelphia]'tWoyears ago and bought a house in West Mt. Airy next door to my mother." MargitSawdey(AGI) and Daniel Meltzer have adopted three sons, biological brothers born in Ig86, Iggo, and IggI. Their names are Eric, Alson, and Franklin Sawdey. The adoption was finalized on January 8, Ig97; the boys have been with Margit and Daniel since :r993, w\len they joined the family as foster children. Jeffrey Wilson (A) is teaching and residing in Bonn, Germany. from January to August 1998 in Loyola Marymount University's study abroad program. Stephanie Rico (A) writes: "We're still living a block from the ocean and three miles from the Mexican border. Todd Peterson (A87) is in his first year of surgery residency at Balboa Naval Hospital and I'm teaching physics -n"....-- n.....-... at San Diego High and preparing fo:r my dissertation proposal hearing in January. The most exciting thing I've done lately is to go to Mexico for three weeks this summer to learn Spanish. I'm surprised at how far I conversational with my students. Todd still runs down to the beach to surf every chance he traveled the world and is mother to a fine two-year-old boy-Harry Read. Peggy O'Shea (A) accomplished her long term goal of self-employment this past September. After working as a realtor in addition to a full-time day job since December Ig96, she was able to start selling real estate full time. Charlotte Glover (SF) recently became president-elect of the Alaska Library Association and is busyplanningthe statewide conference while looking for her first house. ''I'd welcome any visitors from St. John's to Alaska as soon as I get that guest room!" she writes. 1988 Steve Virgil (A) and Sheila Monen Virgil (A) write: "We joyfully announce the arrival ofJames Ignatius into our hearts and home!" James was born August 28, I997· Benjamin Krauss (A) writes: "I'm still really cool-only now-I have a career." Laurie Cooper (A) married Dov Kugelmass on December 7, 1996. "Our two dogs and immediate families were witnesses to our union ceremonyin the Natchaug Forest during a snowfall," she writes. Charles D. Melson (AGI) writes that his son, David Andrew Melson entered the class of 200I in Annapolis. Charles is teaching history at Anne Arundel Community C()llege and has three books in the works. "AGI, Class of88, where are you? Ten years are up ... Homecoming in Igg8?!" he writes. Sarita Cargas (A) received an MA in psychology from Georgetown University and this May will receive 1 another MA in theology from Aquinas in St. Louis. She writes: 'Tm looking forward to having a job finally! Any ideas?!" Eran Williams (SF) is a founding member of the editorial advisory board for The Montserrat Review, an biannual liter'.'.ln iournal. The first issue of The Montserrat Review will be published in February and will include Eran's poem, "dark. office, the heart." His letter to us ends, "While rm at it I might as well tell you that I also have work forthcoming in the Black Swan Review and in an anthology of nature poetry being put out by University of Georgia Press. Oh, and I just won 3rd prize in the Miklos Radnoti poetry competition." Picot B. Floyd (A) is living in Tampa and is a systems administrator for GTE. He is married to Suzanne Louise Floyd and has two children: Myrina Raaushanaa Zanne Chamomick Floyd (3) and Caphne Alexandria Isabella Maria Floyd (I). His e-mail is: sfdwqhe@scfn. thpl.lib.fl. us. Marion Gunn Jenkins (SGI) is being tutored in Greek language. She finds it "wondersome," although hard on a 77-year-old mind. Her job for the League ofWomen Voters of New Haven as observer of governmental affairs gives her a chance to compare with those e>f . Santa Fe. "Same foibles, same problems," she says. Janet Meeks (AGI) received a master's of science in library and information science from Catholic University in 1994 and published a poem, "October", in the October, Ig97issue of Cricket Magazine. Sophie Ehrhardt (Romano) (SF) writes to saythather daughter, Isabel, turned one on October 8, I997· She quotes a saying of the Slakeys: "Some walks, some talks, and some gets teeth." She reports that Isabel talks. CaptainJeffKojac (A) is now the comm~ding officer of a marine unit at the f uma, Arizona, Marine Base. MarkKreider (A) and Sarah Wetherson (A) are happily living together in sin in a house they recentlypurchasedin Portland. Two cats, Misha and Sydney, share their humble abode. Martin Gelfand (A) graduated from Case Western Reserve University School of Law in May I997, passed the Ohio Bar Exam, and is Congressman Dennis ·Kucinich as Congressional Staff Attorney atthe Cleveland, Ohio, district office. George Turner (A) is working hard as a labor and employment lawyer at O'Melveny & Myers in beautifulNewportBeach, California. "It's probably safe to say that I will never have a better office view than here," he writes. Eric Poppele (SF) writes: "My wife, Leslie Fagre, and I are celebrating the first birthday of our son Jasper David Poppele." 1990 Peter Holland (AGI) was appointed part-time visiting assistant professor in the University of Baltimore's graduate program in legal, ethical and historical studies. He has also opened his own law practice. MargotMaganias Thomas (A) married Bill Thomas, received her MAin theatre history, literature, and criticism from Catholic University in Ig95, and has two children: August William Thomas (born n/ 7I 94) and Imogen Nicole Thomas (born 10/30/96). Graham Harman (A) is the translator of Cristina Lafont' s Sprache und Welterschliessung and Niklaus Largier' s Der heilige Narr. He writes a regular sports column at web.sportsextra.com, in the online magazine section. Stanley P. Whatley (AGI) got married on June 28, I99?. to Diane Tate. They live in Birmingham, Ala., in a cozy condominium with two geriatric cats that Diane brought to the marriage. Diane is an interior designer and Stanley is an architect. Sandro Battaglia (A) is presently a junior trial lawyer with Marshall, Conway & Wright, a relativelymidsize insurance defense firm in lower Manhattan. He writes: "Regarding stereotypes, I have avoided involvement in any jumping, mugging or slashing incidents. Large hellos to friends, acquaintances and the staff at Jimmy Cantler' s. •• (A) is enjoying his second year at the Kellogg Business School. "Chicago is great fun, although it is hard to keep n.a1ra.n.uJ.a::. in these Chicago winters," he writes. Clinton Pittman (SF) is now a lawyer in Birmingham, ~.,...... ~...H·""• with the firm Saddler and andislnn.~H,ITltnvu1~·r~ swells from El Nino this winter. Come visit!" writes: "I married Ana Pilar Betran of Zaragoza, in December Igg6. Our daughter Andrea Pilar is five months healthy and beautiful. We live in Geneva, where I continue to work as an editor for the World Health Organization. Ana is finishing her MD/PhD." Susan Read (SGI) is living in Santa Fe and teaching English at Santa Fe Indian School. She has aH alumni! In r.::iimino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, skewes@mail.sjcsf.edu. I; I OJ; e· _ (SGI) teaches advanced placement psychology, civics, and honors philosophy at Pueblo Central High School. She developed the honors philosophy course using the St. John's seminar approach to reading the classics in philosophy. Students take the �philosophy course for college credit (while still in high school) in alliance with the local university. the University of Southern Colorado. Steven McNamara (A) writes: Angela Mlinko (A) and I are living in Providence, where Ange is teaching poetry and completing her MFA degree in creative writing at Brown University. Her second book o(poetry is due out in I999 from Zoland Books. I am finishing my dissertation in philosophy at Boston College and playing drums in the Boston-area band "Electric Hummus." Benjamin Foley (SF) is teaching high school English in the lower Rio GrandevalleyofTexas. His email address is: bff@tenet.edu. Amanda Fuller c( SF) was married to Andy Richards on September 27, Ig97, at Fairfax Unitarian Church in Oakton, Virginia. The marriage followed a Io-year engagement that was d'lbbed by John Carle (SF) as the "longest courtship in America." Johnny wedding party members included maid ofhonor Cynthia Rutz (SF82), and Elisabeth Anderson (A86) also did a reading. .Hen]lllIIUlII ~VlO:!is (A) is working on a Master's of Divinity at Yale. I997· She is working for the Consortium for Oceanographic Research and Education in D.C. while Kurt works at Homestead Gardens in Davidsonville. The two live in Eastport. Kristin Li1:si11ge:r (A) writes: "Jim and from Southern 1v1etnorust with an MBA and an MA in arts "I administration in don'tthinkI St. ::1rhrnnt::1orPit gave me in JU~~g.llmg th«) Se two degree pro-' grams." she writes. She is now an assistant vice president for the charge between and $Io,ooo. Lalena Parkhurst is .l:Hc~orrnm?;toin, lr1dlama, with her n!n·Tn ..... of 4 1/2 years, Sandi. She is vvvJ.AJ..ug at Indiana University doing c01mn1utc~r support and can be reached by email at lalena@ bluemarble.net. Hannah Stires (A) graduated from Harvard Law School in June of Ig97, and passed the Maryland bar. She is working at the office of the general counsel at the Department of Health and Human Services and says she enjoys her work immensely. She would love to hear from old friends, and can be reached via email at hstires@os.dhhs.gov. Michael Stevens (AGI) and his wife Linda enjoyed two welcome additions to their lives this summer: the first was a son, Ethan Patrick, who arrived on July u. The second was a new job for Michael as assistant professor of English at Cornerstone College in Grand Rapids, Mich. "Both are hard work, but rewarding," he writes. Sarah Schoedinger (A) married Kurt Heckel (A93) on May 30, I Kristin are proud to announce the birth of a member of the St. John's College class of 2or9 ! Nathaniel Sterling Litsingerwas born October I6, I997· Baby Nate has spent his first weeks oflife introducing us to various fluids and noises, smiles, and a love all words fall short so to describe. The Great Books are rhymes, silly songs, and lullabies, and I be a full time Mom. In short, our lives are forever changed, but we would not want to go backward for anything!! Nate would love to hear from folks: jlits@clark.net. As of October IS, Alexander Ellermann (AGI93) was in the Persian Gulf with Helicopter Anti-Submarine Squadron 8 embarked aboard the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz, the lead ship of the USS Nimitz Battle Group. (SF) received his master's degree in philosophy from the University of South Carolina and is currently in his second year oflaw school at the University of Minnesota. He will study law in Uppsala, Sweden, this spring. Michael McGuire (SFGI) married Michelle Gibbons on August g, I997 in Bishop, California. He teaches and is currently working on a book: Walking Hormones-Life in anAmerican Middle School. Henry Clews (SF) is engaged to Mary G. Zanoni of Portland, Maine. They are planning an October Igg8 wedding. He writes: "I have become a slumlord and renovate old apartment buildings. We do not see many Johnnies up this way but any who pass through should feel free to get in touch." Victoria Burgess (SF) has finished her masters in sociocultural anthropology at Columbia University and will soon be job hunting. David Ohanesian (SF) received his MA in mythological studies from Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa BarbarainJuly97. The program emphasized critical theory, comparative mythology, and depth psychology. Julia Beth Graham (SF) is finishing her thesis for her master's degree in world religions at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Currently finishing his master's degree in geography at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Gabe Preston (SF) took a job in Aspen, Colorado, with the Pitkin County Planning Department in January. Dan Farley (A) and Elizabeth Rhodes (A93) are married and expecting their first child in February. Dan is teaching grade English, speech, and drama. Liz is a medical transcriptionist at a local hospital. Wntson (SF) is cmTerttlv Outward Bound in Everglades City. Florida. He completed nine months at the tsa1umore Md., base. and Aimee Lalone (A} report that Morf was born March 3, 1997. .........,... .,.... Bronson (SF) writes: .. After almost three years away from St. Santa Fe, all I can my experience there in the past keeps me sane in the present. Thank you tutors, "great" authors. Great reading definitely keeps me alive! l !" Denver. Sheila Armstrong (SGI) writes: "We're back from Australia. All three boys are interesting and weird. I'm working for a women's health doctor in Santa Fe. Mike is retired and enjoying being a househusband. All is well.". TracyWhitcomb (A) is currently working at Trinity College as the assistant manager of the bookstore and is loving living in Vermont. "If anyone wants some information or advice about Vermont, Burlington in particular, I'd love to help," she writes. Her phone number is 802-865-8m6. Chris Davis (SF) writes: "Funk is its own reward and life is good!" Josh Barnard (A) married Barbara McNeil in May I997· He is currently pursuing a graduate degree in mathematics at the University of Alabama. Alice H. Brown (A) and Gregory Hodges (A) write to announce that their days ofliving in sin are now numbered. "We are looking forward to the married life. The event is to take place June 27, Igg8 on the coast of Maine. Alice is currently researching and writing for TVO's (Ontario television) various historical programs. Greg is finishing up an MA in Classics at the University of Toronto and is planto pursue doctoral work." Sarah (A) married Adam Ig96. Her address is: P.O. Box 772784,Eagle AK99577. t.;arolineJackson (SF) is currently stud:y:mg at the University J. Knighton 22, ofMi~mi. Elaine Ataba (SF) is a veterinary hnc-n~i-.-.1 and isprepann._, Francesco Giuseffi (SGI) teaches western civilization. ancient civilization, Old Testament and New Testament at Olney Friends school. In addition to his teaching duties, he is currently serving as Dean of Students. Kurt Schmidt (AGI) is teaching Zuzana Svih:ra (SF) is a first year instrumental music at the Maret __ law student in beautiful Law Quad, School in Washington, D.C. University of Michigan. Micah D. Pharris (A), a secondyear student at The Dickinson School of Law of The Pennsylvania State University, is th_e recipient of Gjergji Bojaxhi (A) writes: "I the M. Vashti Burr Memorial Award would like to be back at school and for the 1996-97 academic year. The award is given for excellence in read more books. PLEASE." Shana Sassoon (SF) currentlyis industry and scholarship. PatriciaM. Greer (AGI) is visiting Israel and living and working in a kibbutz. working towards a PhD in the department of religious studies at lNA. Her field is history of religions Answers to the Barr-Buchanan Quiz with a focus on Indology: Hinduism, on p. 8: Numbers I, 3, 4, 9 and IO are Sanskrit, etc. true of Stringrellow Barr. Numbers 5, 7, Angela Junk (SF) is the manand 8 are true of Scott Buchanan. ager of special events and commuNumber 6 is true ofboth. Number 2. is nity affairs at the United Way in true ofneither. �Obituaries ... Reginald Calvert Orem Reginald Calvert Orem, class ofr928, died in October in Cambridge, Maryland. He was a retired Cambridge newspaper editor who was well known in the town for his daily visits to the Dorchester County Public Library. An opera buff, he loved literature and languages. Orem was born in Cambridge. At St. John's he served in the U.S. Navy Reserve. After graduating from St. John• s, he worked as a supervisor for the Baltimore Gas and Electric Company. In 1946 he returned to Cambridge to become editor of the Democrat and News, a weekly paper owned and published by his father. He sold the paper, which is today the Dorchester Star, in 1961 and became an administrator for the Cambridge Urban Renewal project. He retired in 1964. His wife, Hazel, died in 1989. He is survived by two sons, three daughters, 16 grandchildren, and 23 great grandchildren. • Andrew Smith Andrew Smith, a graduate of the Annapolis campus in 1994 who was a doctoral student in English at Stanford University, died suddenly in November. Smith was from Scarsdale, N.Y.• and had been at Stanford since 1996; his concentration was in 18th century British literature. The Stanford Daily carried the following statement from Smith's advisor, Professor Terry Castle: "Andrew was a very shy, very smart and very sensitive person ... Andrew was a lovely person and a brilliant student. He had a wry sense of humor and was a delightful man to be around." He was actively involved in expanding the English Department's library, and was a member of the department's Book Review Club. Smith was also a jazz fan, with a special interest in avant-garde jazz. He loved books and was especially interested in rare and antique books. A memorial fund in his honor is being established at St. John's. Bernard Gessner Bernard "Bunny.. Gessner, class of 1927, died in Annapolis in November. He was 92. Born in the Germantown section of Annapolis in 1905, he attended Annapolis High School before coming to the college. At St. John• s, he played lacrosse, basketball, and football. From 1927 to I928 he taught at Sparks High School, and from 1928 to 1931 he coached football, basketball, and lacrosse at St. John's. In 1947 he graduated from Georgetown University Law School. For many years he was an executive with Coca Cola Inc., retiring in 1970. Gessner was a sales representative for Coca Cola Foundation Sales Division. He served as president of the St. John's College Alumni Association f:rom 1972 to 1975. he received the association's Award of Merit for distinguished and meritorious service to the college in 1977· In 1986, he was president of the Annapolis chapter of the alumni group. He was a regular at Annapolis Chapter luncheons, where he delighted generations of alumni with stories about the college during his rime as a student. Gessner was also known in Annapolis for his contribution of stories to the book Annapolis' I Rememberin 1990. In one story, he related that he earned money for college by working on the construction of the old Severn River Bridge, earning 35 cents a day during a 10hour day. Gessner' s wife, Ruth, died in 1989. He is survived by a daughter, four sons (including Michael, A 68), fourteen grandchildren, and eight great-grandchildren. Ruth Graham Hammen Ruth Graham Hammen, secretary to Stringfellow Barr when he served as president of the college, died in October. She was Sr years old. Mrs. Hammen was born in Colorado and graduated from the Central YMCA College of Chicago. In addition to working at St. John's, she also served as the executive secretary to the director of the Great Books Program at the University of Chicago and worked for the chairman of Encyclopedia Britannica in New York City. In 1966 she became secretary to Franklin Paterson, founding president of Hampshire College, and worked there in various positions over 27years. She retiredin 1994. Hampshire College named a lecture hall in the Communications and Cognitive Science Building in her honor. At the age of 75, she completed a tandem ski dive at Northampton Airport. She is survived by a daughter. a son, a brother, and five grandchildren. thereafter was named a Family Court judge. He spent 29 years with the Wilmington law firm of Morris, Nichols, Arsht & Tunnell, retiring in 1975. He served on the state Board of Education, was former president of the state Board of Mental Health, and served on the boards of the Travelers Aid Society, the Girls Club of Delaware, and the Delaware Curative Workshop. He was the Wilmington area chairman for John F. Kennedy's presidential campaign. He is survived by his wife, two sons, a stepson, and one grandchild. Carol Ann Tucker Carol Ann Tucker, graduate of the Santa Fe class ofr969, died on Tuesday, December r6, 1997, after a long illness. A well-known member of the Santa Fe community, she was a longtime board member of the Orchestra of Santa Fe, treasurer of the Acequia Madre Elementary School Parent-Teacher Council for uyears, and for many years a board member of the Theater of Music. For several years she also taught Sunday School at Holy Faith Episcopal Church. She is perhaps best known for her work as a member of the Santa Fe Garden Club. She won numerous awards for horticulture and flower arranging. The horticulture awards were given mostly for plants and flowers she grew on her own property. "She was always a lot of fun," said Susie Herman, a friend in the Garden Club. "She had tremendous enthusiasm and she was always organized to get things done." Carol was born on February 9, 1947• in Wichita, Kansas. She graduated from Albuquerque High School in Ig65 where she was head cheerleader as well as a member of the Honor Society and Girls State. She also met her husband, Steven L. Tucker (SF69), in high school. "She was head cheerleader and I was on the football team," he said. The two went on to St. John• s together and were married in 1968 at St. John's Episcopal Cathedral in Albuquerque. She is survived by her father, Ralph S. Lightner of Wichita; her husband; children, Patrick McMillen Tucker and Bevin Marie Tucker; and many other relatives and friends. Douglas Earle Gosnell Douglas Earle Gosnell (SGI89) died November ro, 1997· He was born on July 29, 1929. A sociologist, he lived in Boulder. Colorado. Michael Littleton Michael Littleton, retired Annapolis tutor, died on February 8 of a bone marrow disease. He had been ill for sometime. Mr. Littleton had been a member of the faculty since 1960. A graduate of the University of Maryland in 1955, he earned a second BA in divinity in 1960 from the Hartford Seminar Foundation. In 1967 he was awarded a master's in sacred theology from New York's Union Theological Seminary. Mr. Littleton's many interests included Jungian psychology and music, especially jazz. A more detailed obituary will appear in the next issue of the Reporter. Frank Lawrence Chartier Frank Chartier, Chief Financial Officer of Condor Technology Solutions, Inc., died suddenly in December. A graduate ofNotre Dame University, Charrier received his MA f:rom the Graduate Institute at St. John's in Annapolis in 1992. He was born in Detroit, Michigan, and had lived in Annapolis for IO years. He also participated in the college's Executive Seminar program . He is survived by his wife, son, and daughter. George T. Coulson George T. Coulson, class of 1938, died in Wilmington, Delaware, in December. He was a long-time trial lawyer and a former Family Court judge and deputy attorney general. He received his BA from St. John's and his law degree f:rom the University ofVirginia Law School. Coulson was a World War II Coast Guard veteran, serving in the north Atlantic and South Pacific. He became the city solicitor of New Castle, Delaware, in I949, and shortly __ ,_J �. . THE. .BARR/BUCHANAN. .CONNECTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . .. .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Excerpts from a talk delivered to the decade ofthe '4os luncheon at Homecoming by Charles Nelson, A4s T last term at Balliol, I got, I think, a clearer idea of what bound him to me. he friendship between Scott Buchanan and Stringfellow Barr began at Several English members ofBalliol and I started meeting with him regularly Oxford in I9I9 and ended with Buchanan's death in x968. During many in a discussion group. It was his curious kind of questioning that bound them of these years they were together in the same place: as Rhodes Scholars at and me ... I had quite simply been snared into a Platonic dialectic, by a dialecBalliol; as fellow members of the UniversityofVirginiafaculty, Barrin the tician who had staked his life on Socrates' statement that the unexamined life History department and Buchanan in Philosophy; with Robert Hutchins' is not worth living, a dialectician who may already have agreed with that Committee on the Liberal Arts at the University of Chicago for one year; then stately first sentence in Aristotle's Metaphysics: 'All men desire to know' ... " nearly ten years of hard but productive labor as co-founders of the New ...What was happening that first year, I think, that partly caused the Program and respectively president and dean of St. John's; and two years tension, was that Barr did not realize at first that he was in the process of together at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbecoming a tudent of Buchanan's. bara. All told they spent about 23 years in the same .... [After spending time on the faculty of the places, seeing each other frequently (often day-afterUniversity of Virginia together, and then in Chicago day) in one office or the other or in each other's homes. with Hutchins trying to establish a course based on the During other years when they were many miles apart, study and discussion of the great books, Barr and Barr in Princeton or New York or India, and Buchanan Buchanan were offered the opportunity to come to St. in Massachusetts or Israel or California, they correJohn's to institute their scheme.] sponded and sometimes visited each other. ... Barr, characteristically, was reluctant. Just as he What drew these two together? What attracted had not wanted to leave Virginia for Chicago, so now Buchanan to Barr? And Barr to Buchanan?Was it he did want to leave Chicago for Annapolis. And always a friendly relationship, or did they sometimes besides, he knew a bit about the college, and what he quarrel? What did they have in common? And howwere knew was not good ... He did not see it as a promising they different? • What did they accomplish together? site for a revival of the great classical tradition. Where did they fail? Buchanan, on the other hand, was intrigued. Perhaps For the last two years I have tried to find answers to his experiences at Virginia and Chicago had shown these questions. Those of you here who knew these two that only at an institution in dreadful difficulty would men, even if only slightly, will appreciate that the way they be given a free hand to overturn completely the they connected was almost entirely by conversation. existing structure and install a revolutionary new Since there was no tape recorder hidden under the desk order. Barr was persuaded to make the attempt, of either man, much is left to imagination. There is, though he expected to fail; he just felt he had a duty to nevertheless, a substantial body of material to draw try. Then it was left to them to sort out their respective upon. In ... these remarks today I will not always identify responsibilities. Barr relates: the source, but I assure you that, although it is appar... Barr as president and Buchanan as dean seem, in ently fashionable to do so, I will not invent quotations. retrospect, almost providentially well-suited to their The friendship had a rocky beginning. [Barr recolrespe~tiveroles. Now, for the firsttime, I believe, we lects what happened after his first encounter with Stringfellow Barr (left) and Scott Buchanan find Barr in a full and equal partnership with Buchanan in the fallofI9I9 at Ballioli]: (right} In the president's office at the college. Buchanan. Each carried an arduous burden ofrespon"During the next fortnight I saw Buchanan often and ·sibility under trying circumstances. we talked ... On the whole, I found him the most exciting .. .In Harris Wofford's conversation with Barr about Buchanan in Ig66, person to talk with that I had ever met. Nevertheless, in about three weeks I recorded in Embers o/The World, Wofford refers to the charge against decided to let our acquaintance lapse. For several reasons. First, Buchanan Buchanan that he was a destroyer. Barr responds: was obviously not attuned to a highly class-conscious society. He was not, it is " ... three or four years after our New Program started I was delighted with true, a crusader. He accepted authority if it was functional. But not empty it and Scott was depressed with it. The difference between Scott and me was status. Politically nostalgic about town meetings, religiously Congregationalthat when I see a baby I'm enchanted with him; and Scott is always feeling, ist, he reacted to social rank, to the arrogance of power or the servility of the 'Well, that's not the babylhadinmind. Babies ought to be betterthan that.' powerless, as a Scot, rather than as an Englishman. I objected to this stance All human enterprises, including birth, seem to him alittle disappointing. · [says Barr]. I could see a case for social strata. It did not irk me to give orders He's a Platonist in the sense that he's got some notion of a baby in the back of to my scout, who took care of my rooms, beyond a faint discomfort that his his mind that no baby lives up to, whereas to me it's such a miracle the little face was pink and white instead ofblack. Buchanan disliked the relationship. brat is alive-so what, ifhe has defects. His ears stick out and he's cross-eyed, I rather think that I disliked his dislike. certainly, but he's still alive. I don't think Scott and I were really disagreeing "More importantly, I disliked, as many others did, some truculence or on the facts of St. John• s at this point as much as that I'm always so impressed trickery in his conversation that ended by making fools of people. And yet it by anything coming to life and he's always so disappointed it didn't come to was their voices, not his, that grew louder; their faces got redder, never his ..." more life-because in fact it is partly alive I feel impelled to interpolate here from my experience as a student of Buchanan in and partly dead, like my mind." my freshman year, Ig4I-42-five mornings a The St. John's years were a great strain "The difference between Scott and me was on both men.The tasks associated with the week in an hour-long Greek tutorial and two that when I see a baby I'm enchanted with installation of the New Program would evenings a week with him as my seminar him; and Scott is alwaysfeeling, 'Well, leader. I never observed or experienced a alone have been sufficiently fatiguing to sign of truculence or "making fools of have worn down the bodies, minds and that's not the baby I had in mind. Babies spirits of two strong men in their 40s. But people" in those intense, intimate experiought to be better than that. 'All human ences. Not that there were no boys to make they faced, in addition, two severe fools of, if he had chosen to do so. He was struggles that nearly doomed their enterenterprises, including birth, seemed to him a the most patient of tutors. "Tricky," yes, but prise. One was the bruising battle to hold little disappointing. " never at our expense; his tricks were onto the campus against the designs of the dialectical and grammatical, and we shared Annapolis Housing Authority and the the fun of it. My tentative resolution of this Navy, previously referred to. The other discrepancy between Barr's experience and mine is two-fold: one, he had near-disaster was the direct result ofWorld War II: the loss, by draft or by matured, modulating the tone of his questioning over those .2.2 years; two, he enlistment, of most of the student body and some of the faculty, from I94I continued to be an irritant to many of his peers, but this did not infect his until the end of the war in x945 ... relations with students. From the available evidence I conclude that these nearly ten years of There was not only a lot of conversation between the two young men; there developed also an informal seminar. Barr reports: "During Buchanan's continued on page 9 �Calllpus Life ... .~9.~~~.q~ J~.9~~Y'. In what on-line competition did a Johnny who knows a lot about a lot come in second out of64, ooo contestants? by Heather Richardson, A99 of me were disqualified. Apparently. the rules were unclear about the number of times a person could enter, and that, coupled with the fact that whoever played would have to leave in the middle of finals (thank you, St. John's, for not having finals!). they were quickly running out of people for the short list. They managed to narrow it down to four people, however: three players and one alternate. And so it was that I met Justin Smith, Jordan Silverstein, and David O'Brien. On the morning of our game we were thrust into the green room with chaperones watching our movement very carefully, so that none of us would do anything that could be construed as cheating. We became fast friends and talked about everything from Alien Resurrection to Kafka to "South Park." The next few hours were a blur. At times, we felt like actors in a public relations nightmare. We came, we played, we posed for many, many pictures. As for the outcome of our game: David didn't make it into Final Jeopardy, and both Jordan and I got the final question wrong. He was $600 ahead of me, however, so with more conservative betting, he won. (The question: In 1603, this James became the ruling leader in Britain. Choices were Windsor, Stuart, and Tutor.) Sonywas quite generous with the prizes. We were given, of course, the free trip to L.A., first class accommodations, more than enough spending money, and all our meals payed for. As second place finisher, I came home with a leather jacket, sweat shirts, t-shirts, CDs, a CD player, the book version of "Men in Black," a "Men in Black" poster, and a Microsoft Trip Planner. I received $moo in Sprint long distance for the tournament in addition to the $ 300 of Sprint long distance I had won in the preliminary round. All in all, it was a cool experience, and I hope that more Johnnies enter this semester. Ifl finish in the Top Ten again, I have a shot at going back in the spring, and that wouldn't be a bad thing. After all, I'd get to meet three more great people and see all the people who were so nice to us in December. For now though, we 're waiting for warm weather so Justin and Jordan can pick me up (they both attend the University of Florida) on their way to Minnesota to visit Dave, for our own little reunion. Of course, we won't get to do the Monkee Walk out of the glass doors on the Jeopardy set again, but we can look at the pictures and talk about how we'll trounce the competition the next time.• · It was just your average extraordinary day. I found 20 dollars in my laundry, the guy at Dunkin' Donuts gave me a free donut, and my Don Rag didn't completely suck. I was riding high on the waves ofluck, and poured myself a glass of wine ... then noticed my answering machine light flickering. "Hello, this call is for Heather. I'm Kevin from Skycastle Entertainment, and we wanted to congratulate you for being a finalist in the College Jeopardy Online Tournament. Please call me back at your earliest convenience." My wineglass hit the floor. I r~played the message to find out if it said what I thought it did, and after doing some time zone calculations I called Burbank, California, and bothered the poor receptionist asking if this was "really, really, really real" and "not a joke." Thirty-six hours later. Sony flew me to Los Angeles, where a stretch limousine was waiting for me. After an uneventful ride (it was drizzling, so I couldn't playwitlh the sunroof), I ended up at a hotel adjacent to 'IWentieth Century-Fox Studios. In a rather dreamlike sequence, I watched bemusedly as the doorman and the driver fought over who would bring my bags into the hotel (the doorman won) and then I was "announced" to the front desk. It wasn't exactly a new experience to stay in a hotel, but hotels in Hollywood are not normal hotels. I insulted the bellhop by insisting that I bring my own bag up to my room, but once I got there I wished I had someone to tell me I was in the right room. It was a corner room, on the tenth floor, overlooking the Fox lot and Century City, with a bathroom larger than my old double room in Randall. I would have passed out on the bed if I could have found it, covered as it was by enough pillows to make Martha Stewart scream. Now comes the part of this tale in which I explain how I got to this point. Last September, I participated in the College Jeopardy Online Tournament. Out of the nearly 64,000 students that registered to play, I was one of the top 2oowho made it to the insanely stiff semifinal competition, where I finished around sixtieth and was eliminated. Until I got that phone call. Due to circumstances that were never fully explained, many people ahead SANTA FE HOMECOMING '98 S unshine and mountains, old friends and long talks, waltzing and seminars - all of these await you this summer during Homecoming on the Santa Fe campus. What's more, the two weeks of the Summer Alumni Program will be filled this year with fascinating conversations and a few special events for those who come back to St. John's. The first week of the Summer Alumni Program, from June 14 through June 19, will look ai "Fantastic Journeys." Led by Annapolis tutors Eva Brann and Nancy Buchenauer, seminar participants will relive Culliver 's Travels through strange and foreign lands. A second journey, led by Santa Fe tutor Bill Darkey, will take students on a literary journey through Conrad's Heart ofDarkness, Shakespeare's Tempest, Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, and Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner." In addition to the classes, the first week of the Summer Alumni Program offers the chance to join a day-trip through Chimayo, where you can see the Santuario de. Chimayo, a chapel that is revered by r---Tus,I~llid~~~:-a~ch~mdre~~tion~eri~ilie--l I 1998 HOMECOMING & I SUMMERALUMNI PROGRAM IN SANTA FE Name:~-----~----------~--~~~ Class Year: Home Address: I I Phone: E-mail Address: Campus: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ : I I I I I I I L-----------------------~ pilgrims who believe in the healing power of its dirt. The journey also will take us through Taos and up to the Rio Grande River Gorge. An alumni night out at Pranzo 's Italian Restaurant and farewell luncheon on Friday complete this week of adventure. Then, on June 19, 20 and !U, Homecoming Weekend will arrive for the Santa Fe campus. Activities for the weekend will include: seminars all alumni and special seminars for those in the reunion classes ohg68, 1973· 1978, 1983, 1988 and 1993; a barbecue picnic and games on the soccer field; a Homecoming dinner and dance; brunch at the president's home; and special activities for children. Immediately after Homecoming Weekend, the second week of the Summer Alumni Program begins, running from June 21 through June 26. This year the topic will be "A Journey Through the Human Mind," featuring readings from William James' Psychology: A Briefer Course and Frances Crick's The Astonishing Hypothesis. Santa Fe tutors Hans von Briesen and Timothy Miller will be among those leading the week's seminars. And, as with the first Summer Alumni Program week, there will be lots of great activities to keep you busy in your spare time. A day trip to Georgia O'Keeffe's home in Abiquiu will include a picnic at Abiquiu Lake and a stop at Echo Amphitheater. There also will be a dinner at Pranzo' s and a farewell luncheon for all the program participants. So, whether it's a weekend getaway or a two-week excursion, make time to return to St. John's at Santa Fe this summer. A brochure about Homecoming and the Summer Alumni Program will be mailed to all members of the reunion classes. If you are not in a reunion class. but are interested in Homecoming or the Summer Alumni Program, please call the alumni office at 505984-6rn3, send an e-mail message to eskewes@ mail.sjcsf.edu, or fill out the form and mail it to to: St. John's College/Alumni Office/ n6o Camino Cruz Blanca/ Santa Fe, NM 87501 �Cantpus Life ... ONE TOUGH STORY, TWO TOUGH PRODUCTIONS "NOW MY EYES HAVE SEEN YOU" "THE PERFECT AND UPRIGHT MAN'' The Book of]ob staged in AnnapoUs L et's see ... we've got Job (the greatest of all the men of the east), his seven sons and three daughters, the sons of God, Job's friends: Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite, Elihu the Buzite. Then there's seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred she-asses. And for dramatic effect, Satan, as well as the voice of the unnameable from within the whirlwind, the Lord. The "Book of Job," broughtto the stage, could easily reach Cecil B. DeMille proportions. The first chapter alone has days offeasting, burntofferings,ascenebetweenthe Lord and Satan, the fire of God, and a wind from thc!wildemess as destructive as anything The English Patient ever saw. By chapter two, Job is covered in boils with only a potsherd to scrape himself with. Any reader can see: this is the stuff of great drama. Junior Derek Alexander, who produced and directed "The Book of Job" for Annapolis' King William Players, agrees that the story has enough drama for a season of productions. But when he read the text, he saw something beyond the drama of the story, something that he wanted to bring to the stage. Alexander describes "The Book ofJob" as "aural," something meant to be heard. ••The book may be read silently, but at a loss to its meaning and beauty," he writes in an introduction to the production. "Thus the surprise of putting Job on stage belies a greater surprise: that most of us have never heard the book read aloud." By listening to the he says, we hear The Book about what it means to see and to be seen ...Job and his comforters have visions, and convey them in speech. They assert evidence that they have 'seen with their own eyes.' Job says, in a baffling response to an incomprehensible God: Before I had heard ofyou with my ears, but now my eyes have seen you.' What could Job mean?" Alexander asks. About goo people watched Alexander attempt to answer that question in a three-night run that set attendance records for productions of recent years. Alexander's presentation, rather than playing up the epic qualities of the story, explored the words and meanings of the text, demanding the audience's attention through its very restraint. The players stood against a backdrop of acoustical panels. Narrator Sara Barker (Ag8) wore a plain black suit and the rest of the cast wore long flowing robes in rich colors. The spare set, the simple costumes, and the straightforward blocking put the focus on the words of the text. By limiting the cast to a narrator and the six characters who speak in the book, Alexander presented Job just as it appears in the Bible. "I didn'twant this to be a covert 'J.B,' he says, referring to the Archibald MacLeish play that uses Job as a jumping-off point. While the audience was forced to focus on the words of Job, the actors were overwhelmingly immersed in them. Sophomore Lance Lusk, who played Job, had about 35 minutes of lines to memorize. Alexander explains that this task was harder than in most plays, because there is far more soliloquy than dialogue, and because many phrases of the text are repeated. "A lot of people who read Job get the sense that it says the same thing over and over again, but it never truly repeats. For memorization, this is horrible. You begin with the same line, but ifyou sayitthe same, you'll end up with thewrongline. Theonlywayto memorize it is to knowwhatyou actors in biblical gear. mean, and then to attach the words to the meaning. Because of this, we worked hard together on the sentiment, the doctrine, the rhetoric and the strands of argument." Gadfly reviewer Ben Speakmon gave the production a rave review, writing: "I judged the performances and production excellent ... The impression of thoughtfulness, care, and devotion to the text was everywhere apparent, and Mr. Alexander and the whole cast and crew deserve hearty congratulations for their stage presentation of this extraordinarily difficult text." • -bySru3anBorden Santa Fe students tackle MacLeish I n keeping with its timing just weeks before the winter solstice, the student performance of ArchibadMacLeish's "J.B." in Santa Fe was everything a winter tale should be: heartfelt, powerful, and very, very dark. The play' s script. written by 20th-century poet MacLeish, is both lyric and stark. Its subject, the suffering and illumination of} ob, could scarcely be more challenging. These characteristics, which might seem certain to doom an amateur production, instead brought this one close to the heart of the question of human pain. Audiences at both crowded performances were chilled, and some perhaps kindled by the interpretation of Job's tragedy. The credit for this success goes largely to the work of director senior Seth Brown (the director oflast winter's well-received "Waiting for Godot"), the actors, and the technical support members. The play is set in a deserted carnival, where two ex-actors decide to enact the story ofJob, playing God (Mr. Zuss, played by freshman Sergio Preston) and the Devil (Nickles, played by sophomore Lloyd Bricken). Through the technical assistance of stage manager Tony Jacobs, the two don masks and stand on a platform above the main stage s "JB" daughters of tutor Charlotte Martin, Eliot Fisher, Mrs. Martin's nephew,. and Lindsay Williamson, a campus resident and daughter of graduate student Laura Williamson. The children put in several hours of rehearsal for their role in the Thanksgiving dinner scene that opens the main action of the play. The perks? Areal turkey dinner dUring the performance. Bricken was so completely absorbed in the story offob that he wrote his seminar essay about it. But for the actors playing the leading parts, preparing for the play was an, intense emotional experience. Hall says that trying to portray Job led him to a very personal examination. "Understanding the anguish ... has a lot to do with tapping into what I feel is good about myself," he explains. To get more inside his role he alternated between reading the Book of} ob and the script, spending time with one of the two every week since being cast for the play early in the fall semester. Bricken, who plays the actor playing Nickles, the devil, was so completely absorbed in the story of Job that he wrote his first semester seminar essay about it. Though it was eventually edited to a workable size, the first draft was over fifty page.s. He says that despite the huge time commitment, theater works with the program, not against it. "Theater at St. John's is a way to internalize a lot of what we do here ... You .......,,... .8"" Hall and Maureen Galla1ther. make it personal. You make to preside over the drama. Though it live." neither plays the role of Job, they All the actors agree that the only are unconcerned: as Mr. Zuss tells thing that keeps the theater proNickles, .. there's always someone to gram at St. John's alive is love. play Job." Genie Stevens, a former employee A Job does in fact arrive, the at the college bookstore, donated "perfect and upright man," J.B., her time to give acting lessons played by sophomore Jim Hall. In a during the first month of rehearsals. departure from the Old Testament Brown and the cast put in a huge story, MacLeish's play includes amount of time on the production, several scenes ofJ.B.'s life before culminating in the final week before the pain of his testing begins. The the performances, when evening role of his wife Sarah, played by rehearsals lasted until well after junior Maureen Gallagher, is midnight. expanded to a leading part from a For all ofits shoestring budget, single line in the Biblical original. the on-stage fireworks of"J.B." His children, too, have a more proved that drama at St. John's is important role, and were played by strong.• Glenna and Colleen Martin, -byCarolineKnapp, SFOO �28 THE .REPORTER IOINING THE REAL WORLD "'d ·ca ~ JOHNNIES IN THE LAND OF COTTON AND KUDZU t £ I Ill "a CJ by James B. Cooper, Jr., A 00 ~- T ~ i.= ..... 0 VJ 0 = ·~ i:a::: v ~~ ta ~ ou ~ ti} "'d Q.) .!;:l & ~ (,) :.= ~ ~ IJJ "5 >. 'Ct" 0 ~ e'I ~ ;;J u ~~ :a JS - IXl ~ l><l 0 0 ""'"""' ...,J "t:I 0 0 = 0 ·a CJ Cl U':l ~ .,Q ~ 0 .~ ~ ~ ~ 0 <§} Ill ~ ~ hree Johnnies have made the trek from the belltowers and cobblestoned streets of Annapolis to the land of cotton and kudzu, the Mississippi Delta. As a part of the Mississippi Teacher Corps, Wes Donehower (A95), Matt Ehret (AGI96), and Hayes Adams (A97) have all agreed to spend the next two years in the Magnolia state, teaching in secondary schools and earning a master's degree from the University of Mississippi. Teaching at S.B. Marshall High School in Tchula during the Ig96-97 school year, Donehower used a method familiar to all Johnnies past and present, having students demonstrate their understanding of concepts at the chalkboard. "What set my math class apart and what made it successful was that the students mostly taught each other by going to the board. Almost the entire period was spent with students at the board and the teacher listening. It worked like a charm. Of course I would have to explain new concepts. But there were times when students would take their textbook home and would be able to explain the new concepts themselves. I would jump in the conver- ~ I Wes Donehower discusses Richard Wright with his high school students In a St. John's class. s a student in the Graduate nstitute, u1 ya Jwa~;!'..u1w::;,M, SGI97, was moved - how he handled own life and his qm~snons Those questions, she says, and some of the other books that she read at St. 1 "All art is occupied with the questions that are in the books we read at St. John• s," she says. "I needed to read them and I know I could have on my own, but it wouldn't have been the same. I wouldn't have gotten as much out of them without the seminars." Laskowski, a native of Austria, has been working on her art for more than 20 years. Most ofhe:r work starts with what she calls a .. pin.n1ted.prumt1nfl!:. _ in wax. In either case, the result is an abstraction of what she sees. ••Abstraction is to me," she says. "I feellike the artist needs to be the a1cne1m1s.t, n1e1·gu1g you." For several years, she says, her artwork reflected the darkness that she felt following the death of her Ig-year-old son. Today her work still shows some of that influence, "but now there's more balancing, more good and bad. Nowthere's a lot sation from time to time, but tha~ was a student-run operation," Donehower says. In fact, the charm worked so well that Donehower's math class, consisting mostly of high school freshmen and sophomores, scored higher on a state algebra exam than has any other class in Holmes County. "There might be a disadvantage with a student explaining a concept, but the big advantage comes when the entire class can jump in and think along with the student explaining the concept," he says. Now in his second year in the corps, Donehower has moved to T.L. Weston High School, in the delta metropolis of Greenville. He is teaching English and literature to freshmen and sophomores. And though the state-provided textbook is brand new, Donehower has his students read some of the same books he read as an undergraduate in Annapolis. Afterreading"Oedipus Rex," his students were curious to learn more about the fate of the house of Thebes, so they read "Antigone." "They were really funny about it and wanted to find out what happened to Oedipus' children. They were pretty convinced that the children would be retarded," he says. Besides Sophocles, the students have also read Mississippi-native Richard Wright'sBlackBoy, Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet," and Euripides' "Medea." Donehower also had his students read the book of Genesis. "Some students mentioned that they thought it was illegal. It is unconstitutional to promote or inhibit religion in any publicly funded place. I wasn't doing either of those, I was just trying to get them to think about what it is they believe. I wasn't trying to influence their beliefs one way or another," he says. Donehower says that he plans to continue teaching after he finishes his two-year commitment in Mississippi, though possiblywith the federally funded Teach For America. Mississippi Teacher's Corps Recruiting Director Harry Gaston says that the program's affinity for Johnnies is largely due to word of mouth. "We tend to get one or two people who come from the same school who do very well. Their friends and people they know then apply," he says. Gaston is familiar with and an admirer of the St. John's curriculum. He says that all three Johnnies who entered the program applied with the intent of becoming math teachers. Hayes Adams is at West Tallahatchie High School while Matt Ehret is teaching at S.B. Marshall. The program itself began in I99I, with a vision for meeting teacher shortages across the state of Mississippi. It emerged from a nowdefunct program called Project 95, which established education goals to be met by I995· Originally, the corps was a one-year commitment. However. the 2.5 corps members now stay two years, alternative teaching certificates in summer before their first academic year and beginning work on a master's in curriculum and instruction, a degree that emphasizes teaching rather than administration, Gaston says. Corps members receive the first year Mississippi teacher's salruyof$2.o,500, which is sometimes supplemented by the communities in which the corps members teach. All costs for the master's degree are paid by the state for program participants. 8 more celebration in mywork." Laskowski also is drawn to the monotypes and abstraction each work is a surprise for her. The matrix for her work is created on a which is then covered has the when she starts, she never , she'll end up ... I need that element of surprise and that immediacy in my work, especially because of my European background, which causes me to exercise a lot of control over other aspects of my life," she says. Laskowski says that for now, •• monotype and Laskowski. she's content to work on her art. She may soon begin teaching art again, she adds, and hopes to have a gallery ofherown.8 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The St. John's Reporter</em> Description An account of the resource College newspaper which started publication in 1974. Continued publication into 2000. Includes primarily historical content.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The St. John's Reporter" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=35">Items in <em>The St. John's Reporter</em></a></strong> <span>to view and sort all items in the collection.</span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 28 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context vol 24 issue 2 Winter 1998 Title A name given to the resource Reporter, Volume 24 Issue 2 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1998-01 Description An account of the resource Volume 24, Issue 2 of The St. John's Reporter. Published in Winter 1998. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Public Relations Office Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Goyette, Barbara (editor) Skewes, Elizabeth (editor) Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf The Reporter https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/dffa3261baed212b9fe460b0f032a20e.pdf 62a7109d64b0aeab8d33080add7801d6 PDF Text Text ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE LIBRARY I\\I\I\\I\\ ;i \\11~\lllmll\Wllli\I\\\\I\\\\\\\\! 31696 011381546 ST. JOHN'S GETS COOL New admissions publications disregard geeky image, plus croquet gets raves on the web ................................. 3, 24 BRYCE JACOBSEN An interview with this colorful ! H ' COLLEGE alumnus, tutor, and athletic director about his days as a ANNAPOLIS· SANTA FE student-when he opposed fraternities and favored lacrosse over baseball. ........................ 6 CAMPUS FARE College students are known for their ability to survive on cola eat ..................... 9 the Bell Towers: u.luJ.uvu, new vice officers announced .... Alumni Profiles: Alumni take the great books to Haiti; the conflicts of a committed ecologist ........................ 14, 16 Alumni Association: The SJC oral history project; news from the Portland chapter; election notices ..... . ............. 12 The Proe:ram: The Dean's Statement of Educational Policy considers the size of the college; Summer Classics makes business execs Johnnies for a week...................... 20, 24 A new angle on seminars: Tutor William Darkey and a group of Santa Fe students posed for Campus Life: Singing the February blues away in Annapolis; time-off ideas from Santa Fe; cross-campus ties ............ 21 Letters ................................. 5 Class Notes ......................... 15 one of the photographs used to illustrate the college's new admissions publications. See story on page 3. Photo by Peter Howard. �Frolll the Bell To-wers ... ROBERT A. GLICK IS SANTA FE'S NEW VICE PRESIDENT DOUBLE JEOPARDY! St. John's studentpoints-and-clicks to prize F or the second time, St. John's junior Heather Richardson finished second in the College Jeopardy Online tournament. Last semester she went into Final Jeopardy in second place, was tripped up by a question about the royal families of England, but won a bag of stuff from show producer Sony and sponsors Pontiac and Sprint. (She told her own story in the winter issue of The Reporter.) This time around, she finished second again but brought home a special prize to the Annapolis campus-a check for $ro,ooo from Pontiac. The money, whichwas awarded to St. John's because its competing students had the highest average score in the semi-finals, is for the college's general scholarship fund. Annapolis vice president Jeff Bishop made the trip to the Big Apple to watch the finals (which consisted of students sitting at keyboards) and accept the award. The Sony people,daim that nearly Ioo,ooo college students competed in the rn-week online championship this spring. To play, students log on at www.station.sony.com and play to accumulate points. Categories included: Animals' Dining Habits; Civil War Nicknames; Monks, Monkees and Monkeys; Nuclear Physics; and Rodents. 8 PINCH-HITTING FOR ALUMNI ...J I g <ii z I 0 ~ ~ Roberta Gable, before the arrival of baby Conrad, with Suslan Borden (left) and Lynn Yarbro (right). "D obertaRusch Gable (A78), the .[\.Alumni Director on the Annapolis campus, does nothing halfway. So when she started thinking about what her life would be like once she had her baby (Conrad Jeremiah Gable, born May 7), she decided she would like to devote herself to parenthood as much as she devoted herself to St. John's alumni. Gable will extend her maternity leave for a year, working one day a week at the office and the other days teaching baby his Greek paradigms, reading Goodnight Moon countless thousands of times, and finding places to put her Elvis knick-knacks out of the reach of baby fingers. Sus3an Borden (A87) will step into the Alumni Director's job for the year, working four days a week in the Alumni Office and also continuing to work a few hours in the Public Relations Office, where she assists with media relations and writes stories for The Reporter and other St. John's publications. The "3" is not a typographical error-it's part of her name. Here's the story: "When Borden was in elementary school, there were myriad other Susans, so she adopted the "3" (which is silent) to distinguish herself. Lynn Yarbro, the assistant in the Alumni Office, will continue to offer support to chapters and at events like Homecoming. Yarbro returned to Annapolis last summer after living in Paris for four years and Brussels for eight. In Brussels she worked for NATO, the U.S. Mission to the European Union, and the Bilateral Embassy. Borden, Yarbro, and Gable will work closely together during the coming year to ensure that alumni programs continue on their present course.8 R obert A. Glick, former development director for the Santa Fe Opera, is the new vice president for college advancement in Santa Fe. Glick' s appointment was approved by the Board ofVisitors and Governors in April. Glick earned his bachelor's degree in Ig65 from Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, his MA from Columbia University, and his PhD in Comparative Literature from Indiana University in 1973. A specialist in 19th- and 20th- centriry English, French, German and Russian literature, he was a professor of English and comparative literature at the universities of Cincinnati and Maryland, as well as a visiting fellow at Yale University. "While at the University of Maryland, Glick began teaching a course called "Opera for People "Who Hate Opera," which led to a position as an educational consultant with numerous opera companies around the nation. In 1979, he accepted a position as director of development and community affairs for the Opera Company of Philadelphia, but continued to teach as an adjunct professor at both Temple University and the University of Pennsylvania. In 1980, he became director of museum and public programs at the renowned Folger Shakespeare Libraryin Washington, D.C., and two years later he was appointed director of development. Glick became director of development and public affairs for the Division of Libraries at New York University in 1985, and then director of education at New York;s 92nd Street Y, where he produced one of New York's most extensive lecture and film series, as well as programmed numerous classes in the arts and humanities for both children and adults. Prior to moving to Santa Fe, Glick was the senior development officer for the Mu- · seum ofJewish Heritage, New York's Holocaust Memorial, which opened this past December. In I99I, Glick returned to the music world as director of development for the Santa Fe Opera, where he was in charge of fund-raising efforts for the nation's major summer opera festival and participated in the successful drive to raise $19 million for the opera house's extensive renovations, to be completed by the 1998 summer season. In Santa Fe, he also served on the boards of Shakespeare in Santa Fe and the New Mexico Children's Foundation, and was a guest tutor in the Summer Classics program at St. John's. Glick remains active in the opera world as a frequent contributor to opera publications and has lectured on opera at many of the nation's most prestigious institutions, including New York's Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., the Philadelphia Academy of Music, and the San Francisco Opera. Glick is married to concert . pianist Jacquelyn Helin. They have · two children, Kathryn Tyra, 7' and William David, 2- II2. e -by Laura] Mulry NEW GI DIRECTO A nnapolis tutor Michael Dink .tl.has been appointed Director o~ the Graduate Institute in Annapolis. He will take over as director in June from Thomas May, who held the position for the past three years. Dink is a graduate of the Annapolis campus, class of I975· He has a PhD in philosophy from Catholic University in Washington, D.C., where he wrote his dissertation on Plato's "'Sophist." He taught in Santa Fe from Ig8o to Ig84, and has been a faculty member in Annapolis since then. Dink has served on the Instruction Committee and he held the National Endowment for the Humanities chair in Ancient, Medieval, and Renaissance Thought in 1994-96. 8 The Reporter (USPS 018-7.50) is published in January and July by the Public Relations Office, St. john's Coltege, Annapolis, MD, and in April and October by the Alumni Office, St. John's College, Santa Fe, NM. Known office of publication: Public Relations Office, St. John's College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-1800. Annapolis: Barbara Goyette, editor; Sus3an Borden, writer; Roberta Gable, John Christensen, Pamela Kraus, Benjamin Milner, Brother Robert Smith, Harvey Flaumenhaft, advisory board. Santa Fe: Elizabeth Skewes and laura J. Mulry, editors; Lisa Tibbs, art director. Periodicals postage paid at Annapolis, MD, and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Reporter, St. John's College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800. �Frolll the Bell Tow-ers ... STUDENT SUCCESSES A GOLDWATER IN SANTA FE S ophomore Abigail Weinberg was one of only 3I6 sophomores and juniors nationwide to receive the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship. The scholarship is granted on the basis of academic merit to mathematics, engineering, and science students and is the premier award of its type in these fields. This year's competition had I,I86 applicants. Weinberg's application proposed a study of the relationship between the social and scientific in food production. This topic draws on her own experience in both organic farming and in more traditional scientific research programs. Weinberg's grant will provide herwith $7,500 each year for the two years left in her St. John's education.• TWO FULBRIGHTS I ANNAPOLIS wo graduating seniors from the Annapolis campus have won Fulbright scholarships for next year. Daniel Lee, who won a full Fulbright Grant, will be taking language courses at Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest, Hungary, and doing research into Attila the Hun. Eli Wiggins won a Teaching Assistantship Fulbright and will be teaching English in a private high school in Germany (as yet, unnamed.) The Fulbright Post Baccaulaureate Fellowships were started in 1946 to foster mutual understanding among nations through educational and cultural exchanges. Sen. William}. Fulbright sponsored the legislation, which he saw as a way to build alternatives to armed conflict. The program is administered by the U.S. Information Agency. Fulbrights give recent graduates (also Master's and doctoral candidates), young professionals, and artists the opportunity to study and do research abroad and to gain international experience. Grantees plan their own programs. These may include university coursework, independent library or field research, classes in a music conservatory or art school, and special projects in the social or life sciences.• // · ' �Frolll the Bell Tow-ers •.. PHONATHON MAKES CONNECTIONS SANTA FE HIRES NEW DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC RELATIONS S L ometime in the last two months, alumni, parents of alumni, parents of current students, and other friends of the Santa Fe campus got a phone call at dinner time. The caller wasn't asking them to subscribe to a magazine, consider re-financing their home, or comment on the current political situation. It was a student from the Tilman Jacobs and Chris Chew hard at work during the spring phonathon. Santa Fe campus, takingtime out of his or her study schedule to work on the Annual Fund Phonathon. The students were asking alumni and other friends for their assistance in improving tutor salaries, library holdings, and general campus maintenance. And while they received their fair share of firm refusals and dial tones, they did something that no mailing couldestablish personal connections. Under the guidance of Annual Fund Director Ginger Roherty, Emily Andrews' OI, Chris Chew' oo, Greg Grillot' 01, Tilman Jacobs 'oo, Kevin Blankenship 'oo, Denise Loya 'oo, Krishna Mehta '99, Matthew Morgan '01, Maureen Rynne 'OI, and Christina Schoux '01 placed nearly 5,400 phone calls, and from those garnered $I.2.,ooo in pledges for the Annual Fund. The gains to the college community from the phonathon cannot be accurately measured in monetary terms, though the impetus forthe event is certainly financial. Talking to alumni and their parents taught the students about real life after St. John's. Schouxspokewithone alumnus studying to be an existential psychologist and another getting a master's degree in Aristotle. Chew had the tables turned on him by an alumnus who needed to continued on page 23 aura J. Mulry is the new director of public relations in Santa Fe, filling a position that has been vacant since March 1996. Mulry comes to Santa Fe from Dallas, where she was the account supervisor for Carpenters & Associates, a public relations firm with offices in Dallas and Santa Fe. Under the auspices ofCarpentei:s & Associates, Mulry was responsible for public relations and marketing for national accounts, such as the nonprofit development organization Heifer Project International; the oldest continuously operating toy manufacturer in the United States, Today's Kids; The Ancient Blanket Series, a series oflndian Trade Blankets designed by Hopi weaver Ramona Sakiestewa, Sakiestewa Textiles; the Fechin Inn in Taos and the Inn on the Alameda in Santa Fe; and the sculptor David Hostetler. In addition, she provided public relations services regionally forthe Dallas Museum of Natural History, Crystal Creek Cattle Company, the Dallas Council on World Affairs, and the State Fair of Texas. Prior to joining Carpenters & Associates, Mulrywas one of nine professionals retained by The CocaCola Company as regional publicist for the 1996 Olympic Torch Relay and was responsible for publicity in a six-state region. Her previous clients include the City of Dallas, the Dallas Parks Foundation, the Central Dallas Association, the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, and Domain es Henri Bourgeois, a French winegrower and distributor. Before establishing herself as a consultant in marketing and public relations, Mulry was the Main Street manager and executive director for the nonprofit Jefferson Area Association, a low-income neighborhood in southern Dallas. The Main Street program is a project of the National Trust for Historic Preservation that uses preservation in economic development efforts for the revitalization of rural and urban Main Streets across the country. Previous to becoming a Main Street manager, Mulrywas director of marketing for La Madeleine French Bakery & Cafe, and commer- ~ :E E ~ lii ~ Jonathan Eng, class of 202 I (?), son of Jing Wang, A96, and Benjamin Eng, holds tight to his kite string at the first Great Kite Fly, held on the Annapolis back campus on April 17. Hundreds of local families turned out to fly kites, compete in friendly competitions, and watch demos of kite ballet and kite fights. The music was mellow, the weather was bright, and everyone had fun. The event was organized by the Maryalnd Kite Society, sponsored by the Friends of St. John's, and chaired by Esther Slaff and Carol Boslet. "It was our way of saying thank you to the community for its support for the college," says Kathy Dulisse, AGl88, who works in the advancement office and served as kite-fly archon. cial and cultural attache for the Quebec Government Foreign Trade Office in Dallas. Mulry received her bachelor's degree in English literature from the University of Dallas and a Diplome Superieur in French language and culture from the University of Strasbourg in Strasbourg, France. 8 NEW BOARD . OFFICERS ANNOUNCED N ew officers for the St. John's College Board ofVisitors and Governors were announced at the Board meeting in April in Santa Fe. Taking over as chairman is Gregory D. Curtis, He replaces Ray Cave (A.Lj.8), who is leaving the board after serving as chairman for one year and as chairman of the Campaign For Our Fourth Century from Ig93I996. Curtis is founder, president, and CEO of Greycourt & Co., Inc., an investment counselting firm headquartered in Pittsburgh. He writes an investment column, "Right on the Money," for the Pittsburgh Bzt.Siness Times. Curtis graduated from Dartmouth College, earned his JD from Harvard Law School, and is a graduate of The Endowment Institute at Harvard Business School. The new vice-chairmen are Harriet Higgins Warren, of Atlanta, and Steven Feinberg, of El Paso. Warren is president of Higgins Asset Management in Atlanta. Feinberg is chairman of the board and CEO ofDorsar Investment Co., Inc. The new secretary is Sharon Bishop (A65), ofReston, Virginia, who is president and founding partner of Caliber Associates, a consulting firm that deals with human service programs. She recently held the position of president of the St. John's College Alumni Association. Joining the Board in July are alumni representatives Jean Fitzsimon (A73), RobleyTimmins Levy(A56), andPaulMartin (S8o}; returning members are Richard Berkowitz, Thomas Geyer (A69), and Barbara Lauer (576). • �Letters ... Tuition Costs The winter issue of The Reporter arrived recently and, although our daughter,Maureen(.AGigI)w-asthe addressee, I spent a stimulating hour perusing it before forwarding it on to her. Kudos to Sus3an Borden for three delightful articles. I onlyintended to give your paper a quick glance, but from the eye-catching cover photo to the last page account of "Johnnies in the Land of Cotton and Kudzu" I w-as captured, enthralled, enlightened and stimulated-just as w-as Maureen w-hilst at St. John's. Barbara Goyette (p. IO) laments that she cannot afford to send her eldest son to St. John's in much the samew-aythatwe once had to tell Maureen no, w-hile to State. Nevertheless, once cantured bv the St. deter her ., later she made it to the Graduate Institute on her own and found it all she ... be. Maureen dates her intellectual . ., her too brief time at the Graduate Institute. Maureen's hope is to one day leave St. John's a legacy which ·will ... similar low-income students like herself achieve their intellecpotentials. concur. And I might add that her father's scant exposure to the classics came from one gifted high school teacher and one inspiring college professor. Yet this proved enough. Great books and great teachers provide potent potions for promethean productivity. -Mrs. Morris (Eileen} Mericle Editor's Reply: I'm sorry to have given the mistaken impression that my son is not attending St. John's because it is too expensive. He isn't interested in the program and isn't interested in a small school-he chose a large university in a big city instead. Had he decided on St. John's, however, I'm confidentthatthe college's financial aid policy, based on need, would have provided him with an adequate combination of loans, grants, and work-study so that our family could have afforded the tuition. It's sentiments like Maureen's that enable the college to keep tuition w-here it is now. Gifts to the college endow-ment subsidize more than 25% of the yearly cost to educate each student at the college. -Barbara Goyette Reason for SJC Pride I enjoyed the winter I998 issue. I was particularly moved by the story about St. John's integration decision in '48. I hadn't heard anything about it before - one more reason to be proud of St. John's. I have been living in rural Haiti for about a year now, running a health clinic and w-orking for a peasants' association. It's been fascinating and difficult in equal measure (extremely so, in both cases). If anyone happens to have related interests, rd be happy to correspond. I am filled with envy when I read about the Jerusalem .Alumni Chapter. Why haven't St. Johnnies flocked to Haiti the way they have to Israel ... ? -Sue Conlin (A72) I found tw-o items of particular interest in your last issue. The first: .A note from George He was a special friend to me -rn-,;ri-••rc-1-un<Yr at St. John's. I had not heard from him in many years he was called me.We Secondly, as a native of the Mississippi Delta (Greenville, Miss.) it was interesting to read that St. Johnnies are involved in new educational efforts in that area. I left there in Ig58 to attend St. (Annapolis campus - the only one then). I went back to complete my college w-ork at University of Southern Mississippi . .After that I returned to Maryland and have only visited Mississippi once, very briefly, since then. It is good to hear that there are new- educational ideas being introduced there. -PaulB. Green (A62) It is always a pleasure to receive The Reporter, for it invariably brings back warm memories of my long ago days at St. John's College. I commend you and your staff. One tiny thing puzzles me, however. The spelling ofyour w-riter Sus3an Borden's name. Does she pronounce it Sooz-three-anne? -Martin Andrews (A4.3) Editor's Reply: The mystery of Ms. Borden's name is explained on page 2. She wanted to set herself apart as a fourth grader when there were lots of other "Susans" in her school. The "3" is silent. Removing Barriers a Continuous Process Reading the article describing St. John's Ig48 decision to recruit and admit .African-.American students made me feel proud to be a Johnny. How-ever, I could not help wondering how accessible is a liberal education to students of color today? .Although segregation no longer keeps black students out of colleges and universities, economic and social barriers still prevent access to the freeing education of St. John's for many students of color. Driven to pursue an education that will secure economic survival, many bright minority students perceive that they do not have the time or money to spend four years learning to think about ideas. So many more never have the chance to discover that a college exists where what they think as individuals is most important. Look around campus; ho-wmany .African-.American, Latino, .Asian, and Native .American students attend our college? Of course, not every student, regardless of ethnicity, will be suited to attend St. I am not advocatseek:ing diversity to bolster statistics. This w-ould demean the students seekinl! them for the co11t~JJ'"e ,...,,......-,..,,"""'-""'·'tirshare the responsibility for spreading the word about our school to young .,,,.,,.A,,..,.,"" ,,.rnn. might otherwise not have the opportunity to become "energetic seekers ofknowledge." The students, tutors, and president of St. John's in I948 courageously exemplified talci.ng action based on principle. I hope that for us in Igg8, living by the principle of "liberal education for all who are qualified" is a continuous process and not a fixed moment in time. - Kim T. Rascon (SG/96} Notice from the Dean Harvey Flaumenhaft, dean in .Annapolis, sent the following notice to all students, faculty, and staff of the college. He notes that it may be of interest to alumni, some of whom have contacted him with questions: Discovery of the copying of a senior essay made it necessary for the College recently to revoke a degree, with its accompanying senior essay prize, and to expel the student. The Reporter 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 either campus: Annapolis - The Reporter, Public Relations Office, St. John's College, Annapolis, MD 21404 or e-mail b-goyette @sjca.edu. Santa Fe - The Reporter, Communications Office, St. John's College, I 160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 8750 I or e-mail eskewes@mail.sjcsf.edu . �THE REPORTE<R 6 BRYCE JACOBSEN: THE EARLY YEARS A graduate ofthe college in 1942, Jacobsen returned in 1958 to teach and head up the athletic program. Valerie Pawlewicz (A89) interviewed him about his life before 1950 for the St. Johns oral historyproject. VP: Can you tell me about the Bryce Jacobsen pre-St. John's College? BJ: Well, I was born and raised in Towson, Maryland. I went to elementary school in what used to be called Towson Normal School. It's now Towson University. Actuallywe only lived about a block from there so it was an easy little walk even for grammar school. And then later I went to Towson High School which was up in Towson proper. Then I came to St. John's in the fall ofI938, the year I had graduated from Towson High School. VP: How did you know to come toSt.John's? Eventhoughyouare in-state, it's relatively local. It's veryd-i:ff'erent, and they had a radical newprogram. BJ: Well, it wasn't because of my prior knowledge of the New Program or anything like that. It was simply just by chance, which plays a big role in people's lives. There was a state senatorial scholarship which came up that spring. So, I scored well on the examination. As a matter of fact, I was told later that I had made the top score. That's how I won the state senatorial scholarship. And for that particular year, it came up for St. John's.Well, my family was rather poor like most families at the time. This was sort of in the middle of the big, long depression of the Ig3os, and, they were anxious, of course, that I accept any scholarship anywhere. Because they didn't really have the money to subsidize me at school. I did have a part scholarship to Loyola because of my athletic prowess, which wasn't very great. I was still undecided about which one I should take. But, my late older sister, bless her heart, came to me and said, "It'd be better if you left home." VP: I hope she meant that in a nice way. BJ: Yes, the home situation was, there were six children and a lot of disputes. It was not great, the home situation. It was not really dysfunctional, as they say nowadays. And nobodywas committing any crimes or beating up on anybody. But, it was not good really. So, she in her wisdom said it'd be better if you left home. So that persuaded me. Not because of anything I knew about the New Program. VP: Youhadmentionedyour athleticprowess in high school. Well, this is an important element in your life then and later. "What were you knownfor in high school? BJ: Well, primarily basketball. 'Cause at that time, I usually played center being the tallest member of the basketball team. I practiced a lot and I was fairly adept at playing basketball. That's why Loyola College became interested in me and that'swhytheyofferedme some sort of scholarship. VP: Didyou expect to play sports at college? BJ: Not really. I would,9nly have expected that if I had taken the scholarship to Loyola. Sports wasn't in the deal for St. John's. I did play when I was a freshman, because that turned out to be the last year of intercollegiate athletics which was the year Ig38-39. I played on the basketball team and in the spring on the lacrosse team. I was also fairly adept at lacrosse, like most people in the state of Maryland, most athletes, because lacrosse was actually, in many places, a bigger sport in the spring than baseball. VP: Do you remember where your dorm was? BJ: Well, I was assigned to Randall Hall, which at that time was the dining hall, still is. But the upstairs had all single rooms. However, freshman they doubled up. We all had roommates. But, I recall, for instance, that most of the time when we went in and ate lunch they would be in the dining hall eating at what we called the high table. There was a little platform at this end of Randall, I don't know if it is there anymore. VP: It'snotthere, wouldithave been near the.fireplace, or near the entrance? BJ: The high table was near the far end as you went back towards the kitchen. They used to be there having lunch, sometimes with some other tutors or whomever. VP: Do you remember your tutors? BJ: Wilbourn. Wilbourn, yes. He was in our seminar I remember. John Kieffer was also my freshman language tutor. In later years, I had seminar with Stringfellow Barr which was good. I think he was very good in seminar. No matter what the subject somehow, or no matter how apathetic the students might be, he always somehow seemed to make it interesting. VP: How did he do that? BJ: Just by the way, just by his vitality and the VP:Doyou "How about contemplat- wayhecould remember your speak. Of course freshman hehadan ing getting that roommate? enormous rebound?" the coach BJ: Ohyes. knowledge on Chap named would say. This was part many subjects. Warren Hehada Bomhardt, from limitless store of ofthe kidding about the Baltimore. He anecdotes and was called Slim stories about New Program. by his old any particular friends because subject which actually he was taller than I was. I would tend to enliven the conversathinkhewas 6'3". ti on. VP: Andhow tall are you? VP: I still want to get back to yourfreshman year because I'm BJ: A real string bean. I was 6 '2". fascinated with thefact thatyou So, we occupied one of the rooms in didn't know about this school. I Randall Hall and we got along fine would've walked in thinking it with one exception. He didn't like would be a regular college with opening the windows at night and I regular courses. When you started did. Oh, this was a source of... I don't were you surprised? know how we solved that- maybe we rotated or something. One night he BJ: Well, I couldn't have been did it his way and one night we did it here very long before I became aware my way. Anyway, I recall that one of what I was getting into. But as I night, must have been in March in say, it was a great scholarship and I I939, early spring, one weekend was prepared to do almost anything. there was a sudden storm that blew, a I had been a great reader in myyoung snow storm, and that was my night life. So, the idea that we were going for the windows and we had them to read more books, that was fine open and we woke up early in the with me. morning and the snow was all over VP: Was there tension between the room and that was just a little bit oldprogram students andNew too much for Slim. Program students? VP: He won that contest. Do BJ: Well, there may have been a you remember Barr and little bit. I wasn't really aware of it Buchanan? much. As a matter of fact, I made BJ: Yes, yes. My freshmen year, theyweren 't teaching any of the classes that I was in. That came later. some good friends among the old program students. Primarily because I got involved in the athletic program which some of them were involved in. So, I didn't feel it at all. They used to kid me about New Program, sort of like an egghead or something. I remember playing basketball in a practice and the coach at the time was a chap named Dutch Lentz. I didn't do something to his satisfaction, maybe I was getting a rebound or getting a pass, and so he made some corrective comment to me and I replied in some way that suggested in some way that I had been considering or contemplating or thinking about what he said. Well, of course, he made a big joke out of that. There after, he would say, "Now, Jacobsen, will you think about doing this," or "How about contemplating getting that rebound?" All this was part of the kidding about the New Program. But it was lighthearted stuff. VP: Wereyouamemberofa ·fraternity? BJ: Well, eventually I was. I was rushed, as they say, like other people and I joined at first. Then, later, when I became a sophomore, I think I was becoming more knowledgeable about society and things in general and I started to have some doubts about the purposes and value of the fraternity. As far as I could see, it was only a drinking society. And then I discovered that, like most organizations at that time, most organizations of any sort, had prohibitions against certain races or religions joining their group and that really riled me. VP: Whydiditrileyou? BJ: Because, somehow I had developed, I think primarily through my reading and whatever, while I was still growing up in Towson, an idea of universal brotherhood or some such idea which, to my mind, didn't go along with all the ways that society in general at that time and organizations in particular, you know, segregated people into separate groups. In most cases, there was sort oflike a caste system. There were superior groups and inferior groups. I thought that was all wrong. But, when I was a sophomore I decided I should not be a member of that fraternity or perhaps any fraternity. I had a good friend, a student who was a Jew, amember of my class, }ournet Kahn. He is a professor of philosophy for the rest of his life somewhere and of course he couldn't join our fraternity. When I mentioned that to one of my fraternity brothers, he said, "Well, he has his own fraternity" -there was a fraternity for Jews. I don't remember what the letters were. But I didn't like the whole arrangement. Of course, they all denied access to blacks. So, I went to the chap who was the sort of president of the fraternity when I was a sophomore and I told him some of - ··--·-··- - ~-~ --~-~- -- �whatever. Since this was a federal law, then if you break such a law, you will be visited by the FBI and then things will take their course and eventually they will charge you with breaking the law and you'll come before a judge. There was no jury. The judge will sentence you according to the law. There was a maximum of a five-year sentence for the law at that time and I forget whether there was any minimum. In any case, my sentence was two years which was fairly low for most sentences at that time. Many of my friends in prison had five year sentences. my misgivings, and of course he was rather astonished. I'm sure I was the only one that had ever mentioned such things to him before. So, I actually resigned from the fraternity in the spring of Ig40. I believe shortly thereafter, maybe in the summer or the fall of Ig40, President Barr anounced that hereafter the College was reclaiming for its own use the buildings or parts of buildings that they had allowed the fraternities to use. You might say, he reclaimed college property. He didn't abolish the fraternities as was announced. VP: Whatdidyouthinkabout the decision to abolish intercollegiate sports in 1940? BJ: Of course we were told correctly the College was now going to introduce and encourage an active intramural sports program. I thought, well ok, that sounds fine and it didn't bother me that much. Many students came to me and wanted to know what I was going to do. Was I going to take off and go to Michigan State or someplace? I said, "No, I can't go anywhere, I've got this good scholarship here. We're going to have an athletic program." VP: I'm really interested in the early intramuralprogram with NedLathrop. Whatwas that like? BJ: AB I recall, let's see, Ned organized it on dormitory units, that is Chase Stone had a team, Paca Carroll had a team, and Pinkney had a team. And, as I recall, we played touch football in the fall, not soccer at the time because that didn't happen until later when I introduced it. Basketball in the winter, not volleyball. Softball and lacrosse in the spring. There was still a lot of interest in lacrosse and we used to play six-man lacrosse. I think on the whole that went well. There was a good deal of participation. Of course it was all voluntary. And that persisted through the r94os, through the r95os. Maybe with minor modifications or something. But when I came back in Ig58 after being away from the College for sixteen years the system was organized by class year, and it didn't work very well. I changed over to the system that we still have. Of course we retain the team system but the teams were now made up in an entirely different way. See, each team had a certain amount of freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors. And each year we would lose a few seniors and gain many freshmen. So there was more stability and more equality and we inaugurated a draft system so that the poor teams would have a chance to draft the better players. VP: I wanted to ask about what VP: So you went to pruon? Mr. Jacobsen, tutor and athletic director from 1958 until his retirement in 1986, is known for his sartorial splendor (ugly ties) as well as his prowess on the field. In the catalogue, his background was always listed as "farmer and carpenter" but his past also includes years of being a serious student and a stint in prison as a conscientious objector. happened between t942, when you ltfrcollege, and1958. BJ: Technically, I was farming most of the time. Either working for other farmers or eventually working on my own farm. In I942, I was a concientious objector vis a vis the war. VP: Whenyougraduatedfrom college did they immediately ask you to go to war and that's why you ... BJ: Turned out, yes they did. The draft board didn't recognize me as a consciencious objector. I thought I was, and all my friends thought I was and Stringfellow Barr thought I was and he wrote a letter to the draft board and everything but it didn't mean anything to the draft board. I think it was the temper of the times. Of course, our war, that is the war that Japan had just started in December of I94I, that was in my senior year. There was a general feverish war feeling everywhere. VP: Whatmadeyouaconcientious objector? How would all yourfriends have said, "Yes, Jake if one. "How would they know, why, what made you different from others? BJ: I don't think I was really different in most ways. I mean I was a student and I had various interests and hobbies and I was active in athletics and in many respects I was a typical, average guy. VP: So, whynotgotowar?All yourfriends were. BJ: Yes, yes, itwas difficult. Ihad a roommate at the time, he was ultimately killed in the war, his name was StreitCunningham. A lot of them tried to stay and graduate so they could become a commissioned officer. Others who were not as patient, or thought theywouldn't be able to graduate, went off and joined the army. But to backtrack, I was never granted the right to the CO classification because the draft board chose to take a quite literal interpretation of the law, which most of us did at the time. The law said, the selective service law of Ig40 said that you could be a CO by reason of religious training or belief. Well, technically that boiled down to if you were a Quaker or, say, a member of the Amish or some religious sect that had a tradition of passivism, they would grant you CO status. But if you were not a member of any such group, you had a slim chance of being recognized as a CO. VP: So what happens when a Selective Service Board decides not to grantyou CO status? BJ: Well they give you what was called IA- that is, you're supposed to be drafted. Then they tell you you have to appear at a certain time at a certain place for an examination or what not, preinduction. What happens if you don't do that, of course, you've broken the law and they notify the Department of Justice or the FBI or something and you are then a suspected delinquent or BJ: Yes. HI had been recognized as a CO, which I wasn't, I would have been sent to what they call Civilian Public Service, CPS, camps. The government had set them up where they sent the recognized CO's. They were supposed, in the word of the law, to be doingworkofnational importance. Of course, it turned out that it wasn't always work of national importance, leaf raking or something. ManyCO'swho accepted parole from prison were sent to hospitals. That, of course, was not under the Civilian Public Service. You were still under the Department of Public Justice. That's what happened to me. Eventually, I was paroled from prison to work on a farm, farm labor being very scarce at that time. VP: Howlongwereyouin prison before theyparoledyou to thefarm? BJ: About thirteen months, I think, a little more than a year. VP: Andyou werefarming at thatprison as well? BJ: Yes. I grew a lot of crops and had animals and everything. I found that, if you must be in prison, that's, at least from my standpoint, sort of a good way to handle it. I enjoyed working on the farm and lots of times you were out in fields and places and you couldn't even see the prison. You actually felt as though you were free. Of course, we were sure not. I did gain considerable farming experience there, which helped me to a certain extent when I was on parole. I had a good friend who was paroled to work in a hospital. So most of the CO' s that were paroled during the war either went to farms or hospitals where both of them were suffering badly from labor shortages. VP: But once you had completedyour term, you could still be drafted, right? BJ: Yes, that's right. I had to go continued onpage 14 �JOHNNY. . .GEOMETRY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . .. . . .. . . . W: re do geometrical objects exist? This question, which occupies the minds of .freshen studying Euclid, Plato, and Aristotle, can have several answers: in the imagina- on, in nature, in the imagination as imitation ofnature, in reality, nowhere. Cer- tainly, though, glimmers - or should we say imitations - ofgeometrical shapes con.front us every day. Freshman Sylvaine Rameckers took her Nikon on a tour ofthe Annapolis campus looking/or new views ofknown objectsund came up with circles, squares, triangles, and lines. Counter-clockwise from top: The divide between the steps leading to the planetarium; the stairway on the Pinkney side of McDowell (this porch of Seneca stone was added to the entrance in 1903-it had been salvaged from the west side of the State House library annex, completed in i 886 and demolished in 1902, and offered to the college); the roof of the planetarium; a chair {not the usual SJC "seminar chair") in the · Greenfield Library; a wooden bench in the Mellon courtyard. �CAMPUS FARE BECOMES ... WELL MUCH BETTER THAN FAIR ••• Quinoa? Bok choy? Coconut milk? Garbanzo dahl bread? Are we in the cafeteria? BY CAROLINE KNAPP, SFOO B efore this semester, Santa Fe campus students who heard about foods named quinoa or coconut milk would have been more likely to guess theywould be served in the local natural foods store than the dining hall. But thanks to a new concept from Aramark, the campus dining service, residential students are looking at the cafeteria experience in a whole new light. At the beginning of the spring semester Aramark introduced the Granery component of their Pangeos line of food stations. Essentially, the Pangeos concept features food prepared directly in front of the prospective diner, with an emphasis on freshness, healthy ingredients, and speed. The Pangeos approach, says John Olszewski, food service director, is "the future of food service." The recipes in the Graneiy are all vegetarian, feature protein-rich combinations of grains and vegetables, and make constant use of fresh herbs and spices. Because the program is more cost efficient than the standard steam table service, dishes can include more expensive ingredients like kalamata olives, high quality cheeses, and mandarin oranges. And each plate of salad or stir-fry is garnished and arranged, as at a restaurant, to have visual appeal as well as taste. Because the Pangeos concept is a trademarked property, all recipes served at the station are developed and tested by Aramark. However, since students watch as their food is prepared, they can request that personally offensive ingredients be left out of "their" batch. In this way long held phobias about onions, olives, cayenne pepper, bell peppers, eggplant, and other savories may be indulged, while allowing less cautious palates to enjoy their pungent flavors. This ability to tailor a meal's ingredients is also excellent for students with food allergies or restricted diets. And for meat eaters and traditionalists, the steam table remains, serving up classic fare like fried chicken, meatloaf, steamed vegetables, and mashed potatoes. For the chronically finicky, there are always peanut butter sandwich fixings. The Pangeos service costs no extra for students on a meal plan, and though portions are standard, students can return for as many is now sparsely hung, if there are plates as they like. Pangeos is open cards at all. Although the survey for all lunches and dinners, and data from this semester is not yet available, anecdotal evidence currently about 40% of students will suggests that student satisfaction is get at least one plate of Pangeos high. Significantly less food is being food during their meal. An unexpected benefit of the new service is thrown away after each meal, as students are now less likely to get a that tutors and staff members, who whole plate of hot previously confined food and then decide themselves to the that it is unappetizcoffee shop during Ina survey ing. As Olszewski lunch, are now eating last year, stuexplains, "students lunch in the dining hall at ten times the are getting a plate of dents cited the previous rate, accordPangeosandrealizing that it is enough ing to Aramark healthiness of food ... They don't statistics. the dining hall Several factors have to try a lot of converged to make different things and food as their throw them away." the Santa Fe campus a Vegetarians and site for this new type number one of food service. vegans have tradiconcern. Olszewski explains tionally been the that nationally, "food most difficult market trends are changing." Americans for food services to satisfy. Unseano longer eat at home as much, and soned or mildly seasoned vegetables, if not fresh, are generally most current college students have bland. And combining grains and more sophisticated, restaurantoriented taste than they did only ten vegetables to produce high protein years ago. They are also more aware food has never been a strong point of health concerns, and more of conventional cafeteria fare. As interested in knowing precisely for vegans, the most that food what went into their food and how it service could do in the past was have was prepared. a continual supply of plain beans In a survey last year, students and brown rice. While beans and cited the healthiness of the dining rice are the base ingredients for hall food as their number one many Pangeos dishes, Olszewski concern. The college coffee shop is says that the difference is in the the second highest purchaser in cooking style: "We can take all the Santa Fe of Odwalla fruit juices and ingredients for a Pangeos plate and health shakes, behind Wild Oats put them on a steam table, and natural foods store. Most decisively, people look at it and say 'Beans and according to an Aramark survey, 45% percent of Santa Fe students eat vegetarian all or most of the time. These and other factors have made the Santa Fe campus a difficult assignment for food service providers. In the past five years the campus has had four food service providers, including a one-year period where the food service was self-operated. When Aramark arrived in August of Igg6, it faced widespread student discontent with food service in general. In typical St. John's style, students poured their frustrations onto stacks of comment cards, threatening to get scurvy if orange juice was not served all day, to call health inspectors, and to starve. Several even wrote poems. The comment card board, once a continual source of entertainment, rice. There's nothing to eat here.' But ifwe put it out in front with spices and cook it right there, everyone is thrilled." Vegetarians are understandably appreciative of Pangeos. Sophomore Monique LaCour explains that, though last year she avoided the cafeteria at the cost of doing her own cooking on campus, now "I'm going to miss it if I move offcampus." For many students, and Olszewski admits, food service personnel, Pangeos is an educational experience. "A lot of kids have never tried this kind of food before, and they try it, and say 'Hey, I like this stuff!' We love that." With students feeling positive about food service, Olszewski is eager to press for further changes. A proposal is currently before the campus planning committee to remove the Ig6os serving counters, which are designed for employees to serve students, since students currently serve themselves. While several options are being considered, the key seems to be flexibility. The current floor plan locks the serving area into an out-moded configuration, and no one wants to make the same mistake again. When and if such changes are made, Olszewski says that Aramark will consider installing one or more new Pangeos options, like the Latin station, which has a fresh tortilla machine, or the Mediterranean Kitchen, which features flat breads and pastas.• Santa Fe President john Agresto c::ontratulates Ian Stoner, a junior, at the Annual Art Exhibit at the gallery in Santa Fe. Stoner took third for his black-and-white photgraph titled "Gulls and a Girl." First place went to Julie Gronnenberg, a junior, for a photo titled "Winter Tourist," and second place went to jac::ob Keller for his block piece titled "#7." Honorable mentions were awarded to Larissa Archer, Karina Gill, Lara Hill, Michael Hokenson, and Jarrett Zigon. The show was juried by three members of the Art Gallery Committee of the St. john's College library and Fine Arts Guild. �10 THE REPORTER GOD, ST. JOHN'S, AND THE SOPHOMORE YEAR "St. John's College has no religious affiliation," states the catalogue. But that's not to say that theology doesn't play an important role in the program. BY SUS3AN BORDEN & BARBARA GOYETTE C OLLEGE IS A TIME OF QUESTIONING, A TIME WHEN STUDENTS ARE FINDING THEIR OWNWAY ANDSEARCHINGFORINDEPENDENCEFROM THEVALUESOFTHEIRCHILDHOOD. The political and religious views that they saw in their parents are likely to be included in this questioning-and the result, frequently, is rejection. At St. John's, the process of redefining these views gains an extra dimension because it is played out in the classroom against the backdrop of the great books with their greatideas. Ask a Johnny about his spiritual journey and there will undoubtedly be a story about sophomore year somewhere in the answer. While some students play out the scenario of rejecting the values of their heritage, others find that they end up re-affirming them. A student raised Jewish might begin to keep kosher. A Baptist might convert to Catholicism. A Lutheran might become an atheist. Sophomores are hit hard with long theological readings and broad theological questions. In seminar, they look at the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the writings of the church fathers from within the context of reason, attempting to separate their emotional response from the discussions. But an important component of the year seems to be a coming to terms with religion-a journey that may begin in reason but continues in the realm of the spirit. Some students look to tutors known for their religious ties for guidance; over the years the faculty has included the likes of Simon Kaplan, Winfree Smith, and Brother Robert. (An old joke from the I98os refers to St. John's as the college where Jews make Catholics out of Protestants.) At various times during the history of the New Program, there have been study groups devoted to reading or translating the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament. As evidence that students take the readings seriously, tutors estimate that this year-as usual- about sixty percent of sophomore essays were on topics in theology. About I.5 percent of alumni pursue careers in the ministry, taking their spiritual life into the realm of the real world. Here is the story of two who are just beginning. N athan Humphrey (A94) spent all of sophomore math in room I4 of McDowell, where a portrait of former college president Hector Humphreys hangs. As a student, he attended St. Anne's Episcopal Church (of Church Circle fame), which has a stained glass window dedicated to Humphreys, an assisting priest at St. Anne's from I83I-I857. Butitwas only after Humphrey graduated that he discovered that college president Humphreys was a distant cousinfrom a branch of the family that added an "s" to the name, hoping to sound more distinguished. Nowworking at the admissions office, Humphrey finds that he and his ancestor continue to cross paths. Aside from the St. John's and St. Anne's connections, both Humphreys and Humphrey attended Yale University (the former as an undergraduate; the modernday Humphreyreceivedhis masters of divinity there last May). Both have a religious calling. In the I8oos, Humphreys was ordained a priest and officiated at St. Anne's. Today, Humphrey is an aspirant for holy orders in the Episcopal church and St. Anne's is his home parish. Humphrey began college in I99I planningto become a lawyer. His path began to change during his sophomore year when he was asked to lead the Annapolis campus' Christian Fellowship. While he considered the offer, Michael Stevens (AGI92) suggested thathe visit a monastery that summer to mull over his decision. The St. John's community has a longstanding connection with the Mount Saviour monastery in Elmira, New York, where tutor emeritus Edward Sparrow has brought generations of students for retreats. Humphrey arranged to live there for five weeks ("basically as a monkling," he says) duringwhich he attended seven services a day, the first at 4:45 in the morning and the last at 8:I5 at night. In between, he went to three silent meals and worked in the monastery's gardens and sheep pastures. During his stay, a pivotal conversation brought Humphrey a step closer to the life he is now pursuing. "A friend and I were sitting in one of the pastures that overlooks the monastery," Humphrey recalls. "She said that she couldn't see me as a lawyer, which is what I wanted to do. She said, 'I can imagine you being a good lawyer, but I cannot imagine you loving it. What do you love?' To my surprise, I realized that I really loved God: thinking about God, writing about God, speaking about God. After that talk, nearly all my papers at St. John's were about God." That fall, a young deacon at St. Anne's pulled Humphrey aside and asked him if he was thinking of becoming a priest. "I was flabbergasted. I wondered: how could she tell? We began to talk about it and by the end of my senior year, I was trying to choose between pursuing ordination or an academic career in theology. I decided to go to Yale Divinity School and kill two birds with one stone. I figured divinity school would be the best place to kill a devotion to the priesthood. If it survived maybe there reallywas a c all ." So far, the call remains strong. Humphrey received his master of divinity degree in May of I997· That August, he returned to Annapolis to begin the path to ordination (and to help the admissions office in their noble mission). As he prepared to come back to Annapolis, he was encouraged to know that at least one kindred spirit would be joining him on this path. That February, Humphrey had attended an "Exploring the Priestly Vocation" open house in Baltimore. There, he ran into Adrien Gehring (Ag6) and Nathan Humphrey and Adrien Gehring by the "turret" of Humphreys. They are ioining the group of one or two alumni from each class who pursue a career in the ministry. �GI COLLECTS PRAYERS learned that she would also be an aspirant for holy orders. Gehring, like Humphrey, took her first steps towards the priesthood during her sophomore year when she began attending Sunday morning services at St. Anne's. At first, she says, she was the kind of worshipper who sat in the back pew and escaped as soon as the service ended. But in the middle of her junioryear, she approached the Reverend Ann Burts, then a deacon, and asked if they could speak. "Intellectually, I had been developing a theology and I wanted to see how that worked in a commu- A nthony Chiffolo, AGI94, has compiled a small fl.. book with a not-so-small purpose: to help readers with their spiritual development through prayer. "To me, the definition of prayer is speaking to God out of the depths of our true being," says Chiffolo. "And that is what the saints did so well." At Prayer with the Saints is a compiliaton of 400 prayers from more than I40 different saints, including Francis of Assisi, Therese of Lisieu.x, Arnold Janssen, and Hildegard of Bingen. Saints who also authored great books are included as well: Anselm, "the father of scholastic theology"; Augustine; and Thomas Aquinas, "the universal teacher." Chiffolo is managing editor of the trade program at Liguori Publications, which published the book. He graduated from the Naval Academy, served in the Navy for seven years, then came back to Annapolis to attend school on the other side of King George Street-at the Graduate Institute. nity of faith, and whether I fit in the Episcopal faith community at St. Anne's." The two discussed a world of theological and philosophical issues, often touching on the seminar readings that moved Gehring the most: the Book of Samuel, Sophocles' "Oedipus Rex," and Pascal's Pensees. Gehring began to talk with Burts regularly, often visiting her office every other week. "People must have been wondering: what's wrong with that girl? She must be pregnant or in some sort of major crisis," Gehring remembers thinking. "And I was going through some sort of crisis-I'll call it religious conversion. Because when I let God in I knew it wouldn't just be a Sunday morning thing. I knew it was going to be big." Gehring worked with Burts to· find a place for herself in the church community and live out the faith she was discovering. She helped establish St. Anne's newyouth program, was active in worshipping with children, and was chair of the curriculum committee for the childhood education board. As Gehring' s graduation from St. approached, Burts suggested that she become a hospital chaplain to test her faith and get her feet wet. "G-enn.IH! 10110\'\rea Burts' advice and took a course in clinical pa:stora! education. She served as for the ICU and a of the third floor at the Anne Arundel Medical Center in the historic district. That fall, St. Anne's hired Gehring to work as the church's youth coordinator. As part of this job, she attended a workshop on vJ.HOL!..IJlCUH "Godly Play," a Christian education curriculum. "The lesson they demonstrated was the parable of the pearl of great price, about a merchant who buys and sells pearls. One day, he finds the greatest pearl and gives everything that he has to possess it," she explains. "I've never liked that parable. I always thought it was trite and materialistic, an analogy that works for other people but not for me." ~ "Intellectually, I had been developing a theology and I wanted to see how that worked in a community offaith. " "So we're sitting on the floor, and I'm watching this parable being demonstrated with felt shapes, cut out people and possessions, and I'm waiting to see how the Montessori improve upon this parable. At the end of the parable you have this man and he's got the pearl. He used to be standiniz of a house with all his of his have moved into the other house and he's standing there with the pearl, all alone, unsheltered. I suddenly felt God saying to me, 'Take a risk, dummy.' I realized that I've got to take that risk and put everything that helps me feel sheltered and safe aside to go after this ordination process." The ordination process has four stages: aspirant, postulant, candidate, and deacon. Throughout the process, Humphrey and Gehring will pass through dozens of hoops, small and large, to help them and the church discern whether or not they should proceed to holy orders. As part of the aspirancy, each served a church internship that lasted, roughly, from Christmas to Easter. Humphrey interned at Epiphany Church in Odenton. Gehring interned at Christ Church in West River. Earlythis summer, committees and clergy from St. Anne's and the internship churches will report to the diocese about Humphrey and Gehring. If everybody agrees that they should continue in the process, they must turn in applications for postulancy. They undergo a psychiatric review and face four big interviews with the commission on ordained ministry in October. The commission will then write a recommendation to the bishop, who will, in November, tell them whether or not they may continue in their postulancy. In the meantime, Gehring and u,,...,......,.i...,,.,.,TT~n~~..-n~~ their connecinterviews to attend the school where his distant cousin once And as youth minister at St. has the chance to a taste of St. John's to her ministry. "I run my Sunday School class like a St. John's tutorial," she says. "I always tell my students: Don't swallow anything you haven't chewed up. You can't digest it and you won't get fed." • '-7'-'.U.LL.U.""' �The Alumni Association Newsletter is published in each issue of the Reporter. We welcome letters, capsule book reviews, and article ideas from alumni. Send submissions and suggestions to Peter Huidekoper at 2395 S. Milwaukee St., Denver, CO 80210, call 303-757-1225, or e-mail peterhdkpr@aol.com. J Peter s Hlm:l1eKc:>pE~r he has spent over 20 hours interviewing IS individuals for the first major oral history of St. John's. And she's ready for more. Valerie Pawlewicz, A89 and the Student Activities Director in Annapolis, working with the SJC Alumni Association, has begun a remarkable collection of remembrances of St. John's since the beginning of the New Program. An oral historian by training (folklore graduate work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Valerie has recorded conversations with a wide range of those who taught at, worked at, and/or attended the college over the past fifty years. Some, including Eva Brann, James Matthews, Elliott Zuckerman, Sam and Emily Kutler, Barbara Dorsey, Jack L. Carr, and Brother Robert, are still actively involved with the college. "It's been my goal from the start to make the project represent as many voices of this college community as possible," Valerie says. She feels she has found "good representative voices," those who knew the social life, and others who knew the academic issues well, people who knew the administration, and others who had a better feeling for what was taking place among the students. For a small taste of what will become a rich storehouse of St. John's history, see page 6 of this issue of The Reporter, where you will be able to read part of her interview with Bryce Jacobsen. After St. John's, Valerie went to work for a few years at the Smithsonian Institution and, later, did her graduate work at UNC-Chapel Hill. Following graduate school, she was looking for a good project and thought of the college. So, she moved to Annapolis to try to start an oral history project here. But first there was the day job-she became the head of Student Activities-and while in Annapolis she met and married Leo Pickens, A78, the college's Director of Athletics. Together they live and work on campus. By 1996 the Alumni Association had learned of Valerie's proposed project, and committed $1,000 to pay for equipment, supplies, and transcription services. The college's public relati.ons office has also chipped in to help, committing funds for more transcription, and to find a student photographer to take portrait shots of those interviewed. Asked about her major impressions of these I S people, Valerie says: "In terms of background, you could say they have nothing in common, very much like the students who come to the college as freshmen: they are all different. But underneath they had a lot in common: they were lively, bright, committed, hard-working, irreverent, strong-willed, and engaging. "They talked about what was important to them, not what was supposed to be important. A few told stories that brought me close to tears, and all made me laugh at least once. Interviewing them made me even more proud to be included in their community. We are a lucky place." Now that those I S interviews are taped and are being transcribed, she is preparing to head off to Santa Fe to conduct a series of interviews with those who recall the early days of the new campus there in the Land of Enchantment. Will all of this end with boxes of tapes and transcriptions kept in the college Alumni Office in Annapolisand little more? It seems unlikely. Allan Hoffman, president of the Alumni Association board, notes that it is hard to predict what can come of oral histories, but he sees value simply in seeing "that first-hand knowledge of past events is preserved. From that other good things may happen." As an example he cites the oral histories done with Stringfellow Barr's taped conversations-which sat largely unused until Winfree Smith wrote his book about the history of the New Program, and then again became indispensable to Charles Nelson's book about Barr. Is there a book here, too? Pawlewicz is game: She has found great pleasure in meeting and listening PHOTO BY KEITH HARVEY to these IS people, and she is sure others, too, would enjoy hearing how straightforward, funny, and revealing members of our community are. "They sure had lots to say. It would make a great read." 8 Valerie Pawlewicz, A89, is recording interviews with people who remember St. John's. Oral History Project Interviewees Eva Brann, tutor and former dean, 1957-present Jack Ladd Carr, ASO Barbara Dorsey, head of housekeeping, I 970's-present Martin Dyer, AS2, first AfricanAmerican to graduate from the college Charlotte Fletcher, librarian, 1944-80 Bryce Jacobsen, A42, Tutor Emeritus and former athletic director, 1958-1986 Peter Kellogg-Smith, A43, one of several founders of the Key School, Annapolis Emily Kutler, ASS, AGI 88, first class of women to attend SJC, wife of tutor Sam Kutler Sam Kutler, A'S4, tutor and former dean, I 96 I -present James Matthews, Buildings and Grounds, I 960's-present Mary Lee Schab, Secretary to SJC treasurer, 1939-1940 Br. Robert Smith, tutor emeritus, 1972-present Curtis Wilson, tutor emeritus, twice dean, 1948-66, 1973-88. Married to Rebecca Wilson, former director of public relations. Rebecca Wilson, former director of public relations, I 973-88. Married to former tutor and dean, Curtis Wilson Elliot Zuckerman, tutor emeritus, I 961-present Portland Chapter Answers Wakeup Call A fter a history of vibrant activity, :the Portland Area Chapter of the Alumni Association was sleeping for a few years. Young children, busy careers, and other life distractions led loyal members away from Chapter activities, and the Chapter went through a dormant period. With the coming of spring this year, Dale Mortimer (A7S) issued a wake-up call, and the group brought itself back to life. On March I , alumni from the Portland area met for a seminar on Ursula Le Guin's short story, "The Ones Who Walk Away from Ornelas." (Le Guin, who lives nearby, almost came herself.) A special feature was that Miss Eva Brann, in the area on a visit to the University of Oregon, was present to lead the session. Glenda Eoyang (SF76), who heads the Minneapolis/St. Paul Chapter as well as the Chapters Committee of the Alumni Association Board of Directors, also traveled a long way to lend her support to Portland's efforts. A rousing thirty-three people came to the seminar and reception-a surprise to all-which required a quick change of location. A secretarial reception area, complete with staircases, desks, coat racks and �ringing phones was transformed into The Seminar Room-making for interesting discussion dynamics. At one point, when a mini-seminar broke out in one corner of the room, Miss Brann commented that this was "the first epicyclic seminar" she had ever experienced. The group adapted, and under Miss Brann's masterful leadership, a rewarding seminar was had by all. A reception followed, giving everyone-in the midst of delicious food and ample wine-an opportunity to get acquainted or reacquainted. Names and addresses were exchanged, and plans were made for future Chapter activities. Mortimer took another step to promote the Chapter following the meeting. He sent out a good-humored "want-ad" to those who had appeared (and some who had not); an excerpt appears in the attached box. Like most Chapters, the Portland area is full of alumni who are excited about attending events, but who have limited time and energy to plan and stage them. To share the work, Portland is contemplating a team leadership model where two or three people work together to share leadership tasks. Such an arrangement has proven effective in other chapters, including Austin, Texas, and Washington, D.C. Many thanks to Liz Skewes, Director of Alumni Relations in Santa Fe, for encouraging and facilitating the wake-up call in Portland. Thanks go, ELECTION NOTICES Election of Alumni Representatives to the St. )ohn,s College Board Eva Brann, Ken Kirby, Dale Mortimer, :and Connie Mintz. too, to Dale Mortimer, M.D., his wife Connie Mintz:, and Catherine Carroll for planning and hosting this wonderful event. We hope that this seminar will provide momentum for interested alumni to remain connected to the Portland Chapter. If you are in the area and would like more information about the Chapter activities, contact Dale Mortimer at 360- 906-1 190, oremail, drdalemo@hotmail.com. The rest of the Alumni Association wishes you good luck in keeping the enthusiasm for alumni activities high in the Portland area. 8 -By Glenda Eoyang CHAPTER CONTACTS Call the alumni listed below for information about chapter or other alumni activities in each area. 1331 MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL: Vicki Wilson, 612-595-91 18 or Glenda Eoyang, 612-783-7206 ANNAPOLIS: Rebecca Dzamov, 410-263-4291 NEW YORK: Steven Sedlis, 212-289-1662 AUSTIN: Homayoon Sepasi, 512-272-7383 NORTH CAROLINA: Susan Eversole, 919-968-4856 BALTIMORE: David Kidd, 410-614-2260 PHILADELPHIA: Jim Schweidel, 610-941-0555 BOSTON: Ginger Kenney, 617-964-4794 PORTLAND: Dale Mortimer, 360-906-1 190 CHICAGO: Amanda Fuller, 847-705-1143 SAN FRANCISCO/NORTHERN CALIFORNIA: Deborah Farrell, 415-561-6100, ext. 123 ALBUQUERQUE: Harold M. Morgan, Jr., 505-899- DALLAS/FORT WORTH: Suzanne Doremus, 817-924- 7184 SANTA FE: John Pollak, 505-983-2144 DENVER: Janet Dampeer, 303-972-490 I SEATTLE: Jim Doherty, 206-937-8886 LOS ANGELES: Meg Sheehan, 310-208-2013 WASHINGTON, D.C.: Sam Stiles, 301-424-0884, or Bill Ross, 301-230-4594 In accordance with Article VIII, Section II of the By-Laws of St. John's College Alumni Association, notice is hereby given that the following alumni have been nominated by the Alumni Association Board of Directors for election to the St. John's College Board of Visitors and Governors. For his first term: Jason Todd Walsh, A85 New York, NY; M.B.A., Harvard Business School, 1989; vice president of operations/ general manager, Long Island Region of Quest Diagnostics (a leading healthcare testing company), 1996 to present; associate director for strategy and development for the Opto-Electronics Group of Corning Inc., 1993 to 1995; business manager, television components, Corning Asahi Video Products Company, 1990 to 1993; member of the St. John's College Alumni Association Board of Directors, 1990 to 1996; Treasurer of that Board, 1998-; Race committee chairman, New York Harbor Sailing Foundation, 1998. For his first term: Clinton Dale lively, A78 Cranbury, NJ; M.A., University of Virginia; M.B.A., University of Chicago. Managing Director and Partner in charge of the Corporate Risk Management Group for the Bankers Trust Company, 1997 to present; previously for Bankers Trust: joined the bank in 1984 in Sales, Trading and Funding Department; in 1987 a member of the team that developed the Global Market Risk �Management 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 long-Tail Risk Insurance, Ltd. Election of Directors of the St. John's College Alumni Association For her second term: Justin Burke, A87 Susan M. Ferron, SF77 New York, NY In accordance with Article VII, Sections I and II of the By-Laws of the St. John's College 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. For his first term: Marine on St. Croix, MN M.D., Mayo Medical School. Lecturer in Medical Ethics, St. Thomas University, 1996; Medical Director, 1996-present and Staff Physician, 1995-present, Community University Health Care Center, Minneapolis; Instructor, University of Minnesota Medical School, 1995-present; Member, Medical Staff 1989-95 and Senior Staff Physician 1989-93, Brainerd.Regional Human Services Center, Brainerd, MN; Public Relations, The Hirst Company, Albuquerque, NM, 1980; Assistant Director of Admissions 1977-78 and Director of Admission 1978-79, St. John's College, Santa Fe. Member, Marine on St. Croix Planning Commission, 1995-present. Notice is also given that nominations may be made by petition. The rules governing submission of nominations by petition are as follows: I . Petitions must be signed by at least 50 members of the Alumni Association in good standing. 2. Nominations must be accompanied by a biographical sketch of the nominee. 3. The consent of all persons nominated must be obtained. 4. The petition must reach the Directors of Alumni Activities NO LATER THAN DECEMBER , 1998 c/o Alumni Office Director of Operations for the Corbis Corporation, a leading digital and photographic image content provider, 1998; Vice President, Operations Archive Films & Photos, 1990-97; Entertainment Paralegal, Richards & O'Neil, LLP, 1988-90. President, 1995-97, and Treasurer, 1998-, of the St. John's College Alumni Association New York Chapter; alumni networking mentor, 1992-98. For her first term: For his first term: Greenbelt, MD M.S., George Mason University. Senior Programmer, Center for Earth Observing and Space Research, 1997present; Research Assistant, Upper Atmospheric Research Branch, Naval Research Laboratory, 1993-97; coauthored papers in the Journal of Geophysical Research and the Radio Science Journal, 1997; presented papers at the Coupled Energetics and Dynamics of Atmospheric Regions (CEDAR) Conferences at the National Center for Atmospheric ; Research, 1994, 1996; member of the American Geophysical Society, the American Meteorological Society, and the Annapolis Traditional Dance Society. Peggy A. Jones, SFG194 For his second term: B.A., Texas Tech. Museum of New Mexico Women's Board; Bilingual Volunteer, Villa Therese Clinic; New Mexico Coordinator, International Thomas Merton Society; Secre~ary, St. John's College Fine Arts Guild; Chairman, Meem Library Committee. Denver, CO Peter Huidekoper, Jr., SFGl90 For his first term: Bill Fant. A79 D.C. Education consultant and writer; several current projects include evaluating and supporting charter schools; advisor to The Odyssey (charter) School; member of Advisory Board of the Colorado Geography Education evaluated an alternative teacher licensure program while at the lniu<>rci+v of Colorado at Denver, Gates ., to ~ Colorado worked as a copy editor and soorts writer for The t:Je1nmnl!l'.on Camino Cruz Blanca Santa Fe. NM I and coached Branch offices and in meetings with members of Congress and their staffs. U.S. Senate, Committee on (Emma Willard School); published Shelter -A Cold War Memory, a novel about a twelve-year-old's experience during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Graduate Institute Committee, The Campaign for Our Fourth Century. Notice is also given that nominations for the positions as directors of the Association may be made by petition. Owen Kelley, A9J Santa Fe, NM St. If nominations by pet1t1on 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 1999. Finance, Minority Tax Staff. Director of tax research for Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York. President, Fant Consulting and Information Services; Manager, National Tax, KPMG Peat Marwick; Manager, Washington National Tax Services, Price Waterhouse; Chief Tax Reporter, Prentice-Hall, Inc. soccer and for ten years in Massachusetts (Eaglebrook School), Vermont (Champlain Valley Union High School) and New York The rules governing submission of nominations by petition are as follows: I . Petitions must be. sign.~9 by.;;.!.~ .. least thirty members of the Alumni Association in good standing. 2. 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: Beverly Angel, SGl89, c/oAlumni Office, St. john's College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404. 3. The election will be held at the Annual Meeting on Saturday, October 3, 1998, at 11 :00 a.m., in the Great Hall, McDowell Hall, Annapolis campus. 4. The candidates for Directors receiving the highest number of votes for those offices shall be declared elected. Terms will begin on January I, 1999. Jacobsen, continuedfrom page 7 again and go through the induction. I'm sure I passed all the physical things with flying colors. But then they have those psychiatrists, you know the Army and Navy psychiatrists. I'm sure they were totally baffled by me and we had long conversations. I didn'tknowwhat they decided but what they must have written in their reports was, "Look, don't put this guyin the military. Just don't." VP: Why do you think? Wa.s it your idea ofuniversal brotherhood? Wa.sitthefactthatyouhad been in prison already? BJ: The fact that I had already stood against authority. In one case the draft board, and then in the prison, we skipped that story, but an authorative organization like the military was no place for me. I'm sure they, the military, would have said, "For godsakes, don't send him to us." I'm sure that kind,. .. ~· 0 .,.,.,,...,.. must have gone to the draft board. stroke in intensive care. The day before this issue of The Reporter went to press, he died. Alumni can write his wife, Phebe, at 735 Glenwood Road, Annapolis, MD 21401. �SPRING 1998 15 Alulllni Notes & Profiles ... 1944 J. Herbert Taylor, who is now representing Maryland Classified Employee Retirees on United Seniors of Maryland, notes that his score as oh2/30/97is 3 children, 7 granddaughters, I great-grandson, I great-granddaughter. "Howmany to play?" he asks. 1945 Don Kaplan, who edited the St. John's Collegian for two years, is still at it. "Now I write a newsletter about mutual funds and annuities for financial specialists instead of the Sunday night meetings on current affairs Winkie started. I'll never forget one talk by Alexander Strauss who brought a letter from Einstein to Roosevelt. The message wasthatthe U.S. should start a project to build an atom bomb because the Germans were already making some headway. "After retiring from the NYC school system in I989, I've worked in my avocation, investment planning. In I992 I joined a mutual fund in Walnut Creek, Calif., as a training and communications specialist. I have become familiar with most mutual funds and annuities. Any St. Johnnywho wants to pick my brain may reach me at 800524-7433 and by e-mail at donaldkaplan@att.net." An article in the Vineyard Gazette, Martha's Vineyard, profiled William Goldsmith and his battle to save Waskosim's Reservation, now a I84. 9 acre nature sanctuary owned by the Martha's Vineyard Land Bank. Ten years ago, developers were planning to build 36 houses on the property at a half million dollars per house. Horrified by the thought oflosing Waskosim's ridge and the surrounding meadows and forests, Goldsmith and fellow townspeople got restraining orders to prevent the building. The developers countersued, and the legal battles continued for several years, enabling local conservation groups to raise public consciousness about the issues. Eventually, the land bank was able to purchase the land. A retired Brandeis professor and author, Goldsmith feels strongly about conservation. "I think one of our primary objectives in this country.. .is to save as much of the natural beauty of America as we can," he told the paper. 1946 Peter Weiss was honored by the Center for Constitutional Rights recentlyinNewYork. Weiss, an international trademark attorney, began working for the CCR in Ig69 and has served as its vice president DID HOMER E ske Ekto dwe retournen nan batay?" Should Hector return to battle? This was Steven Werlin's (A85) opening question for anfliad discussion at a teachers' workshop he led in Haiti last summer. Werlin was in Haiti working with David Diggs (AGI91), co-director of Beyond Borders, a cross-cultural learning project he has been involved with since 1989. Werlin spent eight weeks in Haiti investigating whether and how the Touchstones project might be useful there. Touchstones is a teaching tool that seeks, through the discussion of short texts, to promote active learning, thoughtful reading, and collaboration skills. It resembles the St. John's curriculum in two key aspects: participants read original texts, and they learn by participating in small group discussions rather than by listening to lectures. Started in I985 by Annapolis tutors Geoffrey Comber, Howard Zeiderman, and Nicholas Maistrellis, the Touchstones program is used by students at many schools in grades 2-12 throughout the U.S. and around the world. Touchstones programs have also been used with prisoners and senior citizens. This July, Werlin will return to Haiti for four weeks to lead a Touchstones workshop whose purpose is to train adult literacy group leaders on Lagonav, an island just off Port au Prince. Why bring a project that uses difficult original texts and discussion to deal with them - a program like Touchstones - to Haiti, a country that doesn't even meet the most basic literacy requirements of most of its citizens? Staff members of the Haitian organization that works with Beyond Borders, Fondasyon Limye Lavi (Light of Life), felt that something like Touchstones would address issues that Haiti's traditional authoritarian classroom practice leaves unanswered: namely, the passivity of students both socially and in their study habits. since 1973· Weiss' precedent-setting case for CCR was Filartiga v. PenaIrala, which established the principle-now studied in every law school-that foreign torturers and other human rights violators can be sued in the United States. Last year he successfully argued before the International Court ofJustice that the threat and use of nuclear weapons are illegal under international law. 1949 Richard M. Frank delivered the Presidential Address at the 206th meeting of the American Oriental Society in Philadelphia. Titled "Hearing and Saying What Was Said," Frank's address was about translation from Arabic into a European language. He attributes his interest in the subject of Muslim philosophical texts to his time at St. John's. Steven Werlin leads a great books workshop for teachers in Haiti. As Werlin explains, "Education there is as extremely authoritarian as you can possibly imagine: memorization of unexplained facts and drill in unexplained skills. There's a perceived need to break through traditional class and economic structures. In this country, which has been authoritarian for most of its two hundred years, the habits of self-directed thought are pretty beaten down: at the very least, they're not public habits. People might reflect on their own time but they don't think through issues together very much or very productively." During his stay last summer, Werlin initiated a pilot Touchstones project and led four workshops for about 70 teachers and 30 community activists. Participants ranged from Charlotte Werleigh, the former Prime Minister under Aristide, to literacy activists with only a few years of schooling. "The people that I worked with, on the whole, were not trained schoolteachers, even by Haitian standards. They were people with some modicum of education who have become involved in a community effort to educate those with none. The one thingthat they seemed to have in common is a ferocious devotion to bringing education to people who don't have any." Members ofthe St. John's community are invited to make tax-deductible donations to the Haitiproject. For information, contact Touchstones at 410-263-2121. -by Sus3an Borden 1955 Harold Bauer writes: "I was in Annapolis from I95I to I954; I left after my junior year so that I could begin music studies before being drafted. I obtained my first conducting position in I962-and have been at it ever since-symphony and opera." Bauer earned his doctorate in composition at Northwestern. He's presently music director of the New Philharmonic at the Arts Center at the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. The orchestra has quadrupled its audience since its founding at the community college in I977· Repertoire is drawn from all periods and styles. 1957 JackNadol became Deputy Secretary of the Maryland Depart- ment ofJuvenile Justice in December 1995 following his retirement from the U.S. Department ofJustice after a 35 year federal career. 1960 Mary Campbell Gallagher's memoir of life in Greenwich Village in the I95os, "Two Dreams of Greenwich Village," appeared in the November-December I997 issue ofLiteral Latte. JohnH. Puttiewrites: "I have been on the Ventura County Superior Court for almost six years now, am single, and continue to sail. Pam (A6r) and I bought a boat before a car when we eloped to California in' 58. Our sons were sailing before they could walk. She died over 25 years ago. I continue to read voraciously as well as indulge in music but have in recent years discovered and dwelt on more spiritual aspects of life." �Aluntni Notes & Profiles ... 1962 John Miller is currently president of the Edsel and Eleanor Ford House in Grosse Point Shores, Michigan. He serves on the board of the Library of American Landscape History and wrote the "Afterword" for The Gardens ofEllen Biddle Shipman, by Judith Tankard, published in 1996. 1963 MarciaHermanreports: "I finished my doctorate in Public Health, Maternal and Child Health in 1994 and now am medical director of the North Carolina Child Fatality Prevention Team and an Adjunct Professor of Maternal and Child Health in the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. 1964 "I'm married to, an environmental activist," reports Julie Wiggenhorn Vaill. She also says that she has one daughter, works as a systems analyst for AT&T in Atlanta, and enjoys living in a log home in the north Georgia mountains. She would love to hear from friends oflong ago at P.O. Box 870951, Stone Mountain, GA30087. 1965 Susan andJayGinsbergwrite that they are happy to be old enough to see their children do the things they didn't get to do. "David, 28, almost a rabbi, father of 2; Nathaniel, 26, an architect; Steven, 22, enough social conscience to transcend the '6os, Hampshire College; Leah, 18, very serious freshman at Smith, wants to take all the religion courses. And Susan and Jay? Busy in separate businesses, in the natural products industry. Almost old enough to examine life." 1966 Julia Busser du Prey continues as a music teacher and performer, as a soloist in chamber music ensembles and early music. She is also one of the founders of a Waldorf School initiative in her community and serves as its music teacher. She still loves books, especially on philosophical and spiritual topics. "I want to keep learning until the day I die!" she says. 1967 "In addition to myveryrewarding work running an Alzheimer's day care center (a voyage of the heart), I'm enjoying extending my family by becoming an American Field Service parent and working with Servas," writes Helen Hobart(A). 1968 Bruce Baldwin (A) writes thathisson Ian is a junior at West Point. His daughter Marisa is in her third year at Notre Dame Prep in Towson, commuting from Annapolis. Carl Bostek (SF) retired from the Air Force after 27years of service and is nowworking on an MSN in Family Practice Nursing. He will graduate in May 1998. "I will continue to do anesthesia but will add primary care with an emphasis on pain management to my practice," he says. Ann Morin Levine (A) has compiled a report on the status of women called JVhere Women Stand: An International Report on the Status ofWomen in 140 Countries, 1997-98, published by Random House Reference. With collaborator NaomiNeft, Levine gathered statistics that reflect the issues facing women globally, such as education, employment, health, family planning, marriage, and divorce. Some startling statistics from the book: In Brazil, it is not unusual for an employer to require a woman to present a sterilization certificate before she can be hired; women make up more than 97% of the kindergarten teachers in France and the U.S.; about 15 million adolescent girls throughout the world become pregnant each year, and approximately 125,000 die as a result, accounting for about onequarter of all maternal deaths. Despite advances in women's rights worldwide, and efforts to improve their lives and health, women find that their access to education, employment, and political influence are restricted by their gender. 1969 Maya Hasegawa and Robert Wyckoff (both A) report that Maya is in her fourth year as Director of the Somerville Women's Commission and was recently closely involved in drafting and winning the support of the governor and state legislative leaders for a bill to establish a permanent independent state Women's Commission in Massachusetts. Bob has been doing a lot of music, singing with several gospel choirs, playing trumpet in the Brookline Symphony, and recently writing arrangements and playing to backup the Boston Community Choir for their First Night performance on New Year's Eve. In his day job Bob puts in three days a week as a consultant for Data Dimensions, Inc., where he is working to fix the Year 2000 bugs he spent 12 years writing into the systems at John Hancock. "It's all about job security," he says. 1972 Grant Wiggins (A), who runs the Center on Learning, Assessment, and School Structure, has moved his office to 65 South Main Street, Building B, Pennington, NY 08534. The e-mail address is info@classnj.org, and the website is atwww.classnj.org. 1973 BillMcClay (A) is spending 1997-98 as a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., on leave from his regular position as professor of history at 'Tulane University in New Orleans. He'll spend the 1998-99 academic year as a visiting professor in the history department at Georgetown, where he'll hold the Royden B. Davis Chair oflnterdisciplinary Studies. He would love to hear from old friends in the D. C. area, especially if they know of a place to get a respectable bowl of gumbo. 1975 Dale Mortimer (A) reports that along with Evan Dudik (A72) and MichaelAnthony (A69), he traveled to Ashland, Oregon, about 300 miles south of their homes, to visit tutor Eva Brann, who was at Southern Oregon University to deliver a series of evening lectures. Each gave a different introduction about Miss Brann, St. John's, and learning in general. The lectures were about liberal education in a community oflearners, under the auspices of the SOU Honors Department. 1977 William Malloy (SF) writes: "I am still recovering. Thanks for the cards and letters, and especially for the prayers." Miriam Hock (AGI) has completed a Master of Science degree in nursing at Michigan State University and passed the certifying exam for Family Nurse Practitioner in October 1997. 1978 MelindaSkilond.z (SF) has~ started a video production company in L.A. Rising Star Video Services specializes in taping comedians, actors, and musicians; they started at the Improv with Budd Briedman. 1979 Unspeakable Losses: Understanding the Experience ofPregnancy Loss, Miscarriage, and Abortion, by Kim Kluber-Bell (SF), has been published by W.W. Norton & Company. Kluber-Bellis a psychotherapist and marriage, family, and child counselor in private practice in Berkeley, California. She specializes in the psychological impact of reproductive crisis and leads support groups through Resolve, the national nonprofit organization for the infertile, for couples struggling with infertility. She lives in Albany, Calif., with her husband and son. Jean Kerr Lawson (SGI) received a PhD in educational policy and leadership from Marquette University in December 1997· Lawson's dissertation is The Transformational Leadership of Henry Merritt Wriston, President, Lawrence University, 1925-1937Bill Salter (A) and Teresa are enjoying their son Laim, born in November oh996, and are renovating a brownstone in Brooklyn. Tony (A79) and Holly (A82) Sanders announce the arrival of Rachel Carrie Sanders on March 8 (6 pounds, 4lf2 ounces, 19 inches). 1980 Elizabeth Christian Banta (A) has been working as a specialist in Employee Benefits Law at Deloitte & Toche since JanuaryI997. She's also taking classes toward an MS in taxation. DavidWolf(A) and Jennifer are rejoicing and regrouping after the birth of their first child, Samuel, on August 12, 1997· 1981 Joseph (SF) andAnneMartine (SF84) Moore send news from Concord, California, where Joseph �Alulllni Notes & Profiles ... now works for a leasing software firm. He's actually attempting to get his actual title on his business card: Imperial Master of Education and Support Lackey. Matt Hartzell (A) says: "Hello!" He's living in Houston. Nancy Schauber (A) writes that Sarah Anne Schauber Simmons was born April 24, I997· "She brings us great joy." 1983 Susie Horovitz (A) is living in Beer-Sheva, Israel. 1984 Grady Harris (A) reports that he is is now in Atlanta, at 909 Briarcliff Rd. NE #m, Atlanta, GA 30306. "After s:ixyears in central Europe, I realized that I was not going to accommodate myself to ten-month winters, so I've returned to Georgia." Barbara Hausman (SGI) has been hired to be a senior develop- ment manager for U.S. Equities Realty, Inc., in Chicago, Illinois. Hausman will oversee the redevelopment of Philadelphia's 30th Street Station and a project in Chicago's South Loop. Previously she was a vice president of development for Al.rid Properties, a real estate development and property management firm based in Cambridge, Mass. She began her real estate career in 1987with The Broadacre Group, developers of North Pier Chicago, and has managed development projects in suburban Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, and the Lakes Region of New Hampshire. In addition to her St. John's degree, she has an MBA from the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business. Peter Green (A) writes: "In July I was appointed East Europe correspondent for thelntemational Herald Tribune. I'm still based in Prague, and now cover about 17 countries from Estonia to Bulgaria, writing mainly about business and politics. The job keeps me constantly on the move, but I love it. I've been in touch recently with Geoff and Mary Garner, who are in Sicilywhere Geoff is based with the U.S. Navy, withDianaFabiandher husband Ed Samson, who've just moved to Toledo, and with George McDowell, whom I'm hoping to cross paths with in Europe." Peter tells classmates coming through Prague to look him up. His e-mail address is psgreen@terminal.cz. 1985 Jay Martin (SF) is currently employed to map the addresses of mental health care providers. He has been accepted to the "modest" graduate school program in Theater Arts at the university of California, Santa Cruz. Correspondents wishing to dissuade him from this frivolous course of study may write to his address in the Alumni Register or e-mail him at aias@ sfnet.com. Although he has lived in San Francisco for four years and plans to return there, Jay lived in Santa Cruz for s:ixyears previously, long enough to help start the durable" ... Um ... Gee ... Um ... Productions." This improv theater group will celebrate its tenth anniversarynextFebruary, and without a single original member still in it-except as invited guest players, Jay hopes. Linda Sullivan Shea (SF) wrote a "New Mexican thriller," Crying Woman, which won first place in the Writer's Digest script competition and was a semi-finalist in the Wisconsin Screenwriter's Forum contest. 1986 Debbie Humphries (SF) reports that she had a second son, CameronJackHumphries, born at home with the help of his father, on June g, I997· She's doing a postdoctoral fellowship with the Prevention Research Center at West Virginia University on cardiovascular disease risk factors in women in West Virgina. John Lawton (SF) received his , ECOLOGY FROM MANY ANGLES Working in the field, being a player in academia and becoming a conservation activist: Andrew Kroll is trying all three. 5 L etters from Andrew Kroll, Ag4, anive with an armadillo stamped on the back flap. His intriguing return address is "Armadillo World Headquarters" located in Albuquerque. What's the story? An Annapolis alum who is captivated by charming, bony-plated nocturnal mammals? Kroll, it turns out, spent his first three years on the Santa Fe campus, and most of the past four years he has been working as a field biologist in Colorado, Utah, Texas, California, and New Mexico. Armadillo World Headquarters is his own project; he monitors wilderness issues in the Sandia and Manzano Mountains in New Mexico and the Wichita Mountains in western Oklahoma. "When I graduated from Annapolis, I was interested in getting away from the St. John's thing. I was trying to prevent getting into a rut with the rest of my life," says Kroll. He first worked for a conservation group in southern Colorado studying land use issues. Then he worked for several years for the U.S. Forest Service researching raptors in southeastern Utah, amphibians in the High Sierra of California, and Trinity River in Texas. bottomland hardwood forests in Texas. After enrolling in school in Texas, he decided to make ecology his career. Currently Kroll is conducting breeding surveys of cavity-nesting birds in woods along the Rio Grande streambedinAlbuquerque. He's also studying rodent communities in southern Arizona. "Based on changes in the rodent communities we are able to make statements about how the climate is changing," he says. "Even though the area is getting more rainfall, it is undergoing desertification. There are changes due to human land use practices like overgrazing, but it's hard to saywhatthe major contributing factor is. This is happening all over the southwest." This project is typical of the kind that Kroll is most interested in: he wants to find out how everything works within a particular environment. "In ecology, we combine a lot of different disciplines-chemistry, biology, zoology, even computer science to do modeling," he says. Ecologists studywhat.Kroll characterizes as the "energy flow" of an environment: how nutrients are brought in, how they are utilized and recycled. Having a St.John's background is both a help and a hindrance in the study of ecology, thinks Kroll. On the one hand, the ability to synthesize information and to understand what scientists in the different disciplines are doing is valuable. "In ecology, you have to take a broad view," he says, "which St. John's does. And you have to really understand the scientific method, particularly as it is used in chemistry and physics. Biologists are striving to get the predictive certainty of those sciences." The downside of having learned science at St. John's is that "you just don't know as much hard information as the other students, who have been working in biology since they were I?· They are highly specialized." Kroll says he needs plenty of coursework to catch up. He plans on entering a doctoral program next year. Looking at the big picture, which is what ecologists do, Kroll finds himself in a hard position. He has been in the field for a number of years, where he has been exposed to some complicated philosophical issues like how important wilderness is to civilization, and what is the best use of protected wilderness. Dealing with these issues has led him to take some strong positions on conservation. The Armadillo World Headquarters is a result of Kroll's desire to speak out-"I look at land use plans, comment on them in public forums, and try to get other people involved," he says. "We need to do the right thing for the forests, and that's not what the Forest Service's priority is. Their agenda is based on how many cows you can graze there, or how much resources can be extracted. These things shouldn't be resolved by bureaucracy-people should get involved in the process." But, says Kroll, people in the field, and also academically qualified scientists, are not supposed to comment on these kinds of issues; they are supposed to present data. "After I get my PhD," says Kroll, "I hope to work for a government agency. I would like to work from within the system. If I invest the time and get to a respected position, I'll be able to do that."• -by Barbara Goyette �Alulllni otes rofiles ... master's degree in computer programming from the University of New Mexico in December Ig96. He worked briefly in Fairfax, Virginia, but returned to Albuquerque in September I997 and still works there. John, his wife, Karin, and their 3-year-old son, Nikolai, live at SIS Tulane SE, Albuquerque, NM 87rn6. teach philosophy at Creighton University in Omaha, while his spouse Deirdre Routt (AgI) recently started work as an archivist at the Union Pacific Railroad Museum. AndyGhiz (A) writes: "Christi and I are living in Pittsburgh with our two cats and are almost finished renovating our 70-year-old farmhouse. I finished a two-year MBA program in December, Igg6, at the University of Pittsburgh. E-mail would be welcome at aghiz@aghiz.com." 1987 Charlotte Glover (SF) writes: "I'm still living in Alaska and will soon be president of the Alaska Library Association. I recently hosted a Great Books reading group at the library and found it a rich experience to look at our college texts with wiser eyes." 1988 Erin Milnes (A) is still living in San Francisco and currentlyworks as an editor for West. She enjoyed camping and driving cross-country last fall and had a blast at Homecoming' 97. She hopes to make it to this year's Homecoming and welcomes news from classmates via e-mail: emilnes@earthlink.net. JeffFalero (A) nowworks for McDaniel Engineering in San Bernardino. · 1989 Tom Quigley (A) recently celebrated his fifth anniversary with John Macartney. They are involved in non-representational yet nonabstract art, mostly mosaics and patterning of tile or paper. Please email: otter7@webtv.net. Blase Bechtel (A) and his family are now living in Munich, Germany. Blase, Mary Beth, Morgan (8), Nate (6), andLauren (4) have been seeing southern Germany since their arrival in July and are planning a triumphant tour of Europe over the next three years-especially the museums, cathedrals, and battlefields. Blase has also found time to perform his official duties for the Defense Department as a liaison officer to the German government. Everyone is invited to visit, but Blase says to get your reservations in early as in-laws and relatives have the spare bedroom booked through Igg8. His e-mail address is: B3BLASE@aol.com. Kelly Koepke (SF) moved to Phoenix, Arizona, in June I997· She is working as a regional manager for the national office of the Make-AWish Foundation, covering the I6 local affiliates of the foundation in the Southeastern United States. Kevin Graham (A) continues to 1991 Perrin Cunningham (SGI) is completing his fifth year as an instructor in the philosophy department at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs. This summer he is participating in a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar, "Issues in the Philosophy of Childhood," atthe UniversityifMassachusetts in Amherst. He writes: "I share a house and large garden in Colorado Springs with my companion, Professor Rex Welshon; my 4-year-old daughter, Anna James; and our two dogs, two cats, one bunny and a fish. I can be reached at: 846 East Buena Ventura, Colorado Springs, CO 80907; home phone: 7I9-448-0280; e-mail: perrinc@brain. uccs. edu." 1992 MichaelZinanti (SF) and Susan Svetich Zinanti (SF 93) would like to share the joyful news of the birth of their daughter, Anna Grace Zinanti, on May 2, I997· "We are delighted to have her and enjoying (almost) every minute of being new parents!" Claire Darling (SF) writes: "Jim and I bought a house! Yay, life is good. I want to start a chapter in western Massachusetts/Vermont area. Maybe do program with local poor. Anyone readHarper's?" Lila Kerns (SF) received her master's degree in education in I997 from Salen-Teikyo University, and will begin a doctoral program this fall at the University of Kentucky. She works at Three Chimneys Farm handling brood mares and foals. Catherine Barrier (A) graduated in Igg6 from the University of North Carolina Law School, after spending her last year as a visiting student at Columbia so that she could concentrate on her main areas of interest, land-use and arts law. While in New York, she started working as an intern at New York City's Landmarks Preservation Commission. After graduation she stayed on at the commission in the Counsel's Office until mid-I997. Since this past fall, she's been enrolled at Tulane University School of Architecture in their Master of Preservation Studies program, and she expects to get her degree sometime this year. After classes end, she starts work at a new job, back home in Little Rock, as the Assistant Director of the Capitol Zoning District Commission, a state agency that regulates planning and preservation-related matters in several historic districts. On a more fun note, she just got back from a week-longtrip to Cuba, which was wonderful and incredibly beautiful. Anyone who can go, should, she says. 1993 Amanda Klein (A) writes: "I am thrilled to announce the birth of my son, Gabriel Crimmins Klein, g lbs., 6 oz., on January Ig, Igg8. I want to express my thanks to Jonathan Crimmins (Ags) without whom my biological clock would still be ticking loudly. Gabriel was born at home (i.e., my mom's house). Although I am pleased to have received midwifery care and to have avoided the pitfalls of modern hospital obstetrics, my 27-hour labor was neither beautiful nor spiritual: It hurt like hell. Gabriel is of course a singularly attractive and clever baby, and expresses himself in a near-constant stream of grunts, snorts, wheezes, and squeaks. I was conveniently laid off at the end of December from my position coordinating an AIDS prevention project, and I am about to start a job as a therapist at a community mental health clinic that serves Seattle's sexual minority community." JeffSeidman (A) married Lisa Radhika Kaul in New Delhi, India in December. He writes: "Lisa is a Rhodes Scholar from India who earned her PhD in Social Anthropology from Oxford in I995· We met while we were both students here (at Oxford) in I993-9S· We are both living and studying in Oxford again this year." Anna Vaserstein (A) is living in Vermont and working as a special assistant attorney general for the Vermont Office of the Attorney General. She is moonlighting as a sign painter for a local community center. John Markos O'Neill (SF) has moved to Sm West El Camino Real, Suite I64, Mountain View, CA 94040-25n. Nancy Marcus (A) reports that shesurvivedlawschoolandthe Ohio bar exam. She is nowworking as a public interest attorney for Southeastern Ohio Legal Services in the Appalachian foothills. Julie Girone Martin (A) and her husband Eric announce the birth of Charlotte Rosemary on January I4, Igg8. Colin Meeder (A) has been awarded a Robert Bosch Foundation Fellowship for Ig98-99. The foundation, of Stuttgart, Germany, gives young American professionals the opportunity to work full-time internships in Germany. Fellows workin branches of the German federal government and in highlevel internships relating to their professional experience. Meeder, who graduated from Harvard Law School, is an associate with Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver and Jacobsen in Washington, D.C. 1995 MichaelG. Gaffney, Jr. (A) just graduated from Marine Corps Officer Candidate School in Quantico, Virginia. He is now a second lieutenant. Rebecca E. Michael (A97) is working at the Maret School in Washington, D.C., as a development associate. They live in D.C. with their cat, Lucy. 1996 Carl McLaughlin (A) was married to Jessica Wensell (A95) on April 2I, Igg8, in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. Rebecca Kenton (AGI) teaches at an all-girls boarding school in Stevenson, Maryland, with grades gI2. In the fall of I997 she taught a course in Russian literature where she linked Nietzsche's thesis of "The Will to Power" to the main character in Crime and Punishment. She also had her students prepare opening questions and embraced the Socratic method as much as possible. "I try to draw on my St. John's experience whenever I can!" she says. Steve Pearson (SF) has moved to Athens, Georgia, where he is pursuing a master of fine arts degree. �SPRING 1998 19 The Progralll ... HOW SMALL IS SMALL, HOW LARGE IS LARGE? Dean's Statement ofEducational Policy .... . ..... . . . . . . ... . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . .. .. . .. . . . . . .. .. . .. .. . .. . . . .. . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . .. by Harvey Flaumenhaft, Dean in Annapolis The Dean's Statement tkis year takes an unusualform-it is comprised ofa series ofmemos, meeting notes, and reflections on the size of the college. Excerpts are printed in The Reporter. For a complete copy ofthe Statement, call the Dean's office at 410-626-2510. H ow many undergraduate students is it best to have on a campus of St. John's College? This Statement of Educational Policy will deal with that question in itself, abstracting from the existence of two campuses and the Graduate Institute. It arises from experience on the Annapolis campus, but it is meant to be relevant to both campuses. The question has been the subject of a year-long deliberation, and the conclusion that we come to will shape the life of the College for a long time to come. We need to be dear aboutwhatwewant, and about what we need to do about what we want. The process is therefore as important as the outcome. For that reason, this Statement has been cast into a somewhat unusual form. It incorporates a number of documents that constitute a record of our thinking together about the question, after which it presents the Dean's reflections on the many varied voices that he's heard, with the recommendations that they've led him to. The Statement falls into seven parts, including: a description of the current enrollment situation in Annapolis; the posing of the question; notes of deliberations by faculty, officers, Santa Fe tutors, and students; a conclusion. I. President's Memo of 9/97 A year ago we reaffirmed our desire to be a campus of 400-425 undergraduate students even as enrollment grew to 440 last fall and 46oin the springofI997. The reason for the growth was a combination of higher than usual student retention in recent years [not as many students dropped out] and larger than expected January Freshman classes of roughly 40 students in each of the past two years ... For the fall of I997' a substantially larger than normal percentage of those prospectives admitted by the college have accepted the college's offers of admission ...We have chosen to expand the freshman class to I26, while adding five new teaching stations ... ~I. Dea.n's Memo of 9/97 Vi1iat size would be best for the CoJfoge? That question has indeed come up from time to time, and the predominant sentiment of the fac1 lc;:would seem to be that smal ·er is better. As a newcomer, fresh from urban university environments that I enjoyed, I wished that the College were bigger; but the longer I've been here, the more I've come to appreciate the advantages of smallness. Whenever I've had doubts, they've been dispelled by taking a close look at what the alternative has led to. In the 30 years that I've been here, the world has changed a great deal, however, and with those changes we've lost many of the benefits thatwe once derived from our smallness. In the last few years I've begun to ask myself: would a bit of shrinking suffice to bring those benefits back? In fact, I've begun to ask myself whether a bit of shrinking might even impede any effort to bring them back. For example: We used to find many more tutors in the coffee shop for long stretches of time-studying, meeting, and conversing. But that was when many more of them lived within walking distance of the college and didn't have children and working spouses. Times have changed. To the extent that we rely, for the transmission oflore worth preserving and for the generation of newideas, on tutors' sharing their thought in the course of innumerable hours of conversation, we need to find new means to serve abiding ends in changing circumstances. Perhaps a slightly larger size would make it more feasible to find the money to build more classrooms so that we could schedule more 1 Peter Huidekoper, editor of the Alumni Association section of The Reporter (see pp. 15-16), would like to collect alumni responses to the questions raised in this Dean's Statement. Ifyou would like to weigh in on the issues, contact him at: 2395S. Milwaukee St., Denver, C080210, 303-7571225, ore-mailpeterhdkpr@aol.com. A selection ofresponses will appear in the next issue ofthe AlumniAssociation section. classes at the same time, so that more tutors could have the same time during the day free to meet... (I should make one thing clear. It's true that we're already somewhat larger than we've been in recent years, and that we're a great deal larger than we were sometime ago. Currently, however, without any intention to make things so, we are in fact larger than the size for which we are budgeted; ~ indeed, the ;li intention of the ~ J: u President and I: ~ Treasurer is to 5 shrink the it College ... back to Two years ago work was completed on the Greenfield the size that we library, which finally has enough room to hold the were a number of college's collection of books. It also provides muchyears ago. There needed quiet study space for students. isn't any administrative momentum toward quences ofvarious alternatives ... growth, or managerial maneuver to The Dean would then lay both promote it. .. ) reports before a later faculty ...We should first have a faculty meeting; ... there would be for the meeting devoted to a free-for-all first time a full and clear rationale of consideration of our many concerns the faculty's preference with respect relating to the size of the college to size ... (abstracting for now from considerations relating to the Graduate Institute or the campus in Santa Fe) Report of the Faculty ... A group composed of three tutors Committee asked by the Dean should digest the [The faculty committee consisted notes from this meeting-a newof Adam Schulman, David comer (someone who's been here Townsend, and Sam Kuder. The less than ro years), and old-timer committee report analyzed the (someone who's been here more following aspects of the size questhan 20 years, and someone who is tion. This is a summary and paraneither. The group should list the phrase of their findings:] advantages and disadvantages, the benefits and costs by our being Budgetaryconsiderations. A small (325-375 students), or medium larger student body does offer clear (375-425), or large (425-475) ... financial advantages. The report of that group of three tutors would then be discussed by Pressures of facilities and the Instruction Committee, in staff Classroom space becomes consultation with ... [the Treasurer, scarcer, athletic and dining facilities the Vice President, the Registrar, more crowded, dorms fuller. the Admissions Director, and the Beyond a certain point, nonFinancial Aid Director]. The teaching staff of the college will Instruction Committee would then become overburdened. It is easyto digest what they'd learned and add a appointnewtutors to accommodate report of their own about the a 203 increase in enrollment, but feasibility, costs, and other consecontinued onpage 23 m. �Calllpus Life ... WESTWARD WAGONS HO! Across the vast heartland ofAmerica, students journey to meet the "other Johnnies." BY SUSJAN BORDEN S t. John's is often described as a single college with a bi-campi community separated by a vast continent. Who among us, the students ask, can bridge these two campuses? Who has the excellence of soul, the strength of character, the virtue of endurance, or, perhaps more important, the money for gas? This past spring break, fourteen students answered that question, renting two mini-vans for a trip from Annapolis to Santa Fe. While the t students were required to supply the soul, character, and endur- ance to cross the country, the Delegate Council coughed up half of the gas money as part of their sponsorship of the official D. C. club, Wesn"lard Wagons Ho! According to its charter (necessary to secure D.C. funds), the mission of Westi"!ard Wagons Ho! is "to introduce Annapolis students to the exotic liberal-arts sustren of Santa Fe: mainly by means of a perilous expedition from hither to yon." While the students made the perilous trip in a healthy 37 hours, travel was complicated slightly by a condition of the charter stipulating the manner of address of the club leader. "The arch on will be addressed with respect by members in proportion to the altitude at which the addressing occurs: ""lackey" is appropriate in halfway there, "O GreatArchon!" while in Fe." in Santa the students were treated to an impressive Senim show of western deiamen) and director of residence eastern comrades. The visitors set about campus. ICH~nt1ca1," noted club arch on Derek Alexander. '"It's of universal to both east and west to sit in a chair with a rest theiI feet on. If the chair has no rung, the seminar is over." At the end the Waltz in the peTson of hosted a waltz in Santa Fe's Great Hall. The Santa Fe had called the Annauolis music librarv for some had the feel of a says Alexander. While this been sharper for the Santa Fe transfers who ,were reuniting with the feeling also those who had always stuck with the Annapolis campus. "Meeting the Johnnies in Santa Fe was like finding cousins you didn't know you had. The near otherness of it was a lot of fun," says Alexander. We all agreed: there's nothing better than a Johnny theme vacation. You're at St. John's, only not your St. John's. Classes are going on, and you can observe them, butyoudon'thaveto go. You're surrounded by Johnnies, only not Johnnies you're tired of. You're at home, only the location is different. It was just perfect." • retLnI~:::>n," PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY SARAH WATERS TO MEXICO OR TO THE SOFA? Santa Fe students answer the perennial spring break question. BY CAROLINE KNAPP, SF 00 I f spring break for thousands of college students means beaches, bikinis, and beer guzzlin' contests sponsored by major corporations, what does it mean for Johnnies? The Reporter conducted an informal survey of students on the Santa Fe campus, and came up with a picture of breaks that would probably baffle MTV. Not that students didn't have fun ... Damien Richards '99, Alex Everett' 98, Aman Cholas '98, Adrian Boese '99, and two friends journeyed to Real de Quatorce, in San Luis Potosi, Mexico. Richards described the town as "an old ghost town ... but with incredibly opulent buildings ... half abandoned and half prosperous." After driving to the border and taking buses to San Luis Potosi, the group reached the town in the onlypossibleway, through a mile long tunnel hand-carved by Indians in the town's mining heyday. Also traveling internationally were Dan Rose 'oo, and Eilen Jewell 'or, who went to Guatemala, where Jewell reportedly fought off a robbery attempt. Those who did their road tripping in the U.S. included Anne Berven 'oo, Abigail Weinberg 'oo, Mary Lorio 'oo and Caroline Knapp 'oo, who dubbed their trip to California the "Estrogen Excursion." Adrian Lucia' oo got a taste oflife as a "groupie" when he accompanied his best friend as he performed in bars and clubs all over California and the West. The tour culminated in a Friday night performance in the coffee shop on campus. Since sophomore enabling essays were due only a week after the end of break, many had vacations devoted partially or wholly to paper writing. Gabe Caffrey' oo, who stayed at school to write his paper, reported that" an empty campus is really spooky." Susan Raye 'oo had a Biblical vacation, in preparation for her enabling essay: "I read Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Micah (or was it Malachi?) ... translated some Luke ... " Others preferred to work, or not work, at home. Jerome Moroux 'or returned to Lafayette, La., where he celebrated his birthdayin true Louisiana style by "eating a lot of crayfish with my friend Ian Mullet 'or, who's from Covington." But not all of those who returned home were so active. George Finney' 99, reported that he "sat in the house all day and watched TV. I got to see the new episodes of Seinfeld." Omar Rivera '99 also parked himself in front of the television, though he watched the dubiously more exciting 60 Minutes episode with Kathleen Willey. He pronounced it "disappointing, not shocking." Last, but certainly far from least, the Student Activities Office sponsored a rafting trip on the San Juan River in Utah that was attended by almost 30 students. Rafaelle Abramovitz 'or enjoyed the trip as a whole, but said that the highlight for her was getting to be one of only two students who weren't in the raft. She and Shane Stump 'OI paddled alongside the rafts for most of the trip. "We were super special," she affirmed. Tony Dee '98 and Sarah Studd '98, attending the SAO trip forthe second straight year, declared that there was "no better choice." They, and indeed all the participants, said that the highlight of the trip was watching Brendan 0 'Neill of the SAO office get his raft lodged in a difficult rapid. "'We knew it was going to happen," said Studd. ""If anyone was going to get stuck, it was going to be that big rubber yam." Dee added that 0 'Neill owed his rescue to a" giant leaping beaver." 0 'Neill could not be reached for comment.• �Calllpus Life ... • DULL CARE BEGONE A bad case ofthe February doldrums gets banished with music. BY SUSJAN BORDEN S unday, February 22 was bittersweet for folk music lovers on the Annapolis campus. Scheduled for this day was a sing-along, a folksy event held the last six years in an attempt to banish the February doldrums through music and merry-making. This year, however, spring had arrived early. The sun was shining through the windows of the Great Hall and outside, crocuses were already in bloom. But despite nature's unseasonable good cheer, the sing-along' s theme, "Dull Care Begone,"was still meaningful for the eighty-or-so students, tutors, staff members, and assorted children gathered for the event. Granted, the weather had banished the usual winter doldrums. But the dull care on this bright Februarydaywas the loss of tutor Michael Littleton, who had performed at the sing-along for the past three years and who died just two weeks before the event. His spirit brought gentle undertones of sweetness and sadness to many of the songs. The sing-along tradition began sixyears ago when tutor Joe Sachs suggested to then-dean Eva Brann that the college needed something, perhaps singing, to cheer up the students when the mid-February doldrums strike. Brann asked Santa Fe tutor and blues guitarist Carey Stickney to come to Annapolis for Valentine's Dayweekend. With Stickney signed on as the featured musician, a songfest was organized to include tutors Wendy Allanbrook, Chester Burke, Jon Tuck, and Judy Seeger; Seeger's husband Tony (nephew of folksinger Pete Seeger); music librarian Eric Stoltzfus; and former music librarian Tina Davidson. This year, tutors Chester Burke, Henry Higuera, George Doskow, Jon Tuck, andJudyand Tony Seeger took the stage. They performed over a dozen songs, some standard ("Turn, Turn, Turn" and "Blowin' in the Wind") some international ("Guantanamera" and "Die Gedanken Sind Frei") and some topical ("The Titanic"). And, as they do everyyear, they played a program-related song. Previous sing-along audiences were treated to "Don't Know Much About History," Tom Lehrer' s "Oedipus Rex," and, a song Jon Tuck describes as the college seen from the tutors' perspective: "The Great Pretenders." For this year's Tutors Chester Burke, Henry Higuera, and Judy Seeger (left to right}, with Tony In what has become a midwinter tradition, students fight the post-essay slump as they participate in a folksy singalong. performance, Tuck reworked the lyrics to "The Wabash Cannonball" to create "The Western Canonball." While Tuck sang the verses, Ms. Brann was enlisted to lead the audience in the chorus, a charge she fulfilled with a degree of panache appropriate to a former dean. Those who missed the sing-along are invited to banish all dull care with Tuck's new masterpiece: The Western Canonball (sung to the tune of"The Wabash Cannonball") Chorus: Oh listen to the Logos, and listen to your heart As you glide through all the authors, through every liberal art; Hear the mighty rush of the freshmen, hear the lonesome seniors call, I'm traveling through the jungle on the Western Canonball. From the great Atlantic ocean, from that European shore, From Athens and Jerusalem come the authors we adore. They're dead and white and masculine, they're known and loved by all, They're the regular combination of the Western Canonball. They came from old Chicago U. some sixtyyears ago; As they rolled in to the Program, you could hear the whispers go; There's Homer, Hobbes, and Hegel, there's Plato and St. Paul, They came with Scott Buchanan on the Western Canonball. Oh the Eastern books are dandy, say the folks in Santa Fe From the Vedas to Confucius, and Lao-Tze by the way; But we won't give up Plotinus till the darkness round us falls; No changes can be taken on the Western Canonball Here's to our daddy classics, may their names forever stand, And always be remembered and taught throughout the land. Though their earthly race may falter, in the West's decline and fall, Still we never study history on the Western Canonball. • �Obituaries ... Michael Littleton, Tutor Chester Burke, A74, now a tutor at the college, delivered thefollowing tribute at the servicefor Michael Littleton in February. Michael Littleton. Michael Littleton. Michael Littleton. The power of this name magically calls forth a world of kindness, gentleness, and sonorous depths of the spirit. Howwill we, his friends, colleagues, and family, manage to live as before in a world which no longer contains the man himself? In what imagination, save that of his creator, could the possibility of such a man exist? It was my good fortune to have been assigned to Michael's music tutorial at St. John's College. His gift to me was to instill the love of music into my soul. I tried to express my gratitude to him in different ways on various occasions during the past 20 years, but never felt that I succeeded. Michael was everything a tutor should be. I can't remember a minute of time not spent listening to, struggling with, and talking about music. Time took on a certain vibrancy and fullness once you walked into his classroom. Michael would play an excerpt, give us time to take it in (I soon realized that he himself was continually overwhelmed bytheverymusic he was presenting), laugh the laugh of being in the presence of a miracle, and then ask the question he was no doubt asking himself. While we would occasionally be annoyed with each other's answers, this was never Michael's response. I felt as if in the presence of a guide who, while saving his own soul, had the generosity to invite others to join him, without the slightest trace of harshness or sense of superiority. It wasn't long before I found out that Michael had a rich family life and a tremendous commitment to his church choir. For several years I sang and played my flute in his choir. I have to admit that the most rewarding part of this was being able to spend time with Michael. We would have short bursts of conversation, primarily about Plato's "Phaedo" and the power of dreams, while putting on choir robes. Michael was a man to whom you absolutely wanted to speak when you thought you had discovered something. Michael made you realize that you had a soul. The more excited I would get, the more I would see his face sympathetically light up in encouragement; almost as ifI was running the race of and for my life and there was Michael Littleton cheering me on with laughter and with love. Not that Michael was always quiet. How many times have we all heard him surface from his depths, eyes shining, every muscle in his face working to deliver some thought. If what he said at first didn't quite make sense, you simply had to wait and eventuallyyou would receive your reward. Great things take time and rarely come in neat and shapely packages. Or rather, the profound shapes have to be heard in such a way that all their parts may fit together in time. To listen to Michael tell a story was to be drawn as ifby a piece of music, enchanted by the powerful jazz-like rhythms of his voice, expecting a conclusion the precise nature of which you had not the slightest clue because it was being fashioned with exhaustive work and with love while he was speaking. Socrates tells us at the beginning of the "Phaedo" thatthe same dream would often come to him: Socrates, it said, "make music and work at it." For Socrates this meant engaging in what he considered to be the greatest kind of music, philosophy. Now I am sure Michael must have had many dreams, and though I am thoroughly ignorant of their content, I want to assert that he went one step beyond Socrates. Michael not only made music but he was music. Everything about him flowed with the urgency of a musical phrase. Everything about him pointed to another world about whose nature we can sometimes dream and at all other times only make feeble stabs with our words. There are two endings to this tribute to Michael: the first is one of sorrow. But the second ending is one of hope. The thought is not original, at best a pale imitation of the end of a book dear to Michael. The feeling, however, is genuine. Why can't every one of us on a daily basis remind ourselves of the superb gift we were able to share called Michael Littleton? Wouldn't the memory of Michael help to free us from the many things which only cause anguish, jealousy, and strife? Wouldn't such a memory deepen our sense of community, guide us toward what is really important during the short time we are given here below, make us better family members and remind us how precious is the time spent with friends? I want some day, if only for an instant, to hear the music Michael heard-I want to hear it with all of you. e Gary David Friend and Donor 'Well, I'm done.' Gary's generosity, however, has outlived him; the college communitywill remember his kindness, and will benefit from his friendship for years to come." He is survived by his parents, Ralph and Ruth David; three brothers, Terry, David and Dale; and two sisters, Kathleen Johnson and Mary Harris. Gary C. David, 40, ofBelleville, Ill., died Feb. 24 at his home. He was a long-time friend and benefactor of St. John's, having donated hundreds ofbooks to Meem Library. In I996, the college recognized his contributions at a special reception held at the library. Inga Waite, the college's librarian, remembers her first encounter with David in 1993· "He called me up, talked to me about the college program, and asked if he could give us a copy of Skeat' s Entomological Dictionary of the English Language. From that time on, he became a faithful donor, sending boxes of books to Meem Library on almost a monthly basis. Gary was a man of modest means, and his health was not good. Nevertheless, over the years he donated hundreds of books, both new and used, and several hundred dollars toward our library collection. He was not an alumnus, but he was passionate about the program, having had friends who attended the staff posts, and after World War II was head of the U.S. military mission in Norway. He served on the board of trustees of the Naval Academy Foundation. Adm. Cooper's wife Rena diedin I993· He is survived by a daughter and a son, two brothers, two granchildren, and three greatgrandchildren. Joshua Cooper Class of 1926 college. Gary was interested in all aspects of the curriculum, and in recent years became a staunch supporter of Eastern Classics. "Gary had a dry sense of humor, and from time to time would send non-book items to the college. Once he sent the library staff a Japanese tea set; on another occasion he mailed the Graduate Institute Office a gilded Buddha. "The last time I spoke with Gary, he told me in his matter-of-fact way, RetiredNavy Rear Adm. Joshua W. CooperdiedinFebmaryin Alexandria, Virginia. Adm. Cooper attended St. John's and graduated from the Naval Academy in 1927. He was awarded the Navy Cross, the nation's second highest award for valor, for his actions during the Battle of Surigao Straits in the Philippines. He also served in the Korean War, when he was commander of the battleship USS Iowa. Adm. Cooper was born in Surry, Virginia. He served in the Navy for 36 years, mostly on destroyers and battleships. He also held several top Noted ... William M. Darden, class of l94I, on December 31, 1997· Patricia Posey, class oh970 (A). Arthur Townshend, Jr., class of I926, on February I, I998. Robert S. Johnson, Santa Fe Grauduate Institute, class of 1972, on January 6, 1998. Carol Lightner Tucker, class of 1969 (SF). �The Deans Statement, continued from page 19 more challenging to expand the staff. For the present enrollment of 450-475, facilities and staff are adequate. Building. A larger enrollment would create a need for building projects but would also help to finance them. Additional building might improve the quality of campus life, not just its size. unity is meant a sense of common, shared activity outside of class-in addition to the program); and whether the inter-class relations could develop as they should with so many upperclass students living offcampus.] VII. Conclusion (spring 1998) This deliberative process has been very instructive for me as Dean. At the outset, my own views and my estimate of the view of other people in our community both inclined me to favor a smallness that Intimacy and diversity. When I now regard, despite its advantages, the college was smaller (about 300 as not the best size for us. Now, I students) it was a more intimate believe that we should aim to place. Everyone-students and remain in our present range, faculty alike-knew one another by maintaining a student body of name. Tutors spent more time on between 425 and 475 undergraducampus ... Now students don't know ates .. .I fear ... thatthe arguments each other so well, nor do members that support our willingness to go of the faculty... far beyond numbers which once On the other hand, perhaps the would have horrified us could, intimacy of the old unless we're college cannot be careful, be used recovered merely to justify a A larger student by shrinking the dangerous body, and concomisize of the college. ratcheting Students work upward: I can tantly a larger longer hours in imagine a order to pay for seductive voice acuity, makes postheir education, so · saying, "If it sible a more diverse they have less time wasn't so bad to outside of class to go from just over community... get to know each 300 to just under other. Other 400, whywould factors, like it be so bad to go on up to 500; and children, working spouses and then why not up to 600-and even longer commuting distances, beyond that." Ifyou add enough conspire to draw tutors away from drops, a puddle becomes a pool. At the campus ... Furthermore, a some not very large size, adminissmaller, closer-knit community can trative consequences would render perhaps be too intense ... We introunworkable such faculty governance duced preceptorials in part in order as a program of education like ours to combat the malaise of the senior requires, and would generate in the year by adding the variety of mixing student body a dangerous sense of with juniors. An unhealthy intensity distance from the enterprise. may have contributed to the higher ... Here I shall emphasize three rate of attrition when the college sorts of considerations that have· was small. arisen in the discussion-having to A larger student body, and do with I) dangers without, 2) concomitantly a larger faculty, resources within, and 3) consemakes possible a more diverse quences to which we need to give community... some further thought. f Admis5ions and 5electivity. Perhaps we should be willing to increase admissions in order to accommodate the demand that the greater number of applications indicates (the principle being, to turn away no one willing and able to benefit from a St. John's education). On the other hand, if we :remain the same size or shrink, more applications mean that we can afford to be more selective. V. Deliberation by Students (fall 1997) [The Student Committee on Instruction held a forum for discussion of the size issue. 'IWo main issues discussed were whether there ought to be some unity of experience for students at the college (by I)Excessive smallness makes us vulnerable in a world that's largely indifferent to what we try to do, and even increasingly hostile to it. Being small is good for us because otherwise it's hard to do our work-but if we were to insist on being tiny in so precarious a world, we might not even survive. 2)More important, however, to my mind is what resources are made available for the working of this community by our being small rather than tiny. Students who are put off by the prospeet of their relationships being confined to a very few people, in class and out, are likelier to wish to join us, and are likelier to stay for the entire four years ... The faculty is likelier to contain more variety of talent and more depth oflearning... The community as a whole is likelier to be more capable of supporting activities that require a certain minimal size to be feasible ... And, finally, there is the crass fact of cash flow. At any size greater than very tiny, we cannot avoid certain expenditures; but while those expenditures do not go up much as we grow a bit, our income does ... 3)Despite solid advantages that come with being larger than tiny, the condition that provides those advantages also diminishes, threatens, or destroys some precious advantages of smallness. We need to think about how to foster deliberately the contact that arose spontaneously when there were far fewer people in this community. That has to do with a)the effect of our buildings and grounds upon our communal life, and with b) relations among students, c) :relations between students and faculty members, and d) relations among faculty members ... Unless we ask questions such as these, and try to answer them, we may awake someday to find that our gains from growth have been outweighed bywhatwe've allowed to be lost. 9 Phonathon, continuedfr.om page 4 talk to college students who use the Internet frequently. All the students agreed with Rynne, who discovered that "Johnnies are everywhere." The students' interactions were not limited to alumni. Jacobs spent IS minutes on the phone with one alumni family because he was invited to talk to each child;. :"And they made pledges too/ he adds, "'I\vo dollars is a lot for a ki&" In addition to finding Johnnies who are continuingtheir studies.•. students were thrilled to learn of parents who are doing great books courses andreading groups, or who were familiar with the readings. Very often it is the parents of alumni and current students who enjoy talking to a student the most. "I met with one parent in Southern California," Rohertytold the students, "who told me that he looked forward every year to the phonathon and the chance to talk with a St. John's student again." In the phonathon, the strength of the program is manifest in ways less obvious than classroom performance. Roherty sees it in the character of the students who do the calling. "I'm always reminded of mature they are, and how quick. You never know what will get thrown atyouin a phone conversation, and they are absolutely fearless. I think that all reverts back to the program, to having a strong sense of yourself." Students see it in the easy rapport they have with alumni. "They are interested in talking to you," says Chew" and you have something in common." And ultimately this strength showsnumericallyin the enthusiasm that parents arid alumni feel about giving to support the needs ofthe college. As Roherty explains, "It shows that we are doing our job right." 9 -by Caroline Knapp, SFoo �6: ft ('1) U'l U'l Cl 0 ~ ('1) t;i=i !"' '"c:J b:J "' "'d ....... )--' ,..... I-'· ~ co (") ~- 0 ~ i:i.. ~ er' ...... ~ ~ ~ 0 0 i=i ~ (I) ~ 1:::.1 ~ !::d (p (I) g.o ;:i:;g" &. 0 g. g. ~ ';:r ""'" ('!> (/) ;t" = ~ ~~ s~ /'Jl"~ 0 ~ ...... (") n~ 0 Cb '"§ 0 0 (".) H ~ Ea1 ~ ('1) U'l rt Croquet match gets top rating/or the day ('1) ~ J 1-d ('!) >-s I-'• 0 8-! r.l e. U'l 1-d 0 U'l M ~ ('1) 1-d s. p.. ennifer Coonce (A97) didn't take long to land a job in NYC doing something cool-writing r an internet magazine called Ul'hat's Going On. ''It's adailyonline guide to the most inspiring, culturally relevant, historically significant, or just plain silly gatherings taking place on the planet," she says. Every day, one story focuses indepth on one event somewhere in the woTld. On April 25, 1998, it was the croquet match at St. John's-the game against the Naval Academy that serves as the backdrop to the best spring party in Annapolis. Coonce says her bosses agreed to let her extend a little favoritism to her alma mater and write the day's featured article (regardless of the fact that under the Liberty Tree, at the croquet match, is indeed the coolest place on earth). Coonce about 200 fellow ~~~~u·~L''h the On ' ANNAPOLIS • SANTA. FE s E annual events with descriptions contactsof the festivals we cover are pretty strange," says Coonce. The site, which was recently named Cool Site of the Day, is at www.whatsgoingon.com. (Coonce's e-mail address is jenn@ whatsgoingon.com.) Let's see ... the coolest place on earth on the cool site of the day. Sounds like Johnnies will have to fight to keep their famous geeky image alive. SI s s first in coolness, it's also first in croquet. In an effort to make the anm.1al match with more offered the coachinJ?: carried over to the match itself, Rmru,.ri:'lli Wicket Hardison where a natty Wood expounded on the game St. won, of course, and 3. The week before the match, the St. lohn's team ioumeved to New Em1·la11d. where J won the National Colles:[iate title. I SF BY LAURA J. MULRY again, St. John's in Santa Fe will make the college's unique apto education available to a group of business executives, fri...,uu.,, the Summer Classics program. The three-week program is broken up into a series of week-long seminars that engender discussion, reflection and study of the great books. Participants select one seminar per week for up to three weeks. Each seminar meets every morning for two hours, Monday through Saturday. With a maximum of 20 participants, seminar discussions address the assigned readings in depth, led by members of the St. John's faculty or guests from other institutions. Following the seminar, conversations about the readings often continue through the lunch hour and into the afternoon. The 1998 Summer Classics offerings are: Weeki, July12- 18: Wagner, Shakespeare, Homer and the Bible; Week II, July19- 25: Mozart, Tocqueville, Aristotle and Dante; Week III, July 26 -August I: Strauss and Berlioz, Dostoevski, Plutarch and Pascal. Mornings are dedicated to the seminars, while afternoons leave participants free to study, tour the Santa Fe area on their own, or participate in professionally guided anthropological, archeological and geological excur- sions organized by the college. In the evenings, the Santa Fe Opern features some of the world's finest productions. Participants may purchase tickets through the college for this year's performances: Mozart's The Magic Flute on Friday, July 24; Strauss' Salome on Wednesday, July 29 and Berlioz's Beatrice and Benedict on Friday, July 3i. In addition, Shakespeare in Santa Fe will perform Hamlet outdoors three nights a week on the St. John's campus. Tuition is $650 per week, which includes all texts, receptions and some meals and excursions. On-campus single occupancy accommodations are available from $n50/weekincludingtuition, texts, room and board for six nights and seven days, excursions, receptions and extras. For off-campus accommodations, the college this year is offering a tuition package with Hotel Santa Fe with rates from $1,650/week single and $2, 750/ week double. Participants registering for more than one week receive a discount. The Summer Classics program provides the opportunity to discover or rediscover the passion and excitement of the Great Books while meeting new friends in the aesthetic beauty of the Land of Enchantment.• � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The St. John's Reporter</em> Description An account of the resource College newspaper which started publication in 1974. Continued publication into 2000. Includes primarily historical content.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The St. John's Reporter" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=35">Items in <em>The St. John's Reporter</em></a></strong> <span>to view and sort all items in the collection.</span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 24 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context vol 24 issue 3 Spring 1998 Title A name given to the resource Reporter, Volume 24 Issue 3 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1998-04 Description An account of the resource Volume 24, Issue 3 of The St. John's Reporter. Published in Spring 1998. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Public Relations Office Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Goyette, Barbara (editor) Skewes, Elizabeth (editor) Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf The Reporter https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/218dffd011633a9890f989e1be57d192.pdf 96a0b770de2708e2fe1b1519157ee65c PDF Text Text ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE LIBRARY lll 111IllII111\~l~tlm~miIIIIIIllI~IIll 31696 011381561 THE WRITING LIFE Three alumni authors-a poet, a playwright, and a novelist-talk about their craft .................................... 10 S!JOHN'S COLLEGE ANNAPOLIS· SANTA FE COMMENCEMENT '98 Anthony Kronman and William Pastille discuss knowledge in Annapolis; John Leo exhorts graduates in Santa Fe .................................... 6 THE CAMPUS PRIMEVAL New landscaping with indigenous plants transforms the botanical gene pool on the Annapolis campus ....................................... 12 EPARTMENTS F1·om the Bell Towe1·.s: Five retire- ments, a new gym for Santa Fe, so ~ long to the LC, what happened to ~ Stan, website news ........................ 2 8 Homecoming: A recap of happen- ings in Santa Fe and a preview for Annapolis ............... . .... 5, 9 Alumni Association: The D.C. Chapter greets new members; why paydues? .................................... 16 Campus Life: The allure of smoking is still strong for students m Annapolis; students in Santa Fe revive the theater group ......... 14, 24 Alumni Prnfiles: Amy Wuebbels (A94) lands a job in politics; Sue Conlin (A72) runs a one-person dinic in rural Haiti ..... ... 22, 24 · .. Letters ...................... . ~ :z §. .... 21 ClassNotes ................................ 18 ~ In 1947, a neat and tidy row of formal hedges lined the walk leading to McDowell (top). That was then. Today (lower photo), a landscaping plan that re-introduces native plants to the 250-year-old campus gives the grounds a less regimented look and will develop over the next century into a natural setting. See "The Campus Primeval" on page 12. �Frolll the Bell Towers ... THE GOOD-BYE GANG! •....••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••......••.•.......••......•••..............••••...........•..................•..•.••..•.• T utors and staff who have contributed 140 years of experience to the college retired this spring in Annapolis. Tutors Chaninah Maschler, Robert Williamson, and Ben Milner, plus librarian Kitty Kinzer and registrar Nancy Lewis were feted at a gathering of students, tutors, and staff held in the gym (rained out from the President's house), where their contributions were honored with speeches and the crowd was entertained by the Coney Island Tooters (a tutor barbershop duodectet) and by lots of food. Tutor emeritus Curtis Wilson spoke about Chaninah Maschler, who has been teaching at St. John's since 1976, recalling the way she would always challenge easy assumptions. Tutor Mera Flaumenhaft told stories about librarian Kitty Kinzer (herself a great storyteller), including one A SUBSCRIPTION TO SANTAFEAN MAGAZINE CAN HELP ST.JOHN'S antaFean magazine, which covers the fine arts, beautiful homes, fine cuisine, events, culture, and history of Santa Fe, is making it possible for subscribers to help St. John's College while helping themselves to one of the premier magazines in the Southwest. The magazine, published by Luther Hodges, a friend of the Santa Fe campus, "captures the spirit, the culture, and the history that is only found in Santa Fe," says Rob Ettenson, the magazine's associate publisher. Because St. John's is such an important part of the Santa Fe community, Ettenson wants to see more members of the college S I ~ From left: Chaninah Maschler, Nancy lewis, Kitty Kinzer, Mary Jane Milner, and Ben Milner (above). Jon Tuel< with Robert and Marilyn Williamson (below). about her interview to become assistant librarian in 1969 with then-dean Robert Goldwin-held with both lying down flat on the floor because of Goldwin's back pain. Kinzer became librarian in 1981. Tutor George Doskow spoke about Ben Milner, who came to join the faculty the same year as Doskow, in 1965. He described Milner' s independent and strong-minded personality and recalled his fiercely held but not dogmatic convictions. Registrar Nancy Lewis, the "meticulous guardian of college records," was praised by tutor Eva Brann, who also talked about Lewis' devotion to foreign students and the postcards she received from all over the world. Tutor >- Malcolm Wyatt talked about Robert Williamson, who joined the faculty in 11960. He mentioned Williamson's respect for student learning, his aversion i!= to Baudelaire, the work he did in formulating the freshman Greek manual, ~ and the "many elegantly crafted masks with which he entertained us." 9 community become subscribers to Santa Fean magazine. To encourage this, he and Hodges have offered to give the college $5 for each new subscription from members of the St. John's College community. The annual subscription rate for the magazine, which comes out ten times a year, is $24.95. Each issue focuses on a different aspect of Santa Fe's lifestyle oJYculture, but in the magazine's,{ages, readers can find stories about the Santa Fe Opera, the annual Buckaroo Ball, regional homes and furnishings, the art gallery scene, Southwest food, and occasionally about the college. "The magazine regularly features a calendar of arts, cultural and social events going on in the area, which can help people who don't live here more effectively plan their trips to Santa Fe," Ettenson says. '"It can really be a great resource." Those interested in subscribing to Santa Fean magazine may call 800- 770-6326. Please be sure to mention the code "QSTJON" so that the college will benefit from your subscription. • �Frotn the Bell Tow-ers ... ELIZABETH SKEWES, ALUMNI DIRECTOR, LEAVING TO STUDY MEDIA ETHICS RARE BOOKS DONATED TO SJC ~ ocal philanthropist lizabeth Skewes, the Santa Fe campus' director of alumni relations and parent activities for the past three years, has decided to leave St. John's to enter a Ph.D. program at Syracuse University in mass communications, -with a concentration in media ethics and media responsibilities. "Some people saythat 'media ethics' is an oxymoron, but it's not," says Liz. "People go into journalism with high ideals, but they get lost somewhere alongtheway. With the media-not just press but also television and movies-there's a lot of freedom. I firmly believe that with that freedom comes responsibility. The media has been neglecting that responsibility for a number of years now, partly because of market pressures and public tolerance for mediocrity." Liz thinks she can help to change that loss of ideals through education. She aspires to teach journalism full time at a college or university. "Students still live in a world of ideas, a world ofhope," she says. "With students, there's still the sense that the world can be improved upon. Most of the time people in the rl~.-.1~~,.,.~.,,;.-1,.nh.-.+~~ not E Under Liz's care, the Alumni Office in Santa Fe has made great strides. As new Alumni Board president Allan Hoffman, A49, says, Liz's transition into office was seamless. "Liz has the unusual capacity of being both well-organized and imaginative," he says. "That combination is essential for this job." Hoffman adds that quietly, gradually, Liz made small but crucial changes to the way the Homecoming and Summer Alumni programs were produced. The response from the alumni has been positive. More people have been coming to events, and they have been happier with their experiences. Liz is known for her ability to grasp the nuances of a St. John's education and to deal effectivelywith Johnnies. As Barbara Lauer, SF76, Alumni Board vice president remembers, "This year's Homecoming announcements were round, shaped like globes. Liz had mailed them out in specially ordered square envelopes." The question came up: Where would people find square envelopes to return the last pages-the registration forms? "Liz very patiently explained to all of us Johnnies that if we would fold the pages in half, they would fit neatly into a standard envelope." Perhaps the highest praise from the Alumni Board came from the immediate past president, Sharon Bishop, A65: "You can't tell from the way the office runs that she is not an alum." Liz admits that she '"1ill miss the alumni, but has learned from her time that she wants to go back to school and spend the rest of her life teaching. Infact, Liz's time at St. a springboard for graduate school in a couple ofways. First, she began to realize how much she likes students. Second, she considered attending the Graduate Instutute. This helped her to make room in her imagi- nation for the possibility of going back to school, and to begin to think about what she reallywants to do with her future. ''With teaching," she said, "some people go through a semester entirely untou{:hed. Some students just don't 'get it,' and others who are strong writers alreadywill develop only slightly. Butthen there are those who, over the course of a semester, begin to see why it matters, why it's important to be able to articulate clearly, why it's important to be good rather than just good enough. Ifyou teach one or two people like that in a semester, over the course of a lifetime you are helping to create a better, more educated, more informed society." Liz acquired teaching experience as a writing instructor at Santa Fe Community College during her three years here and at a community college in Pennsylvania for five years previously. Along with teaching writing, she has held jobs in journalism, first as a reporter for eight years, and then as a magazine editor at Dickinson College before coming to St. Liz will be missed. Santa Fe President John Agresto says, '"Ifl had to put together my A-team of colleagues, she would be right there at the top. She does the hardest jobs with the cheeriest manner, making the impossible seem effortless. The world needs more great alumni directors, not more Ph.D.s!" • recently nhanced the libraries of four anta Fe institutions, including St. John's College. Gladys Heldman donated a rare edition of St. Augustine's CityoJGodtothe college. Currently on display in the Ault-Eve:rs-Ro-0-m of the Meem Library are this book and the five other rare books which Ms. Heldman gave to other institutions: the Santa Fe Symphony, the Santa Fe Opera, and the African Medical and Research Foundation. The books include a first edition, 1595 copy of Tycho Brahe's "Astronomiae Instauratae Mechanica" and an 1876 edition of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Samuel Clemens. The volume donated to St. John's is a 15 3/4 "x 11" leather-bound book with illuminations by a Venetian artist. Printed in 1470, the volume is the first Venetian edition of City of God, and only the fourth book printed in Venice. It was made by typesetters Johann und Wendelin de Spira, who had exclusive for a short time. Ms. Heldman has been a friend of St. John's College for a number of years as well as being active various other organizations in Santa Fe. She is a collector of rare books who wanted to share part of her collection by making donations to some of these organizations.• -Kathy Pluth, SF99 -Laura] Mulry There's no easy way to say this: The Little Camous is no more. The lom?-time haunt of St. John's students, tutors, and alumni dosed its doors on Marvland Avenue on 3. lit smoky bar with maroon leather seated booths-gone. Miss Peggy, the waitress who's served politicians, Johnnies, and other local patrons since .,;;JJ,r-·~u11111::. Drafts after \..Om:!!ge, Box. 21404-2800. sennir1ar·~:~o11e.Drafts instead of lecture-gone. Owner Nichols, retirafter 40 years-gone. The little Campus was founded in 1924 and has been in the Nichols family ever since. While the fern bars came and went on the dock and Main Street, the little Campus offered that best of all American traditions, the neighborhood place where everyone i z Q. :i:: knew your name, or no one did, if you didn't want them to. The restaurant space has been leased to Virginia businessmen who plan to transform it into an Irish pub, according to the Washington Post. e Santa Fe: Elizabeth Skewes and Laura j. Mulry, editors. Periodicals postage paid at Annapolis, MD, and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Reporter, St. john's College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800. �Frolll the Bell Towers ... Requiem for a Carp TUTOR NEWS anta Fe faculty member Peter Pesic has edited a new book, Max Planck, Eight Lectures on Theoretical Physics, published by Dover for $6.95. In 1909 Max Planck gave a series of eight lectures at Columbia University presenting the accounts of various experiments he did, including his work with quantum hypothesis. Planck discovered quantum theory in 1900 and played a leading role in redefining the world of physics. His lectures range from the scientific to the mathematical to the philosophical; they give the reader a chance to follow Planck's thought processes on these different levels. The book is introduced and annotated by Pesic. His observations and notes help the reader to find a historical placement for Planck's work and that of his contemporaries. The volume should be of .interest to students of modern physics, philosophy, and the history of science. Annapolis tutors Laurence and Gisela Berns will teach at The Clearing, a rustic folk school in Ellison Bay, Wisconsin, this summer. Mr. Berns will use The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker as his text and will explore the biological and instinctual basis of speech and its connection to and dependence on the mind. Using illustrations as varied as New Guinea tribes, teen-age gangs, Mark Tw-ain, and Groucho Marx, Pinker makes the fundamental unity of humanity the theme of the book. Mrs. Berns will study George Eliot's Middlemarch, focusing on the characters of Dorothea Brooke and the young doctor Lydgate. • S Notre Dame has the Fighting Irish Leprechaun, Annapolis has its Liberty Tree. Santa Fe had Stan the Carp, but that was yesterday, and now he is gone. S tan lived for at least 20 years in ties but being a big fish in a small dean, says that she knew Stan primarily through her children, because nearthe pond on Peterson Placita. pond? "We admired him for doing so ly everyvisit a child makes to campus "He has always been there," much with so little. To grow to that says Kathy Mizrahi, director of resisize in that little place was certain]y includes some time at the pond. "I dential life, "and I came in 1978." an accomplishment," suggests remember the first time each of my But some oflastyear's freshmen three children saw Stan," she says. Annapolis tutor Nancy Buchenauer. Perhaps one secret to Stan's didn't even know there was a Stan Stan had to be tough as well as big. longevity was cafeteria food. Rachel until the mourning began. "All I Vedaa, '99, says, "Sometimes I remember about Stan is when he died," says Carlo Santiago, '01. would lie outside and people would "Everyone got very sad. It was nice ~ feed him bread-and his big mouth to hear everyone reminisce." Other ~ would open to get the bread." students' memories of Stan were ~ (Rachel opens her hands in an openpersonal and immediate. Amber ~ carp-mouth demonstration.) AcBoydstun, '99, says, '"You always ~ cording to Mike Rozak, '01, Stan knew it was a lucky day when you'd liked Swiss cheese and lunch meat. ;;;! Following taxidermy, the matwalk by the fishpond and without ----------~----- ter-if not the form-of Stan accomhaving to look hard you saw that panied Jacob Keller and Steve Conn, shiny fin on the surface of the "One year the students burned a water." papier-mache statue-I think it was of '98, on their post-graduation Spaziergang through the Southwest. According to his Albuquerque Aphrodile-on the placita during taxidermist, Stan died by choking on Reality Weekend," recalls Santa Fe Stan was seen at several major tourist spots, including the Grand a stone. Apparently, carp clean their Dean James Carey. "It fell into the mouths by swishing rocks around pond and killed all the fish but Stan." Canyon and Venice Beach. Stan provided, in his passive, The Campus Planning them. Judging by the size of the rock Committee has approved the display nearly inert way, a rallying point for left in his mouth at the time of his of Stan's considerable body in the taxidermy, Stan, who was 26 inches the community. Natalie Arnold, '94, cafeteria, though it remains to be long, had taken on a larger rock than former assistant director of admisseen whether students on the meal he could safely handle. Jacob Keller, sions, describes her feelings about plan will also approve. "He's gone to Stan this way: "He's like the one '98, found him washed up on the his eternal reward," says Santa Fe consistent thing at this place in the edge of the pond. president John Agresto, who, as it In his obituary of Stan in The last eight years. Almost every time I happens, contributed half of the passed by I looked for him. I was so Moon, the Santa Fe campus newspamoney for Stan's taxidermy. "Not per, Keller called Stan a "mascot." upset when he died." The greater St. John's community bad for a bottom feeder." • This begs the question: What does it also found meaning in Stan's presence mean that we choose as our mascot a among us. Lisa Carey, wife of the creature with no outstanding quali-Kathy Pluth, SFgg i OKS, NEW GYM now, when someone mentioned "student activities" on the Santa spoke at the ceremony and expressed his own excitement at the imminent relocation of SAO which has been encroaching on "his" space for so long. campus, the first picture that came to mind was a small room in the When finished (final completion date to be determined), the oa~;en1er1t of ESL. This is where the Student $8 million center will provide rooms for drawing, pottery, and Activities Office has been housed for the past 30 years. photography, as well as space for the Search and Rescue Any SAO worker can attest that a new building is needed. Team, and, finally, a pool. Those dark, dank rooms, overcrowded storage spaces, Other speakers at the groundbreaking were President and outdated weight equipment do not inspire student John Agresto, Mark St. John, director of the Student activity. In the bowels of ESL our dreams of a bright new gym, plentiful storage and office space, and actually seeActivities Office, and John Balkcom, a member of the Board of Visitors and Governors. Amber Boydstun, representing the ing the light of the outside world are. on their way to being students, spoke of her own and others' needs for a place to fulfilled. exercise, work and play. Lorn Tryk, vice president of Lloyd On Sunday, June 21, the Santa Fe campus held the groundbreaking ceremony for its new Student Activities and Tryk Architects, and Barbara Lauer, vice president of the Alumni Association, also offered their comments in support Center. The site for the facility is next to the soccer field of the new building. and behind the tennis court. Down the bumpy, rocky dirt Finally, Joyce Rumsfeld and then John Balkcom took a road to the field, a small "Mustang" front-end loader turn in the front-end loader to dig the strip ofland marking bounced to dig the first hole for the new 45,828 squarefoot complex. where construction of the center will begin. The groundbreaking was held on the last day of Homecoming, so many The Student Activities Center will be built in stages. alumni were on hand to express their delight at the beginning The first phase will include a gymnasium, two racquetball of a project they did not have the opportunity to enjoy as stuand squash courts, a fitness room, locker rooms, and showers. This $3. 7 million building is slated to open in dents. No longer can anyone joke "Great Books, No Gym." It John Balkcom drives the Mustang will soon be "Great Books, New Gym."• late 1999. The Student Activities Office will also move there with all of its equipment, freeing more space for the to break ground for the new laboratories. Hans Von Briesen, director oflaboratories, Student Activities Center. -Blythe Boyer, SFoo �••• SEARCH AND RESCUE TEAM RECOGNIZED T he St. John's Search and Rescue Team recently received the 1998 Distinguished Service Award from the Santa Fe Downtown Rotary Club. Every year the Rotary Club recognizes an individual or organization for outstanding community service. This recognition is of great value to the members of the Search and Rescue Team because public appreciation is the best reward for the dedication and effort each member volunteers. The idea of a St. John's Search and Rescue Team originated with 14 eager Johnnies taking a first aid class in the early '70s. The students thought a Search and Rescue Team would be the perfect opportunity to apply their newly learned medical skills. With permission from the president of the college, the students and their instructor, Herb Kincey, created the Search and Rescue Team. In the early years there was a minimal amount of pubJic recognition. Local police were at first unaware of the potential resources the team could provide perhaps because team members would participate in searches dressed in bell-bottoms and love beads. After the first few missions, however, the police realized the team's potential, as well as its skill. Now the team participates in missions all over New Mexico and on out-of-state missions as well. The success of the team is due to the continuous training all members receive and their strong commitment to quality. Two decades after its inception, membership has grown to more than 120, including both Johnnies and "townies." Town residents began to join when they realized that the team disbanded over school holidays and summer vacation. These "townie" members form a stable foundation. Since new Johnnie freshmen join the team every year, training is available regularly and is open to everyone. In the words of the chairman of the Rotary committee, 10th Circuit Judge Paul Kelly, Search and Rescue is "a 'team' in the true sense of the word." The award ceremony was held on June 11 in downtown Santa Fe. 10th Circuit Judge Paul Keily, himself a volunteer with Hondo Fire and Rescue, presented the award to St. John's on behalf of the Rotary Club. There to receive the award for St. John's was Tom Rushton, one of the 14 Johnnies who started the team; John Tull, a townie whose effort and dedication has helped lay the foundation of the team; and Liz Trice, a St. John's graduate and the current vice president of the team. • -Matthew Burritt, SF01 GfYzize, GfYisdom_, and @fbng: Annapolis Homecoming 'g8- October 2 - 4 omecoming in Annapolis kicks off Friday evening (Oct. 2) with the Class of '94 Homecoming Lecture: "Is America an Experiment?" given by Bill McClay (A74). Mr. McClayis the author of "The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America," and currently holds the Royden B. Davis Chair in Interdisciplinary Studies at Georgetown University. After lecture, the great conversation continues in the dining hallwith wine, coffee, and dessert. Those who prefer body language should head for the coffee shop party. Eric Lyon (Agr) will be spinning the disks and taking requests for favorites from way-backwhen. Please contact the alumni office as soon as possible with a list of your favorite dance tunes-we'll start searching for them now. On Saturday morning, the Alumni Association will have its annual meeting, which will include memorials for Michael Littleton, who died on February 8, and Bryce Jacobsen, who died on May 3r. H Saturday lunch is available for all alumni, with special luncheons for reunion classes. G.l.s will have a pizza party in the Coffee Shop, senior alumni (pre-new program) eat in the Mellon Conference Room. alumni from the forties in the Boathouse. and the classes of '53 and '58 in the Conversation Room. The class of '63 is invited to Mary McCutchan's (A63) house on Randall Court, the class of '68 will eat in the private dining room, the class of '73 will gather in the Chase Stone common room, the class of '78 is invited to lunch atthe oncampus apartment of Leo Pickens (A78) and Valerie Pawlewicz (A8g), and the classes of '83, '88, and '93 will picnic on back campus. In the afternoon, alumni will have fourteen seminars to choose from, led by Michael Dink, George Doskow, Robert Druecker, Harvey Flaumenhaft, Barbara Leonard, Nicholas Maistrellis, Leo Raditsa, Beate Ruhm von Oppen, Brother Robert, David Stephenson, David Townsend, John White, Curtis Wilson, and Malcolm Wyatt. Senior alumni (from the old program) will gather in the General Hartle Room for coffee, dessert, yearbookinspired nostalgia, and a screening of "Annapolis Salute." The alumni soccer classic, scheduled for 4 p.m., will. as always, pit speed, agility, and athleticism againstwisdom, wiliness, and knee braces. Meanwhile, also at 4 p.m., the bookstore will host an autograph party featuring alumni authors Anthony Chiffolo (AGI84), Glenda Eoyang (SF76), MarkFabi (A76), and Paul Stiles (AGI96). Rumor has it that program author Plato will make an appearance. The Great Hall will be the site of musical merriment featuring the Coney Island Tooters and Freshman Chorus Revisited. First, St. John's esteemed barbershop duodectet of tutors will charm the assembled horde with a cavalcade of their greatest hits, including "Goodbye My Coney Island Baby" and other tunes from the classical repertoire. Immediately afterward, Elliott Zuckerman will lead former freshmen in a reprise of freshman chorus's greatest hits (including "WachetAuf," "Ave Verum," and "The Heavens are Telling"). Following a late afternoon cocktail party, a gala Homecoming Dinner will feature Alumni Association Awards of Merit presented to Stewart Greenfield (A53) and Tom Geyer (A69). Connie Greenfield, Chaninah Maschler, and L. Harvey Poe will become honorary alumni. A waltz party in the Great Hall will top off the evening. Sunday morning starts with a 5K fun run around Annapolis led by Mike Van Beuren (A77), and, to end the weekend, President Chris Nelson invites all alumni to his house for a champagne brunch. Homecoming brochures with details on all events are in the mail; there will also be a Homecoming website at www.sjca.edu/homecoming.html. For more info, call the Alumni Office in Annapolis at 410-626-2531 or e-mail them at: alumni@sjca.edu. e �8 COMMENCEMENT ' 981- • •• • • • • • • • • • •• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •• • • • •• • •••• • •• '"} Commencement addresses stress the glories and importance of befriending ideas and the inherent dangers ofknowledge. By Barbara Goyette nthony Kronman, dean of the Yale Law School, and tutor Bill Pastille spoke in contrasting and yet complementary ways to the 116 undergraduates and 37 masters degree candidates at the 206th commencement held under the Liberty Tree in Annapolis on May 17. Kronman talked about what St. John's students learn; he stressed the importance of the dual experience at St. John's-reading and studying the texts, and entering into conversation with them and about them. Pastille, who taught many in the graduating class and served as assistant dean during their tenure at the college, talked about what students should do ·with what they learn; he urged them to live fully in the present and to be wary of the power of knowledge. Kronman began by quoting Hannah Arendt's description of a cultivated person as one who "knows how to choose his company among men, among things, among thoughts, in the present as well as in the past." It is important to take care in choosing our company among thoughts, said Kronman. A thought survives the moment of its expression only by being-written down. To acquire a thought as a companion, one must therefore begin by making some written text a friend-by reading it. To develop a conversational relation with the text, to approach it in a spirit of reciprocity, A i ~ gathering activity; third, in the critical review of the canon, a skepticism arises about whether some books can be judged as greater than others. St. John's College, he said, devotes itself to the art of befriending books and draws students into the conversation ofideas. Kronman went on to examine one of the questions in the great conversation-the uncertain relation between the two great strands of our inheritance, the Greek and the Semitic, between Athens and Jerusalem. The Republic expresses some of the profound assumptions of Greek thought: that there is a rank order of souls discernible to the mind's eye, that we each belong somewhere in the overall scheme of things, a destiny not a choice; that politics should conform to nature and be guided by it; that justice and beauty are convergent and in the end the same. On the other hand, the Jewish prophets and Jesus assumed that the true worth of every human soul lies in the realm of conscience, commitment, and faith; that all possess the capacity for righteousness regardless of earthly station; that justice is above beauty. Examination of this question provides the key to understanding both the triumphs of our modern world and its most profound limitations, said Kronman, and St. John's graduates have received the gift of the opportunity to explore it fully. Dean Harvey Flaumenhaft confers with Anthony Kronman (above). A graduate receives congratulatory hugs (left). Graduates Alexandra Mudd and Will Gorham before the ceremony (below). A resourceful solution to May sunshine (right). i ~ is to allow it sink down into one's soul and perhaps even to change it, as every friendship has the power to do, he said. The art of befriending books is dying away, Kronman pointed out, even in the midst of our glittering civilization with its immense stockpile of technical knowledge. He cited several reasons for this: first, the specialization of work means that some reading is to keep up with developments in our separate fields; second, the increase in general public information and its quick availability encourages the view that reading is essentially an information- Love and Strife "At every moment, Life demands that we choose between Love and Strife, between the powers that bind and those that loose," began Bill Pastille. His heartfelt address to students defies summary-like Ecclesiastes or other poetic renderings of advice mingled with life-enriching cautions, it can best be read for itself (see page xx). The address completed that of Kronman by its insistence on the personal responsibility students need to adopt in their relation to knowledge. "Among the falsehoods which we have given you to believe far too easily is this: that knowledge is an unqualified good. It is no such thing. For insofar as knowledge is power, it corrupts as power corrupts; and insofar as it is taken to be an unqualified good, it corrupts surreptitiously," he said. Commencement Festivities Building up to the Big Moment when graduates received their diplomas, the college scheduled a number of other activities for seniors, Graduate Institute students, and their families. Some were traditional-the President's cocktail party and dinner, Class Day Exercises, and the Baccalaureate service (with moms and dads as officants). And replacing the usual softball game, for which faculty support had waned in recent years, was a Saturday >- afternoon senior-faculty croquet match on front campus. With a Hegelian twist the teams were dubbed Being and Becoming; Becoming, needless to i= say, won handily. The after-Commencement reception on the lawn featured ~ hundreds of friends and family members mingling with graduates. • I I ~ �••••• •••• • • • • • • •• •••••• ••• ••• ••••• Columnist John Leo has one last lesson for graduates: Hold on to your moral values "and don't be afraid to fire." ideas of others. The result, he said, is moral chaos. At Hamilton College (in New York), for example, students in one class wouldn't go on the record to say that the killing of six million people during ?:::::i. ::/'ll~i the Holocaust was wrong. "I can't imagine it is much of a problem on this campus, but overdosing on non-judgmentalism is a growing phenomenon," Leo said. "I think it is the result of an empty tolerance born of the collision between our fierce individualism and the spreading phenomenon of relativism." The problem isn't isolated to one college campus in upstate New York. Leo cited another example from California where students at Pasadena City College were reluctant to say whether the killing of a woman as a sacrifice to help the crops grow in Shirley Jackson's short story, "The Lottery," was right or vuong. The dilemma, Leo said, is that "basic human values are being privatized and reduced to personal preferences, as unsuited for criticism or argument as personal decisions on pop music or clothes." The lesson for St. John's students, he said, is to "be clear what your values are, and speak out for what you believe. Do not glide along with the conventional wisdom. Don't let people intimidate or silence you by saying you are divisive, by Elizabeth Skewes intolerant or attempting to impose your views on other people. These are n the national conflict between rugged individualism and social the catchwords of a demoralized, privalues, St. John's graduates may have an edge. If so, said John Leo, a columnist for US. News and World Report and the speakvatized non-society, one willing to seter at Santa Fe's commencement in May, then they must take the val- tle for a no-content form of tolerance ues they learned at St. John's into the world and proudly proclaim that really amounts to a repeal of practhem. tical moral concern .... The lesson is to Leo, who spoke to the college's 110 graduates-68 from the keep your morals loaded and don't be undergraduate program and 42 from the Graduate Institute-said afraid to fire. that too many students are going out into the world fearful of judg"Years from now... you will realize ing or criticizing the that in a sense you have not really left St. John's, for college is not just buildTutor Bruce Perry conings, bricks and mortar, beer riots, gratulates GI James sexual harassment hearings, and Petcoff (top left). learning the meaning of 'hegemony' Rebecca Nelson takes so that the white males in your class the last difficult steps can be accused of it. It is all that, of course, but much more. It is a set of . of her St. John's values. If I may say so, you are embarkcareer (left). john Leo ing on the first of an endless series of connecting flights we call addresses the life," Leo said. " ... Remember, since baggage has a way of getting graduates (right). lost on almost every flight, may you keep these values as close to you as carry-ons." • I ••• • ••• ••• •• • • �Choosing Between Love and Strzfe .......................q?.'!!:::!.~~.<:~::!.~'!.~ !!.~~~~~~.~r... T:!:.~!.~~q_'!!:. ?..l!:~~~?~~~. ~l!.r... !.?.?.~- ........................ every moment, Life demands that we choose between Love and trife, between the powers that bind and those that loose. If we o not hear the urgency of this demand, it is because we do not live fully in the present moment. Most of our attention streams away toward the remembered past or imagined future, relaxing our bond with the vivid Here and Now until we drift too far off to hear the voice of Life above a whisper. But today, with music, ceremony, and speeches, we try to dam the flood of inattention, to focus on the Now, on this single moment, which is both ending and beginning for all of you who are about to receive degrees. If you search your feelings in this moment, you will find two commingled emotions: melancholy-for all that is past and gone, for a way of life that can never be relived-and expectancy-for all that is yet to come, for a way of life that you are hoping to create. Please remember this composite feeling, because it is the feeling that lives in the heart of every Now. Wilen we are not experiencing this twofold emotion, we are not really in touch with the present, but have allowed our habits of inattention to separate us from the Now. In this state of habitual inattention, we nevertheless carry on the daily work of life: people are fed, cities and empires built, careers made and unmade, children reared, and academies of higher learning established for the purpose of passing knowledge and tradition from generation to generation. William Pastille, Tutor At this ceremony, and at thousands of others like it to be held across the nation today and in the coming weeks, those of us who serve and support the academy will confer upon you and upon your counterparts at other institutions the outward signs that we have discharged our duty, that you, by completing rigorous courses of study, have increased in knowledge and learning. In thousands of speeches we will extol your virtues; we will praise you for your fortitude, perseverance, and intelligence; we will encourage you to develop your talents further, and to fulfil your promise; we will impress upon you the solemn obligation that you pass the baton of learning to the next generation; and we will express our pride in your achievements, for we honor the devotion, the toil, and the sacrifice that nourished your success. It is altogether fitting and proper for us to do this. But even on such a congratulatory occasion, a decent regard for truth and for honest self-criticism compels me to speak of failure as well as success-my failure, the failure of my generation, and of all who consider themselves teachers, mentors, and leaders in all walks of life. For the truth is that we have failed you. We have failed you because, being human, the better angels of our nature are often bested by the worse; and because, being consequently inconstant, we preach ideals that we fail to honor in deeds; and because, being consequently hypocritical, we are forced to hide painful truths from ourselves; and because, being consequently ignorant, we hand down to you truth and falsehood mixed indiscriminately in unknown proportions. Among the falsehoods which we have given you to believe far too easily is this: that knowledge is an unqualified good. It is no such thing. For insofar as knowledge is power, it corrupts as power corrupts; and insofar as it is taken to be an unqualified good, it corrupts silrreptitiously. Knowledge can ally itself with the slightest weakness of character and with any unexamined prejudice, transmuting unjust, intolerant, or self-centered attitudes into the figures of intelligence and ignorance: a latent racism, sexism, or class prejudice can manifest itself as an empirical observation that this or that individual is just not as intelligent as we. Egotism, above all, joins readily with knowledge, leading to the empirical observation that no one is quite as intelligent as we, and to the logical conclusion that everyone needs to be inoculated with ample doses of our own personal wisdom. You have witnessed something of this here, in the microcosm of the classroom, whenever I or one of my colleagues have used our familiarity with the books on the program or our knowledge of other sources as unfair advantages to attain a position of power in discus- ~ sion, or to maintain a tenor of authority, or to sustain our own sense of intellectual superiority, perhaps going so far as to be dismissive, even rude, to students or to other tutors whom we regard as less knowledgeable, less experienced, or less sagacious than ourselves. Such behavior clearly creates estrangement and disaffection, scattering seeds of Strife about the world; it can only be the work of our worse angels. And yet I fear that some of you admire the ability to wield knowledge as a form of power, and are planning to master the skill though further schooling. I earnestly hope that my fear is misplaced; I hope all of you understand that having and using such a skill is not worth the risk of planting a single seed of Strife in a single human soul. If the temptation to brandish knowledge as a weapon can infiltrate even here, where we have an official rhetoric that cautions us against the danger, how much harm is it doing out there, in classrooms and boardrooms, in factories and chambers of government where no such caution exists?where knowledge is valued precisely and only for its fearsome aspect of power? In the world in which we live, knowledge consorts with Strife; and the belief that knowledge is an unqualified good has precluded your seeking out the one force able to liberate knowledge from the dominion of Strife: Only Love can conquer Strife. Only Love can render knowledge harmless. Only Love can transform thought and sensibility into wisdom and compassion. Only Love can bind the separate moments of existence into a whole, meaningful life. But we have become such children of Strife that we no longer understand the universal application of Love. Because Love always involves submission to deep and ove;-powering feeling, we scrutinize it fearfully from within the protective cage of our current conception of rationality, which is, on the whole, a heartless, soulless intellectualism. Love requires the courage to hazard sentimentality; for the harm done by sentimentality-which can, after all, be educated, broadened, and elevated-is very light compared to the harm done by fear of sentimentality-which, like all fear, is an implacable agent of Strife. Love requires us to feel deeply, and to be carried away by feeling. Fortunately, there is always nearby one thing-the present moment-with which we can practice our ability to love. Ifwe can learn to love the Now, which is to live fully in the present that is always with us, then the unifying force of Love will always be close at hand to shield us from the divisive force of Strife. And we are already prepared halfway, because we know the heart of the Now, we know the twofold feeling of melancholy and expectancy. To make a beginning, we must carry the memory of that feeling with us at all times; we must cultivate that feeling until the poignancy and fragility of the moment swells in our hearts, catches in our throats, brings tears to our eyes. Then comes the hard part-we must give ourselves over completely to the feeling welling up from within and to the moment embracing us from without, until we seem almost to forget our own existence. Because this is the essence of Love: sublation of self in the enveloping presence of the beloved. If you can love the moment intensely-as Penelope loved Odysseus, as Dante loved Beatrice, as you loved when you first fell madly in love-then your knowledge will work no injury, nor will the seeds of Strife take root in your soul; and the failings of your teachers, mentors, and leaders will be redeemed. For Love makes all hurt as though it had not been. At every moment, Life demands that we choose between Love and Strife. For the sake of the world in which you were raised, for your own sakes, and for the sake of the world to come, which you will help to fashion: please, please, please-choose Love. e Portions of this address were broadcast on NPR 's ''All Things Considered" the week following commencement. The speech can be found on the St. Johns website at www..ijca.edu/campus-eventsl commence-address. html. �Homecoming '98 - Santa Fe T here was dinner in the dining hall, but with flowers, wine, and a waltz party afterwards. There were seminars across campus, but no one had to leave them and face don rags. There were parties and picnics and even a few events off campus to lure away some of the alumni, but no one complained. It was, after all, Homecoming Weekend. And for the 150 or more people who came to Santa Fe for Homecoming and the Summer Alumni Program weeks June 14 through 25, it was simply a time to catch up with dear friends, brush up on waltzing, and walk up Monte Sol for another look at a place where they spent so much of their lives. For some who came back, it was a whirlwind weekend of fitting in every last event and trying to see as many of the people and as much of the place as they could. Others could be seen sitting for hours near the fishpond as they talked with close friends, or touring the campus with a family in tow. For each, there was a different highlight, a different reason that coming back to Santa Fe made all the sense in the world. There was the more official business-for example, making Brownie Anderson an honorary alumna of St. John's to recognize her work as a member of the Board of Visitors and Governors for the past 11 years. That happened at the Homecoming Dinner Dance, where Bob Hampton, SF73, also was honored with an Always looking for new challenges, alumni experiment with the applicable value of Brendan O'Neill's (SF9J) fonn ... a wheelbarrow, perhaps? Award of Merit for his work as a former staff Darkey on Heart ofDarkness, "The Tempest," Alice's Adventures in attorney working for the Wonderland, and "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." The second week on needy in Texas. "An Inward Journey: A Study of Brain and Mind" had seminars and labs on And at either end of Francis Crick's The Astonishing Hypothesis and William James' Psychology, Homecoming were the two the Briefer Course, which were led by Nicholas Capozzoli, AGI81, David Summer Alumni Program Krimins, A63, Timothy Miller, and Hans Von Briesen. weeks. The first week, As usual, both program weeks filled up quickly and lots of suggestions with seminars on were handed in for next year's events. The dates and subjects for the 1999 "Fantastic Voyages," had Summer Alumni Program -will be decided soon. Watch The Reporter for classes led by Eva Brann information on the Summer Alumni Program and Homecoming Weekend. • and Nancy Buchenauer on Bob Hampton, SF7J, accepts the Award of Merit Gulliver's Travels, and a -by Elizabeth Skewes from Gerry Zollars, A65, and Barbara Lauer, Sf76. preceptorial led by William �:The GfYr1l1izg Life t. Johns is a talking college, not a writing college-students are judged on their ability to S analyze in seminar more than on their ability to express their thoughts on paper. Although the annual essays are important, the day-to-day classroom undertaking oftalking through the material is the primary St. Johns experience. But despite a lack offormal classes in writing or guidance in terms ofstyle and structure for composition, Johnnies do find themselves living the writing life-as journalists, poets, novelists, technical writers, screenplay writers, playwrights. Theres the additionalpsychological hurdle ofhaving spentfour years with greatest writers and considering one's own writing the the great books authors produced. Here are three stories ofSt. Johns people who made it as writers. a philosophy-laden graduate find Liz Waldner (A85) proves the as a ~l~IJ ~~•• SusJan Borden the winter of 1991, a mistaken medical diagnosis led Liz Waldner (A85) spend SL"'C weeks believing that she would soon die of cancer. Thrown this dramatic life evaluation scenario, Waldner, then a graduate student at the University of California-San Diego, realized that what she really wanted to do was write poetry. Once the medical confusion was cleared up and she was given a clean bill of health, she decided to pay attention to her hazardously-won moment of clarity. Since t.hen, she has published over 50 poems and won more than a dozen awards, fellowships, grants, and artist residencies. For the past eighteen months, her pursuit of poetry has taken her all around the continent (as well as to Hawaii) where she has done artists' residencies, house-sits, and readings. This summer finds Waldner at Centrum, an artists' residency in Washington state, where she is revising a poetry collection that was a National Poetry Series finalist last year. Four different manuscripts have made her a finalist four years in a row, no small feat in a competition where there are about 1700 manuscripts entered and only 35 finalists chosen. In addition to revising the manuscript, Waldner is working on a libretto for an opera, creating covers for tvro chapbooks of her poetry, and leading a number of community writing workshops focusing on the idea of place. .t11.Luvui:;u Waldner now lives in a world of words, she had done no VvTiting and read few poems before she went to St. John's. "I went to public school in Mississippi during segregation, which meant a whole lot of sitting in the gym and not much in the way of classes. The admission essays were the first essays I ever vvTote," she says. "And I knew nothing about poetry except what I encountered at St. Liz Waldner John's. ./ "I loved my language tutorials and I was lucky in most of my tutors, given that I did have this latent lust for poetry. I had the great good fortune of having David Stephenson for a French tutorial and we read Rimbaud and Baudelaire and St. Perse and Racine. It was in large part because of my language tutorial junior year that I fell in love with poetry. I also had a preceptorial with Jim Beall on Wallace Stevens, whose work I had discovered in a Goodwill and who may have been the only English poet later than Milton who I had ever read. We inhaled Wallace Stevens. I was so full of the language, so saturated in Wallace Stevens, I wrote a little poem, a very tiny something." Upon graduation, Waldner went to Middlebury to study French. There, in the college library, she found the first poetry journal she ever looked atan issue of Shenandoah. She sent them her poem (which she refers to as ''my Wallace Stevensness"} and then-edi_!or Richard Howard published it. After Middlebury, Waldner went to the Writers Workshop at Iowa, a school she discovered because it was mentioned in a book of Flannery O'Connor's letters that tutor Bill O'Grady had given her for Christmas. There, along with her study of poetry, Waldner was given a teaching fe11owship. "My first assignment was in the rhetoric department. I knew rhetoric as the evil Gorgias making the better case to appear the worse, or the other way around. So I bombed, basically," she says. "I also didn't know anything about other colleges, and I went in with my happy St. John's approach, asking open-ended questions to a bunch of starters for the Hawkeye football team and they hated me, they absolutely hated me. And I was miserable. The building that class was in was a red brick building·with big, big steps in front. Some mornings I would get to the bottom of the steps and have to talk my way up, step by step." Despite this poor beginning to her teaching career-or perhaps because of it-Waldner became interested in teaching, and in particular, she says, "in the ways in which a classroom communityis connected to and furthers the aims and projects of communities outside it." After Iowa, Waldner pursued this interest, returning to Mississippi to teach at Millsaps, a small liberal arts college. At the end of her first year, the dean asked to sec her. "I thought I was being called onto the carpet, because," she explains delicately, "I had unusual teaching methods." Instead, it turned out, her course evaluations had been so good that the dean just wanted to hear how she had run her classes. "And my pay-this ·will give you an idea if you don't know the world of adjuncts-my pay was raised from $1500 a course to $2500, which put my income up to something like eight thousand dollars a year, maybe even nine." It was around this time that Waldner realized that other people in her department were making three and four times as much money as she was, while she was stuck teaching composition-a course she enjoyed, but that no one else wanted to teach because of the amount of work involved. '"I thought, okay, fine. I need a PhD, "she says. \Valdner found what she describes as "a kind of lefty communications program" at the University of California-San Diego, which connected to her interest in community in the classroom. The question she set out to answer there was: "How are students encouraged to become consumers of other peop1es' meanings?" "I wanted to work with video and I elaborated this enormous (as is mywont) interdisciplinary project. Then I got there and found out that the guy that I wanted to work with was retiring that semester and they decided to no longer let grad students work ·with video and there was a housing disaster and I ended up moving from illegal student housing sublet to illegal student housing sublet. I got hit on my bicycle, I lost fifteen pounds for reasons nobody could ever ascertain-it was just not a good time. In the middle of it I got the mistaken medical test but I didn't know it was a mistake because it was from a student health lab that closed over Christmas break." Waldner was finally retested and her results were fine, but, she says, "for six weeks over winter break I lived with the possibility that I had far advanced cancer. I did one of those reevaluation of values and decided that, really, I'd prefer to be writing, thank you very much. So I took a year's leave from my program and did exactly that. I wrote." The result of that first year's writing is Homing Devices, published in 1998 by 0 Books in Oakland. As the title suggests, home plays a role in Waldner's work, as well as in her life. "At the moment," she says, "I'm up to seventy-something addresses, not counting anything under four weeks and considering only actual having-to-pack-and-move events. I have lived in so many small worlds that I have poured myself into and then have missed, really longed for deeply. The presence of absence is pretty much the movie that's been playing at all times and at all places. Having moved so much, I really felt I inhabited this immense universe ofloss and longing, all these little worlds all over the continent full of people I cared about but wasn't with any- �more. That Baudelaire poem, "Le Cygne," with Andromache wandering around hunched over-I can see it. Because absence is so present to her, it really rang with me. And that echoes throughout the book." Another theme in Waldner's poems is St. John's College. She has manuscripts called Saving The Appearances andA Point Is That Which Has No Part. In "Time Trials," a poem about time and memory, a line reads: "She was rewarded for knowing the answer to why there couldn't be a future subjunctive in Greek." She recites a line from another poem: "To those who all Baconian tortured them into speech." In Homing Devices, Apollonius makes an appearance, and there's a thread of Dante that Can The Regime Of Meaning Be An Extension Of The Regime OfTruth? Fool: The reason why the seven stars are no more than seven is dpretty reason. Lear: Because they are not eight? Do cells in their bloodstream dream? Do they know one another like fish in a school, like starlings in their dark armor that, as one, at once, dip the right ·wing and sail and bank at once in their hundreds? It is a secret. l walk around with il. Then I am back, having read the last few pages of a novel in which a lover dies G)1/ell-GJ1Jrztten :fief{ January Freshman Laine Conway's melodrama produced in NM by Kathy Pluth SF99 A January Freshman in Santa Fe can now claim credit as a professional playwright. Laine Conway, 01, wrote the melodrama The Cerrillos Coal Mine, or The Ruined Woman's Revenge. The play ran for seven weeks at The Engine House Theatre in Madrid, a small town about 30 miles southeast of Santa Fe. The play's subtitle comes from a couplet by Richard Brinsley Sheridan: "A woman's ne'er so ruined but that she can/ Revenge herself on her undoer, Man." "That became a starting point for the play," Conway says. "One of the things I knew at the beginning was that I wanted the villainess to do in the villain, rather than the hero or some other character." Conway, 34, active in melodrama since junior high school, has worked with this theatre since 1996. "When my niece came to live with me I wanted to make some new friends. There was a theater up the road and I had done a little bit about 15 years ago, so we went to them and asked if they needed any stage help. They did, so I was stage manager and my niece handled lights for all that summer and half the next." Melodrama is a 17th- and 18th- century literary form, Conway says, which developed into musical comedy, soap opera, and light opera. "It was extremely popular in the American west, both because it was easy to get together a touring company, and because it was simple, dean entertainment for hard-working people." Which is not to say that it need be prim. As Conway says of her play, "There's some humor that's purely from character situation, there's a little bit of slapstick, and some double entendre, both in a coarse way and in a little more subtle way. The heroine spends about half the play in drag. At one point the villainess is trying to hit on the heroine, to the consternation of the heroine and the amusement of the villain." "Certainly it's fluff," Conway says, "but I think even fluff should occasionally be well-written and entertaining." Conway grew up in Flagstaff, Arizona, and has lived in New Mexico for 10 years. She and her husband, Chris, first heard about the St. John's program from a friend, Roberta Barker, SF93. Chris mentally filed the information away until the day Laine would want to go back to school. When the subject next came up, he reminded her of the St. John's pro- gram; she applied and was accepted. Conway says that she started writing a couple of days after she started reading. For her, there was something urgent and personal about seeing words on paper. Playwriting was one of her first loves, but she had set it aside for awhile before writing her melodrama, concentrating more on short stories. A lover of all kinds of serious fiction, Conway wants to be Jane Austen or Isak Dinesen when she "grows up." Conway has been pleasantly surprised at how much St. John's has to teach her about writing. No longer concentrating on grammar or writing mechanics, tutors expect students to learn to present arguments logically and clearly. This skill, according to Conway, is as necessary for a novelist as for a student of Euclid. Conway also feels that one of the best ways to learn to write is by reading great books. "We sit in seminar and ask, 'Why did he say it this way?' Then we think, 'How else could he have done it?"' Solving these literary puzzles, she says, helps a natural writer to become a better writer. For this freshman, that's an invaluable extra benefit of the St. John's education. e andfortyyears pass and the wisteria she planted Jnstant JVOvelist frames the bedroom window. I know myworkis to reinterpret the world to myself. The secret says the meaning asks, Which wing is right? Bill Kowalski (SF94) -will get his first novel published by a major house and perhaps made into a movie. How easy was it to get his first book written? Not very. it means: don't cry, didn't-plant-any- lVhere. (My native American name.) Can't I live in my own bloodstream? Call me Mobius ... (docket here intervenes:) "We show that there is no decision procedure that separates those first order statements that hold almost always from those whose negation almost always hold." Shhh. Show me how-at once-to hold my head so it dreams a window bound by streams of air. Analogous air. So my analogs of fin and wing home in on How and lVhere. -Liz Waldner runs th;roughout the book. "Every one of my manuscripts is chock full of stuff that I came across at St. John's," she says. This fall Waldner will take a position at the College of Wooster in Ohio as, appropriate to her nomadic existence, a visitingt1.ssistant professor. Her plans beyond that are already taking shape: in the time it took to write this profile she was awarded an artist residency for 1999 by Fundacion Valparaiso in Spain and received a check for the Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship in Poetry which will pay for her travel.• by Elizabeth Sl<ewes A few months after he graduated from St. John's, Bill Kowalski (SF94) started jotting down some ideas and turned out what he now says was "a very bad short story. It wasn't cohesive, it wasn't polished." Today that shmt story has been polished into a gem. For several years, as he worked at odd jobs, he refined the story. As he finally began showing it to people, the revised more, and the piece grew into Kowl}lski' s first novel, tentatively titled Eddie's Bastard.- The novel, due out sometime next year from HarperCollins publishers, also may be turned into a film-Kowalski has been contacted by Columbia Pictures. For Kowalski, it's been a heady time, but also a fulfilling one. "This is what I've always wanted to do-to be a writer," he says. ln fact, he started his college career in a creative writing program at Emerson College. But he found that the classes weren't giving him the background he needed to become a novelist. "I realized that I needed a really broad base of knowledge to draw from and that was my original reason for going to St. John's," he says. While some of Kowalski's classmates and tutors may find bits and pieces of themselves in Eddie's Bastard, they won't find their college days relived in the novel. Unlike many first novels, Eddies Bastard isn't autobiographical. "None of the events actually took place in my life," Kowalski says, "although people may recognize someone they know in each of the characters. "Eddies Bastard refers to the main character in the book," Kowalski says. "This is how he refers to himself throughout the novel. His father is dead and his mother is absent. He's narrating the story in the first person." The narrator is a member of the oncepowerful Mann family, which lives in the fictional Lake Erie town of Mannville. The book began with a focus on the nar-rator's great-great grandfather, a Civil War hero who was the town's main benefactor. But as Kowalski worked with the story and the characters, "Eddie's Bastard" emerged as the main character. Kowalski says advice and encouragement from those who saw some of the later drafts of the book (he went through 15 drafts before submitting to a publisher), along with a practiced regimen of writing every day, helped him finish the novel. Even now, however, it's still a work in progress. Kowalski's editor at HarperCollins has suggested some rev1s1ons. He's also already started a second novel. And while he doesn't want to say what it's about, he does admit that "it will be totally unrelated to the first one because I don't really believe in sequels." Kowalski plans to spend the next six months or so finishing up Eddies Bastard and finishing a good draft of his second book. "After that, I'd just like to knock around for a while and gain some more experience. The future is an open book for me. It's a very exciting feeling." • �f ~ our hundred years ago, the 29 acres of the planet on which St. John's sits were covered with ancient forests storing hundreds of thousands of years of genetic history. Now, except for the Tree, the thousands of former species are gone. For 250 years, the college has this physical space, grassy areas, 1mu'\..Jlu 6 athletic fields. In the 50 cents a head for their cows to graze on the front campus, the need for lawn maintenance. ago, the campus showed man's att:en1pt im-po~;e order on his su:rrcmrHnng·s: vva.lJ['>._\'V<l't~ lined neat rows (as shown on the cover of The Reporter) were one example of the desire to formalize the college's landscape. Today, the college, under the guidance of landscape architect has adopted a different approach to the that form one of the physical surroundings. A "Hundred Year Plan" with a vision of how the look for its 400th 1--n--..-rhr1.;u1n 2096 is here. 990s the college decided that the campus lartdsca1:>._ _ , needed some attention. Rather than aDDroach the ......,,,hl.c.m CAMP U E A new landscaping plan is transforming the F the treasuTer, and members of the u.u.uu.u;;, L;om1nlt:tec~. a group or tutors, and administrators who think about what should be built talked to a number architects about cte1v-e14::m1ng a for the campus grounds. The group chose because ""he had different ideas and we liked the other projects he had done," says --'-'-'-''-'-'-"-IJ'"• Gutting met with people at the college and asked not only about but about as wellwhat kinds of facilities were conceivable? ADartments for A-~n ..ln ni--~ T 11.Jolw"B- ::::J Klos !lMIP- ----------- ----··-·---.---- ~MASTER PLAN ~Y/GUIDBUNES"Fo:R THE FUTURE J(_)HN'S COLLEGE Annapolis, Maryland June 1994 J Entrance commons B Garden Opening/with emphasis on a continual flow of native plant communities thrnughout the campus C Sitting Plaza/McDowell plaza is rcconfor improved circulation, seating & tree D Car Park/total increased capacity from 159 to 216 E Existing service drive to be removed and replaced -with grassed pavcrs; loading dock and garbage are covered by a screening trellis F Iglehart Hall entrance addition and sitting plaza G Great Commons H Proposed Fitness Center/located adjacent to Iglehart Hall's gymnasiumbecomes a link in the row of recreational facilities which end at the Boathouse: contains 25 meter swimming pool with glass walls facing south and opening onto campus, locker rooms, administration office, 2 squash courts, 2 handball courts, weight and exercise room, dance studio. I Proposed academic and dormitory facilities clustered to form courtyard A built and some not, cte1:>er1C11ngon needs and uulJ.1;;:.'C!,. Most of the ln~ ..:i~~~~~~~ J.'Ct)J.UH," says \.:TUU...H!tj, business is located on the Eastern Shore. '"Developing a landscape is like composing a story. The elements are buildings, bricks, plants, flowers. This system does not use plants as ornaments. Other styles are more formalized, like the hedges lining the walkways; I'm trying to tell a different story." There are four layers of plants in a natural setting, .Jolll!P.G! Woods, college horticulturalist, plants ground cover. Plantings line a new walkway behind Humphreys. Graduate student Hillside seating fo L Planetarium reloc restOTe campus views M Te1mis and basket N Multiple use athle Renovated rnmp f~ shells to dock; water:fr 1 McDowell Hall Hall 2 3 Pinkney Hall 4 Chase-Stone Hou 5 Paca Carroll Hons! 6 Woodward Hall 7 Randall Hall 8 Iglehart Hall 9 Greenfield Librar 10 Boathouse 11 Reverdy Johnson l 12 Steam Plant 13 Campbel] Hall 14 Carroll Barrister 1 15aMellon Hall 15b Key Auditorium 16 Harrison Health ( �s l RIMEVA ~ iapolis campus by reintroducing native species. says Gutting, each with its own function: canopy trees, which are large and provide shade; understorytrees, which grow 15-30 feet tall; shrubs; and ground plants. In a balanced ecosystem, the four layers work together-and that's the goal for the campus greenery. On a philosophical level perhaps there's some justice in the college that deals with original texts being located on grounds with original plants. The nlantings are being done , . in sections as allows. The most dramatic cn:arn~es have occurred around the Carroll Barrister House (A1im1ss1or1s where oaks and willow oaks will form the canopy, and redbud the understory, blueberries and vibernum and inkberries (all native) the shrub layer, and ground will fill in with ferns, violets, golden star, and native pachysandr::i A second area of change is around the Greenfield where the landscapingwas put in two years ago. of Both places involve the lots into inviting entrances to the campus-these most mundane locations are •-vn-.-.,.,.... t- ....... tvisually, says Gutting, because visitors (and stuare the first dents and see. The new style includes \ \ \ j I ) <:J z ~ <:J z I 0 -····-----~- ·- - R ,._., • -~· "- " ' ' ' - > ~ ~ V1 :J lllllm&~~- ~er~ll:~.:l!fHll@uc~ ~ PO.hl2oJ"m-- °"""Hill,~ 21m 41l1SS567ili ''tutor apartments 450 spectators lted in order to if College Creek iall courts ic field 1r moving rowing ont sitting area areas." Woods I see in adds that at first she missed «the usual suspects" like azaleas and lots of ,.,~,-~,,,,,.~u, but as the new areas develop she is seeing a lot of color and textures that are interesting to watch. Shades of !!Teen from smaJl flowers of clear silver and dark red :;s 1742 1837 1858 e 18S7 1857 1899 1903 1910 1934/95 FUNDAMENTAL INFORMATION 1934 fouse Existing Land: 29 acres; 1720 1951 buildings= 3 acres, paving= 3.5 acres; lawn= 22.5 acres. 1954 louse 1723 Proposed Land: 29 acres; 1958 buildings= 3. 75 acres; paving= 4.25 1958 :enter A new garden next to Paca-Carroll softens the landscape. tn1mpe1ts is growing over the wall behind Randall and also twines around the railing in back of the Greenfield Birds find the chokeberries; butterflies find the when the filbert bushes produce pus squirrels will undo1llbt:ecily them. "The native plants require a delicate balance of the four layers," says Gutting. "When they are all healthy and thriving, the plantings will be pleasing aesthetically and also have ecological results that are helpful." • acres; lawn= 13 acres, woodland or 1972 ground covers = 8 acres. -by Barbara Goyette �Calllpus Life ... UP IN SMOKE Is it sense vs. sensibility? Why do so many St. Johns students smoke? Will regulations help them give it up? by James B. Cooper, Jr., AOO to restrict the personal he habit of smoking is habits of smokers, but that going up in smoke. The "at the same rime, in view of federal government is the reports on the harmful preparing to settle with tobaceffects of smoking cigaco companies for reimburserettes, St. John's seriously ment of government funds questions the appropriatespent caring for smokers with ness of providing the service lung cancer, emphysema, and made available by vending heart disease. President machines." Clinton has urged Congress The students, said a and the FDA to restrict Baltimore Sun article, were teenage tobacco use as much "somewhat annoyed and as possible, through mandatoinconvenienced, but not up ry identification checks up to in arms." Interviews with the age of 27 and bans on cigfour students revealed the arette advertising, as well as mild campus mood. Britt taxes designed to raise the Gilbert, a junior at the time, price of cigarettes, rendering described himself as a smoking a habit for the devout smoker and said: "I wealthy and foolish. But think all it caused was troustanding on the quad on the ble, but I don't think anyone Annapolis campus after a feels it's worth leading a cruclass has ended or before a sade over. I don't think it's seminar has begun, you might helped anything." Bingham Davis, a pipe-smoking think that St. John's is in a Pipes, cigarettes, lighters, matches, ashtrays-essential elements of the successful seminar for sophomore, said that he time warp, stuck in the bygone members of the class of 1952.. Photo by Marion Warren from the St. John's College archives. era of Bogey and Bacall, the noticed no uproar among time when smoking was accepted if students, but that there was "a genlege since well before the founding cigarette smoking. The administraeral sort of mumbling about it." tive council acted upon the advice of not encouraged. Smoking is of the New Program in 1937. In the Gilbert expressed concern for female extremely popular at the college, intellectual atmosphere of the New the faculty. At the faculty meeting, students who might run out of cigadespite the fact that it is prohibited Program, smoking became a kind of the motion to remove the vending rettes after the midnight curfew. machines was made by one faculty in all campus buildings and frowned emblem, its gestures and rituals One anonymous female student said upon by a large segment of society. interwoven into the fabric of college member who was trying to switch Tim Freeman, AOO, has smoked life. It is difficult to find a picture of from cigarettes to pipe smoking, and that she felt that the removal of the for three and a half years, despite President Stringfellow Barr without it was seconded by another tutor who machines was "annoying" and that the question of to smoke or not to almost daily reports of the chemicals a cigarette in his hand, and Jacob had a cigarette in hand. smoke should be left to the individin commercial cigarettes and the ual. Barbara Poeter, a junior, said documented health hazards the that she could understand the habit presents. Freeman waxes removal of the machines and that philosophical as he justifies the she had no objections to it, though habit in prime Johnny-speak: ''It is because of some sort of male jouisshe was also a cigarette smoker. ''A lot of students feel that it is not necsance, some sort of self-destruction, essary for the administration to take or rather the pleasure of selfa position on matters such as these, destr uction. By fixating ourselves on but the administration likes to the darker sides of our passions, the express its opinions on a lot of lightness of our lofty intellectual things." compulsion is nurtured. Or, in other Klein in his most sagacious Cigar smoking increased at the A decade later, in 1974, the words, deep peace." college shortly thereafter, though moments always seem wreathed by Joe Richardson, A99, who works the smoke from his pipe. Yet, while Delegate Council took matters into the Associated Press noted that its own hands, passing a measure at The Smoke Shop on Maryland the popularity of smoking seems not "pipe smoking among women stuasking students not to smoke in the dents is not the coming thing as to have diminished over the course Avenue, is much more straightforfirst hour of seminar. This restricward in his apologia: "I keep smokreported at other colleges." This of the past 50 years, smoking has ing for two reasons. I am addicted; tion was seen as an extension of the been increasingly restricted. story about the vending machine ban on smoking during the first I'm a compulsive person. And I shake-down was distributed on the A BriefHistory hour of post-lecture question period. AP wire as far west as New Mexico, enjoy the taste of tobacco." At this time, the college was also No definitive figures are availIn March 1964, the college's Texas, and Colorado prior to the able on the number of smokers at restricting smoking on all floors of opening of the Santa Fe campus. administrative council decided to the library save for the first. the college. Some have speculated "It was simply felt that the colreturn three cigarette vending Another restriction was placed that a majority of students smoke. machines to their distributor, in lege should not be in the position of on smoking in 1976. Bryce Jacobsen, itself selling cigarettes to students," Most of the speculators are smokers light of extensive new medical Director of Athletics, banned smokthemselves. Regardless of how many reports from the U.S. Health Council said President Richard Weigel at the smokers are part of the community, ing in the gymnasium. "The proband Surgeon General Dr. Luther L. time. Dean John Kieffer explained lem of smoking in the gym has that the college was not attempting the habit has been a part of the colTerry citing the harmful effects of T In the intellectual atmosphere of the New Program, smoking became a kind ofemblem ... �always been with us, but two trends have brought it more to my attention oflate: the number of smokers has increased as has the number of those who object to the smoke," Jacobsen said in an announcement carried in The Collegian (the student newspaper of the day). "The smoke concentration has at times become a serious problem, especially for many of those who like to exercise "Vigorously. I understand their plight, since I include myself in that group ... Somewhat surprisingly many smokers have told me that this is what should be done ... Smokers also have agreed overwhelmingly that this would not significantly curtail their use of the gym." Jacobsen said that if the gym ever expanded, a room could be added for smokers. The next major step in the prohibition of campus smoking came in 1980, when at last the college banned all smoking in classrooms and required college functions. Dean Edward Sparrow ordered the ban because of new scientific evidence that smoking could harm even non-smokers, invoking a clause in the college charter which makes the dean responsible for the health of students. Sparrow said that students had been smoking at the college since he first came 23 years before, but that students bothered by the smoking could that it be prohibited during a certain class. Any non-smoker could go to a tutor and make the request, resulting in a ban on smoking in the class for the entire year. Reaction to this ban was, as in 1964, mild. Sparrow, himself a former smoker, said that he thought the ban was working. He was advised in his decision by a St. John's alumnus, Dr. Peter Hamill (class of' 4 9), a professor at the University of Maryland and scientific director of the Surgeon General's 1964 report on smoking. St. John's action attracted national at-tention. The Chronicle ofHigher Education said that it knew of no other college in the country with a similar ban. Even the faculty accepted the ban, adapting their habits. "Some tutors smoke quite heavily. They haven't said anything about the ban. That's the interesting thing. I'd like to see what they say," noted Sparrow. Tutor John Sarkissian said that he did smoke, despite the fact that "everybody says smoking is bad for you. I do smoke cigarettes, and a lot of them. Four packs, five packs a day. I haven't stopped smoking [because of the ban]. The minute class is over, I go out and smoke." Sarkissian resorted to toothpicks for the three-hour smokeless lab periods. For Elliott Zuckerman the answer was snuff Zuckerman said that he felt the ban was "perfectly right and I should give up smoking anyway. So this is good training." .. Zuckerman had replaced cigarettes and taken up a pipe by 1980. The classroom ban on smoking not only changed the atmospheric conditions in seminars, it also put a stop to the practice of students and tutors using ashtrays to illustrate the Platonic theory of forms. · From then on, it was the eidos of table, not that of ashtray, that served as the universal example during discussions. Smoking was relegated to the Coffee Shop during certain hours of the evening and to a restricted area of the dining hall, where booths are now in place. The final and definitive prohibition on smoking at the college came at the hand of the state of Maryland, which in 1994 approved a measure making it illegal to smoke in enclosed workplaces unless confined to an enclosed and separately ventilated smoking room. Such a room is not allowed to be in a location where an employee is required to work. Exceptions to the rule only applied to bars and restaurants. According to Assistant Dean Anita Kronsberg, who was on the campus planning committee at the time the state measure was passed, the college asked for a clarification from the Maryland State Attorney's Office about whether the measure applied to dormitories. The state confirmed that it did. From then on, all smokers were relegated to the outside to indulge their habit-even during rain and snow. POLITICAL PARTIES Continuedfrom page 24. .. the television team that's producing the show for PBS-the first time the awards will be broadcast. When she's not buying gifts for heads of state, planning receptions, or working with Mrs. Pataki, Wuebbels acts as a protocol advisor-a sort of Polity Hostess for the state of New York. As protocol advisor, she fields questions such as who comes first in order of precedence, a governor or a senator? (a governor), and, can the governor marry people? (he can't). To an authentic Polity Hostess, these questions might not be as engaging as appropriate waltz party attire or as critical as post-seminar coffee shop etiquette, but Wuebbels is perfectly content to have matters such as these occupy the time between galas and banquets. e AS YOU LIKE IT Continued.from page 24... Assistant Dean Kronsberg says that she had no plans to change the smoking policy at the college. "If there are some problems with the rules that I don't know about, I would be willing to discuss them. We've pretty much followed the law and the example of other institutions." Kronsberg concedes that the present policy is difficult to enforce, but the college is bound to follow the law of the state of Maryland. As for the smokers on campus, most will agree that they intend to quit. Freeman says, 'TH quit when I find something that I love more." Richardson says that he will have quit smoking cigarettes by the time this article is published. Other smokers just keep on lighting up and inhaling away, longing for the days of the eidos of ashtray. e James Cooper, Aoo, has been known to take a smoking break every couple ofhours from his job in the public relations office. He claims he will quit when he graduates. St. John's College, so unique was the manner in which the students involved approached the play. Memorizing lines, building a set, aiming lights, and donning costumes were only part of their expectations. The five months of rehearsals were not spent in blocking movements and running lines so much as in discussing the characters' motivations, exploring the subtleties of the text, and connections within the work as a whole. So when "As You Like It" was presented in the performance was considered by all involved as a work-in-progress. The final production was the culmination of a five-month long seminar on a piece of great literature. With a roomful of period costumes that now belong to the college, a number of actors and technicians eager to take on new challenges, and a professional director willing and excited to tackle another classical piece next spring, the St. John's College Theater Program is already in the process of deciding on a play to perform next May. And, always being in the fundraising mode, they are still selling a limited number of Edward Gorey posters, signed by the artist, for $25 each. Order a poster by calling 505-474-2866. e �PAYING THEIR DUES: SJC ALUMS TELL WHY It's that time of year again. The Alumni Association has sent out its annual "dues mailer." By Ann Cruse, A76 John's better than alumni. I want to support the alumni and their relationship to lumni dues-the heart of the Association's fundraising efforts-are what the college. I know that by paying my Association dues I'm, in effect, supporting make possible activities and services such as: the Alumni Register; chapter the 'core' of the college. I think the Association offers a lot." activities including seminars, picnics and receptions; the Senior Dinners; Rodney Brimhall, AGl89, explains his support of the Association this way: "I the homecoming events on each campus; the Summer Alumni Program in Santa had a thoroughly enjoyable experience at St. John's and continue to have enjoyFe; the two-page quarterly newsletter that appears in each issue of The able experiences there. I participate in weekend seminars of the Annapolis Reporter; and a variety of other activities Chapter. I just feel my time there was so ALUMNI ASSOCIATION DUES 1993-1997 promoting alumni interests and helping to worthwhile and I want to stay involved. I enhance the connection between the really enjoy the seminars." Rodney adds, "I College and its alumni. (Dues for the think St. John's 'did it right' with the Total Alumni Association should not be confused Graduate Institute. It could have been made alumni with contributions to the St. John's College into some sort of peripheral activity but I've Total# dues Annual Fund. Contributions to the Annual always felt I'm a valued participant in the St. Fund go directly to the college and are used payers John's alumni community." for such purposes as general operations of Sara Coulson Ellis, A75, has a special Percent of link with the college. Her daughter has just the campuses and financial aid for current alumni who students.) completed freshman year in Annapolis. paid dues Why do St. John's alumni "pay their l~lili:s2!gl "That's a big link for us" (Sara's husband is ~mountpaid $34,947 George Ellis A75), "She roomed with the dues"? The Association Newsletter set out in dues . to answer that question by talking with daughter of another alumni couple who are friends of ours." When asked about special alumni who are loyal dues payers. memories of Association sponsored activities Sara replies, "We used to live in "My dose proximity to St. John's makes me want to stay involved," says Chicago. They have a pretty active chapter and we took part in their activities. Herb Taylor, A44. "I've never lost interest in what's going on on campus, I'm still intrigued with the heart of it." Although Herb attended several other We especially enjoyed it when tutors came out to lead a seminar." When asked why he keeps current with his Alumni Association dues, Jack schools, he says: "I feel most drawn to St. John's. I get stuff from the other Ladd Carr, ASO, gives an emphatic response: "It's a moral imperative. I just places, but it's St. John's I'm most involved with." "When I was a new graduate," says Mary McCormick Freitas, SF80, "I think alumni are as much a part of the St. John's community as they are of the appreciated that the dues amount was so low. It made it easy to 'get in the habit' communities in which they live. We owe St. John's what we owe our home communities. St. john's helped form me. I continue to be a part of the St. John's of paying them each year and I've just continued." Mary learned firsthand the community, in part through Association sponsored events and activities. In fact, importance of alumni involvement, particularly with the college's admissions process, when she worked as the Director of Admissions in Santa Fe. "I'm grateI feel strongly that I'm as much a part of the St. John's community as the students who just graduated." Jack sums up his feeling by adding, "I'm pleased to ful alumni are out there helping students learn more about St. John's. It was an alumnus who gave me my first contact with the college. Nobody explains St. pay my dues."• I I Hosts Found! Senior Dinners Held In Annapolis By Peter Huidekoper M ost springs the Alumni Association Board comes to Annapolis for its quarterly meeting, and during the weekend board members host Senior Dinners at restaurants in and about the city. But as this spring's meeting was moved to Santa Fe, the Alumni Office recruited hosts from Annapolis and the surrounding area-one former board member even flew in from Chicago to host a dinner. The recruiting efforts were a success, and on April 18 the traditional Senior Dinners were held. Eighteen hosts dined with 70 students-over 60% of the senior class-at Middleton's, the Charthouse, Harry Browne's, Treaty of Paris, Griffin's, Lowe's Corinthian, Lewne's, Cafe Normandie, La Piccolo Roma, Vespucci's, and Northwoods. Alumni Board members used this opportunity to help soon-to-be graduates to know more about the Alumni Association and its various activities, and to share information on the chapters around the country, the Alumni Register, and contacts for career pursuits and/or moves to new parts of the country. These newest alumni were given the chance to see a variety of ways in which their participation in the life of St. John's can continue. At the same time the hosts learned a great deal about the experience the seniors have had at St. John's, about classes and tutors and the school climate, and about the seniors' postgraduation plans. Following the Senior Dinners this spring, the Alumni Office in Annapolis conducted a survey of hosts and sen- iors to help determine the effectiveness of the dinners. Because the college and the Alumni Association subsidize these events (a similar evening is held each winter for graduating seniors in Santa Fe), both organizations are anxious to find out if the investment is one they wish to continue. Comments were favorable, as they usually are. The key issues the Alumni Association is trying to sort out are the purposes of these evening, and whether the impact of the get-togethers justifies the costs. For the time being, plans are to continue with the Senior Dinners in 1998-99 much as they have been in the past. Many thanks to the hosts who made April 18 such a nice evening for all involved! • The Alumni Association Newsletter is published in each issue of The Reporter. We welcome letters, capsule book reviews, and article ideas from alumni. Send submissions and suggestions to Peter Huidekoper at 2395 S. Milwaukee St., Denver, CO 80210, call 303-757-1225, or e-mail peterhdkpr@aol.com. �Note: The St. John's College Alumni Association will elect new directors at its annual meeting, to be held during Homecoming weekend 1998 in Annapolis. The slate of new directors was listed in the spring issue of The Reporter. Recent Alumni Welcomed by Washington Area Chapter By Bill Ross, Sam Stiles, and Peter Huidekoper he second annual reception to welcome alumni to the Alumni Association and to provide opportunities for career networking and socializing with other alumni was held March I0, 1998. The get-together was held at the Blackie's House of Beef restaurant in downtown Washington. Approximately 45 recent alumni, Gl's, and other alums attended, as did two seniors. Sam Stiles, the Chapter president, welcomed the group and introduced board members. Bill Ross described the twice-monthly seminar, the principal T CHAPTER CONTACTS Call the alumni listed below for information about chapter or other alumni activities in each area. Bill Tiilles, A59, chats with a recent alumna. Chapter activity, as well as other events put on by the Chapter. Everyone told a bit about themselves and their career history and/or career aspirations. While attendance was somewhat smaller than last year, the event was highly successful with much good feeling. It lasted from 7 to I I p.m.-the open bar and hors d'oeuvres perhaps became "dinner" for some!-with constant animated conversation between alumni of all eras. The pros and cons of various career paths were discussed. Inevitably, there was much reminiscing of the St. John's experience. A high percentage said that they enjoyed the event and hope it would be repeated. There is already discussion about finding ways to increase attendance and expand the program next year, perhaps by inviting a well-known speaker. PROPOSED AMENDMENT TO BYLAWS In compliance with ARTICLE XIII AMENDMENTS SECTION I, that any proposed amendment shall be published at least six weeks prior to a meeting of the membership of the Alumni Association regular or special called for this purpose. ARTICLE VI OFFICERS SECTION Ill, DUTIES OF THE EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT The Executive Vice President shall perform the duties of the President in the absence of the president, and shall perform such other duties as may from time to time be assigned by the Board of Directors. The Executive Vice President shall also be responsible for monitoring and reporting to the Board on the progress of the work of the Board Standing Committees. SECTION m is offered for amendment to read as follows: The Executive Vice President shall perform the duties of the President in the absence of the President, and shall perform such other duties as may from time to time be assigned by the Board of Directors. ALBUQUERQUE: Harold M. Morgan, Jr. 505-899-1331 NEW YORK: Steven Sedlis 212-289-1662 ANNAPOLIS: Rebecca Dzamov 410-263-4291 NORTH CAROLINA: Susan Eversole 919-968-4856 AUSTIN: Homayoon Spasi 512-272-7383 PHILADELPHIA: Jim Schweidel 610-941-0555 BALTIMORE: David Kidd 410-614-2260 PORTLAND: Dale Mortimer 360-906-1 190 BOSTON: Ginger Kenney 617-964-4794 SACRAMENTO: Helen Hobart 916-452-1082 CHICAGO: Amanda Fuller 847-705-1143 SAN FRANCISCO/ NORTHERN CALIFORNIA: Deborah Farrell 415-561-6100, xi 23 DALLAS/FORT WORTH: Suzanne Doremus 817-924-7184 DENVER: Janet Dampeer 303-972-490 I LOS ANGELES: Meg Sheehan 310-208-2013 MINNEAPOLIS/ST PAUL: Vicki Wilson, 612-595-91 18 Glenda Eoyang, 612-783-7206 SANTA FE: John Pollak 505-983-2144 SEATTLE: Jim Doherty 206-937-8886 WASHINGTON, DC: Sam Stiles, 301-424-0884 Bill Ross, 301-320-4594 ISRAEL: Mel Kline, c/o Rechov Menasha 8 Jerusalem 972 2 6736914 moshek@actcom.co.il �Alulllni Notes ... 1931 Winson Gilbert Gott, Jr., retired this spring after 60 years researching land titles in the Anne Arundel county courthouse. In honor of his dedication to his work in the Land Records Office, a room in the new courthouse will be named the Winson Gilbert Gott Jr. Land Records Office. As he retired just before his 88th birthday, Gott told the Annapolis Capital that he planned to read, garden, and write a family history. After graduating from St. John's, Gott earned his law degree from the University of Maryland Law School. He passed the bar in 1936, then practiced law in Baltimore before moving to Annapolis and starting land title research work in 1937. During World War II he inspected bombers in Baltimore, then returned to the Land Records Office, where he's worked since. When the Annapolis Chapter of the Alumni Association used to hold alumni luncheons, Gott attended regularly. 1935 Richard Woodman writes that he is still active practicing law in upstate New York. 1936 Two St. Johnnies of the class of '36, Martin Rausch and Gil Ci·andall, survived a tornado/water spout together in Islamorada, Florida, on February 2, 1998. ''There were no casualties but there was property damage," reports Crandall. 1937 Dr. Harold Milstead The Rev. writes that he is entering the 59th year of uninterrupted pastorate in the Baltimore/Washington Conference of the United Methodist Church. 1951Westerbeke is currently Paul researching to write a biography about Russ Colombo (1908-1934), a popular singer, actor, composer, and musician-"Agenius of his time." 1953 "I was in the class of 1953 but since I left after my first year and joined the U.S. Air Force, I don't believe anyone will remember me," writes Merton E. Rice. "I served the U.S. Congress for 34 years, retiring as a Sergeant of the U.S. Capitol Police on 12-31-93. I also served for a short time as Chief of Police in Goldsboro, Maryland. I currently work two blocks away from the college at the Comptroller General's office for the state of Maryland." He added a new title to his name last December when he was ordained by the Anglican Church. The Rev. Rice is with St. Andrew's Chapel on Goldsborough Street in Easton, Maryland. Chades Powleske retired as president of The Business Council for International Understanding last September but continues with the title of vice chairman. He divides his time between his New York apartment and his second home in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. "Retirement has proved to be a great experience, one not to be missed!" he says. Gerald Zollars reports: "I've retired!" He's looking forward to spending more time with his daughter Maya and two granddaughters in Australia. Maya lives in the small, beautiful rainforest town of Dorrigo, New South Wales. ''Otherwise," he says, 'Tll be finishing my seminar readings and practicing geezerhood in Seton Village, New Mexico." 1973 H. Briggs Jr. (SF) Robert received a master's degree in liberal arts from Harvard University in June. He also received the Dean's Thesis Prize for the Outstanding Master of Liberal Arts Thesis in Behavioral Sciences. The prize is given for the thesis that shows the highest level of imaginative scholarship. His paper, "A Citizen's Evaluation of Feuerstein's Instrumental Enrichment Program," was completed under the direction of Patricia Rogers, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Project on Schooling and Children, and Carol H. Weiss, a professor in the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Robert is a building contractor and audio engineer. 1974 Erica Chaney King (A) writes that she will be retiring from the Marine Corps in July, with just over 24 years of service. "Gregory and I will be returning to California and settling down somewhere in San Luis Obispo County. I plan to do nothing much at all for as long as I can stand it! My new address is P.O. Box 6938, Los Osos, CA 93412." 1975 Derek Cross (A) was In June, ordained to the priesthood by Bishop Carl Mengeling of the Diocese of Lansing, Michigan. Cross.studied and taught philosophy at Catholic University after St. John's and earned his master's in theology from St. Philip's Seminaryin Toronto. He completed formation as an Oratonian Brother at the Toronto Oratory and has served as a deacon. He will be a member of the Holy Family Oratory of St. Philip Neri in the Diocese of Kalamazoo. Peter Fox (A) is living with his family in San Antonio, where he heads the Research Imaging Center, focused mainly on increasing understanding of the human brain. He spends his leisure hours driving his truck to local golf courses. Wendy (SF) is still working for "management guru" Eli Goldratt, but she has relocated to the Netherlands. She recently took a business trip to Santa Fe and took advantage of the time to catch up with "songster Doug Cotler, advocate Jon Zorn, and structural expert Jeff Hockersmith." John A. 'White (SGI), who retired as a professor of science, technology, and society from Rochester Institute of Technology in 1995, now leads a great books seminar at the RIT Athenaeum, an academic club for people over 50. Joseph and Barbara Jean (Sisson) Roach, both A81, have three children. Joseph works with Melanie Hiner, A80, who founded a private school called The New School in Newark. 1982 Rachel O'Keefe Bohlin (A) and Steven Bohlin (SF) announce the birth of their daughters, Darcy and Bridget, on June 9, 1997. Tom Palmer expects to submit his D.phil. dissertation to Oxford University this year. It is on "A Cosmopolitan Theory of Justice" and considers distributive justice from a cosmopolitan point of view. Among his responsibilities at the Cato Institute were directing Cato University, though which professional and business leaders can deepen their understanding of the moral, economic, and legal foundations of free societies, and editing a number of books and papers for publication. 1983 Richard Miller's (A) book, As 1977 Malloy, (SF) writes: William "Back in October, 1997, my life was being maintained by a ventilator, and I was expected (by medical professionals) to die; but my life was spared, thank God. In June, 1998, I attended a week of the Summer Alumni Program, as well as Homecoming. One morning, before sunrise, I was able to climb Monte Sol, atop which I danced with abandon, chanted a Native American chant, and sang (what else?) 'Good Morning, Starshine.' My PO Box is still the same, and I welcome e-mail at: texastbill@worldnet.att.net" 1978Tamlyn (A) writes that Lucy she and her family have moved to Rio de Janeiro for a three-year posting. She is the political officer at the consulate and her husband is working for the New Jersey Power Company, which is investing in Brazil's newly privatized energy sector. Their two children, Ben, 6, and Filipa, 3, are enjoying living right next to one of the world's most beautiful beaches. 1981 Scali Pease (A) Elizabeth writes: "Andy and I joyously announce the birth of our first child, John William, born on September 26, 1997. I also defended my doctoral dissertation in December, on Baroque Aesthetic and its 20th Century return in French Thought, Arts & Letters, to receive a PhD in French Studies from Rice University in Houston." IfLearning Mattered: Reforming Higher Education, has been published by Cornell University Press. One of the chapters is devoted to a discussion of the great books program as a pedagogical project. Miller says that he drew on archival research he did at the Houghton Library (Harvard) and at the Maryland Archives, which he pursued trying to make sense of the sudden departure of Barr and Buchanan. The book's topic, he notes, is one close to the hearts of many Johnnies-the challenge ofreforming higher education. "In the 15 years since I was a student at SJC, I've learned a lot about how entangled higher education is with mechanisms of assessment and fiscal concerns. As a result, I've written a book that eschews ideal solutions in favor of an ongoing pragmatic response to worldly demands. My thesis is not one that is likely to sit well with many academics, but my hope is that it will spur the discussion of reform on in a new direction." The Reporter will carry a review in a future issue. Bi·ian Shields (A) reports that he spent many years after leaving St. John's working in the Dallas, Texas, area as a radio news reporter, talk show host, and anchor for the local all-news station, the NPR station, and the ABC Radio Networks. In 1994 he left the airwaves to become a behind-the-scenes person in TV news, working for ABC in Houston and at the CBS station in Tulsa. Since November oflastyear, he's worked as a news producer for KXTV, channel 10, the ABC affiliate in Sacramento. �Alulllni Notes ... 1984 Murray Cohen (SGI) is teaching at Suffolk Community College, auditing classes at SUNY-Old Westbury, writing poems for publication, and participating in a great books discussion group at the Locust Valley Library in Nassau County, Long Island. always looking for new bands and musical styles to review and discuss. If anyone want to view my immortal prose, copies of East Coast Entertainment lurk on top of cigarette machines all over Fells Point, Annapolis, and the Eastern Shore." Rich Green (SF) is a postdoctoral and faculty intern at the University of Utah. 1988 ~I~ f Lucy Duncan (SF8 6) recently celebrated the third anniversary of the opening of her children's bookstore, The Story Monkey, located in Omaha, Nebraska. She says the store is growing slowly and she plans to publish a catalog of multicultural children's books and storytelling resources in late August or early September. She also plans to launch a website (probably Story.Monkey. com) around the same time. She adds: "I love recommending and finding books for folks, so if anybody wants a fairly knowledgeable Johnny bookseller to recommend some 'great children's books' call me at 800-274-9972 or e-mail monkeylady@juno.com. We also can find out-of-print books." Lucy has been a professional storyteller for five years and says that that end of her work also is grnwing. "For two years I've been performing with a storytelling troupe called 'The Five Bright Chicks.' We perform original personal stories for grown-ups and just finished our fourth show, entitled 'Memories and Other Lies.' I'm also on the Nebraska Arts Council's Artist in the Schools/Communities roster and have completed a couple of residencies recently. I would never have expected myself to end up back in Omaha, but so far this place has treated me well." ~ 1987 Nettie Koko Ives (A) is married and living in Arlington, has a beautiful baby girl, Zoe, and works for the government. Julia Mobayed Dray (A) says that two kids, a dog, a husband, and three jobs "tend to leave my memory just a trifle on the leaky side." Robert Louis is six, Mary Margaret a "relatively angelic" three. "I am currently working as a professional musician (piano at Nordstrom and a lot of other stuff), writing software manuals (the ones no one ever reads), and working as the editor of a monthly entertainment magazine devot.ed to the Annapolis/Eastern Shore/Baltimore music & arts scene. I would love to hear from any Johnnies involved in the music business that hail from my area; we're John Richai·d Lavery (A) is still in Europe "balancing the demands of skiing and banking, working on a masters at Kings College with a concentration in Egyptology and statuary." He enjoys a steady stream of visitors, who have become, in addition to classmates, doctors, lawyers, consultants, etc., much to his satisfaction. Cynthia Hobgood Strauss (SF) and her husband, Steven Strauss, are living at 4327 Salem Street, Emeryville, California 94608-3323. Her phone number is 510-547-6475. "More to follow when the dust settles a bit," she writes. Charles Bieneman (SF) has quit practicing law, gotten married, and moved out of Washington, D. C., to Reston, Virginia. He is now a consultant for a data warehousing software company in Virginia. He says he would love to hear "from all my Johnny friends." His e-mail address is cbieneman@strategy.com. 1990 Lisa Liske-Doorandish (A) is teaching cello with the Renaissance Music Aeademyin Blacksburg, Virginia. She founded the Emrys Ensemble and is Assistant Principal with the Roanoke Symphony. Her daughter, Miriam, three, is beginning to play the cello. 1991 Maureen Mericle (AGI) is working toward her MBA at Northwestern. Peuin Cunningham (SGI) has completed her fifth year as an instructor in the philosophy department at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. Her daughter, Anna James, will be in kindergarten in the fall, and her companion, Rex Welshan, is returning from Brown University where he was a visiting professor in philosophy. Perrin received an NEH grant to participate in a summer seminar on "Philosophy of Childhood" at Amherst. 1992 James Ashley (A) and Tamara Steblez Ashley (A93) announce the birth of their beautiful daughter, Alexandra Sage, on April 27. She weighed in at a healthy 8 pounds, 3 ounces, and "is the most beautiful thing we've ever seen. Having her is more wonderful then we could have imagined! " The Ashleys are living in a suburb of Atlanta at 858 Willivee Drive, Decatur, GA 30033. Steven Van Dresser (AGI) reports that he is starting his fifth year as an English instructor at Miyazaki Queen's Junior College in Miyazaki, Japan. He's trying to use seminar methods with low level language learners and continuing to pursue interests in flower arrangement, tea ceremony, karate, and pachinko. Petei· Steadman (SF) is a software developer at the National Center for Genome Resources in Santa Fe. er Johnny, _,. ,._..... ,.,,.11.v.u. (SF91) in June 1.997. The couple is living in New Mexico. Patrick Andrew Lewis (SF) and Jenifer Joy Lewis (SF95) announce the birth of their son, Daryl Lindsay Lewis, on March 25, 1998. Daryl weighed 8 pounds, 8 ounces when he was born and was 22 inches long. He and his proud parents are living in Austin, Texas. 1993 Joanna Corwin (SF) will be pursuing her PhD in philosophy at The Catholic University of America, in Washington, D.C. Fortunately, academic scholarship will permit her the time to simultaneously continue her rugby career. She would love to hear from anyone who remembers her, and can be reached via e-mail at jmcorwin@juno.com. Katherine Wolff (AGI) married Stephen D'Arnato, an attorney, in July. They are living in Cambridge, Mass. Amy Flack (A) is currently pastoring two Presbyterian churches in Avon, South Dakota. "It's beautiful country here and I'm constantly amazed by it and the kindness of the people," she writes. "If you're in the area, come and visit." Elisha Dunn-Georgiou (A) completed a masters in epidemiology last spring and is now in Morocco, North Africa, working as part of a women's and children's health care team. She will probably be there until at least the summer of 1999. Patricia Dougherty (A) reports the birth of her son, Owen Walker Dougherty, on April 12 (Easter Sunday). "We're looking forward to reading all the fart jokes in Rabelais to him," she says. Barbara Arlette Arnold (SF) graduated from the University of Maryland School ofLawinMay 1998. 1994 Eli Castro (SF) writes: "After four long, pleasantish years in D.C., I am finally making my way back west.... Not sure of addresses yet, but I can always be reached at ecastro@sable.com." Eli is working as a software consultant for Trilogy (www.trilogy.com) in Austin, Texas. Phoebe Meuin (SF) is planning to marry her Canadian boyfriend, Greg Carter, in August. She has a "great new job" as assistant branch manager and children's librarian with the Weber County Library in Ogden, Utah. "I am so happy to be out of Brooklyn and back in the west! Utah is beautiful." Sidrin (A) is living in D.C., working for George Washington University as an Information Systems Coordinator. "I spend my days working on new ways to use the university's computer network to further benefit the students and troubleshooting network outages. Most recently I've been working to organize the Washington area network presence on the Internet 2, a high-speed, non-commercial network that is being developed for educational and research purposes," he says. 'Tm also taking classes at GW, but have not yet settled into one particular graduate program. I would be happy to hear from anybody who is further interested in any of this; e-mail me at sirk@gwu.edu." Maggie Arnold (A) married LTG Martin Robers, USN, in Coral Springs, Florida, in March 1997. They are now living in Anacostia, Washington. Alex Goldstein (SF) moved to Los Angeles to start an Internet business. He says he would love to hear from Johnnies in the area. He can be reached at alexgoldstein@wTiteme.com. Aaron Thomas (A) got his MA in classics from the University of Florida. He will spend the next year in Bulgaria as a Fulbright Fellow studying Latin inscriptions and comparative linguistics. 1996 Devon Burr (SF) is entering a PhD program in planetary science at the University of Arizona. 1997 Patricia Burk Travis (A98) is happy to report that she and Jeff (A97) have finally graduated from St. John's: Jeff in 1997, and Patricia this past May. They have two children: Claire is twenty-six months and David is five months. Jeff will start law school in the fall at the University of Baltimore Law School and still �••• works for the state in the courthouse on Church Circle. They'd be happy to hear from classmates passing through Annapolis. Their phone number is 410/216-7874 and their address is 431 Burnside Street/Annapolis, MD 21403. Danielle Insetta (A) is in the process of moving to Bethesda, Maryland, where she is working as a trader and broker at a small full service brokerage firm called Koonce Securities Inc. She's having lots of fun and learning a lot using her St. John's education, she says. Brenton Hinrichs (AGI) reports that ten months after receiving his St. John's degree, he will receive an AM from Stanford University. "This year I have studied Policy Analysis and Evaluation in the Graduate School of Education, he says. "In August I will be the Director of Admissions and Placement as well as a language arts teacher at the Phillips Brooks School in Menlo Park, California. Any California GI alums?" Dominic Crapuchettes (A) is teaching math at a boarding high school and coaching lacrosse. He is still living with Amada Dulin in Charlottesville, Virginia, where they have a once-a-week book club dinner and a Sunday morning Aristotle study group. "Life is good," he says. "A week ago I took second place at an international magic competition and won $15,000! ! Go figure." Rebecca Michael (A) is living in Washington, D.C., employed by the Maret School as Assistant to the Director of Development. She plans to attend American University for her graduate work in arts administration. ""Still with Mike [Gaffney A'95]. Still have Lucy," she says . Becca decided to act as a class representative and gather information about her fellow '97 s (See box at right). Hello A 'g7! Through little effort on my part I was able to compile the following "notes':· you mayfind them informative) interesting) or possibly redundant. Have any information to add/or next time? Feel.free to email me! -Becca Michael Annemarie Catania is living in Washington, D. C. and is the Development Associate at Georgetown Preparatory School in Bethesda, MD. Ian Kelley is going into the Navy at the beginning of August 1998. Aidan Kelleher is working at Royall & Company in Richmond, VA. Taylor Hudnall is working at a law firm in Washington, DC. Todd Stregiel, Kevin Gardner, and Tucker live in Philadelphia, PA; Kevin is attending the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and Todd is pursuing work with National School and Community Corps. They tell me that Lori Freeman lives in Richmond, Va., and will be attending VCU in the fall. David Veazey: "This fall I will begin pursuing a doctorate in Economics at Fordham University in New York where I will learn how to eradicate global poverty." Maura Tennor: '~Mary Lynch and David Haber live in Annapolis. Heidi (Jacot) Wells lives on Prince George, but she and her husband will be moving on to graduate school soon, I think in North Carolina. Richard Schmechel lives with his sister and her husband in Minneapolis, MN. Corey Comstock still lives in Annapolis as far as I know." Adam Weisberg: ~'Matt Corcoran is in Nashville for the remainder of the summer. He's been teaching remedial inner-city l-3rd graders how to read. Come fall he'll be in law school but he's not yet sure which." (Adam lives in Nashville as well.) Ben Bloom: "At the moment I'm studying for the GRE's and hope to take them this Fall. I should be back in the States [from Israel] come next September." Caitlin Aptowicz: "Working at Kenneth Starr's Office of the Independent Counsel with Forrest Norman. Starting a Ph.D. this fall in Neuroscience at the University of Chicago to search for old IK's proposed transcendental schema (B 177). If you pass through the City by the Lake, I'm at: 5715 S. Drexel Ave., Apt. 406, Chicago, IL 60637." Damon Kovelsky: "I am currently (and properly) employed at Lehman Brothers, in NYC, as an assistant analyst. I am doing over 10 hours a day, starting to lack a life, and generally becoming a yuppie." Sarnh Fremont: "Following a short stint in the unglamorous world of small town newspapers, I am happily working as an associate publicist at Regnery Publishing, a small publishing house in DC. I spend my days working with our authors and the media to promote our books.~.! [also] spent a week in Hilton Head, SC with 300 energetic high schoolers as part of the volunteer staff with the high school group at my church .. My wedding date is (finally) set for March 27, 1999." Tony Cole: ''I got a fellowship from the University of Virginia, so I'm going there to do a Ph.D. in philosophy." Gjergji Bojaxhi: "The only thing that I might have to report about myself is that in May I went to Albania and got married, and I guess that I am going to be a father at the beginning of next year." Adam Mai·ker: "I can not give you any information about myself worthy of printing. I am still working in the same job I had since school. It is going well and I am learning a lot. While I have been reading in the field of political science, I have done nothing substantial about that interest of mine." Jen Coonce: "I was hired kind of jointly by two internet companies. From the article [in the last Reporter], you know what What's Going On is all about. The other is owned by an Alum who graduated in '85, Alex Strumminger. It's Planetrider.com, a travel guide, which organizes, rates, and reviews the best travel web sites." Juan Villasenor: "I will be attending Vanderbilt University School of Law in Nashville this coming August, and will end a year of work for Touchstones during which I got to translate books into Spanish and go to a prison here in Maryland, as part of Touchstones of course. Judith Neely will attend the University of Chicago to do a Masters in Public Policy. Rana [Choi], as you may know, is going to Harvard for Architecture. Lydia Aybar lives and works in DC. Karnielle Shaffer started working for Touchstones. Zack Srnoll was last sighted in Phoenix, Arizona in January. He said in a letter to me that when he first got to L.A. he was sleeping in his car and taking showers at the beach in the public baths. Luke Trares and Rachel Davis tied the knot. Erin Smyth ilid too. Genevieve [Goodrow] was.at UVA Law since last year, as far as I know. Dave Polgreen got married this summer too. Jonathan Pomerance is working as a paralegal in DC and is planning on going to law school next year." Seth Milliken: "I wish I could make this sound more glamorous than it is, but I'm living in San Francisco working in the technology department of a ... um ... branding and identity consulting firm. San Francisco has a superb swing scene. There's dancing to be found almost every night, complete with live swing bands,vintage clothing, and expert Lindy Hoppers. I've been happily infusing the Johnnie brand of swing into the San Francisco scene. Our style is variously called "jitterbug', "street swing', and 'gutter swing' by the locals. The more experienced Lindy Hoppers are usually somewhat disoriented by it, but seem to enjoy it once they get used to it." Steve Urich: "As for myself! am doing nothing noteworthy." Reiko Gregg: "Tm currently working as an assistant to Sharon Bishop (former pres. of alumni assn.) Jo Chung recently completed the post-bach pre-med program at Goucher in Baltimore, took the MCAT, and applied to the Peace Corps to teach mathematics in Africa. I don't know the results of either application yet (she just left for California). I know that Laura Collins is teaching at the high school level (I believe)." Mary Duncan: "Things are going quite well for me. I work in the books department of a science union dealing with copyrights and some aspects of production. They sent me to Boston for a week, so that was cool." Elaine Spidle Ataba is still living in San Diego with her husband, Orrin. She is now a veterinary technician, and will be on her way to veterinary school soon. She was in San Francisco at the end of May, where she visited by Drew Keenan, Jesse Berney, and Matt Braithwaite. �Obituaries Bryce DuValJacobsen Class of Ig42, Tutor, Athletic Director Bryce Jacobsen, an alumnus from the first year of the New Program who returned to the college to lead its intramural athletic program and act as athletic director and tutor, died May 31 of complications of a stroke. He was born and raised in Baltimore County, graduated from Towson High School, and came to St. John's in 1938. A natural athlete, he had been offered a basketball scholarship to another college in Baltimore but wanted to travel farther from home for school. VVhile a student, Jacobsen questioned the fraternity system then in place at St. John's because it was discriminatory. He supported Stringfellow Barr's controversial decisions to discontinue intercoJJegiate sports and to abolish fraternity buildings from campus. After graduation, Jacobsen was sent to prison because his status as a contentious objector was not recognized; in prison he learned farming, a skill he continued after his release. He and his 'i-vife Phebe bought a farm in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where he raised cows and also worked as a carpenter. colorful ties. Freshmen from many different classes remember Jacobsen's Euclid tutorials, where his penchant for logical argument was impressive. He retired from St. John's in 1986. He is survived by his mfe of 54 years, Phebe, by a son, Erik, and daughter, Kristin; two brothers; a sister; five grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. A memorial service was held at the college on July 18. A memorial fund has been established and contributions mll go toward the athletic program at the college. Jacobsen came back to St. John's in 1958 as a tutor (he taught biology and mathematics) and as athletic director. Under his leadership, the college's distinctive intramural program became well-established and hugely popular with the students. Team competition in soccer, flag football, basketball, volleyball, softball and track, as well as individual competitions were offered. Jacobsen himself refereed the games, which attracted as many as 403 of the student body. He was known for his distinctive hobbies, which included stamp collecting, the Baltimore Orioles, and wearing unusual and Henry Harrison Sadler Class of Ig38 Harrison Sadler died in May at his home in Belvedere, California. He grew up in Annapolis and graduated from St. John's in 1938. He received his MD from the University of Maryland in 1942, and after a residency in Brooklyn he went overseas as a medical officer. He was awarded a purple heart for action at Normandy. Dr. Sadler graduated from the Menninger School of Psychiatry in 1949 and opened a psychiatric practice in Detroit. He also taught at Wayne State University Medical School, becoming Assistant Dean for Medical Education in 1962. In 1965 he moved to San Francisco, where he joined the UCSF faculty. In 1980 he moved to the UC Berkeley campus as director of the UCB-UCSF Joint Medical Program in Health and Health Sciences, serving until 1986. Dr. Sadler's interest was in the human and emotional aspects of illness. As a part of medical training, he initiated cross-disciplinary forums on ethical and philosophical issues at the scientific frontier. He is survived by his mfe, son, daughter, sister, and stepdaughter. Peter Zachariadis Santa Fe Class of I998 Peter Zachariadis, SF98, died in June 1998. He had been bathing in the Ganges River, which runs through northern India near the Himalayas and into Bangladesh, when he was pulled under the water by the river's current. A memorial service for Peter was held at St. John's in Santa Fe on Monday, July 13. Allen Homarei Ohta, Class of I945 Allen Ohta, who was a member of the class of 1945, died in Dec- ember, 1997 after a long illness. He served for two years filth the U.S. Army in Japan on a special project after World War II. Thereafter he worked as a high-grade cabinet maker for the Simmons Company and others. For a number of years before his retirement he worked as a longshoreman on the San Francisco waterfront. His mfe, Peggy, died in 1983; they had five children and six grandchildren. Noted ... Col. Frederick S. Matthews, Class of 1912 Charles E. Molland, Class of 1912 Charles T. Westcott, Class of 1936 Marcus E. Smith, Class of 1937 Prof. Francis E. Barkman Class of 1938 Haynes M. Bryan, Class of 1939 Thomas J. Cole, Class of 1957 Shirley Moffett Sanford, Class of 1958 �Aluntni Voices ... Machete Wounds, Mangos, and 23 Orphans: One Alumna's Glimpse into Haitian Culture S ue Conlin, A72, has been working as a nurse in a remote rural village in Haiti since May 1997. She writes occasional "newsletters" to herfriends and family, sections of which are excerpted here with her permission. May 1997 posing to do. The problems in Haiti are so profoundly institutionalized, it's hard to imagine I can be of any use whatsoever. But I have felt strongly that God wanted me to come here. So I guess I'll be finding out why. October I 9 9 7 After nearly six months in Haiti I am finally starting to feel comfortable here-because of a number of factors, including language, simple familiarity, and work. I wish I could say that my Creole is now nearly fluent, but of course it isn't. There are times when I can have fairly extended conversations, but if people are speaking normally to each other, it still passes too quickly for me. I have by now gotten to know a lot of the people I see along the road out of our valley. This means that as I walk along, I am greeted by name; everyone asks me where I am going and when I will return; kids wait for me and hold my hands to help me pass their houses. I love it! Outsiders aren't treated like this. I begin to feel I am known and accepted. The biggest change over these six months is my work in the clinic. I'm sure there will be days when I am in over my head, but for the most part I see a fairly narrow range of pro blems and I feel reasonably confident of my ability to assess and respond appropriately. Although people certainly come to the clinic -with serious problems (we have had one very serious abscess, one death from meningitis, one infant death from dehydration), the vast majori- I finished nursing school last June in a state of such complete exhaustion that I didn't take my Boards until November. Then in January I began to hunt for a missionary placement in Haiti-and finally got here on April 2 9. I'm excited to be starting this next huge phase of my life. And very worried and scared about learning Creole and starting my first nursing job in a new language. Port au Prince is built on very steep hills. Most of the city streets are unpaved. So to decide to go anywhere means you must gird yourself to face the dust, the blazing sun, the steep hills. It's a foregone conclusion that you ·will be drenched with sweat when you get anywhere. An added factor with the heat is that not only is there not air conditioning (except for two small grocery stores that I know of so far), but there generally aren't fans, since the electricity is absent more often than it's working. The streets are filled with people, cars, hand carts, pigs, goats, the occasional cow or mounds of garbage and of sand for making concrete and are lined with street vendors selling everyfrom clothes to charcoal to food to car tires-even TVs. I like being out on the streets: it feels like a village, not a The statistics say the unemployment rate in Haiti is 803. But this doesn't mean people don't support themselves; it only means they don't have a secure source of outside income. When you don't have a job in you become a "ti machan" (street merchant) and plant yourself on the sidewalk with whatever you can find to sell. Most shopping can be done off the streets. As far as I can see, virlually everybody in Haiti works. For the most part people seem to be making dosomehow. In Pmt au Prince, at least, the problems are one step above absolute survival; they have food, and clothing, and most of them seem to have at least a tin roof over their heads. But the problems of society and infrastructure are overwhelming: garbage, the condition of the "streets," the lack of job opportunities, the lack of reliable electricity or water... everything is so difficult. It is e:Xhausting. I can't imagine how people "I share raisins (a good source of iron and a good medium for with a family I pass fn:~cnu~1l'ltly maintain any energy to hope for tirings to get better. Yet on the road near fondwa. The house is made of palm tree wood, the shutters are banana leaves, and everyone assures me that there is spirit of hope here. the roof is thatched grass." There is music everywhere-you always hear people singing. I am told that what I am describing here does ty come with the same problems they would bring to a primary care clinic in not apply to some of the rural areas that have been completely deforested; the States: ulcers, arthritis, high blood pressure, colds, back aches. Then there they have had five years of drought, and the people are indeed dying of add the standard problem of the tropics, malaTia; and scabies. Our clinic is starvation. the nearest source for over-the-counter medication, so I dole out a lot of I'll be in Port au Prince for two more weeks [working in a children's hosantacid and Tylenol. But I also dole out advice about diet and back exercises. pital and trying to learn Creole] and then I will go to a rural area called Folks have to walk great distances to reach us, so we have started a Fondwa. I'll be making a three-year commitment to the organization that is mobile clinic. Each Thursday we will walk to one of the five sites and set up sponsoring me in Haiti, Spiritan Associates. I went to visit Fondwa last clinic there. I love the walking and I love seeing the countryside. But it is week. I had thought it was a village, but it isn't; there is no crossroads even, quite exhausting to start out at 6 am, walk some three hours in steep hills, just tiny farms scattered through the countryside. It is in a beautiful area of see patients back-to-back for hours, walk another three hours, and get home steep mountains; I fell i11 love with the place. I will have a small room of my at 7 pm. It is certainly picturesque. We load up the mule with all our supown, at the back of a small log cabin house with a tin roof. I'll be living with plies and meander along country roads and paths, past banana trees, palm two nuns and 23( ! ) kids. I -will be the only blan (foreigner) for many miles. trees, etc. As we pass peasants along the way, we tell them about the clinic. I am very worried about running the clinic on my own. "\Vhen I came I The peasant who was our contact for one village stood at the crest of the hill understood that there would be a doctor coming once a week, but it now and blew a conch to alert everyone in the valley that we had arrived. looks like it will be only once or twice a month. With no on-the-job nursing I am also involved with two projects: a gardening project to show the experience yet, only book learning, I can scarcely think about what I am pro- �"Outs\de the house I live in, Evelyn, age 3, and Sheila, age 5, are playing. The log cabin has a tin roof and I live there with two nuns and 23 orphans." kids in various stages of chicken pox, scabies, ringworm, intestional worms, malaria, and a really virulent cough and cold. Things have slacked off some now. I also came home for mango season. For about a month each year we've got an abundance. I was eating up to six a day. During mango season I swear 403 of all conversation centers around which of the ten Haitian varieties is best. We also smell mangos all day. We also wear mangos all day: the juice spreads from ear to ear and runs to the elbows. And we hear them thumping to the grourid all night. Since coming back I feel the clinic is doing well. Between the regular and the mobile clinics, I saw about 150 patients in June. My heart doesn't sink when I see patients coming now. I am getting more used to some of the Haitian customs around doctors. Poor health is a community interest, it seems. One village makes a day of coming to the clinic: each Friday they gather up whoever wants to come, leave early in the morning and make the two-hour trek together, and are all there (some 20 strong) to greet me when I open. If there is any kind of drama (most often a machete wound) the exam room is filled with a crowd of excited neighbors. They mill around looking at and touching everything, "helping" me with my intake questions, offering opinions and treatment suggestions. This used to drive me absolutely wild. Now I barely notice it. I presume the community presence is a comfort to the patient. I have been too busy with the clinic and the kids to have time to track down the status of the vegetable gardens project. The technician's time with us is over, and I fear that without the follow-up the gardens will simply go to peasants how to plant small vegetable patches and a vaccination and TB screening program. The diet of the peasants is very restricted. Oddly enough, in this climate of abundance, they don't seem to have the concept of raising small patches of food. I guess because until the recent deforestation everything they ate just fell off the trees? Anyway, it is an ambitious project because it involves convincing people to change their eating habits, convincing them to change how they have traditionally used their land, and teaching them how to do the gardens. I am convinced that I can most positively affect the health of the people of Fondwa through education. March 1998 A few days after the fact, I learned that the local oungan, or voodoo doctor, had come through my clinic as a patient! He was not what I expected an oungan to look like. He was the only peasant I've met who seemed American: huge, energetic, young, and confident. I thought an oungan would be a tiny shriveled old man. When I began to tell him how much his medicine would cost (always a delicate time) he interrupted me to assure me, '"It doesn't matter." Not a peasant response! It turns out this oungan lives in the only three-story house in Fondwa, a lovely clean modern building. So much for stereotypes. On a serious level, I am very glad he came through. I am thinking this means he believes in modern medicine (as ·well as voodoo) for others as well as for himself, and I am "Some of the younger children at the orphanage. They love to get medicine for their real or hoping he would refer his patients if they need me. I will be spending more of my time in Port au Prince because Fr. Joseph imagined illnesses-it makes them feel special, or perhaps it seems like food, and in Haiti food asked me to handle arrangements for visitors coming in and to help with is very important." fundraising. After reaching some bearable level of acceptance, I have not gotten any more comfortable with working as a primary practitioner without seed. I feel angry at the very thought. I very much did not want it to be supervision, so it would be a relief to get out of the clinic for a time. The isola''Sue's project" -the outsider coming in with an irrelevant program that has tion and physical discomfort of life in Fondwa have begun to wear on me. Also nothing to do with the people who live here. But the APF (peasants' associaI worry that one outside cannot begin to address the problems tion) staff haven't taken over responsibility. What else should I have done? facing the community of Fondwa. The changes and solutions can only come Surely the answer can't be to never even propose anything new. Maybe next from within the community itself. This is where I see the importance of the year I'll try again. • Peasants' Association-they are the necessary and only hope for improvement. July 1998 I'm back in Fondwa after about seven weeks in Port au Prince. It's really great to be back "home" -I'm enjoying the kids and the green beauty of the hillsides and all the folks greeting me along the road. The French nurse who had been in Fondwa for several months left at the end of April, so I came back to full-time clinic work. I also came home to 29 The programs that Sue Conlin is working with are in constant need ofsupport. Donations can be made to Spiritan Mission Outreach, 6230 Brush Run Road, Bethel Park, PA 15102-2214, attn: Fr. Gerry Kohler. A notation for ''Fondwa "will ensure the money goes to Haiti. �I fl'J. ea ~ •1""'1 "'C Q •1""'1 ~ ~ ~+;;> C/J <ll (]) on CJ.) u l'.N C/J ...c: ....., 0 ..0 1tj ""d Q) 0 p:; 0 C/J u co ;.::: ;.::: l'.N ~ if)_ "§ "§ r::i... r::i... 0 ..... ....., >=I Q ~ >=I :>-. ..... J=] p:; "1' ,..., 0 CJ.) & <ll 0 ti:: ~ ~ 0 "1' u ..... v ?"1 0 ~ u .0: u 0 §-< ~ ~ <ll H H 0 C/J C/J <ll .tj ""d ~ Suslan Borden my Wuebbels (A94) has a that would make the Host~ss (St. John's version of Miss Mannersn occasional polity position) turn green with envy. As assistant director of special projects and protocol for New York's Governor George Pataki, her professional life is a whirlwind of luncheons, dinner parties, and evening galas. In the line of duty, \Vuebbels shops for hand-cut Tiffany crystal vases, engraved silver bowls from Oneida, and New York wines for the governor to give as gifts. She has hosted receptions honoring President Mary Robinson of Ireland and the Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church. She works with many of New York's most interesting communities, both ethnic and cultural. Wuebbels' path from Annapolis to the governor's office was not a direct route. After graduation, she spent four months traveling in Italy and eastern Europe, drove across the U.S., and then went home to Arizona where she took some pre-med courses and worked in a coffee shop. "I was miserable in the pre-med courses and was even more miserable in the coffee shop. I decided then that I didn't know what I wanted to do but I certainly didn't want to live in Arizona any more." Wuebbels moved to New York without lining up either a job or an apartment (she relied on the hospitality of Amy Muldoon [A94] and Jane McManus [A93]), temped for six months, and then heard about the governor's office job through her sister. Having worked in politics in high school gave her an edge during the interview, and a successful interview and good luck put her over the top. During a trip to Annapolis this winter, Wuebbels spokemth current students about life beyond St. John's. "I wanted to encourage them to reach high, to apply for jobs they're not qualified for," she says, her advice a reflection of the good fortune she feels in having won her job. Wuebbels divides her work into two main elements: event planning for the governor and working with New York's first lady. Her work with Mrs. Pataki includes schedule coordination, traveling with the first lady, and working with her on the domestic violence Amy Wuebbels with New York's and breast cancer Governor George Pataki issues she is involved with. As the governor's event planner, Wuebbels plans, organizes, and stages about 35 events each year, such as the Governor's Arts Awards (New York's version of the Kennedy Center Honors), official dinners at the governor's mansion, community events such as the AsianAmerican Heritage Lunch, and one-time events such as the TWA Memorial held last summer on the Long Island beach closest to the site of the plane crash. '"The TWA event was the hardest event I've worked on," Wuebbels says. '"During the 1996 funeral service, Governor Pataki promised to host a memorial the following year. He considers it the hardest thing he's ever had to do. All of the children and families gathered at the beach. Judy Collins sang 'Amazing Grace,' and a wall was built 'vi.th the names of the victims on it. It was a moving tribute, but grief can be very exhausting." Currently, Wuebbels is working on the Governor's Arts Awards, New York's version of the Kennedy Center honors. Not only will she plan and coordinate the invitations, programs, banquet, and entertainment, she will also raise $250,000 for the gala's budget and support ... Continued on page 15 AS YOU LIKE IT-THE FIVE-MONTH SEMINAR THAT TURNED INTO APLAY .........••.••••.•................•.•.................••........••............•...........•.........•............................•• n the spirit of the St. John's tutorial, in which ideas read on paper attain a new kind of hfe through hands-on application, a number of students on the Santa Fe campus have been working hard to establish a strong theater program to explore the works of the great dramatists, as well as those of contemporary playwrights. During the week of commencement in May, the students performed Shakespeare's "As You Like It." This production was possibly the most worked-on, generously supported, and widely applauded play ever presented on the Santa Fe campus. How has such a vibrant theater program come into existence on a campus full of book-readers? Like all extracurricular events at St. John's, the theater program has fluctuated throughout the years. There may be many talented actors and actresses one year, while the next year brings almost no interest whatsoever in theater. And, like all special activities, theater takes a great deal of time and energy. So it has come as something of a surprise that the last two years have yielded an enormous interest in theater on the Santa Fe campus. An estimated 45 students have been actively I involved in the theater program, with more students becoming involved each semester. Even more surprising has been the realization that these students are not only enthusiastic and willing to devote their time and energy to creating quality productions, but they are also extremely talented. What are the odds that out of only 450 undergraduate and graduate students whose only common interest is the study of the great books there would be so many talented enough that they could have attended performing arts colleges instead of St. John's? Noting that there had been numerous but sparsely attended productions each year in the past, the thespians decided to focus on one major production each semester, while still making an effort to support other productions in between. Students began to think about the idea of reserving the spring performance slot for a classical piece in an effort to start a tradition. John Michael MacDonald, SF97, an actor who directed the 1996 spring production of two short works by Neil Simon, decided in l'ERfOJIMED JIY &TUPENTS 01' Si: JOHN'SCOLLEl!lE DIRECTEJD BY FRI MAY l5 8 fM SA! MAY 16 JrM ~~ 1997 to direct Shakespeare's "Love's Labours Lost," humorously referred to in the theatrical world as "This Labor's Lost." But, ...vi.th a solid cast, long rehearsals, and an eye for perfection (or at least pronunciation), MacDonald presented what was later called by many faculty and staff members the finest, most professional work that has ever been performed on the Santa Fe campus. In the now-optimistic hope of developing a tradition over commencement weekend, the students decided to ask professional director Genie Stevens to direct Shakespeare's As You Like It for this year's offering. More than five months of long rehearsals went into the production. The theater program received financial support from the President, the . Dean, and the Student Activities Office that allowed them to buy the material for hand-made costumes. These costumes were designed and constructed by Eun Hong, "vife of Santa Fe tutor Michael Bybee, who generously donated her time, her sewing machine, and her daughter's seamstress skills to the cause. And, adding a delightful twist to the experience, artist Edward Gorey, renowned for his unique style of artwork featured in the theater, in books, and on the BBC's "Mystery!" series, created a spectacular original poster. But what made this production, and indeed all that are presented at ... Continued on page 15 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The St. John's Reporter</em> Description An account of the resource College newspaper which started publication in 1974. Continued publication into 2000. Includes primarily historical content.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The St. John's Reporter" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=35">Items in <em>The St. John's Reporter</em></a></strong> <span>to view and sort all items in the collection.</span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 24 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context vol 24 issue 4 Summer 1998 Title A name given to the resource Reporter, Volume 24 Issue 4 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1998-07 Description An account of the resource Volume 24, Issue 4 of The St. John's Reporter. Published in Summer 1998. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Public Relations Office Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Goyette, Barbara (editor) Skewes, Elizabeth (editor) Mulry, Laura J. (editor) Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf The Reporter https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/795255a0ab99fb6b68df0c03ec0d7306.pdf d3e1599e1ad48a1f7c9bd0361126651a PDF Text Text r ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE LIBRARY l~li~\i~\m\~~ I ~ lllll\lllIIII 1696 01138 16031111111111 II 3 ='~ --- .-~- ~- - -------~-- .-- _ _r ! HN'S C ANNAPOLIS· SANTA FE THE T he average St. John's graduate will have spent approximately 8,634 hours in the college chairs. The chairs are used in tutorials, in labs, in seminar, in the dining hall, in the library, in dorm rooms, and even in the offices. As common as the chairs are to a St. John's campus, it seems that the students knowvery little about them. There are the myths and the rumors about the chairs. One Santa Fe student insisted that no one would believe that there were tall chairs and short chairs. Another said that they do exist, but only because Buildings and Grounds cuts the bottoms of the legs to keep them from rocking. Another pointed to the uncanny similarity between the college chairs and a Van Gogh painting. If these are the rumors about the chairs, what are the facts? E.A. Clore Sons, Inc., a company in Madison, Virginia, manufactures the chairs for both campuses. While the company was established in 1830, it has only been providing the college with these chairs since after World War II. The chairs cost the college $153 each plus shipping. The chairs at St. John's differ on each campus. The Annapolis chairs are usually a walnut color, although in a few rooms with cherry tables, the chairs are ordered to match. Originally, all the chairs on the Santa Fe campus had cushions on the seats. These cushions didn't last long though, and soon the college began to order chairs without cushions. EAT OF LEARNING The chairs that formerly had cushions on them are all one to two inches lower than the newer chairs. The Santa Fe chairs were originally color-coded according to location (for example, the Junior color, whereas the Dining Hall had another), but now all chairs are ordered in natural oak. If students should break the chair in their rooms, they are charged from $50 to the cost of the chair, depending on the extent of the damage. Although less than ten chairs are reported as broken to the Directors of Residence at each campus, Buildings and Grounds usually repairs 75 to 80 chairs every year. Johnny Zamora, head of Buildings and Grounds on the Santa Fe campus, insists that if the chairs were used in a home or office they would last at least six generations. "You don't find a chair built this good anywhere," he says. Zamora tries to salvage parts from irreparable chairs and has at least two or three boxes of spare parts in the shop at all times. The most common repairs are made on the back rests. When the back rest is broken beyond repair, Zamora says, they make "lowrider"chairs out of them by cutting the back off. He laughed, though, at the suggestion that the chairs were evened out with a saw. The seat of the chair, which is the most difficult to replace or repair, is actually made of what is called fiber rush - basically twisted paper. In Santa Fe, when the seats are damaged, they are sent to Carlson Caning, in Tesuque, a nearby town. Replacing the seats costs the college $65 per chair. Most chairs can be repaired on campus, although sometimes this means sawing off a broken arm or replacing the "footrest" rung with a modified broomstick. In Annapolis, broken chairs into storage until there are are enough to send back to Clore for repairs. Recently, the college sent 100 for repairs and received 75 for continued use. After thousands of hours in these seats, St. John's graduates are sure to miss the familiar feel of fiber rush and the unique style of Clore Sons' "Master Chair." Some alumni have been known to purchase chairs for their homes. The design is available to the public through the E.A. Clore Sons, Inc. catalogue (website address: www.eaclore.com). For slightly less, the St. John's bookstore sells a postcard ofVan Gogh's painting "The Chair and the Pipe," which does depict a chair with a striking resemblance to the college chairs. • Jessica Godden (SF02) �Frotn the Bell To-wers ... NEW FACULTY AND STAFF IN ANNAPOLIS AND SANTA FE ..........................••.•.........................................................•••.••••••••.......................... InAnnapolis ... •:• Amirthinayagam P. David, a new tutor, is a St. John's alumnus, A86. He studied Greek at the University of Chicago, where he received his doctorate from the Committee on Social Thought. His dissertation explored a new theory of Greek tonic accent and its application to Greek phonics. He has taught ancient Greek language and literature in classes for colleagues and students at the University of Chicago, as well as in its Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults, which is modeled on the St. John's curriculum. •!• Daniel Harrel, a new tutor, received a B.A. in English and philosophy from Vanderbilt University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in philosophy from Emory University. His dissertation was on Hegel's answer to the question "what is philosophy?" Harrell has taught ethics, politics, and logic at Emory, Georgia State, and Oglethorpe universities. •!• John Kress, a new tutor, received a B.A. in philosophy from Eckerd College and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University, with a dissertation on Plato after Nietzsche. His philosophy studies have also emphasized Kant, Heidegger, nineteenth-century German Idealism (particularly Schelling), and contemporary Continental thought (particularly Foucault). He has taught at Eckerd and Vanderbilt. •!•Mark Lutz, who was appointed tutor in January 1998, received a B.A. in political science from the University of Chicago and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. His dissertation was on the political psychology of the erotic in Plato. In addition to his studies of Platonic political philosophy, Lutz_ has worked on the topics of liberalism and education. He recently published a book on Socratic education. He has worked at the State Department drafting speeches and publications on human rights, and has taught at the University of Toronto and at Notre Dame University. •:•Joseph MacFarland, a new tutor, is an alumnus of St. John's, A87. He earned his doctorate from the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. His dissertation was on world government and the tension between reason and faith in Dante. Other authors his work has emphasized include Aristotle, Virgil, Machiavelli, and Shakespeare. At the University of Chicago he taught in the humanities common core and in the social sciences common core. He also taught academic and professional writing in Chicago's "Little Red Schoolhouse." •!• Devin Stauffer, a new tutor, received a B .A. in political science from Kenyon College and a doctorate from Boston College. His dissertation was on justice in Plato with a view to morality in Kant. His other studies have included Locke on religion, Periclean empire as presented in Thucydides, and Aristotle on virtue. He has taught at Boston College. •!• Lisa Richmond has been appointed librarian. She previously worked at the Medical Library Services of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia. Before that, she was a librarian at the Regent-Carey Library of Regent College and Carey Theological College in Vancouver, British Columbia. She studied at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto and has a B .A. in French language and literature from the University of Regina, Saskatchewan, a Master of Christian Studies from Regent College, and an M.L.S. from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. •!• Shirley McBrayer has been appointed registrar. She previously worked for the Association of American Medical Colleges in Washington, D.C. Before that, she was with the Human Resources Research Organization in Redcliff, Kentucky. She has a B.A. in history from Waynesburg College and an M.B.A. with a concentration in human resources management from Rosary College in River Forest, Illinois. McBrayer has served as registrar at Barat College and at Dominican University, both in Illinois. •!•Matthew Davis is an alumnus of St. John's College, A82. He pursued postgraduate study in philosophy at Dalhousie University, where he received an M.A. in 1984. He was a Ph.D. candidate in classics and philosophy from 1985-87 at the University of Pittsburgh, and received a Ph.D. in political science from Boston College in 1995. Prior to joining St. John's, he taught at the University of Toronto. •!• Peter Gilbert is an alumnus of St. John's College, A81. He studied at Oxford University, where he received a B.A. (M.A.) in theology in 1985. In 1995 he received a Ph.D. at the Catholic University of America, where his major field of study was Greek patristics. He taught at "Ngjallja e Krishtit" ("Resurrection of Christ") Orthodox Seminary in Durres, Albania. •:• Louise Guenther graduated in 1992 from San Francisco State University, where she majored in economics and humanities. Prior to that she studied at Chabot College, where her major was interdisciplinary studies in letters and science. In 1994 she received an M.A. from the University of Minnesota, and recently a Ph.D., also from the University of Minnesota, in the field of world history. •:• George Lane completed his undergraduate work at Reed College and then studied religion and philosophy at the University of Chicago, where he received an M.A. in 1978 and a Ph.D. in 1989. He has taught in the department of philosophy at Elmhurst College and in the department of theology at Loyola University of Chicago. More recently he taught at the University of New Mexico and at Albuquerque Technical Vocational Institute. •:• Jennifer Otsuki, also a graduate of Reed College, studied literature at the University of California, Irvine, where she received a Ph.D. in 1991. Afterwards, she taught in the Department of English and American Literature at Brandeis University. •:• Julie Rehmeyer studied for two years at St. John's College in Santa Fe, and then transferred to Wellesley College where she received a B.A. in mathematics in 1994. She received an M.S. in 1997 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is currently a doctoral candidate there in mathematics. •!•Mark Rollins is a 1977 graduate of Princeton University, where he concentrated in philosophy and physics. He received an M.A. and a Ph.D. in philosophy, in 1986 and 1991 respectively, from the University of California, Berkeley. He has taught at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, American University of Bulgaria, and Harvard University. •!•Gino Thomas is a 1989 graduate of the California Institute of Technology, where he majored in physics. He received an M.A., an M.Phil. and a Ph.D. (1997) in astronomy from Columbia University. Mr. Thomas joined the faculty of St. John's last spring. •!• Kenneth Howarth was appointed Registrar on December 1. Howarth is a graduate of Davidson College in North Carolina. He received an M.A. in Liberal Arts from St. John's College (A96) and an M.A. in Eastern Classics from St. John's College (SF97). Prior to joining St. John's, he was the controller of produce brokerage for the Love Juice Company and the Santa Fe Produce Company, both in Santa Fe. •:• Diane Martinez has retired from her position as registrar after 12 years at St. John's. Dean James Carey praised Martinez as an outstanding member of the staff and a good friend to countless members of the St. John's community. She went above and beyond her duties as registrar and was particularly helpful in enrollment and retention. Her attention to detail and caring attitude will be greatly missed. • �Frolll the Bell Tow-ers ... NEW GRADUATE COMMON ROOM TO BE NAMED IN HONOR OF TUTOR WILLIAM DARKEY ..•..•..••.••..•..••...•..•...••..•...•..........................•......•........•........••...•.....•..••...••...•...•••..•. T he students and faculty of the Santa Fe Graduate Institute have a new, comfortable home. After extensive renovation and remodeling, the space formerly occupied by the old SJC College Bookstore in Peterson Hall has become a Graduate Common Room. The room is named in honor of tutor William Darkey. Funding and support for the project has been provided in large part by former Santa Fe Gls, led by Robert A. Warren (SFGI93). "In Santa the Gis have always felt the need for a space where they could meet and socialize with other graduate students," says Warren. "During the two years I was a we really didn't have such a place. We usually met in the coffee shop, sometimes in the Library. The purpose of the new Common Room is to provide graduate students and tutors with 'a place to call their own.' 'Tm particularly pleased to know that the new facility will be named in honor of Bill Darkey, who has unselfishly served generations of SJC students, both here and in Annapolis," continues Warren. "He was a founding member of the Santa Fe campus, has served as its dean, and has long been active as a tutor in the SF Graduate Institute. Like so many of his former GI students, I remember him not only as a tutor and scholar, but as a friend and colleague." The new facility was suggested by David Levine, the current director of the SF Graduate Institute. "When Annapolis converted their old library into the Barr-Buchanan YEAR t. John's began its fourth century by receiving $7,489, 701 in gifts during fiscal year 1997-98, the most ever in one year. Final figures show that giving trends are generally up for all categories of donors: alumni, parents, friends (non-alumni who are interested in the college), and corporations and foundations. About 323 of (graduated) alumni contributed a total of slightly more than $1. 5 million. This was down from the $2.2 million contributed in '96-97. Although the final year of the Campaign for Our Fourth Century pledges were being paid off, contributions were up significantly from pre-campaign years. Giving by friends of the college increased from $550,000 in '96-97 to $1.23 million, Center, with the Graduate Institute housed on the first floor, the old reading room was first thought of as a natural place for Gls to congregate, a GI Commons of rn sorts. I thought we might do something like that here in Santa Fe." Some summers ago the Graduate Council entertained such an idea. They envisioned a space where one might continue conversations begun in class, work on a paper for tutorial or preceptorial, reread an assignment, hold GI Council meetings, alumni meetings, work with one's essay advisor, hold after seminar receptions, in short do all the things that would make for a more complete graduate experience. The area had been vacant since the bookstore moved into its new, much improved quarters off the main foyer of Petersen Student Center in 1990. The space required extensive work to make it useable. Mr. Warren's generous gift made it possible to undertake this renovation without any impact on the college's budget. Future enhancements will also be entirely supported by private contributions. The Common Room, with approximately ~~~square feet, will provide areas for a separate classroom space (usable for tutorials and preceptorials) and a larger, well lighted seminar /common area, which could also provide space for lectures and small symposia. The common area will feature bancos, a comfortable arm chairs and work tables, a working fireplace, specially designed and installed 'soft' lighting, and warm colors throughout. The main area will include power outlets and network plug-ins for laptop computers. A separate room will house two high-end computers provided as part of the project for the use of Gls. Aside from word processing and Internet/ e-mail network connections, the new computers which were designed, assembled and installed by Walker Hagius, a former Santa Fe undergraduate - will be programmed to assist students in the Eastern Classics--Sanskrit and classical Chinese language tutorials. There also will be a small coffeebar. "The one stipulation of this very wonderful gift was that there always be a good cup of coffee available," Levine said "Not an easy request to fulfill, butwe'll try." Warren declined to state how much financial support he has contributed towards the project, except to note that it, and his commitment, "have grown like Topsy." He commented that "David and I agreed that a job worth doing was one worth doing well. Since this projecthas been mainly financed by private contributions made specifically for this purpose, we've tried to plan and build a first class facility. When completed, the College will have created a pleasant, comfortable environment designed to enhance the Gls' experience while on campus." "It is hoped that this will be a where tutors and GI s can get to know one another better, where GI s and undergraduates might come together and form a more unified community, and, of course, where GI alums can continue their involvement in the life of the college," Levine says. • ETS almost as much as alumni. "This increase speaks to the appreciation of citizens in Annapolis and Santa Fe for the presence of the college," says Jeff Bishop, vice president in Annapolis. Parents are also supporting the college by increased giving - more than doubling their contributions from thepreviousyearto $490,000. More and more parents are realizing that tuition does not cover the cost of educating students at St. John's. Those who have the ability are becoming donors. Money from foundations and corporations rose to $4.2 million from $2.2 million the year before. "Fewer foundations and corporations are supporting liberal arts colleges," says Bishop. "But we have become better at focusing on the few who do and building relationships with them." A new foundation, the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, gave million to the Annapolis campus, while the Santa Fe campus received over $1.25 million in support for the new Student Activities Center and $800,000 in scholarship support from the Brown Foundation. The final significant group of donors were members of the Board of Visitors and Governors, whose gifts totaled $861,676-11.53 of the total given. Most gifts were allocated to the Annual Fund or to the endowment. The Annual Fund, which supports the operating budget on both campuses, met its goa] with a total of $1.65 million. More than $3.5 million was donated to the endowment, which is composed of special funds to support tutorships, scholarships, the libraries, prizes, and other needs. Several new endowment funds were established during the year: memorial funds for Michael Littleton and for James Frame; the Martin Dyer Book Fund; and a Cornell Foundation fund for student financial aid. The college also received significant support for building projects last year. A total of $1. 64 million was contributed for the Student Activities Center in Santa Fe and for the Greenfield Library, the Barr-Buchanan Center, and the new laboratories in Annapolis. 8 �Catnpus Life ... N 0 VA T I 0 N s ............................................................................................................................. R E Top: Pinkney Hall in the 1800's. Right: Students moving on the Santa Fe campus. Pinkney: V isitors to the Annapolis campus often remark on the charm of its 19th century brick buildings--Humphreys (1837), Pinkney (1858), Chase-Stone (1857), and Paca Carroll (1857). Students who live in these dorms, however, soon see a different side of that old charm: leaking pipes in the bathrooms, drafty windows with crumbling sills, walls in need of patching, carpets worn to a frazzle. Keeping the buildings in working order is a big job for the college; deferred maintenance is constant. This summer Pinkney underwent the first part of a two-phase maintenance project. The work included a number of improvements to student dorm rooms on the top three floors: replacing all the closets and cabinets; putting in overhead lighting, putting in new cables for phones and computers; patching and touch-up painting; gutting all bathrooms and replacing all pipes, then completely rebuilding the bathrooms; and putting in new carpeting. On the first floor, which houses college offices for placement, financial aid, and personnel, new doors were installed, some offices were re-configured, and new carpeting was put down. The fire alarm system for the whole building was upgraded. The $600,000 price tag included architectural and engineeringwork, construction, and new furniture. Charles Berliner, A70, was the contractor. Next summer, the exterior of the building will be renovated. The stone windowsills will be replaced, and major repairs on all 124 windows will be made. The brick will be re-pointed and the roof will be repaired. According to college treasurer Bud Billups, this work was scheduled for next year because permits to renovate the exterior of buildings within Annapolis' Historic District take time to obtain. Pinkney has seen its share of renovations. At the turn of the century, the building sprouted 20 turrets andin the 1930s it wore a thick covering of ivy, both now gone. In 1992, the walls separating East Pinkney from West Pinkney were removed and the old iron heat registers in each room were replaced by individual air. and heating units. According to St. John's legend, the walls separating the sides were put in after two students engaged in a duel in one of the hallways - having found it to be exactly 20 paces in each direction from the center. Santa Fe Dorms: eanwhile, on the younger Santa Fe campus, dorm buildings are getting a tune-up to provide safer and more modern housing. The first major renovations on the "Uppers" began in August. Wagner was the first to be completed on October 23. Students housed in McCune at the beginning of the semester were moved to the newly renovated Wagner so that work could begin on McCune. Assistant Dean Basia Miller and Housing Director Kathy Mizrahi brought libations of coffee and donuts to cheer the McCune residents for the early morning transplant. Buildings and Grounds employees moved the large, heavy furniture, while the former McCune students carried their personal belongings to their new Wagner rooms. Word has it that some, more ceremonial residents of the dorm found solace in transporting one treasured item at a time, in true Santa Fean, meditative style. Despite the inconvenience of reduced housing capacity, both the Housing Office and Conference Services are pleased that repairs are right on schedule. Renovations on each dorm in "Uppers" will be completed by the end of the 1999 summer term, including Meem, Driscoll, Murchison, and Kirby. Renovations on the "Lowers" are tentatively scheduled for fall 1999. Each dorm takes nine weeks for completion; by June, Anderson, Huffman, and McCune will have the sparkle of brand new buildings. Renovations include general abatement (asbestos removal), repainting and refinishing furniture, new covering for the ceiling, new handle bar locks on the doors (like those on the doors of the suites), new hall carpeting, replaced floor tiles, new light fixtures in the rooms; and new windows for safe emergency evacuation. In addition, new wiring will include a second phone jack for computer network connection. • Sarah Fridrich (SF99) '' PEAKING VOLUMES'' Author Marie Romero Cash and photographer Siegfried Halus at a lecture and slide presentation on their new book Living Shrines: Home Altars ofNew Mexico, on October 14, 1998, in Santa Fe. "Speaking Volumes" lectures are sponsored by the Library and Fine Arts Guild of the Santa Fe campus. �Cantpus Life ... PRECEPTORIALS Ulhat's Hot and Ulhat's Not P receptorials were adopted at the suggestion of Curtis Wilson, then Dean of the college, in 1962. Wilson thought that the senior year had become disagreeable to many students, who ploughed their way through just for the sake of a degree. He also worried that students weren't developing the ability to lead a "continuing process of independent investigation" about anything. The preceptorial, where a very small group of students would work with a tutor on one book or subject for a seven-week period, was the result of the faculty's discussion of the problems that Wilson had brought to their attention. Alumni now on their own for choosing readings or study matter might be interested in finding out what is being studied in Annapolis this year - what program readings are "in", and what outside-ofprogram subjects are capturing the attention of students and tutors. •Nietzsche, Philosophy in the Tragic Age ofthe Greeks and Birth of Tragedy: The purpose is to gain a perspective on Nietzsche's view of pre-Socratic philosophy, which is poetic and life-affirming and is compatible with the strength and beauty of the "tragic culture." Leader: Jonathan Badger •Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro. Leader: Andre Barbera •Kant's The Metaphysics of Morals: An examination of Kant's modern ethics of autonomy, freedom, and human rights. Leader: Laurence Berns •Melville's Moby Dick. Leader: Nancy Buchenauer •Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations. Leader: Michael Comenetz • Herodotus. Leader: Radoslav Datchev •Lady Muraski: The Tale of Genji: A study of the long, complex narrative written in 11th century Japan by a lady of the Hein Court. Leader: George Doskow • Dostoyevsky'sDemons. Leader: Robert Druecker •Plato's Gorgias: A close reading of the text, together with Book One of The Republic. Leader: Robert Goldberg • Shakespeare, selected sonnets. Leader: Margaret Kirby • Aristotle'sNicomachean Ethics. Leader: Carl Page •Plato's Symposium and Marsilio Ficino's Commentary on Plato s Dialogue on Love. Leader: William Pastille. •Machiavelli's Prince and Discourses. Leader: George Russell •Erwin Strauss's The Primary World ofthe Senses: A reconsideration of the claim that animals are machines and the experimental discoveries of the first half of this century that provide evidence for it. Leader: Joe Sachs • Heidegger: the opening sections of Introduction to Metaphysics, plus parts of Being and Time. Leader: Eric Salem •Writings of Francis Bacon: An examination of literary, scientific, and philsophical writings by the founder of the modern project, encompassing the conquest of nature for the relief of human misery, the anticipation of infinite progress, and the unleashing of human acquisitiveness for hwnane ends. Leader: Adam Schulman • Anthropological perspectives on society: Focusing on the organizing principles of social groups, particularly the relationships between individuals and society. Selections from Herodotus, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, Fusel De Coulange, Marcel Mauss, Bronislaw Malinowski, Claude Levi-Strauss, Edward Leach, and Marshall Sahlins. Leader: Judith Seeger "Kierkegaard, Either/Or: The development of the radical opposition between the aesthetic and the ethical. Leader: David Stephenson •Whitehead's Philosophy of Nature. Leader: Robert Williamson 8 RAFTING WEEKEND SANTA FE STUDENT ACTIVITIES RAFTING Trur ON SAN JUAN RrvER Top Left: Kee Zublin, Liz Borshard, Patricia Eamon, in water hole. Top Right: Mark St. John and Liz Borshard in canoe. Brendan O'Neill, Sam Parker, Karen Costa, Tallie Scroggs, Kathleen Van Luchene, and Mack McConnell in boat. Lower Left: Students hike down Chinlee Wash to see Anasazi Ruins. �Scholarship ... A WORK OF THE MIND, A WORK OF ART ............................................................................................................................. The Dedicaaon efthe Mo.s.r Haggadtzh was a highlight efthe 1998 Santa Fe Homecoming. The Haggadah was created by artist DavzdMru.s (SF68) and donated to the Meem Library by Tom Geyer (A68). A Haggadah is a .small book that is read aloud at the Pas.sover Seder. It tells the .story efthe Exodusfrom Egypt through quote.sfrom the Torah_, prayer.s, .song.s, and commentary. Remarks at the Dedication ofthe Moss Haggadah at the Meem Library T he Haggadah is the main event today and we are lucky to have David with us from Jerusalem to talk about it. I would just like to say a few words about what it means to me to have this exhibit. David was the worst person I knew at St. John's when we were here in 1968. He had no vices but was implacably hostile to arbitrary authority. Arbitrary being any authority he didn't like. "When President Weigle invited an important New Mexican to deliver the first Santa Fe commencement address, David went so far as to visit him and ask him not to come. For this I admired him tremendously. I had lots of vices but was always polite. So it was a bit disorienting when, after college, David chose to commit himself to the strict observance of I ewish law. It seemed downright perverse at times, as I was completing my own journey away from my Protestant religious roots. As the years passed we seemed to keep moving in opposite directions: David prayed, kept kosher, married Rosalyn, had four wonderful children, moved to Israel and pursued his art. I smoked, drank and worshipped at the altar of commerce. Nevertheless, we remained friends. We seem to be the kind of friends that perhaps only those who meet as un-formed adolescents can be, surviving great distances, long separations and even long silences. I knew I should give my copy of David's book to the Meem Library when I first saw the new building five years ago. The Haggadah is, after all, not only a magnificent book but perhaps the only physical work of art by a Johnny that will be looked at and studied in times far removed from ours. On the other hand, I didn't want to give it up. For me it has been not only a beautiful possession but a kind of window into the soul of a complex and fascinating friend. And I confess I loved showing it off to people. But at last it is here on campus in Santa Fe. Seeing it in its fine display case for the first time a couple of months ago, I was overwhelmed by a sense that it had found its right place. I'm grateful to the college and our librarian, Inga Waite, for Image from the Song of David Haggadah © 1998 Bet Alpha Editions. making such a perfect home for it. But I must admit my favorite thing about this exhibit is seeing my name next to David's at the top of the plaque. I don't remotely deserve this honor, but I like to think that future generations of Johnnies will see our names-one from Santa Fe, the other from Annapolis-and wonder, how did they know each other? -why did they care for one another? "What did they learn from one another? I hope those students are as blessed in their friendships as we have been. Thomas Geyer (A68) About the Moss Haggadah I n 1980, Richard Levy, a collector of antique Judaica, commissioned David Moss to create a hand-written, handilluminated Haggadah. "While the project was originally planned to take a year, Moss ended up working on it full-time for three years, half of which was spent researching in libraries and museums on three continents. The fruit of his labor was a work of scholarship, art, and religious study, created with elaborate and painstaking detail both in its design and execution. The pages overflow with complex symbolism; the craftsmanship employs a world of techniques, including elaborate cut-outs, micrography borders, and gold leaf. In 1985, Moss and Levy agreed to allow the Haggadah to be reproduced, on the condition that it remain faithful to the original in every respect: size, color detail, and special techniques. The Haggadah's publisher, BetAlphaEditions, was established for this project with a mission to produce a deluxe, limited edition facsimile that would be as indistinguishable from the original as human craftsmanship and modern technology would allow. The book was printed at Stamperia Valdonego ofVerona, which Moss considers the finest printing establishment in the world, and the paper was made especially for the edition by the Carriere Fredrigoni of Verona. Printingwas done on a single color press, with some sheets printed twenty-five times. Moss' elaborate cut-outs were achieved by precision laser in California. According to book dealer Henry Hollander, the facsimile's memorable details are too numerous to describe comprehensively, but he cites a few: "The texture and bleedthrough from the original vellum copy are apparent. A fold-away flap shows the nations in which Jews have resided and been expelled. There is a moveable cup of Elijah. At the Betzait Yisrael MiMitzrayim, a weaving line of men, women and children can be seen to follow that song's melody in an illuminated ·musical notation of the artist's own devising. At L'Dor VaD01-, a checkerboard arrangement of portraits and silverfoil 'mirrors' is used to brilliantly illustrate the continuity 'from generation to generation.' "When held dose together, the checkerboard of generations on these facing pages is seen to mingle. On each page the artist engages the reader in the text, invoking new insights into this ageold story of exile and redemption." Because Moss' Haggadah is a work of the mind as well as a work of art, each facsimile edition is made up of two volumes: one the copy of the Haggadah, and the other a detailed page-by-page commentary. At the Santa Fe Homecoming, Moss explained that he did not consider one volume or the other to be the Haggadah, but instead, both together. The facsimile of the Haggadah was published just before Passover in 1987. Aumi Shapiro, reviewing the book for the London Jewish Chronicle, wrote, ""When I handled it I trembled, because what I saw was in my view, the greatest Haggadah ever produced. In October, 1988, the most definitive exhibit on the Hebrew book ever assembled opened at the New York Public Library. Of the thirteen most important and beautiful 11.a.gg~aaalll manuscripts shown, Moss' was the only one created after 1717. Five hundred of the first edition's five hundred and fifty copies were sold within a year of publication (the current price is $6500). The "White House purchased a copy to present to then-Israeli President Chaim Herzog as an official gift from the United States. Many of the editions were purchased by major libraries, museums and institutions such as the Library of Congress, the British Museum, the Getty Museum, and the rare book collections of Princeton, Yale, and Harvard universities. Thanks to the generosity of Geyer and his friendship with Moss, it is now also in the collection of the Meem Library of St. John's College. 9 Sus3an Borden (A87) �THE OTHERWORLDLY SIDE OF ST. JOHN'S: Y ears ago, while I was writing my Senior Essay, I needed quiet and chose to work one night up in McDowell Hall. The hours passed one into the next and when I finally looked at my watch, it was midnight. It might have been my shock at the hour, or tiredness, or perhaps too much Homer, but I suddenly felt spooked-that I wasn't alone; that I had to get out of there. I quickly packed my things and started down the stairs. There had been a waltz party the night before In the 19 8Os a student watched a through one in ofher second-floor Pinkney room out and some of the evidence lingered: a strand or two of crepe paper along the balcony, somebody's scarfleft behind, and one white helium balloon attached to a paper ribbon. When I saw the balloon out of the corner of my eye, however, it wasn't just lingering .. .it was following me down the stairs! Predictably, as I moved faster, it moved faster too. If you, Gentle Reader, were not such polite company, I would tell you the truth-which was that that white balloon scared the begeezus out of me. I ran the rest of the way down the steps, out the double doors and into the comforting atmosphere of the late Sunday night campus where-thankfully-there were a few lights on in Pinkney and Randall, a few students walking home, distant laughter. I've only told a handful of people this story until now. Most of them said that the balloon chase might have had something to do with temperature. But what of the overwhelming feeling I got before it happened? The "I am not alone" sense? Safe in the present, I like to think the balloon came down the steps that night with some brash young Civil War soldier who was among the troops recuperating in McDowell, a temporary hospital during the war. Perhaps his buddies dared him. Perhaps he was equally mischievous around a sister or a sweetheart back home. But mine is not the only story of a possible haunting on the Annapolis campus. You may have heard about "The Whistler." This ghost has antagonized generations of SJC security officers by calling them with A GHOST STORY one of those professional-baseballnot Monet and certainly not Jerry player whistles until they bite the Lewis. In the 1980s a student watched a bait and walk over to the whistle's cadet march in through one wall of seeming source, only to hear that her second-floor Pinkney room and dastardly Whistler calling them anew from somewhere else 100 yards out through the other. In the early 1990s a student studying in away. This, I have been assured, was McDowell once proven over and opened the door over again not to to one of the be a prankster, second-floor not to be a bird, classrooms and and not to be a encountered a fellow security man reading by a officer. It is a fire in the distinctly human fireplace. The whistle, saythe room was guards, and decorated with seems to come 19th century from something furniture. She that is, most didn't think definitely, about what she watching them. was seeing Then there is because she was the woman who startled that she prances up and had disturbed down the steps in someone in what Carroll Barrister seemed to be a (anxiously private room. awaiting some She quickly said, Revolutionary "Excuse me!" War soldier's and shut the homecoming?); door. Afew and the ghost who closes doors in seconds later, however, it registered the Greenfield library (once the that what she saw didn't make sense. Maryland State Archives Building She couldn't resist opening the door and workplace of Frank White, an again. This time, however, it was just infamous practical joker and prime a regular classroom and no one was suspect in that building's current there. McDowell once housed haunting); and the ghostly lovers professors and their families. People from the 19th century who stroll on have heard the back campus: he, sound of a Native children American running up on The number and variety of student; she, a the third floor St. John's of the building hauntings on our campus is College when there were professor's impressive. Perhaps it's no (live) daughter. They children around. because so much living and were forbidden Security guards to see each dying has been done on our in the '80s told other, so they of venetian 29 acres. threw blinds going up themselves into in McDowell College Creek though they one winter night searched for the and drowned. blind-raisers in vain. The number and variety of After listening to these stories, hauntings on our campus is and paging through tattered impressive. Perhaps it's because so newspaper clippings, my next move much living and dying has been done was clear: I had to go back. I had to on our 29 acres. Lafayette set up gather my courage and revisit camp here with his soldiers during McDowell at the stroke of midnight. But I couldn't go alone. I needed an the Revolutionary War. Many of the expert. I needed company. I men died of disease and were buried considered Zelda, my neighbor's near where the French Monument personal psychic, who claimed to see stands today. Up until the 1930s, I a ghost last spring in a Kent Island am told, you could still see some of antique shop. (It was only the the wooden grave markers. Back in proprietress. _AJj a local, I know.) the 1950s a student walking on back Instead, I settled on Steve-our twocampus one evening encountered a French Soldier ... on guard! I'd say year-old shepherd-Lab mix-a serious dog, sensitive, insightful, with keen when you see that fella, he might be detective skills for both the able to discuss Pascal, but definitely supernatural and for domestic and imported cheeses. Steve would be the "expert," our detector of ghosts. My little sister, Taylor, a fine woman of courage, hilarity, and 30 years experience as my Sancho Panza, would be my company. There were students giggling in the distance as we sneaked on to campus with Steve. I scanned the facade of McDowell. It was dark; only the light in the bell tower was on. No silhouettes in the windows, but something seemed to be waiting for us. The door opened easily (unusual in these days of high security). Did someone anticipate this Top Secret investigation? We padded up the stairs quickly, determined. Because of the 1989 renovations, these were not the exact steps I trod during my student days. Nor were they the very ones the Civil War boys used. But they were "as near as dammit," as we say around my house. We reached the third floor. Our flashlights panned the hallway, moving slowly around the dark, empty classrooms. I looked at our ghost detector. She panted gently, looking up at me, probably thinking about dairy products. "Are you sensing anything, Steve?" I whispered. He licked my face. Then we thought we heard something. "That," said my sister, "was definitely from inside, not outside." We moved forward. Midnight was nearing. We were just going to have to wait until we heard another sound or saw something strange. "Let things happen," said Taylor. "This is a scientific investigation and should not be contrived." I agreed. In the ensuing silence it dawned on me that she might just be humoring me. We hunkered down. Hunkering down was a thing I learned to do at summer camp from a Mennonite preacher. (It was a Mennonite Camp.) It was also one of the few and only positions that Taylor, Steve and I could all take at once. After an hour or so of the kind of peace and whispered conversation that rarely fits into my schedule, I discovered that McDowell Hall is as comfortable as an old shoe for me. We eventually gravitated toward the windows. Being in that building late at night, with Annapolis so still around us and the shadows from the trees outside moving softly in the cupola's light, I felt a most wonderful sense of appreciation. There are hundreds and hundreds of ghosts in McDowell, I decided. Perhaps they were, in the gentlest way, letting us see that night why they chose this place ... and why they might want to raise the blinds when they think no one is watching. • By Sarah Waters (A88) �ROBERT BART .... A part of the oral history project to record memories f St. John's earlier days, Valerie Pawlewicz (A89) interviewed Robert Bart. Mr. Bart has been a tutor at St. John's since 1946. In 1977 he moved to Santa Fe, where he served as dean from 1977 to 1982. He became tutor emeritus in 1990 and lives in Santa Fe. VP: I wantedto .rtart bymkingyou que.rtiollJ ahoutyour.re!f; .ro to hegin,, what wereyou doing hefi>reyou ever heard<ifthe college? RB: I first heard of the college when I was a sophomore in college myself, at Harvard. Mr. Barr's nephew was in the college simultaneously- that is W.R.B. Lewis - and we were sort of friends. The Life article had just come out. This has to have been 1938 or '39 because I graduated in 1940. He gathered a group of us who he thought were intelligent or interesting to talk about the Life article and in effect to talk about St. John's. Mr. Barr had really excited a lot of people in the education world by St. John's. I thought it was the craziest idea I'd ever heard of. But that was really based on an awful lot of ignorance on my part. I didn't know most of the curriculum. I did know that to tackle four languages in four years was kind of a crazy notion. The curriculum was an inspired notion of Mr. Buchanan, but I was not in the frame of mind to learn that at that point. VP: W'hatwereyousmdyingat Harvard? RB: Well, various people at Harvard were kind of upset by the division of the intellectual disciplines as practiced so they made a first move towards St. John's in widening very much one of the history sections. They produced something called history and literature. In my case it allowed me to study almost everything in the humanities for credit and I was able to put together a fairly exciting list of studies and to study with almost all the best people in the humanities at Harvard. VP: So what didyou do in tho.re six years hetween graduating andcoming to St.John's? RB: Well, the war was in there, and after the war I did some ordinary manual things and realized that that wasn't going to be enough for me. But I thought this was going to be about the college. I don't like talking about myself. VP: JVt. n getting to the college. W'hat how didyou hearaboul the college agai11? RB: Oh, it's complicated, as almost everything in life really is. My best friend had a cousin who picked up the college catalogue and knew me and said "I think this is the place for Bob Bart." And it turned out that that was right. I read the catalogue. I was very excited. I had had a chance to reflect a lot on my Harvard education and what I would really like to be doing. I felt I wanted to be a teacher. So that's what directed me to the college, and within a few months I was actually appointed. VP: Didyou have to comefor an interview? RB: Yes, I came to Annapolis. I fell in love with the college immediately, that was an amazing experience. Mr. Buchanan's secretary told me how to get to a room that they had in one of the happene~ The students were talking about things I cared about, which never quite happened at Harvard. I was enchanted by the college. dormitories and told me to come back for Mr. Buchanan's seminar. I would never permit any visitor to do what I did. But the seminar was King Lear, and I was so excited by the discussion. Mr. Buchanan foolishly had placed me beside him at the table, and I just leaned over and I said "do you mind ifl say something?" Of course, it was about an hour and half later that I stopped talking with the students. It was just the most exciting exchange. I saw how wonderful the students were and that they were talking about things I cared about, which in some sense had never quite happened at Harvard. So I was enchanted by the college. I thought this must be a place where the sorts of things I care for go on. I made that decision very happily by three o'clock. Good thing, because the next morning I went to a Euclid class. In those days they had Euclid all year long, and the students really were totally incompetent, could do nothing. The tutor said "I guess we better go back and study Book Five again." That was the face of the college which was not so untypical of those early years. The students were very ill-prepared. That doesn't mean that there weren't excellent students. I went away wildly excited. After seminar I met with some members of the Instruction Committee. I didn't know what to make of that meeting because it wasn't a real meeting and it wasn't an inteTview. It was just in the faculty lounge and people drifted in and out. I don't even remember sitting down, but I suppose I did. But I went back home and within a couple of days, Barr sent me a letter saying that my background was as good as a Ph.D. and would I join the faculty. It's incredible that something 50 years ago still moves me very much. They were very good to me. Very, very good. VP: BarharaLeonard stillhas her acceplance letter. RB: Yes, well, in both our lives, it was a tremendous turning point. I've never regretted coming to St. John's, and I don't think they've ever regretted that I came. VP: You were infact inAnnapolirfor 30yearJ befi>reyou moved to Santa Fe. RB: Yes, yes, I loved Annapolis. Hated leaving there. VP: So there were a loteftheJ·eearly people around when you staned in '46. You wouldhave been aroundin the '47'4 9presidenuhip <ifKieffer andthe difficulties during thatperiod. Now., yvu don I have to go into them in detail but what was it like as a young llltor to haveyvuradminirtrationflip flopping and a loteftemion? RB: It was devastating in the sense that I didn't think that some of those administrations were very fortunate for the college. Nothing shook my faith in what we called then so calmly and firmly, the Program. We were convinced the institution was on the right track but hadn't had a very fortunate choice of leaders, and so we lost a dean, we lost a president. I was involved in the politics of the college more than I cared to be. I was so brash and presumptuous that I waited on the president, Mr. Kieffer, and told him that if he didn't resign, I would. This was my third year. I saw, the wonderful man that he was, he was never cut out to be president. I think most people agreed, he just plain couldn't act; it was necessary. VP: I think rhatwar under.stood. W'harIwar impres.redhyir that he stayedon as a tutor; as did the others. It takes a re.rilient communily to have pai1iflllupheavalandto remain a community. RB: I agree with you. I think it was just marvelous and I think it was characteristic of him as it was also of me and a number of us. We believed in the institution, that is to say what was going on there, more than any other thing. JP: adminirtration. You have thir new dean~ JarhaKlein,, The enrollment ir going down andyou have toughfinancial times Ul the earlyfiftie.r. Its a rather tough time to he a new per.ron. RB: Well,_bythen I didn't feel all that new. I was on the Instruction Committee fairly early on in my career and was on it an immense amount of the time that I have been at the college actually, even after I stopped being dean myself. When Jim Carey came here, he made use of my firm opinions and long experience. VP: So bythenyoufeltyou understoodEhirplace andthmyo11 couldweatherlhese .rto111U andit would carry on. I know someefthe discw.rwn in the '50.r war ahout theprogram_, how it was going to he. Somepeople who were smdenu at the time said that they .penta lot'![their time.figuring out what the school wouldbecome., what we .Jhouldreatl what we should110tread. RB: Yes, that's true. Yes, Tom Simpson was very much involved in that. That was a time of foment but not a time of great change. The major change came when Curtis Wilson became dean. He sure was the major figure of the years after Mr. Klein. The introduction of the preceptorials, which I think was very fortunate, was his idea. But, I don't care to talk much about change; it's inevitable and sometimes painful but the college, to anybody who looks at it, is obviously not about change. Our concern is to try to deal with the best in the past that's useful to us, and change is going to occur. I don't have any interest in change for its own sake. JP: In 196{l thepre.rident at the �... .An Intellectual Force on Two Campuses tim~ Jrieigl~ hadhufirst conversation ahout a secondcampus. He waJ· speakingI.forget to whom and they car.r-101.u i1.rMom'ert.'Y. So the verymuch. Verymuch. was one of Mr. Weigle's few supporters in this venture, which was considered to be . . the faculty. And that's the sort of resistance change that was I was of the committee that came out to Santa Fe with Mr. to consider possible campuses and possible sites. I think all of us fell in love with Santa Fe. Many people warned us of the consequences of plotting ourselves here. I'm not quite sure whether they were right and we were wrong. I emphatically said Santa Fe and for reasons it seemed to me significant. There was a question of who was going to support the college. Mr. Weigle thought that Santa F'e would provide a great deal of support and it did. But the fact of the matter is, that it wasn't enough. Santa Fe had to undergo some of the changes it's undergone. It's become quite a different place in the 35 years since we made the decision and has become more supportive of St. John's. JP: You were on the committee th.at came out to visit the site andyecyou R.Linfield Robert Bart, tutor emeritus, came to St. John's College in 1946 and served as dean from 1977 to 1982. because I came out here in '75 at Mr. Weigle's and Mr. Neidorf's urging. They said "please come out and at least be here for a year." And I said "I don't know that I can stand it for a year. I'll agree to come out for a half a year." But by then I had grown didn tcomeyourselfto teach until ten years efter it started. ~ydidn 'tyou rome right away? RB: Well, there are so many different reasons. One is that I am an easterner and a thorough-going easterner, the kind of easterner whose eyes are turned towards Europe and not towards the West. The whole western experience is essentially alien to me. But I love it here. I love the views and I love the mountains. It was a big shock for the faculty when they discovered that they got such an easterner. I haven't tried to insist on how eastern I am, but it's transparent from my accent to the ties I used to wear when I could and so on. No, there were other members of the faculty who were obviously eager to be here - Curtis Wilson, Michael Ossorgin. They were people who really wanted to be in the West. Michael appreciated the desert-like character of Santa Fe, for example. VP: How long didyou intend to come outhere? RB: Well, that's a funny story Our concern is to try to with the best in the past that's useful to us, and change is going to occur. I don't have any interest in change for its own sake. very, very fond of the students and my classes. And, I stuck the year out, not unhappily. I mean I love the sunshine. I love the blue sky. So, in the spring of '76, I went back to Annapolis thinking that I had done my duty and could settle into the life that I really wanted to enjoy, which would have been a life of study. Suddenly, I found a year later that theywere asking me to be dean. I knew the difficulties would be great. But I'll say I never had a really unpleasant time with faculty or students in the five years I was dean. It was amazing, but it was true. Immediately afterwards I saw what could happen to deans, but that's another story. JP: The last que.rtion: Is there a last memoryth.atyou 'dlilce recordedor something thatyou think if worth noting? RB: Not specifically. In the tension between the two campuses, it does sadden me that Mr. Klein who was such a very great man, seems not to be, not only not loved, but not admired. I think that's a very great pity. That's because, though we have founders in Mr. Buchanan and Mr. Barr, they imagined that the college might not continue. The continuance of the college is the chief tribute to Mr. Klein. I think it's a pity that that's not always understood. There are a lot of people out here who talk of Klein as though not a man deserving much respect. Now that may be partly the respect that comes from opposing him, but I think it's mostly just not even seriously trying to understand him. Part of his greatness, as was Mr. Buchanan's, was that the living man that you talked with was so great; it was not the books he wrote or something like that. It's been understood of course that I was mostly shaped by Mr. Klein, but people do talk of him in ways that pain me very much because we wouldn't be here if it weren't for him. Because when he stopped his work on Plato, and took the college in hand for ten years, we were just in chaos. There was no visible center, there was the Program but it wasn't clear even that everybody really subscribed to its central characteristic. In other words, people would've thought its center was at different places. So, that was a very great moment when he agreed to be dean, and when they asked him to be dean because he was a foreigner, he was a Jew. St. John's in Annapolis had been a little local college of no significance in the educational scene at all. Mr. Klein was very conscious of the fact that he was foreign and kwish, that he had to walk carefully. It was a Board that was largely made up of Marylanders. So that's the thing that should be remembered. But colleges are living institutions. They live on their memories to some extent but to some extent they live by forgetting. 8 �CLONING CARROTS. • • Ten tutors in Annapolis spent the summer traipsing through swamps and making tissue cultures ofcarrots - all with the aim oflearning more about modern biology. ................................................................................................................................... W: en tutors commit to eaching a laboratory class t St. John's, most of them are adding a dimension to the way they think about the world. They may have studied a lot of philosophy, or English, or mathematics, or political science - and these backgrounds enable them to step easily into leading a freshman seminar or a sophomore math class. But only a few have had much experience in the kinds of science that employ laboratory techniques. "Modern science," where years of directed experimentation combined with random flashes ofluck lead to tiny advances in understanding, seems to be a different kind of endeavor, perhaps because the methods it employs are not those that can be developed by studying pnillo~m~'hY mathematics, or political science. of the 1996 grant for million from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to the Annapolis campus is tutors explore the mt~thocls. tools, and ideas of modern biology. This summer ten tutors participated in a special biology study group; two other groups often will meet during the next two summers so that at the end of the three-year grant period, fully a third of the faculty will have participated. The Hughes grant also funded several other important initiatives including the renovation of four Mellon lab rooms, several project rooms and a care molecular biology lab; summer internships for students in medicine, biology, and biochemistry; and the development of St. John's-style science curricula for local middle schools. Guided by tutors Kathy Blits and Nick Maistrellis, the ten tutors trooped through marshes, spent hours creating sterile environments in the lab, cloned carrots, and tackled biochemistry texts. (Faculty members participating were: Lijun Gu, Mera Flaumenhaft, Henry Higuera, John White, George Russell, Margaret Kirby, John Silver, Abe Schoener, Debbie Renaut, and lab director Mark Daly; med schoolbound Christine Love, a recent grad, served as an assistant.) "Biology Camp," as it came to be called, met three afternoons a week for three hours for eight weeks. What the tutors learned is not immediately translatable into the present curriculum. "We wanted to give them a conceptual landscape as well as a hands-on feel for what modern biology is like," says Blits. "In fact, the material that we used is contemporaneous with the last of what is done in senior lab, the discovery of regulatory mechanisms the college 20 years. She liked the idea of studying plants because, as she says, "Aristotle moves so quickly to consider animals-I thought it would be useful to talk more about plants as part of a consideration of what life is." A newer tutor, George Russell, was inspired by the subject matter also. "I had just taught freshman lab, and I thought it would be nice to spend more time learning in the lab," says Russell, who's been on the faculty three years. He realized over the summer that to become proficient in the bench work you have to do the tasks over and over. ''It's little things, he explains. ''At first with dissections you are terrible, you can't cut anything h.,;- -.rrm get better at it." in laboratory was one focus, the group also discussed a set ofreadings (see boxL some in the familiar St. Nick Maistrellis (right) shows spectrophotometer. Gu and Debbie Renaut how to use a in bacteria." Most faculty members have not spent time developing the kinds of skills needed to do careful bench work. AB Maistrellis says, "They are good at reading and learning and talking, but this [bench work] is new to them." The dual aims of investigating the concepts of modem biology and learning lab techniques determined the plan of study that Blits and Maistrellis developed (tutor Chester Burke, A74, also worked on the curriculum for the study group, but did not participate this first year). They chose botany as their forum because, as Maistrellis says, "we're animals and we think we know about ourselves;" studying plants would make the questions more vivid. Mera Flaumenhaft, one of the participants, has been teaching at in Gymnosperms The group began by reading sections of The Natural Philosophy ofPlant Form by Agnes Arber, a botanist who worked in the 1940s and 1950s. Arber's focus is on what she calls "morphology," which she defines more broadly than other biologists do. For her, the important goal is to keep some sense of the wholeness of the organism before you at all times as you examine it and its parts. "She wants to ask whether there is a whole, what it is, and whether you can keep it before you. It's an interesting, serious attempt to see whether Aristotle's notion of causality might be revived and used as the basis for a contemporary biology," says Blits. "You would see in the internal organization of the living thing an indication of aspects of the whole which are indispensable in understanding what the organism actually does.". After discussing these readings, the tutors began their field work - in the Mellon courtyard. Still deserted after all these years, the courtyard does have one great feature: four 30foot tall magnolia trees. The tutors spent days studying the trees, examining leaves, twigs, buds, and roots, and eventually dissecting the parts and looking for their connections. "We were trying to say what the particular form of growth is," says Maistrellis. What makes a magnolia a magnolia, what makes a tree a tree and not a shrub? The tutors found that giving an account of the form of the tree was an interpretive activity, without a direct correspondence between what they �• • .AT BIOLOGY CAMP ..•..•...•..••......•..•••••••...........•.......•......................•....••••........•.................•..........•............ were seeing and what they could say. The "looking" activity soon advanced to the lab room. "I found the dissections and using the microscopes very rewarding," say~ Flaumenhaft, who has taught freshman lab but had little experience using microscopes. She · also spent hours on her drawings, something she often has urged students to do but has never devoted time to herself. Maistrellis and Blits, both of whom have academic backgrounds in biology, think that an understanding of the form of a living must be considered alongside its function. '"Form and function are two of the living thing," says Blits. "In considering the internal on!:!m11zat1on - which has to do with what the does, OT its function invariably going to ask about the chemistry. perhaps u11,derstarndrnte: of the form can be hiochemistrv." But to arrive at a beginning of a discussion about biochemistry, the group first considered several other aspects of botany: internal (including cell differentiation), and growth activity of plants), and ecology an individual affects and is affected by its place). "Talking about the form leads to a consideration of development, the unfolding of the plant," says Maistrellis. During this consideration, the grnup tackled the technically difficult task of tissue culture OT cloning. Theyworked with carrots. The methods for using a non-growing segment of a plant to generate a new plant with the identical genetic structure were developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s. According to Maistrellis, "it's surprisingly difficult to transfer things from one place to another without contamination. The tutors felt proudest of doing the tissue cultures - they all managed to make sterile transfers so that the cloned carrots grew successfully." Russell was not only proud - he was amazed. "I couldn't believe you could actually do this." Other lab work centered on Top: Mera Flanmenhaft and Henry Higuera show off their enzyme assay. Bottom: Margaret Kirby prepares for a protein analysis experiment. readings about the amount of protein. I'm not sure how this was elucidatine: the wholeness of the the most basic issues the group dealt with over the summer. directness - "what h"'""'~,.,,, he asked. "For the hotorne1rrv we suddenlv had mashed up little tubes embryos, and from that we ternt1c." says to the camaraderie that the and the sense of~~~~,,~~ ..."' of what St. John's labs can be," says Maistrellis. What the study group tried to do essentially St. John's kind of dealt with the can see and what you can't see-where can't see is what makes can see the way it is. .n.u3:,t;11 claims the "'"'"'~N,.,~~ between the seen and unseen is that it penetrates to the kind of questions modern scientists are willing to ask. "It may be the case that if you ask questions about form you will eventually begin to ask questions about the mechanisms of the thing under investigation. The 'what is it' question may lead to the 'how does it work' question, which is about the mechanisms. If you're raised on laboratory science, if that's the way you think, and you're . asking questions about how things happen, it's not clear that you ever get from that to the question of form." The beauty of the St. John's way of dealing with science is that you always do get to the basic questions, because you never leave them. For the tutors, the bench work focusing on the "how" of the plants combined with their discussions about the inseparability of the plants' form and function eventually took them back to the question of the "what," which they could discuss with greater insight. Having spent the summer discussing experimental activity and how it may or may not contribute to theoretical questions, members of the faculty study group are ready to lead their lab classes once again-but .with a better understanding of the methods and modern Most are still whose aim is to e1u11i:U11 behind the seen. Barbara ~mTPITP A73 �BooKREVIEW Richard E. Miller, As If Learning Mattered: ReformingHigher Education, Ithaca and London: Cornell ix+249 pp., cloth .........•.................................•.........•.......•....................••...........•............................. economic climate (123). "To naturalize" is bad and means to make to seem natural or essential what is really socially conditioned, such as hierarchies of excellence. Whereas the old historicism .u:u-'-"''-HF. human ichard Miller is an alumnus of at Rutgers University. suggesting that I might review his book, he hono:red me with his trust in my appreciative openness, since he must have known - he cites some of my writings on the college - that I could not possibly like much of what he says. This is a mordant book. It is biting, disillusioned, bitterly realistic. It is also totally unboring a near miraculous achievement in a book on education. "Enjoyable" is not quite the right description for it, but "gripping" would do. Mr. Miller employs a poker-faced objective mode and a knowing academic diction to skewer the illusions of selected would-be reformers of higher education. Why would he, why would anyone, want to do such a thing? One answer is that the book is a long-term working out of an old academic Catch-22-like-trauma: Mr. Miller was rejected by a doctoral English program on grounds of insufficient preparation by a university that soon after offered him a teaching position as specialist for learning skills none of whose job qualifications he had met ( lff.). This bizarre behavior got him to ponder the irrationalities of institutions of higher education. He reached hard-won, hard-headed conclusions, somewhat skewed to the sour side but sensible and informed by a care for real-live underserved students, that lends the book a certain - recessive - warmth. The other answer is that from his experiences and his studies he came to conclude that reform plans based on high principles never succeed (203) and are in fact unreflective reentrenchments of current presuppositions -- and also that he knows a better way. The book is built on two connected theses, one explanatory, the other hortatory. The first thesis is a personalized form of postmodern historicism. This is a radicalized version of the old flabby historicism - the notion that "history," not human thinking, accounts for people's ideas -which the program of this college was instituted to counteract. Mr. Miller is "hoping to historicize the institutional practices that have served to naturalize cultural differences" (43). "To historicize" is good and means to show the constraints imposed on our intellectual activities by contingencies of location, personnel, political and i-""r£HY-,.Q1YI his purpose Mr. Miller gwes a trenchant of four reformers and reform movements: Matthew Arnold's nineteenth r-.a;nrrrru for school reform, the British Open distance learning H'-'U.Lmu, and some ethnographic attempts to base reform on an anthropology of student life and language. The critique that will be of most interest to readers of The Reporter is the one of the Great Books movement. This chapter focuses on the pre-history of St. John's at Columbia and the University of Chicago, and on the earlyyears of the college. Mr. Miller is particularly concerned to understand why Scott Buchanan, the intellectual founder of St. John's, turned on the college and engaged in a prolonged and harsh denunciation of the Great Books program, calling it a "poison corrupting" St. John's that will be "poison wherever it is tried" (85). Mr. Miller attributes this rejection to a sense growing on the idealgoverned founder that the institution was really the result of an unreplicable linked set of historical contingencies and as such had gotten away from him and Barr, the other founder. I must say that local lore attributes Buchanan's defection merely to his vagrant spirit, ever more interested in searching than in finding; opinions here differ whether this frame of mind betokens a love for, or an evasion of, truth. In any case, while the college would never have come into being without Buchanan, it could probably not have reached maturity with him, and this pattern mirrors on a tiny scale a grand modus operandi of fate in America: If Jefferson had not been in Philadelphia to write the Declaration we might never have been a country at all, and if he had not been in Paris when the Constitution was drafted we would not have achieved stable permanence. So the Buchanan case does not seem to me to show conclusively that pure, thought- governed foundings never succeed. Founders may ride off to ever-new Ultima Thules, but their founding ideas can live on in an institution that realizes rather than corrupts them. Mr. Miller's second, hort:rt.-....u thesis is the call to imnnrit~r a numismatics professor in graduate school who once took me to lunch in order to tell me that the way to run anything was "pure principles and corrunt administration." and became my 5 ......... u_.u...5 as dean at St. John's. So I have much sympathy for Mr. Miller's call to learn to wo:rk the system. He understands institutions of higher education to be primarily bureaucracies, entrenched and unbudgeable, irrational and unrationizable. His book aims to persuade teachers to become, instead of purist intellectuals, "agents of change." Such agency requires making oneself into a "hybrid persona, the intellectualbureaucrat" (41, 211, 218 n) who lives in the real world and makes incremental improvements. Nothing could be more congenial to me than the thought that real life ought to be devoted to the workings of small places here and now. But "small is beautiful" is not quite what Mr. Miller's very distinctive theses intend. He means - I think- that teachers must learn that thought is always in the end subordinate to contingency and that they had better embrace their fate, which is bureaucratic dominance. I have three quarrels with this brave but depressing wisdom. The first is just the question: Who can live that way, the way that attends only to the administrative corruption and omits the pure principles? The second is more focused: The Miller thesis identifies "institution" with "bureaucracy." Who can deny that there is something inherently problematic in institutionalizing learning? Yet, not all institutional governance is bureaucratic. Ludwig van Mises, in his book Bureaucracy, begins by admitting that the term is one of opprobrium and then describes a bureaucrat as someone whose "main concern is to comply with the rules and regulations, no matter whether they are reasonable or contrary to what is intended." In the case of schools one usual effect is that human beings are conveniently quantified. Now our college isn't run that way, nor are quite a few other schools, though they are, to be sure, usually small. So my third quarrel with the "intellectual-bureaucrat" thesis is that it suffers from sv.s:ter.rutl:s, which I mean that considered real • whole system in some way. On that criterion there is indeed no success because there is no Education in this because the are indeed immovable • intellectual construction since are inhabited by intellectuals whose bread-and-butter it is to devise the most novel competing designs. What the thesis leaves out is the end runs, new beginnings, tolerated alternatives, and other maneuvers that evade rather than accommodate the bureaucracy. There is a serious question expressed in both our views together: Granted a common commitment to universal education, what does more for our republic the small, though perhaps paradigmatic, school governed not by contingency but by purpose or the large though compromised university that has enclaves of people skilled at making the best of the situation? It is probably one aspect ofworking in the latter pragmatic large-scale mode that the emphasis is on "marginalized" students' needs - a care that is, as I have said, the most attractive feature of As IfLeaming _Mattered. The notion, on the other hand, that a school should incarnate intellectual purpose is inherently antipragmatist in the notion that the idea always precedes the deed both in time and in dignity, and also in the supposition that teachers should not inspect the students' situation in life too closely but should just offer them good and lovable things that all can together make their own. In short, good teachers in a curriculum-centered school cast friendly side-glances at each student, but mostly keep their eyes on the matter which is geared to an ideal student, while teachers in student-centered programs will take careful account of the students' reallife background and adjust the learning matter to a realistic construal of their condition. The latter is Mr. Miller's way, and in his situation it might be the right way. So perhaps my quarrel with his theses amounts only to pleading that when making a virtue of necessity one should not also make a philosophy of it. Let me say again: Mr. Miller's book is somewhat grim but not at all dreary. I think selections from it would make a fine reading for an alumni seminar. He might be invited to lead it, and I'd be glad to come too. • By Eva Brann Eva Brann is a tutor in Annapolis. �GRAD GUIDES NAIL-BITING STUDENTS THROUGH THE ''ALGEBRA WILDERNESS '' radical? don't worry, because even if refresh your memory or for your children - by reading a fun and throue:h the thorny own. who since graduating has a winding through careers in journalism, teaching and tutoring, has put his~ St. John's education to work by writing the Algebra Survival Kit, a self-described "conversational guide for the thoroughly befuddled." The kit, published this summer by Singing Turtle Press, offers hope to students of all ages who are having trouble grasping the abstract world of algebra. "Kids have so much trouble with algebra, it's almost a national tragedy," says Rappaport, who has tutored.for nine years after teaching public school for four. "When I started tutoring, almost half of my students wanted help in algebra, so I figured there's a need out there." Relying on the well ingrained St. habit of questioning, Rappaport questioned his own understanding of algebraic concepts and came up with a host of analogies to help students. "Sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn't. But I kept at it, and eventually I developed a lot of ways oflooking at algebraic concepts that kids found helpful." For example, Rappaport developed a tug-of-war analogy to explain a problem like: -3+8=+5. "Sure, this is easy for many students," he has five more says. "But for pulling, so the those who have answer is trouble with it, it positive 5 .'' can be a During a nightmare." tutoring "To connect session two this problem to years ago, a life, I ask kids to student of think about a Rappaport's tug-of-war," suggested he Rappaport says. make a book "The-3 means out of his three kids are analogies. pulling on the "And in that 'negative team.' very moment, The +8means I decided to do eight are pulling it," he says. on the 'positive To create a Carolyn Wright StUdentJosh Rappaport (A81) team.' Kids need to answer only two friendly design, questions: Which team wins? And Rappaport teamed up with Sally by how many do they win? Here the Blakemore, an award--winning artist positive team wins by five since it and pop-up book designer with Arroyo Projects Studio in Santa Fe. The two hit it off immediately and brainstormed to come up with a design. The design arrived at is a comoact. colorful little book. It closes with a string tie, transforms the kit into a chart by t-ying backwards. The entire book is set up in a question-answer format to help kids stay focused, Rappaport says. And, to keep the topic light and relate to students' feelings, the whole kit plays off the "survival" theme. In addition to 520 pages tackling Algebra I's toughest topics, the kit contain a 7" by 35" "Emergency Fact Sheet"-poswrdjsplaying basic algebraic rules and formulas. It also has a sheet of "Trailmarker stickers" showing the range of emotional states students have in math class. And the back inside cover features an "Algebra Wilderness board game (with a spinner), an educational game designed to help students practice their lessons. While marketing the kit takes up a lot of time, Rappaport still makes time every month to publish another educational product, the Algebra Times, a free, electronic newsletter to help students, teachers and parents. Each issue offers a lesson plan, teaching and learning tips, mental math shortcuts, a Problem of the Month and more. Anyone may subscribe to the newsletter, which has more than 1,000 readers worldwide, by visiting Rappaport's website: www.mathkits.com To order the Algebra Survival Kit or to learn more about it, visit www.mathkits.com or call 1/888.308.MATH. • GREAT BOOKS FOR THOSE AT THE Tor I t's not just 18-year-olds who become entranced -with the notion of seeking for the truth by reading and talking about the great books. Business executives, top-level lawyers, corporation chiefs, financial wizards, and physicians do too. They are the ones who are signing up in record numbers for the Annapolis campus' Executive Seminar program. For eight years the program has given those who don't need to worry about success (because they are already there) a chance to think about the great questions raised in the great books. Presently there are two groups meeting in Philadelphia, two in Annapolis, and one in Baltimore. According to Pam McKee, program administrator, there are plans for Executive Seminars in Washington, D.C., New York, Chicago, and Atlanta. "Executives who've been successful in life and have doggedly pursued goals are starved for something more intellectually stimulating," says Chris Nelson president of the Annapolis campus, who personally leads all the seminars, along-with various tutors. "Some of these people miss the education they never got; that is, they may have a top-notch degree and a long history of business triumphs, but they never sat down and worked their way through these kinds of questions. St. John's does this kind of thing well, and it does it differently." Most other programs aimed at this level of achiever stress the value participants will gain. St. John's isn't out to teach them how to make a deal, how to advance in their field, or how to bring about resolution or agreement. "Instead," says Nelson, "we sell it as a vacation from the rest of their working life. They want to seek truth." The ten-month programs have participants meeting once a month in groups of about 18-20. Most of the readings, which are chosen by a faculty committee, are from the program. Each year, each group has a theme such as justice, leadership, great American voices, or the individual and society. "The quality of discussions is very high," says Nelson. "Even though these are people who are used to having their opinions respected, they fall right into the St. John's seminar style of putting ideas out on the table for discussion. The discussions go deep and are intense. The more life experience one has, the more one appreciates the timelessness of great books." • �Aluntni Profiles ... BATTLING "THE BIG BAD WOLF" children we all heard the story of he three little pigs. The first pig builds with straw, the second out of sticks and the third out of bricks. Of course, the Big Bad Wolf comes along and blows down the first two, leaving only the house of bricks standing. So what would you say if someone approached you and asked if you wanted to live in or build a straw bale house? There is a group in Santa run by two Johnnies, doing just that. Sustainable Communities, (SCI) is a .,,,,..,., .........r.h+ affordable housing develoner that uses ~ was constructed 20 years ago by family members to provide herwith shelter, and is little more than a plywood shack with no insulation and only a wood stove for heat. Her old home became so cold in the winter that she had been hospitalized several times in the past years for pneumonia, and became so hot in the summer that it was hard to stay in." Alfred Von Bachmayr, who is an architect she works with, had been interested in creating a prototype straw bale home for elderly people in remote rural areas and came across and her Above: Julia Takahashi, in hat, watches as Matts Myrhman adds a corner piece to the straw bales. , With SCI' s interest Below: Marv Lowe stands in front of her new solar straw bale house on the Navajo Reservation. in straw as a material for low-income techniques. The group was com1tryuntil the 1950s, when founded by permaculturist Ben housing, this the IJ'l.,i.-'-"-'''" mass-produced building materials Haggard, in and is now opportunity." became more prevalent and run by Takahashi, SF74, and "The straw was grown on the inexpensive. Schroeder, SGI96. reservation and was donated and The reintroduction to building "Most think it sounds of the mud and sand for the adobe with straw came in the 1970s with crazy when we first mention it to the increased interest in "Schroeder says, "and they protecting the environment. think it's crazy exactly because of Since the word about this tale. I'm not sure where without having to '-' u .• ....,..... a."'-· strawbale construction has passed expensive materials from outside that story because building of mouth and the area. out of straw has been used as an various groups formed by the most amazing effective and socially acceptable strawbale converts to help those about building ·with straw is how building material around the world looking for a way to build houses easy it is," Schroeder says. "Most for centuries." that are both energy-efficient and people think they can't build their "The first time I told environmentally benign. own houses because mistakes in Agresto (president of the Santa Fe "AB an architect, I find one of frame houses are measured in campus) that we were building out of millimeters, whereas with straw straw, he says 'Oh, you mean like the the truly amazing things about straw bale is that, unlike many bale, two of the most common tools three little pigs?'" Takahashi, the are a sledgehammer and chainsaw, executive director of SCI, says. "But other segments of the industry, no one is really proprietary about and mistakes are measured in another big misconception we battle the knowledge," Takahashi says. inches. With minimal training is that people think we are building accepted by other low-income "Everyone is sharing the anyone can do it. To tell you bow with hay. Hay is a feed product that developers, because it is seen as a information. If they have tried easy it is, one of the volunteers had is cut while still green. Straw, on the labor intensive process that would something new and it didn't work, or drive costs up and profit margins his 6-year-old grandson out helping, other hand, is the stalk remaining if it did, that information is passed and Mary, at 87, was also helping. after grains are harvested and is down." on so that everyone is always gaining All told it is a truly amazing process. pure cellulose material with a high "Unfortunately, people moving from the knowledge. Mary's house was 400 square-feet, percentage of silicon. Most of the into these affordable houses are so "This is also facilitated by the fact and even with it snowing and time it is plowed back into the fields happy to have a house they are not that a lot of straw bale houses are sleeting, 40 people come out to help left to rot, or burned. In fact, in immediately concerned about California alone, one million tons of being built by individuals rather quality. It has become like Sinclair's with a community house raising, just than large construction firms, so like the barn raisings of old, and put straw are burned each year, creating The Jungle all over again. We want they are able to try new things. The up the walls in one day. It gives a more carbon monoxide than all the to change that perception. We want straw bale movement is constantly connection to a place that is not electric power generating plants in everyone, regardless of income reinvigorating itself with new ideas, present with traditional housing. the state combined." level, to have housing that is safe and the envelope is also being «I hope this movement catches on The closest examples of modern and energy-efficient, and to demand pushed one step farther along." more for affordable hou · " houses were constructed after the that type of housing if it is not being SCI began to use straw Takahashi says. "Matts invention of the hayI straw baler in provided for them." bale to construct low-income the 1890s. In the Sandhill area of The first SCI undertook to and Judy Knox, two of the gurus of "In the U.S., straw bale the straw bale movement, recentlv i'le:oras.1ca, the sod was unusable as a this concept was the houses have been constructed by domade a l)r•esE~ntation material and there were no construction of a straw bale house many of whom would bales for affordable ~ trees around to but on the for affordable housinf!". and international convention in France what did have a lot of was straw. are and used the Lowe uroiect as thefr So constructed straw uvu."''"'"'• contractors to do it for tnem, .. says "''-'....•v'-"·", and other Takahashi. "But as a buildin2 about the buildings material, straw bale has not yet been estimates that America's farmers practice continued uuvu.i::..uvu.1.., U.JL.l!.'U..JLH"'- �Aluinni Profiles ... MOLLY MULTEDO ..•...•...••...••...•.....•...••...•••......•••...•••.•••...••..•••...••...•••...••..•••••.••...••••...•••..•••••...••..••••. M olly Multedo (SF88) has been a very busy woman since she left St. John's College. After graduating, Ms. Multedo moved to Los Angeles where she had an internship with Jonathan Krane at the MCEG Production Company. In 1989, she began working as an administrative assistant at Columbia Pictures in television syndication and connected with Glen Meredith (A78) at Tri Star. She moved to New York in 1990 to continue her studies at Columbia University. In 1991, she was awarded the Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship by the US Department of Education and Columbia University to study Portuguese in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. While in Rio, she also coicnu1etea an editorial internship at the Associated Press. In 1992, Ms. Multedo was awarded two Master's degrees from Columbia -one from the Graduate School of ournalism and one from the School of International and Public Affall:s. For the next year, Ms. Multedo was a key researcher for Connie Bruck's biography of Steve Ross, former CEO of Time-Warner, entitledMasterofthe Game; an editor for Women's Feature Service in New York City; and was regularly published as a freelance journalist in the Manhattan Spirit weekly newspaper. In 1993, Ms. Multedo returned to Santa Fe and became the executive director of the Self-Reliance Foundation (SRF). SRF produces Spanish radio programs on health, the environment, and education, which are syndicated to over 350 commercial radio stations across the United States. In 1996, she developed a project in collaboration with the National Center for Genome Resources, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. The project addressed the ethical, legal and social implications of the Human Genome Project. A series of radio programs she developed on reproductive health issues was awarded the Global Media Award by the Population Institute as well as the 1997 Maggie Award for excellence in media coverage of reproductive health issues from the Bad Wolf continued................................................ . alone annually harvest enough straw to build about four million 2,000 square-foot homes, nearly four times the housing currently available. In addition, because grains are grown in almost very region of the country, straw bales are readily available, with minimal transportation costs. Homes could be constructed for everyone who wanted one, that are nearly five times more energy efficient than the normal house and that can be easily customized for the homeowner, which is something that gives them a greater sense of ownership of the house. On top of that the homes are environmentally friendly. Schroeder and Takahashi aren't the only alums involved in the straw bale movement. Athena Swentzell Steen, SF83, who built her first straw bale house while a student at St. John's, is a pioneer in the straw bale movement and has co-authored The Straw Bale Hou.se, with Bill Steen and David Eisenberg. It has become one of the bibles for those building their own straw bale houses or considering building with straw. But how do they answer the wolf dilemma? "I once asked someone who is very involved in the movement what they say when people asked them that question," Takahashi says, "and their response was that if people are afraid the Big Bad Wolf might come and blow their house down, they should make sure that pigs don't construct it." For more information on straw bale corzstruction, the Mary Lowe project, or Sustainable Communities, Inc., please call 505-820-0186, or write to SCI, 621 Old Santa Fe Trail Suite 15, SantaFe, New Mexico 87501.. John Schroeder (SGI96) Planned Parenthood Federation of America. All the while, Ms. Multedo was helping to expand the SRF from a tiny nonprofit with three employees to a national organization in 1997 with over 25 employees in Santa Fe and Washington, D.C. And from 1995 to 1997, Ms. Multedowas the principal investigator for a $2.1 million National Science Foundation grant to encourage Hispanic youth to pursue math and science education while at SRF. Multedo left SRF in late 1997 to her husband, Dr. Fernando Multedo, develop the New Mexico Academy for Sciences and 1na1..11e1uauc:;, a new irn1e1)e11d(~Ilt school in Santa Fe. The New onened its doors this to 35 seventh, eighth, and ninth graders, over forty percent of whom receive financial aid. The Academy plans to add a grade each year until it offers seventh through twelfth grades. Ms. Multedo currently serves as the director of finance and development at the Academy. "Many of the issues that interested me during my years at the Self Reliance Foundation will find a new life at the New Mexico Academy," says Ms. Multedo. "For example, I'd like to start a Science and Technology Forum at the Academy next year as part of the extracurricular program. Local and national leaders in science, technology and business will be invited to meet with students to discuss the basics of how they got started in their fields, what influenced them, and what the future might hold. We have already lined up Ralph Eggleston, art director of Pixar' s Toy Story, for this series." Ms. Multedo's St. John's education also influenced the academic program now offered by the New Mexico Academy. "Well," she says, "it's hard to say what the origins are since Fernando also studied philosophy as an undergraduate and has always supported the ideals expressed in the St. John's curriculum, but there is a striking resemblance, isn't there?" The New Mexico Academy curriculum is primarily core requirements that will enable students to expand their knowledge from a solid base when they enter college. Although the curriculum includes English, mathematics, natural and physical sciences, history, geography, foreign languages, literature, the arts and physical education, the Academy emphasizes mathematics and science as the backbone of its curriculum. The New Mexico Academy requires its students to study four years of mathematics, four years of social sciences, three years of applied sciences, three years of foreign language-, and take courses in both the visual and performing arts. Math and science classes meet Participation in athletics and extracurricular activities is • The school day runs from 8 am to 5 pm, ·with required classes during school hours and electives, extracurricular and athletic activities filling each afternoon. Afternoon activities include electives in German, Japanese and Italian; athletics such as fencing, dance, soccer, and archery; and various clubs. Most of the faculty hold advanced degrees in their fields. In fact, Dan Hawley, a former tutor from the Santa Fe campus, is expected to join the Academy's faculty next year. Dr. Hawley holds a Ph.D. in physics from Princeton and one in religious studies from the University of Virginia. Afterleaving St. John's, he went to Miami Country Day School, where he teaches physics and heads the astronomy and cycling clubs. Even the school's physical structure is intended to focus the students on their education, and to make a statement about the education. "The choice to use quality materials and finishing," Ms. Multedo says, "reflects the value of and respect for the learning process our buildings were designed to foster." The school is expected to be well appreciated in Santa Fe, where many high-tech jobs are just waiting for qualified candidates to fill them. In fact, over 100 families with sixth, seventh and eighth graders have already requested applications for the 1999 school year. "And we haven't even held our first open house yet!" says Ms. Multedo. The Academy plans to limit new enrollment to seventh through ninth grades. "'Never say never," cautions Multedo. ''We would probably consider an exceptional tenth grader if one came our way." The Multedos expressed deep gratitude to the many members of the Santa Fe communitywho have offered their advice and support. • �SU MME TIM EVE M n addition to the usual monthly readings at St. John's chapters around the country, this past summer was a time when many groups came together for a wide range of social events. In late June the reading for the Boston Chapter ofthe St john's Alumni Association did not include Moby Dick, but they did go out for a whale watch with the AC. Cruise Line. (Is this half-way between reading the book and going to see the movie?) In July the Baltimore chapter gathered for a pool party at the Bolton Swim and Tennis. David Kidd made sure that somewhere that day the clouds would part for all those at poolside: the day included a seminar on Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. In early August the Alumni Association of Northern California held its annual Stag's Leap Wine Cellars picnic and seminar at the· Napa Valley winery of Warren and Barbara THE READING I Winiarski. Robert Glick, the new Vice President of Advancement for the Santa Fe campus, joined the full house for the event There were four seminal" choices, an optional winery tour, and a chance to take a dip in the lake. A week later the Chicago chapter gathered fo1" an evening concert on the lawn at Ravine. The picnic included yummy hummus, pitas. and grapes. Members identified themselves by thei1" orange and black SJC banner; several people interested in or soon to be connected to the college came by to talk about St John's and the local chapter. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, with Christoph Eschenbach conducting and Renee Fleming, soprano, singing, performed works of Straus, Weber, Barbar and Tchaikovsky. Then in late August several alumni in the Boulder-Denver area gathered for a chapter picnic at Chautauqua Park to see the juggling, dance, comedy, and commentary of Air Jazz. ALUMNI BOOK REVIEWS . . . . . . . . . Skepticism in Ethics, by Panayot Butchvarov 1989, Indiana University Press. 225 pages review by Peter Melka, (SF87) One of Butchvarov's fellow philosophers has called this book the most important contribution in ethics since World War II. I am not qualified to say whether this contribution consists in Butchvarov's ingenious ideas defending the notion of right and wrong, some of which are metaphysical and epistemological rather than ethical, or the somewhat original ethical theory he sketches. His theory combines "the truth of Utilitarianism," i.e. that consequences matter, with the unwillingness to reduce the good to anything else, such as pleasure. In fact Butchvarov professes not to understand why the good is desirable. The good, or goodness, is in his view a genus, like the genus of geometric figures, with more familiar species or subgenera of intrinsic good: existence, health, pleasure, satisfaction, knowledge, fortitude, friendship, and (the more stratospheric) good of society. Although a critical judgement of the book's importance requires some expertise, it is a favorite of mine because of its accessibility and the readily understandable importance of many of the ideas. The Millenial Project: Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps, by Marshall T. Savage; Little, Brown & Co.; 1992; 49 I pp. Review by Peter A. Melka, (SF87) According to Butchvarov, one of the possibilities for the good of society is the colonization of the galaxy. Savage's book proposes that we do just that it's The Alumni Association Newsletter is published in each issue of The Reporter. We welcome letters, capsule book reviews, and article ideas from alumni. Send submissions and suggestions to Peter Huidekoper at 2395 S. Milwaukee St., Denver, CO 80210, call 303-757-1225, or e-mail peterhdkpr@aol.com. L ~ And finally, before the sun had set on summer, in September, back in Boston, the local chapter gathers for the express purpose of SAMPLING BEER and, oh yes, chatting at the Sunset Grille and Tap. The Sunset is known as one of the great beer halls in America, with I I 0 brews on draft, 350 bottles ... a beer menu of 12 pages covering virtually every country in the world ... and nachos to feed a small army... We quote, too, from the Boston Chapter's announcement about this event " St. john's wasn't just a place for introverted philosophers and literati; it also had its share of party animals." Happily, there were parties and party animals all across the land, as johnnies came together for these and other summer events, often bringing alumni together in new settings-on land and sea, delighted by wine and song, before the return of fall. • Peter Huidekoper(SGl90) • • • • • • • • • • • • • our duty, he proposes, to bring life to a lifeless cosmos. The Millenial Project gives voice to this view-and to what is in fact a movement seeking such colonization. Utopianism weakens Savage's case. It even distorts the otherwise very impressive engineering information. For example, to me his proposed sites of oceanic farming and energy production more closely resemble San Francisco than they do those locations we identify with farming and energy: the plains of North Dakota or the north slope of Alaska. The strength of the book is probably just the other side of its weakness. That is - rather than deciphering trends Savage steps up to the visionary plate and imagines the next 1,000 years with a vividness and thoroughness that is clearly a labor of love. • ne score and nine years ago Bob Hampton came forth to this college as a new student, conceived in Texas and dedicated to the prnposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great collegiate homecoming, celebrating that that student and other students, so conceived and so dedicated have graduated from that college. We are met in the dining hall of that college. We have come to celebrate Bob Hampton, an alumnus of that college, as an example for those who here study Great Books that that college might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot celebrate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot honor this fine man. The poor people, living and dead, who struggled for justice in and around Wichita Falls, Texas have consecrated him far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what he did there. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which Bob Hampton so nobly advanced in his years of service to the West Texas Legal Services. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us - that from Bob Hampton we take increased devotion to that cause for which he gave the first full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that the poor among us shall not seek justice in vain, that this college shall encourage a new birth of dedication to public service to the poor, and that justice - of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth. • �Alulllnt Notes ... 1931 Dr. Edwin Lotz, who lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, says, "I celebrated by 88th birthday on August 27 and my health is quite good for my age." 1932 "A recent cataract operation has improved my vision, but I still have a hearing problem," writes Henry Shryock. "My wife, Pauline, and I are booked for a trip on the Volga River from Moscow to St. Petersburg. I serve on the executive committee of the Travel Group of the Cosmos Club. I previously led their trip from Prague to Berlin." 1935 Richard Woodman is still actively practicing law and serving as president of an abstract company. He writes that he is enjoying life in upstate New York. Mel Bisgyer is alive and well and sends his best regards from Delray Beach, Florida. 1940 Bill Carter reports that he's having a big 1998. Delaware Technical and Community College named a building after him, and just six months shy of his 30th birthday he received a PhD in government and education. His dissertation research project on the Teacher Assistance Program (TAP) used supplemental computer assisted instruction to individualize classroom learning in grades 3 and 5 of a local public school. After TAP completed its second year, the Delaware State Chamber of Commerce designated it a Superstar in Education with the President's Technology Award of $2500, to which MBNA Bank added an additional $17,500 to help the school expand the project. TAP started its third year in September, now expanded to include grades 3, 4, and5. 1943 Peter Kellogg-Smith, along with four other St. John's alumni, is involved with the Fairhaven School, which will be the fifteenth spin-off from the Sudbury Valley School in Farmingham, Mass. The school opened in September; it's 15 miles south of Annapolis. Other Johnnies involved are: Anne (Glenn) Cruse, A76; Bryant Cruse, A73; Jim Myers, A77, and Alice Wells, A84. 1944 Fifty-eight years after first reading Plato, I walked in Socrates' footsteps in Athens," reports Peter Wolff. "It turns out, he walked and taught conveniently close to the subway stop 'Ancient Agora.' This was an Elderhostel trip, which I highly recommend. We also saw some of the Greek isles and the city of Mycenae with its Lions' Gate, where Agamemnon presumably stepped on the purple carpet. Also the theatre at Epicaurus, where an American tourist stood in the correct acoustical place and sang the Yale song. The archeological museum in Athens was fabulous. I was especially intrigued by the archaic statuary (with the famous smile) and have been reading up on it since." In June Peter Weiss and his wife, Cora, received the Agfrey Medal of the Phelps-Stokes Fund for their "life of service to Africa and their heroic efforts in the cause of justice and peace." They are currently engaged in another heroic effort to bring 10, 000 people to The Hague in May 1999 to launch a campaign under the slogan "Time to abolish war -peace is a human right." Ahmet Ertegun, founder and CEO of The Atlantic Record Group, was presented with "The Spirit of Music" award by the Entertainment, Media and Communications Division ofUJA-Federation of New York. He was selected because of his strong commitment to many philanthropic, civic, and cultural organizations as well as for his contributions to the music industry. 1945 Charles (Chuck) Nelson writes that he is working on a dual biography of Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan. "I welcome recollections from all survivors of the 1937-46 period. Also anyone connected with publishing who is interested in finding an audience wider than St. John's for such a book should get in touch with me," he writes. His address is P.O. Box 247, Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y. 10520. Fax 914-271-4278. Gene Thorton's poem, "Ovid in Exile," was scheduled for publication in the Summer 1998 issue of the Paris Review. 1947 John Brunn has just retired after 37 years of teaching at Chabot College in Hayward, California. "I plan to keep busy," he says. ArcherJoneshaspublishedthe last of several books on military history, Elements ofMilitary Strategy, An Historical Appraisal, in 1996. He assisted Alberto Bin and Robert Hill with a book about Desert Storm, to be published in 1998. 1948 Peter Davies sends word about a fishing trip for striped bass off Montauk Point this summer with Peter Weiss (A44), Allan Hoffman (A49), and David Rea (A49). Those who caught their limit of two each were Davies, Weiss, David Rea's son, and Allan's son. The group enjoyed a fine dinner at David and Jacqueline's beautiful Victorian house the evening before. The once-a-year fishing adventure has become an annual event for the four from the decade of the 1940s. 1949 "Will be nowhere near Naptown in October for Homecoming," says James Conrad. "However, I'd think someone is planning for our 50th next year ... " 1950 Ben Moskowitz toured Australia in January 1998. He's going back for more sightseeing in January 1999. 1951 Bill Roberts writes that he continues to satisfy his desire to travel. He spent part oflast fall driving up the east coast to eastern Canada to see the leaves change, following the change down to the Smokies in western North Carolina"a beautiful trip!" Last spring, he drove out to Portland, Oregon, spending a month on the road "hot in Texas!" He plans to spend a month in England in the fall. Bill owns Far Horizons Sailing School and Charter Services, which offers local cruises (discounts to Johnnies) from Miami on 30-, 35-, and 40-foot sloops. His number is 305 245-6632. 1954 Bernard Jacob received his PhD from the New School for Social Research with a dissertation on Aristotle's Art ofRhetoric. In 1997 he became the third A.M. Bickel Distinguished Professor of Communications Law at Hofstra University on Long Island, where he has been teaching since his retirement from practice in 1979. Since 1977 he has been married to Hon. Phyllis Gangel-Jacob, Justice of the New York State Supreme Court; the couple lives in Manhattan. 1958 Mary Bittner Goldstein has retired from Brooklyn College and the Graduate School of The City University of New York and is finishing a book, Accommodating Women in Western Art: An Essay on Interpretation. 1959 JohnMcDevittwrites thathe has a new grandson, John Robert Phelps. He also says, "I'm retired from public school teaching but am keeping my hand in as an adjunct at Tallahassee Community College." 1960 John Pattie writes: "I continue to dispense law for the Ventura County Superior Court. ("Justice" is a too effete term.) Sold my house to move onto my boat. I am single, happy, and Jungian. Plan to retire soon in Mexico (La Paz, B.C.S.)" John Lane is still with NationsBank running information technology activities. After the merger with Bank of America, the new entity is the largest bank in America and the fourth largest in the world, he reports. Frank B. Murray has been appointed the first president of the Teacher Education Accreditation Council, established in 1997. He is former dean of the University of Delaware's College of Education and currently director of the university's Center for Educational Leadership and Policy. 1963 Bill Rump is a consultant with Cybernet Solutions in Atlanta. William Merritt Davis is executive vice president at Donaldson Lufkin and Jenrette in Boston and the chairman of the board of the Berklee College of Music. He and wife Jessica Hoffmann Davis (A65) reside in Boston and have three grown sons, one grandson, and another (grandson)on the way. 1964 Cecily Sharp-Whitehill is president of Telecompetence, Inc. Her company has expanded its business-communications seminars and consulting to include personal presentation, written communication, and computerrelated communications - "well beyond our original reason for being, which is spoken communication, particularly focused on telephone-related business communication." She lives in Annapolis. Stephen Fineberg is a professor of classics at Knox College, a small liberal arts college in Illinois. He writes: "I direct a program for seniors in (what else) general education - the various courses ,/ �Alulllni Notes ... include: myth, time, freedom, death and dying, modernism - most taught by two or more faculty (St. John's seminars reborn on the prairie!). Greek does well here as does Latin, which is taught by my wife Brenda who also chairs Women's Studies. My two daughters are in college and my black lab Maggie (two years old) is among the best behaved in dog class! My current work is on the god Dionysos (visual images and written texts in 5th century Athens). I myself am not always the best-behaved dog in the class, but then I am tenured. Pleaseothers in my class: write in so we can know what you're doing." Sara Hobart Homeyer loves being a grandmother, making quilts for a 3-year-old and a 6-month- old. She delivers a sermon once a month as a licensed lay preacher at her Episcopal parish. "Preaching is hard I have discovered-need a nap afterwards! (Actually it's the study and then sleepless night before that are exhausting. Speaking is not difficult.)" Laws Wood returned to school in 1993, earning a bachelors degree in business administration with a minor in public administration from California State University, San Bernardino, in 1996. In May 1998 she graduated from San Jose State University with a masters in library and information science. She became a university librarian two days after graduation, ending a journey started at St. John's in 1960. 1965 Jessica Hoffinann Davis is the founding director of the new arts in education program (in its third year) at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she teaches and does research. She and husband Will Davis (A63) reside in Boston, and have three grown sons, one grandson, and another (grandson) on the way. 1968 Thomas Keens (SF) is a professor of pediatrics at the University of Southern California (USC) School of Medicine, and in the Division of Pediatric Pulmonology at Childrens Hospital, Los Angeles. He has been involved in research into the cause of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) forthepast20years. His daughter, Jenny, just completed her freshman year at USC ("I could not interest her in St. John's"). His son, Peter, is a sophomore in high school. His wife, Susan, is a clinical psychologist presently running a day treatment program for severely emotionally disturbed children. Marilynne Scott (SF) and her husband, David, continue to enjoy living in the Seattle area. She has been teaching first grade for the past few years and will teach second grade this fall. Daughter Emilywill begin her freshman year at Sarah Lawrence. Her older daughter, Sasha (Schell), continues to work diligently on her doctoral thesis in Latin American history and plans to submit this fall. Marilynne and David visited her in Oxford this summer. "I am healthy and happy!" she writes. Elizabeth Dobbs (A) has been elected to a two-year term as Chair of the Faculty at Grinnell College. She had an article, "Seeing through Windows in Chaucer's Troilus," published in The Chaucer Review. In July, Donald Schell (SF) walked 300 miles of the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela with daughter Maria, who graduated from Smith College this year. This winter, he will be in Washington, Florida. Megan Anne Beaumont (formerly Anne Reid Dews) sends this report: "My son Morgan, now 30, lives in Barcelona and has just cut a record. My second son, Alan, plans to make me a grandmother in November-this will be the seventh grandchild of our four-adult household, but the first one of my body. I'm alive and well and living in New Jersey, where my husband Bill and I are building a dream house with another couple, out in the woods with a little field attached. This year we 're finding out about farming-which has certainly been an education. We planted about 100 pumpkin hills, each with two plants; so far we have at least a dozen pumpkins, most as big as three inches in diameter but some as much as five inches. With Halloween fast approaching, we've abandoned our hopes of a bumper crop-or Over the years I've attended four colleges without ever graduating, but am expecting to get a Bachelor's in Natural Sciences and Mathematics in probably February of 2000. I've worked as a credit department clerk, a waitress, a mechanical engineer, a maintenance supervisor, a newspaper reporter, a real estate agent, a teacher of mentally-retarded adults, and an activities leader in a residential facility for people with Alzheimer's' disease. Not counting all the volunteer stuff that has come my way. Most of it has been fun, interesting, challenging. I'm finally starting to make my peace with some of the tough stuff, and it's just possible that I'm Beth Kuper (SF) is doing feng shui consulting in the San Francisco Bay area. "Feng shui is the ancient Chinese art of arranging environments harmoniously to facilitate the smooth flow of chi the universal energy that animates, connects, and moves everything through the cycles of life," she explains. Joseph Baratta (A) reports that he is "becoming a Quaker (after an Episcopalian, a Rationalist, a Jew, and a Catholic)." His article on "International Federalism" will appear in Peace and Change in 1999. His study, "Joseph the Carpenter: Father of Jesus," is ready for publication. "Heretical, but nice." encoura~ed to Grant Wiggins (A) that he has two books out this year on education reform: Educative Assessment (Jossey-Bass) and Understanding by Design (ASCD, co-authored with Jay McTighe). He and his family live in Pennington, N.J. His passion for baseball is undiminished; he pitches to his sons Justin (8) and Ian (6) in the backyard, working unsuccessfully on his curve. He's happy to hear from old friends at gwiggins@classnj.org. 1973 India Williams (SF) is selling real estate in Sabastopol, California, an hour north of San Francisco in Sonoma County. She works for Coldwell Banker. Her oldest daughter, India, is a sophomore at Santa Fe. Her younger daughter, Challen, is a junior in high school. 1967 Helen Hobart writes: "Please be sure to include the Sacramento group in your listing of alumni seminar groups. We welcome new members! We meet roughly every four to six weeks; recent readings include Nicomachean Ethics, Gogol, Our Countrys Good by Timberlake Wertenbaker, and the Gospel of St. John. Contact Arianne Laidlaw at 916-362-5131 or Helen Hobart at 916-452-1082. We're especially pleased that tutor Tom Slakey and his wife Marion have become part of our Sacramento group." 1969 1974 D.C., where he has been elected to a residential six-week fellowship at the College of Preachers. He'll be working on a series of articles on preaching Christology - experience and mysticism. Tom Geyer (A) writes: '"I have retired from the newspaper business after 30 years as a reporter, editor and publisher." Peter Coen (A) recently opened a general law practice in Bradenton, starting to grow up a bit. I've been blessed with good friends and interesting times. I want to hear all about everything that has happened to members of my class, so I invite them to get in touch. E-mail is the easiest way to find me, maggiebea@compuserve.com. Snailmailis P.O. Box2594, Trenton, NJ 08690. Do say hello, at least." James LeVan (A) was married to Nancy Jo Fiscus last May in a Quaker wedding at the Sandy Spring Friends Meeting in Sandy Spring, Maryland. Mary Jeoghegan Jolles (SF) received an M.Ed. in elementary education from the University of New Hampshire in 1985, and was a teacher for 15 years. "I am now the principal of Colebrook Primary School in Colebrook, New Hampshire, a K-5 public school, and recently received by C.A.G.S. degree in Educational Administration and Supervision," she writes. "My three �Allllllni Notes ... children - Philip, Diana, and Karl are 21, 18, and 16 respectively. My husband, NickJolles, is an independent building contractor." Erica Chaney King (A) has retired from the Marine Corps with over 24 years of service. She and Gregory will be returning to Califo:rnia and settling down somewhere in San Luis Obisbo. "I to do nothing much at all for as long as I can stand it!" Celia Y. David (SF) has been named to manage the sale of Com.Ed's coal-fired generation plants. Com.Ed provides electricity to seventy percent of the population of Illinois. David attended Northwestern University Law School after g:raduating from St. College. She lives in Glencoe, Illinois with her c~~~ 1~T _,,.~ Laura Bridgman (A} writes that it was "great to 'hear' M:r. Jacobsen in the Reporter interview and to remember Mr. Littleton from Chester Burke's memorial speech. I guess I'll be :ready for a reunion in 2000 AD. Hope the '75e:rs and others will come!" Peter Kniaz (A) has a new job he is now Director of Systems Services for Invacare in Elyria, Ohio, outside of Cleveland. Cynthia Swiss (A) is now the director of the string orchestras at McDonough, a private school in Owings Mills, Maryland. She has also started a salad dressing business called Falls Farms - she uses all natural ingredients and the dressings are fat-free. Christian Burks (SF) andJanet Christian is working with a biotech, Elelixis Pharmaceuticals (www.exelixis.com). Their oldest daughter, Caitlin, is entering UCSD freshman, and her sister, iua.rcail, is a sophomore at Berkeley High School. John Rees (A) reports that he is practicing neuroradiology and general radiology in Orlando, Florida. "My daughter Katie is three years, my son Daniel is 10 months, and my wife Courtney and I are expecting another baby boy around Thanksgiving. Katie wants to name him 'Fleek,' but we're not sure. Recently I had a stimulating seminar on the Book ofJob with Paul Heylman (A74), Sam Goldberg (A74), MarkAickelin (A75) and the recentlymarriedJim.LeVan (A74)." Leslie Graves (A) writes that ·she enjoyed Steve Urich's (A97) comment in the last Reporter, ''As for myself I am doing nothing noteworthy." She says, "This ought to be the motto for A76, my own class, which either has the record or is in the homerun chase for most years of alumni silence. I've been pursuing masters rowing with my three sisters. In August, we competed in the Nike World Masters Games. This resulted in a half-hour ESPN show about our team, which was g:ratifying ('the true spirit of athletic excellence,' and other similarly over-the-top encomia, which we ate right up)." A web page about their experience is at http://members.aol.com/lbgraves/i ndex.html. 1977 Andrea (Williams) and Robert James Ham (both SF77) write from Santa Rosa, California: "Our family is still mourning the death ofJohn L. Williams, Andrea's father and alumnus (A50) and member of the Board. Thank you to all who sent condolences and positive thoughts. On a happier note, Jim and I are busy juggling business and family. Dylan enters high school and Caitlin goes to junior high. We are all well. Jim and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary this last July. We have fond memories of St. John's and Santa Fe where we met. With our niece, India Clarke, as a freshman at the Santa Fe campus, St. John's College is truly a 'family affair'! We welcome news from all our old friends." Anne Browning Byers (A) reports: "I spent the fall of 1997 in Aarhus, Denmark, with my husband and two children. My husband was there on a Fulbright Fellowship. We all had a wonderful time. We traveled a lot and loved Denmark! Since returning, I've been fighting metastatic breast cancer. I'm receiving treatment through Duke University and am very optimistic for a full :remission." DanielJerrems (A77) says he decided to grow up and get married. He's now the proud father of the handsome and intelligent sixmonth-old Daniel the Second. "Best thing I've done so far." Walter Featherly (SF) and Carol Stolpe are building a new home/B&B in Anchorage, Alaska, with the best views of the area. "Come visit!" Miriam Redleaf (A) writes: "I had a good time seeing Laurence and Gisela Be:rns in Chicago. My same sex spouse and I live in a house in Chicago. We go to an egalitarian conservative synagogue where we try to stand up and sit down at the right times. I am an ear surgeon. We have four very nice adopted children who are 13, 11, 9, and 7. My interests are foreign languages and drawing and painting. So far so good." 1978 Michael Ciba (A) and Diane Lamoureaux Ciba (ABO) send along this update: Michael became pastor of the Mill Plain Union Church in Waterbury, Connecticut, in August. Diane is a PhD student in marketing at the University of Connecticut. Her research centers on marketing on the world wide web. Their daughter, Rachel, is a freshman at Drexel University majoring in architecture. Their son, Daniel, is a junior at Crosby High School in Waterbury. Melinda Skilondz (SF) missed her 15th reunion this summer to get married in Montana to Don Byner. The Byners now run a video production company in Los Angeles; they are reachable at BynerVideo@aol.com. Elizabeth Burch Michel (A) was admitted to the partnership of KPMG Peat Marwick LLP (the Big 5 accounting firm) on July 1, 1998. 1979 Muriel McCown (SGI) sends a thank you to the Graduate Institute"My very best classroom study... opened a new world to experience in thought and travel." Kathy Buck (A) says that Michael Blum.e's niece Francesca was her daughter's best friend this year. "What a coincidence!" Kelly Bradford (SF) changed jobs; he is now a Microsoft Certified Trainer teaching Windows NT and other software for a training company, Productivity Point International. He is married to Lynn Anderson, has a six-year-old daughter, Anne Bradford, and has lived in Austin, Texas, since 1984. He'd love to hear from classmates; email is kbradford@propoint.com. 1980 Amy Clark (A) has moved to Pennsylvania and is teaching at Dickinson College in Carlisle and Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster (Latin and Greek, history and literature). "I'd love to get together with people in the area, maybe go to a concert occasionally (it's not that far from Philadelphia and Baltimore). E-mail will reach me at a_clark@acad.fandm.edu or acclark@emial.unc.edu. Nancy Cline Wright (SF) is still teaching. She says she received points to renew her teaching license when attending the alumni seminar in Santa Fe. ··we had to move all our books (and the rest of our stuff) 12 blocks this summer. Sigh." Commander Paul B. Martin, Jr. (SF) is retiring from the U.S. Naval Reserve and Naval Reserve SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team TWO on Saturday, October 17, 1998. 1982 Randy Linder (SF) writes: "Somehow, I find myself an assistant professor at the University of Texas in Austin, researching the evolution of plants and teaching about plant evolutionary biology. It's a mostly satisfying enterprise, but I do find myselflonging for more time. Debbie and I have two wonderful children (my unbiased assessment), Rachel and Ben. Let us know if you'll be in the Austin area. Visitors are always welcome." Valerie Kinzer (SF) is currently working part time as a nurse and taking care of her children, Emily (4 1/2) and Michael (71/2). She would love to hear from any Johnnies in the class of '82. Nathan Rosen (A) sends word that his sons were born on April 21, 1998: Daniel Tzxi Rosen (6 lb., 8 oz.) and Zachary Alexander Rosen (7 lb., 1 oz.). He teaches drama at Atholton High School in Columbia, Maryland. John Michael McDonald (A97} substituted during his paternity leave "and did very well." Rosen's daughter Marielle had her bat mitzvah last fall and started high school at the Carver Center as a drama major. He also notes that he directed Arms and the Man at the Elliott Theatre last summer. His email is Nhrosen@aol.com. 1983 Jessica Wolff (SGI) says that her single term at the Graduate Institute had two side-effects: she rediscovered a love for classics/archaeology and ended up going as a volunteer on Etruscan and Minoan digs; and her daughter, who was with her that summer, went back to Santa Fe years later to study at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Miles Beckwith (A) has accepted a position at NMU as an assistant professor of English (tenure track). He has a doctorate in linguistics from Yale, has been teaching as an adjunct at Princeton, and he and his wife Mary McCune, have two children, Elinor (3) and Owin {bo:rn in April). 1984 Fr. Robert Nicoletti M.J. (SF) writes from Lublin, Poland, "Would anyone like to help an orphanage in �Alulllni Notes ... Ukraine? If so, let me know. My address is Ul. Dudzinski.ego 7, 20815, Lubin, Poland." "I recently received a University of Nevada Las Vegas and Nevada Board of Regents Award for Distinguished Teaching," says Martha Young (SCI). "Much of my success as a teacher and scholar may be attributed to the St. John's models of teaching and learning that instilled the values inherent in serious inquiry and acceptance of diverse views." Dave Meng (A) and Patricia Noone announce the arrival of their daughter, Molly Tian-Ni, born 6-2397 in Wuzhou, China. John Bush (SF) is finishing up his architecture internship and plans on taking the architecture registration exam next summer. Elizabeth (Harris) is working in the plant pathology lab at Virginia Tech and gardens a lot. Salem (15 1/2) is in the 10th grade, running cross country and playing soccer and basketball. Loran (12 1/2) is in the 7th grade and also loves playing soccer and basketball. They are doing fine, says John, and would love to hear from old friends who might be near Blacksburg. After six years in Central Europe, Grady Harris (A) realized that he was not going to accommodate himself to ten-month winters, so he returned to Georgia. 1985 Kevin Fitzgerald (AGI) is now principal of Caesar Rodney School in Camden, Delaware. He is pursuing a PhD in Education Leadership at the University of Delaware. Margot Hobbs Thompson (A) reports that she will be teaching art history at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, in 1998-99. Terri Luckett (SF) writes: "We are currently living in Fairfield, Connecticut, one hour from NYC. We moved in October of 1997 just in time to miss the deluge from El Nino. Despite a bit of culture shock, we - (Gordon Lloyd, SF84), Carolyn (my daughter), and I- are doing quite well. While my job has moved me into the maw of the beast (GE headquarters) it is at least challenging and interesting work. I'm still deciding what I want to do when I grow up. If anyone finds themselves in the area, feel free to drop in." An update about Torin Owens (A): "Torin continues to progress, though slowly, since his accident in 1985. He has recently purchased a Gladiator Chevyvan with an electric lift and he has a handicapped accessible home. He spends his days and nights listening to music, classical literature, and the RugRats. He goes to physical therapy where he exercises, entertains, and is entertained. He remains a devout Christian. He remembers most of his classmates. He can be reached at P.O. Box 391, Fernandina Beach, FL 32035." Stephen Rudow (A) has moved from commercial real estate appraisal to a mortgage underwriting position at NationsBank in Baltimore. 1986 Jamie Davis (SF) and Regine Verougstraete announce the birth of their second son, Teodore Oswald Jean Davis. Jamie is still doing lighting for film and TV and lives in South Pasadena. 1987 Alexandra Kambouris (A) writes: "I married Ken Alberstadt in June, 1997 (in a ceremony witnessed by, inter alia, E. Updike, Pam Fabi, Shaughnessey, Duvoisin, Frame, and Hussein). Angelika Nora Alberstadt was born May 27, 1998." John McKim (AGI) recently completed all of the requirements and passed the Accredited in Business Valuation (ABV) examination given by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AI CPA). 1988 Samuel Casey Carter (A) has been named a Bradley fellow at The Heritage Foundation, a Washingtonbased think tank. During his oneyear term as a Bradley fellow, he will write about successful education reforms at the state and local level, including charter schools, vouchers and other school-choice programs, and about public schools and districts using innovative teaching methods to raise student performance. He is executive editor of Crisis magazine, previously served as a Benedictine monk, and is on the board of directors of America's Future Foundation, a non-profit corporation that encourages increased political awareness among young professionals. McLaughlin (SGI) hopes to sign up for the Eastern Classics program "in nine or ten years." Meanwhile, he plans on going to Switzerland this fall to work on an illustration, after being "chained to a desk doing a drawing for a wine bottle label (in about a year ask for Duckhorn Winery)." McLaughlin also notes that "there is a sketch due Phil Leatherwood of his classic VW, but as far as anyone can tell he has become a hermit in the mountains of Norway, and forwarding the drawing could be difficult." Carole Cunningham (A) is currently Dean of Students at Coleman College, a small, private, technical college devoted to computer related fields. She teaches a course called "Success Seminars" to prepare returning adults for success in college and on the job. Sheila and Steve Virgil (both A) report that they've left Ohio and are back in Nebraska, where Steve is a bond lawyer at Kutak Rock and Sheila cares for James (born 8/28/97). They see Lucy Duncan (SF86) frequently and love her children's bookstore, The Story Monkey. "My two children (Baird - 8, and Marion - 6) and I live in a cute little crackerbox house in Baltimore," says Ellen Schwindt (A). "I teach biology and physical science to 10th and 7th graders at Park School, along with fellow Johnny colleagues Hunter Nesbitt, Greg Brandt, aµd David Lowther.'' · Chades Melson (AGI) has been appointed Chief Historian and head of the Historical Branch, at Headquarters Marine Corps. "We continue our charge of recovering, preserving, and telling the story of the Corps through material and narrative history," he writes. Melson was educated at Sonoma State University and St. John's, and he has 25 years ofreserve and regular Marine Corps service. Katarina Wong (A), in the spirit of equality, decided that after spending four years at St. John's College reading works by dead white men she would devote at least two years to reading works by their dead Asian counterparts. She is currently at Harvard Divinity School finishing her last year as a candidate for the Master in Theological Studies in Buddhism and is looking forward to seeing her former SJC classmates at the October reunion. Jeff Falero (A) offers to assist any students, alumni, or staff interested in the transition between St. John's and a career in civil engineering. His e-mail at work is jfalero@ix.netcom.com. Bauer (A88) and Nancy Harris Bauer have just added to their family of three a boy, Miles Harris Bauer, born in February. They have a daughter, Elena, born in 1995. Karel is a video and documentary film photographer in Seattle, and Nancy is a lawyer specializing in maritime law. Jana Giles (A) recently published a short story, "The Singing Door," in Rosebud Magazine (Cambridge, Wisconsin) and an academic article, "The Craft of 'A Painful Case': A Study of Revisions," in the anthology New Perspectives on Dubliners {Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997). She is currentlyworking for ProLaw Software in Albuquerque as a trainer, and traveling throughout the US. Shirley M. Banks (SF) ran her second marathon in February in Austin. In March, she graduated with a BS in biology, with a math minor, from Kennesaw State University. In July, she became a health educator at Emory University. She runs the HIV testing program, plans and implements human sexuality education for students, and serves as administrator for the immunization program of the student health service. 1989 On March 7, 1998, Brett Heavner (A) married Christine L. Kohls in the Great Hall. His brother Bryce Heavner (A93) was best man. Many alumni were present to share happy times and memories. George Turner (A) reports that he is leaving his current job at 0 'Melveny and Myers LLP and starting with the Orange County District Attorney's office. 1990 Jintana (Tina) Chiu (A) received an MA in history and philosophy of science at the University of Chicago in 1993 and an MS in urban planning at Columbia University in 1996. She is currently working as a researcher at Columbia's Empowerment Zone Monitoring and Assistance Project. Geneva Fulgham (SGI) has written a book with her sister, Elizabeth Silverthorne, called Women Pioneers in Texas Medicine. Published by Texas A & M Press in October 1997, it has had good reviews and a commendation from the Texas Medical Association. Graham and Brooke Ked!rra'\re (both SF) live in Baltimore with their two children, Benjamin, 6, and Rosalind, 3. Graham is beginning his last year of medical school at Johns Hopkins and is planning to start a career in psychiatry next year, and Brooke is actively involved with the kids' education at the Waldorf School of Baltimore and at a coop nursery school. "Contact is encouraged!" Eliot Duhan (A) writes: "In the past few months, I've harvested the first honey from our beehive in the backyard, sold a screenplay, and �Aluntni Notes ... gotten married to Tyra Petrak, a woman who never ever went to St. John's. We're living in a part of Philadelphia called Manayunk, a neighborhood in which mostly everything rolls downhill. Our house has cats like some houses have mice but it's okay. EDO, my band, the best Marx Brothers cover band in Philadelphia, thrives, working hard, week in, week out, on the new CD, due out on Pat O'Donnell's Skoda imprint sometime before the millenium. I can be reached at eliot@p3.net." The e-mail address for Andrew Ghlz (A) was printed incorrectly in the last Reporter. It should be aghiz@ghiz.com. Karl A. Meyer (A) says, "I married Jennifer K. Luebbe on 8-898. We are living in Chicago, where Jenny works as a statistician and I am establishing myself as a professional musician and booking agent in the local Blues scene. Drop us aline at: kmeyer99@aol.com." 1991 Cynthia LaMarche Gavioli (A) reports that she married Douglas Gavioli of New Haven, Connecticut, in 1996. She is newly employed by A.G. Edwards & Sons. An update from Andrea Rush (SF): "I've just returned from a fantastic six months at the Findhorn Foundation, an international community in northern Scotland, known for its magical gardens. I got to work with 'The Living Machine,' a very groovy ecological sewage treatment system, and continue studying expressive dance. I'm spending the summer with my family in Pennsylvania and can be reached c/o P.O. Box 86, Mechanicsville, PA 18934." Sapna Slatkin (A) has just moved back home after teaching English in Japan for two years. "I'm just floating for a while before beginning a serious job search. I would love to hear from friends,'' she says. Michael Hennerty (SGI) retired from teaching in 1994. He's presently doing furniture on commission and also teaching classes in blacksmithing at Ghost Ranch Conference Center in Abiquiu, New Mexico. He's studied Irish history and performs Irish folk songs locally and far afield. Lisa Hopkins (SF) and husband Phil (SFGI92) are in Texas, where Phil got a position as visiting professor at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas. He will finish up his PhD this winter in philosophy at the University of Texas. 1992 "I'm still in the Bay area,'' writes Martha Acosta (A). "I came out to San Francisco in '96 after getting an MBA and MA at SMU in Dallas. I've been a fund raiser at the Asian Art Museum, the United Way and now I'm the Director of Development at Alternative Family Services, a foster family and adoption agency. I'm applying to SFSU's Instructional Technologies program." Maureen Hatch Levri (A) was married to Ed Levri in August 1996. Since then, they have been living in Bloomington, Indiana, where they both recently received PhDs in ecology, evolution, and behavior. Ed minored in education, Maureen in plant sciences. They have moved to Murfreesboro, Tennessee, where Ed is teaching biology at Middle Tennessee State University. In January, Maureen will begin teaching ecology and biology at Seton Hill College, a small, Catholic, liberal arts college in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. "Happy to hear from you, especially if you have boxes," she says. John Miller (SGI) just graduated from the University of Minnesota Law School (cum laude) and is relocating to the Washington, D.C., area with his wife, Betsy. Siofra Rucker Nugent (SF) reports: "Our daughter, Tinsley, just had her first birthday party. I've started a new job as case manager for a fantastic chiropractor's office. Andrew Nugent, my husband, has left the U.S. Navy; And we've finally bought a house. It's been a very busy year - full of change. We love La Jolla (California) and I hope we don't have to move again for a long time. Tinsley is a complete water baby - a surfer chick in the near future." Leah Ankeny (SF) writes that the past year has been a whirlwind. She began touring two solo shows with an interactive video, as an actress with Living Voices Theatre Company based out of Seattle, where she now lives. She adds, "I bought a home this fall with my wonderful partner, Mark Russotto, which I am very thankful for. In the spring of '98 I returned to Detroit fo:r a semester of teaching as an adjunct faculty member at Henry Ford College. I got the opportunity to develop a short, solo theatre piece, 'Freak.show Brain,' into an hour-long ensemble piece. It was very challenging and a great learning experience." "My partner and I are moving to Bellingham, Washington, so that I might continue my graduate -- - - education," writes Stacy Vennema (A), who will be working on a master's in education. James Ashley (A) and Tamara SteblezAshley (A93) announce the birth of their daughter, Alexandra Sage, on April 27. "She weighed in at a healthy 8 pounds, 3 ounces, and is the most beautiful thing we've ever seen. Having her is more wonderful than we could have imagined!" 1993 Jide Nzelibe (A) graduated from Yale Law School and finished taking the Maryland Bar Examination. He will be. clerking for a year in Washington, D.C. for a federal judge. Valerie Duff (SF) was recently awarded two individual artist ·grants- one from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and one from a private foundation. She currently works as an editor at AGNI Magazine in Boston and is starting to teach. Omar Manejwala (A) writes: "After completing my MD degree at the University of Maryland I moved to North Carolina where I am working in the department of psychiatry at Duke. I am enjoying my residency, and in addition to treating patients I am doing research on the magnetic stimulation of schizophrenic patients' brains, which appears promising." Michael Baldwin (SGI) was selected Man of the Year by the American Biographical Institute, USA, based on outstanding accomplishments and the example set for his peers and community. Scott Capehart (SF) graduated from the University ofWashington with an MFAin acting. He is currently working as an actor, pianist, and teacher in the Seattle area. Next spring he, his partner Laura, and their four-year-old sonLavran will be-heading to Los Angeles. Santha Bundy-Farah (AGI) writes: "I accompanied a fellow teacher and a group of students from Sidwell Friends School on an exchange to Russia. Puschino, a rather small town two hours south of Moscow, at the bend of the Oka River, is the focus of our cultural exchange program in the middle school. Puschino was built to be environmentally perfect and is a Russian academic research town a lot like NIH. Other areas of focus on our three-week visit included Moscow and St. Petersburg. This is the second time in three years I have gone. After returning to the US I spent the rest of the summer as a biologist in Dr. Kenneth R. Spring's lab at NIH in the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, in a Laboratory of Kidney and Electrolyte Metabolism." C1taire Darling (SF) says, "Bought a house. Getting married 10/98. Love to help start a western Massachusetts alumni chapter. I'm very happy." 1994 Sara Treanor Armbrust {SGI) had a son, Karl Decatur Armbrust, on June 4, 1998, weighing in at 7 pounds, 7 oz. She says they are moving the Austin. "Does Austin have any Johnnies?" Josh Silberstein (A) says that his CD, In the Middle, has been selling well in eight states "due in part to the wonderful support of my fellow alumni." His band is called Magis; one of their songs has been accepted to be released on an acoustic music compilation that will be distributed nationally. Check their website at www.bigheavyworld.com. Emika Ima (SF) is currently typing her Master's thesis for the Sorbonne. She writes that she will probably stay in Paris for another three or four years to continue her studies in political science. �Alulllni Notes ... Jeffrey Wright (SGI) spent the summer as a visiting scholar at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. He received a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to participate in an NEH seminar for school teachers on "The Irish Famine of 1845-1852" - "a wonderful and enlightening experience." Margaret Booker (SGI) writes: "Life is good! " Lexey Anne Bartlett (A) received her MA in humanities in December 1997, and is getting ready to begin writing her dissertation for a doctorate in English at the University of Texas at Arlington. 'T d love to hear from any classmates or friends in similar situations for commiseration purposes, or any friends I've lost touch with for procrastination purposes," she says. Kate Feld (A) has recently returned from two years teaching English in Taiwan, and plans to move to Boston. "If anyone wants information about teaching English in Asia, I'll be happy to help," she says. "My e-mail address is Katelf@packers.com." (A) is starting a three-year master's program in landscape architecture at Rhode Island School of Design. She writes: "Landscape architecture involves placing human-made design in the natural environment. I will be minoring in fiber-art. I am also engaged and will marry when I graduate in 2001. Myfiance has a degree in architecture. We met while renovating a fold-music theatre in an old Masonic temple. Sound like the plot for a bad romance novel?" Geoffrey Griffin (AGI) reports that he is taking a break from his consulting practice, Superhighway Systems, to become director of marketing for Picodyne, Inc. "Picodyne is a startup company supplying advanced electronics components to NASA, DOD, and industry featuring ultra-low power operation and radiation tolerance for space use," he says. Cantwell (AGI) is working as a volunteer at the Anne Arundel Medical Center in Annapolis and also volunteering at the Annapolis and Anne Arundel Conference and Visitors Bureau on West St. Frank Lanzkron-Tamarazo (A) is in his second year as cantor of Garden Jewish Center of Flushing. He's in his last year of his Master's degree in sacred music at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Tracy Whitcomb (A) is now the manager of the Trinity College bookstore. One of the philosophy professors at Trinity is very excited that Tracy is a St. John's graduate, she reports. Kiersten Johnson (SF) sent word about herself and about Bethany Serene Huffman and Kendra Mack. Kiersten will begin the second year of her doctoral program in film studies and rhetoric at the University of California at Berkeley. Bethany was married to Michael O'Connell on June 1998 in a beautiful openair ceremony near Missoula, Montana where she and Michael currently reside. Kendra will begin the second year of her doctoral program in American studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Carrie (A) is living in Toronto. "I have really enjoyed being back in Canada for the past two years-although the winters have taken some getting used to again," she writes. "I definitely do not miss the Annapolitan summer humidity though! This past June I successfully completed my first year (of 4) studying acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine at The Michener Institute for Applied Health Sciences here in Toronto. Taking real exams was a killer! Outside of school, I have taken up rock climbing, ultimate frisbee, hiking, canoeing, and golf-anything that allows me to appreciate the great Canadian outdoors when it's not buried in snow. If anyone if venturing forth to our great white north, please feel free to contact me at carrie@pathcom.com. Kira K. Zielinski (SF) reports that she was one of the small handful of Marines selected for the extremely competitive aviation board. "I'm looking at transitioning out of the Air Support field to go to flight school in Pensacola this fall. Also, I've been selected for captain, which I should be pinning on this fall as well. Life is outstanding. My email is Herme5@aol.com. Barbara Reel (SGI) was appointed the Assistant Director for Human Resources - New Mexico Judicial Branch in February. (SF9 5) and Allison EddyBlouin (SF) are living happily in mid-coast Maine, where John has been building wooden boats and Allison nurturing 3-year-old Mary Catherine. Friends are always welcome: P.O. Box 201; New U a ...hrm ... Maine 04554. Christine Reshetiloff (AGI) completed her first year of teaching high school at St. Mary's in Annapolis. Kevin Ross (AGI) will be getting marriedinApril 1999. He's currently pursuing a doctorate in education. Melanie Kirby (SF) is serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Paraguay, South America, working with campesino families in developing bee-keeping as an additional income source. Although conditions are "basic," she reports she is thoroughly enjoying the immersion into the indigenous Guaira culture. Melanie does have access to e-mail about once a month; she can be reached at ringofire@hotmail.com. Juan Villasenor has moved to Nashville. 'Tm not becoming a country singer/ artist," he assures The Reporter. "Rather, I am going to attend Vanderbilt University Law School." Jason Stevens (SF) and Celine Bocchi (SF) are living in Houston, Texas. Celine manages Pappadeaux restaurant and is talci.ng language classes. manages a store called Surroundings and is going for his Masters in Business. They plan to be married at the end of May. David Austin (AGI) won the Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship to study sociology and education in Nepal for 1999-2000. e I IES Daisy Goldwin Daisy Goldwin, SGI78, died in October in Potomac, MD. She was born in Mamaroneck, N.Y., and attended the College of New Rochelle. She first came to Annapolis in 1944 with her husband, Robert A. Goldwin, who was then a lieutenant in the Army at Fort Meade. After the war, he enrolled at the college, where the Goldwins lived in quonset hut barracks on back campus with their two daughters from 1946 to 1950. When Mr. Goldwin was appointed dean of the Annapolis campus in 1968, they moved to King George St. Later, when he worked as a key assistant to President Gerald Ford and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, they lived in Washington. They also lived in New York, Chicago, Santa Fe, London, and Brussels. While in Annapolis, Mrs. Goldwin taught at the Key School. In Washington, she was on the administrative staff of the Field School. After retiring she served for many years as a docent at the Hirshhorn Museum. In addition to her husband she is survived by her daughters, Harvey, Jane Band.ler, and Liz Goldwin, and by her son, Seth. William Barrett Dunham William Barrett Dunham, who was vice president of the college from 1973 to 1979, died in August. He was responsible for all fund.raising and general administrative duties, and is remembered for his kind and gentle manner, and for his organizational effectiveness. Prior to his arrival at St. John's, he served for 20 years in the Department of State and the Foreign Service. From 1956 to he was chief of the political section of the American Embassy in The Hague. After leaving government service, he was vice president and secretary of Carleton College in Northfield Minn., where he had received his BA degree. His master's degree was from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He retired to live in Annapolis, where he became involved with a variety of arts organizations, including the Symphony Orchestra and the Maryland Council. Diagnosed with emphysema in he wrote a paoe1rba.ck book on the illness. The hospital in Annapolis still distributes his book. Surviving are his wife, Charlotte, a daughter and three sons. L. .l.llJ.ii:li.Ui~~ A50 John L. Williams, a member of the Board of Visitors and Governors, passed away this year. was graduated from St. College in 1950, after which he pursued a career as a California real estate developer for 38 years and as a private investor thereafter. He was married while in college to his wife, India, who preceded him in death 18 years ago. Together and India produced five daughters (two of whom graduated from St. John's India Williams '73 and Andrea Ham '77). He was known for his love of sailing, and was renowned as a tennis player. He won the California State Championship as a youngster and later won the U.S. National Men's 35 Doubles Championship. He served his country from 1943-46 in the U.S. Air Force. He devoted many years to St. John's College, giving generously to both campuses and to an endowment to support faculty enrichment and to the Klein tutorship. ALSO NOTED: EdmundJ. Turner, class of 1930 George D. class of1932 William F. class ofl932 ;rann:lss, class of1934 class of 1936 class ofl936 ...-"-"'-"-""_...,.,class of 1938 class of 19 38 e �I GREEK ORTHODOX CHURCH ESTABUSHES FuND IN MEMORY OF SPIKE VENABLE I I M id rain fell the morning of ptember 27, 1995, as my e, Melissa Johnson (SF 88) and I walked up the drive leading to St. Elias Greek Orthodox Church in Santa Fe. The little white church, designed and built in the traditional Byzantine style to resemble a Greek isle hill church, was surrounded by friends, past and present students, colleagues, and family to pay respects to Santa Fe tutor, Bruce John Venable. At first I thought we were early to the funeral service; but as we drew closer I realized that -~- there was not enough room inside for all the mourners to stand. We took our places with all the rest standing in the early fall rain. In my grief, I remembered that 'Spike' had once read me a poem by Cavafy. I don't remember the name of the verse and I barely remember the poem since the recitation had occurred after a feast of a dinner washed down with liberal draughts of potato vodka. But the sentiment of the poem stayed with me~ and in it Cavafy relates the debasement of the hlexand:riaofhis daywith the Byzantine Alexandria of his imagination and the longing for its return. At the time the poem saddened me for it asked of the imagination to confound the linear course of history. I simply didn't believe that it was possible to overcome the present; and to attempt to do so would only cause a false nostalgia and bitterness. But as I listened to the Orthodox funeral mass being sung for my friend, I realized that Spike believed it was possible to transcend the temporal boundaries that confine us. And that it was his faith that made it possible for him to believe. He was both gone and there; and it was our LETTERS collective voices that were 'returning' him to Heaven. After all those years, he had finally managed to teach me something. Memorial is important to the Orthodox. Loved ones that have passed away are remembered by the entire congregation on the anniversary of their passing in a memorial service and in the Greek tradition by the eating of a sweetened barley pastry. In the preparation of the Eucharist, the priest recites the names of saints, patriarchs of the church, clergy, and the departed members of the congregation. All are included in this process of remembrance because both the living and the dead are members of the church. And even icons, the symbol most associated with the Orthodox faith, they themselves are vehicles for the faithful to remember and venerate the lives of those represented. The effect of memory in the Church is to confound the distinction between that which has passed and the now. And in doing so, it allows one to transcend the temporal and for however brief a moment glimpse the eternal. In 1995, St. Elias Church began an ambitious icon program. For an Orthodox church, it is not merely important to have icons, it is a necessity. The covering of the walls of the church with icons is an ongoing act of worship and a memorial to the faith. But to do so is an enormous undertaking especially for a newly established church. After three years of searching, the St. Elias congregation selected Maria Sigalas of Athens, Greece as their iconographer. As of today, Mrs. Sigalas, assisted by her husband and another female assistant, has completed the first of three phases envisioned for the icon project. That phase includes the iconostasis and the altar. The next phase will include the area under the central dome; and the final stage will cover the rest of the interior of the church. Besides her commission at St. Elias, Mrs. Sigalas has recently finished St. John's Greek Orthodox Church in Detroit, Michigan and will begin work shortly on the Greek Orthodox Cathedral in New Orleans, Louisiana. To help St. Elias Church in its efforts, a fund has been established at the church to receive donations from the St. John's community in remembrance of our friend and tutor, Bruce John 'Spike' Venable. All checks should be made out to: St.Elias Greek Orthodox Church, 46 Calle Electra, Santa Fe, NM 87505. Please be sure to designate on your check in the memo: in memory of Bruce John Venable. Please include in your correspondence your name, address, class, and graduating campus. All gifts will receive a letter of thank you; and after the funds have been collected, a photo of the designated icon dedicated in his memory. For further information, please contact: C.J. Dallett, 305 Grand St. #l, Brooklyn, NY 11211; phone: 718-486-3565 or by e-mail: reddline@eaTthlink.net. (St. John's College has established a memorial fund in honor of Mr. Venable. The gifts received will be used to purchase laiturgical music, which will be housed at the Meem Library and available for use by the community.) 9 CJ Dallett • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • It was nice of The Reporter to give notice of my after-dinner speech to the American Oriental Society. I was, however, a bit chagrined that apparentlyyou--St. John's of all places--seem not to have discerned what it was really about. That is, my topic was not "the difficulty of translating Arabic." (There's plenty of Arabic that is relatively easy to translate.) The talk is/was, rather, a philosophical reflection on the nature of language viewed in terms of the problem of understanding and then, some degree of understanding achieved, of translating across a cultural and historical chasm (and that's geschichtlich, not historisch). The problem of our seeking to understand and to re-present a particular tradition of Muslim theology was chosen in order to illustrate and to reflect on the fact that the talking animal (to zoon logikon) is by nature an historical being, wherefore all logoi are formed in an historical matrix; in terms of the citation of Heidegger I built the core of the talk on, the dialogoumenoi cannot leave the household oflanguage. Was-salam. Richard M. Frank (A49) �' IN SANTA FE AND ANNAPOLIS Alex Ward Above: Neoma Kretzmeier (SFOl) with her father, Warren, at Parents' Weekend in Santa Fe October 16 to 18. '"O (!.) -i.-> Q3 \. °' = v;) °' p::; ~ ~ ct! ~ v ~ u r.12 "= ~ s Q \..) ...-< (!.) rJl I p::i ....-! N 0 Keith Harvey = e ~ ·.o 0 'f3§U~~ >-. ·~ ~ ,.a "d'°Qj (!.) p::; 0 .s ~~u z .... ~ S ell (J.) [§) ~~ .eJ ;.:::I uU~ ~ ;.:::I 0 ~ E-t en i::i... iii....-! Cf'.l ~ =. .; Right: Mirabai Knight, a freshman from Missoula, Montana, poses with her mom under the portrait of Scott Buchanan. More than 400 parents, grandparents, and siblings attended Parents' Weekend in Annapolis, October 30 through November 1. .s "'§"§~ §"d T J HN' S COLLEGE LIBRARY & FINE AR S l;UIL SALE AND SPANISH Through generous contributions from Guild members, local dealers and collectors, a unique array of fine and rare books were included in the auction, as well as exquisite art pieces created by local master santeros and santeras. All auction items were on Meem Library a week prior to the event and a catalog of auction items was produced to promote the event. On Saturday, the Fourth Annual Spanish Colonial Arts Market was held in the Great Hall in Peterson Student Center. Spanish Colonial Art is an art form unique to New Mexico. Select featured artists included Marie Romero Cash, Ellen Chavez de Monica Sosaya ...... u ......:v.LUL, Mary Rita Padilla Haufman, Kathleen Sais Lerner, Ramon Jose and Nance Lopez, David Nabor Lucero, Jerome Luian. Paula and Eliseo Rodriguez, Thomasita Rodriguez, Jimmy Romero, Jimmy and Debbie Trujillo, Don Leon Sandoval, Irvin and Lisa Music was provided by Ruben Romero, a well-known local C::n<nn-ich On both Saturday and Sunday, the 7th Annual Library Book Sale took place in Meem Library. Rare and bargain books, sets, reference, art, music and collectibles were all available. Profits from this event far exceeded sales from previous years fm1di.ng for imo:rovements These events were well attended by guests of Parents' Week.4en<1. supporters from the vv.uuuu........,...cr students. By Sarah Vanderslice AOO Alex Ward Artist Ramon Jose Lopez. he St. John's College & Fine Arts Guild sponsors special events for the Santa Fe Community throughout the year. On October 16 -18, in conjunction with Parents' Weekend, the annual Meem Book Sale and Spanish Colonial Arts Market and auctions were held. The festivities opened with a private reception and auction on Friday evening. The Guild presented its first "closed-bid" Art and Book Auction. Guild members, friends of the college and special guests ne1r1.oon enjoyed a preview of sn<:~ct~1cular works of art and books. A nn::se:ntat1onwas made by Charlie Carillo, a master northern New Mexico santero, who provided an overview of the featured Spanish Colonial artists and their work. Nicholas Potter, owner of Nicholas Potter Bookseller, described in detail the rare books and signed first editions. Spanish enhanced the evening with a performance by Ellen De Leitner and her daughter, Johanna, both local Spanish Colonial artists. issues $35 The Moon, Santa Fe's student newspaper, is currently offering a yearly subscription for $35 which includes twelve issues. With a to The Moon you will read about campus happenings from the ue1~su1ect1ve of students. The articles and stories provide an undeirst:an<1me: issues students fight for or the questions they ask peers and society, and the way students spend leisure time. Name: Address: City: State: Please make checks payable and mail to: The Moon, St. College, 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87501-4599. For more information contact The Moon at (505) 984-6137. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The St. John's Reporter</em> Description An account of the resource College newspaper which started publication in 1974. Continued publication into 2000. Includes primarily historical content.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The St. John's Reporter" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=35">Items in <em>The St. John's Reporter</em></a></strong> <span>to view and sort all items in the collection.</span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 24 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context vol 25 issue 1 Fall 1998 Title A name given to the resource Reporter, Volume 25 Issue 1 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1998-10 Description An account of the resource Volume 25, Issue 1 of The St. John's Reporter. Published in Fall 1998. (Corrected from Volume 24, Issue 4) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Public Relations Office Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Goyette, Barbara (editor) Mulry, Laura J. (editor) Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf The Reporter https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/8e6bd915aaa5e7e889f42fb64e2f4b82.pdf 225b3ec478583304fa9272e58e39f5a4 PDF Text Text ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE LIBRARY 111111111111111 :-1 i]~~r1ll~lllii[f[~1 1 1 1 ~1 1 1 1 1 31696 01138 2262 HOMECOMING 98 Annapolis events included something for everyone ....................... 14 CATALOGUE BOMBS How-and why-a St. John's alum lofted catalogues out the window of S!JOHN'S COLLEGE ANNAPOLIS ·SANTA FE his plane during bombing missions over Germany............................... 9 THREE FACULTY STORIES Charles Bell adapts Symbolic History to the computer age; Krishnan Venkatesh talks about Chaucer and the I Ching; John Verdi and other Annapolis tutors relate Nietzsche to the Program ......................... 6, 7, 10 DEPARTMENTS From the Bell Towers: Searching for Isaac Newton, banishing the February blues, Paul Mellon's legacy ............... 2 Alumni Profiles: An explorer of underwater caves, an attorney who argued before the Supreme Court .................................... 20, 23 Campus Life: Community service in Santa Fe, milk and cookies in Annapolis, the all-American guy from Ghana ...................... 11, 12, 13 Alumni Voices: A Peace Corps volunteer shares the story of his first shakymoments ........................... 28 Alumni Association: Peripatetic tutors, chapter contacts ............... 16 Class Notes ................................ 18 Letters ........................................ 8 + Randall Hall, built in 1903, is a true multi-purpose building: dining hall, dormitory, office space, administrative computer center. Alumni from all eras have fond-or not so fond-memories of times spent in the building. See "Nine Facts About Randall Hall" on page 2. Watercolor illustration by Sarah Waters, A88. �Fro01 the Bell Tow-ers ... by Sus3an Borden SEARCHING FOR ISAAC NEWTON ir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) is everywhere in our modern world: his laws helped build the Bay Bridge, the engineers at General Motors use his principles daily, and NASA's scientists rely on his insights for calculating orbits. But while his laws govern engineering around the world, and his physics and calculus are taught in nearly every college in the country, his writings are rarely read-only by the few hundred graduate students who study the history of science and, of course, by every student who attends St. This fact was driven home to Dean Harvey Flaumenhaft in 1987the three hundredth anniversary of the publication of the Principia. While reading a newspaper article that mentioned the number of copies of the Principia sold each year, Flamnenhaft noted that the number was very small, only a few hundred. He realized that most of them must be sold to St. John's students. "We read the Principia for a long stretch of junior math, and we read crucial parts of it in lab," says Flaumenhaft. In addition, he says that many junior seminar books (Kant, for example) are, in some way, reflections on Newton's way of understanding the world. ""A direct confrontation with Newton's thought is required and is a large part of the education at St. John's College. Students elsewhere hear about Newton in a physics class, or perhaps in a history class, but the study of Newton is not widespread." This spring, St. John's plans to broaden the study of Newton by several hundred scholars and students through a weekend-long conference and a month-long exhibition of Newton's works and philosophy. The conference, "Beyond Hypotheses: Newton's Experimental Philosophy," will take place March 19 to 21. The accompanying exhibition will run S from March 19 through April 18. Plans for the conference began when Stewart Greenfield (A53), a member of the Board ofVisitors and Governors, learned that St. John's might be able to borrow books and equipment of great interest to Newton scholars from the Burndy Library of the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology at MIT. From there, the idea of sharing the loaned items with other students of Newton's thought generous grant to help St. John's stage the conference. Both the exhibition and the conference will have as their underlying theme the question of hypothesis. "I hope the conference will be an occasion for raising the question: 'to what extent can methods of scientific investigation give more than merely hypothetical ideas about things; " says tutor Howard Fisher, chair of the conference committee. Flaumenhaft elaborates on this ~ ~ ~ -s ~ Howard fisher, one of the tutors bringing Newton scholars to St. john's blossomed into the idea of an exhibition. And around the exhibition, plans for the conference grew. The exhibition will include first, second, and third editions of the Principia and seven other original editions of Newton's work, all on loan from the Burntly Library. In addition, visitors will be able to see a replica of Newton's reflector telescope, on loan from the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History; a replica of a typical Galilean refracting telescope; and a model of Newton's doubleprism experiment. In addition to facilitating the loan of these items, the Dibner Fund has also made a by explaining that an important question in the study of science is whether the pursuit of science yields a view of what is, or if it merely yields a set of tools that enable us to manipulate what is. "The question is," Flaumenhaft says about the work of science, "are you getting a cookbook or a window? Is science a set of mental rules and tools for taking raw materials and making something, or does science give you a view of what's already there?" This issue will be addressed throughout the conference, beginning with the keynote lecture on Friday, March 19 at 8:15 p.m., when Francois de Gandt, professor of philosophy at France's University of Lille, will lecture on the topic: Does Newton's science disclose actual knowledge of nature? The following day, three talks are scheduled, two of which include re-enactments of Newton's original experiments. William Donahue (A67), a former tutor and now one of the proprietors of Green Lion Press (which publishes a guide to the study of Newton's Principia, as well as other works of math and science) will discuss Newton's early work in light and colors. This will include a demonstration of his famous doubleprism experiment. George Smith of Tufts University's department of philosophy and William Harper of the department of philosophy at the University of Western Ontario will discuss Newton's double-pendulum experiment. This talk will include a demonstration of the experiment by Tutor Emeritus Curtis Wilson. For the final Saturday talk, Smith and Harper will again pair up for a discussion of Newton's work and thought between the Opticks and the Principia. On Sunday morning, Dana Densmore (A65), also a former tutor and the other proprietor of Green Lion Press, will present alesson on Proposition 7, Book III of Newton's Principia, a proposition concerning the proportionality of gravity and matter. The conference will close early Sunday afternoon with a panel discussion led by the conference's speakers. The conference's organizers, Howard Fisher, Curtis Wilson, and Adam Schulman, along with Dean Harvey Flaumenhaft, hope that interested alumni will be able to attend some or all of the program. All of the conference's lectures, talks, and demonstrations are free and open to the public. For more information, call 410-626-2539. • 9 FACTS ABOUT RANDALL HALL Ill It was built in 1903 to serve as the college dining hall; the architecture is pseudo-Georgian, in the style of Christopher Wren. Ill When women were admitted in 1951, they lived in Randall dorm rooms (this was before Campbell was built). Barbara Leonard, the tutor and assistant dean who was "'in charge" of the women, lived in a suite (now the common room) that was separated a curtain drawn across the end of the hallway. Randall was designed by T. u.auuaLL, a Baltimore . and named for the Randall family, which had many St. John's alumni among its members. The building was remodeled in 1981, when a new kitchen was built and the pri- vate dining room and terrace were added. The entrance was moved from the quad side of the building to the Pinkney side. Ill For many years, dinners were served family style (see photo) by student wait staff. Men wore coats and ties and women wore dresses to dinner. Any alumnus who knows when this custom of the family style dinners was discontinued, let us know. We haven't been able to track it down. The large portraits of William and Mary in the dining hall were donated philanthropist Paul Mellon, class of 1944. Currently in the "basement" of Randall you'll find the tTeasurer' sand business offices, plus the nerve center of the campus netwnrk where Plourde, A79, and other computer services folk reif!n over a cabling and banks of monitors. The food service contract is renewed every 3 years; a committee of stutaent~3, and administrators decides who should fruit loops to the 350 or so students who use the food service. Current provider is Bon Appetit, a catering firm out of Menlo Park, CA. There are 21 doubles and two single dorm rooms in Randall. According to Director of Residence Cora Sterling, A94, Randall is the least favorite dorm because the rooms are the smallest and because the temperature of the showers fluctuates wildly. • �Front the Bell Tow-ers ... SURVIVING FEBR ARY ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Glenda Holladay Eoyang (SF76) the mid- 70s, when I was a stuin Santa Fe, February was the -,...,.,,,,,i,,."r month. I never did find an ultimate cause for the February doldrums. Such an extreme and campus-wide reaction must have been a response to all four causes. A final cause could be related to the glories of the spring to follow. A formal cause might flow from the long weeks of regular schedules and uninterrupted work between year-end and spring break. Accumulated snow and ice would certainly be a sufficient material cause. The efficient cause was most compelling-we were there, and so was everybody else! February seemed to stretch on and on toward a spring that refused to spring. Before I came to the college, some insightful and particularly miserable student found a cure for February. (It turned out not to be a cure, but it certainly eased the worst of the symptoms.) He or she-identity lost in the fog of history-suggested that the Film Society show Singing in the Rain. The hope was that the Pollyanna characters, the spunky music, and the mindless plot would lift comrades out of the depths of shared depression. It seemed the right antidote to misery and darkness in the winter of Jolmny discontent. The selection committee and a few of their friends saw it first. They previewed the show after lecture on a dark and dreadful Friday night in mid-February. By the time the credits ran, everyone in the room was smiling and laughing. They knew for sure that spring would come again, that senior essays would be accepted, and that Reality would return at least one more time. As the film rewound, the word spread from coffee shop to library, from common rooms to pool table: THE SOURCE OF UNNERSAL JOY IS PLAYING IN THE GREAT HALL. By the time the second showing started, the Great Hall was filling up. Students wandered in with glazed eyes and chins hanging on chests. Again, the film did its magic and left a room full of smiling Johnnies in its wake. By the end of the fifth straight run, almost everyone on campus knew the lyrics and was practicing the choreography. By the end of the weekend, no one could remember how many times Debbie Reynolds and Gene Kelly had fallen in love, but it didn't really matter. Everywhere you turned, hopeful students smiled the smiles, danced the steps, whistled the tunes, and quoted the lines. Their optimism was renewed just enough to carry them through the month and into the warmth, sunshine, and Don Rags of spring. Singing in the Rain had become a sacred February tradition by the time I came along, and it continued to break the mid-winter doldrums as long as I was a student. The effect on me was so strong that I still hanker for a chorus of "Good Morning, Good Morning" starting about February 10. Rumor has it that this practice has stopped. I don't know what interrupted this particular prescription for sanity between mid-term and spring break, but I do hope that current students have some equally effective and fun way to banish the February darkness. We all need some way to "Make 'em laugh! Make 'em laugh!"• ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Musicfor People Who Love Creat Books J anice Felty, mezzo-soprano, and Jacquelyn Helin, pianist, will perform a joint concert in the Great Hall of St. John's College in Santa Fe at 8 p.m. on April 23, 1999. In honor of Shakespeare's birthday, the concert will feature a number of musical settings of the Bard, including songs by Henry Purcell, Benjamin Britten, and Vaughan Williams. And in recognition of the 35th anniversary of the Santa Fe campus, the concert will include musical settings of other great works of literature, as well as music by composers studied in the St. John's Program-Beethoven and Schubert, for example. Janice Felty has performed in the premieres of works by many of contem- porary music's most important composers-John Adams, Philip Glass, John Harbison, Lee Hoiby, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich-andis known to television audiences for her performance as Dorabella in Peter Sellar's production of Mozart's Cosifan tutte. Pianist Jacquelyn Helin was featured in the PBS special Virgil Thomson at 90; she is best known for her performances of American mastersThomson, Copland, Gershwin and Bernstein-but is equally at home in a repertoire ranging from Bach to Stravinsky. The cost of admission for this event is $10. Tickets are available at the door one-half hour prior to the performance. For information, call 505-984-6104. �Frolll the Bell To"'W"ers ... Allanbrook _...__..._ ' .........,_..._ ........... ouglas Allanbrook's opera based on Edith Warton's Ethan Fro me in November at Harvard. is a senim there this year. the opera was comin 1951-52 when Allanbrook was on a i together the orchestra ~ with members of the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra and students from the New England Conservatmy and Boston University. In the Harvard University Gazette, Allanbrook is quoted about using the stark narrative of Ethan Frome as the basis for an opera: "The story has both the economy and dramatic intensityyou look for in an opera... [The burden is on the composer to bring the inner drama to life in the music.] The characters singwhat they cannot say." • va.LlvU.LV.L several different colleges and as well as lustoncal, nriP<:Prv:::itrn time he gave more than 900 works of art to the National "'-'"·LL•"-'J'' and Calder. He was an excellent horseman who raised horses on his Hero won the in 1993. Paul Mellon enrolled at St. as he "to make up for some gaps in my education." '"-"-'-""''La house on Market which he later donated to the to serve as the vu.,-.u,Ju<- the years he made many to the at first in own name and later uu vui;::u Dominion Foundation and the A__ndrew W. Mellon Foundation. ""St. stxesses the essential Mr. Mellon once said. "To my mind the program constitutes a cohesive and IP<:1rnrnoence." he donated went to projects like the heating and Lamr•Dell tions and of campus and to the college endowment. During the earlyyears of the he contributed money which was used to clear college debts. ""It's hard to imagine what the college would have done without his support in the early years of the New Progrnm," said Christophex Nelson, president in Annapolis. ""He the faculty salaries and kept the lights on in the evening. He contributed to our buildings and started our endowment. His munificence is evident everywhere." Mr. Mellon contributed a substantial portion of the funds to build Mellon Hall, named in his honor; the building was opened in 1953. The addition of an administrative wing in 1983 was also completed thanks to his generosity. In 1970 he made a personal gift of $1 million to the two St. John's campuses, Annapolis and Santa Fe. According to the terms of his will, he left St. John's in Annapolis $5 million-the largest cash donation ever. "He had been honoxaxy chairman of our last capital campaign. He had made a commitment to the campaign through his estate. But we were not expecting a gift of this size," said Mr. Nelson. The college will probably set aside a portion of the gift for renovations to Mellon Hall (in the planning stages and due to begin in 2001) and the remainder will go to support the endowment. Paul Mellon was made an Honorary Fellow of St. John's College in 1953 and was presented with the Alumni Association Award of Merit in 1971. "Paul Mellon was as generous in spirit as he was modest at heart," said Mr. Nels on. "He will live on in the great contributions he made in his lifetime-certainly he will have his place in the hearts and lives of all of us in the St. John's community."• te~;~~~~~eJ:11·~~il~~··,r'!; ~?t:1~:~~ years ago on community ll~I::; anu moral development as H itself and, they hoped, as for '"constructive ~AT111m11n-itirni\1"'-n1!C Qf _.,,uq.J~:oLLLa Mr. Delattre was the 19th of St. c;;o1He:2e, from 1980 to I the last to preside over both campuses. He was the fourth or•~sic::ler1t the New Mr. Delattre was the director of the National Humanities 1F::11t·uH-v at Amherst College and of nhilo!iliour11iv•"!r~atv of Toledo. �Frolll the ... ALUMNI S EP RWARD 0 ENC DRAGE !NANCI SUP National Alumni Development Executive Committee (NADEC) is a group ofalumni dedicated to helping St. Johns by Marta S. Lively, A78 ome things about St. John's are immutable-the books, the rushbottomed chairs, even the students. As I walked around the campus for my 20th reunion in Annapolis this fall, I noticed that the students showed an earnestness and seriousness (as well as an unkempt quality) that was much the same as ours decades before. It was a joy to spend time with tutors like Barbara Leonard and Brother Robert again. I was delighted to see signs of change, however-the attractive new library, the renovation of Paca-Carroll, and the beautiful new laboratories. Visiting the campus, reflecting on the program and the ideals that had originally brought me to St. John's, renewed my commitment to supporting the college, which for me means giving of both my time and money. This past October, I also became the chair of the Steering Committee ofNADEC, the National Alumni Development Executive Committee. NADEC is an organization of alumni dedicated to reawakening in all alumni their excitement about and commitment to the unique education provided by St. John's, and to translating that commitment into the financial support that is vital to St. John's preservation. NADEC's mission is therefore two-fold: we hope to provide alumni with a new and exciting connection to the college and to communicate to them how important alumni giving is to its continuing financial health. NADEC is composed of 52 alumni of both campuses and the Graduate Institute who span the decades from the 1940s through the 1990s. Wliat we all have in common is our interest and involvement in the current affairs, and especially the financial well-being of the college. We have been meeting, in Annapolis and Santa Fe, over the last year, searching for ways to increase alumni support for St. John's. In October we formally constituted ourselves into a subcommittee of the Development Committee of the Board of Visitors and Governors and undertook the establishment of a fundraising program designed and implemented by alumni. We hope to reach out to all alumni, to renew their interest in and commitment to the school, and, of course, to solicit their financial support. St. John's faces unique financial challenges. Among these are the rel- atively low endowment and the historically low rate of alumni giving. Alumni giving is especially important in that it not only supports the college directly but is also an important criterion for receiving grants and other financial support. Outside institutions must ponder their donations to St. John's, given the perception that its own alumni do not consider it worthy of support. I do not believe that the lack of financial support reflects alumni indifference to the college and its mission. In my experience most alumni strongly support the school and the program. They also understand the needs of the school. From the perennial problems of plumbing to the knottier problems of faculty compensation, St. John's needs our help. Alumni, more than anyone else, should understand those needs and feel the importance of meeting them. During our first annual fund campaign, beginning this September and running through June of 2000, we shall begin the process of reaching out to alumni through a series of mailings that we believe will reinforce alumni interest in and support for St. John's. We shall, of course, also be contacting all alumni, by mail or telephone, to ask for your financial support. For a limited number of classes, we shall also organize class gifts. We are especially excited about a new initiative in which alumni and students will work together to find new ways to involve both of these groups in supporting the college's financial health. St. John's needs all of its alumni to step forward and participate in its future. We hope you will join us in translating your support for the college into action and welcome your thoughts on how together we can best serve the college and its alumni. • SUMMER CLASSICS LINE-UP INCLUDES OPERA, SCIENCE, AND COWBOY LORE erhaps the most successful outreach program of the Santa Fe campus is Summer Classics "learning vacation" programs focusing on the greatest literature, art, film, and music. Adults from all over the nation, with diverse backgrounds, can attend for one, two or three weeks. Seminars are held Monday through Saturday, ten to noon, while discussion often continues through the lunch hour. Afternoons are free to study or to participate in guided tours and excursions. Programs this summer include: Bizet's Carmen, Aristotle's Politics, Euripides' Trojan Women, Electra, and Medea, and Italian medieval and renaissance art (July 18-24); Strauss' Ariadne aufNa,xos, Mozart's P Idomeneo, Augustine's Confessions, Galileo's Two New Sciences, cowboy classics The Virginian, Shane, Horseman, Pass By and the film High Noon (July 25-31); Poulenc's "Dialogues of the Carmelites," Bernano's Diary ofa Country Priest, Nietzsche's The Gay Science, Shakespeare's Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love's Labour Lost, andA Midsummer Night's Dream, T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets. (August 1-8). Limited on-campus housing is available. Tuition is $'690 per week, which includes all texts, receptions and lunches, and some excursions. A $50 discount is applied to registration received prior to May 1. For more information, call 505-984-6104 oremail classics@mail.sjcsf.edu. • Mabee Foundation Offers Challenge Grant for Student Activities Center "This is now an unstoppable project and construction will begin as soon as bids are received and a contractor selected," Santa Fe president John Agresto told the Board of Visitors and Governors in January. He had just received word that the J.E. and L.E. Mabee Foundation of Tulsa, Oklahoma, had awarded a $500,000 challenge grant to the college for the new student activities center. With this award, the college is within $500,000 of the $3.8 million goal for phase I. Although groundbreaking for the new building was he]d last summer during Homecoming, it was decided that construction would only begin when the $ 3. 8 million goal for phase I was well in sight. The Mabee Foundation challenge is always given near the end of a capital fundraising drive to "provide incentive for enlisting the support of other donors" to complete the project funding. It is already working-after the announcement at the Board meeting, two members pledged $50,000 each. The Challenge deadline is June 1. For more information, contact Susan Metts at 505-984-6106, or metts30069@aol.com. • Hodson Trust Challenge Targets Tutor Salaries in Annapolis The Hodson Trust has offered the Annapolis campus a $250,000 challenge grant to increase faculty salaries. Between January 1 and June 30, the Trust will match new gifts to the Annual Fund designated for faculty salaries, any increased gift to the Annual Fund designated for faculty salaries, and any alumni gift made in honor of a tutor or tutors. Although faculty salaries and benefits are one of the largest items in the Annapolis budget, tutor salaries on average remain below the mean of those at other small liberal arts colleges with which St. John's is traditionally compared. Raising faculty salaries to a competitive level is one of St. John's most pressing goals. For more information, contact Joan Ruch at 410-626-2534. • President Chris Nelson with Finn Caspersen of the Hodson Trust. �Scholarship ... I by Amber Boydstun (SF99) en I asked Mr. Venkatesh for a time when he could talk 'With me about this article, he said he was not available during the ing his mommgs noons open for his senior advisees. Knm-vinir Mr. N N Venkatesh to prepare and give a lecture on "Sherlock Holmes in the Movies," looking at the figure of Holmes and how he is interpreted from literature to film. Mr. Venkatesh says the aim of this lecture was "to get at the of Holmes as a character. He's one of a that everyone in the world knows." Mr. Venkatesh is one of E dents' genuineness and their enthusiasm to learn as qualities that impress him. Mr. Venkatesh particularly enjoys advising seniors on their essays: "I love advising papers. I like the process of closely working things vvith a Jmvers1ty in Taiyuan City in northern China, Mr. Venkatesh taught English and American Literature. He structured his classes as semicourse on :Shakespearean He also served as a guest lecturer in film at the North China Institute for Film and And for the nine years, he has been a me. The most common of the comments I have heard about him is that he is devoted to his students. Both ~ ~ ~ s ~ j ~ ~·and supportive. IL is clear that he is very interested in the wellbeing of his students and is willing to offer his friendship and wisdom in dealing with any problem, be it confusion with a Ptolemaic demonstration or a disagreement with a boyfriend or girlfriend. ~en we finally met at 6:00 p.m. in the dining hall (during his dinner), I was struck by how rested Mr. Venkatesh looked. It seems the sabbatical he took last year served its purpose, allowing him to return to the Santa Fe campus this fall with renewed energy. I was most curious about his sabbatical, because before he left in the summer of 1997, Mr. Venkatesh mentioned to me that he wanted to spend some time exploring Chaucer, an author in whom I am particularly interested. Although he pursued a number of different academic interests, Mr. Venkatesh did undertake an examination of Chaucer during his year away from St. John's. He spent his sabbatical in Chicago, where he delivered several guest lectures at local academic institutions. Mr. Venkatesh gave a lecture at Shimer College in Waukegan, Illinois, on the Knight as portrayed in the General Prologue. He also gave a lecture to the Basic Program at the University of Chicago on the Tao Te Ching in which he offered an explication of Poem 2, focusing on the very important concept of Wu Wei, often translated as "non action." Last year's sabbatical also allowed Mr. Krishnan Venkatesh is archon of the Eastern Classics program; he also teaches sophomore language and seminar. the few tutors on the Santa Fe campus with a strong background and continued interest in English literature. Born in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, he moved with his family to England at the age of seven. He received his undergraduate degree in English Literature from Cambridge University in 1982. He went on to spend four years at the University of Munster in a post doctoral research assistantship doing textual and philological research on works by Shakespeare, then began his career as an educator. For three years at Shanxi tutor at St. John's College in Santa Fe. The years Mr. Venkatesh has spent at St. John's have obviously been enriching for him, just as his contributions as a tutor have benefited the college immensely. ~en asked what he appreciates most about the college, he says, '"Well, I could say that St. John's has taught me to read, or helped me to learn how to listen, but that's true for everyone. Everyone says those things." After more thought, he says simply and with conviction, "I love the student body." Specifically, he cites the stu- Venkatesh has filled a .,,,n,,, " ofroles. He has been an active member often the of the strong program for the last six years. He works diligently and intensely at his fencing, for, as he says "no Venkatesh ever starts a sport casually." He has also served as arch on of the Graduate Program in Eastern Classics for the last few years. He says earnestly, ''I would recommend the Eastern Classics program to anyone. It's a good chance to be genuinely na1ve about a body of books." The role of Eastern Classics arch on still allows Mr. Venkatesh to teach full time; this year he teaches one sophomore language class and one sophomore seminar in addition to one Eastern Classics Chinese tutorial. Although his knowledge of Chinese is very basic, he is in the process of writing a manual that he says "would allow any of my colleagues to teach from scratch." As a personal goal, Mr. Venkatesh hopes to become fluent in both classical and modern Chinese. It is clear that Mr. Venkatesh has established a remarkable rapport with his students, and that he loves teaching just as much as his students love having him in class. Although his background is in literature, Mr. Venkatesh cites the math classes at St. John's as being some of his favorites. "Although it's difficult for me," he says of the math, "the abstractness of the problems enables you to get really good discussions on things like beauty or thinking ... The geometry, especially, I find to be a peaceful haven."• 7 "" 7 �Scholarship ... usofNi EIGHT ANNAPOLIS TUTORS SPENT THE FIRST SEMESTER WITH THE PHILOSOPHER WHO DOESN ' T BELIEVE IN PHILOSOPHY. by Barbara Goyette A bove all, one should not ·wish to divest existence of its rich ambiguity," ftsays FriederickNietzsche in Book V of The Gay Science. Nietzsche not only recognizes life's ambiguity, he captures it in his writing; his aphoristic style defies efforts to systematize his thought-and that's just the way he wanted it. A group of eight Annapolis tutors who met twice a week during the first semester this year constantly grappled with Nietzsche's ambiguity, which frequently, they found, veers into paradox. The study group was one of the benefits of a National Endowment for the Humanities grant that provides for faculty development at the college. Tutor John Verdi is in his second year of studying Nietzsche, thanks to the grant, which gives a tutor two-thirds release time from teaching so that he or she can study a topic in depth, and a second year with the same amount of release time for the tutor to share what's been learned with the community through a study group and a Friday night lecture. Members of the study group had a variety of past experience with Nietzsche. Verdi, the leader, has been interested in him for a number of years and spent last academic year reading and studying him. Henry Higuera, Jon Tuck, Nancy Buchenauer, George Doskow, and Bill Pastille had read him as part of the curriculum. Michael Grenke, a new tutor, wrote his PhD thesis on Nietzsche. Laurence Berns, the most senior faculty member in the group, had read and thought about Nietzsche since arriving at the college in 1960. (Also attending the seminars was Irving Wasserman, SGI88.) A seminar being a seminar, the same general dynamic happens with a group of tutors as with a group of students and two tutors: questions are raised, possible entryways are proposed. The study group provides a formalized network for what often happens when a tutor new to a subject or baffled by some aspect of a reading corners a more experienced fellow faculty member in the Coffee Shop and they talk about it. "In these study groups there's an atmosphere of helping each other understand," says Berns. "You read the book and you are puzzled. You spend ten minutes talking about it and gradually some way of approaching it begins to emerge." Nietzsche is a difficult writer. He delights in tearing down the conventions of thought that informed the philosophers who came before him, making a study of his works seem out of the orbit of other books on the St. John's program. His ideas have been misinterpreted and given radical political slants. His fabled insanity, his estrangement from the academic world of his time, his stormy relationship with Wagner are hard to separate from a consideration of his thought. But his works are exciting. Nietzsche has a sense of adventure about philosophy; his metaphors seem to penetrate to some truth, and his stance against dogmatism and in favor of the "to thine own self be true" credo are appealing. Verdi came to Nietzsche, he says, after teaching at St. John's for a while. He studied him for several years before applying for the NEH grant, and he thinks that the time is right for a more open-minded interpretation of Nietzsche. "Now there are more tutors who've worked with him-like Jonathan Badger and Michael Grenke. Enough time has passed since the old vision of Nietzsche as pro-Nazi." Verdi argues that Nietzsche does fit within the tradition of Western thought that's outlined in the program. "For one thing, he's trying to build a bridge back to the ancients," he says. An important thing to remember about Nietzsche is that he doesn't think of philosophy as a search for truth but as a way of life. That's why he admired Socrates. "You can't be a follower of Nietzsche," Verdi continues. "He's not offering a specific way of life but, like Socrates, he's describing what it would really mean to be true to yourself." Nietzsche wants to overcome the systematizers, who are missing a connection to humanity because they view themselves as over and above it. Reading The Gay Science is tricky, Verdi acknowledges. "You can't read it as a collection of aphorisms, just picking out one or two to focus on. You have to read every section in context. That he writes this way is part of what he's up to. He wants to warn against dogmatization without being dogmatic-very much like Socrates. You read it as dialectical but not with him, with yourself." PARADIGMATIC PARADOXES The study group met 24 times. At many of the sessions, tutors struggled with Nietzsche's tendency to provoke a dialectical re-interpretation of experience-the "rich ambiguity" referred to earlier. The group found itself dealing with a Nietzschean paradox, a kind of ambiguity that is ultimately unsolvable but nevertheless instructive. First example of paradox: the nature of the gay science. In sections 319, 324, and especially in 335, Nietzsche talks about what he calls "physics" or "science." In 319 he lays out the premise:" ... [We] who thirst after reason are determined to scrutinize our experiences as a scientific experimenthour after hour, day after day. We ourselves wish to be our experiments and guinea pigs." Then in 324, Nietzsche refers to the "idea that life could be an experiment of the seeker for knowledge," that embracing "life as a means to knowledge" will lead one to live "not only boldly but even gaily." The gay science, then, is Nietzsche's prescription for living, in which each individual creates his own life as if it were an experiment. The creating includes moral laws. In 335, he turns Kant's categorical imperative on its head, as Nancy Buchenauer said: "The categorical imperative implies that if you give yourself a law it is always the same for everyone. But for Nietzsche it is not the same, even within the same person." Michael Grenke continued the thought: "We need to become physicists in order to become creators, in order to give ourselves laws." Physics for Nietzsche seems to become the study of human nature, of our human nature. "This is an argument against people who have some code of morality. We have to start picking things apart. But the results that come out of that are created by you. The paradox is that what you create is built of what you've already created-your experience," said Bill Pastille. And your experience is not entirely your own because you are a "Nietzsche is not giving us a system," product of your time in history and says John Verdi. your "reverences" -the so-called truths from established religion and morality. The seminar on this section closed with a question that further highlighted the paradox. Verdi asked: "As physicists, then, we are constantly creating, but what are the materials? We are what is there. Nietzsche has one foot in the world where there are truths-or does he? Is there a human nature?" Second example of paradox: the notion of eternal recurrence, sketched out in section 341 as the suggestion of a demon invading your ''loneliest loneliness." The demon says, "This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh ...will return to you ... The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!" Nietzsche asks: "How well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?" First the study group tried to figure out what eternal recurrence could mean, and why Nietzsche would consider it a good. "You live your life in such a way that you would want to live it again," said George Doskow. "It's a stance toward your life that you have no reservations about it whatsoever, You would will it again," said Grenke. "It's a positive disposition toward life as life. You want the unfixedness of life itself-you're saying yes to being alive at this moment," said Buchenauer. It is an affirmation and beyond that, a willing. In other words, there is no divine purpose; man becomes his own god. The paradox of eternal recurrence is that it's a kind of nihilism at the same time as it's an affirmation: How do you make values (what Nietzsche demands that you do to affirm your life) in a world with no purpose or ends? These examples of paradox mirror the paradoxical nature of the enterprise of studying Nietzsche-he unlocks a door and you look in to see a new world, but your way oflooking at what's beyond the door is pre-determined by your lifetime oflooking at what's on this side of the door: the world of cause and effect, of physics and chemistry that try to control nature by understanding it, of morality grounded in religious and philosophical tradition. Verdi thinks it's important to study Nietzsche at St. John's as part of the program because "we need to open the door a little bit. Nietzsche offers a re-interpretation of our whole life, our day to day experience. He gets you to re-think your fundamental premises." e ~ ~ = ~ "' "O ~ �••• Modernization The number of twentieth-century books that St. John's students read has not increased significantly since the New Program was established in 1937. Now that the century is almost over and a lot more books have been written, it is worthwhile to consider what tvventieth-century books are great enough and fit well enough with older books to be included in the program. I suggest that alumni, students, and tutors submit their nominations with a brief explanation of who the authors are, if they are not likely to be already known to readers of The Reporter; why these are great books; and, if possible, what readings they would drop from the program to make room for their nominations. My own nomination is F. A. Hayek's book The Fatal Conceit: The Errors ofSocialism (1988). Friedrich Augustvon Hayek (1899-1992) grew up in the extraordinary intellectual ferment of pre-Nazi Vienna. Lud·wig Wittgenstein was a cousin, and Komad Lorenz and Erwin Schroedinger were childhood acquaintances. He became an economist. His ideas on business cycles were widely studied in the early part of the Great Depression, then seemingly eclipsed in fuH by ideas of his rival (and later, when both were living in Cambridge, his friend) Keynes. Hayek ceased work in economics narrowly defined and wrote books on political philosophy, the of ideas, and psychology. The Road to Serfdom (1944), a warning against the economic and political consequences of centralized planning, became a surprise best-seller in the United States. In 1974 Hayek won the Nobel Prize in economics. He lived to see his economic and other ideas achieve new influence, especially in Eastern Europe, where they inspired many critics of communism. Today his work is read by a diverse audience including economists, political philosophers, and even researchers on artificial intelligence. An edition of his collected works, projected to be about 20 volumes, is partly complete. The Fatal Conceit is the last book Hayek v171·ote and it pulls together the main ideas that animated his career. Its central idea is that human understand. These prrnc1p1es anse neither from instinct or reason, from tradition. to direct the evolution of as witness the mass starvations that occurred in the Soviet and elsewhere under communism. This is because compulsory centralized direction obliterates the knowledge of local circumstances upon which J • so much of our well-being depends. Hayek was steeped in many of the authors in the St. John's program, and The Fatal Conceit discusses Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau, Adam Smith, and Marx, to name a few. It is a provocative criticism of some and praise of others. What would I delete from the seminar reading list to make way for The Fatal Conceit? Anything by Hegel other than the Philosophy of History Hegel's writing is like quicksand: try to get to the bottom of it and you end up drowning. Editors' Reply: We apologize for the err01: Here is the illustration shown the correct way. -Kurt Schuler (A8 l) Error I enjoyed reading the article on the Moss Haggadah in the Fall '98 Reporter. I was even more excited that this piece of scholarship was due to a St. John's alumnus. However, the picture was reversed. The Hebrew is backwards. -Len Weinberg and Fran Gailun Parents ofAbigail Weinberg (Class of2 000) I am the parent of a Johnny (Charles Weber, A95) who now resides at Kibbutz Lotan, D.N. Cheval Eilot, 88855 Israel. Charlie is a Medic in the IDF. He expects to go to graduate school in Jerusalem next September. I do not pretend to Charlie's erudition in the Hebrew language, but isn't there something wrong with the photograph of the Haggadah on p.6 of The Reporter? Surely others have commented. The first thing that caught my eye was the : in the 3rd line down. Why, I asked myself, would a sentence begin with a period? Then I looked more closely at the text. The letters appear to face from left to right rather than right to left. How did you achieve this? You guys have printed a mirror image! I held the text up to my mirror and suddenly the : appeared after the word Torah. I'm not crazy after all. I hope David Moss has a sense of humor, but such a lack of erudition on the part of St John's. It's a Shanda! -Perry C. Weber (aka Pera Rachel bat Gdaliah) I'm sure I'm not the first St. Klein Weigle and Cain I would like to comment on two articles in the Fall 1998 issue of The Reporter. Robert Bart said that people talk about Jacob Klein in ways that pain . and that " ... we wouldn't be here if it weren't for him." That may be so. However, Mr. Klein was held in esteem, respect, and even affection by most of the students during the mid-1950s. In contrast, Richard Weigle most certainly was not as well thought of or appreciated in those days. For evidence of this, one need only to listen to the recording of "The Fifth Year," the musical comedy written and performed by students at the end of academic year 1954-55. In the songs and dialogue, Mr. Klein is dealt with gently and even lovingly, while Mr. Weigle is spoken of with what almost amounts to contempt. The differences between Mr. Klein and Mr. Weigle were great. Mr. Klein was plump, European, Jewish, warm, and friendly, but even so, quite capable of shooting out obliquely, and even on occasion directly, little verbal barbs at people, sometimes gratuitously. In contrast, Mr. Weigle was very American, Yr<)testant, somewhat formal, correct, not to being personal with others. And it was the oddof these two men that enabled the not to surbut in its modest way, to thrive. Mr. Klein was a person. There were times when he sat in the Coffee and of his childhood in Russia. He seemed to be oleasant and relaxed. .,_,VUIJ.U.H.s;;_ I in a future issue. Thanks for an al"Vva,rs-1nt:en:~sn.ng paper. -Linda McConnell, RN (A6l) when approaching ties. For a closed door. he would out his hand in the pocket of his suit coat and only then, protected from direct contact with the door knob, would he open the door. He opened a pack of cigarettes just as idiosyncratically: from the bottom. He would extract a cigarette and hold a lit match or lighter under the filter end before putting it between his lips and lighting it. When asked about this, he said that other people did worse things, that he only disinfected, and that it was harmless. In contrast Mr. Weigle was a very proper man, a straight stick. He had the knack of making most students feel uncomfortable in his presence. Curtis Wilson once remarked that Mr. Weigle seemed to unbend only when in the mountain air of Santa Fe and in the presence of wealthy people. Just as well; he got along with moneyed donors and was a very successful fundraiser. With all credit due Mr. Klein, Mr. Weigle was as much responsible as anyone else for the survival of the college. He came to the presidency when the college was in turmoil and on a precarious financial footing. Mr. Weigle administered the college with a tiny staff, raised funds and made something of the endowment, increased faculty salaries, arranged for mortgage loans for faculty members, improved and added to the physical plant, worked to better town/ gown relations, and established the Santa Fe campus. To his great credit, he did not interfere with the academic program. On the subject of ghosts on the campus, I recalled reading in Hoopes' biography of James M. Cain (Cain, Holt Rinehart and Winston, 1982) about Cain's thoughts concerning spirits on the St. John's campus. Some background: Jam es M. Cain, journalist, teacher, and author of 17 novels, some of them bestsellers, had a close connection with the college. His father, James W. Cain, joined the faculty as a professor of mathematics and English literature the year Thomas Fell became president-1886. James M. Cain, his first child with Rose Cain, was born in 1892 in Paca-Carroll, then a faculresidence, young Cain lived there the first 11 years of his life. The younger Cain, who earned his bachelor's from Washington College, served in France during World War I, and worked at a number of jobs, mostly as the St .. ing a lecture course in .~~··u~~-J•U, and a class in the u~•~u•U· In and Cain broke down. The mate cause ion about the disciolininl! of some more recogmuon Postman Always Rings Twice, Serenade, Mildred Pierce, The Moth, continued on page 27 �Catalogue 'Bombs During World War II bombing missions over Germany, a St. Johns lofted college catalogues the window ofhis plane. by Barbara Goyette allege students, perhaps those from St. John's more than others, excel at the symbolic gesture. pi.cuu""' the non-wearing of shoes or smoking because it's cool-by actions like students on the cusp of adulthood establish their 111<leT)erH11:~nc:e in deeds as well as in t-h,-,.,,,..,.h+c and words. Martin class of 1943" left college bomber group and was sent to Europe. "Before I went over to I thought of dropping the books," says Andrews. "Since America had sent me over there to bombs, not catalogues, you will understand that I did what I did surre1)titiousl Few 11cu1.1H:::. from the memhers of my crew, knew what was doing. The catalOg:w~s when my or my group was in a lead oosition for that L.H.LfSHUH..L The crew of Andrews' B-17; he's second from the left, bottom row. in 1941 to join the Army, but he carried out a kind of ultimate college student prank-with-meaning during his service-he dropped St. John's catalogues over Germany from the bomber planes he piloted. "Each bundle of catalogues had a little parachute, floating down into Nazi Germany. It was a symbolic gesture to say that, for us, books really mattered. We weren't trying to recruit students but to protest the Nazis' burning of books," he says. In 1939, when Andrews came to St. John's, Hitler had just invaded Poland. "We didn't think that we would get involved in the war, but in two years time it siphoned off half of our class into the armed forces," he says. By 1941 it was clear that he be drafted, and since he wanted to fly, he joined the Army ("The Navy was looking for pilots also, but at least in the Army when you landed it was on land."). Haln<Vaythrough training that summer, everyone in his class was made an instructor. Andrews wanted to see action, so he got himself transferred to a would have drawn attention to them. They were never dropped while we were under German fighter attack nor during periods of heavy anti-aircraft fire." The key man in Andrews' catalogue-dropping process was the parachute rigger. He devised the method of releasing them and together he and Andrews rigged every one. "'Each catalogue was tightly rolled, tied with strong twine, and firmly attached to its own little parachute," explains Andrews. "The chutes were of white nylon about the size of a man's extralarge handkerchief." The books were then bundled into packs of six and had little drogues that pulled the bundles apart when they hit the air stream. Each of the waist gunners, who had open windows on either side of the plane for their ine-gun mounts, would fling a bundle out when Andrews gave the word. The catalogues were dropped on missions to Kassel and Stuttgart. Andrews' time as a bomber was briefer than he it would be-his plane was shot down on his thirteenth after about three months. He made an emergency landing in Switzer} where he and his crew were interned in camps. On a train to Zurich to be s-wiss authorities Andrews met Allen future head of the CIA who was then head German Andrews was to carry sensitive information back to the which he a week m{~mor1z1ng before his return. There are two more St. twists to Andrews' wartime adventures. The first involves the '"nose art" on bis Air Force bombers were "decorated Viii.th or outlandish cartoons, which struck me as " says Andrews. His crew decided to call their Delivery" and to paint an American flag near the nose. But before this could be done, the plane was shot down. Andrews, though, did have time to ask one of the special artists assigned to paint nose art to stencil under the pilot's window "Est Nulla Via In Via Virtuti," the St. John's motto which translates "No way is impassable to virtue." The Swiss officers who met Andrews' plane as it made its emergency landing were so impressed by the B-17's slogan that one remembered it 50 years later. The final St. twist involves a great book- War and Peace. "One of our most stressful missions was to recounts Andrews. "\Ve lost nvo '-'H"'JU''-'" on the same side when we were attacked Messerschmidts. One of my crew was wounded. I had to back to F:ngland-not in formation but alone. I had started reading War and Peace that summer, and I kept thinking that I couldn't get shot down because I needed to get back to finish it. Well, we did get back to England, but I got superstitious and never have finished reading the book." e AfartinAndrews went on to a long career making documentary films. He now lives with his wife, Jean, in Port Jefferson, New York. He's never read the epilogue to War and Peace, so while the novel is finished, the book is not. �·c Gp he era! :P ~..................... . ······················································••@••······· Ruth -Exce1pted with permission from Pasatiempo, the arts and entertainmant magazine of the Santa Fe New Mexican t 81, Charles Greenleaf Bell, tutor at St. John's College in anta Fe since the early days, poet, historian, innovator (the list goes on), has been working full time on a third incarnation of his Symbolic History project. Composed and refined over the past 20 years, the series of 40 lectures begins with ancient Greece, runs through Bach and Milton, and ends with the Atomic Age. But Bell does not call them lectures. He calls them shows. The last three are entitled Now. "I can't get any more contemporary," Bell said in a recent interview. Bell's mission or obsession is simple to him. "Just to make a richer account and more moving account of the actual drama of history," he said. In between public lectures and private study groups, Bell has been working with an assistant, in the basement of the tower building at St. John's College, transferring the sound and image based shows to newer technology. Bell's first show was in 1939, the year Kodachrome was released. He used a record player and slides, and he recited quotes. The show was improvised entirely but guided the images."! had to memorize because I was working in the dark," he said. Over the years, the shows evolved with Bell on tape. Eventually Symbolic History moved to video. Now more than 15, 000 of the images have been scanned into a computer for the first phase of Bell's Symbolic History that will be available in DVD, the technological step beyond CD-ROM. What always has concerned Bell is "the transience of multimedia recording," he said. But he remains opti- mistic."Bythe time I needed anything developed, it was there," he said. When you talk with Bell, it is hard at first to know where his thoughts end and say, Dante's or Milton's or Goethe's ideas begin. There is a shift in Bell's voice, a dramatic tone, and you realize he is reciting a poem that has something to do with what he is talking about. Clearly, Bell believes others before him have said it better than he ever could. Goethe's quote(" ... nature is obliged to find me some other form of being when this one breaks down ... "), for another shot at being himself. On a wall in the dining room hangs a portrait of Bell, painted by Jack Goode. "He made me look like a lecherous old monk of the 15th century," Bell said, obviously pleased ·with the image. Along the bottom of the painting are Floor to ceiling books at Bell's home in Santa Fe. "Without contraries, there is no progression," says Charles Bell. Surely there is no form of being that is suitable for Charles Bell other than being Charles Bell. And no doubt he would ask of nature in ·~ r'S i::, t' (),) ..:::: C§j s <I) s Q ..c:: ~ Charles Bell and tutor Ralph Swentzel! scan images for Symbolic History. words in Latin that translate, "I lived, I saw, I vibrated." Bell, whose first loves were astronomy and science, probably began vibrating in earnest when he was 12, staring into his first telescope, a well-timed gift from his parents. "It was just when I needed something to investigate science," he said of that telescope. "I never worked hard in high school except in my own things," Bell said. He wanted to attend the University of Chicago but his father, who is from Greenville, Mississippi, wanted him to go a southern college. Bell ended up at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. "The school with the largest telescope," he said. His mother sent along a picture of Einstein that young Bell hung on his dorm room wall. "I thought I was beginning to understand (Einstein's Theory of) Relativity," he said. "You had to bridge a contradiction to grasp a phenomenon. You precipitate polarities and embrace both." Years when Bell was teaching at Princeton University, Einstein would attend shows that Bell put on at local bookstores."I had a wonderful audience," Bell said. His idea of combining history, art and literature with a study of the music of specific time periods was a novel one. Through the years, he strove to find ways to make his presentations more permanent. He had problems duplicating slides for distribution and blending records with his voice for video. "The whole thing was based on ephemeral plas" he said. Every time technology changed or improved, Bell looked for a way to use it for his shows. Over time, grants and some sales have helped reduce production costs. At first, the purchase price of each video was $25. Now, if one buys a complete set of 40, the cost drops to $12.50 a tape. Bell only made six complete sets because it takes so long. But he never let go of his project. "My own creative history gave me the hope of some destinate breakthrough," he said. But there is the other part of Symbolic History-the content, the words, the information. A hunger for knowledge drove Bell. During his time at the University of Virginia, students on the dean's list didn't have to take classes. Because he made the list, Bell only had to take exams. "I took as many classes as possible and stayed up all night and took exams and got lOOs," Bell said. By day, the math and science major went to the library and read. He also became a private student of professors Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan, Rhodes scholars who were devising a reading program of the Great Books. Barr and Buchanan's ideas would form the core of the St. John's College curriculum. By the time �LIBERAL EDUCATION IN ACTION Bell finished college with degrees in science, he also independently had completed what is now the Great Books program. He taught himself art by reading in the art and music libraries." I was nearly tone deaf, but the library had scores and records, and I began to learn how to read music on my own," he said. While at Princeton, he organized a reading group of German refugees and began to learn German. "With just a few clues to grammar, you can work through (foreign) text," he said. When he was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford University in England, he traveled to Florence, Italy, where he taught himself Italian so he could read Dante in the original. Later, with a Rockefeller grant, he began collecting the records he would draw from for his shows. "What I sought was a knack for combining visuals and sound." He started another Dante reading group in 1936, and continues to lead it out of his home today. 'Tm the only original member," he said. In his home library that started in the basement and extended into what once had been an attached garage are books on shelves from floor to ceiling, books in piles on the floor, books on tabletops and countless boxes of papers and slides. In one corner near a window is a desk that belonged to his father, a senator from Mississippi. Bell's filing system appears to be chronological although in talking with the professor, it is clear nothing ever is completely linear for him. But '"I know where everything is," he said. The books begin with Egypt, some hieroglyphics, and go to classical texts and then proceed through time, "because my shows are that way and I think that way," he said. Works in their original languages stand alongside translations. Bell set up his slide projector and gave me a minishow-a short program titled Blake and Temporal Revolution. "Without contraries, there is no progression," begins Bell in the taped lecture. For the next 30 minutes, I scrawl just a few comments: "For everything that lives is holy" "how does a confrontation become philosophy?" What has Bell learned over the years and what educational philosophy has driven him? "I learn to celebrate in new terms, everything. Everything that I would have repudiated before I had to learn to celebrate on its own terms," he said. For Bell, learning always will involve embracing polarities. "We build one wall by tearing down another," he said.• Project Politae, a student volunteer organization, takes offin Santa Fe. by Amber Boydstun (Sf99) ulletin boards on the Santa Fe campus feature notices of flu shots, reminders about recycling, upcoming lectures, local job listings, and preceptorial lists. But one board-in the Peterson Student Center-has become particularly interesting to students. It lists volunteer activities, everything from Habitat for Humanity to building pens for captive-bred wolves to tutoring. This year, volunteer community service efforts are united for the first time, thanks to the efforts of sophomore Alexandra Rothenberg, and the range of meaningful and fun activities listed on the board is an indication of her success. After Rothenberg approached the administration in September, president John Agresto, vice-president Robert Glick, and public relations director Laura Mulry decided to work with her to outline an effective program for coordinating all community service work by students. Rothenberg wanted to tailor the program after the successful Annapolis version, called Project Politae. Rothenberg now has a part-time job coordinating the Santa Fe Project Politae. A donation by Robert Warren (SGI93), helped make the funding possible. "By my experience," Warren says, "St. John's is populated with students who are people of good will, willing to go out into the community and work hard to assist others who are perhaps not so fortunate as they are. Project Politae provides that opportunity and encourages cooperation. And it's a two-way street: the more the college and its students give to the community, the more responsive the communitywill become to the needs of the students and their college." Rothenberg's desk, computer, and printer were donated by Santa Fe tutor Linda Myers, (SF72), and her husband Gerald Myers. Office space is shared with the Placement Office in Weigle Hall. There already were a number of students and staff on campus active in volunteer activities. The Placement Office under director Margaret Odell, had students tutoring at Zia Middle School and with homeschooled children. Last year, Abigail Weinberg, then a sophomore, organized volunteers to help with Habitat for Humanity and a program at the Santa Fe Community Farm, an all-organic, all-volunteer operation that distributes food to 30 local shelters. Rothenberg's job was B to bring all these different activities together under one umbrella. Before coming to St. John's, Rothenberg worked with the Garden Project, a San Francisco program that offers ex-convicts rehabilitation through organic gardening. She's always found volunteering an important part of her life, and she thinks there's a connection between the pollination skills. She hopes the garden will also bring bats to fill the duty of pest control on this pesticide-free farm. Perhaps the largest addition Rothenberg has made to the volunteer opportunities has been the tutoring programs. She organized an on-campus tutoring program-every Wednesday afternoon St. John's stu- Alexandra Rothenberg (center) poses in front of the Project Politae board, with Placement Director Margaret Odell and Student Activities Director Mark St. john. ideas of Project Politae and the ideas of the great books. "Project Politae suggests that people should relate to each other, an attitude that often does not extend outside of the classroom, but which is important in the literature we read," she says. Project Politae's recruitment efforts are largelyword-of-mouthplus the bulletin board in Peterson. Rothenberg posts flyers describing different volunteer activities and notifies Resident Assistants in the dorms about upcoming projects. At last count, active volunteers numbered more than 50. Here are some of the projects Project Politae has been involved with this year: preparing the gardens for winter at the Santa Fe Children's Museum; a get-out-the vote effort coordinated with Neighbor to Neighbor; Thanksgiving dinner preparation and delivery to homebound Santa Feans; and assistance to Beneficial Farms, a cooperative farm that donates its food to Kitchen Angels and other local groups. Rothenberg expanded the work done by student volunteers with the Santa Fe Community Farm by creating the St. John's College Butterfly Garden, a separate organic garden designed to attract beneficial animals such as butterflies, bees, and moths for their dents provide homework help and tutoring in all subjects to Santa Fe students of all ages from the public school system. There were so many volunteers that Rothenberg sent some into town to tutor at the Santa Fe Boys and Girls Club. Project Politae also helps out HOSTS (Help One Student To Succeed) in its highly structured program coordinated by the director of parent and volunteer involvement for the Santa Fe schools. As Robert Glick, vice president, says, "The thing every St. John's student can do is teach other students how to learn." Rothenberg notes that many of the people who lead volunteer organizations in town have told her how pleased they are that the college is giving back to the larger community. Even more important is the impact of the volunteer efforts on the campus itself. "Liberal education has a tendency to be very introspective," says President Agresto. "It makes us thinkers and readers and pursuers of knowledge. We run the risk of cutting ourselves off from others. This kind of volunteer activity leavens the daily introspective nature of liberal education and gives us the opportunity to be with others, help others, and make our contribution to the world." • �Calllpus Life ... Classic Tales, Cookies and Milk, and the Hokey Pokey Storytellers' Guild entertains alumni kids at Homecoming by SusJan Borden he Children's Story Hour was the highlight of the Annapolis Homecoming for a handful of alumni offspring (and, truth be told, their parents had a good time too). Held during Homecoming seminars, when alumni throughout the campus were discussing great works like Antigone, Moby Dick, and the Republic, the Children's Story Hour included a few classics of its own: Beauty and the Beast, Rapunzel, and, of course, Winnie the Pooh. But unlike those whose focus was Sophocles, Melville, and Plato, the children in attendance got a break for cookies and milk and a chance to go outside T for a round of the Hokey Pokey. Homecoming's Children's Story Hour was hosted by the Storytellers' Guild, a group of about 25 students that meets every Wednesday night in the General Hartle Room (the former reading room of the old library) for an hour or so of stories and milk and cookies. This year's most popular readings include tales by Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm, the Bernstein Bears, and the complete oeuvre of Winnie the Pooh. Like other campus activities, though, the Guild has its share of controversy: its request to the Delegate Council for funds was met with suspicion until members Frisbee hats and balloons were the dress du at explained the milk problem. Some people like two percent, some like whole, and some like chocolate, so the group asked for enough money to buy three kinds of milk. Junior Gretchen Anderton, the Guild's archon, explains the club's appeal: "It keeps us from always treating books like they have to be program books, like we have to only read program books, as if all other books were evil," she says. "Most of us read tons when we were little kids, and back then we read for fun-not just because we had to get our seminar reading done. It's really nice to get back to that." 8 Hour. EXPLORING THE GRAND CANYON Kee Zublin, (SFOI) N out 60 million years ago an oceanic and a continental plate had the conflict which resulted in he Rocky Mountains. From the base of these mountains sprang the Colorado River, which emerged to wend its merry way due west to the Pacific Ocean. Only some time later did the river settle on its now famous shortcut through Marble Canyon of the Grand Canyon. When it did, it ground like liquid sandpaper into the highest strata of the Colorado Plateau, exposing layers of rock one and a half billion years old and creating 5000-foot-high canyon walls. In January, a group of students fearlessly led by Brendan O'Neill, assistant director of Student Activities in Santa Fe, hiked for six days in the canyon. The trip, the first of its kind organized by Student Activities in 15 years, gave students a chance to witness firsthand the aftermath of all the geologic commotion. The 11 members of the expedition (the radius of whose sphere of action is normally the distance between the library and the cafeteria) packed their week's supply of food and other necessities on their backs down miles of rock into the canyon. As one of the students thoughtfully noted of the unwonted strenuous activity, "It is important that occasionally we leave our comfort zones." The route taken by the intrepid 11 dropped along the Tanner Trail from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon to the Colorado River. The Tanner Trail was built by Edwin Tanner, a miner from the old days. And one tough miner he must have been, we agreed, to pack his mining equipment down miles of rock into the deepest canyon in the world. It wasn't even clear to us what he mined down there. All that we saw were clam fossils and marmots. We were a far cry from mining pioneers, descending that trail. We were decked out in warm polypropelene, with internal frame packs filled with all sorts of nice food. One hundred years ago, Mr. Tanner hitched up his canvas trousers, grabbed his wood and canvas shoulder sack, and hit the trail. His food supply was sweat, tears, and the elusive Abert squirrel. Slim pickings. Our six-day food supply was augmented by the wonderful yards-of-beef. Yards-of-beef is a nonperishable club of meat-excellent trail food. Our three yards of beef formed the cornerstone of the otherwise shaky foundation of nuts and humus. Three yards, 11 people, Katie Turco at rest. Samuel Parker, Jr., near the rim. Taking in the view. Mission accomplished. six days: two inches per person per day (minus the veg etarians). This can all be worked out with computers. Believe me, it was enough. Besides, we all thought that the beeflooked pretty cool strapped to the sides of packs like lethal weapons. And that's what they were: loaded sidearms for the battle ahead. lfwe were a far cry from Mr. Tanner and his mining outfit, inching along the trail in our brightlycolored line, we weren't much like your average organized hiking group either. To begin with, we paid $65 instead of the $1100 for a comparable Sierra Club outing. We traveled with the smug assurance that we were an econo-line outfit, spiritually prepared to face the canyon. Then again, we didn't have anyone clever telling us the Latin names of bushes or the proper epoch in which certain sedimentary layers are classified, as is customary on such outings. We had to make do. Brendan provided us with written information on the geology of the canyon and its resident flora and fauna, and this we read, as Johnnies are apt to do. We were also able to observe the fossil evidence of bygone days. Mostly, though, our guided tour was provided by members of the iconoclast 11 and our various nuggets of wisdom that outshone even the most learned discourse of trail gurus on those other trips. Sometimes we even made up factoids if our collective information didn't answer a question. Like Albert Einstein said, imagination is more important than knowledge. When we didn't have the one, we just used the other. I'd like to see the Sierra Club try that! We didn't need anyone to tell us how beautiful the place we were in was. They couldn't have, and neither can I. It sort of ruins it. I will say this: The view from the bottom of the Grand Canyon is worth the effort. From the rim, the canyon is impressively large and colorful. But as one descends into its depths, leavi.ng behind the trinket-shops, improved campgrounds, and the sexually segregated toilets, a new sense of scale and color emerges. The bands of color that blend together at a distance are each the earth of a multimillion-year phase in the life of the region. In the rocks along the trail we read the tale of past epochs when trilobites danced with mollusks and sea lilies detached themselves from their stems to roam the waters of the Colorado Plateau. Like the sea lily, we detached ourselves from our stems and wandered into the world. • �Calllpus Life ... THE ALL-AMERICAN GUY FROM GHANA •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• by Sus3an Borden T here's something kind of allAmerican about Iddrisu Tia's four years at St. John's College. There's a sort of rags-to-riches feel to his student aid jobs on the Annapolis campus, from his freshman assignment in the dish pit to his upperclass years in the library. There's an industrious seriousness to his part;d ticipation in the biology and math ~ study groups. There's a just-one-ofthe-guys spirit to his play on the soccer field. There's a communitymindedness to his service on the polity's Food Committee. And there's the B.M.0.C. aspect of his just-completed term as Delegate Council president. But while his resume is Tia is not. He is from Ghana and has been in this for less than four years. Tia's road to St. his hometovv11 administered to the best students UU-~LL""'A"'~LLLGhana. year, students who score on this exam are sent to United World Collee:es, think it told them that, although we don't have the equipment or resources they have, we can still compete with them." As a result of his score, Tia was sent to Atlantic College, the United World College in Wales, where he chose physics, chemistry, and math f e: prepares students for the International Baccalaureate Diploma. Tia, like others from the underdeveloped north of Ghana, was discouraged from taking the exam, the result of a national prejudice that northerners cannot compete with the intelligence of those from the south, particularly those from the capital city of Accra.Nevertheless, as one of the highest scorers in his region, Tia was invited to take a further test in Accra, and his score was among the eight highest nationwide (rank among the top scorers is not disclosed). The achievement was an enormous one, not only for Tia but for his family and community. "I remember it was on television, and people were writing to my dad, commenting on how great I did," he says. In addition to reflecting a personal triumph, Tia also felt his score sent a message toGhanaians from the south. "I for his high level studies and Spanish, economics, and English for his subsidiary level subjects. Because Atlantic College is a pre-university program, it is a popular stop for college admissions directors, and while Tia was studying there, John Christensen, the Annapolis Director of Admissions, paid a visit. "When I heard about St. John's College, it really caught my attention, because at that point, lwas a little bit confused about what I wanted to do in the future. Most of the schools said, 'Okay, you come to the university and you choose one thing as your major.' But when Mr.. · Christensen talked about St!John's, he said, 'You don't have to choose a major, you do almost everything. You get to know a little bit of everything: about yourself, about your envjton- ment, about the world, about the past.' That caught my attention." Tia matriculated at St. John's in September 1995. During his years at the college, he continued to enjoy science, as he had in Ghana and Wales. Lab was his favorite class; he was particularly excited by the works of Newton and Faraday. "I learned all this stuff-electricity, magnetism, the laws of motion-in high school, just by writing down equations, but I did not understand what those equations really meant; I just put values in and then found the answer. And when I read Faraday, he brought me back to seeing the phenomena as they are, as values in equations. When I had another look at Newton, the laws I saw were very different from what I learned in high school. I saw it was not 011vs1cs, it was also ornno~;;oi::mv Tia's love for science did not him from the full breadth of the program. He-wrote his freshman essay on the Meno. His sophomore essaywas about essaywas on Phedre, and for his senior essay, he has returned to what the '.:'.>1rirnr,1osw1n about love. With essay writing now behind Tia is making plans for his next big project: a degree in agronomy, an interest that dates back to his boyhood, when a friend of his father's was an agriculture extension officer. "He would come by on a motorbike, and I always thought that if I could be an agriculture officer, then I would getto ride a bike," Tia recalls. By the time he was twelve, however, his aspirations turned to medicine. "I grew up in a community where the ratio of doctors to patients is really low and you see people who are struggling with some tiny disease that could be easily cured and it's just lack of information and medical advice that makes people suffer," he explains. Yet despite his long~standing interest in medicine, and despite his pre-St John's penchant for loading up on science courses, Tia's experience at St. John's has, to some degree, shaken his commitment to medicine. "Starting in my sophomore year, I did feel a little bit confused about what I wanted to do. Because at St. John's I see things that interest me more than what I see in medicine, although still I feel the interest in medicine very much. For example, philosophy caught my eye. I want to investigate it, the philosophical way of seeing things. And, I think, I want to combine 1twith medicine," he says. Tia has given himself an extra year to assess his commitment to medicine while he studies agronomy. Like many Johnnies who plan to attend medical school, Tia intended to take post-bac science courses to meet medical school requirements. -'-'h"''-''--'-'--'-' he will puruse a masters in agronomy, which the same courses he would need to take for his medical school nn··~ 1 •~n tion. '.X7hen his masters is he will re-examine his interest in medical school. If he decides he will pursue a PhD in agronomy-a field that -will also benefit the Ghana he to return to. "I want to go back to Ghana because Ghana is a developing countTy; it needs help, it needs the technology of this country. So my plan is to stay here to gain the necessary knowledge and then to go home and help those people who are unable to study as I've studied. Even if I wanted to stay in the United States, I wouldn't be able to stay because I have a lot of promises made back home. My parents have never doubted that I would come back, and the program that sent me to Britain selects people whom they think will be able to help their country in the future. l promised them that I would help Ghana. So I really must keep my promise by going back to impart the knowledge I gained from the developed world. Though I'm not going to change everything in Ghana, I'll do what I can to help my country." e i A Good Cup of Coffee GJS in Santa Fe have a new place to gather-the William Darkey Graduate Common Room, dedicated in January. Located in the Peterson Student Center in the space formerly occupied by the bookstore and named for tutor emeritus William Darkey, the Common Room has been completely remodeled and furnished; support for the project came from Santa Fe GI alumni, led by Robert Warren (SGI93). The one stipulation that came with Warren's gift was that "there always be a good cup of coffee available." At the dedication, Mr. Warren noted that not only was his coffee stip- ulation being met, but also his desire that the most comfortable quarters on campus be constructed. He credited David Levine, director of the Graduate Institute, for his dedication to the project's completion, a labor of love and determination. He then outlined his admiration for Mr. Darkey, calling him an "institution within an institution." Surely thousands of students, he said, have benefited from Mr. Darkey's incisive wisdom and gentle guidance. Mr. Darkey said that the work of the Graduate Institute is one of great importance to the college. "Itis a national disease that we treat education as a product. Mr. Buchanan began while at Cooper Union stressing the need for providing education for adults," says Mr. Darkey. "The Graduate Institute may be the most important thing we do here. Teaching graduate students may well be the most gratifying part of my long life." Mr. Darkeywent on to note that there may_ be some J . eW.111 o "' ·- · confusion among students lookam arkey Graduate Com- Roo ' •..on mis" A ing for the "Dark Room" to develop '" eterson. their rolls of film, but that the needed and a welcome Graduate Common Room was indeed addition to the campus. e Th . · . . .· . ····. · · Ji �• eco Zl A record 333 alumni came home to Annapolis for the October 2-4 f tHomecoming, with family and guests boosting attendance numbers to over 500. Everyone who registered was presented with an orange Homecoming '98 frisbee, which sported the new college seal. Friday evening, President Nelson hosted the Class of' 48 Fiftieth Reunion Dinner, where members of the classes of '48, '43, '38, and'33 gathered for an elegant meal and a chance to recapture old memories and reacquaint with old friends. About 25 alumni and guests of the class of '68 met in the home of Gilbert and Debbie Renaut for pre-lecture drinks and dinner in honor of their 30th reunion. Forty-three people participated in ''Dining Hall Nostalgia Night," where the opportunity to go through the dining hall line and eat off a tray revived memories of the golden days. The after-dinner highlight was the Class of '94 Homecoming Lecture: Bill McClay (A74) spoke on the subject "Is America an Experiment?" After lecture, alumni joined current seniors in the dining hall for wine, coffee, and dessert. Julia Mobayed Dray (A87) set the tone with her sparkling piano music. At around 11: 30, those still looking for fun migrated to the Coffee Shop where Eric Lyon (A89) served as):)J for a coffee shop party heavy on disco, Motown, and '80s pop. Saturday events began with the Annual Meeting of the Alumni Association. Current Association business was reviewed by Alumni Association President Allan Hoffman (A49) and reports on the state of the college were presented by Chris Nelson (SF70) and Dean Harvey Flaumenhaft. Chester Burke (A74) gave a brief memorial for Michael Littleton (HA95) and Leo Pickens (A78) gave a brief memorial for Bryce Jacobsen (A42). During lunch, reunion classes gathered throughout campus and at the nearby home of Mary McCutchan (A63). The class of '38 celebrated their 60th reunion with St. John's College baseball caps for all who attended. The class of '78 lunched at the on-campus apart of Leo Pickens (A78) and Valerie a~ ~ Pawlewicz (A89). Many alumni had trouble breaking away from mealtime conversation to attend seminar. This year marked an all-time high for seminars: fourteen were offered, on works from Plato's Republic and Sophocles' Antigone to Melville's Moby-Dick and Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. Concurrent with seminar was the Children's Story Hour, during which current students entertained children of alumni with Winnie The Pooh, Beauty and the Beast, and a rousing chorus of the Hokey Pokey. The Alumni Soccer Classic took place after seminar. The alumni proved dominant on the field. "It was an absolute massacre," said Athletic Director Leo Pickens. "Goals were scored by Paul Gibert (A91), Ian Webb (A86), Jide Nzelibe (A92), and numerous others, too many to name in this short article. Craig Sirkin (A95) stood his ground in the goal, while Ned Freeman (A95) played the game of his career at sweeper. Out of respect for the students, we will not report the actual score." Many alumni who chose to steer clear of the athletic field thrashing headed to the bookstore. A 103 discount kept the cash register ringing as alumni loaded up on program books and sweatshirts. In the five hours the bookstore was open, sales exceeded $5000. Outside of Humphreys Hall, the bookstore hosted an autograph party featuring works by four alumni: Mark Fabi (A78) signed WYRM, GlendaEoyang (SF76) signed Coping with Chaos: Seven Simple Tools, Anthony Chiffolo (AGI84) signed At Prayer with the Saints, and Paul Stiles (AGI96) signed Riding the Bull: My Year in the Scenes from Homecoming: Michael Oink (A75), Director of the Graduate Institute, talking with Gls who gathered in the Coffee Shop (above). Marta Lively (above right) at her 20th; Jane Spear and Robin Chalek Tzannes joined classmates from '7l outside Chase-Stone. Mark fabi (A78) signed copies of his sci-fi thriller (above center). Making the soft-sell to a prospective was Susan Eversole (SF 7 6 ), who brought her daughter to check out the college (lower center). Coney Island Tooters Mrs. Berns, Ms. Heines (hidden), Ms. Seeger, Mr. Kalkavage, Mr. Berns (hidden), and Mr. Stephenson serenaded the crowd (top right). A '98 Homecoming memorial frisbee (far right.) �0 Madness at Merril/Lynch. The appearance by Plato, author of classics such as The Republic and The Meno, was, alas, cancelled. Concurrent with the autograph party and the soccer match, alumni were treated to a musical interlude by the Coney Island Tooters, an overgrown barbershop quartet of tutors led by Peter KaJkavage and including Gisela and Laurence Berns, Jonathan Tuck, and David Stephenson, among others. Immediately following, Elliott Zuckerman led returning Johnnies in choral music's greatest hits during "Freshman Chorus Revisited." The annual cocktail party brought athletes, bookworms, and musicians together in the FSK Auditorium for hors d' oeuvres, drinks, and high volume conversation. Saturday night's Homecoming Banquet in the dining hall featured toasts by members of the reunion classes. Stewart Greenfield (A53} and Tom Geyer (A69) received Awards of Merit from the Alumni Association. Constance Greenfield, L. Harvey Poe, and Chaninah Maschler were named Honorary Alumni. An exceedingly well-attended waltz party followed the banquet. Sunday's weather was chilly and damp, but that didn't keep an intrepid few from the 5Kfun run led by Mike Van Beuren (A77). Later, the runners joined about 230 alumni and guests in the FSK Lobby for a champagne brunch where alumni were still reminiscing as late as 3:00 p.m., as caterers cleared tables and mopped floors aJl around them. Alumni planning to attend Homecoming 1999 should mark their calendars: October 1-3 will be this year's dates. And, the alumni office advises, it's never too early to make hotel reservations in Annapolis. Please contact the alumni office (phone: 410-626-2531, e-mail: alumni@sjca.edu) for lodging information. • 'J~ ALuMNI AssocIATION HoNoRs FIVE Constance and Stewart Greenfield; Tom Geyer; Chaninah Maschler, and Harvey Poe. A t the Homecoming Banquet in Annapolis, the Alumni Association presented the Award of Merit to Tom Geyer (A69), and Stewart Greenfield (A53). Constance Greenfield, L. Harvey Poe, and Chaninah Maschlerwere made honorary alumni. Tom Geyer was introduced by Jonathan Zavin (A68), who recounted his background: Geyer came to St. John's from a dairy farm in Pennsylvania, took a year off to become editor of a tribal newspaper in North Carolina, and after St. John's began a long career as a newspaper reporter, editor, and publisher. Zavin remembered Geyer's characteristic "reason and tolerance," which were reflected in his articles and his personality. Geyer has served on the Board of Visitors and Governors, where his counsel "has always been helpful." Geyer, in accepting the award, remembered his time at St. John's as a period in which he was not particularly attentive to schoolwork. However, the program "made the deepest impression on me," he said. Eva Brann introduced Stewart Greenfield and his wife Constance, who was made an honorary alumna, class of 1998. Miss Brann noted that Stewart had once confessed to her his regret at not having been a better student when he was at St. John's. "I developed over myyears as dean a theory... that the warmth of alumni's attachment was in inverse proportion to the brilliance of their student days, and that, in turn, was in inverse proportion to their success in life" she said. "This disparity has always made great sense to me ... The reason is that it reveals the potency of our Program, which goes to work over a lifetime and often touches those most deeply who absorb its good in the least ostentatious fashion." Certainly the Greenfields have demonstrated their strong feelings for the college, she continued, by their generous donation which made possible the new Greenfield Library, and by Stewart's manyyears of service on the Board of Visitors and Governors. In her acceptance remarks, Connie said that she shared her husband's passion for St. John's. "Iflove oflearning is something you do here at St. John's, then I feel that I fit in with the class of 1998," she said. Stewart noted that he felt "tremendously fortunate in my choice oflife, choice of college, and choice of business partners." Many of his present interests, he said, had their origin at St. John's: Newton, Darwin, computers. "They still give me pleasure, and I find them very compelling." Allan Hoffman, president of the Alumni Association, introduced L. Harvey Poe and Chaninah Maschler as honorary alumni. Poe was a tutor at St. John's from 1946 to 1950 and assistant dean from 1947 to 1949. He has practiced law in Washington, D.C., since 1966. Alumni remember Poe's dedication to the New Program, his unassuming but effective role as tutor and teacher, his extraordinary intelligence, charm and wit, and the great respect he always accorded his students. Martin Dyer (A52) wrote a letter urging Poe's induction as an honorary alumnus of the class of 1952 in which he said: "I believe that he played a pivotal role in the college's decision to desegregate ... Honoring him would also honor John Kieffer, J. Winfree Smith, Raymond Wilburn, Jacob Klein, Simon Kaplan, and the others who labored in those early days to nurture and refine the New Program and who, through their decision to open the doors of St. John's to all without regard to race or color, added new meaning to the word liberal in Liberal Arts." Mrs. Maschler became a tutor at St. John's in 1976 and retired last year. She is known to students and tutors for the extreme seriousness with which she takes her teaching, the extra time she devotes to students and advisees, and her concern for the effect that our studies have on the way we live our lives. • �A YEAR OF CHANGE President's Report to the Alumni Meeting, October 1998, Annapolis by Allan Hoffman,A49 his has been a year of change. Roberta Gable, the Director of Alumni Activities in Annapolis was granted a year's maternity leave. Sus1an Borden is Roberta's temporary .-"'r'b'-"''"'""'•'r Liz Skewes, the Santa Fe Director of Alumni Activities, resigned degree. Liz has Tahmina Sha!izi. In as ,..,,..,~"'''1"'r1r of the Alumni Association. us at the end Roberta will of her leave. We wish Liz good luck in her new endeavors. And we welcome Tahmina with the knowled2e that in time she will get to know us and we her. This is my first opportunity on behalf of the alumni of St. john's College and all members of the Alumni Association to thank Sharon Bishop, our president for the past six years, for the superb way in which she fulfilled the responsibilities of that office. She will be a tough act to follow. The usual July Santa Fe Homecoming and Alumni Seminar Sessions were held in June this year on a trial basis. After a careful review and evaluation it was decided to return to the usual schedule in 1999. The Homecoming was well attended as were the Alumni Summer Seminars. Most alumni indicated that was a much more convenient time for the Santa Fe alumni activities. A second successful Reunion was held in Ann'.:u-..-.11.: As usual the St. croquet team led its 1mnP1r1'.:ll Wicket beat The attendance at the is made up of younger alumni. It is so well attended it will become an annual alumni/college event. Your Alumni Association, its committees, is working on many projects. Some of them are: I. The 999 Santa Fe Homecoming and Alumni Summer Seminars; 2. The Alumni Register for the year 2000 (or 200 I); 3. The 1999 Annapolis Croquet Reunion; 4.The 1999 dues mailer; 5. The possibility of an alumni web site; 6. The possibility of a web alumni Register; 7. How the alumni can further help seniors and young alumni in their career 8. Revivinl:'. inactive chartered to establish new rho:>nrorc 9.Alumni archives and oral I 0. Senior Dinners; I . range nll?Jnnm,ofor the Alumni As:soc:1at11on This is ~ , ,, themselves. It takes the of dedicated alumni to determine the of the alumni, the proper programs and activities to those wants, as well as to collect and allocate funds to support the programs and activities. There are two necessaries here-people and money. The St. John's College alumni at large are fortunate to have a group of talented ""<ci"'BAoOlf'O<"fll°' ienvenue et 'Bonne Chance and dedicated alumni who comprise the Alumni Association Board representing you and your best interests as "permanent members of the College community" as stated in the St. John's College Polity. These Board members serve receive no pay; they give of their time; and they pay their own expenses to attend Board in and Santa Fe up to four times a need and deserve support. What can you do? First, let us know what you think of the current programs and activities. Second, what new ideas and/or do have? Let us know. support and existing and new programs and activities for you, the alumni. The percentage of alumni supporting their Alumni Association is small. the Association is not ~ its message across. This part of my report to you is an attempt to correct that situation.• How alumni can help current students grads From New York Chapter Notes by Steven Sedfis (A73), President S In December, 1998, the nascent European chapter of the St. John's Alumni Association held its initial meeting at the Cafe Cluny at the corner of Boulevard St. Michel and Boulevard St. Germain. Most of those at the gathering have lived in Paris for several years but until that evening none had met any of the others! They were quick to announce their first reading by a local writer-name of Montaigne-to begin what they hope will be monthly seminars; if you are in Paris in March, look them up at the Cafe Cluny! For more information, contact Bill Randolph 01.45.35.29.89 at 7 rue Poliveau, 75005 Paris, or, John Dean 01.43.36.36.16 - 13 rue Monge 75005 Paris. in.ce becoming chapter presi<fant I have served on the placement committee of the Alumni Association. The ,committee works with the directors of placement on both campuses and deals with the alumni network and other aspects of life after college .... The placement committee has spoken to a number of alumni who have hired or mentored Johnnies. These alumni feel that St. John's students would benefit from having a better idea of what is needed for success in the workplace. To me, this is clearly something that alumni can help with. In many ways, alumni (especially recent grads) have more credibility with students than placement officers, faculty, or parents (especially parents). The Alumni Association has sponsored discussions between alumni and students on networking and the workplace. Those of you planning to ·visit campus in the, coming year may wish to contact the Placement Office first to arrange to meet with students interested in your line of work or study. Your participation in such discussions would be a valuable contribution to the college. The New York chapter has also, like several other chapters, brought together recent graduates and alumni to network and socialize. This past fall the chapter hosted its fourth annual recent graduate reception at the National Arts Club on Gramercy Park. Alumni and recent grads have opportunities to discuss careers and the transition from St. John's to careers and/or further study. More than 50 alumni attended the annual event. • �ON THE MOVE: OUR PERIPATETIC TUTORS .·. ·:· ·:/·_, .·· :·:. '.·· If it's Tuesday, it must be . .. .. Seattle > :. ::·· •? ' : ·.·.. E .... : ing north, and together they agreed on a discussion of the first third of The Piflow Book by Sei Shonagon.A woman's account of court life in the I Ith century, the book touches on, as Freitas put it, "what is really valuable in human life." In getting to that larger truth-and in the focus the eight or nine present gave to the text-Freitas said he saw little difference from the kind of seminars he leads on campus. "The conversation I thought was particularly good; they had read (the text) very well!' After the seminar, as if obeying tradition, the group headed out for a drink "to continue;' as the saying goes, "the conversation:' "It's really edifying," Frietas noted, to see alumni in their own environment. "I learn about the kinds of work they do, their family situation, the kind of reading they are still doing. I was really pleased to see how thoughtful they were they were about their lives and the books and the authors that they counted on in some way." Such trips have been rare for Frietas, but as he nears retirement, he can imagine doing a few more in the years ahead. "For me," he said, "it was a lovely occasion." In the past decade LeCuyer had flown to Los Angeles and San Francisco for seminars, but it had been quite a few years since he had last met with the Chicago alumni. He, too, enjoyed the chance, as he put it, "to refresh my acquaintance with students from the past." He and his wife were treated to dinner their first night in Chicago by Rick Lightburn (SF76) and his wife Frances. Rick had been a freshman in Mr. LeCuyer's first class back in 1972-so this reunion had more than a little history behind it. But at the seminar the next afternoon, held in an attractive conference room overlooking Lake Michigan, LeCuyer also saw graduates he had known from recent classes, as well as Annapolis grads he had never met before. In all 18 alumni were present. Also gratifying for LeCuyer was the fact that he had begun a serious study of the work of Emmanuel Levinas, and the Chicago seminar was his first chance to discuss chapter one from Levinas' Basic Philosophical Writings, "Is Ontology Fundamental?" A week later, back in Santa Fe, LeCuyer began a preceptorial on Levinas. He found that he drew on the Chicago discussion. Having the chance to take a topic of interest and "try it out on the road" proved most fruitful for him and his students. Like Freitas, LeCuyer was particularly pleased with the quality of the discussion among the alumni.Asked if he saw less discipline to the seminars, or perhaps less attention to the text, "out there" far from the college, he said he had just the opposite impression. "In fact, they are better readers. Over the years they have improved their ear a little bit." What had begun at St. John's, he felt, "had continued to develop." Many participants went out to dinner with LeCuyer after the seminar, giving him the chance to learn more about the lives of St. Johnnies years since graduation. "I was very impressed," he added, "by not only what they are doing, but how they are doing what they are doing." He was especially struck by his conversation with Tom O'Shea (SGl88) now working with kids from the Mother Cabrini Project. Bringing it all back home, LeCuyer was pleased to hear O'Shea say that the discussion about the Levinas reading "was quite relevant to the work he is doing." What alum cannot but be delighted that the Alumni Offices at both campuses support such visits by tutors to our chapters across the country. There is of course the mutual pleasure for faculty and former students in seeing one another, in renewing friendships and past conversations and ties-and in offering tutors a glimpse into "the fruits of their labors." But to have tutors taking off from Annapolis and Santa Fe to points all around the country and leading seminars with alumni reflects on a rather remarkable feature of the St. John's community: that the "ongoing conversation about the Great Books" is not bound by time or place. Or, as Eva Brann, among others, has said, we are reminded that the college is not just two locations, but it is everybody involved in the reclamation of the great books. fl :·:::.:: ·_:.;:::~:::::::::: By Peter Huidekoper arly last fall Santa Fe tutor Glenn Freitas was in Seattle and fellow tutor Philip LeCuyer was in Chicago. But in many ways they were on familiar ground. They were leading seminars for St. Johnnies at the local chapter meetings. They were hardly alone in the outreach from the college. Last summer Annapolis tutor Judy Seeger led the seminar at the picnic for the New York Chapter at the home of Chuck and Anne Nelson in Croton-onHudson. Early in September Annapolis tutors Adam Schulman and Peter Kalkavage led a seminar for the Boston Chapter on Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. A few weeks later tutor emeritus Elliott Zuckerman led the Annapolis Chapter's seminar on "Ode to a Nightingale," by Keats. At the end of the month fellow Annapolis tutor Jonathan Badger led the seminar in Durham, North Carolina, for the North Carolina Chapter on "Progress and Return," by Leo Strauss. And Eva Brann,Annapolis tutor and former dean, was in the Twin Cities late this fall to lead a seminar on Book XI, "On Time;' from St.Augustine's Confessions. We're not done yet. On October 25 Santa Fe tutors Josh Kates and Jim Forkin co-led a seminar in Culver City, California, on a poem by Wallace Stevens about Penelope and Ulysses, "World as Meditation." On November I I Annapolis tutor Nicholas Capozzoli led a discussion for the New York Chapter on the Hippocratic Oath and Oath of Maimonides.A few days later, November 14, Santa Fe President John Agresto headed north to Boulder, Colorado, to lead a seminar on "The Upright Posture," chapter seven from Phenomenological Psychology, by Erwin W Straus. Why such trips? Why such a commitment on the part of St. John's faculty to add another seminar to their duties? Why does the college happily support such journeys? Perhaps two accounts will provide some answers. Freitas had never been to Seattle. Given his interest in Eastern literature, he spoke with local chapter President Jim Dougherty prior to fly- :·:···:···· -;;. ·<= ·: .... \) '' ::::::::\ ·.•·LBALrlMORE:··· : ..:. <<•······) :·:·.·.· ·.:: ....... ',' , .·: .: , /: :• :·: \ > .. • :. :/ •·: ·• <\ , : ' ······... I ·.· ) '\U < x: .? ··• ' '··... c- :· ...•.. ·•·· ... ·::• ' p:_,:: ·::·<;:':=·· ·.•· ' .·•' ' ···:: ~·. :• ·> _.:_:::,;.: .... / .· . . ............:.·:· .... .:i .••' >•·> .• .... .:· . • > \ . . . .•. . . "' ,'' i ·.··•··· ........ . •.: ... ' l .~ / ····· :· \---= •• .·· < ...... :.·.'. ·:.: : . ....: .-:· :· .-v· w ._. .. •...·• ·• •: :.:• < ( < ' i { ' - / ._,::--:- .· _.:•· .. ?•/ \. •. ··:-·:: -..................... :1-:·)(:r I >·· ''.' .. (...... ... : / ... ~ ..: .·.'' } ' ./: • .• ( ' ·:· .:: .. ·:. . <: > ··• ... / •.•·•· '.· · .:. ._: :· ;,:_ ............. . •• . .... •.• .. :.•:. ' ' ··;~::. ·.•· ...•.•.<'<.. :: '' ' ,,:•,•••,,• �Aluntni Notes ... 1932 Willis Lynch reports that he is now 91 years old. He lives in Hampstead, Maryland. 1936 Charles Westcott writes that he is recovering from a heart attack with five bypasses. 1938 Francis Townsend is on the Board of Atlantic General Hospital. One son is an MD boarded in three medical disciplines, and also a doctor oflaw. One son is a computer business owner with four children and eight grandchildren. Oscar Lord's oldest son, Lance Lord, is presently a Lieutenant General in the U.S. Air Force and Vice Commander, Air Force Space Command. Peter writes with news about the Fairhaven School, which opened in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, this September with full enrollment of 30 students. "There are five of us St. Johnnies involved in this new 'free' school. Wish it could be more." 1944 Carl Hammen recently participated in the World Association of Veteran Athletes international masters championship track and field meet in Barbados. He won the 5000 meters and came in second in the 800 and 1500 meters. "To be an international champion runner in the upper age groups," he writes, "one must: (1) live long enough, (2) be in reasonably good health, and (3) have enough money to get to the meet." 1945 "I counsel the homeless in a soup kitchen one day a week and keep up my business helping landlords with their problems with tenants the rest of the week. It keeps me busy," says Lawrence Levin. Gene Thornton had a poem, "Ovid in Exile," published in the winter 1999 issue of the Paris Review and a painting, "Buddies," exhibited at the Duke University Museum of Arts 1998 exhibition of North Carolina artists. 1947 John Brunn reports that he retired from teaching this year and is doing volunteer tutoring. Bill Elliott retired from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in April 1998, where he had been leading a group devoted to studying long-term climate changes. He remains active with the group, however. He has also been honored by election to Fellow of the American Meteorological Society for "outstanding contributions to the atmospheric sciences during a substantial period of years." Arthur 0. "Pete" Davis reports an exciting "Lost Islands of the South Atlantic" voyage aboard the Linblad ship Explorer II during October and November of 1998. This exploration of our natural world was to the Falklands via the Canaries, Cape Verde, Ascension, St. Helena, Tristan Da Cunha, and South Georgia Islands. Bill Buchanan translated and supplied notes for the book Hindu Thought and Carmelite Mysticism, lectures by Swami Siddheswarananda, published Motilal Barnarsidass. One critic said of the book: "I do not recall another book that speaks so insightfully to the interface between Christianity and Vedanta." William Roberts is still sailing the waters off south Florida and he spent this fall touring eastern Canada by car. Christmas was in Vera Cruz, Mexico. "Life is much too important to be taken seriously," he writes. "I'm enjoying continued retirement from teaching, and playing with hobbies, including the computers," e-mails Don Koontz. George Wend says that retirement for him has included PC computer projects such as 1200 photos for a family album, and doing a genealogy. He's also taken trips to Egypt, Israel, and Costa Rica. 1953 An article in the Baltimore Sun in November said about John Alexander: "He'll never play piano like his idols. He doesn't have what you'd call a great voice." But the article praised Alexander for the concert he performed at the Light Street Presbyterian Church-many years after giving up music to study law at the University of Maryland. During his successful law career he continued to play demanding pieces in the style of Jelly Roll Morton or Fats Waller. But after suffering a minor stroke a few years ago, he was unable to play "stride" piano and he began to compose instead. According to the Sun article, his music is quiet and meditative. Alexander is quoted as saying: "I've learned that ... the task is to get inside the music and hear the tones relate to each other." 1962 Carolyn Banks-Leeuwenburgh writes that her son Todd (A85) "presented us with a beautiful granddaughter, Sophia. Needless to say, we are having lots of fun with this new role. I'm still singing on weekends and we still have our travel company." David Schiller writes: "Tutors, students, and alumni who would like to sample my new translation of Confucius' Analects can click on www.sagapub.com. I'm still living in the New England countryside, reading books and running two travel agencies. Chui-Ping and I take as many trips around the world as we can afford-recently Turkey and Guatemala." 1956 1964 1955 John Chase is stuck down in North Carolina "like a fly on flypaper." He says that he would love to return to his beloved Maine, or perhaps venture as far as Alaska, New Zealand, or Australia. Sarah Robinson Munson was honored by being chosen Support Staff Employee of the Year 1997-98 by the Arlington County (Virginia) Public Schools. She was cited for her teaching of elementary school students who are learning English as their second language and for efforts to ensure that cultural diversity is an integral part of the curriculum. Hildi·eth ''Hildy" Smith-Becker moved to Tucson this summer. Her daughter Christina Paige (A88) and her husband and child had moved there in 1997. She'd love visits from classmates-her address is 4901 E. Sunrise Dr., Tucson, A2 85718. Kendon Stubbs, who has worked for 33 years at the University of Virginia library, recently received the Thomas Jefferson Award, the university's highest honor. Stubbs' innovation in making the University Library's vast resources more accessible to the university communityand to scholars worldwide, via the internet-makes his recognition particularly appropriate, as it combines Jefferson's fascination with new inventions with his belief in the dissemination of knowledge as being essential to a democratic society. With a desk, a computer, and a staff of one graduate student, Stubbs launched the Electronic Text Center in the Humanities in 1992. Its mission was to build and maintain an internet-accessible collection of texts and images-and later sounds and videos. Today the E-Text Center has spun off five additional digital centers and its resources are accessed a million times per month. Stubbs earned an MAin English from the University of Virginia in 1964 and began his career in the library there the following year. He has worked in the manuscripts division, was director of reference services from 1966 to 1976, and has served as associate university librarian since 1976. Arlene Andrew is still working as a senior planner for the city of La Verne, California and living in Claremont. Her daughter Abigail is a freshman at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont, and her son Joshua is a senior at Sierra Nevada College in Incline Village, Nevada. w-illiam Banks has been appointed a fellow of the American Psychological Society. He is entering his eighth year as editor of the journal Consciousness and Cognition. Paul Liebow e-mails: "I am retired at 55 ! Finished computer-ing and now am involved with my community. I am a fireman in the Port Washington Fire Department. We are all vols! No one is paid! Most time I work in an ambulance group. I am having a great time. I am a vol for the Long Island Alzheimer Foundation. I do some computer work and I am setting up Chat Rooms for the Foundation." 1965 Allenna Dungan Leonard reports that she has taken on a parttime lectureship in managerial cybernetics in the Business School of Liverpool John Moores University. She's been dividing her time between Toronto (mostly) and the UK. "In the past several years I've also been helping deliver syntegrations (a group process which maps participants in discussion teams on the icosahedron to maximize information sharing). This has taken me to the UK, Switzerland, Colombia, South Africa, and the Netherlands as well as Canada and the US," she writes. "One of our events, 'The Future of Digital Media in the UK,' can be visited on www.interaction2.org. uk." 1967 Johnnies in the Sacramento, California, area are warmly invited to contact either Helen Hobart (class of 67) at 916-452-1082 or Arianne Laidlaw (class of 57) at 916-362-5131 to join the chapter's seminar discussions. B. Meredith Burke writes that her book, Prenatal Testing: A Sociological Perspective, written with �Alulllni Notes ... Aliza Kolker, is out in paperback, with a new afterword. "Fortunately, the reviews were good enough to persuade Greenwood Press that there would be a "'Wider market for paperback," she says. She continues to write newspaper opinion columns in hopes of getting a full-time columnist job. The San Diego UnionTribune carried her column on sex selection of children in October, and the Jlfiami Herald published one on illegal abortion in Chile, also in October. Ia the works are pieces in the Atlanta Constitution (on sprawl, congestion, and population growth} and in the San Francisco Chronicle ("on the high-fashion ads' continued use of size minus 1 models whom not one real woman in 100 can resemble-nor, if they want to bear children, should they!"). ";o~•.,,.11~h (A) writes: "I married for the first time at45, statistic that I had a better chance of being killed by a terrorist than marrying. Darryl and I adopted a three-year-old angel in March of 1997 from the People's Republic of China. We named her Houchan Zara NoreerZara for a name in a book that defined it as 'bright shining light from the East (Arabic).' She is busy absorbing every fiber of my energy and attention .. .I have switched careers from financial analyst to administrator, since travel has become more difficult. One more task to master. As tired as I frequently find myself, I would do it all over. I only regret that even the People's Republic of China has reservations about my adopting another gift from God." Charles Watson (A) reports a busy autumn and winter. He's traveled to lecture about twice a month. His wife and daughter Anna are involved in a production of West Side Story at Barlow High School. Number one son Ivan is trying to be a telejournalist in Moscow, working for CNN, CBS, and others. Number two son, age 18, is taking a junior year with the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Rick Wicks (A) writes from Sweden, where he is a research associate in the department of economics at Goteborg University: "I'm working on a doctorate in economics. Linnea, our seven-year-old daughter, is in first grade, and Ellinor is just starting back to work (Hendrik, who is now four, is in daycare part-time). We had a big trip to the States-our first since we moved here six years ago. We spent a month in Santa Fe in May-June, culminating with the reunion (I was in Annapolis from '64 to '66, then finished in Santa Fe). Then we had two weeks at Lake Okoboji in Iowa at my mother's summer cottage. At the beginning we spent three days in Washington, D.C., just long enough to visit old friends (including our cat, which we had to leave with a friend)." Elizabeth Dobbs (A), who is chair of the faculty at Grinnell College, argues that Chaucer uses windows to highlight parallel significant events in the story ofTroilus and Criseyde and to reveal human limitation, which is at the heart of the poem's meaning. Her article, ""Seeing Through Windows in Chaucer's Troilus," was published in The Chaucer Review. Dobbs teaches courses on Chaucer and medieval literature. She earned her master's and Ph.D. degrees from the State University of New York, Buffalo. A newsletter from the Board of Child Care of the BaltimoreWashington Conference of the United Methodist Church carries a story about (A), a clinical psychologist who works at Washington State Hospital. After an extremely difficult childhood, Mooring ended up at the Board of Child Care at the age of 16. She barely graduated from high school and scored only 2 50 on her SAT. But when she took the Maryland State Senatorial Scholarship Exam, she got the highest score in the state, earning her a scholarship to St. John's. During the sophomore year Bible readings, she discovered God and has devoted her life to her faith ever since. Joseph Barntta (A) reports that in 1998 he exhibited a series of mandalas drawn on computer and demonstrating the unity of religion and science. The exhibit was displayed at Harvard, Wellesley, and the Friends Meetingin Cambridge. In March, the drawings go up at MIT. K.,.,,,....."'••ri ... (SF) graduated from Baylor Law School in July, passed the bar exam and was granted a license to practice law in Texas in November. He is currently working for the University of Texas system as part of their real estate section in the Office of General Counsel. 1970 Molly Hammett Kronberg (A) and Ken Kronberg (SF68) celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary in June 1998, and realized that as of that date, they had been married half their lives. They fondly hope that their son Max, now 14, will some day come to St. John's himself. Hudi Podolsky (SF) is working in the Hewlett Packard K-12 education affairs department, which supports public schools working to reform science and math programs. She is also teaching at San Jose State University in a masters program for high school teachers getting administrative credential. "Not quite up to St. John's standards, but an excellent program in its own way," she says. an ta ..ll.JL.11...L.Jl.J. Weekend 1999 in Santa Fe 18, special events reunion classes of 1969, 1974, 1979, 1984, 1989, ome a week early or stay a week later to take part in the 19 9 9 Summer Alumni Program. The first week, from July I 1 through July 16, will e:rplore the world ofvisual arts through morning seminars led by Santa Fe tutors Steve Houser (SF7 9) and Kent Taylor, and afternoon hands-on practica led by ]Jfichele Beinder, Director ofthe Santa Fe Senior Art Program. Week I seminars willfocus on works by Vermee1; Cezanne, Van Gogh, and Mondrian, while the afternoon workshops will enrich these seminars through compositional studies and analysis, a still life study; and a life drawing session. The second week,fromJuly 18 throughfuly 23, will look at ethical dilemmas in biotechnology; led by Santa Fe tutors Jim Forkin (SF8 0) and Hans van Brie.sen, as well as David Krimins (A63), Annapolis physician. Afternoon classes willfocu.s on readings that discuss transgenic engineering, the human genome project, and cloning humans. Jl1orning classes willfarther investigate these issues in two classic works offiction on biotechnology: Shelley's Frankenstein and Huxley's Brave New World. Week II will also include a field trip to the National Center/or Genome Resources in Santa Fe. The brochure and registration materials will be mailed to all members ofthe reunion classes this spring. Ifyou are not in a reunion class and would like to receive a brochure, please request one from the Alumni Office in Santa Fe I 160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe NM 8 750 !; 505-984-6103. You can also e-mail the director, Tahmina Shalizz: at t-shalizi@mail. sjcsf edu. • 1971 Alan Lee (A) writes that his daughter Amourence is leaving for China and graduating from the New School in May. His son Jonah is a freshman at Reed College. He and his wife Hanne have adopted a five-yeaTold girl from China, Xiao Fang, and will be adopting another in early 1999. Michael Vict01·off (A) sold his medical practice last year and became Medical Director for Aetna U.S. Healthcare of Colorado. "It was a very good move," he writes. "I had a full and busy practice, with three other doctors and two physician assistants (one of whom was my wife). When I was named Family Physician of the Year in 1996, I realized I had accomplished just about everything I could, at the sharp end of the profession. I wasn't satisfied with my leverage in the system. I needed another place to stand... Now, as a full-time medical director, I'm closer to the dials and levers that actually do some good, than I ever was in practice, professional activities, academics or politics. My audience is more thoughtful, critical and constructive than ever. My 'practice' now comprises hundreds of thousands of patients who need assurance that their care is rational, defensible, and effective. I am substantially the faculty to a 'school' of 4000 physicians. There's no way I could have been fit for this job ten years ago; now it seems natural, as if I'd been training all this time." Andrew Ganison (A) says that he is studying the role of religion in the practice of psychotherapy. He also notes that his son, age 13, is interested in St. John's. Cynthia .namcon writes: '"I just finished recording my third album of music for young children, ages 2 to 6. After all these years (my music school is now 12 years old) I'm still enjoying teaching music to young kids and their parents." 1972 Helen Anastaplo Scharbach (A) says that her oldest daughter, Rebecca, has converted to Judaism and emigrated to Israel. Her second is on leave of absence from NYU. "The rest of us are living peacefully in Chicago, where I have begun the University's Great Books program for adults to see what I may have missed 30 years ago." Kevin Snapp (SF) writes: "After considerable drifting, I graduated from law school at the University of Chicago in 1982 and in 1983 married Susan Fasano, the daughter of a Jewish mother and an Italian father. Susan had rejected Catholicism in which she had been raised; I had no religious background at all. When our oldest child started asking about religious things, I resolved to investigate �Alu01ni Notes ... AN UNDERTAKING 100 METERS DOWN UNDER hristopher Brown (A75) says that when he was a student he constantly struggled with the question of the practicality of his St. John's education: ""It was impossible for me to imagine how all the marvelous things I was learning would ever come to play in real life. And l subconsciously feared ever finding a parallel real.- packs worn by divers, since traditional scuba gear is inadequate for the extreme water depths. The principal goal of the Wakulla 2 expedition is to produce a 3D virtual reality map of the underwater cave system thatfeeds Wakulla Spring. The biggest challenges to exploring the cave system are the water depth, approximately l 00 meters, and the long distances of the tunnels. "This is a part of the planet where no one's ever gone before," says Brown. "Throw in the fact that our exploration site was the location for Weismuller's filming and is the of Creature even the cinephile in life situation-another environment of intellectual engagement as all-encompassing as St. John's-that afforded the opporto continually indulge my LU•'-'"''-' curiosity? withU..:>v"'- " can be reached at 247 Jackson St., #69, Newnan, GA 30263. dennis2 j@h otmail. com" Peter and Mary Kniaz (A) report that they and their five children continue to do well in Median, Ohio. Peter is now Director of Systems Services at Invacare. Dale Mmtimer (A) is active in the Portland area alumni chapter, and says that they started the new year off with a seminar on Erwin Straus's essay "The Posture." Dale led the seminar. with assistance from Alexander ,echnique teacher Karen Dale's latest article on "The Identification and Medical Treatment of Atlention Deficit/ a newsletter for clinicians. has to Director-Elder Services at the Moore Center~"",.~,.;~""' 1Vlanc11ester, New J:YVJlHl-'CU , vvvi..ru11t:, to make schools safe for lesbian, gay, bisexual, "teunt11nux;-'-'-'~L--s1 d gazine are int1 1e an ma f" q,. ·pment like . · ._11 works.) The team is using new types o e life support back. d · diver propulsion veln"cles andmixe gas J · • Geographic Judaism again. Remembering from St. John's the importance oflanguage, I joined an adult Hebrew class at a synagogue near the University of Chicago. I became drawn into Jewish studies (yes, I eventually read Maimonides' Guide ofthe Perplexed), became a Jew, and now spend much of my leisure time in Jewish matters. Susan joined in; as a daughter of a Jewish mother she is legally Jewish. I want to thank David Sackton (1969) (who is not who recommended the Guide) and tutor Bob Sacks for unknowingly planting some of the seeds. I am currently working half-time helping federal judges deal with suits brought by prisoners, while seeking to escape a sense of confinement by reading and writing. Susan counsels students at the University of Chicago, a sometimes stressful job that she loves, and we have two daughters, Jennifer, 12, and Gwendolyn, 9." Mada (A) reports that after a happy association dating back to their days as SJC students, she and Michael van Buren (A77) were married in July. 1974 Debonh Ross (A) has changed jobs this year. She was appointed chair of the Washington State Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council. John Rees (A) is a neuroradiologist practicing in Orlando, Florida. "My wife Courtney and I have two children, Katie, three-and-a-half, and Daniel, one, and, imminently, Maxwell. Our e-mail is KlOORT @aol.com." Betsy Blume (A), former director of alumni activities in Annapolis, is nowworkingin Washington, D.C., for the Special Libraries Association, the professional organization for research libraries and special collections. She works on deferred giving and foundations and is traveling a lot, visiting companies like Dow Jones, Lexis Nexis, and Moody's. Church (A) is teaching at the American School of Milan. in Italy. DennisJohnson e-mails: "I H.L.l..LCJ!.H.V anu 1;.1.u-vuA-- u ~ -by Barbara Goyette Ellen Veden (SGI77) has a new as General Manager- Satellite Services · for Belgacom in Westport, was moved to re-establish contact with the St. John's community by the receipt of a couple of extraordinary Christmas gifts from myvvife, Ann, and one of my step-sons, Jay: The Loeb edition of the first five books of Plato's Republic and a "Middle Liddell"! Those hints that I have been dropping about brnshing up on my Greek were taken quite seriously! My fabulous Annie and I were married on May 11, 1991, after a whirlwind courtship (six weeks). Our "boys' are the aforementioned Jay, an explosive ordnance disposal technician in the Navy, and Patrick, a computer systems specialist for a national document storage company. We moved from the Baltimore region to Georgia in 199 3. I have been involved in packaging printing/manufacturing since I graduated from St. John's in 1975. I currently work for Lawson Mardon Packaging in Peachtree City, Georgia. My most recent project for them has been to develop a statistical process control training course for all of the production line employees. I will begin delivering instruction in this course in just a couple of I would love to hear from fellow ,,. ... .,uuu.1., especially those from the class of '75-are there any 'Cellar Gang' members out there? Ann and I Connecticut. Belgacom is the domi- i~ant inter.national telecommunicat1ons earner_ o~ ~el~um, she notes. ~er respons1b1lity1s global marketmg and sale~ ~o t~e broadcast/ corporate televis10n mdustry. 1978 Steve Ross (A) is now a history professor at Louisiana State University. 1979 Lisa SimeonewTites: "The smartest thing I've done was quit my full-time job three years ago to make my living as a freelancer in radio and TV. I do quite a bit of work for NPR; I'm host and producer of the documentary series Soundprint; I still hosl the Baltimore Symphony Casual Concerts Series; and I do commercial voice-over work. Income unpredictable, but oh, is the freedom worth it!" Bill and Theresa Salter welcomed their second child, Francesca Rose, on September 19. (A) is working with the classical studies as a visiting assistant professor at Dickinson College. She recently completed he1 �PhD in classics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. LeAnne Pembm_·n (A) reports: ''I'm still in the wonderful city of Baltimore journeying into the second decade of marriage and starring career number four? five?-programming." Cecilia Goin (A) writes: "I am married to a wonderful man, Timothy Harding, who enriches my life every day in addition to the wonderful books I read, the classes I take, and the places I visit. This summer we toured England and Wales by car and then I went on to take French classes at the University of Geneva. Stayed in a women's foyer in the heart of the old city where I met many wonderful people. We have lived in Coral Gables, Florida, for the past two years. Have very positive memories of the people at St. John's. Don't hesitate to write: 1258 S. Alhambra, Coral Gables, FL 33146." Madin Mille1· (A) changed jobs in September 1997, leaving Draper Labs after 13 years to work for Avid Technology. Avid makes computerbased editing equipment for the movie, television, and broadcast news industries. The real exciting clrnnge, he says occurred this October 13, when Benjamin Adam Miller was born to him and his vvife Linda. Martin also reports that he and Dan Van Doren (A81) attended a surprise 40th birthday party for Evan Cantor (A81) in August. "It was really a surprise since Evan was not 40 until December. Ellen Cantor did a terrific job on the party and Evan was quite surprised." Smith (SGI81) is still working at Coachella Valley High School, but in the state and federal projects office. To keep her hand she's also teaching an English class for the local community college. The1·issa (A) accepted a assistant offer from the of Minnesota Program in Neuroscience. "For the next four to I vvill study neuroscience, work in neuroscience, eat, and breathe neuroscience ... The program offers me an array of excellent labs in which to work. ,..Pn.l.,.,fo because I'm so fascithe neuroscientific asnecb of add~~.,_~~~ about teach and do research. So my first career, addiction treatment, is comafter 12 years." Her e-mail address is Dmholtz (A) says that she's "just married the most wonderful man in the known universe. My ex-boyfriend (OK, husband) would LLL7l.JUU-'-"'"\U'?L-'-,.ULl.H.l.VU.U. like to point out that 'we don't know that much about the universe.' " Nathan Rosen (A) and Roberta Babbitt announce the birth of Daniel Tzui and Zachary Alexander Rosen on April 21, 1998. "Yes, that makes five children," says Nathan. He is teaching high school drama, now at Atholton High School in Columbia, Maryland. John Michael McDonald helped make paternity leave possible. Rob Crutchfield (A) is living in Fayetteville, North Carolina. His e-mail is robcrutch@aol.com. Pete1· Fisk (SF) and Natasha Walte1· (SF84) bought a house in San Francisco. Their new address is 63119th Ave., SF, CA 94121. Peter's office, Mind Body Chiropractic, in the Sunset District, is going beautifully, as is their 2-year-old, Goia. 1983 Steve Reynolds (A) has been loving life immensely the last five years with wife Dena in the shadow of Mt. Tamalpais just north of the Golden Gate. He's thus far been able to elude boredom by dabbling in software, film and video production, and now, playing shipping magnate and telecommunications guru at a firm that makes and distributes nutritional supplements. Concurrently, he's been tutoring math and history to high-schoolers. He hopes to get certified to teach burgeoning minds by the next millennium. So an M.S. in Human Resources Management and Organization Development hasn't had excessive bearing on these disparate pursuits: the joy of collaboratingvvith some really great people has always had greater appeal than the solitude of being a change agent. Turn-ons: Disc golf, brewing beer, and proceeding through the Great Books list backwards, with rime for reflection. Turnoffs: None (it's all good). Steve invites all Johnnies to look him up if they find themselves in the SF area. "God may live in Texas, but She works in Marin!" E-mail addresses: sr@lifestar.com or strdar@pacbell.net (A) will publish Republican Empire: Alexander Hamilton on War and Free ·with the his first Press of Kansas Pete1· Green . where he is Eastern Euronean corresnondent for the she earned a BA in philosophy (University of Washington), MAs in philosophy and in humanities (Stanford University), and an MAin Critical Film Studies and screenwTiting (University of Southern California). She would love to hear from former classmates. Please contact her at 14406 E. Lake Goodvvin Stanwood, WA 98292; or 'WWW.trisha@ndnd.com. ur~ ..;.,..J..+ (A84) and _ _ _ (A85) would like to announce the birth of their adorable son, Orville Evander Wright (named after his grandfather and great-grandfather) on September 13th 1998. John andJagi are living happily in Virginia, where both are pursuing writing careers. John's most recent efforts can be seen in the anthology Years Best SF 3, edited by David Hartwell. Jagi's can be seen in the anthology Don't Open This Book, edited by Marvin Kaye, and in the new magazine, Anime Fantastique. They are happy to hear from old friends and can be reached at: jlamp@iname.com. Andrew (A) is living in a IO-person group house in Berkeley. He works as an architect doing residential work. ''My real interest and sideline at this moment is ecological design and restoration and I'm looking for a way to do this full time," he says. "Our guest room is open to any friends who are passing through the Bay area." Fr. RobertNicoletti (SF) is working at a mission in the Ukraine. He sends greetings to classmates. Lawrence Bush (SF) and Elizabeth Bush say hello from Blacksburg, Virginia. John would like to say an especial "hello" to the members of the "Raw Fish" wherever they are. E-mail: jbush@t-l.com and ebush@vt.edu. TembraAnnLeonard (SF) is in Geneva, Svvitzerland, after obtaining a master's at the London School of Economics and a leave of absence from her work as a lawyer in the )epartment of Labor. She will work for the International Labor Organization. She is enjoying in a French-speaking environment and being close lo hiking and in the mountains. No1·n1an that he is still is Senior Atto.1.11",, resources law at the Coastal J:!,tll'opean countries. His e-mail address is ps:irn~erl(a)'te1rm1na Neurocranial ti.esnucturmgJ on September 6, 1998. Trisha continues to write screenplays, plays, and poetry while also working with her husband. After leaving St. John's, Norm ,."'.,.'"""·11-c has attended a few of the Houston Alumni Chapter book readings. He can be reached at normanewart @coastalcorp.com. This from Jan Conlin (SF): "Jan Conlin was the recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physics for her work on the effect of the doppler shift analysis in comparison to the particle field theory. She plans to travel to Stockhold, Sweden, to personally accept the award with Chris Watson who co-authored the study." Sarah English (SF) reports that she vvill be opening a holistic health spa/health resort in the Flint Hills of Kansas. "Our mission is to help individuals find balance in their life-body, mind and spirit-so that they may evolve to a higher plane of existence." Amy Bianco Murphy (SF) is in New York, working in the publishing industry. She is currently an editor at McGraw-Hill and her e-mail address is: amy-murphy@mdgraw-hill.com. 1987 Peter Melka (SF) writes: "Doing pretty well schizophreniawise, have a paper route, buying a lot ofbooks." Samh Steel (AGI) reports: "In retirement, I continue to poke my nose into any opportunity to improve public pre-college education, especially for students. My children's spouses include a Swede, a Jamaican, and an Indian (from India). They have blessed me vvith four grandchildren. We're competing with the U.N." Claudia Probst (A) announces her engagement to Joseph Michael Stack. They plan to be married on June 6 in Palmerton, Pennsylvania. After four years of being the executive editor of Crisis Magazine Samuel Casey Cai·te1· (A) is now a Bradley Fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. While working for the conservative think tank, Casey hopes to finish his dissertation on the phenomenology ofJacob Klein this spring. His wife, Suzanne, and he are expecting their first child on April Fool's Day. Scott Klebe (A) and his vvife Margaret have a new son, R,,,,...;"'.,.,,,;.,., born on Julv 16. 0 and hear from other alumni in the area. After seven years of "'""'"'iu.u'"" school math in northern New careers Melissa has and is a technical vvriter for a softdevelomnent company in continues his work as an artist and is web page design at Parson's School Liliana Dallett approaches her second birthday and is pursuing a career as a professional ice skater (she can stand up in her skates, though she's still having trouble �AluIDni Notes ... . : • a • • • 11 • e. a.• • . Elizabeth Powers (A) is studying for her MBA at Wharton. She and her husband, Andrew Wagner, moved from New York to Philadelphia in July. Andrew commutes to NYC and Miami as a member of the Radio City production staff for the '99 Super Bowl half-time show. Elizabeth plays ice hockey and continues as a consultant for a few dance company clients in NYC. Their address is 48 N. Front St., 4th Floor, Philadelphia, PA. George 1\uner (A) was recently sworn in as an assistant district Attorney in Orange, County, California. He's a 1995 graduate of Boalt Hall Law School, University of California-Berkeley. He and his wife, Abril (also an attorney), live in Corona del Mar. In November Carolyn Brenner (AGI) retired after teaching English at St. Mary's High School for 20 years. She returned to her hometown of Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania to care for her mother. Erika Gaffney (A) e-mails: "After five years working in the marketing department of Ashgate, an academic publishing company based in Britain, I have just moved into a new role as Ashgate's acquisitions editor for literary studies. I will be commissioning studies on literature from the Middle Ages to the 19th century. I will also be commissioning to some extent for our history line, in women's and gender history and the history of science, technology and medicine. I work from Ashgate's North American office in Vermont." Jon Raney (A) and Marie (Toler), who is class of 79 in Annapolis, are moving to Portland, Oregon. Marie has a new job with Engineering Animation as a software engineer providing 3D CAD visualization and animation tools. Jon will be looking for work as an attorneywhen he and the boys (16 years old) move to join her. The family spent a month in the Baltics, Poland, and Russia this summer, "a sobering and occasionally encouraging glimpse into emerging governments and their histories." They'd love to hear from classmates via email: rntraney@usa.net. Steve Dean (SF) is working at Washingtonppost Newsweek Interactive studying how people use websites and incorporating feedback into both the washingtonpost..com and newsweek.com websites. Elisabeth DuRard Keller (SF) reports that she and husband Reece just bought a house in Santa Fe. They have two children, Sophie (4) and Nicholas (1). She sends word about the wedding of Nathan Hey • • a a a a o a a a a • o a e a e a e .• e a • e • a • .. • e a a o e e a a a _a •. a a.• a e e a a a .• e _• •.a a a a. a a a. a a ~ . a a a a : CALLING ALLALUMNI! . TheReporterwants to hear from you! Call us, write us, e-mail us! Letyour classmates know what you're doing! In Annapolis: The Reporte1; St. John's College, Box2800, with the ice part of the equation). They can be reached at: 305 Grand St. 1st floor, Brooklyn, NY 11211.Email: reddline@earthlink.net. 1989 a.~ . Annapolis, MD 2r404;4rn-626-2539; b"goyette@sjca.edu, InSantaFe:TheReporter, St.John'sCollege,u6o Qamino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87501~ 505.,984-6103; lj-nuilry@mail.sjcsf.edu. . ·············································~··································· (SF89) at the St. Francis Cathedral in Santa Fe. Also attending were John Lawton and his new baby, Win Swafford, Matthew Cooper (SF87), and Lisette Wallace and Alex Grey 'Volf. Beth Heinberg (A) sends the following news: " I am on the faculties of the Boston Conservatory and Brandeis University, teaching musical theater at the graduate level. My band, Magie 12, has just released an eponymous album on Dalia records. I am living in Brookline, Massachusetts, with my partner Nancy. I teach piano to children and adults and arrange for and perform with local cabaret singers. I have been the musical director for Harvard's Hasty Pudding Theatricals for five years." Pamela Jeffcoat (SF) has just begun work as a medical assistant and a Russian interpreter. Christophe1· Teleler (A) relocated to New Jersey, "pursuing a romance reminiscent of 84 Charing Cross Road." He is Director of English Studies at a midtown New York language school. "The romance is better by far than the job," he says. "Dmitri, with apprehension, will be ·with me for Homecoming 1999." 1990 Alexandra Edelglass Stockwell (A) announces, with her husband Rodd, the birth of their son, Christopher Jerome. He was born at home. His sister Josephine is now two and a half. J. Clinton Pittman (SF) wonders if Santa Fe Johnnies have "noted an immigration of computer scientists, buyingwater, canned food, and ammunition in preparation for the Y2K crisis." Kathryn Lane (SF) reports that after graduation, she went out to explore the world, worked and lived in Central African Republic for two and a half years. She returned to the U.S., got an MSW in social and economic development, and married a wonderful Frenchman named Christophe. They traveled to Latin America to work for six months. Currently, Kathryn is working in international development. They hope to be overseas within the next year. 1991 ChrisNewman (A) e-mails: 'Tm currently at University of Michigan Law School, serving as Book Review Editor for the Law Review and president of the Federalist Society. Book Review Editor is the perfect gig for a Johnny-you sit in this office and publishers from all over the place send you free books on law, philosophy, political science ... Paola and I will both be finishing up our work here this spring-me on a JD and she on an MA in Architecture. After that the three of us (including Lucas, 5) will be heading out to Pasadena, California, for at least a year. I'm going to be clerking for Alex Kozinski on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. He's a brilliant judge with an irreverent sense of humor a lot like mine-had he been a Johnny he would have been writing Real Show skits. Paola's going to be working for the L.A. County Department of Public Works. We'd love to hear from any SF or Annapolis classmates in the area. I don't have our Pasadena address yet, but we can currently be reached at cmnewman@umich.edu." Joe Gerber (A) writes: "After graduation I went into a special form of hiding known as graduate school, emerging four years later with a master's degree. Then I moved to Colorado to live the good life: playing in the woods, and dancing (and writing computer programs for a living). I recently woke up and realized that I was simply trying to embody all the noblest concepts I had learned at St. John's, and now feel, as Kepler put it, 'The occasions by which people come to understand celestial things seem to me to be not much less marvelous than the ... celestial things themselves.' So drop me a line, I'm no longer hiding or funning away. (jgerber@spectralink.com)" 1992 Sarah Schoedinger (A), who works as the education coordinator for the Consortium for Oceanographic Research and Education (CORE) and is an alumna of the University of Delaware Graduate College of Marine Studies, this year organized the first National Ocean Sciences Bowl. More than 200 high schools participated. The contest was developed to test high school students' knowledge of marine science. "The Bowl creates an opportunity for teachers to use ocean sciences in their biology, physics, chemistry, geology, and math curricula," says Schoedinger. "Another goal is to help university oceanographic research programs develop strong links with pre-college communities in their home areas." For her efforts in organizing the National Ocean Sciences Bowl, Schoedinger received the NMEA (National Marine Educators Association) President's Award. Elyette Block (SF) e-mails that she is leaving Seoul, Korea, and moving to Amsterdam, indefinitely, to study, work, and enjoy. She's keeping the same e-mail address: elyette@hotmail.com. Erik Fisher (A) and Daniel Littleton (A93) have recently had several of their songs released under the name "Desmond Outcast and the Transplanted Heroes" on Troubleman Records. Daniel is a professional recording artist with a major record label and Erik teaches at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Christophei· Hadley (A) is in Seattle, studying education (M.A.Ed.-TESOL) at Seattle University. He says there's lots of talk of "curriculum and instruction-It's cool, but I still like the St. John's way!" Theresa Klunk Lehmann (SF) was marred to Brian Lehmann in May. She'd love to hear from classmates and can be reached at littlecat@cheerful.com. Sharon Campbell Knox (SGI) announces, with her husband Lloyd, the birth of their son, Teddy. They are back in Chicago where she is still working on her dissertation. Michael Kopple (SF) is currently living in Palm Springs, working as a public defender. He says he has achieved true happiness since landing a job where he can get paid to talk. He misses the intelligence and spiritual vigor of the St. John's community and invites anyone in the area to look him up. He can be reached at 760-360-8064, or you can just commit a misdemeanor and ask for the public defender. Lisa Hollis-Brown (SF) and David Brown (SF) were married in July of 1996 in Gunnison, Colorado, ·with many Johnny friends in attendance. They are now graduate students at U.C. Davis, working on Ph.D.s in applied math (David) and ecology (Lisa). They would love to hear from old friends at: dbrown@math. ucdavis.edu, and they have a spare bedroom for any Johnnies passing through northern California. 1993 Donna Strow (A) has invented and received a patent for a "stationery perspective device." It's a device for painters that clips to the easel, enabling the artist to judge the subject more accurately and to avoid mistakes "like painting the top and bot.tom of the apple at the same time," she says. She's thinking about trying to produce the device in plastic and market it. Ashley Waring Vietor (A) announces the birth of her daughter, Elizabeth Randolph Vietor, on July 18, 1998. Ashley is living at __ . �Chatham Hall in Chatham, Virginia, a girls' boarding school, where she teaches Latin, and where her husband, Oliver, is chaplain. _.__,._.,"".._, .... . _, Koontz (A) reports that he was married to someone he met in grad school, Kazue Watanabe. They both work at the same place on machine translation between Japanese and English. I oJaatn:an Pead received a Master of Music in Vocal Performance from Rice University in 1997. That September, he married an aerospace eneineer he met at Rice. In UP takes EC I I E a case by John inc\...Aau1e (SGI99) Draper, SGI97, has a color sketch in his office of a arguing a case before the Supreme Court. The in the picture-Sandra Day O'Connor, Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice Rehnquist-are familiar. The man before them is Draper himself, and the title reads B. Draper, United States Supreme Court, Kansas v ~ 1 ~~~,:i~ March 2L 1995." highest in Although the court found that the reservoir alone did not violate the interstate agreement, Draper's model helped convince the court that the wells violated the compact. The case has been decided in favor of Kansas, but the question about repayment for past violations is still in question. Kansas is due either money to make up for lost water, or water itself-428,000 acre-feet of it (one acrefoot is the amount of water it would take to cover an acre to the of one foot). Enormous goes into presenting a case before the Suureme Court, savs Drauer. One thinl.! he did "1,VaS ,-,.~n me~ Martin Astronautics and is involved with the Mars school where he can work toward a PhD in musicology, in the coimitive science of song. Marcus (A) is working as a legal aid attorney in rural Ohio. She has a new e-mail address: N marcus@earthlink.net. Louisa Griffin (A) just bought a house in Glover Park, S. C. She would love to hear from people. Her e-mail is lgriffin@nbnbooks.com. Johnson (A) reports that he graduated from Lesley College with a Master's in Clinical Mental Health Counseling. He is currently working with autistic children ages 13 in a community-based program. He says he would love to talk with students and alumni about careers in counseling and psychology. Thomas Lisco (SF) earned National Board Certification from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. Through a rigorous performance-based assessment, National Board Certified Teachers demonstrate not only their knowledge of subject matter but their understanding of how to teach it. Alexander (A) and Vanessa (AGI) Ellerman are living in San Diego. She recently passed the California bar and is using her Spanish skills to practice immigration law. Alex is still flying Navy helicopters and enjoying some time in his homeport before gong to sea again in the spring. They are active in the San Diego chapter of the Alumni Association. 1994 Stacie Slotnick (A) e-mails that she is in the midst of the third year in the doctoral program in English and American literature at Brandeis University. "I received my Master's 'enroute' this May, and am now getting ready to start reading for my field exam, which is my last requirement before I'm ABD. My field of specialization is 20th century American poetry, so Boston/Cambridge is a A Santa Fe-based attorney with 20 years of experience, Draper is an alumnus of the Graduate Institute who understands how the political texts studied at the college pertain to American life. The Supreme Court case, which has dominated Draper's time for the last nine years, is not an abortion rights case, not about civil rights or any particularly controversial or high-profile issue; it is a matter of interstate water rights. Draper represented the state of Kansas against Colorado in a disagreement over rightful use of the water in the Arkansas River. The Supreme Court first had to decide whether the case should fall under its jurisdiction. Draper quotes the convincing passages from Article 3, Section 2 of the Constitution: "The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under the Constitution,. .. to controversies between two or more states; .. .In all cases ... in which a state shall be a party, the Supreme Court shall have original jurisdiction." Since the case went to court in 1990 there have been more than 175 days of trial. The court appointed a Special Master to handle the evidence and make recommendations; Draper argued before the justices themselves one time. The conflict dates back to a 1949 compact between Kansas and Colorado that apportioned the waters of the river. It allowed further development along the river as long as it would not deplete the usable flow. But after Congress approved the compact, many farmers or organizations of farmers put in wells to supplement the water they divert from the river, thereby depleting the amount of water available downstream. The state of Kansas introduced the suit against Colorado when one Colorado town, Trinidad, held what Kansas considered to be too much water in its reservoir. Kansas farmers argued that they were getting less water than they had a right to according to the compact. An engineering firm from Denver analyzed whether the reservoir was a violation of the compact. Their findings confirmed that although the reservoir may have deprived the Kansas farmers of some water that was rightfully theirs, the real problem was the wells that had been drilled along the river. As a part of their presentation, Draper's team created a computer model of a 150-mile stretch of the river, from Pueblo to the state line, that simulated the interactive processes affecting how much water was consumed. The model allowed them to show what would happen if the wells were "turned off." The simulation showed that the wells along the river depleted the usable water flow. Power ofthe Constitution Today, Draper spends a good deal of his time working to resolve disputes between states. In that light he regards the power of the Supreme Court with awe and reverence. "Here is a court of nine people, constituted to, among other things, resolve issues between states that, if they were fully sovereign nations, would be cause for war," he says. He sees the cases he works on as important not so much for political reasons, but in terms of power: "It is very difficult to strike the right balance between the national power and the individual powers of the states." The great books are directly applicable to his daily work, he says, because the issues that are dealt with in a classroom discussion of the American texts like the Constitution and the Federalist Papers are the same as those he confronts in the cases he tries. And St. John's seminar discussions are helpful because they are based on questions-just like court cases are-and because preparation is so essential. "You tell yourself you're going to be on the line at least some time during class, and that means you're going to be much better prepared," he says. Draper found out about St. John's when he was a student majoring in engineering at Princeton. Wltile working on his class yearbook, he interviewed professors in the philosophy department who had spent their summers in Santa Fe at St. John's. After college, he studied consumer law in Sweden under a grant from the American Scandinavian Foundation. He returned to his native New Mexico for law school at the University of New Mexico, where he became interested in environmental issues and water rights laws. He hadn't forgotten about St. John's, though; about 15 years ago he started a study group with some St. John's alumni to translate Homer. Finally, he enrolled in the Graduate Institute, finishing in 1997. Draper practices with the firm of Montgomery & Andrews in Santa Fe. He has begun work on a new case involving Kansas and Nebraska. In late January, the Supreme Court agreed to take the case. Draper feels personally involved with these Supreme Court cases and thinks he has gained rare insight into the judicial process. "You feel like you're very close to the heart of the Constitutional system," he says. e �Robert Drake (AGI) reports: "I moved to Ireland in 1998, after three years in Philadelphia. I sold the literary agency I'd built up over the past 12 years and began exclusively pursuing my own writing career. The second installment in that (after a novel Penguin published in 1995) was published in November 1998 by Anchor/Doubleday, The Gay Canon: Great Books Every Gay Man Should Read, a sort of' St. John's in the Castro' kind of thing. In 1998, I was awarded the Lambda Literary Award for recognition of my editorial work." ~f&­ T The Reporter regreifully informs its readers that Robert Drake has suffered severe head injuries as a result ofa ] anuary 3 l beating in his apartment in Dublin. He has been in critical but stable condition. Friends andfamily are working to raise funds to fly him back to the United States for medical care. Anyone who would like to offer assistance or support to Ml: Drake should contact Dr. Scott Pretorius, 314 South Iseminger Street, Philadelphia, PA 19107. great place to be. My e-mail is: slotnick@binah.cc.brandeis.edu. Peter Bezanson (SF) reports that he met the "love of his life," Alison Brekken, at a country western bar in Iowa City. He was working on his PhD-writing his dissertation-in philosophy. They were married on June 6, 1998 at a family wedding in Lake Mills, Iowa. Peter is teaching philosophy at Mesa Community College. His e-mail is: bezanson @mc.maricopa.edu. Nathan Humphrey (A) writes: I continue to preach "the gospel according to St. John's" for the Admissions Off!ce while I complete my ordination process in the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland. If all goes well, I'll be ordained a deacon by June 2000 and a priest sometime in 2001. In the meantime, I've been teaching Introduction to Philosophy at Anne Arundel Community College and tutoring several high schoolers in Latin. I also write the occasional music review for the Baltimore Sun. This summer, I'll be a student chaplain at Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore. While I'm still in Annapolis, I invite anybody who needs a floor on which to crash to contact me (whether they know and like me or not). I may be reached by e-mail, NHumphrey@sjca.edu, and would particularly like to hear from Johnnies of a theological bent (whether they crash on my floor or not). she has been "learning much about the fine art of patience-I have been teaching Latin and math to seventh, eighth, and ninth grade girls at Harpeth Hall School, a private school in Nashville." Next summer will bring a change of venue as her husband, a lieutenant in the Army, and she move to some other part of the world. Karla Manzur (A) writes that she has been living and working in Austin, Texas, for a year and has succeeded in breaking into the Austin music scene. She has a CD and has been playing out in the local scene about twice a week, steadily gaining recognition as a solo singer/songwriter as well as with her band, "Karla & the F-Holes" (a string ensemble). Cader Snead (A) and Leigh "I began my singer/ songwriter career Fitzpatrick Snead (A98) happily while at St. John's, where I gave up classical piano and began from scratch announce that they were married in Morgantown, West Virginia, this on the guitar. In myjunioryear I past October. They are living in decided I would pursue music as a Washington where Leigh is a staff career. I play on a classical guitar and assistant for Senator Robert Byrd, take my musical influences form my and Carter is finishing his third year South American and Middle Eastern oflaw school at Georgetown. They heritage, as well as my St. John's eduwould love to hear from any alums in cation for lyrical content. But as for 'genre' - I am difficult to classify, and I the area or elsewhere. William Lane (AGI) was would say that is a big disadvantage recently named Interim Assistant starting out in today's music industry. Provost at Gettysburg College in I sometimes venture to call my style Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. 'ethnic pop/folk."' Michael Barth (AGI), after finMicah Pharris (A), a third-year ishing up at St. John's, went to work law student at the Dickinson School with Benno Schmidt, the former presof Law at Penn State, was one of ident of Yale, at his start-up for-profit three students on the school's education venture, The Edison National Appellate Moot Court Team. The team placed second in the Project, in Manhattan. He wrote the Project's Character and Ethics Mid-Atlantic regional competition. Curriculum, and adopted Phil Overby (SGI) and Pierce Touchstones to supplement the K-12 Harman (SGI) share an apartment in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where humanities program. He is currently a PhD candidate in philosophy and eduboth are finishing degrees in politication at Columbia University, where cal theory. Often the two can be he's also the men's lacrosse coach. found in sleek coffee bars courting After graduation, John Elizabeth Bryer (SGI), who also Williams (A) spent most of the follives in the area. lowing year living in Dublin, Charles Weber (A) is a medic in Ireland, writing, working in a hotel, the Israeli Army. He hopes to go to Reform/Liberal Rabbinical School next and training with a champion Irish kickboxer. Upon his return to the year (HOOCH Jerusalem). Currently States, he spent the next year pursuhis address is Kibbutz LOTON D.N. ing a career in the film industry. "I Cheval Eliot, 8885, Israel. worked alternately as a camera assisMaggie Amold (A) married tant and a set lighting technician for Martin Roberts in March 1997. They films with budgets between one and are living in Anacortes, Washington, ten million dollars. I also did some where Maggie is doing some work for writing for an awful television show the Anacortes Museum and enjoying called Space Orphans," he says. He having Martin back home after a sixhas now taken a job as staff counmonth deployment in Japan. George Erving (SF) is currently selor at a residential rehabilitation facility specializing in dual-diagnosis pursuing a Ph.D. in English literature at the University of Washington. (a diagnosed psychiatric condition combined with a chemical dependFrom Page to Stage: How Theatre Designers Make Connections ence). The director of the facility is Dr. Paul Rosenberg (A61). Between Scripts and Images, by Carol Brinjak (AGI) is the office Rosemary Ingham (AGI) was pubmanager and assistant to the execulished in July by Heinemann. tive director at the Pittsburgh Opera. Kie1·sten (SF) began Michelle (AGI) just her second year of a doctoral probegan the PhD program in history at gram in film studies and rhetoric at the University of Michigan, Ann the University of California at Arbor. Six months down, 30 to go. Berkeley. She reports that H€:thanv Her e-mail is: mlcraig@umich.edu. Serene Huffman was married to Heidi Steiner (AGI) is living in Michael O'Connell in June in an Chicago and attending law school at open air ceremony near Missoula, Northwestern University School of Law. Montana. She also sends word about an1dv 'Wootton (AGI) writes Kendra Mack, who began her secthat after finishing his tour teaching ond year of a doctoral program in American studies at the University of English at the Naval Academy, he and his wife Kathy moved to Boston where Texas at Austin. he matriculated into Harvard Business Laura Gianniny (A) graduated School. "There are many interesting last May from Vanderbilt with an ~A in teaching Latin. Since then, she says, parallels between SJC's Socratic 1996 method and Harvard's case study method. I will be graduated in 2000 and am already looking for another graduate program. We hope all is well for the friends who have scattered to different areas of the world." Erin Hearn (A) moved to Anchorage, Alaska, with \Villiam C. Furvy IV. They plan to return to Annapolis in September 2000 to be married. Amy Huberman (SF) who is currently living in Chicago, working for Encyclopaedia Brittanica (no, they won't let her fix all the errors in Ptolemy), doing Korean martial arts, and learning Chinese, is planning to leave the country again in March, probably for Israel and China, and possibly for other corners of the East. She is considering getting a graduate degree in East Asian studies sometime in the next few years. Amy Norman (A) married Bill Morgan on June 13, 1998. They live in Newport, Kentucky, just south of Cincinnati. Jonathan Rowan (SF) is currently in a Master's program in Italian studies at Middlebury College in Florence, Italy. 1997 Fields (SF) has comHillary pleted her first novel and sold it to St. Martin's Press, who've offered her a two-book contract. "Many may be disappointed to discover that I'm using my SJC education to become a romance novelist, but I'm enjoying things so far! I'm living in New York, doing some occasional traveling, and working on my next book. I can be reached at Hillymeg@aol.com." On October 10, 1998 Shannon Wiltsey (SF) and Kelly Stirman (SF) were married in Santa Fe. They currently reside in Austin, Texas. Judith Neely (A) has begun studies at the Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago. She plans to return to the Baltimore/Annapolis/DC area when she's finished, ready to help change the world for good. Casey Pan:ickMcFaden (AGI) was marred to Gwen Marie Vickery at the E.W. Morland Mansion in Ponca City, Oklahoma in November. Gwen is a doctoral candidate at Ball State University in English literature. They arc living in Muncie, Indiana, but are planing to move back east when they finish their degrees. JOSlah"JoJIULlViailllllOil (SF) married Deanne Hyde and is working at Raphael House of San Francisco, a family homeless shelter, as their Children's Evening Program Manager. They are expecting a baby in August. Christy McElroy (A) is doing missionary work with an organization called International Missions. She's living in Loughborough, England. �OLLEGE IS PREP FOR LIFE Why students not choose higher education for the Pittsburn:h Post-Gazette December 1998 gain are starvunable to come to with the demands of the real you couldn't be more wrong. Consider a few random statistics. auuateb "-'-HJlU.ues faster than unnormalized SAT scores. Parents who have exnectirnt that their young ~1auuau:: selves. one useful result of this pressure has been improvement in the of college placement services. But a more depressing result has been tendency of colleges to prepare their students for that first iob" rather than for a long lifetime of useful and interesting work. \Ve might have a dim idea about what jobs are likely to be in demand in four years, but we have almost no inkling of the jobs that "\Vill be needed 10 or 20 years from now. Students who are prepared only for a short-term employment market may find themselves unpromotable and almost unemployable a few years down the road. And yet, as they attempt to sell themselves to parents, four-year colleges are starting to look more like two-year colleges, twoyear colleges are looking more like trade schools, and trade schools-well, you get my point. Let's examine this business of preparing students for the job market. Not long ago, I became chair of the board of a small co11cge which is perhaps the most extreme example in America of a school which appears (note the word "appears") to be unconcerned about the immediate job prospects of its students. St. John's College is America's third oldest college. We have campuses in Annapolis and Santa Fe, and are best known for our rigorous curriculum focused on the "Great Books." At St. John's, students not only study Plato-an almost extinct experience in higher education-they study him from the original Greek texts. In an era when colleges feel compelled to offer a smorgasbord of electives, Johnnies take a fully prescribed course of study from freshman year through graduation. Humanities-oriented students can't duck calculus or physics, and quantitatively oriented students can't avoid reading T.S. Eliot or studying music composition. To call St. John's the world's most intellectually focused institution, an such degTees. But we also rank third in the the of graduates who earn Ph.D.s in math and computer science. you say, you want Curtis• .,.,.,,...,,.. .,.... "' youT child to become a doctm? Well, I'm and Co. in Pit-hh1111"oh sorry to report that St. John's not only St. doesn't offer a pre-med program (far too vocational), we don't even offer some of the courses which are pTerequisites at virtually every medical school in the world. So where does St. John's rank in producing physicians? First in the country in 1993, the most recent year for which statistics are available. And this is hardly a fluke-St. John's has ranked among the premier educators of future physicians for more than 40 years. Of course, St. John's isn't for everyone. That's not my point. My point is that, paradoxicaHy, the more focused a colkge is on educating the complete man or woman-that is, the less focus there is on qualifying students for that first job-the more successful the students will be occupationally. St. John's students, it must be said, are exceptional from the start. They have a bent for intellectual inquiry. We believe the school encourages them to make the most of their curious minds. Do we want our children to be stuck i~ dead-end jobs, always last on the list for promotion? Probably not. We want them to be prepared for anything life is likely to throw at them, because that's the kind of world thepvill have to live in long after we're not around to help out. So my advice is this. If all you care about is that first job, send your child to welding school. But if you really care about him or her, you might aim a little higher. Obtaining the best and broadest education possible-liberal education in the finest sense of the word-isn't a luxury or a waste of good tuition money. It's the most valuable educational gift we can give our children. • Gt 1 M'.:ira'.:llr.,.t- Odell and Karen K ,.. • .,.a.,.. . re you a recent graduate who hasn't yet found your niche, either in the corporate world or graduate school? Are you a more distant alumnus who is ~ your and would like to talk over your career ideas with a counselor to get some suggestions about ways to reach your goals? If either of these descriptions sounds familiar, the St. John's Placement Offices in Annapolis and Santa Fe can help you. The placement effort at both campuses has expanded during the past 10 years. Alumni who graduated before 1988 many only vaguely remember placement as a presence at the college, but we are alive, well, and growing. More importantly, our services are available not only to current undergraduate and graduate students but to alumni as well. Our primary focus is to provide students and alumni 'With career counseling to help them search for jobs, internships, scholaTShips, or graduate school programs. The term "placement" is a bit misleading because it does not mean that our staff is here to "place" anyone in specific situations afteT they leave St. John's. We are not employment agencies, even though we do help students and alumni find jobs. As ·with the rest of the St. John's program, the Placement Offices seek to teach skills-in this case career skillsrather than preparing anyone for a particular job or graduate school. The placement directors at both campuses have gathered an extensive collection of career-related publications and graduate school catalogues, which can be used by I~ rd"~~ for direction Of alumni who are seeking a new direction. We help students prepare resumes and cover letters for their job searches. We also offer support and assistance to people filling out applications or writing statements of purpose for various endeavors. We maintain job boards to match students with employers seeking both part- and full-time help. We have interviewed more than 1000 alumni in various occupations and locations for our Alumni Network. These people are willing to speak with current students or fellow alumni to share their employment experiences after leaving St. John's. Both Placement Offices have websites with information that is available to alumni. The Annapolis site, (w-vvw.sjca.edu/placement/ jobs/html) lists job openings that are appropriate for Johnnies-some for recent grads, some for more experienced alumni. Other kinds of information will be available online soon. The Santa Fe site (www.sjcsf.edu/placement/) also lists jobs as well as internships and general placement advice. Placement Director in Santa Fe is Margaret Odell-505-984-6067; fax 505-984-6003; e-mail: placement@mail.sjcsf.edu. �............. ----- ~ AN UNKNOWN FATE IN A DISTANT JUNGLE most sullen. After many kilometers we came upon a small village, and I saw a barricade in the road. I asked the man next to me if this was Sorobango, and was relieved to see him shake his head. Three pudgy gendarmes swaggered out from under the shade of a mango tree. They each carried vintage automatic weapons, which were draped nonchalantly about their faded uniforms. The largest of them peered into the truck bed and noticed me immediately. He ordered me to get out and show him my papers. I felt exposed and vulnerable as I climbed out of the truck. The other passengers stared at me in silence. I wondered if I should be concerned that I was being singled out like this. I showed my temporary papers to the gendarme. The soldier said the papers were no good and asked for my passport. I tried to explain that the Peace Corps office was processing my passport, and all I had were these temporary papers. He called the other two gendarmes over How arrogant to assume that I could live like a villager. Clearly, I was the one in need. and spoke with them rapidly. I could not understand what they were saying. Then the larger one turned back to me and demanded an obscene amount of money. I told him, truthfully, that I had little in the way of cash. He then yelled something to the truck driver and my bags were thrown off the truck and into the dirt. I experienced a dreadful feeling of loneliness as I saw my possessions being thrown into the road in the middle of this strange village. The rest of the village had grown quiet as people stopped what they had been doing to stare at me. Several children had gathered nearby to watch me, and as more children joined them they grew bolder and began pointing and yelling at me. The children's chants filled my head. It seemed that they could sense my rising panic and their yells became scathing taunts and jeers. I had never before experienced the pressure of so much unwanted attention. The ... continuedfrom page 28 gendarmes were laughing at me and I despaired to think what they would do with me. Confusion, indecision, and frightful apprehension gripped me and I could not think or move. Then something odd happened. I felt anger well up inside of me and extinguish my forlorn stupor. I yelled and cursed at the gendarmes in English. Why could they not understand that I was here to help their people? I needed to be on the stinking, perilous truck so that it could carry me off to my unknown fate in the distant jungle. AB I demanded access to the vehicle that was the centerpiece of my anxiety, I realized that this had all been a comedy, and I started to laugh. The tremendous pressure that had slowly built to a debilitating culmination suddenly disappeared. The children stopped yelling as if on cue, and the gendarmes looked at me for a moment and then shuffled back towards their shade. I placed my bags into the back of the truck and climbed in after them. The truck was pushed back into motion, and I allowed myself the freedom to continue my journey in good faith. • As a Peace volunteer, Marshall had to readjust his cultural compass. �• continuedfrom page 8. The Butte1fly, Past All Dishonor, and Three ofa Kind. And now, about ghosts on campus, from Hoopes' book (p. 7): "The Cains lived in the north end of the double house (Paca-Carroll), and, of course, it was haunted. 'The colored help, who knew its history, said it was,' Cain recalled, 'and I am under the impression some bloody episode had taken place in it sometime in the 1870s. My father would get very angry at such tales, for one of the things he had convictions about was the frightening of children, which he held was wrong and likely to produce unfortunate results later in life. He said that there were no such things as ghosts, and with my head I suppose I believed him. But my heart was a different matter. The front room in the cellar, where a pale gray light filtered in from under the front steps, certainly looked like a place that a ghost would like. And my room, which was on the third floor and had dormer windows, I was always a little frightened to go up to, and left the door open when I had gone to bed, so I could see the friendly light and hear the reassu:ring talk from down below.'" -JacobH deRaat, A58 Some Speculations About Stan and Smoking "Requiem for a Carp" (summer issue) begs the question, "Was the fish named for Stan Nordstrum, honorary alumnus (SF87), beloved chief of buildings and grounds and Senior Resident (with spouse Sis) at Santa Fe?" Stan (the man) would patiently listen to no telling what line some student would give him, then smile and give back a "No kidding?" "Up in Smoke" (also in the summer issue) evoked a strong memory. When Santa Fe classrooms went smokeless, at first students could step out into the hallway, leaving the door open to follow the discussion. A woman who had never in her life taken a cigarette to her lips found it necessary to go out and stand next to the smokers, so addicted had she become to secondary smoke. Michael Ossorgin may well have been the heaviest smoker on the facin Santa Fe; but he never complained about having to abstain during seminar. The loudest complaints I can recall came from a fairly new long gone) tutor who affected the pipe lifestyle. I remember Mr. Ossorgin, his eyes sparkling as he smiled, saying, "\Ve have a number eminences on this and the grayest of them are under age 35." reading the final (incomplete) paragraph of the third column on page 14, I cried out in Lear's voice, "Alack, why thus?" when I • • and more Letters saw "President Richard Weigel." I could only take a deep, smokeless breath and say, "Alas, poor Richard, I knew him well. His name ends with E and not with L." -William Malloy, S77 Re "Up in Smoke" (summer issue): During the 1993-94 academic year I wrote an article for the Gadfly which documented precisely the percentage of the polity that were currently smokers. Believe it or not, Nathan Jongewaard and I spoke personally with every enrolled student, asking them if they smoked. If my memory serves me, the figure was 55% smokers. At the time, the national average was about 25%. -John C. Williams, A96 The Down While I am still quite happy to have a St. John's education, it has had some severe negative effects upon my life. I wonder if you will print anything about the down side. I had 12 years of musical interest and training by the time I graduated in '72 so I pursued a career as a performing pianist when I left Santa Fe. As I expected, it was difficult to break into the field when I returned to California and I was forced to look for "straight" jobs to make ends meet. Looking back, it's amusing how many potential employers had never heard of St. John's or a liberal education. I can't remember how many times I was told that I was unqualified for even entry level positions. At one point, I was reduced to shoplifting to feed myself and my girlfriend. I was overcome by a moral dilemma (cf. Aristotle vs. Nietzsche) in the middle of stealing a package of hamburger and was promptly arrested. This began a life-long association with the underside of society-smugglers, prostitutes, et al. To this day, I have always found these people to have more compassion and more heart than so-called educated people. But I digress. I eventually broke into the music scene and enjoyed a 10-year career touring in bands such as the Jerry Garcia Band, and even a stint with Chuck Berry. After I tired of life on the road, I once again tried (unsuccessfully) to enter the professional world. "No experience, no training, no job." I currently make my living in a blue-collar occupation. I'm an assistant foreman at one of the larger composite shops in the Mid-Atlantic area, and once again my education has hindered me. I have to watch my vocabulary as workers, customers, and product reps are put off by multi-syllable words-using "isn't" in a roomful of "aint." No one in this field is interested in dialectic-they are interested in results. Although the life of my mind has certainly been enriched by my education, my corporeal body would have perished long ago had I relied only on my St. John's education. My Club Fed alumni have helped me, my SJC alumni have not. -fames Jacobs, SF'72 love at St. John's I would like to thank Bill Pastille for his beautiful, eloquent, and above all brave commencement address (reprinted in the summer Reporter). It was courageous of that gentle, soft-spoken, and unassuming tutor-still considered a young upstart when I was a student-to utter what some would deem heresy. Ironically, I imagine he's since been subject to the very dismissiveness against which he warns us. I remember that disrnissiveness. I loved my time at St. John's-but my experience there was, on the whole, one of near-constant anguish. The divisive forces of "Strife" I encountered were great and exhausting, and the force of "Love" was regarded with uneasy skepticism (or at best mechanical detachment)when and if it ever entered the equation at all. That one of the college's own should suggest that knowledge alone is not an unqualified good, and that perhaps we should allow ourselves to feel deeply toward life and one another, is, I daresay, a fairly radical development. I say this as someone who had been "at war" with the St. John's culture, and simultaneously at war with myself. In that overwhelmingly traditional, Cartesian environment, where reason and emotion are sharply dichotomized-with the former elevated to a position of absolute authority and the latter essentially discarded as irrelevant-I remember feeling, as an empathetic type naturally inclined toward intuition and deep feeling, quite literally cut in half. Hence, my so-called "reasoning" part functioned feebly at best, flailing about like some grotesque maimed insect, even as it was working as hard as it possibly could to "stick to facts," to be analytical (and not commit passion's contemptible leaps in logic), to be somehow purely mental. (Here I must mention that modern neuroscience-most notably the work of Daniel Dennett-has called into question the accuracy of this classic and lent new vigor to the of the much impugned David I would even go so far as to assert that the too generally unchallenged dichotomy between "reason" (good) and "passion" (bad) may have contributed to the phe- nomenon of St. John's-as-partyschool. The often excessive Bacchanalian eruption on weekends always seemed to me to be the inevitable result of squelching or discarding human feeling throughout the week in order to compete in daily contests of intellectual muscle. (Are you with me, Euripides?) Nihilism and self-destructive extremes of behavior ran rampant among those torn apart by too much Strife, raw for the balm of consistently suppressed and denied Love. I know that this was true of me, and of many I knew. \\Thich brings me to the last of my painful but typical St. John's experiences of "strife": the experience of sitting at a Coffee Shop, dining hall, or seminar table across from some person whom I loved, listening to him/her/them argue and dissect Love completely out of existence. This would leave me v\rith a hollow feeling where all the warmth and joy used to be. Love has been the topic of much discussion since Plato, but I must say that I never saw so much "heartless, soulless intellectualism!!" The most important knowledge I could claim to have attained in my four years was this: that if you attempt to cut a living cell, you will kill it-there are some things which resist division; that the human intellect can be boundless in its hubris, fully expecting to know and to understand a world of which it is only a small (and far from omnipotent) part; and that to lose wonder, to insist that there are no mysteries, is to put the knife to Love, and to life. Bless Mr. Pastille for "hazarding sentimentality," to speak words of wisdom and compassion informed by life and by Love-not merely clever ones that could have been spoken by any precocious adolescent, any aspiring student of Strife. -Carolyn Barndt, A90 The Reporter 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 either campus:Annapolis - The Reporter, Public Relations Office, St. John's College, Box 2800, Ann.,,r-.1"\il<" MD 21404 or e-mail b-goyette@sjca.edu. Santa Fe - The Reporter, Public Relations St. John's College, I 160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa NM 8750 I or e-mail dassics@mail.sjcsf.edu. �ANUN A curwus an I rl} ~ ~ •l""t "'Cl ~ •l""t liat ~ a_,__. '"Ci (L) µ ~ ~ rJj (L) ::l Q,) bf) ~ ~ 0 0 ~ ~ ~ :a ~ ~ =~ E-t I \fl O"' (I) 'tj'I <:..) ...... ...e:: µ '"Ci ~ 0 0 ~ Q) (I) i::c: •l""'"f •!"""'( ~ <:..) :0 :0 :::! ;:l ~ ~ .s 'tj'I ,....., rJj >-. .,...., ..0 i::c: C"1 ~ 0 (I) (L) 0 ~ µ <:..) (L) ~ 0 0 00 C"1 i;<1 0 i:::Q H rJ; ...... u 0 ~ <:!j ~ ~ ;..; 0 rJj <IJ (I) ..a '"Ci 'hen Reuben Marshall (A95) was accepted into the Peace Corps during his senior year, he knew he'd be/acing some adjustments. .lust a few months after graduation, assigned to the Ivory Coast in west Africa, he had to adjust to intense heat (''My body just wanted to shut down during the day, "he says), different food, exotic germs and bacteria, speaking French (and eventually Koulango, the language ofthe village he was assigned to), and a new set of cultural standards (like never using your left hand). Marshall's first stop in Africa was a Peace Corps training center in Senegal, where, along with 50 otherpeople, most right out ofcollege like himself, he learned about the basics ofAfrican culture and life. After three months, he was sent to the village ofSorobango in the Ivory Coast. Most ofthe population ofthe nation live in villages, where the economy is based on subsistencefarming. ''Jn most villages, conditions are very basic. There is some schooling. Agriculture is the focus oflife. In the south, they grow pineapples, cocoa, and coffee. In the north, the root l'gnam, a yam, is raised, along with some other vegetables. There are not manyjobs in the cities and ifvillagers leave for the city, they end up becoming taxi drivers or they hawk wares," says Marshall. He was asszgned as a water and sanitation technician, charged with overseeing a project to provide clean water sources for drinking and kitchen use. But since there already were some pumps operative, and since health issues seemed to be ofmore overriding importance, Marshall ended up focusing on them. He worked with a nurse, a government employee sent to vaccinate for polio, meningitis, and ye!- low fever. A farmer who had been educated in the city was also asszgned to work with Marshall on health and clean wata "We would walk around the village thinking up projects. My main task was to train him, to transfer knowledge. He was my bzggestproject, "says Marshall. Although the people in the village were devoted to Marshall, he.frequentlyfound himselfintensely lonely, frustrated and stressed out by the conditions oflife. "The onlypeople to talk to are other volunteers. We would journey to other villages to talk with each other and share our concerns," he says. Marshall's recent St. John's experience helped him mentally by giving him a context for his thoughts. ''It's really important to take care of yourself I enjoyed reading books-not in the way I had at St. John's, where I was focused on picking them apart, butjust reading/or the sake ofloving the literature." Now back in the States after two years in Africa, Marshall is thinking about his next move. He'd like to be part ofthe aidprocess for Africa, because, he says, "Peace C01ps people really get an idea ofwhat Africans need. I think there's a question about whether they do need anything. The only Africans who think they are poor are those who see material goods in the capital and realize they don't have money "Life in the villages is good, he thinks, ifthere is enough food. One true need is for health care. Here is Marshall's own account ofhis early adjustments to west Africa. -by Barbara Goyette ~ t was as hot as a sauna inside the covered truck bed, and I reluctantly took my seat on a hard bench against the cab. This was the only vehicle that traveled from the regional capital to my post so I had little choice in the matter. A mixture of strong and unpleasant odors hung in the air about me. I noticed with apprehension that the driver kept the windows and doors of the vehicle closed. I understood the reason for this strange behavior only later on in my service. Most villagers owned a set of formal clothes, which they wore for weddings, funerals, and religious ceremonies. Trips to town were relatively expensive, and were usually just made for these special occasions. I was often amused to see farmers ostentatiously climb aboard the dirty, rust-covered pickup truck, dressed in their fancy garments. In an effort to protect their clothes from the ubiquitous road dust, the truck was sealed as tightly as its old, beaten frame would allow. This peculiarity would remain an annoyance for me throughout my service, because it was always too hot not to have the windows down. It was, however, made slightly less irritating when I considered it from the villager's perspective. On my first transport ride, though, I lacked any understanding of the people I was to live with. I thought, absurdly, that I had stumbled upon a tribe that was immune to the heat of the day. Because the back door was closed against the breeze, the heat was stifling and unbearable. My resolve was melting away as rapidly as my body was soaking itself in sweat. I wondered for the first time if perhaps I was not cut out for this type of adventure. I yearned for the comforts of Abidjan, the capital, which I had only just left that morning. The three wooden benches in the truck bed quickly filled with passengers, and several latecomers were forced to crouch in what little space remained on the floor. I could not believe how many people had been packed into the truck. I concluded from the passengers' complacency, however, that they were used to the crowded and sweltering conditions; that nothing here was out of the ordinary, save my own conspicuous presence. As I sat motionless in the heat, a horde of flies descended upon me. Theywere attracted, I supposed, to my sweating skin. I could hear a number of animals screeching, braying, and thrashing about under the benches. I looked down and saw that one of them had urinated on my backpack. There were a few goats or, perhaps, sheep, some chickens, and a couple oflarge, dead rodents. These hideous creatures were the source of the flies, and they did not improve the odor of the place either. Baggage that could not be tied to the roof of the vehicle was being heaped on top of us, and my cramped limbs were soon trapped in place. In the fifteen minutes or so that I had been aboard this vehicle my enthusiasm for this enterprise had diminished considerably. In fact, I was more uncomfortable than I could remember ever being before. I knew that this was only one of many hardships that lay ahead for me as I began my Peace Corps service. In contrast to my agitation, the other passengers seemed to be greatly enjoying my presence. Several of them were laughing at me unabashedly. They did not appear to be the least bit ruffled by the heat, and I tried not to despise them for this. I was beginning to feel very foolish. Not only had I come here to live like a West African villager, but also to help others in need. How arrogant I had been to assume that I could live like them. Clearly, I was the only person in need here. I found myself doubting my potential for success as a Peace Corps volunteer. In an attempt to rekindle the adventurous and curious spirit that had brought me this far, I tried to chat with some of the passengers. Unfortunately, they did not understand my poor French, and they laughed at my attempts to understand their local language. I became even more despondent. The truck's starting mechanism was broken or had been removed, and it was pushed into motion by a small army of children. The weight of the baggage on top of the roof caused the truck to sway unsteadily. I looked around, expecting to see signs of panic, but the expressions on the faces I saw were as composed as if they had been on statues. I assumed we would leave town but we only drove around its quiet streets, the stillness rudely broken by the driver's gratuitous use of the horn. We stopped near the town market and more people and animals were packed into the truck, and more baggage was piled on top. The heat slowly dissipated as we Reuben Marshall and a friend in front of the village store. left town and headed down the dusty track that led to my site. The truck listed dangerously from side to side as it bounced along the rutted track. I could hear and feel the chassis scraping through the dirt beneath me. Yet, even with the imminent danger of our motion, I was so nervous about my arrival in Sorobango that I did not want the ride to end. I had neither a mattress to sleep on nor a stove to cook with. I had no food or water for that matter, and not even the promise of a place to stay. I would be completely at the mercy of strangers. The villagers would assuredly think I was crazy when I arrived in this manner and announced my intention to live in their village for two years. I was concerned that I did not know enough French to communicate with them, were they to understand any French at all. These anxieties compounded my discomfort and before long I was continued on page 26 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The St. John's Reporter</em> Description An account of the resource College newspaper which started publication in 1974. Continued publication into 2000. Includes primarily historical content.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The St. John's Reporter" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=35">Items in <em>The St. John's Reporter</em></a></strong> <span>to view and sort all items in the collection.</span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 28 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context vol 25 issue 2 Winter 1999 Title A name given to the resource Reporter, Volume 25 Issue 2 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1999-01 Description An account of the resource Volume 25, Issue 2 of The St. John's Reporter. Published in Winter 1999. (Corrected from Issue 1) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Public Relations Office Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Goyette, Barbara (editor) Mulry, Laura J. (editor) Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf The Reporter https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/d6be5ade8a53e66adf36c62963f46ab6.pdf 8feb5d7a350c0d23e27e632b67464f99 PDF Text Text ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE LIBRARY 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1~ ~ir1 1 1 m1 1~ 11111111111111 3 1696 01138 2296 HOMECOMING 99 Programs on seeing a painting and ethical issues in biotechnology await alumni in Santa Fe ........ 24 A GUIDE TO THE GUIDES Guidebooks paint different pictures of what the college is all about. Can high school students figure out whether St. John's is for them by reading the descriptions? .................................... 8 S!JOHN'S COLLEGE ANNAPOLIS· SANTA FE THE 50-YEARPERSPECTIVE An oral history interview with Tutor Emeritus Curtis Wtlson ........ 10 THE PLAY'S THE THING Santa Fe students staging a production of Shakespeare find that acting enhances their reading of the text ................................ 20 DEPARTMENTS From the Bell Towers: Why we are named "St. John's"; Young Presidents in Santa Fe; making violins in the Annapolis woodshop; N. Scott Momaday talks about Native American myths .................................... 2 The Program: Thinking about what it means to talk about the books; complementing the Program with a study of photography ................ 6, 7 AlumniPrortles:TwoJohnny sisters use art to comment on political issues at their Georgetown gallery; Stephanie Forrest is exploring the intersection of computers and biology .......... 14, 15 Campus Life: Getting hooked on dancing in Santa Fe; what the bulletin boards say about Annapolis student life ........ 19-21 Alumni Association: Election Notices for SJC Board representatives; chapter contacts .......... 12 AlumniNotes .................... 16 Letters ................................ 22 Photo: Guy Ambrosino Amber Boydstun (SF99) as Lady Macbeth and Michael Esterheld (SF02) as Macbeth. Shakespeare's Macbeth takes on new shades of meaning for student actors in Santa Fe who study the text in detail, learn acting methods, and gain experience in lighting and set design. (See story on page 20.) �Frotn the Bell Tow-ers ... WHAT'S IN A NAME? T ime to brush up on your St. John's history. Which St. John was the college named after-the Evangelist, the Baptist, or Chrysostom? What's with that pile of rocks in the official college seal (the one on the diplomas of all alumni, not the books and balance seal of the New Program)? What's the real college motto (hint: it's not Facio liberos ex liberis libris libraque)? The answers to these questions are intertwined. All relate to the events of December 1784, when the college was chartered by the General Assembly of the new state of Maryland. For many years the name St. John's was assumed to derive from St. John's College in Cambridge. However, as former Annapolis campus librarian Charlotte Fletcher has pointed out, it would be very unlikely that founders of a new college in a new nation would name that school after an old college in a country with which a bloody war had just been concluded. Miss Fletcher proposed an alternative story in her article "1784: The Year St. John's College Was Named" (The St. Johns Review, vol. XL, no. 2, 1990-91) in which she explained the name and the symbols on the seal. She traces both to the influence of the Masons, an important group in the early history of America. William Smith, the principal author of the St. John's charter, was a Mason, as were many of the financial backers of the so onto-be college. Smith worked with a Catholic and a Presbyterian to write the charter, which ensured that "youth of all religious denominations shall be freely and liberally admitted." According to Miss Fletcher, "A Masonic enthusiasm was promoting education throughout Maryland in the 1780s." As all readers of War and Peace know, the Masons were a secret society that placed great value on wisdom, science, and education. Pierre's induction into the group is outlined in detail in War and Peace -and its description helps illuminate the symbols on the St. John's seal, which was adopted for the first graduating class in 1793. The pile of rocks, which divide into seven layers, corresponds to the seven steps of the temple of Solomon, which stands at the top symbolizing wisdom. The man beginning his climb up the steps is carrying a Tsquare, a symbol of the Masons. According to what Pierre is told, he must train himself in the seven steps to wisdom: discretion, obedience, morality, love for mankind, courage, liberality, and love of death. The St. John's motto Est nulla via invia virtuti means "No way is impassable to virtue," reflecting the theme of the ascens10n. What about the name St. John's College? St. John the Evangelist was patron saint to the Masons, who celebrated his feast day on December HONORING JAMES MATIHEWS 27. Several important events during the last half of December 17 84 might have contributed to the name St. John's being chosen for the new college. The most important order of business for the General Assembly was to deal with the question of the state's border with Virginia-particularly with regard to the Potomac River. In honor of that boundary being resolved, George Washington, the country's most illustrious statesman and also, incidentally, a Mason, came to Annapolis. Both Houses passed the bill on December 27, the feast day of the saint honored by the Masons; that evening Washington attended a special dinner in honor of St. John. On December 2 9, the House voted to ask a committee to prepare a bill for founding a college on the western shore of Chesapeake Bay (Washington College in Chestertown on the eastern shore had been chartered two years earlier). The committee was ready the next day, when a bill to charter St. John's College-so named-was introduced and passed. Miss Fletcher thinks that the connection between Washington being in Annapolis, the Masons' honoring of St. John the Evangelist, and the naming and chartering of the college is clear. Eva Brann, in a dean's lecture from 1992, notes the significance of the seal with its Masonic symbols: "It is an emblem of the spirit of that year of the Treaty of Paris which ended the successful Revolution, an emblem of the spirit of religious pluralism, of the sects making room for each other." And, of course, it must have been fate for the college that would more than 150 years later adopt the New Program to be named for the author of the gospel that starts: In the beginningwas the logos ... 8 Barbara Goyette (A 73) YOUNG PRESIDENTS ORGANIZATION VISITS SANTA FE _N; proximately 30 members of he Arkansas Chapter of the oung Presidents Organization visited the Santa Fe campus in February as part of their annual educational program trip. The Young Presidents, an organization for individuals who have become presidents of organizations by the age of 40, decided to include St. John's in their educational trip when a friend of the organization recounted the singular benefits of a St. John's education. The Santa Fe Institute hosted the Young Presidents on Monday, and the following day they arrived on the St. John's campus to hear Ambas- sador Frank Ortiz deliver a lecture entitled "America's Hispanic Culture: Past and Future." Ambassador Ortiz, who has served as the United States Ambassador to Argentina, Peru, Guatemala, Barbados and Grenada, spoke about the Spanish cultural influence that may be traced from Spain to Mexico, and in turn from Mexico to New Mexico. In addition to a detailed illustration of Spanish history, the Ambassador also spoke of the impact that history has had on the United States. Following Ambassador Ortiz' lecture, President John Agresto spoke to the Young Presidents about the St. John's curriculum and the unique nature of the Great Books Program. The Young Presidents then broke up into two seminar groups led by Santa Fe students, in which they discussed a selection of speeches by Abraham Lincoln. The seminars received tremendous positive feedback, and many members of the Young Presidents Association expressed the desire to return to Santa Fe in the future for additional executive seminars at St. John's, or possibly to take part in the Summer Classics Program. • Amber Boydstun (SF9 9) J ames Matthews, who has been on the staff of the college for 36 years -longer than any other non-teaching employee -is retiring in April. Many students have known Jim over the years; he has worked in Mellon Hall, where he has watched, worried about, laughed with, and become friends with hundreds ofJohnnies. Jim's gentle ways have been apparent to anyone who stopped to talk with him. Some students came to know about his other sides: his strong Christian faith, his participation in a gospel choir, his beloved wife, son, daughter, and grandchildren. Now, because of his struggle with Lou Gehrig's Disease, Jim is retiring to spend more time with his family. Tutors and alumni have started a scholarship fund in his honor-a tribute to his devotion to the college and its students. At an appreciation lunch in March, he was presented with a plaque that read: Reliable, conscientious and professional in performance ofhis duties, immensely strong and spiritual in character, with genuine and loving concern for his fellow man and the College, this kind, gentle and honest man serves as a role modelfor the students, faculty, staffandfriends who pass through St. John's. 8 NICKI GONZALES RETIRES ~ ter 32 years of service, Nicki Gonzales retired from the colege in January. Nicki joined the College in 1967 when the Santa Fe campus was but three years old. She was first employed by Stan Nordstrom in the Buildings and Grounds Department. In 1971, Nicki transferred and was promoted to the Development Office where she assisted Burch Ault. Nicki was then promoted in 1975, to the Treasurer's Office assisting then Treasurer, Emery Jennings. Over the years Nicki remained in and enhanced the operations of the Treasurer's Office. Her dedicated service will surely be missed by all. 8 Bryan Valentine �Frotn the Bell To-wers ... ANEWWAYTO HELP ST. JOHN'S T here are many ways to contribute to the future financial stability of St. John's other than writing a December-31st-is-approaching check to the college. One new way to help the college involves designating life insurance policies for St. John's. Many employers provide $50,000 of group term life insurance as a tax-free benefit. If you, as the employee, elect additional coverage under group term life plan and the employer agrees to pay for it, you must claim for tax purposes the premium you would have had to pay for the added coverage as income (over and above your salary). For example, I.M. Johnny is 5 5 years old and works for Philosophical Enterprises, Inc. He chooses to have $250,000 of group life coverage in addition to the $50,000 his employer provides. In his case, since he would have had to pay $2,250 for the added coverage, he must declare $2,250 in additional taxable income. However, if Mr. Johnny names St. John's College the beneficiary of the policy, he does not have to claim the added premium amount as income. Any alumna/ alumnus can do this to save additional tax. And in doing so you would make a future generous gift to the college, thereby enrolling you in the St. John's College Tocqueville Society (for alumni, parents, and friends who remember St. John's in their financial and estate plans). Ifyou want to find out more about this kind of gift, contact Jeff Bishop at 410-626-2505, j-bishop@sjca.edu, or Robert Glick at 505-984-6109, rglick@mail.sj csf. edu. • ''Bee Pot," pit-fired clay pot by Jan Boyer. Hidden Talents Revealed in First Faculty and Staff Art Exhibition in Santa Fe P aintings, ceramics, photography... the St. John's College faculty and staff showed off their talents in the first Faculty and Staff Show in the Art Gallery on the Santa Fe campus. The opening attracted a crowd of more than 100 colleagues and friends. From underwater photography to religious icons, the diversity of artwork on display favorably impressed visitors. The intertwining of professional and nonprofessional artisans gave the exhibition breadth. The scope of artistic mediums ranged from acrylic paints to watercolor. Subject matter included landscapes, skyscapes, underwater-life, still-life, people and places across the globe, as well as religious images. Photographic artists showcased were John Agresto, Suzanne Cooper, Robert Glick, Basia Miller, and Margaret Odell. Participating potters were Saddiq Khan and Jan Boyer. «Morning Coffee" by Luba Kruk Painters included Eleanor Bernau, Michele Beinder and Heather McLean. Mixed media pieces and drawings were exhibited by Louise Guenther, Luba Kruk and Winifred Rusk. Other featured artists included Michael Rodriguez who showed his retablos and icons and Kathy Mizrahi who exhibited a variety of needlepoint works. • Maggie Maga/nick SUMMER CLASSICS LINE UP INCLUDES OPERA, SCIENCE, AND COWBOY LORE P erhaps the most successful outreach program of the Santa Fe campus is the Summer Classics "learning vacation" programs focusing on the greatest literature, art, film, and music. Adults from all over the nation, with diverse backgrounds, can attend for one, two or three weeks. Seminars are held Monday through Saturday, ten to noon, while discussion often continues through the lunch hour. Afternoons are free to study or to participate in guided tours and excursions. Programs this summer include: Bizet's Carmen, Aristotle's Politics, Euripides' Tojan Women, Electra, and Medea, and Italian Medieval and Renaissance Art (July 18-24); Strauss' Ariadne au/Naxos, Mozart's Idomeneo, Augustine's Confessions, Galileo's Two New Sciences, Cowboy Classics: The Virginian; Shane; Horseman, Pass By; and the film High Noon (July 25-31); Poulenc's Dialogues ofthe Carmelites, with Bernanos' Diary of a Country Priest, Nietzsche's The Gay Science, Shakespeare's The Two Gentlemen of Verona; Love's LabourLost; andA Midsummer Night's Dream; T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets. (August 1-7). Limited on-campus housing is available. Tuition is $690 per week, which includes all texts, receptions and lunches, and some excursions. For more information, please call 505-984-6104 or email classics@mail.sjcsf.edu or visit the website at www.sjcsf.edu. • �Frotn the Bell To~ers ... THE VIOLIN MAKER How sophomore music inspired one student to create his own means to music. o enter St. John's is to enter life of the mind-to eschew the practical for the cerebral. Students reason about matter, rather than work with it. The constructions in math tutorials are intellectual constructions. Some seminar readings question the very existence of the material world. Junior Jason Derleth has stumbled upon a powerful antidote to the intellectual stronghold that St. John's exerts on its students. Over the past two years, he has spent hundreds of hours in the Annapolis campus' woodshop building musical instruments. So far, he has made two violins, is working on a cello, and is helping five students with projects: an acoustic guitar, two electric guitars, a mandolin, a violin, and a viola. Not surprisingly, freshman and sophomore music led Derleth to his new venture. Although he played the clarinet for a few months and the piano for a year or two when he was younger, his enjoyment of the music program at St. John's took him by surprise. "Freshman music was great. I loved singing with other people. But Zuckerkandl was what turned me on, what showed me a unique way oflooking at music. Zuckerkandl taught me what to listen for," Derleth says. His new understanding of music led to a deeper enjoyment of participating in the making of music. lars and wind up with a merely mediocTe instrument. Instead, he decided to spend a large but manageable chunk of cash (about $1500) and invest his own sweat and talent in making a fine instrument. The second reason for building rather than buying came from self-knowledge: Derleth knew that by investing himself in building the cello, he would be more likely to follow through with learning to play it. Because the construction of the cello and violin are similar, but the violin is less expensive to build and does not place as many technical demands on its maker as the cello, Derleth built two violins before starting his cello. Approaching the matter like a true Johnny, he looked for a book on the subject. After long searches in used bookstores in Berkeley, California (near his home town of Hercules), he discovered a book called Violin Making Step by Step. Derleth began his first violin in January 1998 and was finishedjust as school ended that May. He credits tutor Chester Burke (A74) with motivating his persistence in the project. "I might not have finished that first violin if not for Mr. Burke," he says. "When he found out I was working on it, he said that he might want to purchase it, which he ultimately did. Not only did his interest help me finish the violin, but I made a much better instrument than I would have otherwise. I bought better wood, took more time and care with its construction, and I was rewarded for that. The violin, though it doesn't look perfect, sounds wonderful." As Derleth discusses the endeavor that has consumed his free time for the past year and a half, he sounds like an old hand in the Once inspired musically, Derleth found his thoughts moving into the practical realm~ where the question of how to acquire a cello was settled in favor ofbuilding one. "It's so much more fulfilling and interesting and emotional and satisfying to play or sing with others; it's an amazing thing. In sophomore music, when we sang Palestrina's 'Sicut Cervus,' it was fantastic. That, more than anything else, was an inspiration for me to learn the cello," he says. Once inspiTed musically, Derleth found his thoughts moving into the pTactical realm, where the question of how to acquire a cello was settled in favor of building one. He gives two reasons for why he chose this unusual means of acquisition. The first is economic: when he learned that a good cello would cost nine thousand dollars, he knew that would be out of the question. But he was also unprepared to spend three thousand dol- Photos by JohnBildahl Jason Derleth shows off a completed violin (above) and demonstrates woodworking techniques in the shop (top). woodshop, although his previous woodworking experience was fairly limited. "I took woodshop in high school, two classes concurrently, but most of the instruction focussed on machine work. It didn't prepare me at all for violin making, because most instrument building is hand tool work." The instruments' construction involves sculpting the front and back with gouges and finger planes, curving the sides with a bending iron, "The scroll of the instrument is taken from the ionic of a Greek column. a classical sense, it is de.signed to be the most beautiful thing one can look at." and carving the scroll with gouges. Several of the tools Derleth uses are of his own construction. He has made a thickness gauge (he read how in a book called Practical Violin Making), closing clamps, and guides that govern the curvature of the instrument. "Many of the curved measurements on the violin are in extreme and mean ratio to each other," Derleth says, pointing out the small center curve and large upper curve of a viola-in-progress. "There are about 15 measurements like that. It's quite clear that the people who designed the instruments were classicists. The scroll of the instrument is taken from the ionic capital of a Greek column. In a classical sense, it is designed to be the most beautiful thing one can look at." While his attention to the violin's ratios shows that he does, on occasion, relate his work in the woodshop to his academic life, Derleth mostly enjoys the contrast between the two. "It's such a different realm. The menta1 prowess required by St. John's, the mental fatigue that occurs because you're at St. John's, is something that having a challenging hobby helps. There's something about reading books by all these people who have created all of these ideas that makes me want to be more creative and I seem to have found a place where I can successfully do so. To create something beautiful out of a hunk of wood and to have it sound good is really wonderful. Forget winning paper prizes," says Derleth. "This is more satisfying." 9 Sl1S3anBorden (A87) �SPRING •.1999 Frolll the Bell To'1Vers ... A Legend Comes to Santa Fe N. SCOTT MOMADAY P ulitzer Prize winner N. Scott Momaday read selections from his most recent book, In the Bear's House, on March 3. Santa Fe's Great Hall was filled to overflowing. Once Momaday began his readtime seemed to be suspended. Listeners were drawn into the spell of the readings from the time Momaexplained his fascination, indeed his with Bear. "Bear and I are one," Momaday says in the introduction to his new book. He goes on to explain that his Indian name, Tsoai-talee, is Kiowa for "Rock-tree boy." "Rock-tree" is Devils' Tower in Wyoming. It was there, tells, that a Kiowa boy " Urset regrets awkwardness words, and Yahweh expounds on the spectrum ofwords, language, sveecn ofwhich Yahweh has command because he is the word. turned into a bear and his seven sisters were transformed into the stars of the Big Dipper; thus the storyteller relates himself and his people to the stars. Momaday says he is the reincarnation of that boy and is possessed of Bear's spirit. For the Kiowa, Bear is the animal representation of the wilderness, and both Momaday's novels as well as his poems reveal the depth of his understanding of the wilderness. There is a universality in the idea of Bear as a symbol. While certain Europeans in the stone age worshipped bears, no country is more widely associated with the bear than Russia. Momadaytold of his visits to Russia, in particular his visit to Siberia to a reindeer-hunting tribe, where the people have a ceremony which lasts for days when a bear is killed. There is singing, feasting, wrestling and dancing in honor of the bear and what he represents. " .... and everything would have its place in the relief of ritual," Momaday writes in his poem, "Notes on a Hunting Scene." In the Bear's House is divided into three parts: The Bear-God Dialogues, Poems, and Passages. Momaday began his reading from the Dialogues which are exquisite short plays with two characters, Urset and Yal1weh. The dialogues are conversations between Bear and God. Urset is the first Bear, the prototype, and the Pulitzer Prize-winner N. Scott Momadayin Santa Fe's Great Hall, March 3, 1999. first syllable of his name signifies something ancient for Momaday. Several meaningful themes worth noting emerged from the Dialogues and the Poems. Words/Language is the first theme addressed in the reading of the dialogue, "You Are, Urset. I Am, Yahweh." Urset regrets his awkwardness with words, and Yahweh expounds on the spectrum of words, language, and speech of which Yahweh has command because he is the word. Yahweh hopes Urset will express his heart in fine, beautiful "Thought, "Yahweh tells Urset that there are galaxies of words in the mind. This is a towering metaphor. language, and reminds Urset that he exists not only in his name but in the words that tell his story. Momaday went on to say extemporaneously that silence is the matrix of words, that there is the unspeakable, and that it is good to speak of the unspeakable. Language, he pointed out, is limited. Nietzsche's query as to whether language is the adequate expression of all realities seems to relate to Momaday's espousal of the power of silence as juxtaposed against the limitations of speech. Yet in another dialogue, "Thought," Yahweh tells Urset that there are galaxies of words in the mind. This is a towering metaphor. Story and Grace are probed in the charming dialogue, "Story," in which Urset asks what it is to tell a story. A teaching lesson ensues in which Yahweh declares there is only one story, but many stories are in the one, and all stories are true. But Urset wants more from Yahweh. He wants to lmowwhere in the story is the place for grace. Grace, Yahweh declares, is the most important element of all in a story. It is the very substance of story, albeit invisible and remote. In short, grace is the soul of story. And once again Momaday invokes the idea of silence, the matrix of words. Time was the subject of the last dialogue Momaday read. Yal1weh defines the idea of time for Urset. "The present is all there is." Urset accepts the dictum and acknowledges that it is enough. In one sense there is, as Pere JeanPierre de Caussade avows, a kind of "sacrament of the present moment." N. ScottMomadayreceived the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1969 for his first novel, House Made ofDawn. Other honors include the Premio Letterario Internationale "Mondell;" Distinguished Board of Scholars, Library of Congress; New Mexico Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts; the Academy of Poets Prize; the Western Heritage "Wrangler" award; the "Outstanding Indian of the Year" award, American Indian Exposition; and induction into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame. Momaday received his Bachelor's degree from the University of New Mexico and a Master's and Ph.D. from Stanford. He is the recipient of several honorary degrees, including one from Yale in 1980. Momaday lives in Jemez Springs, New Mexico, in the 130-year-old house which his parents bought in 1959. He flies to Tucson once a week where he teaches a seminar on Native American oral tradition. Of note to St. John's students, Momaday requires his students to study myths such as The Iliad before they ... silence is the matrix of words... tackle the Indian stories. Since myth might well be defined as greater than truth, students encounter a classic understanding of myth before their encounter with Native American legends. Momadayis a consummate reader, an actor really, of his dialogues and poems. His complete control of his rich voice captivates any audience privileged to hear him. His flawless delivery takes his audience with him into that time known as kairos where new truths are revealed and welcomed for the first time. • Mary Dare Ellis (SGI98) �The Prograin ... WHAT DO WE HOPE TO ACHIEVE IN DISCUSSION? Convocation Address by Michael Dink, Director ofthe Graduate Institute, Annapolis w: elcome, new students, continuing students, colleagues and friends. We are called together today to begin or to begin again as students in the Graduate Institute at St. John's College. As our Bulletin reminds us, there are two distinctive features of our program oflearning: 1) the curriculum consists exclusively of classic or "great" books of the Western tradition used as texts and 2) all classes are conducted as small-group discussions. Today, I do not intend to defend or explicate our practice of reading the books we call great. Instead, I want to talk about the second distinctive feature of our practice: having read some assigned portion of one of these books, we come together and talk with one another about what we've read. As simple as this sounds, it is not the most common practice in other institutions of higher education. Moreover, it is not such a simple thing to say what it is we hope to achieve with this practice and why we value it so highly. Let me sketch three possible models of what one might hope to achieve in such discussions and raise some questions about each of them. The first model is based on an analogy with perception and the attempts to overcome its limitations so as to make it more accurate. It can be illustrated by the old story of the three blind men and the elephant. You know the story. One man grabs the trunk, and says that it's a snake. The second wraps his arms around a leg, and says it's a tree trunk. The third runs into the side of the sitting elephant, and says it's a wall. In a bad discussion, the three of them will each give elaborate reasons in defense of his own interpretation and :refute the reasons given by the others. In a good discussion, each will come to see that his own interpretation is partial and they will put together their partial views in such a way as to come to a more complete and more accurate view of what it is they have encountered. The presupposition of this model is that there is one common object that all the discussants are experiencing, and that the goal of the discussion is not only to come to an agreement, but to an agreement that more accurately reflects this common object of experience than the partial and limited view with which each participant began. We see that something like this does happen with respect to certain well-circumscribed issues, particularly of the sort that come up in tutorials. Why is a certain step necessary Photo by John Bildahl Tutor Tom May leads a Graduate Institute discussion on Euclid. in a mathematical proof? How is the syntax working in a difficult sentence in a poem? We are less confident that it happens with the larger scale questions that so often preoccupy us in seminar: what is virtue? what can we know? what is the best form of government? what is our proper relationship to the divine? We might, however, reassure ourselves that we are striving towards and possibly making progress towards this goal, even if we don't reach it. Aside from the question of the attainability of the proposed goal, there are two other questions I want to propose about this model. First, if the goal were achieved, would we then look back on the conversation that led to it merely as a means towards that goal? Second, does this mean that each of us sees his or her interlocutors in the conversation merely as a means to achieving a more correct view of the way things are? Is conversation with others merely of incidental importance to having a correct view? The second model has Darwinian roots. Conversation is seen as an arena in which opinions compete and struggle to survive. The participants examine, criticize and refute weak opinions. Sometimes initially weak opinions can be modified so as to survive. As a result of all this testing, only the best opinions survive. This might mean that a single opinion is acknowledged as best by the whole group, but it need not mean this. There may remain differences of opinion about which opinion is best. While there is a strong competitive flavor to this model, it need not mean that one person's gain is another's loss. It might be that each participant will "improve" his opinion without giving it up for someone else's. Perhaps, as in the case of Dar- winian natural selection, the process might even lead to greater divergence of opinions. Like the Darwinian account, however, this model leaves unspecified what is meant by "improvement." If a plurality of conflicting opinions "survive," then they can't all be more accurate. Perhaps they are articulated more clearly, supported by more explicit reasons and held with a greater awareness of their difficulties and of their alternatives. Without the notion of a common object that is seen more accurately, however, this notion of improvement seems problematic and the commonness of the enterprise seems even more clearly subordinated to a private goal. The third model takes deliberative discussion as its paradigm. In such discussions, a common decision must be reached because some action must be taken. Ordinarily, we think of our opinions about what action should be taken as based on opinions about the way things are, both about the circumstances and about the goodness of the ends at which the action aims. When we think this way, we are directed back to the first model: responsible deliberation first requires us to try to ascertain the way things are. however, we cannot come to agreement on this, then we are forced to reach a decision by means of negotiation. Each party to the negotiation has a desired outcome in mind and tries to come as close as possible to this outcome, conceding as little as possible to other parties who desire incompatible outcomes. If agreement is reached, it comes about through power and persuasion, and through fear of the consequences that will follow if no agreement is reached. There are some who claim not only that all deliberative discussions are carried out strictly as negotia- tions, without any possible appeal to a standard outside of the deliberations, but even that all discussions are covertly deliberative, and that any attempt to justify an opinion about how things are is at bottom an attempt to assert power, whether that assertion consists in getting more of some non-sharable good or merely in imposing one's nw11 will on another. If you are as appalled as I am by this third model, we need to ask what exactly it is that appalls us. Is it the absence of a standard outside of the negotiation or is it the way people treat each other within the framework of the negotiation? If we think that the former is more fundamental, then we might hasten back from this abyss to the first model. There we have a shared enterprise with a goal that has some claim to be high and that is a good potentially attainable by all participants without thereby being diminished. Yet no matter how high or common the goal we posit for conversation, conversation itself and one's fellow interlocutors in it run the risk of remaining mere instruments in the pursuit of that goal. If we want to avoid this consequence, then we may have to suppose that there is some sense in which conversation with one another is more fundamental than and prior to any conception of the goal that we hope to achieve through that conversation. Openness to what others have to say, respect for them as sources of intelligibility, a willingness to share our thinking and to risk having it criticized and rejected, a readiness to be moved and changed in response to what others say - perhaps we can recognize these as the virtues which make genuine conversation possible without reducing them to the means to achieve some goal beyond the conversation. Perhaps one could defend this supposition if one could show that conversation with others is an essential condition for having a common and intelligible world about which we can seek to achieve clarity or in which we can pursue our ends. I do not offer this suggestion as a fourth model alongside the other three, partly because it is not one more alternative understanding of the goal of conversation, but a sense that it may have a dignity and worth not derived from its goal, and partly because I do not yet see how to articulate this sense as clearly as I would like. I hope that, in conversation with many of you, I may come to see whether I, or rather we, can make sense of this suggestion. Thank you. Convocatum est. • �,. The Progratn ... PHOTOGRAPHY: STATE OF THE ART Weekend classes and donated equipment lead to a surge ofinterest in photography on the Annapolis campus. s if mathematics and language tutorials, laboratory, seminar, Friday night lectures, and the occasional study group aren't enough, twenty-two students have added yet another class to their schedule: photography. Don't panic-the Instruction Committee has not tampered with The Program; photography has not been deemed the eighth liberal art. Instead, the interest and enthusiasm of two Annapolis students, sophomore Sylvaine Rameckers and junior Vada Mossavat, has lead to a surge of interest in photography. When Rameckers first came to St. John's, she found a darkroom that was low on equipment and lacking any budget. A photography enthusiast since eighth grade, she was not deterred by what she found. Along with a handful of other students, she pu11ed together enough supplies to bring the darkroom to life. That summer, as Rameckers continued working in the darkroom, she met Mossavat, and as the two talked about photography and its place in the life of St. John's, they began to discuss the possibility of teaching the subject. When school began and talk of photography classes got around, interest in the darkroom increased. To help make it accessible to more students, Rameckers requested $930 from the Delegate Council to buy chemicals and supplies that would cover most students' needs save two: paper and a manual camera. She had decided that it would be counterproductive to pay for paper, because she knows from experience that when you buyyour own paper, you tend not to waste it. As for the manual camera, although she wanted one for students who don't own cameras, she thought its expense might jeopardize her entire request for funds and decided to leave it out. Four days after the $930 was approved, she received a phone call from the Advancement Office asking her to pick up some photography equipment that Annapolitan James Kohlhaas had just donated to the college. "It was exactly what we were missing: two manual cameras, tripods, lenses, lens converters, filters, everything," says Rameckers. Soon after, Rameckers and Mossavat began planning their course. Before the first class, the two went to Briarwood Books, a used bookstore on Maryland Avenue (formerly Charing Cross), and picked out an armful of photography books for students to Photo by John Bildahl Sylvaine Rameckers, an Annapolis sophomore, in the photo studio with her trusty Nikon. look at. The classes cover the mechanics of photography, such as how cameras work, the optics of the camera lens, and how film and paper work. Philosophical aspects of photography are also discussed; class discussions explore what it means to take a picture. And, of course, the practical element is always present: the class goes out on photo shoots as a group, they learn to develop film, and they make prints. Next on the agenda is a filter workshop. Rameckers describes the makeshift filters the class will work with: "We'll cover the lens with different-colored pieces of cellophane to bring out various contrasts in the photographs, put mesh over the camera for a faded old-photo look, and put Vaseline on all but one area to yield a hazy look with one spot in focus." As the presence of two tutors brings balance and depth to a seminar, Rameckers says that sharing teaching with Mossavat has similar advantages. "Vada and I are very much into photography, but we perceive things differently. What in- trigues Vada is photojournalism: war situations, being in the midst of action, things that shock and strike. I'm much more interested in details: faces and hands are important to me, I look at architecture and lines. When we teach together and students ask what we look for when we're shooting, we end up learning from each other. "In teaching you reach a higher level of understanding," Rameckers adds. "I think of how tutors read and reread the same books and teach the same class several times, but each time they discover a different approach and have different questions." While the weekend photography classes won't be taking the place of freshman lab or junior French, Rameckers explains that they do indeed complement the program. "It's another medium in which St. John's students can come to understand things and express themselves. The books you read here are about human nature, about how man acts. With photography, you actually document that." • Sus3an Borden (A87) �WILL THE REAL Sr. JOHN'S COLLEGE PLEASE STAND UP? Guide to College Guides ....•••••.......•••..........•••••.•.........•••••••................•••••••...............••••••................................ I t happened to me during my fifth period study hall in room 301. In 1967 I was a junior at Orange High School, an upper-middle-class suburban district on the east side of Cleveland. During that study hall, I was sorting through the papers in my notebook and opened up a brochure that one of the guidance counselors had pulled at random from her supply to jot down a note on. The brochure was a reprint of an article in The Saturday Review, March 23, 1963, titled "St. John's College: Four Years with the Great Books," by David Boroff. When I read the article, I knew right away where I wanted to go to college. Many alumni and current students at St. John's can trace their decision about where to go to school to a similar single moment. It's so common that it has a name: the light bulb effect. A high school student reads a brochure, a college guide descrip. tion, or a newspaper or magazine article that describes the Program and bink-the bulb turns on and they just know it's the place for them. Of course, college is a big decision and there are many factors to consider. The Admissions Offices on both campuses encourage high school students to visit the college so that they can be sure about what they are getting themselves in for. Parents sometimes have to be persuaded, the finances have to be figured out, applications have to be written, recommendations need to be lined up. But that whole process usually comes after the bink-the initial revelation. Making sure that enough students are presented with a clear picture of the Program, so that the few who are right for the Program and it for them will be found, is one of St. John's challenges. What is important about the college is not its location, its pretty brick or adobe buildings, the SAT scores or geographic origins of its freshmen, the percentage of faculty members with PhDs, the ratio of acceptances to applicants, or the amount of endowment dollars per student. The Program is what's important. "What prospective students learn is that 'the Program' is both the book list and the kind of classes we offer. Since they are readers and talkers, they are excited by the books as much as they are by our discussion-based classes," says Larry Clendenin, Admissions Director in Santa Fe. College guidebooks and other sources of information for prospective students need to represent the Program accurately so that the light bulb can go off in the minds of the right students. The college can control what it says about itself in admissions .... _ .. calls St. John's "perhaps the most intellectual college in the country" and uses student quotes to help explain the Program's appeal. Criticisms make sense- "The task at hand is almost always overwhelming; it's easy to get discouraged," one student says-and the praise rings true: "All the students' education is truly in their hands. They can turn as many pages per night as each of them pleases." Dorms, extracurriculars, drinking, admissions policies, and the general atmosphere are all described. Annapolis Admissions Director John Christensen says that this guidebook does the college more good than any other. "People cite it all the time as the way they found out about St. John's," he notes. Reality check: Accurate and inspiring; captures what is special about the Program in a way that would appeal to students who might be interested in it. THE PRINCETON REVIEW'S THE BEST 311COLLEGES Photo by John Bildahl brochures (copies of the newest version were sent to all alumni last year), but what about those college guides on the shelves of all the Barnes & Nobles and Borders across the land? How accurately do they reflect the college? Here's a rundown on some of the most popular guides: PETERSON'S GUIDE TO 4-YEAR COLLEGES This phonebook-sized guide has been around for more than 30 years. Colleges pay to be included; they supply their own description, which is then edited by Peterson's. The guidebook also includes a wealth of basic data, collected independently through a comprehensive survey. It is updated every year. The narrative description of St. John's is the standard cataloguestyle one, including such catch phrases as "Seminars are devoted to reading works of the greatest minds and engaging in thoughtful discussion about them" and "A central purpose of the St. John's program is to give students both the opportunity and the obligation to think for themselves." The language, math, and lab classes are outlined and the tutors' function as guides rather than answer-givers is accurate. Reality check: Accurate but uninspiring; not likely to trigger the light switch. THE FISKE GUIDE TO COLLEGES Edited by Edward Fiske, a former education editor of the New York Times, this guide includes write-ups of the 300 "best and most interesting colleges and universities" in the country. Its methodology could be called journalistic: they send a questionnaire every year that asks for a lot of statistics; they ask students to answer questions about the academic and social life on campus (the students don't check boxes for this, they write out answers); they telephone administrators with questions; and they solicit comments about the previous year's write-up. Each college receives ratings for academics, social life, and quality of life-subjectively determined by the Fiske staff. The St. John's article is well-organized, informative, accurate, and best of all, interesting. The guide This book has nothing to do with Princeton University-the name is clever marketing. Published every year, the Princeton Review guide gets tons of publicity because of the off-beat, hip categories it makes up to classify colleges in. Here, for example, are some of the things St. John's scores in: is it food? (dissatisfied with food service - Annapolis is 1st), class discussions encouraged (Santa Fe is 1st, Annapolis is 3rd), students from different backgrounds interact (Santa Fe is 4th, Annapolis is 6th), everyone plays intramurals (Annapolis is 7th), gay community accepted (Santa Fe is 1st, Annapolis is 5th), professors make themselves accessible (Annapolis is 4th). The rankings seem to have no valid basis, and how the colleges included in each category are arrived at is not explained. The Princeton Review sends a slew of questionnaires to campuses every three or four years; they hire students to oversee other students filling them out on the spot. The surveys contain questions about the academic and social life, and offer spaces for comments. The publisher asks for statistics, but not every year. The description of St. John's (spelled incorrectly as ''Saint John's") manages to miss the fact that the curriculum is based on reading great books. There are some good quotes from students, but without the underpinning of a correct description of the Program, they don't mean much ("St. John's is one long conversation.") continued on page 9 �COLLEGE ANNOUNCI OPPORTUNITY TO HEI m \em\n,plmsor ms\emz\often cap, often attrib J a: the J3th letter of the English alphabet b: a graphic representation ofthis letter c: a speech counterpart of orthographic m 2: one thousand - see NUMBER table 3: a graphic device for reproducing the letter m 4: one designated m esp. as the J3th in order or class 5: something shaped like the letter M 6 a: EM2b:PICA2 At St. John's College "m" has an additional meaning, one of critical concern to students, alumni, parents, community friends, and tutors. At St. John's "m" also means the minimum salary paid to beginning tutors. And since it has long been a tradition at St. John's that tutor compensation is determined solely by length of service, salaries and salary-related compensation for all tutors are determined by formulas based on "m." Annual raises are given to all tutors equally as a percentage of "m," step increases are given as a percentage of "m," compensation for extra teaching duties or for administrative responsibilities are given as a percentage of "m." For St. John's tutors, "m" quite simply determines the economic EADERSHIP GIVING E TUTOR SALARIES quality of their lives. Every year the Board of Visitors and Governors determines this baseline for faculty pay from the median of the Franklin & Marshall independent study of 37 comparable liberal arts colleges. It is a long-stated goal of the College to raise faculty salaries to the median of this study group and both campuses of St. John's have always tried to reward tutors as generously as possible. On both campuses, tutor compensation makes up one of the the largest portions-between 25 and 30%-ofthe annual budget. But unfortunately, St. John's salary for tutors is among the lowest of these peer institutions. And both Santa Fe and Annapolis are expensive communities in which to live and raise a family. The College is determined to do all it can to make life better for its tutors, who work tirelessly to create the St. John's experience. A recently approved strategic plan calls for bringing tutor compensation to the median of our peer group over the next ten years. But to achieve this goal without drastically raising tuition will require the generous assistance of St. John's alumni and friends. In recognition of the dedica- tion of our teaching faculty and of the need to raise tutor salaries to a competitive level, the College is establishing a new leadership giving category, The Society ofM, for gifts of $3,500 to $4,999 Both campuses have recently received generous foundation gifts to raise faculty salaries. The Hodson Trust has offered the St. John's campus in Annapolis a grant of $250,000 to match new and increased gifts to the Annual Fund made before June 30 designated for faculty salaries. The campus in Santa Fe has received an $800,000 challenge grant from the Dodge Jones Foundation for the purpose of endowing a fund to support tutor salaries. While the Santa Fe campus is raising the necessary match in endowment funds, it is also seeking annual gifts to support increases in tutor salaries. On an annual basis, the numbers needed to reward the faculty appropriately are not large. On each campus an additional $35,000 per year-just 10 gifts of $3,500 raised and renewed annually on each campus-will fund a 1% raise for all tutors. To ensure that the College can achieve its plan to raise faculty salaries, members of The Society of Mwill make a gift of $3,500 to the annual fund, restricted for the purpose of tutor compensation. Membership in The Society ofM for the current fiscal year does not constitute a pledge to continue donations at that level, but the College hopes members will renew their gifts, while it continues to raise additional gifts each year. To continue to attract and retain tutors, the College asks that alumni and parents consider making leadership gifts at this level, but gifts of any amount are needed. For further information, please contact the following: Christensen. "They provide a corrective to the view that we are a 'weirdo' college," he says. "This guide doesn't judge the colleges on the lessons you teach, but on the content of the curriculum. All the students need to have some kind of confrontation with the traditions of our culture-that's what they are saying, and that's what we do well." Reality check: Block out the political overtones (which don't impact what this guide is telling us about colleges) and the message is clear: St. John's is a bastion ofWestern tradition and a place for intellectual seekers willing to work hard. John's is flattering, if not entirely accurate. The Program is characterized as "a seminar in which a group of students and two faculty members meet twice weekly to discuss readings from a set list ... It is the goal of St. John's to help students build a life philosophy and value system based on knowledge learned from Western civilization's greatest thinkers." There is no description of the math, language, and lab components. The guide recognizes that there are few minority students on campus, but quotes from students show that minorities are recruited and seem to thrive once enrolled. Reality check: Inspiring argument for liberal education in general, and for minority students in particular. For the right student, no matter what race, this description might cause the light bulb to turn on. introduction talks about the "widespread abandonment of academic standards and moral discipline, the politicization of all aspects of campus life, and the deconstruction of academic disciplines." He calls for parents and students to ask hard questions and to be better informed about what colleges actually offer. The St. John's write-up was done by ISI staff; the books says information came from an "extensive network of campus contacts" as well as interviews with faculty and students and questionnaires to administrators. The description is accurate and informed; quotes from students include: "In some cases you walk away from a tutorial feeling that you didn't learn much. But then it's usually your fault ... The responsibility is on the student, not the tutor." The guide includes something others do not in its treatment of campus politics, pointing out that St. John's has minimal problems because administrators are from the ranks of the faculty. Campus organizations for gay students and "a certain hostility toward religion" are mentioned and then brushed off. Reality check: More good coverage from what could be considered the right in this extremely well-written and flattering portrait. • Barbara Goyette Jeff Bishop,Vice President for Advancement St. John's College Box2800 Annapolis, MD, 21404-2800 tel. 410-626-2505 email: j-bishop@sjca.edu or Robert Glick, Vice President for Advancement St. John's College 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca Santa Fe, NM 87501-4599 tel. 505-984-6109 email: rglick@mail.sjcsf.edu Robert Glick College guides continued.from page 8 Reality check: Opaque methodology and cheesy categories make this guide more like the Harlequin than the Middlemarch of college guides. THE NATIONAL REvlEW COLLEGE GUIDE Edited by Charles Sykes and Brad Miner, with an introduction by William F. Buckley, Jr., this is an overtly subjective gathering of opinions on 58 liberal arts colleges. All meet the editors' standards for inclusion: quality and availability of faculty, quality of curriculum, quality of intellectual life. "Colleges apparently conscripted to ideological biases against God or man are not recommended," says Buckley. The National Review College Guide doesn't include tons of statistics. Rather, it describes the curriculum and academic and intellectual life of each college profiled. The St. John's description is thorough and even includes a brief version of the reading list. John Christensen in the Admissions Office loves this quote from the guide: "St. John's graduates come away with a BA in liberal arts and the ability to think. The latter. .. is what gives St. Johns' students an edge in life." While the tone of this guide can be seen as directed toward parents as much as toward students, that doesn't bother THE 100 BEST COLLEGES FOR AFRICAN-AMERICAN STUDENTS One of the many specialty guides published, this book was first put out in 1993, with a new edition available last year. Included arc 100 schools that have demonstrated a commitment to creating a more racially balanced campus. The preface points out that African-American students must search for the right combination of school, environment, and academics-at either a predominantly white school or a predominantly African-American one. Information about the colleges was gathered by a survey sent to administrators. The section on St. CHOOSING THE RIGHT COLLEGE: THE WHOLE TRUTH AEom 100 TOP SCHOOI"S This guide is researched and written by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, and has an introduction by William Bennett. Like the National Review College Guide, the ISI book seems to be addressed to parents, with the underlying theme of "these are the colleges we would recommend for your children." Bennett's AMERICA?§ �CURTIS WILSON ...... . Excerpts from an oral history interview conducted by Valerie Pawlewicz (A8 9) with tutor emeritus Curtis Wilson, who fir.st came to St. Johns in 1948. V alerieI'aUJleUJicz:.F'irst a latent philosopher. I mean, I I UJanted to ask about wanted to think about ideas. I wasn't UJho you were and what trying to understand what happened you were doing before you came to in history but what people really the college. thought and how they came to have Curtis Wilson: I was a graduate · new ideas. In April of 1948 I came student at Columbia University, who down by train and took the big red had never heard of St. John's. I had a trolley from Baltimore to Annapolis. friend who was attending classes at It moved through a lot of semitropithe New School for Social Research, cal greenery, it seemed to me -I was among them lectures by Leo Strauss. out of New York, which was still This would have been '4 7, '48. And I having trouble recognizing spring. was in a considerable amount of disThis just seemed marvelous. And tress over the dissertation topic that had been assigned to me: I didn't like it very much. My friend said, well, you ought to talk with Leo Strauss about that. So I was permitted to attend some of these classes without paying, and I also talked with Leo Strauss, and he said - I was dealing with history of science in the Renaissance period - Leo Strauss said the person you ought to talk with is Jacob Klein at St. John's College. VP: JVhy? JVhy him? CW: Leo Strauss regarded Jacob Klein as a scholar who knew this area of history of mathematics and logic and physics. I really wanted to study a lot more 17th-century things. But the point of view at Columbia was that there had been no such thing as the Renaissance, that everything was continuous. This was But the point ofview at Columbia was that there had been no such thing as the Renaissance~ that everything was continuous. the view of my adviser, well known scholar Lynn Thorndike. And I had gone to Columbia to study the Renaissance so it was very distressing to me to have this found to be nonexistent. But anyway, I arranged to come down in the spring of 1948 and see Jacob Klein. VP: Didyou call him up and tell him whatyou wanted? CW: I don't remember how this was brought about. But my friend said, "Oh, and by the way, when you're there, ask for a job."I was really, totally unrealistic in those days. I'd been interviewed by a number of history department people in various places and I just didn't like what I encountered. VP: JVhatdidn'tyoulike? CW: What I didn't like was all the immersion in political history. It's important enough, but I was sort of CW: Because I was seeking a job. I mean, I followed my friend's advice. And I got the job. VP: YoujustUJalked in and said thatyou needed a job, and they said okay? CW: Not right away, it took letters or something. I was asked by Raymond Wilburn if I would please take a course in organic chemistry during the summer and take over teaching the whole senior class. I think they VP: Were you about the same age as them? CW: Well, I would have been 27 at the time, and some of them were that old, some of them younger, some of them older. Let me shift quickly to my first teaching here. I did take the organic chemistry, and then I was faced with these two classes of seniors. There must have been 40 all told, or something like that, all of them takingthe attitude, so it seemed to me, ""show me that this is of any importance whatsoever." Humphreys, where the science went on, was outside the real center of the program, as far as they were concerned. The place of the program was where the seminars went on, in McDowell. Curtis Wilson during a question period in the 1970s. then I arrived, and I met Mr. Klein in what was then the senior common room. VP: The room in the coffee shop that's tucked away? CW: It's tucked away in the roughly northeast corner. There was a big red leather sofa there, and that's where I met Mr. Klein. He was not yet married; he had a cigarette in his mouth which cast ashes on his vest and he would brush that away frequently and then occasionally spit. He was a very energetic, and, to me, entrancing person. I explained to him what my dissertation topic was, and he said "Oh, that's all nonsense." Of course I was pleased by that. VP: You werepleased, not disheartened? There goes your whole -everything! CW: Well, well, it wasn't quite that - I'm abbreviating. I mentioned some aspects of what I was doing, and he said, "Now that's really interesting," you see. So it wasn't demolition simply, it was transformation. And then I talked with John Kieffer, the president, and with Raymond Wilburn, the dean. VP: JVhywouldyouhave spoken to them, afteryou've come and spoken toJascha? ing decision thatyou could gain a lot.from. Itwasn 'tjustthe 'first job, getitoutoftheway, do the work and go on somewhere e'lse. " CW: Oh no, and, of course I was really charmed bythe Jacob Klein of those days. I liked his impudence, his dismissal of all sorts of things you know, and his excitement. I went to one of his classes in which he did the traditional thing of drawing the perfect circle. And the whole school was full of veterans in 1948. Many of them had been in battle. They were mature in ways that I wasn't. were on the three term system then, I'm not quite sure, but it was during the autumn, and then the rest of the year I was just to audit classes and prepare for teaching the following year. VP: How did you know you even wanted to be here? You met one interesting guy, the UJeather was nice . .. why move everything here? CW: Well, it ... this was a place where not only were a lot of great books studied that I hadn't been able to read, and wanted to read, but they included scientific works, of the history of science. Galileo, Newton, Copernicus, Ptolemy, none of those had I been able to read. What I did for my dissertation ultimately was to study a 14th-century logician who wrote very abstruse stuff, and I elucidated it, I wrote a sort of commentary, and it was a finite job. When I finished it, I was quite sure I didn't want to go on studying this particular, as I regarded it, largely blind alley. I mean, some of the logic was important later in the 20th century. But, anyhow, I really could set about educating myself and be paid for doing it at the same time, so I thought. VP: So it sounded like an excit- VP: How did you show them? CW: Well, I realized that they shouldn't be studying organic chemistry, because they didn't know any chemistry. And so we had to get started some way, and I went back to I explained to him what my dissertation topic was, and he said "Oh, that's all nonsense. " Ofcourse I was pleased by that. something that had been done earlier, in the mid-40s at the college, namely trying to outline the steps that had led to accepting the atomic hypothesis. VP: So when you started, there was a certain - there was a definite bias. I'erhaps they needed you, someone who had such a strong background. CW: They wanted somebody to do something for the lab, and I tried for a while, and then Tom Simpson came, and he tried. VP: Tellmesomemoreabout your earlyyears there. JVho UJere some ofthe other tutors that were important in the late '40s and �...... THE FIFTY YEAR PERSPECTIVE early '5 Os? Or even characters, notjust the tutors - perhaps staff or students. CW: I remember this poorly. Claude Leffler was important in the laboratory. We had Charlie Alba, who was a very good engineer, and was fond of alcohol. As the person in charge of chemistry, I got the state allocation of ethanol, which we used for distillation at that time. And he very much wanted to get into that supply. I think we avoided that, but when we had the seniors distilling ethanol that first year, there were parties at night all over the campus. "You have to institutionalize revolution; "that isy in other wordsy you need to be awake all the timey and not sleepy, and not merely habitual. It's a mistake to use something imbibable for distillation. I was with Winfree Smith in my first seminar, and I was really shocked by how he started the seminar. His first question for The Iliad was "what is a hero?" I'd never asked that question, and hadn't expected ever to ask it. VP: Whatwouldyouhave asked? What was your question at the table? CW: Oh, I don't know, I don't know. But, you know, these things were new and surprising to me, and Winfree was altogether a big surprise. Among other things was his insistence that we talk not about "civil war" but the "War Between the States." The South here really struck me. The college had a crisis in the first year I was here. John Kieffer was told by Raymond Wilburn and the treasurer, and maybe somebody else, I don't know, that he ought to step down, and he decided to fight back. We'd admitted Martin Dyer, sometimes said to be the first black student, although there'd been others who had been involved in the seminars earlier. At any rate, I was living with a family on Prince George Street, and I was asked by my landlord whether the crisis wasn't owing to the fact that that a black student had been admitted. VP: So thatmight have been a townperspective. The crisis had really nothing to do with desegretation. CW: That was a town perspective. That happened before I finished teaching the chemistry, this big blowup. And then students were meeting all the time, and there were meetings with the board and so on, and of course, in the middle of that year Jacob Klein became the dean. I was very much enthralled by Jacob Klein. And when he became dean, he said, "Now, you have to work on the lab, you know." So during the spring semester and the summer my first year I wrote a manual for use in the chemistry lab, having to do with the development of the atomic theory. And he had me over to his apartment and read it, and of course spat a good deal. While he was getting iced tea out in the kitchen he would keep swatting cockroaches and saying "damn!" for each one. It wasn't that he was angry, it was just for show. The Klein of the' 50s. He exhausted himself in that dean's job. He was nine years dean. VP: Andyou saidyou were the deanfollowing his term. You would liave been there only about ten or eleven years. CW: That's right. Klein went on sabbatical, and went to Europe, and worked on his book on the Meno, and sent me things and then said later they were no good. I had the report later from Dodo (Mrs. Klein) that he was really awful, as people often are when they're trying to write something. That first year we opened the Francis Scott Key/Mellon complex, and had a big to-do with Eisenhower coming. What really wore me down were responsibilities that seemed hard to meet, and the feeling that the juniors and seniors were discouraged and dispirited, and something should be done. We did actually get something done, and I had to sort of manhandle the instruction committee to get it started. That was the preceptorial idea - which wasn't just my idea: it was concocted by Robert Bart and Edward Sparrow and me. VP: How didyou get this idea? Why would that have been the solution to grumbling? CW: There was the decision to give up German, - let me speak of that first. What was wanted was a contrast with the Greek. And what were we reading in German? Some Goethe and a lot of Kant, who could just as well be studied in English. But French literature is something that is just different; it's not philosophy, it's not heavy philosophy in the same way that the Germans seem to be. And the students -we needed to give up one term of, one autumn of studying grammar once again, and get stu- dents into a more proficient use of some one language. There were people in the faculty who said we shouldn't give up German or French because of the importance to graduate school. But we decided- the instruction committee decided; Mr. Scofield was strong in that this was not a very good argument; we'd never made it before that preparation for some other school was important here. Then the matter of preceptorials came next. Both of these things were very much connected with the malaise, as I would have called it, in the junior and senior years. The preceptorials would give more variety and more intensity, for a certain period of time, to the study of something or other. The continuation of French would mean that one moved on to a little bit more advanced French, and certainly not doing grammar once again -the grammar of the language. So those were the reasons. And those things have stuck, surprisingly. I remember when Barr and Buchanan came here in '58, they said, "Why hasn't the program changed more?" VP: More? CW: Right. That was their response. Buchanan had a phrase, "You have to institutionalize revolution;" that is, in other words, you need to be awake all the time, and not sleepy, and not merely habitual. • St Johns College Graduate Institute TEACHING SLATE - SUMMER 1999 l!:astern C:lassics Seminar: Julie Reahard and Robert Richardson Preceptorial (Tale of Genji) *: Michael Bybee; Krishnan Venkatesh Literature Seminar: Barry Goldfarb and Kent Taylor Tutorial: James Forkin Mathematics and Natural Science Seminar: Phil LeCuyer and Mark Rollins Tutorial: Frank Hunt Philosophy and Theology Seminar: James Forkin and Jan Arsenault Tutorial: James Cohn Politics and Society Seminar: Michael Bybee and James Cohn Tutorial: David Levine Liberal Arts Preceptorials Maren Cohn - Flaubert, Madame Bovary and Three Stories (Literature; Politics and Society) Philip LeCuyer - Levinas, Essential Writings (Philosophy and Theology; Politics and Society) Frank Pagano - Heidegger, What is a Thing? (Mathematics and Natural Science; Philosophy and Theology) Mark Rollins - Cosmology (Mathematics and Natural Science; Philosophy and Theology) Robert Richardson - Emerson and Thoreau (Literature; Philosophy and Theology; Politics and Society) Krishnan Venkatesh - English Romantic Poetry (Literature) Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series Lectures on liberal arts and program works by John Agresto, James Forkin, Peter Pesic, Philip LeCuyer, Julie Rehmeyer, and Cary Stickney *open to Liberal Arts students in the Literature and Politics and Society segments �THE REPORTER 12 > ELECTION NOTICES Election of Alumni 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 nominated by the Alumni Association Board of Directors for election to the St. John's College Board of Visitors and Governors. ROBERT BIENENFELD (SF80) Mr. Bienenfeld, born 1956 in Los Angeles, graduated from St. John's College, Santa Fe, in 1980. The Manager of Alternative Fuel Vehicle Marketing for American Honda Motor Co., Inc., he is responsible for the sales and marketing of electric, natural gas and hybrid automobiles. He has held this position for five years. In addition, he serves on Honda's Environment Committee for the Americas. Mr. Bienenfeld has worked for Honda for 18 years in a variety of areas in the US as well as Japan. Over the years, his responsibilities have included sales, product development, procurement, inventory management, and information systems. He served as the president of the Los Angeles Chapter of the Alumni Association in the early '80s. In addition, Mr. Bienenfeld helped organize alumni to support the "Campaign For Our Fourth Century." PAULA G. MAYNES (SF79) Born in Aberdeen, South Dakota, in 1954, Ms. Maynes entered St. John's College in Santa Fe in 1973. She took two years off between her sophomore and junior years and graduated with the class of 1979. Ms. Maynes was admitted to the Bar in 1984, after graduating from the University of New Mexico School of Law. Ms. Maynes served as an Assistant Attorney General from 1984 through 1987 in the civil division of the New Mexico attorney general's office, representing agencies responsible for administration of labor and employment statutes, including the New Mexico Human Rights Commission, the State Personnel Board, the State Labor Commission, and the Governor's Committee on the Concerns of the Handicapped. In 1987, Ms. Maynes left the public sector to practice in a private Santa Fe law firm where she represented employers and managers in all aspects of employment related legal issues. Ms. Maynes joined Miller, Stratvert & Torgerson, P.A. in March 1998, where she continues to represent employers in employmentbased litigation and to provide advice and support to New Mexico employers in their decision making and policy drafting. Ms. Maynes was one of the signers seeking charter status recognition for a Santa Fe chapter of the St. John's College Alumni Association. As president of the Santa Fe alumni chapter, she served on the board of the Alumni Association. Later, she was elected as a director-at-large. In 1998, Ms. Maynes was appointed to the Board of Visitors and Governors to a position nominated by the Alumni Association where she serves on the Alumni Relations Committee and the Visiting Committee. Ms. Maynes is married to Jeff McFall, a Santa Fe architect. They have two sons, Hugh, age I I and Guy, age 7. THOMAS STERN (SF68) Born in Palo Alto, California, December 16, 1946, Mr. Stern graduated with the Santa Fe Class of 1969. He recieved his MA from Stanford University in 1971. Mr. Stern has been involved with motion picture production since leaving Stanford. In 1981 he began his current association with Malpaso Productions at Warner Brothers, Clint Eastwood's production company. Mr. Stern works as a lighting consultant and is currently in pre-production on a film titled Space Cowboys. He was responsible for the lighting of 35 to 40 feature-length motion pictures including Risky Business, Pale Rider, Goonies, Bird, The Unforgiven, and True Crime. Notice is also given that nominations may be made by petition. The rules governing submission of nominations by petition are as follows: I. Petitions must by signed by at least 50 members of the Alumni Association in good standing. 2. Nominations must be accompanied by a biographical sketch of the nominee. 3. The consent of all persons nominated must be obtained. 4. The petition must reach the Directors of Alumni Activities NO . LATER THAN DECEMBER I, 1999. c/o Alumni Office St. John's College 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca Santa Fe, NM 87501-4599 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 1999. �SPRING 1999 ELECTION NOTICES Election of Directors of the St. john's College Alumni Association MARK MIDDLEBROOK JONATHAN DAVID SACKSON (SF83) (SF69) In Accordance with Article VII, Sections I and II of the Bylaws of the St. John's College 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. MARY BITTNER GOLDSTEIN (A59) Mary Bittner Goldstein (A59), is Professor of Philosophy and Comparative Literature at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. The author of The Ecstasies of Roland Banhes (Routledge, 1989), she is completing Accom- modating Women in Art: an Essay in Interpretation. She served on the College Alumni Association Board from 1986 to 1992 and again from 1997 to 2000 and on the Board of Visitors and Governors from 1986 to 1992. She has taught two summer seminar programs in Santa Fe, one on reading as a woman and another on painted representations of women, and led alumni seminars in New York and Boston. An historical footnote is that in the mid- I970s, before the creation of chapters, she and several fellow alumni sponsored tutor-led seminars for alumni in New York City. Mark Middlebrook is a rabid liberal artist in sheepish techno-geek clothing. After earning his Bachelor's degree from St. John's College in 1983, he completed a Master's degree in structural engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. Since 1988, Mark has been the sole proprietor of Daedalus Consulting, an independent computer consulting company in Oakland, California. His work includes consulting to engineering and software companies, developing custom software applications, teaching computer classes, and writing computer magazine articles and books. 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. He regularly leads seminars on great (as well as pretty good) books, and he organized a two-year science and mathematics study group for Bay Area St. John's alumni. Mark's other avocations are music and languages, both modern and ancient. DAVID DUNCAN David Duncan (SF96) is an active member of the Austin Chapter of St. John's College. Jonathan Sackson (A69), received his MBA in Finance from Wharton in 1982. He 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 Vice President of Investments at Salomon Smith Barney in Miami, Florida. For many years he has functioned as liaison to South Florida applicants to St. John's. He was also Class Chair for the "Campaign For Our Fourth Century." Notice is also given that nominations for the positions as directors of the Association may be made by petition. The rules governing submission of nominations by petition are as follows: I. Petitions must be signed by at least thirty members of the Alumni Association in good standing. 2. 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 Beverly Angel, SGl89, c/o Alumni Office, St. John's College, I 160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87501-4599 3. The election will be held at the Annual Meeting on Saturday, July 17, at 2:00 p.m. in the Junior Common Room, Santa Fe. 4. The candidates for Directors receiving the highest number of votes for those offices shall be declared elected. Terms will begin on January I, 2000. 8 �Alunini Profiles ... NOT }UST ANOTHER PRETTY PICTURE The Doorandish sisters want their gallery to be the "Ben and Jerry's" of art. T his past January, sisters Meetra and Mondee Doorandish (A88 and A91) celebrated the one-year anniversary of their Georgetown art gallery, Reality Room. Their commitment to visionary art and political expression has already brought an impressive list of artists and guests to their gallery. "All the artists that we represent, their work has to offer some kind of visionary quality," explains Mondee. "Part of what Reality Room stands for is that we believe that art is our highest form of self-expression and represents our evolution. The purpose of the gallery is to offer artwork to stimulate dialogue that improves reality." To that end, one of the gallery's most successful shows was "Enduring Spirit," an exhibit of 60 photographs of indigenous cultures that are in danger of extinction. The photographs were taken by renowned photographer Phil Borges and commissioned by Amnest-y International to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Accompanying the show was a large book which was presented to the U.N. in December. Signers of the book pledged to do everything in their power to ensure that the rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights become a reality throughout the world. It has been signed by heads of state, Nobel laureates, celebrities, royalty, and everyday citizens. Those who signed it at Reality Room include singer/ songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter, the singer Melanie, New York Times writer Marianne Williamson, human rights activist Kerri Kennedy Cuomo, Amnesty International director William Shultz, and St. John's own Chris Nelson. A portion of the proceeds of the show go to support Amnesty International, an arrangement the Doorandishes work out for many of their exhibits. "Part of what we wanted to do with our gallery is to be like the 'Ben and Jerry's' of art," says Meetra. In addition to using Reality Room to address political concerns, the Doorandishes have other goals for their gallery: to give back to the community; to have art be active and accessible; and to price their art so that it will be available to everyone. "We believe that keeping our markup low can benefit the gallery, the artist, the client, and any non-profit organization we might be working with," says Mondee. Before they opened their gallery, the Sisters Doorandish entered the field by representing artists to other brokers, galleries, and individual clients. As they became more in- Photo by Nike Zachmanoglou Left to right: LeEllen Greeley, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Meetra Doorandish, and Mondee Doorandish. volved with the art world, they grew increasingly disappointed in the way art is sold in contemporary America, finding most venues too commercially oriented. They discovered two spaces that inspired them to pursue the business of art in a way that corresponded to their vision. One was the CFM Gallery, which features surreal and symbolic art. This gallery began with the owner's collection in his house before expanding into two rooms in New York's Soho. The other was a 199 6 show at the Roanoke Museum called the "Dreamweavers Exhibit," featuring the work of children's book illustrators. "These two spaces inspired us to have some kind of space where we could promote artists who were truly talented, had the courage to use their intellect and their soul, and weren't bending to the needs of the market," explains Meetra. Once they had the idea of the gallery in mind, they started scouting locations right away. Like true Johnnies, their search began in Santa Fe and Annapolis-they almost signed leases in both places. Finally, in November of 1997, they discovered a space on Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown, between the Thai embassy and Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition. After signing a five-year lease, the sisters-alongwith their partner, LeEllen Greeley-rolled up their sleeves and whipped the gallery into order-putting up walls, spackling and painting, ripping up carpet, wiring 150 halogen lights, creating design space, and installing cabinetry and display stands. The result is a 2200-square-foot space that visitors most often describe as warm, vibrant, and spacious. Since its opening, the gallery has mounted eight exhibits, among them "Images of Tibet" ("a glimpse into the ongoing political upheaval and spiritual renewal of Tibet," according to the Georgetown Current), ''Human Topographies," a group of paintings by children's book illustrator David Christiana; and "Worth, Women & Wonder," featuring works by American women artists. Reality Room's next show, "Democracy," will bring together visual artists, writers, and musicians whose work explores the different facets of democracy, embracing its symbolism both as a reality and as a metaphor. The exhibit will call upon American democracy to continue evolving its ethic into the 21st century and fulfill its role as the paradigm for democracy. With this exhibit, Reality Room is again joining forces with Amnesty International, which has launched its first ever U.S. campaign on the human rights violations that occur within this country. Reality Room will also work with Shengde Lian, the co-captain of the Tiananmen Square Movement and executive director of the Free China Movement; Maura Moynihan, the politically active daughter of Senator Patrick Moynihan; and Hafsat Abiola, human rights advocate and daughter of the late, democratically elected president of Nigeria. Reality Room is located at 1010 Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown. Phone: (202)333-3709; Email: RealityRm@aol.com e Sus3an Borden (A87) �Alulllni Profiles ... STEPHANIE FORREST: COGITATING ON COMPUTATION S tephanie Forrest (SF77) lives in a cozy house near the Rio Grande River in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with her husband, Fred Carey, their seven-year-old daughter, Madeleine, and Apsley, their Bernese Mountain dog. She offers me tea when I appear at her front door; and we sit down in a small room to talk about her work, her life, and what she's been doing since leaving St. John's. Forrest came to St. John's with all the "big questions" and eager to find the corresponding "big answers." The labs at St. John's had been enjoyable, especially her sophomore year of biology with tutor Barbara Leonard. "She really was wonderful. She loved it (biology) and "From an evolutionarypoint ofview, I have a huge selective advantage because St. Johns taught me how to talk to many kinds ofscientists. " I think that really came across." Finally in her senior year, struggling through Hegel, Forrest had an epiphany. "I realized that these philosophers just made this all up," she says, laughing. "So there's no reason Hegel should know more about the world than I do." At the same time, in a preceptorial on Piaget's Biology and Knowledge, she came to realize that you could go up against big questions with science. Forrest wrote her senior thesis about Kurt Godel' s "On Formally Undecidable Propositions of the Principia Mathematica and Related Systems." The next two years she worked various jobs, including a stint as a longshoreman in Seattle and programming various software projects for hospitals in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In 1979, Forrest went on to attend graduate school at the University of Michigan studying computer science, which was a relatively unusual field at the time. "One of the things that appealed to me about computers was that it was so different," she explains. "It was for the intellectual enjoyment." After getting her Ph.D. in Computer and Communication Sciences in 1985, Forrest moved to Palo Alto, California and worked for a software company for about three years. In 1988, Forrest returned to New Mexico to work at the Center for Nonlinear Studies and Computing Division at Los Alamos National Laboratory as a Director's Postdoctoral Research Fellow. What exactly "Nonlinear Studies" are is difficult to describe. While a linear system can be described as a composition of its parts, a nonlinear system cannot. The difference is similar to that between a line and a parabola. Forrest went to work on nonlinear systems because most of computer science is based on assumptions oflinearity that are falling apart. Her goal was to make computing nonlinear. Nonlinearity for computing is still part of her long-range vision, especially the challenge of engineering nonlinear systems. She left the Center for Nonlinear Studies in 1990 and moved to Albuquerque for a position as an assistant professor at the University of New Mexico (UNM). In 1994, Forrest became an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at UNM and has continued in that position. Forrest also serves on the Science Board of the Santa Fe Institute, and is currently working on several research projects involving a link between immunology and computation. What the research entails is nearly as difficult to describe as nonlinear studies. "What I usually say to people by way of introduction," she says, "is that it falls in the intersection of biology and computation." This sort of interdisciplinary science, Forrest says, is growing rapidly. "Because of being at St. John's, I'm much more open to that kind of thing. From an evolutionary point of view, I have a huge selective advantage because St. John's taught me how to talk to many kinds of scientists." Forrest's research includes a project on computer security trying to develop a program that will simulate the human immune system in a computer. The program would work to lessen the dangers of computer viruses by protecting the computer from infection, recognizing infection when it does occur, and evolving to recognize and dispose of a pathogen after the first infection. Other projects include computersimulated evolution (called genetic algorithms), computer models of cells for use in cancer research, and a project using the computer concept of "associative memory" to help design vaccines for mutating viruses, such as influenza. "I assert," Forrest says with a grin, '"that computation takes place in many places besides the electronic devices we call computers." Whereas Oscar Wilde said, '"Man is a rational animal," computers, Forrest says, "are forcing us to rethink "... a l' mear system can be described as a composition of its parts, a nonlinear system cannot. The difference is similar to that between a line and a parabola. " what is special about being human." For example, todaywe commonly refer to thought processes as computation, which has tremendous impact on our sense of identity. In her free time, Forrest likes to go hiking in the Sandia Mountains or read fiction books, not philosophical ones. For her, the intellectual stimulation of her job is enough. "1 have seminar twice a week with my graduate students!" she says. Nevertheless, Forrest will be leading the Albuquerque Chapter seminar on May23. • Jessica Godden (SF02) PHILANTHROPIA TO ENCOURAGE ALUMNI SUPPORT P hilanthropia, the Alumni Development Council (formerly known by the not-so-inspiring name ofNADEC, the National Alumni Development Committee), is a group of 54 Johnnies whose task is to encourage financial support for the college by alumni. The group is officially a subcommittee of the Board ofVisitors and Governors' Development Committee. The name, which means, according to Liddell & Scott, '"humanity, benevolence, kindliness," is appropriate for the college where ancient Greek is common parlance, the chairperson of anything is the archon, and the community service organization is Project Politae. The group's steering committee has been working for the past year writing bylaws, developing strategy recommendations, planning how to recruit and train volunteers, developing a communication schedule, and figuring out how best to employ research and database information. Philanthropia met April 18 in Annapolis to discuss the steering committee's proposals and schedules. The group's first project will be to participate in the Annual Fund drive that starts in September. The Annual Fund raises money to help cover the college's operating expenses. Alumni from all eras, from both campuses, and from the undergraduate and the graduate programs make up Philanthropia. Goals, as outlined in discussions, are to provide alumni with a new connection to the college and to communicate to them how important alumni giving is to St. John's continuing financial health. Supported by the Advancement Offices on both campuses, Philanthropia hopes to spur alumni contributions with a focused communication effort in combination with direct phone contact by fellow alumni. They hope to convey to their classmates the message they themselves have learned: that St. John's, having formed its alumni during the vicissitudes of early adulthood-both intellectually through the program and socially and emotionally through campus friendships-depends on its alumni for support. The chair of the group is Marta Lively, A78. Glenda Eoyang, SF76, is chair of the Strategy Development Subcommittee; John Draper, SGI97, heads the Policies and Procedures Subcommittee; Claiborne Booker, A84, is chair of the Communications Subcommittee; Dan Eakins, SF88, is chair of the Research and Information Subcommittee; and Ann Cruse, A76, is chair of the Volunteer Development and Training and Orientation Subcommittees. • �AluIDni Notes ... 1934 per diem (she graduated from SUNY Binghamton with a BSN in May 1997). She and Chris have two children at St. John's this year and are expecting their fourth grandchild. 1973 Batteen (A) was appointed Mary Henry Clay Smith at his grandson's wedding. Henry Clay Smith writes that he is now 86, living on Martha's Vineyard, and writing "Thomas Jefferson - The Greatest Personality." 1968 Bald-win (SF) writes that Bruce he and his wife Ena have two seniors who will be graduating in May. Their daughter Marisa is completing her last year at Notre Dame Prep in Towson. She has been active all four years in athletics and is serving as president of the Athletic Association. She has been accepted at John Hopkins, where she will be playing lacrosse and studying international relations. Son Ian is a senior ("firstie in USMA vernacular") at West Point. He served as a company commander the first semester this year. Bruce says, ''We were very proud to watch him lead his company on and off the field at the Army-Navy game in December." After graduation he will head to helicopter training. Sarah Manire (A) reports that two years ago she and her husband, Joseph Rachel, moved from Texas to the Cote d'Azur where they have opened a private practice in clinical psychology. They also do cross-cultural training for corporation expatriates- ''and spend lots of time enjoying the sun, the cheap wine, and French food!" They live in Biot, a little hill village just north of Antibes, between Nice and Cannes. From their terrace they can see the Mediterranean. Rebecca Albury (A) has a new book, The Politics ofReproduction: Beyond the Slogans. Published by Allen & Unwin, it is an account of continuity and contradicition in feminist politics, with an Australian focus. Rebecca is on the faculty of arts at the University of Wollongong. 1969 Lang (A) writes: "Since William 1997 I have been head of the Rare Book Department of the Free Library of Philadelphia. All St. John's people visiting Philadelphia are most welcome to visit; we have a splendid collection of incunabula, medieval manuscripts, and one of the best collections of editions of Horace anywhere." 1972 Peterson (A) has a job as a Susan disability analyst with Social Security. She also continues to work as an RN, Associate Chair of Academic Affairs in the department of oceanography at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. She's been teaching there since 1984 and is currently an associate professor of oceanography. "Most of the students I teach are naval officers from the U.S. Naval Academywho are going for Master's or PhD degrees in oceanography and meteorology. My husband, Tim Stanton, is also a professor there. We have two children, Matthew, age 6, and Elizabeth, 22 months," she writes. Laurie Franklin Callahan (SF) is currently the public relations officer at Marymount University in Arlington, Virginia. 1974 J effVictoroff (A) had an article in the February 1999 issue of Psychiatric Times titled "Why We Are Fat." After exploring the chemical basis of appetite regulation, he argues that "the obesity epidemic is oversimplified when it is described as some kind of Cartesian conflict between passion and reason, and between the cortex and the hypothalamus." Other factors he discusses include evolutionary heritage, diet pharmocotherapy, and the possibility of social changes in thewaywe think about food. Tom E-wing (A) emails: "I am alive and quite well living in Cold Spring, N.Y., with my wife of 20-plus years, Paulette, and my 16-year-old daughter, Briar. I'm the general manager of a wine import company, which means I get to spend a lot of my time eating and drinking my way through New York, while allowing some weeks every year to travel to the great vineyards and cellars of the world to sample past, current, and future vintage offerings, often directly from the barrel. Don't ask me how I ended up with it this good, it just happened! Over the years I have enjoyed reading in the Alumni Notes about the exploits of my schoolmates, and I'm hoping more of those I never read about will come forward to report on their whereabouts, as I have just done." 1976 attending Bais Chana, a "Since St. Paul, Minnesota, women's yeshiva, in 1981 I have been a 'ba'al teshuva,' returning to my Jewish roots," writes Alice Brown (A). "Judaism has opened my eyes to the Torah, a true blueprint for living, and has turned my life around. I live in St. Louis and have been working for the Lupus Foundation." Stephen Chew (A) writes: "After 11 years of marriage I have returned to the life of a single man, only now with two children. I continue to be gainfully employed as an attorney. I live too far away to visit often, but think of St. John's and my classmates often, and always fondly." 1977 Catering People, a restauClassic rant and catering firm with 500 employees, run by Eddie Dopkin and his sister HarrietDopkin (A), was featured in the January 1999 issue of Baltimore magazine. The Dopkin family started in the restaurant biz with the Beef Inn, opened by their father in 1970. Now they run five restaurants and a catering business (which Harriet heads), operate out of a 25,000 square foot building in Owings Mills, and will do $14 million worth of business this year, according to the article. 1978 Bayer (A) reports that he is Greg currently at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, writing a book on the philosophy of science which focuses on Aristotle. He hopes to finish by the end of summer. Greg's email is gbayer@ias.edu; he'd like to hear from other A78s in the central New Jersey/New York City/Philadelphia area. Martha McGinnis (SF) writes: "I had a wonderful time at our reunion this summer. Although small, our contingent shared fine memories and new lives. I have a new career, at the same company, leading a major change project. My husband, Jim, and daughters Amelia (8) and Milly (5) are all doing great." 1979 Toler Raney (A) emails Marie that she and Jon (A89) have moved to greener pastures in Portland "to make a better living so that our kids can spend it all at any college farsighted enough to admit them in two years despite execrable grades." Jon is a criminal defense attorney for Garland Law Offices. Marie has returned to engineering after a stimulating but expensive foray in architecture. She is working for Engineering Animation, Inc. Leslie Westmoreland (SF) is a public defender in Madera County, CA. His major life changes following graduation include two years in Peace Corps in Zaire (now Congo) teaching math, physics and English; teaching English in Saudi Arabia; living in Japan eight years where he taught and managed businesses, incorporated his own, translated/interpreted Japanese and French, and married. He is now attending law school at IU in Bloomington, IN, and growing more liberal with time. He'd love to hear from classmates at 4550 W. Palo Alto Ave, #202, Fresno, CA 93722. Email: ChouChou@ix.netcom.com Phone: 559-436-1517. 1980Grubb (A) reports that his Peter adventure travel company ROW (River Odysseys West/Remote Odyssey Worldwide) will celebrate its 20th anniversary in 1999. "We continue to run whitewater rafting trips on Idaho's Snake and Salmon river, as well as guided yachting adventures in Turkey and Croatia. New in 1999 are journeys along the trail of Lewis and Clark, floating Montana's Upper Missouri River; visiting classical sites in Greece; and smallship cruising in Alaska." Peter lives on 11 acres in Coeur d-Alenewith wife, Betsy .Bowen, and two children, Mariah, 7, andJonah, 5. 1982 Kelly A. Genova (SF) has joined the firm of Civerlo, Gralow & Hill as a workers' compensation specialist. She earned a law degree from the University of New Mexico. Genova will maintain her private practice in downtown Albuquerque while working with Civerlo, Gralow & Hill. Don McLeod, (SF) writes: "My partner, our daughter and I have lived in the land of sun and wind for four years. Remote and beautiful seem to describe this area. Lots of Rocky Mountain amenities to be enjoyed. My partner, Deborah, is a pastry chef and also works with 4H in our county. We have been together since 1990. I help out with the middle and long distance running events for the local high school teams. I now teach economics with agricultural and natural resource applications to BS and MS students, typically from small towns in the west. I try to slip in some of the classics during lecture or discussions. I have succeeded in getting a senior paper to continue to be a requirement for our undergraduates. It is not seeming to incur the same level of suffering that we did during our paper writing as seniors. Our daughter recently made us beaming grandparents with the birth of her daughter Michelle. They unfortunately live away in Massachusetts. We can be reached at: PO BOX 523, Laramie, WY 82073, 307-721-8878, dmcleod@uwyo.edu We have room and would love to hear from you!" 1984 Peter Green (A) is taking some time out from his reporting for the International Herald Tribune to study at Oxford University's Green College on a Reuters Foundation fellowship . He'll be working on a book about the Czechs. Andrew Hryniewicz (A) is living in a 10-person group house in Berkeley. "I work as an architect doing mostly residential projects," he writes. "My real interest and sideline �Alutnni Notes ... Phoenix College. Arlene is now at the moment is ecological design working on her PhD in molecular and restoration. I'm looking for ways and cellular bioloby at HSU. Alan to do this full time. Our guest room is says that any Johnnies in the southopen to any friends-old or new-who west are welcome to contact him. are passing through the Bay area." David A. Pierce (SF) writes: Jennifer Miller (A) emails that "For personal and academic reasons, she is hanging out in hospital operating rooms and labs, doing research I am a nomad, moving now to Canada for a while after five months for her dissertation on discursive in Turkey. There I used Herodotus as practices in technically complex a travel guide. Turkey is fascinating medical settings. She has been a as a young country in a place with a graduate student in UC Berkeley's long and varied history." department of rhetoric for "far too long," ever since burnout ended her career as a massage therapist and drove her back to academia. She Shirley M. Banks (SF) wTites: "I notes that along the way, she has am delighted to report that I have "bred two absolutely amazing chilbeen accepted to the Rollins School dren, Tiana, 4, and Eli, 1, after marof Public Health at Emory University, rying the guy my mother told me I where I will earn the Master of Public should date in high school." Health degree. I will start in the fall, Hanna (SF) reports that he in the Behavioral Science program. I has been living in Portland, Maine, intend to research intimate partner for the past 10 years. "I am happily violence (battering) among college domesticated by the wild ocean with students. Meanwhile, I will continue my wife, Anne, and our daughter my full-time work at Emory, where I Katharine (11). After some procrasserve as Health Educator. I'm retination, we are expecting a new sponsible for sex education for stumale member of the family in June," dents, so the MPH work fits with my he says. "I received an MAin Eastjob." West Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies and am currently executive director of the Margo Maganias Thomas (A) reMaine Coalition for Food Security. . ceived a grnduate degree in dramatic Our mission is to end hunger in criticism, theatre history, and literaMaine; my goal is for all of us to be ture from Catholic University in food secure and retire by 2010. I am 1996. She married Bill Thomas in no longer convinced that the anti1994, and they have a son, August Christ walks among us. But I wonder William, and a daughter, Imogen if the college still owns the Oxford Nicole. Margo currently teaches Annotated Bible I had Jerry Falwell drama at Holton Arms School in autograph in 1982." Jim welcomes Bethesda, Maryland. correspondence at Nathaniel Herz (A) is working jim@mefoodsecurity.org. for a small firm in Manhattan. He married Rebecca Shulman in 1997. A postcard of Yosemite Valley conAlan Haffa (A) writes that he has tained the announcement that taken over as director of the Honors Marty Gelfand (A) got married last and Classical Studies programs at September to Nina Sobel, a cellist 1988 1989 1987 and non-Johnny whom he met after returning to his hometown of Cleveland. After the wedding, they visited Nova Scotia, where they whalewatched and rode bicycles. Marty is currently staff counsel to Congressman Dennis Kucinich and living in Cleveland. Raymond Gifford (A) has been appointed to the Public Utilities Commission and will serve as one of three commissioners for the state of Colorado. He currently manages the technical unit in the Regulatory Law Section of the Colorado Attorney General's office. He received his law degree from the University of Chicago Law School. Watt D. Alexander (SF) and Roberta D. Alexander: "Our third child, Sylvie, was born 12/15/98." Law (A) emails that he has been married for two years to Judy and has been working at various places as a scientific programmer. He gives credit to Mr. Beall for starting him down this path. Currently, Scott is at the World Weather Building in Camp Springs, Maryland. His email is judyscot@smart.net. Dierdre Routt (A) recently accepted a position as a librarian/ aTchivist at the Historical Society of Douglas County in Omaha. Her husband, Kevin Graham (A90), continues to teach philosophy at Creighton University in Omaha. A story in the Washington Post's "Prince George's Extra" in January featured Rachel Frey (A), who teaches an Active Christian Parenting class in Hyattsville, Maryland. She's a pastor in the Disciples of Christ denomination at University Christian Church. Rachel and husband Simon McNabb (A88) have 6month-old Evangeline Grace, who accompanies her mom to the parenting class. Although the ministry is still a profession dominated by men, Rachel says it is important for her to combine her parenting with her work. The class is her way of reaching out to other parents who feel their families are being pulled apart by the current cultme. On May 28, 1998, Christopher Inbody (SF) married Willa Cather Wright. They live in Albuquerque with their two adopted children: Charlie, 13 (a border terrier) and Gus, 5 (a Chesapeal(e Bay retriever). In August 1998, Christopher passed his master's exam with ilistinction. In December 1998, Willa received her bachelor's degree in astrophysics, summa cum laude; Christopher received his masters degree in mathematics and will continue working toward his PhD in pure mathematics. 1992 Christopher Hadley (A) writes that he is still in Seattle, studying education at Seattle University. "There's lots of talk of 'curriculum' and 'instruction,"' he says, "but I still like the St. John's way." Theresa Klunk Lehmann (SF) reports that she was married to Brian Lehmann (a non-Johnny) on May 2. She would like to hear from everyone and can be reached at littlecat@cheerful.com. Sara Tobias (A) is graduating from vet school this May and getting married to Ken Savage. 1993 Hennessey (AGI) pracJoseph tices law at the international law firm of Coudert Brothers in Washington, D.C. He specializes in international arbitration and is currently arbitrating cases before the World Bank's International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes, the International Chamber of Commerce, and the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce. On the creative side of things, Joe's apparatus patent claims for "End-Gaming," an intergenerational collectible card game, have been approved by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Joe has also finished his first screenplay. He and his wife Marynell are expecting their third child in April. The new arrival will join Aiden Joseph, 4, and Helen Curtis, 2. Joe's email address is jomarynell@aol.com. Heather Howell (SF) has received a master's of science in mathematics from Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. Ron Beattie (SF) emails: "I am currently living in Australia, having undertaken an apprenticeship in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and receiving training as a potential Buddhist lama with Prince Ratu Sri Acarya Vajra Kumara Pandji Pandita, a Doctor and Professor of TCM specializing in psychosomatic �Aluntni Notes ... disorders. Ratu is an incarnate Indonesian Vajrayana Buddhist Lama and Balinese Prince to whom I also act as assistant, travelling internationally 3 to 6 months of the year in support of his teachings. As a Buddhist practitioner, I have received the name Madhu Sudana, (one name of Lord Krisha from the Bhagavad Gita) meaning, among other translations, 'sweet eloquence and generosity of all the Buddhas,' or alternately, 'demon conqueror.' I am also studying TCM with Professor Jam es a Taoist master and 6th generation specialist in Chinese herbal medicine. Outside of these studies I am studying Sanskrit, martial arts and classical music composition. I am deliriously happy and could not imagine a better life for myself. Of course, being in love too would be nice. I can be reached via email at Madhu_Sudana@bigfoot. com." 1994 (AGI) is practicing law at Ray Eby however, I left the College for personal reasons after the first year and never graduated. Unfortunately I lost contact with all of the people I was close to during that year and would love to hear from one or the other. It sometimes is hard to have no one to talk about St. John's, living so far away on the other side of the world ... So after I left St. John's I went back to Germany and started to study Classical Archaeology, which I completed with a master's degree last fall. I am working on my PhD now. Even though I still miss St. John's and the opportunities it gave me, for me the turn to archaeology was absolutely the right choice. I tried to keep up with the St. John's program for myself, though, and chose History of the Natural Sciences as my minor subject for the master's degree, where my exam topics were Euclid and Ptolemy. So, whoever would like to get in touch with me can do this at Faegre & Benson in Minneapolis. He lives in St. Paul with his wife and two daughters, and would love to hear from old classmates at reby@faegre.com. Mathieu de Schutter (SF) writes: "If any present or future Johnnies need a contact in the medical field in LA or New Orleans 1 can help them get hooked up. I am working at USC School of Medicine's Doheny Eye Institute. I am a surgical recovery technician for the transplant bank. I am moving to New Orleans in August to begin studying at Tulane University School of Medicine. I have to publicly thank Mr. Carey, Mr. Aigla, and Mr. Venkatesh for their support and recommendations - they got me into a wonderful program. My current address is 543 North Detroit Street, Los Angeles, CA 90036. I'd be happy to advise any graduate on the do's and dont's (which I did plenty of) of medical school admissions." Angelika_Franz@public.uni-hamburg.de. 1995 Franz (SF) writes: "I Angelika J. Maya Johnson (SF) emails that she is currently working at the University of Pennsylvania's Van Pelt Li- spent my freshmen year in Santa Fe; I enjoyed reading the ghost story by Sarah Waters in the last issue and would like to collect more of those. So whoever wants to exchange ghost stories with me is welcome to let me know his or hers." Jennn~~r Chenoweth (SFGI) emails: "I am graduating in May with a MFA in Studio Art. I am making sculpture and installations that are architectural. My thesis show will be at the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin from April 23-May 7. After school, I will be making my art, finding venues to show it, and opening my own construction company doing specialty architectural constructions. (Last fall, I made archaic Greek columns for an art history professor.) I plan to stay in the Houston/Austin area. I'd love to hear from friends after this busy program. My work is online at ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/jenchen." 1996 brary. "It is a fabulous job and I am thrilled at the opportunities there (especially the free tuition). I am still trying to decide what to do with my life, and am hoping to discover my destiny during my time at Penn." Erin Hearn (A) writes that she has moved to Anchorage, Alaska, with William Furby IV. They plan to return to Annapolis in September of 2000 to be married. Amy Huberman (SF) reports that she is currently living in Chicago, working for Encyclopaedia Britannica ("no, they won't let me fix all the errors in Ptolemy,") doing Korean martial arts, and learning Chinese. She is planning to leave the country again, probably for Israel and China, and possibly for other corners of the East. She is considering getting a graduate degree in east Asian studies sometime in the next few years. Eugenia Skarstrom (AGI) recently completed teaching a successful 10-week course on visual literacy, and she has been appointed art director and curator at the Friendship Heights Village Center, where she curates monthly art exhibits. James Sorenson (SFGI) : "I am now teaching American Studies and World Cultures at the Olney Friends School in Barnsville, Ohio. My coworker, Matt Johnson (SF97), and I visited the Annapolis campus over break." 1997 news from Inya Laskowski A bit of (SGI) at Atelier Tewa. "I have a show at the Sonoma Museum of Visual Art in Santa Rosa, California, in April/ May 1999. Also, I am teaching art at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts and at the Santa Rosa Junior College. Most]y, however, I attempt to spend time in my studio." Brian Brock (SF) writes: "I am coming to terms with music in a modem sociointellectual and qualitative context." Michelle Craig (AGI) has started a PhD program in history at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. "Six months down, thirty to go," she says. Her email address is mlcraig@umich.edu. Deborah Tyrrell (SF) is in Buffalo doing a science internship and watching the snow come down with Bucket. Her email is dtyrrell@sc3103.med.buffalo.edu. She sends word of the following friends: Robert Mammon (SF96) is working in a bakery in Portland, Oregon. Also in Portland are Natasha Czapszys (SF9 6), who is setting up a thrift store for Americorp, and Dan Cortez (SF96), who is managing a Starbucks. In Chicago are Sarah Kent (SF97), who is writing; Jeff Huggins (SF97), who is a bike messenger; Natalie Freeborg (SF97), who is a lab tech and works in a sci- ence museum. Emrys Ottoboni (A96), Deborah reports, is in Oxford studying linguistics. Brian Brock (SF97) is in Madison, Wisconsin, playing guitar. 1998 Dawn Star Shuman Borchelt (A) emails that she was married to Matthew Borchelt in August in Philadelphia. The Higueras attended, as well as several St. John's friends. "After a honeyweek (not a whole moon!)," she writes, "I began work as Director of Religious Education for a small Unitarian Universalist congregation in southern Maryland. I love it! Matt works as a photographer from a studio in Alexandria and we live happily in a tworoom shack on an old (non-working) farm. Very cheap! And a lot of fun." Moira Russell (SFGI) and Tim Chase (SFGI) have moved to Seattle. They would like to hear from other Johnnies in the area. Tim is pursuing his career in web development and plans to study epistemology while earning a PhD from the University of Washington. Moira plans to never reread Kant again. Their email address is odysseus@trail.com. Claudia Probst Stack (A) was married in June to Joe Stack, who is working on his master's in chemistry at the Univeristy of North Carolina at Wilmington. Claudia is working as an academic advisor, also at UNCW. They live on a horse farm, where she trains · her horses and continues to write articles about horsetraining. They would love to hear from Johnnies. Rich Field (SFGI) recently had a book published by McGraw-Hill, Winning Edge Series- Weight Training. This book is a reflection of his "past life" as an exercise physiologist. He is currently coaching track and field and teaching Senior Humanities at the Albuquerque Academy. Humanities is a class very much along the lines of St. John's in which seniors read and discuss Woolf, Plato, Aristotle, Fromm, Nietzsche, and the Bible (the curriculum varies slightly from year to year). Rich says "This is a great class to teach, the students are bright and enthusiastic and it keeps me in the 'Johnnie' mindset year-round!" In addition, he founded the Classics Club, an on-campus organization in which students meet and discuss their favorite books. Recent seminars have included: Nabokov's Lolita, Marquez's One Hundred Years ofSolitude, Kesey' s One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, Marx's The Communist Manifesto, and Dostoevsky's House ofthe Dead. His email address is: fieldr@aa.edu • �Catnpus Life .. . DANCING D ancing. It is seen by some people as an important part of a school's extracurricular social activities. "What is interesting, though, is what happens when dancing isn't seen solely as an extracurricular activity but rather as a part of the school just as much as the curriculum. Mark St. John, the current director of the Student Activities Office (SAO), has a lot of information concerning the history of dance at St. John's Santa Fe campus. "We've always had Ballroom dance at St. John's" he says. "Waltz parties are a staple." The strong affinity towards ballroom dancing, and waltzing in particular, was nurtured by the Santa Fe campus' first Director of SAO, Istvan Fehervary. He was a Hungarian who spent time in Vienna hiding from the KGB. In Vienna, he was exposed to waltzing and other forms of ballroom dancing and when he became the director of SAO, he decided to expose the students to something fun that could be enjoyed by all. It settled into the fabric oflife at St. John's, and deeply. I had never danced before I came to St. John's. At least, never really danced. The core of my dancing knowledge consisted of such things as "The Stomp" for slow dancing where the couple loosely embraces and just rocks from side to side (this is extremely popular in grade-school dances), and fast dancing that I had picked up in clubs in Germany. Both of these methods were exciting and simple. I had fun, but if given the choice to go fishing instead, I would have opted for the latter. Ty Schlabach Just last semester (my freshman year) I decided to talce the ballroom dancing class offered by the college. I wanted to do something active that didn't require a lot of time or money. Dancing hooked me. The instructors of the ballroom dance class, sophomores Giovanna Vecchitto and Aaron Clewell, like to see that kind of enthusiasm. "When asked whether they really liked to teach, and whether they did it for the sake of teaching and not for the money, they exclaimed, "Absolutely! It's nice to see the response (of the students) to real ballroom dancing." They like to watch people get involved with dance and approach it with the desire that they have. Their desire to dance is what has continued the classes at St. John's. Last year Dean Petzold and Lind- say Bear, who were the ballroom inare those who see it not just as some- centrated on speaking. Dancing in thing to do in their spare time, but structors at that time, approached town recently, I was approached by a as a must. It's almost as vital as Giovanna and Aaron with the young woman from Santa Fe who prospect of teaching the dance class. breathing. It's part of the entire extold me that the townies can always Dean and Lindsay would be gone, so perience that makes St. John's what it tell who is from St. John's. "You're someone would have is. Because of this the people who know how to dance closeness between to teach the class. that don't show up on Monday and the social and the Giovanna and Aaron Thursday nights ... " She said that it academic, the agreed. Giovanna was nice to dance with different had been a dance inmixing of ideas and people she didn't know and have a the mixing of dance structor at Arthur common bond. I've heard that from are to be expected. Murray's Dance other people, too. Johnnies can go A previous instrucStudio for two years, anywhere and converse with anyone so she was well qualitor took the Hustle, because of their arsenal of Great fied. Aaron was from played with it, and Books knowledge and dancing exOklahoma, ("Opcalled the new form pertise. pressed-ville,") and ""Johnny Swing." During Christmas break, I had So, St. John's has its the chance to visit my dance partner had never danced until the second seown style of swing, in her hometown of Santa Barbara. mester of his freshnot to be found We spent a week doing pretty much man year. Giovanna anywhere else. nothing but dancing. It was great. Even the two camwas his instructor, We concentrated on swing, but the puses have variathough, so his last night I was there we went to a tions, their own knowledge of dancballroom dance at the Santa Barbara species. Giovanna ing wasn't something City Hall. likes the mixing. to be laughed at. There were a lot of people there, Hiring students to "It's fun to find and age-wise, we didn't fit in at all. teach the dance Ty Schlabach and stuff that's not We were the only "young" couple. A Schiraz Quaddoumi ( SF02) classes at the school strictly ballroom young woman came with her grandisn't a new idea. Since and incorporate it father, and there were two couples the very beginning of the dancing into the class," she says. It allows for who looked to be very good ballroom scene at St. John's, instructors were dancing everywhere, not just in a dancers, but they were at least in brought in from town to dance hall. their thirties. The rest teach the classes; but whenAnyone can dance of the dancers were ever there were students to "modern" mainly married couwith the drive and technical music using ballples who were over expertise, they were hired. room dance techfifty-five years old. It Enter Giovanna and Aaron. niques. To be able was amazing to watch Ballroom dancing isn't to cha-cha one these people who had the only type of dance to be doesn't have to been dancing together found at St. John's. There play Latin music. for years. They moved are ballet classes, and preWith "Social as one. viously the school offered Dancing," the My partner and I belly-dancing and Afrowhole aspect is were then lucky Haitian dance. St. John's entirely in its enough to dance with swings, too. There has been name. Dancing some of the older a national resurgence of and being social people because the swing that has been seen as Giovanna Vecchitto (SFOl) and is what it's all band called out a Aaron Clewell ( SFOl) a huge wave building up about. You don't "mixer," where everyjust recently. One always just go out and one has to get a new hears, "it's catching on, dance byyourself, you're dancing partner for each song. That was and again." Again? There were with another person. You don't even is one of the most memorable dancsmall pockets of people have to know them. The fact that two ing experiences I've ever had. across the country that people who don't know each other Both of us danced with people kept swing dancing alive. can interact through a medium that who were four times our age. I've There had to be, or else is entirely non-verbal is a comforting never felt a close bond to people who how would it have ever caught on if thought in a time when people are were significantly older than I was. it had "died Even with my grandparents it seems accused of out?" like they are on some different level being disSt. John's was oflife that I can't comprehend, and I connected one of those could never know them on that level. from pockets. There It was all different with dancing. We others. was swing at were dancing to "their" music, but I There is no the school "each to his liked it, too, so couldn't it be mine? from the very We were dancing "their" steps in own" in beginning, social danc- "their" way, but I knew the steps, so just like waltz weren't they mine, too? We were ing. A and ballroom sharing something so simple that all couple is dance. Howof the normal divisions of generation given the ever, due to didn't matter. We were equal. For title "partthe recent . Northup ners" for a just a little while two Johnnies were Photos: Steve swell in popu- Ty Schlabach ( SF02) and Sara Burnham (SF02) able to read a Great Book and underreason. larity there St. John's stand a part of the past thatwill have been more swing dances at relies heavily on the ability of people never be written down. e St. John's than waltz parties. to communicate, and being able to The dancing scene really has a communicate without words is an Drew Cheney (SF02) St. John's flavor all its own. There added bonus to an education con- �20 THE REPORTER Calllpus Life ... SHAKESPEARE PERFORMANCE - SEMINAR STYLE S t. John's College is undoubtedly a very special place. Despite the daunting challenges, the school survives and thrives with stamina and brilliance, due in part to the almost uncanny ability St. John's has to coHect remarkable individuals. For as noble as the program is in theory, St. John's could easily be a school of half-hearted education; its vitality depends upon its wealth of exceptional individuals. Tutors of incredible intellect and creative insight, staff with dedication, and students of the highest caliber, collaborate in the pursuit of a strong environment of learning and One such individual is Genie Stevens, Director of Theatre Arts on the Santa Fe campus. With strong support from the administration, Stevens has created theatre program that not only allows students a chance to become involved in theatre, but serves as an enhancement of the Great Books curriculum. Stevens offers classes each semester, ranging from lighting, set and tech workshops to theatre-oriented yoga. She teaches students how to act, how to direct and, most importantly, how to read. As in seminar, where tutors guide students to a deeper understanding of a text, Stevens uses theatre as a medium. With a degree and strong professional background in theatre, especially classical theatre, Stevens has the ability to read a text well, to find the subtle nuances in language and to portray those subtleties in a cohesive and colorful whole. She directs high-quality theatre, teaching students how to develop a good ear for the language of the text and to use the language to create powerful performances. Towards this aim, Stevens has directed only works by William Shakespeare. In addition to offering weekly theatre classes, she offered directing assistance to student director John Michael MacDonald in a production of Loves Labour's Lost in the spring of 1997. The next year the decision was made to invite Stevens to accept the full responsibilities of directing two major student productions each year. Under Stevens' direction, students presented a highly-acclaimed rendition of As You Like It. The following December, Stevens directed her students in Twelfth Night or 1¥hat You Will. This spring, Stevens is leading her students through the challenging work of Macbeth. Although Macbeth is usually seen as one of the most disturbing works in all of literature, Stevens and her students have found a quality of redemption in the tragedy, because there is perhaps an infinite number of ways to perform Shakespeare. Stevens and her students have many decisions to make regarding how to words. ''Everything," she says, "emotional, psychological, physical. Everything is there in the text." The importance Stevens places in the text echoes the sentiments of George Balanchine, who said, "Classicism is enduring because it is impersonal." Stevens holds that there is no place in great classical theatre fm the individual philosophies of the director or the cast, and says that "we must become invisible" in order to see ~naKcs1)c<ire work as he meant to be viewed. is the direct Photo: Guy Ambrosino Michael Esterheld and Amber Boydstun in the Santa Fe student production of Macbeth. play Macbeth, and they rely upon seminar-style discussion to reach those decisions. Whereas many theatre companies portray the Macbeths as having a cold, calculated relationship dependent upon their individual ambitions, this performance of Macbeth will illustrate a passionate love between the leading roles that fuels their lust for power. Stevens believes that the power of their love is redeeming in spite of their tragic downfall. The witches have roles perhaps unlike any interpretation of the play seen before, adding to the theme of redemption by their close relationships with one another. As Stevens says, "the witches' love for each other mirrors a human joy we wish we could see throughout the play, but that is squelched in the end." Led by Freshman Alana Hollingsworth (Witch 1 and choreographer for the production), the witches have incorporated intricate dance movement in their scenes. Although most of the six witches have never had dance training, Hollingsworth has utilized her extensive experience in theatre and dance, particularly in a genre of dance called contact improv, to guide the witches through intense and mystifying movement. Why is Stevens devoted to directing Shakespeare in particular? Her passion for Shakespeare can perhaps be described synonymously with her passion for language, and it is language that Stevens points to as the most important part of theatre. She treats each production as an extended seminar, using an ongoing process of close textual analysis to arrive at a clear interpretation of the author's work. Although Stevens always encourages a close reading of any script, she trusts Shakespeare in particular to guide her actors through written words alone. "Shakespeare's genius," Stevens says, "makes it clear that every word has a purpose ... I don't know of a betterwordsmith; I don't think there is one." There is no doubt that Stevens tailors her directing around the reverence she has for language. As she explains, she is '"passionate about everynuance, word, vowel, and movement." Stevens continually urges her actors to perform through the words of the text, not around them. For every performance, she leads her cast through vocal training, focusing not only on the quality of an actor's voice, but more importantly on developing each actor's ability to portray the full meaning of the curriculum. Her philosoon theatre is a perfect match in many ways, as Johnnies in general have all the characteristics of great actors: intelligence, curiosity, openmindedness, and creativity. Although few of her students have professional acting experience, Stevens says she has been astonished at the ability of her students to work at a professional level. The attention to detail encouraged at St. John's, specifically the close textual analysis, is the same attention that the best professional actors devote to their scripts. Stevens cites innocence as the strongest gift her actors have, and is refreshed by their maturity and excitement. Actors must learn to intuit the language in their hearts in order for the words to become real for them and for their audience. There are few guidelines to understanding Shakespeare, and Stevens admits the process cannot be quantified. Attendance at all of Stevens' productions has been very healthy. Tutors on the Santa Fe campus in particular seem to appreciate the work Stevens is doing with her students as a direct evolution of the St. John's process. Such applause for her work excites Stevens, as it is her vision that the productions will serve as more than entertainment for the community. "Going to a Shakespeare play hopefully is like going to a good seminar," she says. The rendering of Macbeth that students will perform will illustrate the height of the theatre program on the Santa Fe campus. As the first tragedy Stevens has directed at St. John's, it promises to be rich with intellect, insight and intuition. As Stevens says, "we offer a process of delving deeply into an unedited text and taking the time necessary to allow it to be understood so the audience is not only entertained but educated and excited. That's one thing we can guarantee - people coming to our renditions of Shakespeare plays will be excited by Shakespeare." 8 Amber Boydstun (SF9 9) �Catnpus Life ... BEYOND THE PROGRAM Annapolis Extracurricular Life ...•...•................................••.••••••• ' ' xtracurricular organizations at St. John's are generally informal. Some continue year after year, while others spring up and die out as the individual members of the community come and go." -Current St. Johns College Catalog These days, student activities go well beyond the Delegate Council and King William Players. Notices on Annapolis campus bulletin boards reveal the ever-changing extracurricular life of the Johnny-a snapshot of one week's events. Athletics-related announcements include a flyer for women's softball that asks: "Ever Want to Hit Something?;" swim club, rowing club, and Hatha Yoga class announcements; a March Madness basketball team roster; and the following notice: Egyptian Belly DancingLearn to dance to the exciting rhythms of the Middle East as you explore the charm of Egyptian Belly Dancing. Just bring comfortable clothing and your curiosity. Everything e]se will be provided. The arts are represented by a poster for the latest exhibit in the Mitchell Gallery (Sunlight and Shadow: American Impressionism, 1885-1945); a poster for the Baltimore Opera Company; a of Botticelli's "The Adoration of the Magi"; and a sign headlined "Photographers: Expose Yourselves!", inviting photographers to submit their work to the Collegian. Forays into popular culture include an anime showing: Kaze no Tane: or Nausicaa: Warriors of the Wind. And what Great Books college would be complete without Keanu Reeves Night-a tribute to one of the worst actors ever to appear on the silver screen. A poster announces the screening of three masterpieces from the Keanu oeuvre: Point Break, Dangerous Liaisons, and Bill and Ted sExcellent Adventure. Academic signage includes a Student Committee on Instruction (SCI) agenda; an announcement of an intensive Latin tutorial to be taught this summer by Christine Kalkavage; "Plato in the Springtime," a Student Community Institution-sponsored event that will take place on April evenings; a poster announcing the availability of French Assistance; and a poster for Music Assistance that asks the melodically challenged: "When you're asked if you know bass clef, do you wonder 'large mouth or small mouth?"' and "At the mention of melody and harmony, do you think only of two nice girls you knew in high school?" The spiritual life of the college is addressed by one notice offering to match up tutors and students for Passover Seders, and another offering three mini-retreats on the 3 R's of Lent: reflection, relaxation, and renewal. Finally, rounding out the batch, is a poster for Johnnie Java, a recently instituted program in which tutors and students can go out for coffee at any of six local cafes and have their tab picked up by the Student Activities Director. e Sus3an Borden (A87) SENIOR ORALS ....•.....•......••.•..••••••••••...•..•..••.•..•• Photo: Mark St. John (SF82) SANTA FE CLASS OF 1999 tarting this year, Santa Fe Senior Orals will no longer receive Honors, but will be graded on a pass/fail basis only. According to Jam es Cary, Dean of the Santa Fe campus, this change was initiated by the Instruction Committee, and was approved by the faculty, in light of increasing and pointless preoccupation with the question of who recieved honors and who did not. Santa Fe has also altered the format of Senior Orals and now joins Annapolis in having only three tutors on each senior's committee. A chairperson, a presenter and one other committee member (instead of the previous two) now serve to conduct the oral examination. Another important change is the role of the presenter in the Senior Orals. Originally a faculty member selected by the student to participate in the Senior Oral, the presenter is now selected by the Dean, although heavy consideration is given to requests students are asked to make for their choice of presenter. And, because there are now only three members of the Senior Oral Committee, the presenter takes part not only in assigning the pass/fail grade to the oral, but also is responsible for working with the two other committee members in assigning a grade to the paper itself. e Amber Boydstun (SF99) �Letters RANDALL RIDDLE ANSWER I enjoyed the winter issue of The Reporter. I am glad to see that Howard Fisher is still thinking about Newton. (He was my advisor when I wrote my senior essay on Newton's theory of colors.) I have the answer to when the sitdown dinners in Randall Hall were discontinued. I started in the fall of 1970, which was the last year of the family-style dinners. I regretted their demise, as the sit-down dinners meant that you ate with different groups of people each night. People would line up for dinner, and then you would be seated at a table, so you often ate with people you did not know well, and that's how you got to know them. RichardFerguson (A74) MORE LIST SUGGESTIONS I just read Mr. Schuler's letter about the Hayek book. It astonishes me that a St. John's alumnus would propose as a Great Book of the twentieth century a work which has so overt a political agenda, at least as presented in the letter, and Nobel Prize notwithstanding. Socialism is not synonymous with the ""compulsorily centralized" economy. One cannot extrapolate from the Soviet experience to the many Socialist governments in Western Europe, which the people have elected and reelected over the last hundred years because they like it that way. Hayek might be suitable for the Program with a proper antidote. Marx and Mill are probably more than adequate, but if it's to be a twentieth century book, how about E.F. Schumacher's Small Is Beautiful? Fritz Schumacher (another friend ofJ.M.Keynes) was lionized worldwide in the seventies for his seminal thinking, the concept of intermediate technlogy, and his consulting work in India. This economist really deserved a Nobel Prize. He even has a theory ofliberal education. John A. White (SGI75) FILM MEMORIES I second Glenda Eoyang's praise of "Singin' in the Rain" as a antidote for February. In 1974, I shared a common wall, in Urania, with the head of the Film Society, Steve Thomas. As any good projectionist would, Steve previewed the film in his room, to ensure that there were no unspliced breaks. As I recall, he previewed it at least 17 times! After Roots, one of my Dad's cousins took on the task of genealogical research, and found that Gene Kelly was my grandfather's second cousin. To those women who can remember what a poor dancer I was, I can only say that Cousin Kelly had all the dancing genes in the family. William Malloy (SF77) ALUMNI ON THE WEE I wanted to thank the Alumni Association Communications Committee for including mention of the unofficial alumni Web page in the most recent issue of the Reporter. Before the Reporter came out, the number of alumni who had added information to the page stood at 455. Today, the total is 515, a huge increase based on experience. I doubt that in the previous year the listings increased by 60 (about 13%). While rm sure that 60 is a small number relative to the number of issues that are mailed, it is a huge success in growing the SJC cyber-community. Interestingly, at least to me, the great majority of the additions came from members who attended in the 70's or 80's. This suggests that readership of the Reporter is heavier in those groups. Almost half of the total listings, since the page began, come from the decade of the 90's. One person from the class of' 48 (Richard Matteson) added his listing, and there were afewfrom the '60's. I hope you will continue the practice of' advertising' the unofficial page. I think the recent increase is a good demonstration that alumni see the utility for such a resource, and demonstrates a small but significant demand. http://www.charm.netrbfant/johnny/ Bill Fant (A 79) MORE ON KLEIN I would like to offer another insight into the importance ofJacob Klein's role in the preservation and continuation of the college, in light ofJacob de Raat's letter in the winter issue of The Reporter. After both Scott Buchanan and Stringfellow Barr had abandoned St. John's in Annapolis, the college was plunged into a crisis because of their departure. That crisis was compounded by another crisis when the successor Dean (Raymond Wilburn) and his assistant (Luke Harvey Poe) told the then Chairman of the Board (Richard Cleveland) that they had no confidence in the then President (John Kieffer). The community at St. John's was split into warring factions so much so that a great deal of energy that should have been devoted to teaching and learning was, in fact, being used up in the campus struggle. After a protracted, bitter fight which split both the faculty and student body, Kieffer, Wilburn and Poe were relieved of their administrative posts. Jacob Klein was named Acting Dean and was given the extraordinarily difficult and unprecedented task of rescuing the college from its implosion and of putting the focus back onto the cooperative spirit of teaching and learning and away from the competitive spirit of campus polarization. One had to be there to appreciate the enormity of the effort required by one man to bring the college through this period and to do so in a way that preserved its integrity. Indeed, in his first speech as Acting Dean, he emphasized the need of returning to the daily work of studying and of keeping the spirit of wonder and inquiry at the center of life on campus. In a very real sense, both before and after being confirmed as Dean in 1949 as well as through the rest of his tenure at St. John's, he was its intellectual guardian. As I said in 1979 at his memorial service, "The result of what he accomplished through endless effort should be recorded in high relief and given a foremast place in the annals of this college. It is no exaggeration to say that St. John's would not be what it is - or perhaps not even .to be - were it not for what he did." I have given the question of the survival of St. John's a good deal of thought and have concluded that a St. John's that preserved the in- tegrity of the goal of a truly liberal education would not have survived without Mr. Klein's stewardship. In a brief discussion with Dean Carey at Santa Fe, I was pleased to discover that he believes that St. John's would not exist were it not for Jacob Klein. On does well to remember that the year 1954 was the nadir for student enrollment in the new program (except, of course, for the very beginning in the 1930s). Mr. Klein had to deal not only with that prob1 em, but also with the choice of a new President by the Board, with the cultivation of the existing faculty and the appointment of new faculty who looked promising, with the change to a co-educational institution and the myriad problems that change brought (as well as its blessings), with the quality of the intellectual life on campus. Because of his leadership and intellectual generosity and, perhaps most important of all, with his continuation and successful efforts to keep morale high. Let no one be mistaken about Jacob Klein and St. John's. The focus of that institution was already on him before he became Dean, certainly while he was Dean and to a significant extent in the period after he served as Dean. Everyone who loves St. John's should be more than grateful that he came our way. Robert Haza (A53) LOVE & STRIFE I was grateful to read Carolyn Barndt's passionate critique of her St. John's experience ("Love and Srife at St. John's," Winter 1999). Like her, I loved St. John's despite an experience of "near-constant anguish." Like her, my anguish had to do with negotiating the reason/passion dichotomy in the peculiar atmosphere of the College. I am not a great fan of the dichotomy: reason is never without passion in the establishment of its premises; passion is never without reason in its efforts to achieve satisfaction. Neither do I think that St. John's lacks either reason or passion. But it is lacking in something. My graduating class had only 38 students, and it was not a case of" We happy few." There were two huge plusses in my St. John's ledger: 1.) the view from the top, a distinctive and intimate historical vision; 2.) the satisfaction of forging a good personal philosophy. There were also negatives: severe personal and intellectual loneliness; dismissive tutors; deficiencies in the teaching of mathecontinued on page 23 �OBITUARIES JosephB. Gray Joseph Gray, class of 1936, a chemical engineer and international expert in mixing chemicals, died in September in Delaware. He was born in 1915 in the Paca-Carroll House, on the campus of St. John's in Annapolis, where his father, J. Clifford Gray, was a professor of chemistry. Mr. Gray attended St. John's, where he graduated first in his class with a chemistry major. He earned his PhD in chemical engineering from John Hopkins in 1941. From 1941to1947, he was a petroleum engineer for Standard Oil of Indiana, where he developed methods for the fluid catalytic cracking process for making aviation gasoline. After that, he became an associate professor of chemical engineering at Syracuse until 1951. In 1952 he moved to Delaware and joined the Du Pont Company. During his 31-year career, he developed improved methods of mixing chemicals in virtually every phase of the industry, from research and process and equipment design to manufacturing. He made significant contributions to the development of such chemical products and polymers as Lycra, Teflon, polytheylene, Kevlar, and Tefzel. He held several patents, wrote several publications, and edited chapters in Perry's Chemical Engineering Handbook. He was a former conference or session chairman for conferences held by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and the Engineering Foundation. Surviving are his wife, Susan Kemp Gray; two sons, a daughter, three brothers, a sister, and four grandchildren. Victor G. Bloede Victor Bloede, class of 1941, a former advertising executive who helped introduce the slogan "Good to the last drop" for Maxwell House coffee, died in February in Boca Raton, Florida. Mr. Bloede was a native of Baltimore who attended St. John's and graduated from the University of Maryland in 1941. He was hired as a copywriter in 1950 at Benton & Bowles Advertising and rose to become chairman and chief executive. Mr. Bloede originally tried to become a police reporter for the Baltimore Sun, but found breaking into the journalism field difficult. He instead went into public relations and later into advertising. In addition to the Maxwell House slogan, he was responsible for other famous product tags like "Please don't squeeze the Charmin." The only creative executive to run Benton & Bowles, Mr. Bloede was named president and chief executive in 1968. He became chairman of the agency in 1971. He is survived by his wife, Merle; a son, a daughter, seven grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren. Douglas Buchanan Douglas Buchanan, who graduated from St. John's in 1943, died in February. The son of New Program founder Scott Buchanan, Dr. Buchanan also graduated from the University of Vermont Medical School and received a doctorate from Yale University. He studied tropical medicine at the London School of Tropical Medicine and received psychiatric training at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He was a physician in private practice in Andover, Massachusetts, and at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Lowell, Massachusetts. Dr. Buchanan is survived by two daughters, two sons, and former wives Annick Buchanan and Vera Buchanan. William Kinser Dr. William Kinser, who taught at the State University of New York at Buffalo in the department of art, died in January. The father of Maggie Kinser, A85, he had taken classes in the Graduate Institute in 1980. Amemoriallibraryfundhas been established in his honor; the address is cl o Department of Art, SUNY at Buffalo, Box 606010, Buffalo, NY 14260. Cleveland suburbs. She sang with the Forest City Singers for several years, and as a cancer patient entertained other patients, with her son David, by singing and playing the guitar. As an adult she began a serious study of the Torah, became a bat mitzvah, and taught the Torah to high school students. She is survived by her husband, Steven; a daughter, a son, her mother, and two brothers. William Tell Claude William Tell Claude, a native of Annapolis who graduated from St. John's in 1917, died in March. His father, the late Dr. Gordon Handy Claude, was a former mayor of Annapolis; his grandfather and greatgrandfather also served as mayor of the city. Mr. Claude was the oldest known surviving class member to attend the Green Street Elementary School in Annapolis. In addition to St. John's, he also attended John Hopkins University and the Naval Academy. He saw active duty during World Wars I and II while in the Army Reserve. From 1927 to 1967 he worked in public relations for the Maryland State Road Commission. He is survived by two sons, eight grandchildren, and 13 great-grandchildren. Dr. Frances Hernandez Dr. Frances Hernandez (born Mary Frances Baker, April 6, 1926) died March 27, 1999 at her home in Las Cruces, N.M. Dr. Hernandez was in residence at the Annapolis campus in Fall, 1963, where she was preparing to be the first Dean of Women at the Santa Fe campus, scheduled to open the following year. Unfortunately, she had to resign to nurse her husband through a serious illness. She subsequently returned to New Mexico State University (where she became a full professor of Spanish Literature) and, following her retirement, moved to the University of Texas, El Paso campus. In the past decade she had become known as an expert on the topic of conversos, the Spanish Jews who were forced by the Inquisition to be baptized as Catholics. Increasing evidence has shown that these converted Jews, many of whom came to the New World, continued furtively to practice Judaism. She is survived by her husband, water resources expert Dr. John Whitlock Hernandez, P.O. Box 3196, Las Cruces, NM 88003-3196. A memorial service was held April 11, 1999. Martha Kaufman Stone Martha Kaufman Stone, class of 1971, died in Shaker Heights, Ohio, in February. She graduated from Cleveland Height High School and came to St. John's in 1967. She earned a law degree at the University of Chicago in 1975 and practiced with the Cleveland firm of Burke Haber & Berick. After leaving the firm, she continued volunteer work with the American Civil Liberties Union. Mrs. Stone was a member of several book clubs and volunteered with the Junior Great Books program in the public schools in the ALSO NOTED ... James Dunleavy, Class of 1933 Katherine Schroeder, Class of 1981 Dexiang Li, Class of 1988 letters continuedfrom page 22 ......................................................................................................... . matical skills and writing; an unfocused and shallow exposure to the Books. At first I thought it was just me or the nature of the era (198286). But alumni from other classes and professor at graduate schools have made confirming remarks, also experienced a recognizable form of fatigue. Museum fatigue. Thus, the reason and passion one encounters at St. John's are much like what one would expect to find at a good museum. The tutors reason and emote like curators. The students reason and emote like museum visi- tors. The seminar does little to alter this dynamic. Unfortunately, museums do not embody the type of reason and passion Scott Buchanan had in mind when he designed the New Program. The passion of a museum is to preserve; that of a school to originate. When I attended St. John's, my passion was to study Great books so I could write one of my own someday. The passion of my tutors was, I now believe, to study Great Books so they would comment intelligently on them. The two motivations are enig- mas to each other. Therefore, what is often viewed as lack of passion at St. John's may simply be passion of a different kind, and its "excess of reason" may simply be its focus on the art of restatement and commentary. It has little invested in developing the reasoning powers useful for making discoveries. Anxiety rises when students do not realize that the passion that attracted them to St. John's is not the same as that which sustains the institution, causing an apparent strife between reason (the institu- tion) and passion (the student). What would make St. John's more of a school and less of a museum? An obvious approach is to have tutors do more research and teaching and less facilitating. Maybe have tutors teach electives in fields that excite their ambition. Push them to publish, do ground-breaking work, make sure to involve and promote interested students. Hard to schedule, veryun - St. John's, but perhaps necessary, to escape the museum mentality. Mark Moulton (SF86) �1999 '"= SANTA = •111'4 ~ FE HOMECOMING AND ' SUMMER ALUMNI PROGRAM 00. ~ I 00. ~ ~ ~- '"d ,_, Cl) O'\ "' O'\ Cl.) y on Cl.) u LI";) y - N 0 <l.) ;:::l rf) f.-< & Cl) "'::!' <l.) I~ s ~,....; 0 :::l 0 § <l.) rf) lJ';) t- ~ 0 ....... µ rfl§UCO~ >-. ·p ~ g t: ..o cd.,...z o '"d Q) Ei ~u <l.) A::: cd <l.) w {;luu~~ ;.=i;.~ o '"§'"§~ e ..tJ §'"d P-iP-i,....;cJ:l~ ome a week early or stay a week later to take part in the 1999 Summer Alumni Program. The first week, from July 11 through July 16, will explore the world of visual arts through morning seminars led by Santa Fe tutors Steve Houser (SF79) and Kent Taylor, and afternoon hands-on practica led by Michele Beinder, Director of the Santa Fe Senior Art Program. Week I seminars will focus on works by Vermeer, Cezanne, Van Gogh, and Mondrian, while the afternoon workshops will enrich these seminars through compositional studies and analysis, a still Hfe study, and a life drawing session. The second week, from July 18 through July 23, will look at ethical dilemmas in biotechnology, led by Santa Fe tutors Jim Forkin (SF80) and Hans von Briesen, as well as David Krimins (A63), Annapolis physician. Afternoon classes will focus on readings that discuss transgenic engineering, the human genome project, and cloning humans. Morning classes will further investigate these issues in two classics works of fiction on biotechnology: Shelly's Frankenstein and Huxley's Brave New World. Week II will also include a field trip to the National Center for Genome Resources in Santa Fe. The brochure and registration materials were mailed to all members of the reunion classes this spring. If you are not in a reunion class and would like to receive a brochure, please request one from the Alumni Office in Santa Fe: 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe NM 87501-4599~ 505-984-6103. or Tahmina Shalizi, at tshalizi@mail.sjcsf.edu. e � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The St. John's Reporter</em> Description An account of the resource College newspaper which started publication in 1974. Continued publication into 2000. Includes primarily historical content.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The St. John's Reporter" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=35">Items in <em>The St. John's Reporter</em></a></strong> <span>to view and sort all items in the collection.</span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 24 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context vol 25 issue 3 Spring 1999 Title A name given to the resource Reporter, Volume 25 Issue 3 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1999-04 Description An account of the resource Volume 25, Issue 3 of The St. John's Reporter. Published in Spring 1999. (Corrected from Issue 2) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Public Relations Office Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Goyette, Barbara (editor) Mulry, Laura J. (editor) Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf The Reporter https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/480a28a9287c7802d7407f40ea7bd248.pdf 4bf5b20550c39a8cb36ff5ab7e893d3f PDF Text Text :J L ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE LIBRARY l[fil~\~l~\111\ill lllIIllIIIIII 01138 2338IllIIllIIllII' I 31696 SUMMER 1999 COMMENCEMENT '99 In Annapolis, graduates heard about the value of poetry; in Santa Fe, St. John's was cited as a model of ....... 12 civility............... . JOHNNY PARENTS OF JOHNNIES S!JOHN'S COLLEGE ANNAPOLIS· SANTA FE What happens when parents find themselves entranced by The Sometimes enroll in the Graduate Institute ............ 14 A mofile of music librarian Eric a look at tutor Robert Sacks' career; Eastern Classics; the Dean's Statement........... 7, 8, 10, 11 EPARTMENTS From the Bell Towers: John Agresto resigns in Santa Fe; additions to the Annapolis library; cloning the Liberty Tree; alumni focus on ................... 2 Alumni P1·ofiles: Who writes screenplays for the hottest Disney hits? St. John's Bob Tzudiker..................................... 19 Alumni Authors: A review of an alumnus' compilation of prose and r>APH"Uh\TPVPY'VrlmT Americans ...... 23 -.n,-,rnwu· new experiences; students assess The Stone ... the saga of Chase- ........................ 26 Alumni Association: What's pening in the chapters .................. 16 ClassNotes ................................ 17 Lette.rs ........................................ 9 John W. Wood, class of 1919 and in all likelihood the college's oldest alumnus, doffs his cap after hitting the opening ball at the Croquet Match against the Naval Academy. The Annapolis rite of spring attracted more than a thousand spectators, including many alumni. See story on page 26. Photo by Keith Harvey. �Front the Bell To-wers ... JOHN AGRESTO RESIGNS AS PRESIDENT IN SANTA FE J ohn Agresto, president of the Santa Fe campus of St. John's since 1989, has announced that he will resign. He will remain at the college as president until June 30, 2000. Having more than doubled the endowment, increased enrollment, and helped conduct a successful capital campaign, Agresto has decided to pursue other interests and allow for a new president to steer the college on its future course. Chairman of the Board of Visitors and Governors Gregory D. Curtis cited Agresto's dedication to liberal education, and his ability to articulate the value of such an education, as unparalleled. "John has shepherded the college from where it was ten years ago to where it is now so well," said Curtis. "Today the college is a secure and vibrant institution ... John will remain an influential member of the St. John's community whatever he decides to do in the future." Since Agresto became president, the endowment for the Santa . Fe campus increased from $8 million to $20 million. Enrollment has increased from about 350 to about 440 undergraduates. The Graduate Institute has also grown in size-to around 90 students per term-and the Eastern Classics program has been added. Agresto has overseen the expansion of the college's program to nonstudent groups. He established the Summer Classics, a non-credit education program in which adults study the great books in a seminar setting. That program has grown to more than 200 participants from across the country this year. Executive Seminars, weekend seminars for professionals, began as an outgrowth of Summer Classics and has expanded rapidly since 1996. Community Seminars, public programs for the local community, have grown from a few offerings to dozens each year with hundreds of Santa Feans participating. In a letter to the Board of Visitors and Governors reflecting on his ten years at St. John's, Agresto wrote, "This campus has received over the last decade national mdeia attention far beyond what our small size would indicate. And if the number of schools calling us for curricular assistance is any sign, we're having a salutary effect on American education at all levels. Finally, gone is the time when segments of the intellectual and academic community would hold us up for contempt because we are a college that didn't march to the drum of the latest educational fad or politically correct new orthodoxy. These are battles we won." Agresto is Santa Fe's fourth president. Before coming to the college, he served for eight years as deputy and acting chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. He had previously been a faculty member at the University of Toronto, Kenyon College, Duke University, and the New School for Social Research. His undergraduate degree is from Boston College and his doctorate is from Cornell. Agresto's plans are not firm. "I have a few opportunities, though I've said yes to none," he said recently. • Famous Writers' Books Join Library Collection •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• T he Greenfield Library's special collections include: theological books from a famous French ventriloquist, Alexandre Vattemare; Elizabethan .and other early English imprints; "incunabula," or books printed prior to 1501; and the 800 books, maps, and globes of Annapolis merchant Lewis Neth left to the college in 1832. This spring the library added a new special collection: a group of almost 1000 signed and inscribed books gatJ1en~d by E. Barrett Christopher Nelson, donated the personal library Charles Dickens. he has been collecting since the 1950s. "He called because the college has a reputation for books, and he thought we would love them and take care of them," says Mr. Nelson. Since he lives only 40 miles away, Mr. Prettyman can continue to visit the books at St. John's. Most of the books are by American and British authors, political figures, and cultural icons from the 20th century, although there are a number of volumes from the 19th century as well. Authors include Mark Twain, Alfred Lord Tennyson, John Galsworthy, Winston Churchill, Leo Tolstoy, Albert Einstein, Albert Camus, Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Eliot, Harry Truman, Rosalyn Carter, J. D. Salinger, John Lennon, and Kurt Vonnegut-to name but a few. All of the books have been signed by their author, and many are inscribed as well. Mr. Prettyman served as attorney to several of the authors, and their books have personal inscriptions to him. He also has a strong interest in the Supreme Court, having argued before it, and the collection includes the signatures of all the current justices. As part of the donation agreement, the college will keep the collection intact and display some books on a continusays al basis in the Lisa librarian. of the books made their irnm~m,a.L appearance at an exhibit at the Mitchell = held in COil1UltlCt:lO.H ~ ~ the Great Book Fair in ~ In a statement accompanying the display, Mr. Prettyman wrote: "I wish I could begin to explain what these books mean to me. They are first, my friends. But they are something more, because very few friends can comfort you, in person, in the shank hours of the morning, before daylight. How many times-countless-have I been unable to sleep and wandered into my library, taken down a volume, savored a few pages, read the inscription, felt the texture of the pages, the jacket, and the binding, and reassigned the book to its place onto the shelf? Only someone who loves writers, the writing process, and the end product can understand- that 4 a.m. feeling-the one that sends you comforted back to sleep." • i -by Barbara Goyette �FroID the Bell Towers ... ATALE OF TWO SCHOOLS Tutor News Louise Guenther, a tutor in Santa Fe, presented a paper at the annual meetings of the World History Association in Vancouver, B.C. in June. She then spent the summer in the United Kingdom, as a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of London. ~ Abraham a tutor in Santa Fe, will spend the last week of in Ireland for the International Society for Eighteenth-Century ::>1umes. at College. He will be attending a roundtable called "Scepticisme et clandestinite" skenticism about religion and and giving talk called "The Children of Averroes: the Traite des trois lmuo:steurs on a Secret Premise of l:!,n11rn:nt1ernment." The secret premauestion is the intellectual .._,uuLOc:<.Uc:u, in much of ~AHJ ~~-H~ of the early Enlightenment. Next year Mr. Anderson will be taking a leave of absence to work on the revision of his manuscript on Kant. ~ Eva Annapolis tutor and former dean, was granted an honorary Doctor of Letters from Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont. The announcement reads in part: "As a beloved tutor to four decades of St. John's College students, as a writer of books, essays, and reviews on authors ranging from Homer and Plato to Kant and Hegel, as a lecturer on topics as diverse as early Athenian pottery, liberal education, the imagination, and time, ... you represent that academic polity whose most famous teachers return every year in the form of the Great Books. As a refugee from Nazi Germany, you have been a true friend of the Republic that has made it possible for you to pursue the good life. You have shown in word and deed that the careful study of great books is a republican, or conversational, activity among fellow students .... You have also gently chided Americans not to pursue utility as the end of liberal education. Rather, you have written that the undergraduate years should be a time for 'learning to become a human being ... ' " ~ Peter Pe.sic, tutor and musician-inresidence in Santa Fe has written an article entitled "Desire, Science, and Polity: Francis Bacon's Account of Eros" which appears in the Spring 1999 issue of Interpretation. ~ orty years ago, three St. John's tutors struggled with the question of what kind of education would be best for their children. Parents then confronted choices just as parents todayweigh their options-public school with its democratic, something-for-everyone philosophy, religious schools that stress values and content-based courses, independent schools that try to nourish a child's creativity or offer a special educational credo. But after looking into the schools available in Annapolis in 19 58, Tom Simpson (A50), William Darkey (A42), and Clarence Kramer (A46) decided they could found a school themselves that would better reflect the kind of education they envisioned for their children. The along with some other interested Annapolis founded the School. In philosophy the college and the school (which began with primary but added to cover are close; the ties between the two institutions remain stron2' and there are at , . their children to who come to St. tutors and staff whose children attend Over the years, St. tutors have served as curriculum advisors at and on the school's board. Peter J\..ellOJf!:l!,-.::>mtun (A43) was the first headmaster-and a have followed him to teach at including those on the JoAnne Mattson (A87), current Dan Schoos and Katherine Haas Key is located in Hillsmere, about a 10-minute drive c from the college; · today its enrollment is 625, and the glossy brochures describing its educational approach stress creativity, intellectual development, success skills, and special programs like Orff Schulwerk music classes and an ambitious outdoor learnmg program. In the Key Peter Kellogg-Smith (A4l) was the School's original first headmaster. statement of policy, written in 1958, Tom Simpson wrote: "The school has one prime purpose: to foster the intellectual development of the individual. To this end all activities in the school must be subordinated. We shall take this, therefore, as a statement of our cardinal principle, defining the overall purpose of the school. It is, we feel, precisely this principle that is largely ignored by contemporary educators ... Current educational practices seem phenomenally successful in stifling this natural desire of children to know, to ask questions and to seek answers. The age-old vision F of the free, thoughtful individual seems all but forgotten in many of our schools ... The duty of the school is to help the child develop those habits and acquire those arts and skills that will insure his continued growth to intellectual maturity in subsequent years ... Good litera- ture, biography, and properly chosen historical writings furnish material superior in every respect to the ordinary reading textbooks ... Mathematics should never be taught as the pointless drill work it has become in many schools ... Enrollment, of course, will be open to all qualified student regardless of sex, race, color, or creed." In the early days of the Key School, it was harder to find teachers who understood the educational aims, and Tom Simpson arranged to have a St. John's student, Richard Ferrier (A70), teach at Key during his senior year. Simpson recalls one time when the worlds of the two institutions converged. Ferrier was in Simpson's senior math class and also team-taught a physics class at Key with him. "We would go to tutorial in McDowell, then jump in the car and drive to Key. I remember one time stopping on the way to buy blue balloons to use in the physics class-although I don't remember now what we were trying to do with them," says Simpson. Today, of course, most of the teachers in Key's upper school hold advanced degrees, as befits a college-prep school with intense academics. But the St. John's and Key worlds continue to converge in some of the same unusual features: Key doesn't recognize student achievement with academic awards or honor rolls, choosing to de-emphasize grades in favor of strong communication between students and faculty in much the same way that St. John's does not encourage grade-centered competition; and Key, like St. John's, balances the strict rigor of its academics with an egalitarian, informal atmosphere in which the focus is learning rather than inculcation. • -by Barbara Goyette �FroDI the Bell Tow-ers ... LAURENCE BERNS RETIRES aurence Berns, a tutor in Annapolis since 1960, has retired. Although students and faculty probably remember him best for his interest in what is generally L Program of Liberal Arts for Adults from 1956 to 1959. In 1960 he came to St. John's. During various periods ofleave from the college, he taught philosophy at Rosary College in Chicago and was an Associate at Clare Hall at Cambridge. In 1959, while doing post-graduate work at the University of Heidelberg, he met Gisela Neck. Both were students in a class on Plato. He spoke little German, she spoke no English. They communicated in and when that in ancient Greek. Their ,.,,,.,,,...,_cl-unwas carried on letters-in '-''-'-<AUUU' English, and Greek-and they married in 1965. Mrs. Berns has been a tutm since 1967 and will continue <.JlU.VUOU called science, those who studied with him know h.rrnnArlrl"'hr one Theaetetus was faced with in Plato's dialogue, for He is one of the most fac members in terms of articles written and lectures delivered. and conferences attended. Born in Mr. Berns his mother run a photograstudio as a young man. He attended the University of Chicago, where he earned his BA in 1950 and PhD in 1957. He taught in the Basic •••• •• • ••• In 1969 Mr. Berns was the first editor of The Colleue. a iournal fea- tures and scholarly articles r-rP1'"1n:r·rpr with information about the and alumni notes. For many years Mr. Berns has been active in the student-run Political Forum, n~1·nr-1_ example, in a debate about the 1992 presidential candidates (he spoke in favor of Bush) and offering a seminar on the writings of Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas. Topics covered in Mr. Berns' lectures and articles include Hobbes, • • Aristotle, .........u....,v.11..u, Shakespeare, the "'"'~HC>LAL•iL.<.••n" eral education, and the themes of justice and democracy. He's done a • •••••• •••••••••• • worKea to make more than $I was to oenent a ., ..... ship fund that will assist students at the college from ha.1n.,,. 11"~ 1via1 Anne Arundel County. translation of Aristotle's Politics. He to continue and perhaps gather together some of his previously published work . �Frolll the Bell Tow-ers ... VOICES OF &?i ILANTHROPIA pungent sagebrush to join 18 other like-minded, curious ore than 50 alumni have come together to form people to discuss a Great Book in the hopes of discoverthe Alumni Development Council and are voluning within it a broader meaning oflife." teering their time, expertise, and enthusiasm to Rebecca Michael, A97 - After gradhelp St. John's raise money. Their motivauating from St. John's, Rebecca worked tions are idealistic-the name they've choin development for the Maret School, a sen, Philanthropia, means "humanity, private independent school in benevolence, kindliness" in Greek. Those Washington, D.C. She recently joined the involved represent every era and both Washington Ballet as director of corpocampuses, and all have re-forged their rate and foundation giving. She has a very connection to the college. Here's what a real sense of how essential philanthropy few Philanthropia members have to say is for the survival of educational and about why they became involved: other non-profit institutions. DonBell, SF91- "Among the practi"First off," she says, "I am very cal, real world things I did NOT learn at proud to be called a 'Johnny' and want to St. John's during those wonderfully engaghelp the institution that helped me grow ing four years is the lifecycle concept of intellectually, emotionally, and academibelonging to a community, in this case a cally as best I can. Because I have been . school. I recently graduated from Wharton business school, and discovered Rebecca Michael studying and participating in the field of development for about six years, I feel that there a broader definition of the benefits joining Philanthropia is the most beneficial and responsibilities of a lifelong relationship with the institution and other alumni. After school, way that I can aid St. John's College. Although we all need our time away from St. John's, it is undeniable that our role shifts from student to contributor-both finan"'once a Johnny, always a Johnny.'" cially and through other means like recruiting, and, in Tom Stern~ SF69- Tom began coming back to the my case, hiring from the school (I am co-captain of the college regularly after helping to lead a seminar on the Goldman Sachs team focused on recruiting graduates film Unforgiven during the Santa Fe into our Investment Banking Division). Alumni Week several years ago. He St. John's is, in my mind, much more had worked on the film-he does the unique and deserving of support; however, lighting and acts as a negotiator for we don't have the culture of continued Clint Eastwood, who produced and involvement and support from alumni that is starred in Unforgiven. His interest in critical to fundraising success. Tuition is helping with fundraising grew after only the first part of the exchange-it costs attending Alumni Week, although he much more than $25,000 per year to edusays, "I've always had a strong interest cate each student, and the in the college." His St. John's experibalance has to come from alumni and instience influences what he does every tutions in the form of annual gifts and conday. "In graduate school at Stanford, I tributions to the endowment, so I believe we studied communications and film. But are responsible to the best of our ability to I find that in what I do with Eastwood, support the school later, after graduation, as my St. John's background is just as our resources grow. The reason I want to be involved is that I Tom Stern important. What I do is very collaborative; we work from consensus. At St. still believe in the value of the program as John's I learned to listen to people-to much as I did on my first night at St. John's, listen really and carefully. I also have a true life-long when, following a brief evening rain, I walked down love of reading, which the college nurtured." 8 from the dorms among the still-damp pin on trees and M s Cloning's got something of a bad name, what with the Clone Wars coming up on Star Wars and all the fears about the consequences of genetic engineering of peoand animals. But evidently in the world of plants, cloning is a perfectly acceptable activity. To celebrate the millennium the state of Maryland decided to clone the Liberty Tree and send the baby trees to the governors of all 50 states, so that every state could have its own symbol of revolution and freedom. The cloning ceremony took place on front campus on June 3. A poplar reproduction expert from the University of Maryland headed a research team that clipped genetic samples from the tree's newest shoots. The clippings were placed in tanks ofliq- uid nitrogen. After six months of work in the lab being genetically engineered and made herbicideresistant, the little trees will be distributed. Tulip poplars do not replicate by means of traditional cutting techniques, and offspring from seeds (like those that were produced in 1976-one of which stands on the opposite side of front campus) contain only half the DNA of the famous parent. The 400-year-old Liberty Tree was the meeting place for the Sons of Liberty as they gathered to denounce British oppression during the pre-Revolution days. Liberty Trees in many of the original colonies were destroyed by British troops, and others succumbed to age overtime. The St. John's Liberty Tree is perhaps the only original still alive. �Frolll the Bell To-wers ... PROFESSIONALS GATHER FOR CLASSICS WEEKEND IN SANTA FE •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• spring, for one weekend in May and another in June, a group of and women met at the St. John's campus in Santa Fe to read and U.J.;)'l_.,uss classic texts of western civilization. 'What made this meeting unusual was that all of the participants were considerably older than the average student-most over 50-and each was a successful professional. Classics Weekend grew out of the popular Summer Classics program. Paul Tierney, who had been attending the Summer Classics for several years, began to imagine a program that be tailored to of similar ages and professional Rather than a group of various ages and experiences, envisioned a more select group of L... ..., .• vucHL''"'' one chosen and assembled that could to:!re1tht=ff over a long weekend and discuss ideas find relevant and mt~anJnJ:t;tuL For butnotAn1t1T.~hr fulfilling. He wanted to discuss ideas and read texts with some of the friends he had known at the University of Notre Dame and at Harvard. 'While Tierney was a philosophy major at Notre Dame, he and three friends used to get together at a bar in tow11 to talk about some of the larger questions of life. In this ongoing conversation, they wondered whether each of them would pursue a life of reflection or activity; all four went into business, following the more active course. But they never stopped asking questions or wondering about ideas. After Notre Dame, Tierney went on to Harvard Business School and then became a very successful financial investor. He discovered St. John's only much later, when he attended the Summer Classics program. Four years ago he was elected to the Board of Visitors and Governors of the college. Among those joining Tierney for not only the first but subsequent Classics Weekends was Perry Lerner, a longtime friend. Lerner received his BA from Claremont Men's College in California (now Claremont-McKenna) and met Tierney when he was a student at Harvard Law School. He worked for nearly 30 years as a practicing attorney before going into business. Lerner was recently invited to join the St. John's Board of Visitors & Governors. "The obvious advantage of something like a Classics Weekend is that you get to choose the participants as well as the program. And ours is an affinity group so we all know and understand each other pretty well," Lerner says. The idea behind the program at its inception was that men and women who are in well-established, successful careers might want to go back and examine some of the ideas they had left behind in their college days-or perhaps to look In seminars on the great books, n::irtili""in::mt<: their at them for the first time. Business and professional people would gather for a long weekend to discuss fundamental questions of life and the world. It would be suited for anyone who might be saying: "IfI had it all to do over again ... " Using the St. John's model, with the guidance of two faculty members, participants at Classics Weekend spend six, two-hour sessions discussing ideas arising from readings on a particular topic. Seminar topics range from "'What It Means To Be a Good Citizen Today" and "The Foundations of American Society," with readings from de Tocqueville, Lincoln, the Bible, Locke, the Federalist and selected founding documents, to "Philosophy and Theology," where seminar participants delve into works by Plato, Aquinas, Kierkegaard, Buber, and Leo Strauss. Other topics include "Virtue and Character," "Essence of Leadership," "War, Peace, and Heroes," "Justice," and "Great Lives of Antiquity." Seminars typically meet Thursday afternoon for a couple of hours to get the weekend started, then Friday and Saturday mornings for two two-hour sessions each. The Santa Fe campus had begun an executive seminar weekend program two years before Tierney approached the college with the idea. The effort had met with only moderate success in recruiting participants. But Tierney furnished the school with a list of names, and that year, essentially the first for the ... continued on page 24 OMECOMlNG ANNAPO lS-OCTO ER 1 -3, 1999 ~e first weekend of October in L Annapolis: the freshmen are reading Plato, the sophomores are reading Virgil, the juniors are reading Hobbes, and the seniors are reading Marx. The graduate students are reading Aristotle and Homer. The alumni, however, are reading Proust, Dinesen, Milton, Kant, Wordsworth, Euclid, Austen, Maimonides, the Bible, Harper Lee, Homer, Shakespeare, Montaigne, and the 1937 St. John's College catalogue, in preparation for Homecoming Seminars. But most of Homecoming calls for student-style behavior of a different sort. This year there will be more parties than ever before, including a double-decker bash Saturday night, with a waltz/swing party in the Great Hall complemented bya simultaneous rock partyin the coffee shop. Andforthoselesswillingto stay up late and more desirous ofwaltzing than of swinging, there will be a Tea Waltz Saturday afternoon, with Elliott Zuckerman at the piano. (Short white gloves not inappropriate, but scarcely required.) The usual reception and rock party after the lecture Friday, remrion luncheons on Saturday, cocktail recep- Tutors Peter Kall<avage, Eva Brann, and Eric Salem get ready for Homecoming. tion Saturday evening, Homecoming Banquet, and champagne brunch on Sunday round out the social schedulefor party diehards, Saturday afternoon seminars will provide one of the few welcome breaks from the demands of the weekend. The more formal celebrations include a Friday night lecture by Curtis Wilson, and honors from the Alumni Association: dedication of a portrait of former president Edwin J. Delattre, honorary alumnus status awarded to Wye Jamison Allanbrook (former tutor), John Christensen (Director of Admissions), James Matthews (custodian at the college for thirty-six years) and Charles H. Watts II (longtime Board of Visitors and Governors member), and the Alumni Association Award of Merit given to Jeremy Leven A'64. Mr. Leven is the author and director of "Don Juan de Marco," starring Marlon Brando, Johnny Depp, and Faye Dunaway, which will be shown several times throughout the weekend. Romance, a likely story, famous faces, and great lines: it's Homecoming in a nutshell. • �The Progratn ... St. John's College, a Bastion of the West, Makes Room for the Classics of the East by Carolyn J. Mooney F aculty members at St. John's College like to talk about the "great conversation" of Western civilization. It's a discussion that has unfolded over centuries: Plato speaks to Homer, Aristotle to Plato, Dante to Aquinas, Machiavelli to all of them. Since 1937, St. John's-which has campuses here and in Annapolis, Md.-has based its undergraduate curriculum on the works of such authors, sealing its reputation as "the great books college." In the past few years, though, a growing circle of faculty members here has become interested in another conversation-the intellectual discourse of the East. Five years ago, the Santa Fe campus began offering what it believes is the nation's only master's -degree program on great books of the East. Those works, too, span centuries: Indian epic poets speak to Buddhist scripture writers, whose work travels to China, breakinto a dialogue between Confucianists and Taoists, That such a program would be offered at a college best known as a bastion of Western culture isn't that much of a says Krishnan enkatesh, the program's archon (Greek for leader) and a tutor, as faculty members here are known. "If there's one thing we're good at, it's our resourcefulness in reading books," he says. Just don't call the program multicultural. Scholars at this adobestyle campus near the snow-covered Sangre de Cristo Mountains still cringe when they hear that word. If anything, they see the program as the antithesis of the usual attempts to broaden curricula to satisfyvarious groups demanding change. Its focus is an intense study of important Eastern texts, such as the Rig Veda, a collection of sacred Hindu hymns; the Upanishads, Hindu religious and philosophical literature; the Analects of Confucius; and the Tao Teh Ching, a group of poems by Lao-tzu devoted to following the Tao, or "the way," of all things. Students also learn enough Sanskrit or Chinese to read passages in their original language. Back in 1992, when a pilot version of the program began, St. John's announced it was undertaking "a serious study of the classic texts of the East, rather than indulging in popularized interpretations of certain aspects of Eastern culture." It hoped that the program would serve as a model for colleges "embroiled in the push for 'multiculturalism.' " Mr. Venkatesh elaborates: "The reason we have a Western-books curriculum is that there's a coherent and developed conversation going on. When Lao-tzu is writing, he's address- ing someone else. We have to respect the integrity of the conversation." "Dropping the Bhagavad Gita into the undergraduate seminar," says James Carey, dean here and one of the program's founders, "would be tokenism." The undergraduate program at St. John's remains firmly Western (as does its master's program in liberal arts, offered on both campuses). It has retained its idiosyncrasies-no majors, no departments, and no faculty ranks beyond "tutor." All students read the same books in seminars, so that, as one scholar puts it, "there's no need to identify St. Paul." founder of Taoist philosophy, might have asked. A Chinese sage believed to have lived more than 2,500 years ago, Lao-tzu, whose name means "old master," wrote of the struggle to lead a balanced existence in a world of conflicting forces. His classic Tao Teh Ching is the subject of this evening's seminar. A student opens the class by posing a few questions: What is the nature of the Tao? (It's pronounced "dow.") How do we interpret the Tao, and how does it affect us, if at all? The questions lead to comments that lead to more questions that lead to more comments. j ~ u Michael DiMezza Sanscrit on the board an Eastern Classics tutorial. Still, it was inevitable that the Eastern Classics program would influence campus culture, even if in subtle ways. Because the program has no separate faculty, scholars who volunteer to teach in it must bone up on Eastern texts and languages, on their own or in the faculty study groups that already existed at St. John's. About 10 of the campus's 60 faculty members teach in the program each year, and as many as one-third have participated since it began. Scholars here routinely teach outside their fields, so it wasn't unusual for Linda Wiener, an entomologist who became interested in Chinese literature, to offer a preceptorial on early Taoist writings. What is new is a shifting of scholarly interests on the part of some faculty members. "The Eastern Classics program has diversified our interests," says Ralph Swentzell, one of two faculty leaders of the program's seminar. ''I'm not as concerned about the ins and outs of Plato versus Aristotle. I'm more concerned about Confucius versus the Taoists." Then there is the question of whether there are great books of the West, great books of the East, or only great books. It's a question Lao-tzu, the A few students discuss various translations of certain words, and then the group works through lines like these: "The Tao is an empty bowl, I Which in being can never be filled up." And: "Heaviness is the root of lightness. I Serenity is the master of restlessness." The Tao, one student says, "is empty, like a bowl. But it can also be useful, like a bowl." Another says: 'I never took the Tao to mean being or not being, but the merging of the two." A heated discussion takes place over a passage in which Lao-tzu advocates governing by Emptying the heart of desires, Filling the belly with food, Weakening the ambitions, Toughening the bones. Students wonder, Did the author mean that a leader should empower his people-or subjugate them? Students do most of the talking, as is customary here. (They also address one another formally in class. The gentility is quaintly jarring at first, when a student says he "liked Miss Hadley's suggestion.") The program has 18 students, but the faculty recently voted to expand it. Some of its students, like Michael DiMezza, hold bachelor's degrees from St. John's. "I thought once we got out of Greece, the world would be stood on its head," he says. "In fact, I found thatthe Hindus are probablythe underpinning of the Western tradition." The teaching approach defuses the kind of debate that might take place on other campuses." says Homayoon Sepasi, another student. "You learn that it's not either/or. One does not relinquish critical thinking because one is reading a book in another tradition." A discussion with the campus's dean and president about whether certain ideas are unique to the East or West becomes itself a kind of mini-seminar: Questions matter as much as answers. "We're leaving open the question of whether both cultures are even asking the same questions," says John Agresto, the president. (As acting and deputy chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities in the 1980s, Mr. Agresto relished a good scholarly skirmish. He still does.) Mr. Carey compares Hindu notions of man as a herd animal governed by caste with Aristotle's notion of man as a animal. The two then discuss Western efforts to faith and reason. Mr. Agresto: "I think the central Western idea is equality." Mr. Carey: "But it's false that Eastern thought is intuitive or mystic, and that Western thought is rational." The Indian scholar Nagarjuna, for example, was "a ferocious logician." Mr. Agresto: "But do Aristotle and the Hindus view the idea of soul in the same way?" Eastern versus Western ideas? "Ah, that's a huge question," Harvey Flaumenhaft, dean on the Annapolis campus, says later by telephone. And a good reason, he says, to have an Eastern Classics program-even though he opposed creating it. He worried that it could spread the faculty too thin and blur the college's mission. "The question isn't whether the program is a good thing, but whether it's a good thing for us to be doing," says the dean, who himself has scholarly interests in Chinese culture. Many people expect the undergraduate curriculum to remain firmly rooted in the West, for this reason: There is only so much time to read so many books. "What can you do well in the time you have?" says David Levine, director of the graduate institute. "The West is what most students have grown up with-so that's the place to begin. But in principle, the great books are not Eastern or Western." 8 Copyright 1999, The Chronicle ofHigher Education. Reprinted with permission. �....,..,_..L ..... .-. • • • :Aiusic cJiath Charms Music plays a part in the classroom and extracurricular life ofthe college, and Annapolis music librarian Eric Stoltzfus helps make it all happen. by SusJan Borden n 1996, Eric Stoltzfus, the Annapolis campus' music librarian, was at a Bach festival in Harrison-burg, Virginia. In preparation for a concert he was giving, he went to the nearby music library at James Madison University and asked for a CD of the cantata he was about to perform. "I took it over to the listening station and it was in pristine condition-didn't have a mark on it. And I thought: 'Wow, we have this in our library and it's totally destroyed!' Everything in the library gets sent out the door~ it's not just a reserve collection like in some academic settings. One of the great joys of our music library is that things get used up: records get destroyed, CDs are worn out. I feel good about that," Stoltzfus says. While the average music librarian might object to his collection being ravaged, Stoltzfus is well aware that he is not in charge of your average music library. "When I came to St. John's," he says, "I found something that I had never really experienced before. When I worked in the music library at Catholic University, people came to the music library, for the most part, to fulfill requirements. But here, people come to fill something elseto fill an enthusiasm they've gained through sophomore music. I see so much enthusiasm, at times it reaches a point of almost violent arguments about, say, which performance of the St. Matthew Passion is better than the others. Something is really at stake for these students." In addition to overseeing an extraordinarily well-used collection of CDs and scores, Stoltzfus is also responsible for the St. John's College Concert Series, which presents two or three concerts a year during the Friday night lecture timeslot. "The concert series has been going on for decades and has a tremendous history of bringing great music to Annapolis," Stoltzfus says. "In the fifties, some of the most important groups in the world, like the Julliard String Quartet, would come here. They'd give a concert on a Friday, stay overnight, and give informal recitals for the students on Saturdays. A group like that is out of our financial range now, but we have had some really wonderful concerts over the years." Among the most memorable concerts, Stoltzfus lists performances by the Angeles String Quartet, the Orlando Consort, pianist Eugene lstomin, and guitarist Eliot Fisk. "What I remember sometimes about these concerts is not so much the music, but the audience. There I is a concentration and an excitement that I remember when the music has faded from my mind," says Stoltzfus. "And the truth is, that's what the performers remember. The performers who come to St. John's give concerts at colleges all across the country and around the world. The feeling in most college concert halls, in general, is not very exciting. Then they come here, they go out onto the stage, they begin playing, and-this with a jazz band. But at St. John's, while the formation of music groups is encouraged by the administration, they must be led, as all things are, by the students," he says. So rather than being the driving force behind such groups, Stoltzfus makes the music library a center for their activities. "If the students want something to happen, they must do it themselves," he says. Three exceptions to this general rule are the "d ~ 6 = ~ ~ Eric Stoltzfus leads a group of students who meet once a weel< to sing madrigals. is what they tell me, almost without fail: 'All of a sudden, we felt that the audience was involved with what we were doing, that they were paying attention, that they were engaged.' It's amazing for the performers and they really appreciate it." While it's tempting to attribute the students' attentiveness to the fact that everyone at the college studies music, Stoltzfus has other theories about why St. John's students make such a good audience for musicians. "They come to the concerts to be engaged intellectually," he says. "They come with the expectation that the performers will bring something to them that they can become involved in. The concerts are approached-not as an escape or entertainment-but as an intellectual activity." In addition to running the library and coordinating the concert series, Stoltzfus works to foster musical activities on campus. He hook up students and teachers for private lessons and bring together students who wish to play in ensembles. "At a normal college, there may be a department of applied music where the administration decides to have a jazz band. They hire a director and they end up school's chorus, chamber orchestra, and a capella singing group, which are led by tutors and meet for one hour every week. "The idea of having a single oneh our rehearsal a week is pretty ludicrous, really, but this is part of St. John's approach to music," says Stoltzfus. "Instead of perfecting the technical aspect of the performance, people join the groups to explore what's going on in the music. During rehearsals, we bring up questions such as 'how does your part relate to this part that another section is singing?' or 'why do you think that this little bit was composed in this way?' "Maybe it goes back to something that I thought about when I first arrived here. I saw people in the sophomore tutorial and elsewhere reading about music, and thinking about it in a different way than I had experienced. If you wanted to learn music theory, in my experience, you went step-by-step through a workbook and concentrated on the specific physical things that happen in the score. But that's never enough here. Every step of the way, there's always more to consider. People want to know what things mean. They are bold enough to ask that kind of question: 'what does it mean?'" As Stoltzfus becomes more deeply involved in the life of St. John's, he finds himself more and more engaged in such questions of meaning. This has become particularly true during the last three years, as he has added the leading of the sophomore music tutorial to his list of college activities. While Stoltzfus' background-a BA in music and an MA in musicology, along with nearly two decades of playing cello and singing with semi-professional groups-would seem to qualify him to teach this course, Stoltzfus is not so certain. As a visiting tutor, Stoltzfus only teaches music, and so finds himself without the reference points that the rest of the campus takes for granted. "I have a lot of musical background, so on the one hand I feel like I really have something to offer. On the other hand, I've never been a student at St. John's College. I consider it a serious potential defect in my ability to be a tutOT that I haven't done freshman seminar, I haven't gone through Euclid, and I haven't studied Greek," he says. In an effort to remedy this problem, Stoltzfus audited a freshman math class. The tutor began one class by saying, 'okay, who's up?' And then he didn't say a word until the end when he said, 'okay, I'll see you tomorrow,'" Stoltzfus reports. "A student would go to the blackboard to demonstrate a proposition in geometry. He would try to work it out, get confused, get help from another student, say 'I'm lost, I can't do it, I'm going to have to sit down,' and then just keep working, fight it through, and finally make the demonstration work. "It was a tremendous class and it reminded me of something that Eva Brann, then the dean, said when I first was invited to teach. She looked at me and sort of smiled and said 'I think you'll be a good tutor because you won't talk too much."' This summer, Stoltzfus finds himself at the end of his eighth year at St. John's. He is in charge of a library he is happy to see destroyed rather than preserved, he arranges for concerts that students will listen to as much with their heads as with their ears, and he teaches classes in which he is prized for his ability to hold his tongue. While it's not what his studies in library science, his lifetime of playing music, his cello performances with the Annapolis Symphony, or his decades in classrooms prepared him for, he nonetheless says of the music tutorials, "It's been tremendously enriching for me."• �Letters ... "Singin' in the Rain " I second Glenda Eoyang's praise of "Singin' in the Rain" (Winter issue) as an antidote for February. In 1974, I shared a common wall, in Urania, with the head of the Film Society, Steve Thomas. As any good projectionist would, Steve previewed the film in his room, to ensure that there were no unspliced breaks. As I recall, he previewed it at least 17 times! After "Roots," one of my Dad's cousins took on the task of genealogical research, and found that Gene Kelly was my grandfather's second cousin. To those women who can remember what a poor dancer I was, I can only say that Cousin Kelly had all the dancing genes in the family. -William Malloy, SF77 Reason and Emotion Revisited We feel as if we have to suppress one to deal with the other. The community at St. John's seemed, in my personal experience, to have heightened an awareness of this dichotomy. Tomkins clears up this central question in life. A question that is asked at the school, but the works we read do not satisfactorily resolve the dilemma; and so we go about our lives thinking it is a unsolvable mystery. Tomkins is a major thinker in the history of thought. He is known for other things in the world of psychology. We who are involved with his thought truly see him as the Einstein of the mind. It has been my experience that I can read nothing, feel nothing and cannot reason about anything in the same way since coming to know his insight. It is because he has shown me how to use reason to look at emotion and in a way that weds emotion and reason. I encourage all to first read Donald Nathanson's book. I would encourage anyone to contact me for further information and I would be happy to inform the college in any way I could about this work. I am in Chicago and looking for venues to present his ideas locally and to possibly having a study group. I read with great interest recent letters concerning the issue of reason vs. emotion as it involves college life. Oflate my life has been more concerned with these matters. I am a Family Doctor in Chicago. The combination of St John's, medicine, and -Brian Lynch, A 76 a basic life search to unify mind and B3393@aol.com body did much to push me along roads that are now impossible to not travel. I am reminded of it daily tryWaltz History ing to put the mind and body togethAbout the waltz parties at St. er in the act of taking care of patients. This has been most satisfy- John's in the Spring 1999 edition: I am afraid that Mark St. John will have ing as it has led me to the work of to reach farther back than the time of two men who have gone a quantum step in solving the problems encoun- SF Student Activities Director Fehervary, who may have come upon tered when we think of the mind the idea of waltzing independently. In and body as a whole. This speaks directly to what goes on at the school 1957-3, Lenke Vietorisz (A62), Maria Flaschberger (A62), and Alexa in terms of emotion and reason as Nadosy (A61) began teaching some well as how the mind and bodywork of us how to waltz. These informal together in the newly diagnosed dialessons progressed rapidly into betic, and why high school children . organized waltz parties which genershoot other high school children. ally followed the Friday night The work I refer to is that of Question Period into the early hours Silvan S. Tomkins and Donald (until the women were required to Nathanson. Dr. Nathanson, who is a psychia- retire to their dorms, around 2 a.m. as I recall). Possibly these three can trist in Philadelphia, wrote a book give a more detailed description of called Shame and Pride: Affect, Sex the actual events. and The Birth ofSelfput out by W.W. Norton. Tomkins (no 'p') -David Schiller (A62) wrote a four volume set called Affect Imagery Consciou.sness (AIC). Nathanson added to and set out SJC Poetic Inspiration Tomkins' thought in his beautifully As a graduate alumnus from written book. 1933-34, I must report that the two I have brought these works to summers I spent reawakening my the attention of at least one tutor and I am certain that Tomkins' work mind were far and away the best of my life. As a retired foreign language will be on the program some day. I, teacher, I have indelible memories and I suspect all of us, go through of superb learning inspired by an life thinking that there is something wrong with the way we, as a commu- outstanding program. Currently, I teach part-time nity, deal with reason and emotion, ESL at Suffolk Community College, and that means any community. audit classes at the state university in Old Westbury, participate in a Great Books discussion group in Locust Valley Library, and write poetry as the spirit moves me. I enclose a poem which best expresses what St. John's did for me. Liftoff In a Greek Space I keep Achilles by my side, and with the wise Athena looking on, journey with a well-bred Ithacan to sea-borne places far and wide, watch in vain as mighty Zeus consigns a sad Prometheus to live his life in pain, am there when neither haughty Creon nor Antigone gives in, and when the dark Medea exacts brute vengeance for her wounded pride, applaud but cry anyway. Placed thus on high Olympus, where men with eyes are blind as blind men see, I soar to immortality and leave the weight of earth behind. -Murray Cohen, SGI84 More about that "3" I am writing to correct a reference to Tom Lehrer's character Hen3ry made by Todd Everett in the Summer 1993 issue of The Reporter. Hen3ry was actually a writer himself. He is the author of a novel about a "young necrophiliac who finally achieved his boyhood ambition by becoming coroner." Hen3ry was later taken away to the "Massachusetts State Home for the Bewildered." It was Dr. Samuel Gall, inventor of the Gallbladder, who, while at agricultural school, "majored in animal husbandry, until they caught him at it." -Jacqueline E. Kaye, A85 An Opinion on St. Johns History St. John's is now, happily, a permanent part of the American educational scene. But as every St. Johnny knows, it was not always so. No single book tells the early story as well as The Search for a Liberal College by the Rev. J. Winfree Smith. Mr. Smith was meticulously factual in telling the St. John's story. I think, however, it not improper, given when I attended St. John's, to offer a theory about its development that is somewhat revisionist. Its thesis is that there were four individuals without whose contributions St. John's would not exist. They are, in chronological order: Mortimer Adler, Scott Buchanan, Paul Mellon, and Jacob Klein. All were necessary but by no means sufficient conditions for the emergence of an institution whose sole aim was and is to provide the atmosphere that encourages a truly liberal education. Three caveats. First, the thesis only applies from the 1930s up to and including the late 1950s. Second, the thesis only includes the contributions that these individuals made to St. John's and not what they otherwise may have accomplished either in education or in other fields. Third, around each of these pivotal figures there were certainly other individuals whose work played an important role in what they didRobert Hutchins in the case of Mortimer Adler, Stringfellow Barr in the case of Scott Buchanan, Adolph Schmidt in the case of Paul Mellon, and in the case of Jacob Klein-Robert Bart, Curtis Wilson (who succeeded Klein in the deanship), Richard Scofield, Ford Brown, John Kieffer, Winfree Smith, William Darkey, and others including Eva Brann. Mortimer Adler - Whatever one may think of Adler and the enterprises in which he was engaged during a very long life (he is now in his 90s), it was Adler andAdler pretty much alone who picked up the idea of reading classic works from a program first introduced by Professor Erskine at Columbia University early in the 20th century. Adler took that seed of an idea of reading great books and nourished it in a variety of ways. Brought to the University of Chicago by Robert Hutchins, Adler taught a great books seminar there with him. Adler also knew the budding philosopher Scott Buchanan and Mark Van Doren. This eventually led to a Committee on the Liberal Arts, a group from which the movement to institutionalize the great books derived. Above all, .Adler early on wrote the bestseller How to Read a Book, which exerted more influence over time in nurturing converts to the great books idea than anything else, except perhaps for the college itself. Scott Buchanan - First and foremost, it is incontestable that Scott · Buchanan was the man who used the college that was in order to become the founder of the college to be. Winfree Smith made an important point about Scott Buchanan in his story about the establishment of the New Program. He noted that Buchanan was not particularly interested in the substance of the books but rather saw them as vehicles or ... continued on page 11 �Robert Sacks •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Robert Sacks (A54) is retiring as a tutor in Santa Fe, but everyone-including Mr. Sackshopes to see him back in the tutors chair in the.future. Aaron Mehlhaff, SFO I Sacks was born to Solomon and Ada Sacks of Akron, Ohio, the first quarter of the twentieth century. Having been born with cerebral palsy, he credits his parents for pushing him to be active, for bringing him up to be a part of normal society. Without them, Mr. Sacks doesn't believe that he would be able to speak ("It took a long time fm people to realize that the sounds I was making were speech"). During his childhood, Mr. Sacks' mother was involved in theatre. Because there were no tape recorders at the time, Mr. Sacks never heard his own voice, and he allowed himself to dream of becoming an actor. He carried this dream with him while searching for colleges. As he was looking for schools he visited St. lillna'po11s and with Jacob Klein. "I never tn<m~mtnu before that It " he re1nemamJUe:ct to turned the admissions office didn't even seem to notice his cerebral Mr. Sacks considers this an honor to the college. Mr. Sacks says . "As well as I can remember he wanted to talk about Newton instead. The great books themselves are that and other things don't matter much, and that seems to carry over even to the everyday, mundane workings of the college itself." Mr. Sacks graduated from in 1954. He was a tutor at Annapolis from 1961 to 1969. He received a Ph.D. in Humanities from John's Hopkins University in 1963. In 1969 he moved to Santa Fe, where he has been a tutor since. There have been a few intermittent visits to Robert Sacks St. Mary's College, Middlebury, and other colleges. When asked to comment on how he views himself, he replied, "We are born into the middle of thought. I find myself with the notions like inertia just standing there as if they naturally were there like so many apples falling from a tree. I fail to see them as the labor of human thought, other people's thought, not my own. When I try to understand myself, I find that that self I want to understand is partly hidden between dusty books unopened for hundreds of years. Their ghosts flit thoughtlessly from mind to mind in turns of speech and I think it's up to us to make those thoughtless thoughts which we breath in the air into living thoughts again, if only to understand ourselves." He finished his passionate response to the question of how he sees "That's what I do." Soon Mr. Sacks The introduction ofhis two-volume text, The Lion and The Ass: A COJnmoentan' on"' vv _,_,..,"" v lished in 1972, details this time in his life. "'This book " enteen years ago at the home of Professor Leo Strauss ... the talk soon centered on Genesis. At the end of our discussion Dr. and said 'Mr. aboutthe Book of Genesis. Please come to it was every Shabbat The Lion and The Ass was later in an form as volume six of Ancient Near Eastern Texts and Studies in 1990. Mr. Sacks also has a which he in translation and on the Book 1993. This text lead to a recent lecture tour on He is also working on puonsnmg a text on Hebrew grammar. His work on the Book of} ob is based on what Mr. Sacks considers a central issue to who Western society is. In the introduction he says: "We in the Western tradition have the blessing and the curse of finding ourselves heirs to two quite different ways of life and hence to two quite different ways of thought...The problem to which I refer is often spoken of as the problem of Science versus Religion ... More fundamentally, and perhaps less prejudicially, we may call it the question of... Greek Philosophy and The Hebrew Bible. ... Rarely can they be caught addressing the same question in ways that can be compared with true clarity of thought. Such considerations as these eventually led me to the Book of Job since, of the books of the Bitl.e, it seemed to me to be most in contact with those problems which gave rise to Greek Philosophy." Mr. Sacks' primary project for his retirement is to study a possible relationship between Saul, in the Book of Samuel, and Agamemnon of Homer's Iliad. His interest in the Bible began with the Book of Samuel, and what this book says about striving to be a king. At that time he was also separately con.,.;rip... .;n ..... the relationshiu of Achilles to AE!amemnon and to the Greek in the Iliad. It was not until recently that a friend of Mr. Sacks' in Santa Fe suggested that someone consider the two together, as two sources addressing the same issues ofleadership. The fascination aroused by that first conversation with Jacob Klein introduced Mr. Sacks to St. John's and the intellectual world. When asked why he remained a tutor, as opposed to seeking another job in academia, he replies, ''I'll be damned if I'll find an honest job. Getting paid for teaching is terribly dishonest. They pay the bills me other kids to " Teaching is not work to Mr. Sacks, but a leisure because in ""-nllcnnnIT~AT11rh other kids" he not onlvteaches. but learns. However he do your ... • to teach mathematics, which relates to his n;o.vi" .,."''"''Appolonius as a itself available to the awake mind." Director of the Graduate Institute also mentions this generosias one of his most noticeable characteristics. Alisa a graduate student of Mr. Sacks', is impr;ess,ed by "the generosity of his spirit, he gives so much of himself in his classes and " President Agresto says of Sacks, «He has loads of friends, and I don't think he has an enemy in the world. He's one of the few faculty that has students who become followers and friends." Mr. Agresto tells the story ofwhen Ed Delattre (president of the college from 1980 to 1986) said, "Bob Sacks is one of the best ambassadors the school could have to the town." In fact, Mr. Agresto notes that "people will come from other places to this campus and want to spend time with him. I'd heard about how smart he is and how captivating he is long before I'd become president." Mr. Sacks' love for learning can be seen in the way he treats the discussion on the great books. Ms. Smith is impressed with how he never settles on a merely adequate answer. "He wouldn't let things rest because people agreed on it or it sounded good." This intense and exact questioning not only gives him the best grasp on a topic as also is a pedagogical method. David Levine, who has known Mr. Sacks for over 30 years. says, "He understands the difficulties a student has in J,,<r,,..,....;,...,... 1-.n think for himself or herself. His own love a model for the life of the ~ someone to the whatever is at issue is possible. People are 1m1pn:ed. " this love he has. He has adventure that we n~~·T~ ~~P Of When We talk tO him." Mr. Sacks of the Porter in this spring's student ,_,duction of Macbeth. When asked if he intended to n<l!T'T1 " 1 ::->n:a1u~spem~e TlroC1uc1'.1011s he l'<r 1 •rr,~T 0 one for an actor with cerebral I've done all I can for Shakespeare." Mr. Sacks' expe1·ience with Shakespeare does go this one perto,rrr1ance; he directed productions of Shakespeare at both Santa Fe and Al1mapolls, and has been known to turn his sophomore language tutorial's study of a Shakespearean play into a small theatrical production, even using the balcony and placita of the Fine Arts Building as stages. Mr. Sacks remains interested in the theatre and hopes to do more during his retirement. I was lucky enough to have Mr. Sacks for sophomore language this year. I found him to be generous, bright, imaginative, kind, patient, and able to make intellectual endeavors vivid and exciting. Mr. Sacks really exemplifies the joys of an intellectual life. His philosophy about learning and about life are so closely intertwined that in learning with him in class, one also learns a lot about how to live life. One day before class began, my classmates were discussing rock operas and the work of Andrew Lloyd Weber. ijow, exactly, should the differences between rock operas, rock musicals, and similar media be delineated? Mr. Sacks entered the room, listened for a few minutes, and then in a pause in the conversation, said, "Why does everything have to fit into nice little cubbyholes for you?" This comment has stayed with me since then. I have realized that this is not simply a statement about our conversation, but a view with which we can see all of creation. e �THE DEAN'S STATEMENT OF EDUCATIONAL POLICY Aaron SFOI and more Letters continued.from page 9 he College instruction committee is chaired by the this and other issues of great importance. This dialogue Dean of each campus, alternating on a yearly basis. is the unifying point for those who are members of the The Polity states that the Dean who holds the posi- school's intellectual activity. Because liberal education is a form of philosophy and "prides itself on its ,._._ .__Lll...,_,"'tion must write a "Statement of Educational Policy," in ness to examine its own presuppositions," it is essential addition to the committee. This statement is to the program that there be a debate as to the viability then submitted to the faculty, and afterwards presented of its aims. "Paradoxically, the College needs at least to the Board of Visitors and Governors along with a some faculty who think that the loftiest end of liberal on the faculty's views on the statement. education cannot be attained, if the College is to have a The Dean's Statement of Educational Policy for reasonable prospect of attaining 1999, written by James Carey, this end." Dean of the Santa Fe campus, is a So, to reconsider the purpose statement on the foundation of of this statement, the intellectual the great books program, a statecenter is the dialogue of different ment on the foundation of the colviews on fundamental issues, and Mr. Careywas comthe basic aim of the great books to address this topic by two program is to take the various main forces: opinions on the fundamental In recent years, Statements of issues, and attempt to replace Educational Policy have treated them with knowledge. Thus the important issues offaculty develintent of a liberal education proopment, intercampus unity, chalgram diffe1·s greatly from what is lenges to the program.from the outactually the focus of intellectual side, the quality ofstudent life, activity. In fact, the intellectual and the size ofthe College. Various center is a part of the basic aim of aspects ofthe curriculum have the program, because dialogue been addressed as well, such as the James Carey, Santa Fe Dean about the issues is presupposed if language curriculum, writing, and the laboratory But it has been a while since a Statement there is to be any hope of turning opinions on the issues into knowledge. And one must remember that only ofEducational Policy has attempted to articulate the some issues are necessarily important in the dialogue: basic principles and presuppositions ofthe program If, then, it is concern with the fundamental questions taken as a whole. In my last statement I wrote that "the that leads us to the liberal arts and to the great books in College does have an intellectual center and one that the first place, these questions can be said both to provoke accommodates a wide range ofopinions about what the development ofand cultivation ofthe intellectualpowers and to sustain our endeavor at the College. A sensitivity to these questions is the chiefprecondition ofliberal edushould entail. " Without elaboration, I referred to the cation, and a liberally educated human being is one who intellectual center ofthe College as "well defined and does not underestimate their weight. Accordingly, one clearly understood. " Conversations I have had with colmight design a liberal arts curriculum, or evaluate one leagues since then have led me to believe that it might be already in place, by attempting to determine how sucuseful to try to articulate exactly what the intellectual cessfully it keeps these questions in sight.... It is unlikely center ofthe College is, and to locate it relative to the that any College in the country has given more sustained basic aims ofthe program. reflection to the principles ofits academic enterprise than Dean Carey believes that the aim of the great books St. Johns has. But have we given enough? The loftiest program is to move from opinion towards knowledge, conception ofwhat we are aiming at, namely, human especially regarding the "fundamental questions of enduring significance." This, he says, is the official posi- .freedom at its acme, requires a vigilance ofthought that is hard to sustain. We run the risk ofturning radical tion of the College, "according to its original concepenquiry itselfinto a catchword... No one doubts the richtion, and as it has been typically understood." But the Dean also notes that there is a range of opinion concern- ness ofthe program. Almost everything we study here is, ing whether or not it is possible to achieve this end. Both beyond the shadow ofa doubt, interesting, even exciting. certain authors, and members of the college community, Still, are allparts ofthe education equally liberating? Because the dialectical, intellectual center, which question humanity's ability to replace opinions on these ultimately underlies the basic aim of the program, is the fundamentals with knowledge about them: dialogue derived from discussion of these fundamental It is possible, I think, to identify in the program two questions, the Dean asks the question of whether or not principal and independent sources of doubts about the the "tensions implied in these questions ... shape the conpossibility ofliberal education according to its original tours of the curriculum?" His answer to this question is conception. The Bible is one such source, and Nietzsche is to rethink the program in light of the questions. In doing the other. To be sure, there are other sources, for example, so he suggests a few changes: skepticism. But in terms ofpresent influence on faculty The Program could be made more coherent, could be and in the program, these two are the chiefsources. In made more ofa whole, by attending more carefully to the opposition to both is the officialposition ofthe College as an institution dedicated to liberal education according to fundamental questions and the places in the curriculum where they most readily come to the fore. The following its original conception. This position is exemplified by changes suggest themselves. They are notproposals. classicalphilosophy, which ranges from Socratic quesThey are suggestions merely, and are offeredfor faculty tioning to considerably more ambitious attempts to articdiscussion ofthe program construed as an integrated ulate "the whole. "The intellectual center ofthe College, whole resting on clear and consistentprinciples. then, is not our common agreement on the possibility of Dean Carey's final statement is an invitation to the replacing opinion about the most important things with faculty which this article opens to the alumni communiknowledge, for such agreement does not exist. The intelty and the other members of The Reporter audience: "My lectual center ofthe College is, in fact, not the Colleges chief hope, in placing these suggestions before the faculofficialposition. The intellectual center ofthe College is ty, is that by addressing them we will be led to reflect on rather the tension between opposing views regarding the nature oftruth and the possibility ofknowledge, and con- what we mean by 'the program.' " The Dean's statement is available from the Public sequently, between opposing views ofwhat constitutes Relations Office, 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, the most choice worthy life. NM 87501, or on the Internet at www.sjcsf.edu/ The intellectual center of the college then becomes the conversation between the differingviewpoints, on academic/ deans.htm. • catalysts for getting the students to think deeply about ideas and not necessarily the ideas that came directly from whatever book was being read. But Winfree Smith did not sufficiently dwell on the means Buchanan used to stimulate thought. Buchanan was an artist in provoking others by using his status as his reputation as a unique kind of philosopher, as well as his relationship to President Barr. (No one who has ever seen them together could doubt who was in command.) He also was adept at employing silence as a form of rhetoric in a seminar as a way to stimulate thought. Paul Mellon - Much is already known about Paul Mellon's role in the history of the college. He, indeed, was "converted," as it were, to the idea of a real liberal education, spent part of a freshman year at the college, did not get on well with mathematics but very much liked studying classical Greek. A reliable source told me Mellon once said that he could think of no better career than to teach Greek at St. John's. He left St. John's after a time, in part, because his obligations, given his vast wealth, could not be met while he remained a student. His continuing generosity toward the college is legendary. Jacob Klein - Havingwritten about Jascha Klein in the "Letters" section of the last Reporter, I will say little here. He was my mentor; I have never had a conversation with him, read any of his books, lectures, or letters without learning something. As for what he did for St. John's, let the last word be that of James Carey, dean in Santa Fe: "There would not be a St. John's were it not for Jacob Klein." -Robert Hazo, A53 The Reporter 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 either campus: Annapolis - The Reporter, Public Relations Office, St. John s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404 or e-mail b-goyette@sjca.edu. Santa Fe - The Reporter, Public Relations Office, St. John s College, I 160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87501 or e-mail dassics@mail.sjcsf.edu. �(}Onl/nl/~///D~nl/~///f; P oetry can take us from reading as passive recreation to reading as active Te-creation of ourselves, suggested Robert Fagles in his commencement address to the 91 seniors, 24 master's degree candidates, and their family and friends on May 14 in Annapolis. Fagles, a professor of comparative literature at Princeton and translator of The Iliad and The Odyssey, used his talk about poetry as a and heartfelt reassurance that the life of reflection and the life of action-the life within the college and the life outside it on one level-are intimately connected. Peter Kalkavage, the faculty speaker, asked the question: what makes thinking alive? Citing the vast number of ideas St. John's students deal with overthe course of four years, he asked graduates to consider what brought certain "thinkables" to life for them. Fagles began by noting that St. John's is a place where poetry is required. He cited Robert Frost, who compared poetry to love, saying that both begin in delight and end in wisdom. He talked about the process of" carrying over" or translating the meaning of a poem into our own lives. In this process, he said, reading becomes a "vivid form of action" rather than, or in addition to, a passive entertainment. The ancient Greek world as portrayed in its poetry becomes a real place for us when we allow ourselves to be affected. As an example, Fagles cited a passage in Homer he finds particularly affecting: "I ... can never read Andromache's lament for Hector in grieving that their son Astyanax must be orphaned of his father, without seeing myself as well, orphaned of my father too, when I was rather young. But no sooner have I entered into the spirit of Andromache's lament than I find myself enlarged by Homer's poetry-a medium so unsparing, so immediate in it pain and yet so ennobling too, that being an orphan becomes, in one and the same breath, a passport to being human, a vulnerable yet enduring part of the race." ~//////ll/F'O"t~ Fagles also read-in an ancient Greek so mellifluous as to be unrecognizable to St. John's student used to laboriously parsing their way thrnugh passages syllable by syllable-the epic "shipwTecked sailor" simile from the Odyssey in which Penelope and Odysseus finally recognize each other. He pointed out that the shipwrecked sailor does not really apply as a simile to Odysseus, who is himself shin-wrecked sailor not ANNAPOLIS mind the twins eras and thumos-love and spiritedness. Eros makes us ask questions, he said-as the offspring of resourcefulness and poverty, love is the cunning poverty that inspires students to question. Thumos, on the other hand, is "the place in the From left: Michael Goodrum and Deborah Carlos celebrate with Robert Fagles and Peter Kalkavage address the graduates; students find great viewimr from Pinkney s upper floors. like one. Instead, it applies to Penelope; "she too is a shipwrecked sailor, having weathered years of buffeting, stormed by the suitors here at home, in Ithaca, until the return of her husband returns her to the land that they possess in common." The delight that we feel about a passage such as the one from The Odyssey can end in wisdom if we "translate it into the texture of our lives"; it will become "the wisdom of the land that we return to, the basis of the love we bear one another." Fagles con duded by saying that this love may be what is most worth pursuing and preserving as graduates commence the rest of their lives. soul where depth meets clarity. We experience the thumos of thinking when we realize something deep down." Such realizations sometimes transform us forever, he said. Kalkavage also brought up the importance of "intelligent play," which inspires imagination and serves as a counterweight to the seriousness of thumos. Kalkavage concluded by asking the graduates to remember not to think of their education as complete. "Do not let the logos within you die," he cautioned. e -by Barbara Goyette PRESERVING THE PASSION OF THE LOGOS "Hegel tells us that nothing great in the world is ever achieved ·without passion," said Peter Kalkavage to the graduating seniors, many of whom he taught, and to the master's candiright about the world and dates. "He is about you. For what you have done here in coursing through the program is great as well as good, noble as well as useful. And it has all been the work of your passion for learning. It was your passion that brought you to this college and kept you here in difficult times. It was your passion for the thinkable that made thinking alive." In analyzing this passion, Kalkavage called to AWARDS AN To the members of the Senior Class who have written the best Senior Essays. Offered in memory of Simon Kaplan, Tutor Emeritus, by his widow, Mrs. Kaplan: Piroska Katalin Kopar. Offered in memory of Susan Irene Roberts ( 1966): Derek Preston Alexander and Sean Shanti Forester. Honorable mention: Dana Beth Ostrander and Gary Arthur Temple II. UYY To the member of the Junior Class who has written the best annual essay. Offered by Mrs. Leslie Clark Stevens in memory of her daughterin-law, Kathryn Mylorie Stevens: Markus Christoph Glodek. Honorable mention: Robert Pickett Dickson and Alan Howard Rubenstein. To the member of the Sophomore Class who has written PRIZES the best annual essay. Offered under the will of the late Judge Walter I. Dawkins ( 1880): Sarah Elizabeth Whitesel. Honorable mention: Justin Donald Andrews and Maria Christina Cassimatis. To the member of the Freshman Class who has written the best annual essay. Offered in memory of Jacob Klein, Tutor Emeritus, and his wife, Else, by the Dean: Blakely Lauren Phillips. Honorable mention: Nina Karin Isaacson. To the Graduate Institute student who has written a distinguished preceptorial essay. Offered by the Alumni Association: Fairlea Ann Sheehy. To a member of the Senior Class, for excellence in speaking. Offered in memory of Senator Millard E. Tydings of Maryland: Pamela Jean Bergson. �[ft~ s we tested our most rudimentary language skills - lining up in alphabetical order - assisants to the registrar administered sunscreen and bottles of water. I suppose the general consensus was that if we were wearing caps and gowns we kind of civil discourse that makes a democracy work. We don't listen. We don't reflect. We don't learn. We attack. Butyouknowbetter, don'tyou?" He spoke candidly about the different manifestations of the crisis as he sees it in our society, drawing from his own personal experience in American politics. Offering an inspiring example to the 1999 graduating class, he recounted what role civility played in his family's tradition service. From left: Fammes gather after the ceremony; speaker Tom Udall; Paul lopez is congratulated by john Agresto; Liz Bors.hard and Amber Boydstun. had made it through the worst. Thus, we settled down to listen to the guest speaker's address, happy and calm amid the ceremonious excitement. Full of compliments to the St. John's program, Thomas Udall, a New Mexico congressman, addressed the 1999 graduating class of 65 undergraduates and 27 graduate students. His address was more of an experience of the real world than a philosophical exploration on "what it means to be entering the real world." That we were entering the "real world" was a given. Mr. Udall's direct contact with modern political life lent a real-time feel to his speech. He offered a perspective on what that real world is like and of what value a St. John's education is to that world. "You have attended an unusual and perhaps unique institution." he began. "As graduates of St. John's, you have had precisely the sort of liberal education that will serve our country best in this time of crisis. And the particular crisis I am concerned about - as ABC labeled it the other night on the network news - is the civility crisis. "This is a crisis that really strikes at the core of our democratic system. We no longer engage in the His uncle, former congressman Morris "Mo" Udall, had the reputation of being a man who "exemplified the best of the American spirit, [proving] that honor need not yield to ambition, that open-mindedness and willingness to listen are not inconsistent with devotion to principle, that civility can accompany tenacity, and that humility should go hand in hand with power." He continued, "I have a personal interest in promoting civility and I think I'm talking to the right crowd." "You have had a liberal education in the best sense of the word." To expound, Mr. Udall appealed to the authoritative words of present Santa Fe dean James Carey, and former Annapolis dean Eva Brann. "Dean Carey has described a liberal education in terms of the examined life - the opportunity to raise and discuss fundamental questions of enduring significance [see the Dean's Statement of Educational Policy on the Santa Fe web site www.sjcsf.edu/academic/ deans.htm]. On the Annapolis campus, Eva Brann has written that the first and last unabashed answer to the question 'why engage in a liberal AN To the student who submits the best English version of a Greek text. Offered in memory of John S. Kieffer, President Emeritus: Samuel Joseph Garcia. To the student who submits the best English version of a French poem. Offered by the Board of Visitors and Governors: Robert Pickett Dickson. To the student who submits a fine original English poem. Offered PRIZES by Dr. George Austin in memory of his brother Henry: Patrick McCormack Findler. Honorable mention: Bryan Howard Thorpe and Kristin Rapp Woodfin. To the student who submits a fine essay on a piece of music. Offered in memory of Mary Joy Belknap: Nicholas Gaston Holovaty. To the student who submits the most elegant solution to a geometrical education?' is to learn something worth knowing forits own sake." Mr. Udall had a personal response to this view of education: "For myself, I have always viewed education as a journey, not a destination. St. Dean , makes the same about education: 'The habits of questioning and thoughtful reflection that we to inculcate in our students should be habits that continue to shape their lives after they leave the college.' These habits make good citizens. They p:romote civil discourse. Thus, by any definition, your liberal education is an experience that will serve you well in this world whatever you decide to do." He continued with a heartfelt call for a better world. "There are a lot of things the world needs these days. We need more reason. We need more compassion. We need more tolerance. We need more understanding. And underlying it all, to make this happen, we need to return to civility- the civility that is a byproduct of a liberal education. You might say we need more St. John's!" Udall, originally from Tucson, Arizona, was elected to Congress from New Mexico's 3rd Congressional District. He sits on the House Small Business Committee, the House Committee on Resources, and was elected by his peers as one of three freshman Democratic Whips. Udall has served as Assistant United States Attorney, as Chief Counsel for the New Mexico Health and Environment Department, and as New Mexico's Attorney General. His father, Stewart Udall, served in the United States House of Representatives from 1954-1960 and continued under Kennedy and Johnson as Secretary of Interior. His uncle, Morris Udall, represented Arizona in Congress from 1961-1991. e -by Sarah Fridrich, SF9 9 ... Continued problem. Offered by the Class of 1986 in memory of Bryce Jacobsen ( 1942), Tutor and Director of Athletics Emeritus: Christian Michael Moser. To the student who submits the most elegant solution to an analytical problem. Offered in memory of James R. McClintock ( 1965): Erika Margaret Nesse. To the student who carries out a fine laboratory project: Bryan Howard Thorpe. Special blazers for the Senior man and woman who by their participation, leadership, and sportsmanship have contributed most to the Colleges athletic program. Offered by the Alumni Association of St. John s College: Benjamin Ide Closs and Abigail Lisa Gibbs. To a member of the Senior Class ... continued nextpage �PRIZES - continuedfrom page 13 who has contributed outstanding service to the Greater Annapolis Community. Offered by the Caritas Society of St. John s College: Eve Alexandra Gibson. Charles Vernon Moran Prize, for a member of the Senior Class who submits the best work of visual art to the Community Art Exhibition: Marianne Thompson. Honorable mention: Derek Preston Alexander. Walter S. Baird Prize, for a Senior who has demonstrated excellence in the arts, literature, or sciences: Rodino Fabrizio Anderson. National Security Education Progr"''"'"' 'rhnbrc:hin Alternate: Brvan Howard Howard Hughes Medical Institute Summer Research Fellow<:hinc: ts1011o~:ica1 Sciences: Dennis Robert Pickett Dickson, Karin Max Green, and nvn.,, .... rH,,i,::"''"' Melanie offered _ Prize and of Press Book Prize, for the best Senior Tobin Shulman. Robert Neidorf Memorial for a deserving student to help with the continuation of work at St. Johns College through cultivation of the liberal arts of thinking and Adriana B. de St. John s College Community Scholarship, for members of the Freshman, Sophomore, and Junior Classes in recognition of academic achievement and constructive service to the college community. Offered by the faculty, staff, and students. Class of 200 I : Kiera Homann and Kee Zublin. Class of 2002: Andrea Quintero. Senator Millard E. Tydings Memorial Prize, to a member of the Senior Class for excellence in public speaking: Tobin Shulman. M. Austin Prize, in recognition of academic achievement and of talent in writing poetry: Charles Rieden (GI). University of California Press Book Award for his Junior Adrian Lucia. Yale University Press Book Award for his Sophomore Essay: Andrew Frishman. Green Lion Press Book Award for their Freshman Essays: Michael Sullivan and D. Hunter Saussy. For their essays (other than annual). Upperclassman: Julie Gronneberg. Honorable mention: Ben Hance. Underclassman: Michael Sullivan. WW. Norton Book Prize for his mathematics essay: Paul Obrecht. Random House Book Prize for his science essay: Michael G. Wood. Honorable mention: Rowan Wing. Columbia University Press Book Prize for her Graduate Institute essay in the liberal arts: Kristi Stewart. For outstanding performance in athletics. Class of 1999: Michael 0 Boyle, Tarek Salem, Rachel Vedaa, and Kyleb Wild. For outstanding contributions to the college community. Class of 1999: Carisa Armendariz and George Finney. Class of 200 I: Alexandra Rothenberg. For outstanding service to the college: Sarah Fridrich. '--1111...axu SusJan Borden •are1us Weekend is always a hit, bringing moms and into their students' classroom, giving them a for the academic program with parent seminars, and introducing them to waltz parties. But for some parents three days a year just aren't enough. They enthusiastically participate in Parents' Weekend with a searching look in their eyes-and a Graduate Institute brochure in their hands. At other colleges, "legacy" students-those whose paTents attended the school-are common, and there are a number of St. John's undergraduates whose parents are themselves alumni. But parents who enroll because they were exposed to the school through their children's experience are the St. John's twist on legacies. Here are the stories of three parents ofJohnnies who became Johnnies themselves in the Graduate Institute. l appreciated, says Mary. "One night, she breezed in and saw me writing a paper and smoking, which I only do while I'm writing. She said, 'Oh yes, oh yes, I can see .. .it's definitely the third stage of panic.' This is after I held her hand through her senior essay. Then I wanted to take that Aristotle she had given me and toss it right at her head." s because perfel LINDA LLERENA HUDAK MOTHER OF JOSH (AGI95) (A94) When Linda Llerena-Hudak's son, COllege,Lindan111PThT~~iQnT~•rl catalogue in his room. Aft:nougn been drawn to "On my fiftieth Kate gave me a beautiful copy ofMcKeon's Collected Works Her selection of it s1gmt:1c~rnt and meant a lot to me. That was when I had reallvworked for her. She knew how 'Poetics.' at the time she gave me the I had not even tn<)u~mt about to St. she meant it as a subtle su~~gesu1on. But a telephone call with St. John's president Chris Nelson included a far less subtle suggestion. "His call to me was mainly because of fund.raising. But as we were chatting, Chris said, out of the blue, 'Have you ever thought about coming here yourself?' I said no, but it was just the push I needed." Mary wrote two of Josh Silberstein the application essays within minutes of receiving the Graduate Institute bulletin. She applied, was accepted within two weeks, and immediately started reading. Mary's quick conversion from parent to Johnny was, in some ways, not surprising. Unlike many parents, whose first introduction to St. John's comes from their child's interest in the school, the Glassmans knew of the program long before their daughter became interested in it. When Kate chose to attend the college, her parents were astonished and delighted. As she progressed through the progrnm, her parents followed everything that she was reading. Kate's senior year, however, was a trying time, when troubles within the family were deeply distracting. She credits Kate's tutors with helping to keep her mind focused on her academic work. She particularly remembers former assistant dean Abe Schoener's shepherding Kate through the senior essay writing period. "He set up a program for her to complete it. Even though he wasn't her tutor, his forcing her step-by-step to write her essay, despite distracting emotions, was miraculous. I was much impressed with the personal attention at St. John's, not counseling, but the direction to concentrate on something that can ultimately be more meaningful to you than the chaos you're living in." Soon it was Mary's turn to struggle with paper writing. Although she and her husband, James, had been owners and publishers of the Congressional newspaper Roll Call, writing for St. John's was an entirely different matter. "When I wrote my first precept paper, it was a real challenge," recalls Mary. "I had been a wordsmith of necessity for many years, but to sit down and write a long, lucid, thoughtful essay from my own head, to resist looking at what other people said about the subject, was very difficult." Because she was writing about Jane Austen (in particular why she doesn't love Jane Austen), she consulted Mark Twain on the subject. Finally, Mary says, Kate stepped in with some sound advice: "She told me that if I read what other people think in order to get an idea or affirm my own thoughts, I'd be led astray." Halfway through the paper, Mary threw away her secondary sources and stayed with the text, allowing her, she says, to concentrate on her paper and finish her writing. But Kate's paper writing wisdom was not always completely encourage refused. ''It's this m<111'>hrt·h,, in the environment to nurture himself, not just his intellectual side but his whole person." While Josh was at St. John's, Linda was considering pursuing a and Linda Hudak PhD in philosophy. AB she was looking into different graduate programs, she says, there was something that beckoned her to St. She and Josh talked about what he read; he would bring books home, and they shared his favorites. When she saw a copy of the Graduate Institute reading list, she got a sense that the master's program was a rich experience that she didn't want to miss. Linda enrolled in the program and her first semester at St. John's coincided with Josh's final semester. "Josh was very happy, supportive, and welcoming of my decision to study at St.John's." she says. "I consulted with him on readings, papers, and classes, and he did the same with me. He would often meet me for dinner on the nights I had class and we would share what we were working on." Linda's favorite readings from the Graduate Institute were the Greeks: Plato and Aristotle and the tragedies. "I had the good fortune to have Mr. Berns for Aristotle. I had read a bit of Aristotle before, but Mr. Berns opened him up in a way I had never seen. Then I reread the Politics with Mr. Townsend," she recalls. After receiving her masters, Linda's great books reading continued as Josh recommended some undergraduate books that were not on the GI reading list (such as The Aeneid) as well as some that she had read before, either in high school or college, but that she was now equipped to get far more out of (such as Paradise Lost). ''I found myself wanting to read good books after St. John's," she says. "For me, that was an integral part of the program, the habit of really appreciating good books. That doesn't mean I don't pick up a mystery from time to time, but I'm always reading something of quality-books of ideas or good literature." HARRIET LONG (AGI 93) MOTHER OF KIMBERLY RILEY (AGl87), ELISABETH ANDERSON (A86), DAVID LONG (Ago), AND MOTHER-IN-LAW OF PAUL ANDERSON (A87) When Harriet Long's daughter, Elisabeth, was 16, she got a job at a cleaners. Although the work was terribly boring, Elisabeth stayed for three summers and quite enjoyed her job. The reason? She had a Johnny for a coworker, and �.__ J Jllllll#""°' 'U""''1LA/ ·r in St. the they spent every day playing classical music and talking about books. "She totally took in the program," Harriet says. "She visited St. John's and loved it. We looked at other schools but she had no interest in them." Harriet's husband Don, the Director of Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, was not so enthusiastic, however. "He had very clear-cut ideas about where he thought Elisabeth should go to school," recalls Harriet, and St. John's was not among them. It was only after Don spoke with Hopkins president Steve Muller that he changed his mind. "He asked him: 'What about this little school in Annapolis? What do the students do after thev !!raduate?' Steve told Don the best school in the United States. he considered St. child to go, and that child wants to do. are stitute can be the t thinkine: it was school.' We attended a seminar and came the kind of we wanted to go to ourselves." At the end of Elisabeth's freshman who is very comall those I've ' I can't about these writers but I've never read what they wrote.' Kim went Elisabeth told her about the Graduate to looked up the called the school, and enrolled that summer." Not long after, her son David began making frequent visits to Elisabeth at St. John's. "We eventually discovered that the reason he was going was they were letting him play soccer. He for at least two years befme he went. We were never certain whether it was the program or the athletics that brought him to the school, but either way, he loved St. John's." After David graduated, Harriet finally considered entering the Graduate Institute. From the time she finished college, she had always intended to go to graduate school, but marriage and family kept delaying her plans. Finally, with all three of her children through college, she decided it was time to pursue her education. "But at my age," she says, "going Paul Anderson, A87; David, A90; Harriet, AGl9l; Am::lerson, A86; Kim AGl87; Don Long. back to graduate school in a traditional setting doesn't make sense. The program was what I wanted to go to school for anyway, it seemed like a perfect fit." As it turns out, it was indeed a perfect fit. "Those were absolutely engrossing and wonderful years," she says. "It was a terrible letdown when it was over." Yet for Harriet, the experience is far from over. She serves on the Board of Visitors and Governors and is active in the Baltimore chapter of the Alumni Association. She and her Johnny-family often talk about the books. "I've done more reading of books not included on the Graduate Institute list because the kids talk about them. Elisabeth, when she was talking about Plotinus, told me to read him, which I did. During a discussion, Kim told me, 'You sound just like Heidigger.' I had to read his works just to find out what she was talking about. We're always talking about some idea or issue; the family is referring to the books all the time-it's an ongoing discussion." • J ohn and Rachel Balkcom, a father-daughter duo, represent another variation on the theme of "I want to study the great books too." John began attending the Graduate Institute in Santa Fe three summers ago, and Rachel started the program this past fall. John is a consultant with Sibson & Company in Chicago and attends the classes in the summer only. Rachel is planning to teach high school humanities and has been substituting at Santa Fe Prep this past school year. They will both be in their third term this summer studying the Literature segment. How did each ofyou come to attend the Graduate Institute? .Rachel: I had almost come for undergrad. I ended up going to but my parents and I visited both the Annapolis and Santa Fe campuses. I remember my father I'll come saying, "·This is here!" I didn't take him at the time. I he was of the schools I had the to. But he the idea in the back of his mind until he could arrange to enter the program himself. I came for all the reasons anyone nr•>O'l'>lrl'l-1 wanted to learn Hi~UA;.LL~.i, the method of instruction excited me, and I it would be relevant for my chosen which is teaching. But I wouldn't have thought of St. John's if mv dad wasn't already here. At the last-minute suggestion of Rachel's high school guidance counselor, we took her to visit St. John's her senior year. She decided it wasn't what she wanted at the but I was ready to enroll on the spot! I came back for Summer Classics and went for two successive summers. After studying the Federalist Papers, and then reading the Aeneid, I was hooked. I then decided the Summer Classics was fun, but it wasn't sufficient to satisfy my need to get back to the texts I had both enjoyed and fled as an undergraduate. Rachel, how do you think your dadfelt about your decision to attend St. John's? Rachel: I think he was thrilled. He probably saw it as an affirmation ofwhat he was doing, and I think it probably made him proud. I think there were a numbe1· ofways in which he influenced my decision. I had heard him talk about the quality of the students and of the teachers. And we had had several discussions about the content of the material he was studying, and I remember being so interested. I think in the back of my mind I somehow thought that coming to St. John's would allow me to enter my dad's realm-to approach what I had always seen as his vast intellect. Now, I realize that I will always see my dad as a superior intellect and that my impression of him has less to do with what he knows than who he is. What I do think though is that we have this little part in common that we didn't have before. I know that when he and I talk about justice or truth, or a square root, we are probably thinking about the same questions. John, what's it like having your daughter at St. John's with you? Are you kidding? It's great! She wants to teach and this gives her great material to work with, plus the unique experience of teaching and learning in the St. John's way. I think she caught some of my enthusiasm for the experience of shared learning. Having her at school has made me do my readings even more carefully. It sent me back to some of the books to reread passages she told me about, passages where she had gleaned things that I missed. And now we're going to be in class together this summer. Truth is, I'm a little giddy about it. When I get beyond that, though, I really expect the exchange to be thoughtful, considerate, civil, challenging, far-ranging. The bonus is that we'll get to carry on our conversations almost indefinitely. And what are your plans after St. John's? John: To find some way to keep coming back. There is something compelling to me about playing even a small part in what Mr. Levine calls "this community oflearners." I once thought I aspired to be a tutor, but my observations tell me that their job is much harder than any I have ever held. Although I don't presently see how it might happen-in view of our commitment to the community of Evanston-I relish my participation in the seminars and preceptmials, and I want to continue to be a part of them. At a minimum, Mr. (Christopher) Nelson has initiated an executive seminar series in Chicago. I thinkit begins this coming fall. So there's the possibility of St. John's coming to me. Rachel: The main reason I came to St. John's was to inform my teaching. Most people, if they've found their thing, will probably spend a few years figuring out how to become really effective at it, and then moving toward that goal. St. John's gives me both the material to teach and methods with which to do so. I think it's definitely going to make me a better teacher. So, after St. John's I'll stay on this path. I thinkfor many people, education in this country, especially public school education, is something of a myste1·y. Its relative failure is a mystery. I didn't think much of my own education growing up, so I'm sure much of my search for · answers in the field of education is motivated by personal experience. But the question, for which I assume there is no ultimate or simple answer, is: What mal\.es for a good education? I'll continue trying to answer that. -JohnMcCauley, SFGI99 �Events for the included a seminar, on Steinbeck considered questions about the land and nrrH"li::>rtv has for it? How are ni:>1~..:nn::11 and fulfillment connected with the land? one ome alumni curl up for a long summer s social activities, leavseminars to their natural _ Febbies, and time, the traditional academic Tortilla Flat. Over the weekend -"''cc•J. Others pursue traditional annual social events and had to narrow it down to ner. After much hand \Mr•naona Slotnick's the Burren at Davis Somerville." have a seminar on the thirteenth every month no matter what: so far this summer, read three Of Mr>nt-'.:l!in·no Solitude", and nPrlnrm~nl'"P On Baltimore: The on the other take it easy. party at the Bolton Hill Swim and Tennis Club on I I-heralded the assurance that "There is no reading." San tutor Beall will journey out to lead a seminar on a couple of Wallace Stevens poems on August IS. North Carolina: One of our smallest chapters is Washington, D.C.: Seminar participants are on one of the most avid. They meet on July 25 to discuss Eric Hoffer s The True Believer, and will get together on August 15 for a seminar on Akira Kurosawa s film Kagemusha. R&R. But they ve been put on notice that their first reading for the fall is a long one: they have a seminar on The Charterhouse of Parma on September 15. Scene from the New York Chapter picnic. Seattle: Robert Glick, Vice President of the Santa Fe Campus, and Tahmina Shalizi, Santa Fe Alumni Director, traveled to Seattle for a seminar on Dante, Inferno 1-10, on May 27. Mr. Glick co-led the seminar with chapter president Jon Bever SGl95, while Ms. Shalizi wisely stayed out of the tutor role, and visited with alumni to ask not what Seattle alumni can do for the alumni office, but indeed what the alumni office can do for Seattle alumni. In the last issue of The Reporter, name one nominee to Association inadvertently was out. Tom Geyer (A68) is nominated as a Alumni Association for a second term. The election is to take place at the Alumni Association meeting October 2 in Annapolis. New York: The Annual Chapter Picnic was held on June 18 at the home of Chuck (A47) and Anne (H90) Nelson in Croton-on-Hudson, with a seminar on Bartleby the Scrivener led by son Christopher Nelson (SF70). Northern California: It s party party party for the California people again this summer. On June 5 and 6, Dorine Real (SF69)and Lee Tepper (SF69) hosted their second annual Mendocino Weekend Getaway The Stag s Leap Wine Cellars picnic and seminars, hosted by Warren (A52) and Barbara (ASS) Winiarski are scheduled for Sunday, August I . This huge famous annual event will feature not only a winery tour but an impressive five seminars, on The Republic, War and Peace, writings on art by artists, selections from Alice Miller s For Your Own Good and Drama of the Gifted Child, and one other reading, not, as of this writing, yet revealed to mortal man.• by Roberta Gable (A79), Director of Alumni Activities, Annapolis �Alulllni Notes ... 1932 Since the last Homecoming, Henry Shryock has attended the annual meeting of the Population Association of AmericainNewYork. He's aformer president. He and his wife visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where they particularly enjoyed the American wing of which R. T. Haines Halsey has been the diTector. a course in colonial art when I was at SJC and chose the furnishings Psi wife ~ walked back from 82nd Street through Central Park to our hotel on 46th Street. returned from a cruise on the from New Orleans to lV.J.empms; we were particularly interested in seeing the battlefield at Vicksburg." Bean reports that his first great-grandchild was born in Sentember of 1998 and is doing fine. Richru.·d Woodman wTites that he is still active in the practice oflaw and president of an abstract and title company in Mica, New York. He'd like to hear from classmates. 1937 Alan Pike is still enjoying life on the beach and tennis at Oceans Racquet Club across the street from his home in Daytona Beach, Florida. He expects to visit all his children in California and northern Nevada this summer. The Rev. Harold Milstead reretired last December after 58 and a half years under episcopal appointment, the last 18 and a half years of which he served as paster of Shiloh United Methodist Church in Bryans Road, Mru:yland. Oscar Loi·d writes that his son, Lance, will assume command of the U.S. Air University at Maxwell AFB at Montgomery, Alabama, this summer. "Great trip to Belize-jungle and coral reef!" writes Bu1·t Armstrong. 1944 Rod Whetstone sends the following message to his classmates: "To borrow a phrase from Jake Smedley, 'We were shot to hell by the war' emotionally, intellectually, temporally, and sometimes mortally. Outof90 starting out in the fall of '40, only 23 managed a degree, the last 15 in '47 and '48. Since our 50threunion, I have been impressed by how many of my classmates, 'shot out of college,' are forthright in describing the great influence that theiT abbreviated stays at St. John's had on their post-war life. In some ways, this is more striking than the reactions of 'we happy few' who were able to get our degrees. Apologizing in advance for my probable failure to remember all who talked to me or wrote me in this regard, I will list those still held in my flagging memory: Whitey Bauder, Lindsay Clendaniel, Howell Cobb, Ed Godschalk, John Davis Hill, Kick Huyck, Al Koukly, George Levine, Thad Prout, Jim Raley, Don Tuhl, Sig Sorenson, and Herb Taylor. are now scattered from Suffolk, .Ene:land. to Texas and from Wisconsin to Florida. I would be remiss not to mention two who are no us: Russ ru11g1arn:i. I am sure there are others who left us in the yea.Ts after the war who should be added to this particular college honor roll." Petei· Wolff writes: "In February, I almost drowned at Waikiki beach in Honolulu. I fell forward in shallow water and was rescued by a nice lifeguard from Brazil, who found me floating, face down, in 18 inches of water. Medical tests ruled out a heart attack, a stroke, or a brain seizure. I probably fainted. The lifeguard revived me with CPR; I ended up in the intensive care unit of Queen's Medical Center, then spent 11 more days in the acute care hospital. The bill was $43, 000 which Medicare paid. Don't try this in Tahiti or anywhere that is foreign soil-Medicare will not pay!" Herbert Taylor is now representing the Maryland Classified Employees Association, retirees Chapter 15 of the United Seniors of Maryland organization. 1947 "Since retirement a semester ago," writes John Brunn, "I have been a volunteer tutor at my local elementary school in San Francisco. I am trying to teach arithmetic to an 11-year-old student with dyslexia. I view it as a challenge to understand a different, very visual, way of thinking. I am grateful to St. John's for giving me the background and courage to learn new approaches." The Rev. Frederick Davis is still assisting at Sunday services every other week and leading every other Thursday the healing services at his Palm Springs Episcopal parish. Physical problems have so slowed both him and his wife, Rita, that they are not taking any long trips, although they did enjoy attending the decade of the 40s reunions at Homecomingin 1993. "You see that I not only got a classical liberal education at St. John's; I met and married Rita Skordas, sister of Curt Skordas, '34-who is still active out here in San Diego." 1950 The Rev. David Corbin Streett reports that he and his wife Betty have traveled over the past several years to Britain, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Greece, Israel , and Egypt. They also sailed the Caribbean aboard a barkentine for a number of weeks. Peter Whipple and two other mem- bers of the class of' 50 joined the bus excursion from the Caritas Society that visited the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, D.C. At the luncheon that followed at the National Press Club, Jack Carr (class of '50) was master of ceremonies, and Peter provided cocktail piano background; Bob Goldwin (class of '50) gave an interesting and inspiring apres-luncheon talk. The Caritas Society gives financial support to St. John's students. Donald (A48), oresident of the Northern California Alumni Association, sends this note: Bob has been diagnosed with Parkinson's. The expenses for inhome care and alternative treatment are exceeding all his available resources. Bob may be reached at 260 Camino Alto, 12. Mill Valley CA 99941. William Roberts writes: "Still sailing! Weather is beautiful! Still have specia] charter rates for all St. Johnnies." His address is Strite 1-g, 14830 Naranja Lakes Blvd., Homestead, Florida 33032. 1955 "I recently resigned my 18-year faculty position in computer science at the University of New Haven and am freelancing in the same field," writes Priscilla Husted Griscom. "Although none of my children attended St. John's, hopefully, my grandson, Liam Husted Griscom, born April 29, 1998, will do so." J enefer Ellingston sends a report from the political sphere. "The Green Party is underway-small but growing, and joining hands with Green Parties in Europe (30 of them) and in Mexico and Russia (! ). Keep growing Green. Earth, om life-support system, is at risk and we are an endangered species by our own doing." James Jobes Jobes (A59) stopped by the alumni office while in Annapolis visiting family, and gave us this update: Amy is currently an associate priest at St. Luke's Episcopal Church in North Little Rock, Arkansas. She got her MS in counseling in 1984 at Memphis State University, and her MDiv at the School of Theology, University of the South, in 1992. From 1992 to 1995 she was a lay pastor at All Saints Episcopal Church in Paragould, Arkansas, and then was ordained a priest on June 5, 1996. Jim taught philosophy at Rhodes College in Memphis for thirty-two years. He retired in 1996 when they moved for Amy's position at St. Luke's. Now he teaches part-time at three different schools in the Little Rock area, in philosophy, humanities, and philosophy of art. Amy and Jim have two children. Elizabeth Anne (married name Hufford) has a BA from Bryn Mawr, an MAin history from Brandeis, and an MLS from Simmons. She works for a new online health database company, www.healthgate.com. Thomas Howard is a hydrologist (Harvard '90) worldng for Aquatena, an environmental consulting firm. John Pattie has sold his house in order to move back on his boat, in preparation for retirement in La Pag, B. C. Mexico. He has his eighth year on the Court and lives in Oxnard, California. "I have been invited to present a paper about Confucius Dilemmas, Human Rights and Jen' [Humanity]) at the 11th Annual Conference of Chinese Philosophers being held in Taiwan at the end of July," e-mai]s David Sd1ille1·. "Chuiping and I celebrated our 23rd year of 'Being Together' on the 4th of July by climbing a (small) mountain and predictably walking far out of our way until a local finally took pity on us and gave us a ride back 10 miles to where we had parked our car." Cecily Sharp-Whitehill has expanded her portfolio of activities to include market research and mergers/acquisitions in Europe. 1966 Constance Baring-Gould writes that "both daughters are happily married and living in Logan, Utah. One is a programmer. The other is in graduate school in psychology. I feel so lucky and privileged that they have grown into such delightful and talented people!" The Rev. ClarkLobenstine is celebrating his 20th anniversary as the Executive Director of the Interfaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington this spring. The Interfaith Conference brings together the Baha'i, Hindu-Jain, Islamic, and Sikh faith communities in the region to build a just society and to increase understanding. Clark refers those interested to the website at www.interfaith-metrodc.org. "After 25 years, I am finally beginning to understand the practice oflaw," writes Jonathan Sinnreich (A). "I am also in the process of building my own 20,000 square foot office building. Son Aram is a graduate student at Columbia School of Journalism. Daughter Rachel is a Mellon Fellow doing graduate work in American history at Berkeley. Youngest son Daniel is the most unusual of all-a happy seventh grader. My wife Emily just ascended to the bench as a District Court judge here in Suffolk County. A very good year." Lee Fischler (SF) writes that he and Jean FitzSimon (A73) have left �Aluntni Notes ... Arizona for Chicago. "Jean after years in private practice has become a corporate lawyer fm Sears. I expect to do psychotherapy with an agency while building a private practice. We both love Chicago and enjoy cliff dwelling (the 45th floor overlooking lake, river, and downtown). Luckily because Jean is on the Board of Visitors and Governors we get to escape to both Annapolis and Santa Fe, each nvice a year." Ailltl~;onlePhalares (SF) says, "I celebrated my fifth anniversary after breast cancer surgery last year and ended a nvo and a half yeaT dance with phlymyalgia. I write my opinion on ethical issues as a member of a panel for a column in the local newspaper, the Sacramento Bee. This is my ninth year of working for the same employer despite never having previously worked at the same job for more than two years! I teach science and manners to seventh and eighth graders from every continent. Having grown up in NYC I feel quite at home in this ethnic and racial rainbow. Alumni seminars in Sacramento are a source of great pleasure, not to mention continued contact with dear Johnnies. David Moss hovered at my house in January, long enough for lunch shared by Tom and Marion Slakey, Arianne Laidlow, and Helen Feeley." Rick Wicks (SF) writes that his daughter Linnea has just finished first grade in Sweden where they've been living for the last seven years. Allan Hoffman (A' 49) and his wife Margie were touring Sweden and joined them for the traditional school-ending ceremonies (singing "summer songs," giving out sports prizes, etc.). "We love to play 'tour-guide' so if you're in the area, be sure to let us know." George Pal"tlow (A) reports from southeast Alaska that he is enjoying his grandchildren, Serena (2) and the t\vins Laura and Mariah (1). He's trying to work his way through Fobes' Philosophical Greek despite decades of neglect of all those paradigms. Charles Watson (A) writes that his oldest son is trying to be a telejournalist in Moscow as a freelancer and produces stories for CNN/CBS and files reports with several other agencies; his second son is transferring to Boston U. after spending a semester off and a semester with the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, Massachusetts; his daughter is a junior at Joel Barlow H.S. and is active in music/theater and a high honors student, busy upstaging her older brothers academically; wife Masha is now chair of the Easton Arts Council and designs costumes for plays. "I slog along in the health care wars--new and exciting applied science ... " Thomas Keens (SF) is a Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Southern California School of Medicine (Children's Hospital Los Angeles). He was recently granted a secondary academic appointment in a basic science department (Professor of Physiology and Biophysics). He continues research into sudden infant death syndrome and disorders ofneurologic control of breathing in infants and children. Along with his wife Susan and daughter Jenny, he will tour Italy this summer with their church choir and sing High Mass at St. PeteT' s in the Vatican and formal concerts in Floi-ence and Rome. His son Peter will join them but will not sing. Ken (SF68) and (A69) report that they have re-read War and Peace three or four times in the last 18 months. "It gets much better," they say. "In fact, almost all of the great novels and pJays on the program get much better. Or maybe it just means that what you read at 20, you should reread at 50." Sarah Fishe1· (A) reports: "I've spent the last two years settling into my new position as director of the librnry at Montgomery College in Takoma Park (this is especially nice since I live 1.1 miles from campus, and can walk or bike to work through a park and a very pretty suburb). Two years ago I also became a grandmother-Llewellyn Jam es Westrick. My husband, Mark Fisher, and I are active volunteers on the Maryland Dove, the replica of one of Maryland's vessels of colonial settlement." -''-'dl.uJl ..._,., .. ""' 1969 The International Federalist Movement: Toward Global Governance, by Joseph Barite (A) is due to appear in the July 1999 issue of the Journal Peace and Change. 1970 Ed Macierowski (A), who teaches philosophy at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, addressed the World Congress on the Philosophy of Mulla Sadrain Tehran, Iran, on May 25. His topic was the unity of being in Essence in God according to Avicenna, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Mulla Sadra-a topic that "Jews, Christians, and Muslims can all agree on," he says. Macierowski has a new book, Thomas Aquinas '.s Earliest Treatment ofthe Divine Essence. He traces his interest in Avicenna to a comment he heard from Leo Strauss: "I recall reading as a lad in a Latin translation of Avicenna's treatise on the division of the philosophical sciences that the standard treatise on prophecy is Plato's Laws. This struck me as such a strange thing for a wise man to say that I decided to find out first what this sentence meant, and then to see whether it was true or not." 1971 George Elias (A) writes that his eldest daughter, Ingrid, has decided to attend the University of California al Berkeley in the fall of 1999. His youngest, Victoria, is entering kindergarten at the same time. His wife, Deborah Nikkel, is ten chapters into writing her first novel, which is an account of the Bank of AmericaNationsBank takeover. Mary Beth Sanders (A) says: "Would love to hear from other alumni of classes of 1970 and 1971-Craig, Cliff, Cheryl, Ron, etc-where you are and what you're up to. I'm raising a 17-yearold son, working as a medical transcriptionist, ·writing poems, trying to write prose. It's been a long road from St. John's to here, but I've had ups as well as downs, and would only change a little if I could-mostly my arrogance in thinking would stay where I left them and I could go back to them when I wantedput my foot in the same stream ... " (SF) continues to enjoy her work as a computer programmer/ analyst. In off-hours reading is still her favorite form of recreation. She has recently joined a synagogue, and she and her son Daniel are learning Hebrew. "Naturally," she says, "I want to be able to read the Torah in the original!" Matthew Mallory (A) is still at NATO, celebrating its and his 50th this year. He is happy to see any early '70s/late '60s Johnnies who happen to be in Brussels. 1973 Peter Aronson (A) writes, 'Tm still assistant professor of dermatology at Wayne State University in Detroit, but am running a private practice on the side. After eight years I am ending a second term on the board of the National Tuberous Sclerosis Association in Landover, Maryland. But I was just nominated for their professional advisory board and endowment board. I am also threading a needle trying to help a decertified/ depriviledged colleague (because of criminal background) gether license." 1974 Janet Braziel (SF) reports: "A few years ago, I quit practicing law, after 18 intense years specializing in litigation. I realized I needed to change something when my younger son started to call me 'Janet,' in a collegial way, and called his nanny 'Mom.' Despite cei-tain initial fears, I find that life without an overwhelming and engulfing profession is glorious. Why was that a hard question? I love spending time with my children Jack (11) and Charlie (7), reading, gardening, and hanging out in Corrales with my husband, Bob Lunn. With several friends, I recently bought and restored The Guild, a small but venerable art cinema in the historic Nob Hill district of Albuquerque. We show wonderful independent and foreign films and enjoy going to film festivals. This leisure on my part is all made possible by Bob, who continues to be totally immersed in his medical practice, Southwest GI. I've recently seen Stephen Slusher and Fred Sturn from the class of '74 and hope to see many others at the 25th reunion." Tom .Byrnes (SF) is now employed at XOR Network Engineering; the website is www.xor.com. "I like to check in every 2 5 years or so," writes Jim LeVan (A). "I've been living and working in the Maryland sub- urbs ofWashington, D.C. since 1982. I'm a chiropractor in private practice. My wife Nancy is an architectural engineer working at the National Zoo. Her passion is animal welfare issues. Mine is sports. We hike and camp and are avid biTders. A favorite treat is a weekend in Annapolis and a stroll around the SJC campus." an associate professor of social medicine at the University of North Carolina, Hill, along with two colleagues, has edited a book, Beyond Regulations: Ethics in Human Subjects Research, recently lished by the University of North Carnlina Press. According to the publisher's blurb, "The book reexamines research ethics using a new relationships paradigm. Through in-depth cases, commentaries, and essays, a multidisciplinary group of scholars and researchers addresses informed consent, conflict of interest, confidentiality, and other issues, considering questions like: What relationships should researchers have with their subjects' communities? When researchers and subjects have different views about research, who should have control? ... " 1976 Eric Seder (SF) reports that he left investment banking after 16 years at Smith Barney. "Escaped to Ketchum, Idaho, where my wife, Susan, and I have opened a fabric store. Two kids, two cats, one dog, two rats, one fish, one lizard." Stephen Gilles (A) and Laurie Feldman welcomed their fifth and sixth children, Eve and Isaac, into the world on 8/15/98. The t\vins join Daniel, age 10, Emmett, 8, Rita, 6, and Carol, 4. 1977 Judy Kistler-Robinson (SF) and her husband Jay moved to the Twin Cities from Missouri in December 1998. Judy manages the technical communications group for the Building Automation Systems division of the Trane Company, writing and editing software user guides. Judy and Jay live very close to Glenda Eoyang (SF76) and John. In the summer of 1998, Bai·bara Lauer (SF76) and Elizabeth Cochran Bowden (SF77) visited Glenda and Judy. The four have been getting together for mini-reunions for over ten years. They met at Elizabeth's in Boston in the mid-80s, at Judy's in Springfield, Missouri, in the early 90s, and plan to meet again on Barbara's home turf (or somewhere in the west) shortly after the new millenium. Susan Ferron (SF) andher hri.sband, David Stephens, are delighted to announce the birth of their daughter, Sarah Elizabeth Stephens, on December 17, 1998. Robert James Ham (SF) and Andrea Williams Ham (SF) say "Life is good in Sonoma County!" Jim has joined Hamilton Software as a software development engineer. Andrea remains busy ... continued on page 20 �Aluntni Notes ... f The odyssey that took Bob Tzudiker, A 75,.from a senior essay on the Philoctetes to a Disney version of Tarzan by Roberta Gable learned, to his amazement, of human origin, the ape-man himself in natty English clothing and prepares to travel with Jane to the land of civilization. He bids farewell to his life among the gorillas, feeling that he belongs with his own kind. He rows out to the ship, and up to the deck. but all is not as it should be ... ape-man of the silver screen), is not the of record for this Tarzanic scene. It came from screenwriters Bob Tzudiker A75 and his wife Noni White, who were the Tarzan project, in the hands of various.,,.,.,,.,.,.,,.,"" trouble. "The story had been 1.-.:;a.LH.Jle'.. apart," says "between the of comedy and the Charvbdis of the action adventure story." At the first meetingwith Disney, the talk was about thematic structure. Tzudiker had Bob Tzudiker read the first Tarzan novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, finding it largely about the dominance of man over nature-not exactlywhat the studio had in mind. They got into the first principles of the tale, asking what it should be about, who the characters were, and how the story and characters worked. Then came writing, and rewriting, rewriting, rewriting-Disney allowed them to take the time to get it right. In the middle of the fifteen-month project, Tzudiker and White were able to get away for a trip to Africa. The Disney team of directors, top animators, and researchers had already had their African safari by the time they joined the project; but when a four-week hiatus in the writing process presented itself, they jumped at the chance to go themselves. They traveled in Kenya and Uganda, and were able to obtain two-day permits to trek in search of gorillas, a private safari in the unspoiled back country. The gorillas in the movie are anthropomorphized, of course, so it's hard to effect seeing the genuine article have had upon the writers; but if their hearts were by any chance not in the right place before their African trip provided some underpinnings. Back at work on the screenplay, they were able to collaborate the directors. the artists, and with the animation team, headed Marlon Brando of animators" says Tzudiker); and a new v1sney classic was born. Tarzan was released in to the acclaim of film reviewers and the collective voice of the of America. The took Tzudiker from a senior essay on the Philoctetes to )isnevversion of Tarzan started with a on the acting side While still a he worked in summer stock at the Mill _in everything from musical comedies to i:;rnuuauuu, he headed to New York, as all good actors must, on the lower East Side with Seth Ginsburg, A75, (Eric Rosenblatt, A74, was next door), and got a job with the Jean Cocteau Repertmy, which performed nine shows a week, up to seven plays at a time. He made dollars a month and supplemented the actor's life with a job at Preferred Wire and Electric in Brooklyn. After a year in "horrible, crime-ridden, defaulting" New York, he moved to Santa Fe (which he had visited in his senior year) and was intending to write, but got involved in theater once again. He made a living (having learned to live on next to nothing) acting and producing plays in community theater; and at other times sold Kirby vacuum cleaners door to door throughout northern New Mexico, and worked at Santa Fe Carpet and Tile. Finally lured to Los Angeles (the other geographical magnet for actors) in late 1979, he hooked up with Lee Zlotoff, A74, who was already working as a writer in Hollywood. Zlotoff got him an audition for a part as a grocery store manager in an episode of "Hill Street Blues" he had written. Tzudiker got the gig, got an agent, and got involved in the Ensemble Studio Theater. But he was always struggling with the discipline of writing. He started writing plays, had some of them performed in readings, but never tried to get any of them produced, never being happy enough with what he'd written. In the mid-80's he met Noni White when they were cast as husband and wife in The Circus ofDr. Lao, which was the last play he ever performed in. He and White started going to LA Writers Bloc, a playwrights' group (mostly populated by actors turned writers) and he started hanging out with writers rather than hanging out with actors. ("Acting is cruel and random," he says, not meaning the art but the business of being an actor. "With writing, you have a fresh start every Blank paper is very cheap. The whole process is an act of magic, and it's under your control." Words on paper can "represent you in the world for a long time.") Their first job as a writing team was a for Man. It was called The Ten Minute Moschitta. The and featured one minute courses, .Ep1stemoloe:v; Modern National :::iec~ur:1tv: nvuuuHJu; at Speeds Makes You Younger, Shorter, and and Economics: The Devastating Effect of Borscht Demand on the Price Elasticity Curve of Beets. time Tzudiker and White were married in December were collaborating on screenplays. Their an of "The Show" done on spec, didn't but an agent interested in their work. The 1988 screenwriters' derailed their television career, and they turned to writing movies. They their first screenplay, a period drama based on an 1899 newsboy strike to Disney, who bought it (this being tantamount to a grand slam at your first major league atbat). Through five drafts, they saw steady improvement; but then studio head Jeffrey Katzenberg, hot off the success of The Little Jlfermaid, insisted that it be turned into a musical. The result was Newsies, a "disaster of almost historic proportions," says Tzudiker. It failed dismally, but has a life of its own on video. It was a great experience, but a painful experience." And, in the end, a fruitful experience. The people on the animation side of Disney liked the Newsies screenplay, and wanted Tzudiker and White to work on The Frog Prince; subsequently they wrote big chunks of The Lion King and The Hunchback ofNotre Dame, did work for Fox and DreamWorks, and returned to Disney for Tarzan. Life, however, is not all animation. Five-month-old Ben, Tzudiker and White's first ("and only!") child, sees to that. With the help of a newly hired assistant, though, they keep on track with their working-at-home schedule: early to rise, a long morning walk together, back home for breakfast, get to work by nine or ten, work until lunch; then, depending on what they have going on, perhaps have another writing session in the afternoon. Two to four hours a day writing together is essential. "Ifl had to be trained for this kind of work-collaboration," says Tzudiker, "I could have fom1d no better training than St. John's. Working in speech with others, trying to reach some kind of understanding of a text, whether it's one you're reading or creating together-that's what's essential. It's difficult to find good collaborators, because you have to be able to listen better than the person who's speaking can speak, in order to respond to the idea rather than to the means of expression." So what's the next big project for the team? Tzudiker says they're at work on a screenplay for Disney, the details of which he's not at liberty to reveal. He will say, however, that "it's a well-known piece of literature, one with both comic and dramatic aspects, that Disney has tried to do on and off for decades. WaltDisneyhimselfwasinterestedinit." Oh, and it's on The Program.• �Alulllni Notes ... with her property management company. They manage to fit in some whitewater rafting (the Rogue in early May), camping, ballet, soccer, and reperatory theater. Dylan, 15, is already talking about St. John's in Annapolis; Caitlin, 12, is active in ballet and drama. Both are honor students. Jim is a certified whitewater rafting guide. "Anyone interested in joining us on a river trip is welcome to call us!" 1978 Amy McConnell Franklin (A) is back in the French Quarter in New Orleans after another year with her family in Senegal, West Africa. "I have four children, ages 11 years to 11 months, and am parenting full time while giving occasional lectures at 'I\tlane's School of Public Health where I am an adjunct faculty member. Our family plans to return to the west in the summer of 2000 in order to live a more rural lifestyle. We will miss the diversity and festivities of life in New Orleans but look forward to a more contemplative way oflife and the time to enjoy our blessings." Christopher Currin (SF) has two children, Cormac, four and half. and Flannery, two. "Observation: choosing names of unpleasant contemporary American writers for your kids does not guarantee they'll become bright, sweet people, but it seems to have been a good start with this pair. Note to self: must amend personal financial plan. Compile list of colleges that accept direct deposits from Social Security Administration." An essay by David Woolwine (A) entitled "The Failure of Liberalism" has appeared in That Obscure Subject of Desire: Freud's Female Homosexual Revisited, edited by Ronnie C. Lester and Erica Schoenberg (Routledge, 1999). It is a critique of social constructionism, as well as of Freud's treatment of homosexuality in his only published case study of a lesbian. 1980 Elizabeth Pollard Jenny (SF) is currently living in Boulder, Colorado. Her eldest son, George, is considering going to St. John's in the fall. "I also have a daughter headed for middle school next fall, and boy/girl twins who just started kindergarten. Good thing I got an education to last a lifetime at St. John's; with kids at all these different stages it helps to have a love oflearning. I'm also painting my heart out and on the lookout for a horse. The alumni chapter goes well." Joseph (SF) and Anne-Martine (SF'84) Moore are still working on establishing a Sudburg model school in their area (Concord, California). Any support for this endeavor is gratefully welcomed. Jill Cowley (SF) says hello to all fellow alums, especially class of '80, and hopes everyone is doing well. She is splitting her time between continuing to work for the National Park Service Cultural Landscape program in Santa Fe and attending classes at the University of New Mexico. Susan Keeler (SF) still lives in Austin, Texas, with her daughter Natalie, age 5. "I've become more extroverted now in my old age (are we really in our forties?) and am working as the Resources Manager for a consulting firm. Looking forward to our 20th next year!" she says. Suki Graves (SF) writes: "I live in Berkeley, California, where I own a rambling old brownshingle in the flats inhabited by me, my son Travis Kirby (age 8) and occasionally Faye Gault ( 18) stops by. I just took a new job as InfantToddler Specialist for the Head Start Region 9 Quality Improvement Center for Disabilities Services at the California Institute on Human Services at Sonoma State University. I love it. For 18 years l have been a glorified babysitter-now I am a Brain Technician. I completed my Master's in Early Childhood Education in 1987. Now that Faye is moved out on her own and Travis is getting older, I am getting ready to go back for the PhD. I share 503 custody of Travis with former husband, StevenM. Kirby(SF79), who lives nearby. Life is really opening up for me right now-it's a rebirthing experience. I'd love to get mail from you all ... " Kurt Schuler (A) is now a senior economist at the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress. 1982 On November 27, 1998, Linda Sullivan Shea (SF) gave birth to Lillian Dorothy Shea, who joins her sister, Maria, now three. Bonnie Stark (SF) writes that she and her family (Todd; Ben, 9; and Kellen, 6) moved to the Cleveland area last fall "so that I could finally follow the path of my heart. I just finished my first year of a nursing doctorate at Case Western Reserve University with the intention of practicing nurse-midwifery and perhaps teaching on completion of the program in three or four years. I am interested in hearing from old friends, from other Johnny midwives (Kelly, how are you?), and from any St. John's grads in the Cleveland area. My e-mail is bjs17@po.cwru.edu." 1984 1981 artists in training enrolled. Mertz has been at New Mexico Highlands University since 1993, first as assistant professor of music, then associate professor and chair of the Department of Communication and Fine Arts. She also served as chair of the Humanities Working Group for the New Mexico Commission on Higher Education. She is the chief examiner in music for the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme and presents teacher training workshops for new teachers joining the program. After St. John's, she received her master's and PhD from Harvard. 'Tm very excited about the new job," she says, "particularly as the General Studies curriculum at NCSA has elements of the 'great books' approach applied to the devel9pment and training of an artist." Russell Titus (A) writes: "I don't have exciting news to report, but my life is happy and meaningful. It revolves around teaching martial arts and raising children (Jacob, 4 and a half, and Kirsten, one and a half), and, once in a while, I even get to spend time with my wife, Deanne. I'm writing this dull news because the 1983 section of Alumni Notes has been almost empty lately, and I invite my classmates to chip in their dull (or exciting) news too so we'll all have something to read." Jean Doyle (Burkhart) (SF) resides in Chicago where she teaches fifth grade at a small liberal arts school on the south side. She has been married to David Bonnan, happily, for five years. Directing high-school theater productions, improvisational acting and gardening also bring joy to her life. Beth Lohr Koolbeck (A) says, "I am alive and well and trying to live the examined life in a small house full of kids. My husband Greg (who talked me into applying at SJC over 20 years ago) and I have five kids: Daniel, Sarah, Benjamin, David, and Peter, who range in age from 9 years to 8 months. I tell people that my kids are attending an exclusive private school with a progressive curriculum. Actually, I'm just teaching them at home." 1986 Patti Nogales Ozdemir (A) published a book on philosophy oflanguage called Metaphonically Speaking, through CSCI Press, distributed through Cambridge University Press. David Elman (SF) reports that he is still running a screen print and embroidery shop as he has for 15 years. He is married with a child and step children. He is currently importing stones from Brazil to start a new venture. "Trying to (re)read 13 Books of Euclid," he writes, "HELP! On Book 7 now." Leslie Smith Rosen (A) reports: "I'm enjoying life-teaching, writing cur- · Jim Hanna (SF) has called riculum for several schools, taking care Portland, Maine, home for the last ten of my big old house in Baltimore, finishyears. He is happily domesticated bythe ing my PhD (at least the coursework!) cold ocean with his wife, Ann, and their and most of all, raising my three wonderdaughter, Katharine (11). After some ful children-Marielle, 15 (!);Alyssa, 12; and Samuel, 8. I was thrilled to see many procrastination, they are expecting a Johnnies at classmate Christina new male member of the family in June. Hanna received an MA in East-West psyFaulhaber's wedding last September. chology from the California Institute of Would love to hear from one and all at Integral Studies. He is Executive pistachio_nut@hotmail.com." Director of the Maine Coalition for Food Security. He says, "Our mission is to end hunger in Maine. My goal is for all of us to be food secure and retire by 2010. I am MargaretMertz(SF)hasbeen no longer convinced that the anti-Christ named dean of the Division of General walks among us, nor do I believe Tink:y Studies at the North Carolina School of Winky desires Platonic sex. But I wonder the Arts in Winston-Salem. The Division ifthe college still owns the Oxford of General Studies has 30 full and six Annotated Bible I had Jerry Falwell autopart-time faculty members and complegraph in 1982." He welcomes correments the five arts schools at NCSA, providing academic grounding in the human- spondence at jim@mefoodsecurity.org. Christine Gowdy-Jaehnig (A) ities and sciences to the more than 1000 1983 reports: "Mark and I are living in Preston, a small town in SE Minnesota. Mark has been a large and small animal veterinarian for seven years now. I work part-time in nearby Lanesboro's library, where I perform most all of the great variety of library tasks. We are busywith work and church and rearing our three book-loving children: Alexandra Marie (13), Phillipa Lee (11), and Bjorn Josesph (5)." Edward Epifani (SF) is a dentist in Salem, Oregon, He's involved in the politics of dentistry on a state level, concerned with access to care and the ethics of managed care. When he's not in his practice or in meetings he makes toys in his woodshop and windsurfs at the coast. He's married and has three dogs. Cynthia Keppel Hellman (A) and Gauy Hellamn (A) live in Norfolk, Virginia. Cynthia has been working on medical scintillation imaging devices as a sideline for the past year. There have been several successful tests and she hopes to have the first device sold and marketed soon. Barry works as a pathologist for three area Bon Secours hospitals when it doesn't interfere with motorcycle riding, trapshooting, or spectating at his kids' sports games. 1985 James Davis (SF) and Regine Verougstrete are happy to announce the birth ofTeodore Davis on June 27, 1998. Elliot, the older brother, is now three. James still does lighting for the cinema and advertising businesses. Becky Morgan (A) is spending her time editing books for a publisher in Berkeley and raising her one-and-a-half year old daughter Frances. Whenever they can, they go to San Francisco to visit Mary Beth Herner (A86), who is madly studying for medical school. Stephanie Rico (A) and Todd Peterson (A87) areencouragingparticipation in the new San Diego Ahnnni chapter. So far, they have about 12 regulars. "If you're interested, please contact one of us via e-mail," says Stephanie. Recent readings: Sula by Toni Morrison, selections from de Tocqueville, Robert Frost, Camus' The Stranger, St. Luke, and �Plato's Philebus. Stephanie's e-mail is sarico@leland. stanford. edu. Ben Monaghan (A) e-mails: "I just completed two months of minimum security at the Cumberland County Jail. I haven't read so much since St. John's! Alina, born in '90 at SJC, is now nine. She also has two sisters, Tsesa and Mieke. Anna and I are happily divorced since '94. I plan to study Yacht Design in the fall." Spencer Thomas Engel was born to ·Annalisa Chamberlain and Curran G. Engel (SF) on June 3rd at 10:50 p.m. after 17 hours oflabor. He arrived healthy at 8 lb., 6 oz., and 21 inches long. Mother, son and father are all doing fine. After almost ten years living in Stockholm, Sweden, Alexander Farnsworth (SF) reports that he has finally become a vodka swilling, meatball munching Viking. He's learned to say 'Va Fan ocksa ! ' after a sauna and an icy plunge through the ice of Lake Miilaren on a bout of dark winter madness. Alex recently attended the underwater and at-home birth ofJohn Lawton's (SF) fifth child in Albuquerque, New Mexico, for a story he photographed about uncommon birthing practices in the SW part of the United States for a mass circulation parenting magazine in Sweden. John (A) has joined the faculty of Baltimore International College as an English instructor. He teaches composition, literature, and humanities. Prior to joining the college, he was an adjunct English instructor at Carroll County Community College in Westminster, Maryland. He also previously held adjunct and teaching assistant positions at the University of Southwestern Louisiana, with experience teaching humanities, poetry, folklore, and ethnomusicology classes. Sallie Fine (A) e-mails: "I have recently published an academic article, 'It's Not Just What You Teach, But Who You Teach' in the anthology Teaching/or a Tolerant World (Urbana: NCTE, 1999). After a yeaT of managing the curriculum department for an educational internet publishing company, I have happily returned to teaching high school English in a suburb of Cleveland. I'll start postmaster's work this summer toward my administrative license." Joey and Patti Coxwell report that Joey (SFGI) is a physics teacher at Livingston High School and Patti, SFGI'92 teaches music part time at Livingston Junior High. The couple moved in August '96, and returned in August '97. TheyweTe blessed with a wonderful baby girl, Joanna, in March '98, so "we don't keep up with the outside wodd much." Patty says: "I owe a deep debt to a St. Johnny, Dian Belanger (SFGI90), who taught me yoga during my summer there. When I went into labor, the Lamaze was useless, but the yoga breathing actuallyworked! We would love to hear from some of our friends." "In June I won a promotion to Europe & Northern Asia Subject Editor at World Book Encyclopedia," e-mails Jay Powers (A). "For about two years preceding this, I was the Statistical Editor (think economic and demographic data). I feel more at home as an editor than in my previous incarnations: teacher, computer programmer/analyst, public relations guy. Biking is my sport of choice at the moment. I will ride in the MS 150 fund-raiser at the end of June. Anon-Johnny friend of mine (William Alba) will start teaching at SJC Santa Fe in the fall. I'll come for a visit at some point. I've been in Chicago since 1993. I'd be happy to hear from old acquaintances. My e-mail address is jpowers@wbpublish.com." Zohar Ben-Yosef (A) is the area manager for Isrnel for the Samsung Industries of Korea. After he graduated from St)ohn's he spent several months in Alaska on a salmon fishing boat in the northern waters. After returning to Israel he was an ambulance driver and first aid man and then worked in the family fiTm on gas tmbines, according to his father, Raphael Ben Yosef (A48). "Aloha from the Big Island of Hawaii." e-mails PamelaHalkett Hicks (A). "LifeiswondeTful! Myhusband, Stephen, and I just celebrated our fifth anniversary. We have two fabulous children: our daughter Alicia (2) and our son Austin (5 months). They are the light that warms our souls. I am currently the admissions director at a small K-8 private school and I am teaching 7th and 8th grade math. Last month I completed my Masters of Education in Professional Development from Heritage College and hopefully will be just teaching next year. If anyone wants to visit, we have a spare room and we love to have guests. We would greatly enjoy hearing from everyone; e-mail is best with the six hour time difference between Hawaii and the East Coast. Our e-mail address is hicksspa@aol.com." Sue Scarfe (A) is now Sue Wilkins. She is a freelance copyeditor and lives with her husband, Jon, and son, Warren (born 6/16/98) in their new old house in Deale, Maryland, just 20 minutes south of Annapolis. ("I can't believe I'm a mom!") b·ene Laporte Plenefuch (A) and husband Tom announce the birth of their son, Adrian Thomas, on November 6, 1998. "Adrian and his big sister, Elena, now a very gi-own-up a three-year-old, adore each other, so we have a happy house," writes Irene. "I am working part time as a marketing manager for SanoSite, a new company developing a hand carried diagnostic ultrasound machine. This machine has the potential to change the way doctors perform physical exams-they can now see what befOTe they only felt. So their diagnostic capabilities at the pointof-care are gi-eatly increased. It is a very exciting product and I am glad that I get to be involved in its development and marketing-part-time." Laurie Cooper (A) is a clinical social worker and lives in rural Lebanon, Connecticut, with her husband, Dov Kugelmass, and their two huge dogs, Aly and Osha. Elaine Coleman (SGI) reports: "I quit my day job as a writer/editor for Los Alamos National Laboratory to pursue my own writing. Recently I completed "From Calcutta with Love," a collection of essays and my late father's correspondence during World War II, where he was stationed in India as an army psychologist. If there are any Johnnies out there who served in India from 1944 -45, I can probably use your memories in my book. Please e-mail me at Elaine@trail.com or send a fax to 505-983-0743." 1989 Lee J. Mendelson (A) and his wife Shelia are thrilled to announce the biTth of their twins, Nathaniel and Emily, arriving on September 6, 1998. Lee is an attorney admitted to practice in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut, and is currently a solopractitioner working out of his home in East Meadow, New York. "Having twins is great," he says, "although now that they are crawling, it's a constant effort to keep your eyes on both of them at all times. All of a sudden, I understand Tinbergen much better." Charles Gill (A), now a Lieutenant in the Navy, recently reported for duty with Strategic Communications Wing One, TinkeT Air Force Base, Oklahoma. Tish Wu.lick (SF) announces that she and her husband are expecting their first child this August. She sends greetings to her classmates since she won't be able to travel to the reunion in July. "Please send a note byemail, especially if you'll be traveling to the Oregon coastline sometime! MLPylman@harborside, com." Daed1·e Culllen (A) is living in Richmond and expecting a baby girl in late spring. Ki·iszti Fehervary (SGI) writes: "I am currently finishing a PhD in cultural anthropology at the University of Chicago. Dissertation writing has been set back recently by the birth of Alexander Fehervary Hull on January 25, 1999. Matthew Hull and I can be reached through my e-mail at kefeherv@midway.uchicago.edu." George Ei·hard (SF) is living in the San Francisco Bay area with the love of his life, Claire Alyce Johnson, and his 11year-old foster son Dustin. He's using the famed SJC mode of thought to become a support ubergeek at Pacific Bell Internet. Ch:ristophe1· Sullivan (A) says, "Despite powerful Luddite tendencies, I continue my glorious career as writer and designer for software companies in San Francisco, while making as much time as possible to further my still nascent cottage industry voice-over factory. Am curious to hear from long losts ... email me at csullivan@earthlink.net." Aliza Shapiro (SF) is dancing in New York City. She says: "While I am involved in many kinds of dance and movement, I am most rooted in Laban Movement Analysis (LMA). LMA uses the platonic solids to describe pathways in space - when I use LMA in dancing it's like feeling geometry connect the inside of my body to the far reaches of space." StevenJ. Williamson (SF) reports: "After leaving St. John's in 1989 I moved to Boston and worked with emotionally disturbed youths (while still one myself), then with developmentally disabled adults. I spent my free time working with ACT-UP lobbying and causing trouble to encourage the government to accelerate the drug approval process, improve research efforts, etc. I was also involved in a renegade needle exchange progi-am (as the City of Boston did not have an approved needle exchange program at that time). I decided to return to school in 1991 at the University of Rhode Island to pmsue a Master of AI-ts in the Marine Affairs program, a program focusing on the public policy and law of the sea. The program was founded by Lewis Alexander who by coincidence was a St. John's graduate from the early days of the new program. I was fortunate enough to be there for his last full year of teaching. While at URl I began to learn tattooing, then dropped out of gi-aduate school (as an ABT-All But Thesis) to tattoo for a living. Hell, a job. I have been tattooing since then. I currentlywork at Art Freek Tattoo, on Steeple Street in Providence, Rhode Island. I live with my neurntic dog, attend the Episcopal Church of St. Peter and Andrew, go to punk mck shows on occasion, and have recently started to learn Russian, with the help of a graduate student from Brown (who by the way also spent a year at St. John's). Isn't life funny?!" Sean Scally (AGI) and his wife Deborah (AGI91) write from Nashville, where Sean is counsel for Vanderbilt University in Nashville. TatianaMaste1:s (SF) was awarded her Master's degree from the University of Washington School of Social Work on Thursday the 10th ofJune, 1999. She sends her sincerest thanks and fondest regards to all those who supported her in this endeavor. Ken Turnbull (A) is finishing his last semester in law school; afterwards, he will clerk for a judge on the Maryland Court of Appeals, and then work at a firm in Baltimore, Piper & Marbury. "Despite the fact that I will be required to make the weaker argument look the stronger, I am happy," he writes. M. (A) will be starting an MFA in acting and directing at Catholic University in the fall. She will continue to work part-time as a physicist at NASA while pursuing her degree. Sundance Metelsky (AGI) writes: "My partner, Tom Oehser, and I bought a house in Bethesda, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C. I am workingpaTt-time as a technical writer and caring for our three-year-old son, Bela. I recently became a session leader for the Washington AI-ea �Drumming Group, a group that practices shamanic techniques such as shamanic journeying, dancing, drumming, singing, and mask-making. I'd love to hear from former classmates and/or Johnnies interested in Shamanism/earth-centered spirituality. My e-mail address is sundance@toms.net." 1991 Here's the latest on, Ben Foley, (SF): 'Tm teaching English at the public high school in South Orange/ Maplewood, NJ, and trying to take advantage of New York's cultural offerings, especially opportunities to learn and practice traditional Anglo and Irish dance." J. ChristophAmberger (SFGI) has three momentous announcements to communicate (in chronological order): 1. the promotion to Executive Publisher Agora Financial Publishing and VP of Agora Inc. in Baltimore; 2. the birth of his first daughter and third child, Helena Sophia; on February 15. She joins Johann Maximillian (age 6) and Tristan Sebastian (age 3); and 3. the release of his book The Secret History of the Sword: Adventures in Ancient Martial Arts (Burbank: MultiMedia, 1999)-which, among other gems, identifies Odysseus as a practitioner oflndo-European martial arts and reinterprets Socxates' txial stxategy based on his expexience as a hoplite. Sample chapters are on vvww. swordhistory.com. "I am planning on going back to J a.pan fox a couple of months to join my husband," writes Sapna Gandhi Slatkin (A). "When I return to America, I will start a job search to teach ESL at a univexsity or college. If anyone has any job leads or just wants to get in touch, you can e-mail me at dreamsapna@yahoo.com." Andrew Michael Schwartz (A) graduated from Hofstra University School of Law. He's an attorney practicing in Philadelphia. "I am still single but I'm walking the tight rope between bachelmhood and marl'iage. I would like to hear from my classmates. My e-mail is eegulz@erols.com." Steven McNamara (A) writes that he received his PhD in philosophy from Boston College in May. He is now packing up to go to Ifrane, Morocco, where he'll be teaching philosophy and humanities at Al alehawayn University. "This should be an adventure! Ange Mlinko (A91) will be joining me in April." 1992 Catherine Barrier (A) sends the following update: "Jim Dugan (A93) and I were married January 16 of this year. Any of you who didn't get invitations, it was because I didn't have your address! To see pictures of the wedding, m just to drop us a line, you can take a look at our website, http://home.earthlink.net/- radovic. We have been living in sunny Little Rock, Arkansas, for about a year now, and have now moved three times, thanks to the tornadoes we had in Jan nary (five days after the wedding!), so e-mail is mobablv the best way to track of us. I am currently working at the Capitol Zoning District Commission, a state planning and historic preservation agency, and Jim is working on every film that starts shooting in Arkansas. We would absolutely love to hear from the Johnnies we don't hear from often enough (you know who you axe), or anyone who needs a little help worldng in either of our fields, since we now know just how hard it is to do that. My e-mail is catherine.barrier@mail.state.ar.us." Phil Pollard (AGI) and Dawn Beltz-Pollard (AGI 97) are proud to announce the birth of their second daughter, Anna Walters Pollard. Further, they will be moving to Knoxville, Tennessee, later this month. "We will miss the croquet matches and the kite flies," they say. Phil was voted teacher of the year and delivered the commencement address at Mount de Sales Academy for Girls in Baltimore. Dianne Cowan (A) reports: "For almost five years, I've been dating David Block-architect, Harvard grad, and cat lover. In Maywe'xe moving into a pretty new apartment with our three cats, Yeti, Sasquatch, and Homer. I've recently been promoted to managex of the technical suppmt/consulting grnup atthe software company where I work. My e-mail is diannec@pcwiz.com." Catherine Bauer (SFGI) has recently taken up a career she abandoned more than 40 years ago-acting. She has appeared on KIRO Ts "Mystery Theater" radio and KNWX "Imagination Theater," as a 21-year-old ingenue and an 80-yearold woman. "Nevertooold! (I'm69!)" Greg Francke (A) writes that he is currently an Applications Development Specialist at VlJTEK, a worldwide manufacturer of inkjet printers. "With them I've worked in China, Europe, and the Middle East as a trainer and consultant," he says. "I live on a 60-acre farm in Gilford Village, New Hampshire, in an old farmhouse I've been restoring for six years with my dog and four cats. I play bass in a 'speedmetal' band called Suicide Contest throughout the northeast. I am also involved ill the snowboard industry and publish Hellfire Magazine for MIA snowboards from my house. I am usually in a cast or a splint most of the time due to snowboarding, skateboarding, or dirtbiking." Julia Wimberly (AGI) sends this xeport: "Aftex graduation, I loaded my car and headed north to Alaska. I arxived there at the end of August. I landed a job in the law offices of James B. Gottstein in the position of Landman. The position was with the Mental Health Tmst Lands Project. What an experience. I was responsible for organizing, recording, and mapping information about state and federal land, including title work, permitting, and authorization activity, and value estimates fox surface and subsurface estates. I returned to Philadelphia in 1994 and substituted as a teacher in the Philadelphia School System. In 1995 I had major back surgery and am now retired on total disability. If you can help it never put anything off." "The Jesuits have decided to accept me as one of them," says Christophe1: (A). "I go to Portland to them as a novice this summer. Wish us all luck! I am also finishing up an interesting MA research project at Seattle University on reading comprehension in non-native speakers of English." Don Carlos Bell (SF) writes that he and Sabrina have been married for nearly seven years, and they've settled in New York City after living in San Francisco, then Santa Fe, then New York, and most recently Philadelphia. He graduated from Wharton Business School in 1998 and works in investment banking at Goldman, Sachs. Sabrina is studying nursing at NYU and plans to go into home healthcare. "We recently attended an alumni seminar on Kafka's Metamorphosis, which we thoroughly enjoyed, and I am participating in fundraising for the college. During business school I Look up jogging and ran the 1998 Palos Verdes and New York City marathons. We try to get back to New Mexico a few times a year to visit family and friends, including Dave Jaramillo (SF91) and his wife Sandra, who are expecting a baby this spring. Would love to hear from classmates at dcb_3@hotmail.com." 1993 Jennifer Council Jones (A) is living in Annapolis with her husband, Ned, and yellow lab, Liberty. Jen's Vice President of a marketing firm where she manages new client development and current law firm accounts in Washington, Chicago, Dallas and Minneapolis. (If any of the crew is out there, send her an e-mail, jcjones@ herrmann.com). Whenever she has a chance to lose the suit, she's sailing competitively on the Chesapeake Bay, Midwest lakes and abroad. Julia Graham (SF) will be moving to Boston in August, where her significant other will begin his PhD in philosophy of religion at BU and she will keep thinking about how to pare her many intexests into a practical and likable future. She asks anyone with news of SF92 or SF93 Johnnies in Boston to contact her at julia.graham@usa.net. Nancy Marcus ( S) has wrapped up her first attorney job as a legal aid lawyex in rural Ohio. She is working on a complex litigation internet copyl'ight case for the fun of it until August 1999, when she moves to D.C. for a fellowship with the Alliance fox Justice, a progressive judicial watchdog organization which was instrumental in defeating the nomination of Judge Bmk in the 1980s. She welcomes e-mail at nmarcus@ earthlink. net or msquire@yahoo.com. J. Claire (SF) writes from Brattleboro, Vermont: "Looking fmward to a Vermont Chapter starting up." Heathe1· Howell (SF) has earned a master's in education from Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia tte:nn«~ssc:~v (AGI) and his wife Marynell are the prnud parents of Maeve Alice Hennessey, born April 3. (SF) reports that he and is his wife, Hillary, had their first child, a girl, Carson Bogart Coffee, on June 1. He and Hillary both graduated from Covenant Theological Seminar in St. Louis in May. Hillary received her Master of Divinity degree and Clay received both the Mastel' of Divinity and the Master of Arts in Counseling. In mid-July, they are moving to Atlanta to join Perimeter Church, where Clay will be the singles pastor. Tom Jacobson (SF) is a producer at Gamelet.com, using his classical education to create on-line games and contests. He lives in San Francisco. Lynarra Featherly (SF) writes: "Kathleen (Eamon) (SF97) and I are in the most unlikely of places - New York City. I'm busy helping Donna Karan get her home department in order and giving Donna fashion advice. She came into a meeting one day with her poncho sideways and exclaimed, Tm mad about ponchos for fall!' I broke it to hex gently. Kathleen is trying to pick the perfect Ph.D. program for philosophy. Perfect means warm weather and smallish town -she doesn't necessarily agree." Gregory Stephan Watson (SF) is working for Outward Bound in Baltimore as Sea Base DiTector. He married Kmen Page WestingofBelAir, Maryland, in June. Colleen Hatch (A) is receiving hex master's in social work from the University of Pennsylvania. Jeffrey Spencer Wright (SFGI) reports: "Spent last summer (98) as a 'visiting scholar' (actual designation! Yikes!) at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut. I was one of 15 secondary school teachers selected to take part in a �Aluntni Authors ... five-week seminar on 'The Great Irish Famine 1845-1852.' Itwas all a National Endowment for the Humanities sponsored program. The NEH Fellowship was most appreciated. Great experience-sad but engaging topic." Aaron Garza (SF) wTites: "I married my beautiful wife Azenett in August oflast year. We are well and wondering just when to start trying to have children. I am coming to a close reg:uding my corporate adventure. Time it is to take some classes, grow some hair, and regrow some deadened brain. "What fortune it has been to get ,."'"""hin<Y 30. Mr. in Develonme:nt:tlPsychology at Teachers College - Colrnnbia University in 1997, Be.n Feldman (A) spent 1998 in Jerusalem, at the Yeshiva Ohr Somayach-The Center Progrnm where he learned Jewish law, history, philosophy, and Hebrew. "While in Israel, I met many interesting Johnnies who helped diversify my exposure in Israel," he says. "I had decided, while still at Colmnbia, that I wanted to pursue Industrial/ Organizational Psychology instead of Clinical Psychology for which I had been preparing through work, education, and research. In order to get into I/O Psychology, I have to obtain business experience, so, after looking for a long time in the New York area, I found work as a Management Consultant at ProWright Business Technologies, Inc. I am currently living back in Manhattan on the Upper West Side." 1995 AlexRuschell (SF) has alovely wife, Jennifer, and a baby, Benjamin Alexander Jr., born June 16, 1998. Alex is in counter-intelligence in the army, was sent to Korea to learn Korean, and is stationed at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Karla Manzur (A) e-mails from Austin, Texas: "My music career is still growing steadily, but my main focus right now is my upcoming wedding to my bandmate and soulmate, Thomas van der Brook, a talented violin I saxophone player. We will be married in Rockville, Maryland, this Labor Dayweekend. Please print my email address-kmanzur @jump.net, and soon to be web site address, www.karlamanzur.com. Would love to hear from people-we have an east coast tour in the works for 2000 with fellow Johnny musician, Josh Silberstein (A94?) from Burlington Vermont. We will surely pass through Annapolis!" Rebecca Ti·umble (A) has found her dream job in Birmingham, Alabama ("of all places") at an HMO. She would love to hear from anyone in the area. Heidi Ovei·beek (A) writes: "I'm in nn-..c n.,. school now (three semesters 'til I have my RN). and I are having a commitment ceremony in late which I am very excited about. We met when we both volunteered on a crisis phone line for lesbian, gay, bi, and transgendered youth. She has an even greater weakness for strays than I do, and now we have 3 cats and 2 big dogs. We moved An American Mosaic: Prose and Poetry by Everyday Folk~ Edited by Robert Wolf (SF69) R obert Wolf, SF69, ends the first section of the compilation An American Mosaic: Prose and Poetry by Everyday Folk (Oxford University Press, 1999) by declaring a desire to investigate the notion of "full humanity." In an effort to encourage dialogue between people across America he presents the need for "a public quest, bringing together the homeless and non-homeless, those with power face to face with those who lacked it." This desire for conversation is the basis for a series of writing workshops Wolf led in varying communities. In these workshops he encouraged people to write their oral histories, creating a patchwork of the American. This compilation consists of four main sections: Poetry and Prose by the Homeless, Rural America: The Midwest, Communal Life, and The River and the Delta. Many of the stories are excerpts from other books published by Wolf, books featuring solely one of the regions. An American Mosaic is an eclectic read. It opens and closes with thoughts on those living homeless in society. the frustration expressed overlooked by soci. _, • aswell example, has a of style Likewise, the second A • • • • A lS humorous in form but simultaneously creates feeling for the characters portrayed. The tales in between the thoughts on homelessness differ in style and form, but many are less stories than vignettes, featuring a day in the life of a rural or communal family. These are intriguing in their own right, some less from a literary perspective but from a purely anthropological view. The way in which the stories are told reflects as much the lifestyle of the narrator as the words they say. The farming stories are by and large simple narrative, unadorned and speaking to the point. They tell of the relationship of the farmer to the earth. The stories of communal life in Amanna speak mostly of sharing within community. The homeless stories express an unquenchable solitude, even within the hubub of the city. They are complex tales, richer in language than most of the others, and as hectic as life in the city. The link between the small town experience and that of the homeless is never made explicit. Although Wolf's voice is heard at the beginning and end of each section, there is little discussion on how the four topics work with each other to create a larger pattern. The narrator doesn't weave the situations together, but presents them in isolated chunks, leaving it largely to the reader to conceptualize the book as a whole. When Wolf says, "I wanted to promote the development a body of folk. literature that would help unify the experience of the people in my region," (page 317) the reader doubts that his purpose is that simple. It is not entirely clear from his essays what his exact motives are in tying together these specific works. Each of the stories has a merit of its own, some as poetry, some as history. Wolf's commentary is consistently shifting as he goes from the notion of home to a place where he pleads for awa· eness to the plight of farmers and small towns, and proposes solutions to the reader for how to heal the wounds of which the writers speak. Bythe end it is clear the book is less an artful mosaic than a plead for awareness of a dying world outside the cosmopolitan. Read this book as an investigation into the unity of American culture. An American Mosaic doesn't strive to make the connections for the reader. What it does access is a glimpse into the lives of those who have a direct connection with their land. These are the origin from which our lives within cities have sprung, and their daily trials shed a different light on urban traffic jams or the lines at the supermarket. Robert Wolf is executive director of the Free River Press. He is a writer and teacher who has lived and worked in many regions of the country. A former columnist for the Chicago Tribune, in the 1970s Wolf taught in public and private schools and colleges, and now runs private seminars and workshops. He lives in Lansing, Iowa. Note: St. John's College is referenced on page 73. -Alexandra Rothenberg, SFO I out of San Francisco to Berkeley about a year ago, partly so we could have dogs. We found what is known around here as a 'Victorian Cottage.' Known where I come from as 'small and old!' My email address is elicurwin @earthlink.net. Any Johnnies who are moving out to the San Francisco area or have questions about nursing school are invited to write." 1 "I am living in my home country, the Czech Republic, working in a big international advertising agency in Prague," writes Lenka Rosolova (A). "I am in touch with Shai·on (A96) who will be leaving the Peace Corps at South Africa this May and probably going back to the U.S. I'd be happy to hear from any Johnnies via e-mail at lenka_Rosolova@bssaprague.ccmail." Michael Barth (AGI) is a doctoral student in philosophy and education at Teachers College, Columbia University. He's also the coach of the men's lacrosse team-a club, not a varsity team-that plays Division III varsity teams. They beat NYU 19 to 5 in their first game of the season. Bmth revived a version of the original lacrosse game while at St. John's; it became known as "bloodless" lacrosse because of limiting checking. Also while he lived in Annapolis, Barth coached the team at St. Maxy's School, leading them to the 1997 National Prep School Championships. Himself an Academic All-American lacrosse player at Clark University, where he did his m1dergraduate work, Barth says that he doesn't see lacrosse as simply a sport '"I see it as a living laboratory of social and ethical problems that occur on the field, on the spot. You have to deal with the consequences immediatelywithin a team dynamic the wayyou wouldn't have to if you were off reading or writing." Barth is also involved with the planning for a new charter school in South Bronx for which he is drafting a charter and vision statement. previously, he worked for the Edison where he co-designed a K-12 charter school system and wrote its citizenship and character component. JVu•u,;:;.n.""' Beck (AGI) a graduate student at the Washington University in St. Louis School of Architecture, won a grant in the school's 1999 Steedman II Competition for his portfolio and proposal to study "The Logic of Context: The �Architectures of Ludwig Wittgenstein." He will study Wittgenstein's work in Austria, Norway, and Ireland. Cherly Heneveld (AGI) has moved to New Delhi for three years; she's reading Indian writers and welcomes visitors and fellow travelers. Her e-mail is chervls@vsnl.com. Kirsten Jacobson (SF) has accepted an offer to study toward her PhD in philosophy at Penn State starting in the fall of 1999. 1997 Jill Nienhiser (AGI) is working as a writer for Mind and Medicine, a multimedia company in Alexandria, Virginia. PatJ:ick Wager (AGI96) just joined the company as a producer (see "Frontiers of Medicine" on PBS.) Jill says, "I also work with a murder mystery company in St. Louis, putting on wacky audience-participation shows around the country." JeffTravis (A) and Patricia Travis (A98) are relocating their family to Costa Mesa, California. Baby #3 is expected to join Claire (3 in June) and David (1) in September. Jeff anticipates attending Whittier Law School in the fall and Patricia's looking forward to life on the west coast. Lee Munson (SF) has hired Nathan Olsson and Carl Smith, both SF99, to work as securities brokers for Prime Charter Limited. Lee is a broker and a vice president of Prime Charter. He is very excited about being able to hire other Johnnies and give them a chance to be successful on Wall Street. MaraiyaLeagne Gentili (SF) had a son 011 Dec. 30, 1998. His name is Rhys Allen and he currently weighs 20 pounds and is 28 inches long. CLASSICS WEEKEND .. .continued/rampage 6 Cindy Lutz (A) will be finishing up a year's research fellowship at the National Eye Institute this summer. "Next year I'm headed to Philadelphia to teach Upper School science at Friends' Central School. I'm very excited about teaching and I'd love to hear from any alumni with pointers for a beginner. I'd also love to hear from any recent alumni in the Philadelphia area." Lea Pitkanen (A) and Ma1·jorie Truman (A) are freeing the youth of Richmond, Indiana, from the cave by means of quality conversation and great children's literature. "Anybody in the area want to participate in alumni seminars?" they ask. "Contact us at trumana@earlham.edu." Kathleen Van Luchene (A) and Deirdre O'Shea (A) were pictured in the May 17 edition of Forbes (page 181). Both are working for Walker Digital, the idea factory behind Priceline.com. Stephen Conn (SF) is now studying acting in the New Mexico State University theater program and will appear as Bardolph in the upcoming production of Henry V Stephen is also appearing in a comedy improvisation group. Tiffany Head (SF) was initiated into the honor societies Phi Kappa Phi and Phi Beta Kappa at the University of New Mexico. She will be receiving her degree in foreign languages. She sends greeting to all tutors, staff, students, and alumni of Santa Fe. program, there were 12 participants for a weekend of seminars, and the event was a success. In fact, those 12 were so enthusiastic that the second year ten of them returned, along with 24 others. Now, in the third year, 11 of those first participants are back again and the total enrollment has grown to 52. Spouses can either participate in or audit a session if they wish and take part in all of the other activities. The weekend allows for recreational time, mostly in the afternoons, and often group hikes or golf outings are scheduled. Participants are together for nearly all social events, activities, and meals, as well as for the seminar discussions. These are times not only to socialize but to continue discussions begun earlier in the day, in seminar. Many participants in this year's seminars felt the conversations drew out the wonderful and complex nature of the texts. Several commented that discussing these issues with their contemporaries was very different from discussing them with younger students or with an arbitrarily selected group. Tierney emphasizes: "We've done some living. The exchange is different at 50 than at 20." Lerner says, "Reading a text and discussing it is always going to be more fruitful than just reading it." The goal is to deepen the reading. Jack Walker, another original member and an attorney in Los Obituaries Angeles, says the weekend offers a combination of reflections and applications to the experience of a complete life. "The discussions have a kind of leavening effect," he says, addingthat the seminars allowed him to continue to look at his life in different ways. The weekend offers him the opportrm:ityto bring together many people from the different parts of his life. Dick Berkowitz, a stockbroker in Atlanta and also a member of the St. John's board, invited 30-plus dose friends to join him for an executive seminar in celebration of his 65th birthday. The theme he chose was "What It Means To Be a Good Citizen Today." According to Berkowitz, "You're never too old to learn and to modify your ways. Not enough people are involved in the decisions that direct this country. It takes an awful lot of effort and awareness to participate and be informed." Whywould successful professionals who are into well-established careers want to study the Great Books at all? For Tierney the decision was an easy one. "It's sort of like the mountain," he says, "because it was there." When he talks about the Classics Weekend, it is with continued enthusiasm and interest. And perhaps best summing up the experience, he says, "It reinforces the importance of friendship and a life of inquiry." 9 -]ohnMcCauley, SFGI99 ��Cantpus Life ... Croquet: Victoryon the Lumpy Lawn by Suslan Borden and Barbara Goyette C roquet 1999 began Saturday morning May 1 with National Public Radio's Weekend Edition previewing the match and ended in the wee hours of Sunday morning as the Croquet Ball finally wound down. Highlights in between included: the dedication of a portrait of Eva Brann donated by the class of 1997; the striking quet cowboys." Tim Carney, a junior, tried to say why St. John's wins: "Think of Star Wars, when Luke Skywalker takes off those little goggles and then he's actually able to do it. That's the sort of thing. It's something like the Force." Gladstone asked Moser to compare the mentality of a St. John's player with a mid's and he said, "I'm going to go out on a limb and say, 'Yeah, you have to be outside of a regimental structure in order to be good at croquet. It takes a creative mind and it takes an exuberant soul."' Moser also commended the midshipmen, with their competitive mentality, for coming out to every year knowing that they would lose. s its gift to the college, the class of 1997 commissioned a portrait of Eva Brann, whose final year of a seven-year term as dean coincided with the class's final year. The artist chosen was Cedric Egeli. Juan Villasenor, as chair of the gift committee (along with Alex Bowles and Julia van R.eeven) spoke at the dedication, which was at noon on Croquet The will in one of the McDowell classrooms. Miss you to the class, wrote the tn11n""'n<r have, as certain say, less than their But in compensation existence. So me a sort of I'll w~rrhina life in McDowell Hail way after my pertect on [ Ill ::i:: -5 ~ Sam Davidoff and Piroshlca Kopar confer on court 2. of the first ball by John W. Wood, class of 1919 and in all likelihood the college's oldest alum; the busy Alumni Tent, presided over by alumni director Roberta Gable (A79), home base of the more than 300 Johnnies who attended the match; and, last but not least, the annual trouncing of the Naval Academy team. Beamed across the land National Public Radio's Weekend Edition has a savvy executive producer, Ken Hom (A80), who saw the potential for a good NPR segment on the match. Commentator Brooke Gladstone along with a crew of four visited Annapolis on the Thursday before the match to record interviews and soundbites at St. John's and the Naval Academy. At the place across King George Street, a single mid-David Evanson-had been designated spokesperson for the croquet team; in answer to Gladstone's quizzing about the typical personality of a midshipman vs. a Johnny, the mid described his classmates as ''extremely motivated, responsible, well-organized and determined." The Johnnies, he said, are "free-spirited, really open to a lot of different things." Soundbites at Navy: Midshipmen training (you can tell by the grunting) and chanting. At St. John's, the soundbite came from Freshman Chorus, which was singing a madrigal and receiving coaching in pronunciation from Mr. Kalkavage. The croquet interview was more free-form and took place during an afternoon practice after classes. The front lawn was sprinkled with students making lame attempts at doing their seminar reading. The sound guy from NPR kept trying to get the right "pock" sound of a mallet hitting a ball. Christian Moser, a senior on the team, described Johnny players as "cro- SPE~Ct<ltOJ[S had staked out space around the three courts, many up tables with elaborate refreshments. Students had moved sofas and chairs from out of the dorms and others had set up picnic blankets. The croquet ers-eight men and two womenwere on court 1, beneath the Tree, being photographed by Sports Illustrated, and the Alumni Tent was in full operation, offering returning Johnnies welcome, refreshment, and souvenir baseball caps. To start the game, John W. Wood, Jr., St. John's class of 1919, hit the first ball. Mr. Wood, a month shy of his lOOth birthday, is also an alumnus of the Naval Academy. The five matches weren't finished until almost 7 p.m., but in the end St. John's won all. The longest play came on court 2, where Piroshka Kopar and Sam Davidoff fought off a real challenge from the midshipmen but finally triumphed after playing for more than three hours. Ryan "The Phenomenon" Simpson, Imperial Wicket, set the tone for the afternoon by playing his first shot for at least 20 minutes, amazing midshipmen bystanders who ceased to scoff at the athletic ability of St. John's students. (Later in the match, Simpson sliced his finger while cutting a piece of white chocolate; Thad Finlayson had to step in and finish the match.) Festivities continued into the dinner hour and beyond until late evening, when the Croquet Ball was held in Randall. Alumni, current students, and middies mingled happily, a fitting end to the 17year :rivalry. Could there really have been a different ending to the story? One student toldNPR: "Oh, sure. It could happen. Navy could win. Comets come around and we lose croquet Imperial Wicket Simpson amazes matches." 9 the mids. time on and now and then a student will meet my eye and say, 'What's that woman thinking about?" A gleeful notion! I did work off some of my debt of gratitude to you by being an assiduous sitter. Having one's portrait painted is a weird and wonderful experience. Week after week, brushstroke by considered brushstroke, Cedric Egeli would make my likeness appear on the canvas, and after each sitting there would be a little more of me looking back, yet not as does a mirror image, which mirrors you look for look but rather as would an independent doppelganger. Those of you who've come across Oscar Wilde's Portrait of Dorian Gray will recall how as Dorian's life degenerates his picture liquefies in corruption. Well, Cedric worked a reverse magic: as I wore out the picture gained severe and robust thereness, and toward the end it suddenly acquired the hint of a smile which it kept and has now. Eventually there also materialized the volute on the arm of one of our seminar chairs that Cedric had let me bring (nota bene, with the dean's permission), and so did the book we put on the table so that I might appear to be pondering something-not just any book but Jacob Klein's Commentary on Plato's Meno. In fact I was mostly daydreaming or listening to Cedric's theory of vision. At I I a.m. Jeanette Egeli would come with a tea basket, at I p.m. we'd have lunch, and once, toward the end, I was given a bed to regenerate me for an afternoon of sitting. Giving away one's likeness is a strenuous kind of passivity, it turns out. So now this magical object is sealed and lacquered, and on May I, there'll be a hanging. Never has a hangee felt more honored and pleased and grateful. Sincerely, Eva T.H. Brann �Cantpus Life ... ''Appetite Comes With Eating'' (Rabelais) Santa Fe students hope their dining hall blues will be alleviated by a renovated serving area, innovative buffet arrangements, and a new chef. ong lines, fancy footwork, and strategic timing are the images that usually come to mind when students think about the dining hall on the Santa Fe campus. St. John's is not known for its delicious food, much less its dining hall, which can get crowded and be hard to move around in. But all that is about to change. The first improvement is the addition of executive chef Jeff Sisson, whose impact has already been evident in the the menu. Not only has Jeff brought more variety to the daily menu, he also responds to student comment cards on a regular basis. His interaction with students has helped to create a feeling of camaraderie between the students and kitchen staff. The second improvement is the renovation of the dining hall space, now underway. According to Santa Fe treasurer Bryan Valentine, ARAMARK, Inc., the contracted caterers, will cover a large part of the renovation costs. Plans for renovations have been in the works for the past two years. Suggestions were generated by students, kitchen staff members, and the architects for the project. The kitchen staff wanted the door at the rear of the food service area, which leads into the kitchen, closed off to prevent students from wandering aimlessly around the food prep area; the architects wanted to close off the unattractive view of the kitchen. The serving island was not originally set up for self-service. The hope is that by replacingthatisland with smaller, movable service units everyone can get in and out a little more easily. Finally, the kitchen staff has ordered a new Pan Geos station, a set-up that offers foods from the world over which the staff prepares on the spot for students. The college already has one station and the addition of a second will add much more variety to the daily menu. Additionally, the plans call L for a new tile floor, brighter lighting, new hot stations, and the removal and reconstruction of one wall in order to allow more natural light into the serving area from the adjacent corridor. The renovations are slated to be finished by early August, just in time for the fall semester. Throughout the years students have enjoyed dances and holiday meals in the dining hall. Despite their like or dislike of the food service, students will remember those events. William Davis, a rising junior, approves of the planned improvements but thinks "it would be nice if the sense of history associated with the dining hall was not lost during these renovations." Everyone can rest assured that the renovations will not affect the buffet style holiday meals or use of the dining hall as a location for dances. Mr. Valentine and the kitchen staff are optimistic that these renovations will help to shorten the waiting time in lines, and remove the bottleneck areas, i.e. the drink and cereal dispensers, by moving them into the main dining area. The changes to the location of the serving islands should allow for easier replacement of food trays. Aaron Mehlhaff, a rising junior, thinks that the renovations will indeed help to reduce "the lunch time congestion," since lunch is the busiest meal of the day with the shortest time allotted. Now, the many beautiful views offered by the dining hall balconies will be complemented by the splendor of the new serving area. All that remains to be seen is whether or not the student population appreciates the hard work that went into the renovations. e -Dagny Chicoine-Stangl, SFO I .............•••.....•....••......•.....•..........••....••...•..............•..•.......•....•....•.......•....•...•...•..•.......•...•..•...•.....•..••..•.....•..•..• PROGRAM HOT POTATOES How a student Committee on Instruction deals with contentious issues ike the politics of Capitol Hill, the politics of McDowell Hall can be contentious. Instead of abortion, social security, and the budget, however, St. John's politics involve issues like how to teach calculus and whether students who already know French grammar should attend language tutorials on the subject. as alumni have suggestions about what books should be added to the -r<>•~rhn"' students. In a nine-member Student Committee on Instruction serves as an avenue student concerns about the prngram to reach the Instruction Co1m1m11tte~e., the group of tutors and administrators who decide what will be studied and when. L Few Johnnies have studied ancient Greek in high school, but French is a different matter: some students are even fluent. The question of whether these students should be included with their novice classmates is a long-standing one at St. John's. During the eighties, Annapolis "tracked" junior language. Tracking means that juniors already proficient in French grammar are placed in a separate tutorial. In the first semester they read a play by Moliere or Racine instead of working through the Palmeri and Mulligan grammar book as their fellows do. In 1996, the Instruction Committee decided that placing the "advanced" students in a separate class was not in harmony with the college's educational philosophy. Tutorials where students with varying abilities work together to solve a or a text is to the Socratic method that we at St. At SCI forums on the issue many students supthis view. If tracking were taken to its logical extreme, they contended, it could move St. John's towards specialization, thus undermining the whole program. Furthermore, part of the St. John's experience is learning to teach others. Students with French knowledge should be able to draw the class' attention to interesting aspects of the grammar and help with pronunciation. However, not all students and tutors agreed. Some students already fluent in French before their junior year questioned whether their presence in class was effective. Unlike seminar, they argued, French grammar is a skill to be learned. St. John's should allow those who know French grammar to move on to translation as it did successfully for over a decade. In an attempt to create a compromise, two SCI members proposed that the college provide a bi-weekly tutor-led study group for advanced French students. This way, the junior tutorials would be students who .,. .....o..-.ffilu knew French would have an opportunity to further their study. Several SCI members felt that this was a good practical solution, but other members and some tutors found fault with it. They argued that a select study group would foster competition and elitism. After discussion, the proposal was rejected. Although the SCI did not alter junior language, the discussion raised larger questions which everyone should consider seriously: What is language study at St. John's? Should we study a modern and living language in a different manner than an ancient one? How important is it that we learn to pronounce and speak French? Should a study of French, St. John's style, focus primarily on the linguistic aspect of French grammar (and thus on the question of what language is) or upon the unique poetic experience of the French language? The second issue before the SCI this year was the calculus segment of the iunior mathematics tuto, · on .L.ll::::lll.l\.i:UJ.U, but of the first semesrudiments of ter, Juniors modern calculus: derivatives and integrals, the fundamental theorem, etc. The current manual begins with Newton's lemmas and shows how the modern methods evolve from them. Judging from the comments the SCI received, however, many students are not satisfied with the manual. Some students felt that it was not rigorous enough; others, that it lacked internal logic in the overall presentation; still others, that it did not inclue enough original sources. Creating an effective manual for the calculus segment has been a ... continued on p. 28 �"' '' The saga of Chase-Stone Dormitory ~ £ ~ ti';. • ti';. ~ ~ ."""' "'C = ."""' ;..i ~ -- "'8 (!,) .,_, r.ffl (!,) (!,) \.) ":::!" .,... tl:1 0 ....... i:: 0 ...... ';j <!) """" <:!.) ~ 0 0 00 r.ffl en \.) ;.!:! .,i.J :=l <N ~ ~ i::Q .g .g .s <N r.ffl ,..1:1 ~ ":::!" 0 'i:;j & v l><1 0 Q ~ ul ...... """" 0 ~ e<:S = ~ :::: ~ \.) v H H 0 u rJJ r.ffl (!,) ~ ~ he Chase-Stone House began life in 1857 as the resithe story on one of the building's namesakes, Samuel dence for the president and vice-president of the col- Chase: Chase was alledgedly a flamboyant, temperamenlege; during the Civil War it served as a hospital tal, egotistical, tactless character. In 1765, at the age of when the Union army took over the campus; faculty lived 24, he led the local chapter of the Sons of Liberty when in its lofty suites before the turn of the century; during they ransacked the crown's stamp office. He studied law, the 1920s fraternity men lounged, pipes in hand, in after having been tutored by his father, an Anglican clerrooms furnished with plush chairs adorned with lace antigyman. He was over six feet tall and very hefty; he was macassars; in the '70s long-haired, bell-bottomed stuvariously known as the "Demosthenes of Maryland" dents held raucous parties in its basement; and today its rooms top the list of those chosen early during the annual dorm lottery. Students love Chase-Stone's large, highceilinged rooms, its fireplaces, and its wood floors (and disregard the temperamental plumbing, at least most of the time). Chase-Stone was built in the same year as Paca-Carroll on the opposite side of campus. They were named after Samuel Chase, Thomas Stone, William Paca, and Charles Carroll-Maryland signers of the Declaration HHle1J1enae11ce who also served on the St. Board. Both buildings housed faculty at the college, although Chase-Stone is decidedly grander, having been designed to be home for the president and vice-president. When it was restored in 1963 as of an a.Ichitectural master plan developed by I.M . Pei Associates, the local architect handling the work noted that "in its general massing In a scene from 1941, students relax in a Chase-Stone room. and simplicity it is directly descended from a Florentine palace. 11 Originally there were two entrances on the front campus side of the building; they opened into spacious reception rooms. (supposedly for his deep voice and grand presence) and Curved led to the second and third floors. as "Baconface" his florid demeanor). As a member Between 1927 and 1939 the fraternities Theta Psi and of the Continental Congress, he was booted from office Phi Delta Sigma used the house, but after the dawn of the when he tried to corner the market on flour the New Program Stringfellow Barr declared that fraternities Revolution using inside trade information. Later, his couldn't reside in college buildings and that fraternity life sins or forgiven, he was to the was incompatible with the curriculum. Chase-Stone only to be impeached. The House became a dmm. During the 1963 renovation, the rear charged that he seated a juror in a sedition trial even wings were demolished and the entrance on the though the man had said that he made up his mind Carroll Barrister side was built. The dirt cellar was dug before the trial that the defendant was The senate down an extra three feet to create enough headroom for trial featmed Sen. Uriah Tracy being carried in on his the present common rooms. The building's cn1mne'vs sickbed to vote in favor of who was acquntea, which had been removed years before, were re101a.ce1cl. 11-<nrlfv-.rn Goyette In the suirit of debunkini!'the glorious past, here's CONTENTIOUS PROGRAM ISSUES ... continued.from page 27 text" for the calculus, notnmg s1m1lar to Euclid's Elements. The papers .!U'-'-"-'.lJl.l"'• Newton, Bernoulli, etc. contain different notations and do aspects of the mathematics for ex:amp1c::, transcendental functions and multivariable differential As the SCI '"" issue, the committee raised the qm::stJLon "What should the calculus segment accomplish?" One student said that the manuals' emphasis on nrr-.nn,pm solving rather than proofs was an aberration in the St. John's mathematics program. "Why," he asked, "are we spending time working out the derivative of 5x2 instead of presenting a proof for the fundamental theorem or investigating the meaning of a function?" The answer seemed to be that understanding Maxwell and Einstein requires a cer- tain degree of facilitywith calculus. But is this a good enough reason to focus on problem sets rather than on theoretical questions? SCI members did not think that their study of Maxwell was aided by the manual's nmh1Pm sets. It was suggested that ·~~--A~•~L of the calTP>irllTIO' Maxwell be [iJA CLIJlfJ ..l..L"O.UVH v'UjUU.<CHJ'.U.::J, need for such concepts as div and curl. The same would hold for the of relativity: the calculus needed to understand Einstein is reviewed in the senior math manual anyway. This would give the math tutorial freedom to focus on the presentation of proofs and on the theoretical aspects of the calculus such as: What is a limit? What is a function? What is continuity? And it might allow for the study of more original sources. The SCI met with the Instruction Committee to discuss the calculus segment. The student committee recounted to the tutors the comolaints they received from A discussion fol" of acc•om1Dllsl1. The SCI pr4)1)<)se:d that the manual focus on fundamental issues of calculus rather than on c.n.h,.;.,...,.,. Even if the .,.,,,.,-,nnPrn moved to the argued, the calculus manual needs a progression of themes that hold a student's interest. The Instruction Committee heard the SCI's suggestions, but they did not adopt them directly. The tutors agreed that the calculus manual should address philosophic aspects of the calculus and provide a way for students to present proofs at the board, but they were less sure that the problem sets were not vital. One tutor said that the difficulty may not be as much with the manual as with how the tutorials are being run. Some tutors •mnnrwrPCI the idea of more thought this a~ e:1nrn'no:i,...li because of the difents. one and deserves more discussion. Asin does not come about The program, like the Consntut1on, is amended after sideration. But St. many other colleges and universities, has a mechanism for students to voice their complaints and concerns. And at $20,000 a year, without student governmental groups like the SCI and the Polity, Johnnies would have the right to declare, along with some program authors from America's early days: "No taxation without representation." 8 -by Sean Forester, A9 9 "' ~ l1 Q a "' '>:: ..Q 0 ,_, .,_; Cf) � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The St. John's Reporter</em> Description An account of the resource College newspaper which started publication in 1974. Continued publication into 2000. Includes primarily historical content.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The St. John's Reporter" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=35">Items in <em>The St. John's Reporter</em></a></strong> <span>to view and sort all items in the collection.</span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 28 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context vol 25 issue 4 Summer 1999 Title A name given to the resource Reporter, Volume 25 Issue 4 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1999-07 Description An account of the resource Volume 25, Issue 4 of The St. John's Reporter. Published in Summer 1999. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Public Relations Office Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Goyette, Barbara (editor) Mulry, Laura J. (editor) Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf The Reporter https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/93bfaf6850a88821d45edf79791c1af3.pdf 928b36ff5cc2c79fd9790dbd7df080ab PDF Text Text ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE LIBRARY l\III\ \\I\\ \\I\[\\li~ll~i[~II~I\\\\H\I ~ · 31696 01138 2361 1 1 FALL 1999 JOHN AGRESTO'S LEGACY Interviews .............................. 8 CONFUCIUS Parallels between ancient Chinese and Greek thought ........ 14 THE SANTA FE -ALASKA PIPELINE Johnnies working in Alaska and Alaskans studying in Santa Fe ................................ 34 S!JOHN''S COLLEGE ANNAPOLIS ·SANTA FE 1999 HOMECOMING AND SUMMER ALUMNI. PROGRAM Photos and Toasts .................. 18 DEPARTMENTS From the Bell Towers: The "Lead Sled"; Charles Fasanaro Honored; Alexander Meiklejohn; Governance issues; Instruments in the Lab .............................. 2 Philanthropia: News, responses to the calendar ........................ 7 Preceptorials; SJC Meets Y2K ...................... 13 Scholarship: Bruce Perry's sabbatical ............................ 14 Campus Li : Summer vacations and one student's approach to getting the most out of St. John's .................... 30 Alumni Profiles: Toy Soldiers, classical education for classical guitarist? performance evaluation low-income schools, alumni authors ................................ 19 Alumni Association: Chapter events .................................. 23 Alumni Notes ...................... 24 JOHN AGRESTO, PRESIDENT, ST.. JOHN'S COLLEGE, SANTA FE, 1990-2000 Top row: with board member Paul Tierney; at the Pig Pie.kin' Middle row: at Commencement; at the Letters ................................ 16 Student Acivities Center Groundbreaking Bottom row: on the 300th Anniversary; as chef �Front the Bell To-w-ers ... THE LEAD SLED FINDS ITS KARMA ...•.....•..•...•.....•........•....••...•....••.....•..•........•..•....•...•.•..•..•..••.•........•.....•.••..•..•..•.••....•. T here are boats, and there are boats. When Jamie Whalen, A81, considered last winter the sorry shape of the beloved St. John's College racing shell the "Lead Sled," he knew that it would be an offense against the heart of the crew to "send it to the glue factory" (making it, alas, the "Dead Sled"); and he hatched a scheme. Whalen was living in Annapolis in the late 1980s when interest in crew was growing at the college. He became involved, then more involved, and now he is a sculling instructor and coach with a national reputation, as well as a professional boat-repair guy. And the "Lead Sled"? It was a huge, heavy wooden eight-seat shell, bought from Washington College in 1989. "Nobody in their right mind wanted wooden boats for rowing," explains Leo Pickens, A78, Director of Athletics. Washington College was, like the . rest of the sane world, switching to fiberglass boats. But the big wooden boat, swiftly dubbed the "Lead Sled" for its mighty mass, had virtues of its own. The shape of the hull made it easy to balance, and its great weight meant that its momentum (F=ma, after all) could be astonishingly palpable. It became a great favorite among the crewbees over the years. Eventually, · however, the old girl's hull sustained enough cracks and damage that major maintenance was required merely to keep her afloat. Typically, retired racing shells that are not abandoned to the elements are sold to trendy eateries and retail establishments for ceiling embellishment. Whalen thought, though, that the Sled would find a more dignified retirement in the homes of those who had occupied her "staterooms." staterooms with plate glass tops to turn them into coffee tables, and salvaging the other seats, and the rudder, bow, and stern. They sold the tables to rowing alumni just to cover costs; and doled out the other parts to appropriate parties. Stateroom coffee tables went to Dani Schaffel A98, Matt Carter, A96, John Michels, A95, and Matt Fremont, A94 (as a wedding present for his sister Sara Fremont, A97); Beth Martin, A94, got the cox's seat, Nelson Hernandez, A99, scored the "whale tail" rudder, townie Stan Mitchell, a longtime boathouse hand, was given the stern, and the bow was mounted and hung in the boathouse. Shipping was not inabove: Jamie Whalen (A81) saws "the leadcluded in any offer, so sled" into coffee table-sized pieces. Pickens has enjoyed the left: Leo Pickens (A79) and Jalllie with the visits of these crewbees of remains of the boat. yore as they've shown up to claim their prizes. He has a plan for seeing even more of his past rowers: the "Robert Pickens compiled a list of over Klinger," another old wooden shell, 250 alumni who had rowed crew, but only a four-seater, will be retired and sent out a letter asking who when it can be replaced. Whalen's might be interested in owning a and Pickens's saws will be poised.• piece of history. Last June he and Roberta Gable Whalen sharpened their saws and cut the boat up according to Whalen's master plan, fitting four �Front the Bell Tow-ers ... CHARLES FASANARO - CATHOLIC DIGEST RECOGNIZES SANTA FE TUTOR C LIBERTY TREE'S LAST STAND? atholic Digest recently awarded Charles Fasanaro first place in their "Good Egg Award" competition. Mr. Fasanaro has been a tutor at St. John's in Santa Fe since 1991. In 1997, Catholic Digest, as part of the Make Your World a Better Place Campaign, began an initiative called the Good Egg Awards. The Good Egg Awards were created to honor "people in our everyday lives - those people who give ... with no expectation of recognition ... special people whose contributions are T he Liberty Tree, the 400year-old tulip poplar on the Annapolis front campus, is th~ oldest living survivor of the Revolutionary War; it has endured through the normal ravages of time like decay, disease, drought, and storm damage, as well as pranks like having a fire lit in its trunk {a deed perpetrated by town boys, not St. John's students). Politicians wax poetic about its meaning as a symbol of liberty- the firebrands of the colonial revolutionary movement met beneath its branches to plot their resistance to British rule. Generations of St. John's students have read, dozed, played croquet, and graduated in its shade. Now the tree is in serious danger, a result of damage from Hurricane Floyd, which hit the Annapolis area with strong winds and 12 inches of rain on September 16. Already weakened by its age and the weight of its brnnches, the tree developed a 15foot crack in the tTunk. The large limb closest to Pinkney- which had been held in place by wires - was loosened. The local tree company that has taken care of the Liberty Tree since 1959 inspected the damage and advised taking the tree down. President Chris Nelson and other college officials decided to seek further opinions in hopes of saving the tree. Meanwhile, an orange plastic fence with a radius of 100 feet or so was erected around the tree and students were cautioned to stay outside the fence. Students who lived in the six rooms in Pinkney were moved to prospective and guest rooms because the loosened limb was dangerously close to the dorm. As The Reporter was in production, the college was still consideringways to try to save the tree. There will be a full story in the next issue (due out in early February) about the fate of the Liberty Tree. 8 Barbara Goyette making this world a better place ... our unsung heroes." The award is open to anyone and the contestants are nominated by readers of the magazine. The only requirement for the nominee is that they be a part of the everyday life of the person nominating them. Mr. Fasanaro was nominated for Catholic Digest's Good Egg Award by his student, Doug Lynam (SF96), who gives his former tutor and present friend "sole credit for transforming me from a self-centered individual to someone whose life is based on strong moral principles." Fasanaro has a lifelong history of committing himself to others that dates back as far as his childhood in New York City teaching neighborhood kids English and math. On many occasions he has taken those in need, drug addicts, those with family problems, into his home and counseled them. In his nomination letter, Mr. Lynam writes that Mr. Fasanaro's concern for his students goes far beyond the classroom. He is con- stantly helping students, often on a daily basis, even "staying up until 4:00 a.m .... only to get up at 6:00 a.m. to prepare for class." As Mr. Lynam notes, "Wherever Mr. Fasanaro is, there is always an entourage of students listening, and asking questions. Why? The attraction seems to stem from his character. He is a vessel ofliving,-visdom, and teaches as much by example and presence as with words." This ability to change the lives of others doesn't come only from his presence, but also his actions. However, the significance of the Good Egg award isn't that Mr. Fasanaro changed one life, but that he has changed several, that he changes lives every day of his own life. An excerpt from the Catholic Digest article describes Mr. Fasanaro as using "his life experiences to help others who are struggling or need to talk with someone who understands. When he is not working with students, he can often be found volunteering with veterans, reading his poetry to them to facilitate the healing of emotional wounds, or assisting his disabled parents." Mr. Fasanaro' s thoughts on his award are thankful, modest, and oriented towards his St. John's tutorship. "It's very nice to be recognized by a wider community, but it's an honor to be here at St. John's and learn with the students. Teaching, having such fine students, having the opportunity to teach throughout the program, is its own reward. There's no way of being a tutor and not going the extra distance - and my colleagues all do the same." Mr. Fasanaro earned a Bachelor of Science in chemistry from Manhattan College, and a Masters of Arts in Religion with Distinction from Iliff School of Theology, in Colorado. His Ph.D. is in Philosophy of Religion from University of Denver/Iliff School of Theology. He is an oblate member of the New Camaldoli monastery in Big Sur, California. He works with combat veterans as a poet, playwright, and counselor. His book of poetry, inspired by his experiences in Vietnam, is entitled Veloc- ities ofRage. He has also written a play based on these experiences calledHuntingwith the Moon. In ad- dition, Mr. Fasanaro has done work on military ethics with the foint Services Conference on Professional Ethics and the U.S. Air Force on a character development program. Mr. Fasanaro is currently on sabbatical. He intends to spend his time writing articles, practicing Beethoven and Haydn piano sonatas, leading a monthly seminar for town members, and learning Italian. 9 Aaron Mehlhaff (SFO l) Excerpts reprinted with permission from Catholic Digest. �Front the Bell Tow-ers ... ScoRN FOR No MAN A Look at Alexander Meiklejohn H: re passed Alexander Meiklf!fohn, with a twinkle in his eye, the truth by his side,freedom in his bones, conviction in his heart, and scorn for no man. I have read these words, which hang on a plaque in FSK Lobby, for 16 years-first as a student and then as an employee of St. John's. When I read them as a student, I thought they described the ideal tutor. Since graduation, they have seemed to describe a more universal ideal. Last summer, I noticed a reference to Alexander Meiklejohn in Mary McCarthy's The Group and I began to wonder who he was beyond these inspiring words. A quick search of the Greenfield Library catalogue revealed six books by Meiklejohn, all relating to freedom, education and free speech. A seventh book, a collection of his writings, included a biographical study in which Meiklejohn was positively idolized. And, interestingly enough, the study closed with the words written on the plaque, which were attributed to· Peter Weiss, an alumnus of St. John's from the class of 1946. When I asked Weiss about the words, he explained that he met Meiklejohn at St. John's. "He was great friends with Barr and Buchanan, particularly the latter, and while they were in Annapolis, Meiklejohn used to come for a week or two, sit in on seminars, hang around the campus and talk to students and faculty," said Weiss. "My first encounter with him was when he unobtrusively took a seat in the back of a seminar, listened attentively to the discussion and never said a word except when it was over: 'Thank you very much for letting me hear what you had to say.'" Meiklejohn's interest in St. John's was part of a longtime interest in education, particularly liberal education. He began his career as an instructor in philosophy at Brown University in 1897; he was appointed dean in 1901. In 1911, he became the president of Amherst College, to some degree on the New School for Social Research in New York. In 1938, he retired from teaching but maintained his interest in education, spending a month each year in Annapolis as a consultant to St. John'sthen in the earliest days of the New Program: Concurrent with his work in education, Meiklejohn was a thinker and writer about constitutional issues, where he was an influence on the thinking of New Program founder Scott Buchanan. In 1926, Meiklejohn was given the opportunity to plan and run an experimental college within the University of Wisconsin. The first year of this two-year interdisciplinary program was devoted to the study of Athenian civilization in the fifth century. In 1934, Meiklejohn was hired to establish a school for adults-the San Francisco. School for Social Studies-modeled particularly free speech. He was elected to the National Committee of the American Civil Liberties Union in 1927. In 1962 he became the chairman of the National Committee to Abolish the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. Although he never attended law school, his legal arguments were published in the journals of the law schools of Indiana, Duke, and Chicago. His interpretations of the Constitution were published in Harpers, The Nation, The New York Times Magazine, and The Progressive. In 1963, he was chosen by President Kennedy to receive the Medal of Freedom andin 1964, he agreed to lend his name to a civil liberties library in Berkeley, now the Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute. From 1920 to 1960, Meiklejohn published nine books. He wrote articles, reviews, and pamphlets, from an 18 97 review of La modalite du jugement by Leon Brunwschvieg . published in Philosophical Review to "Words of Advice to the Graduates of Any Class at Any Time," published posthumously in The Bill of Rights Journal in 1968. His playful sense of humor and gently bold personality are revealed through numerous anecdotes in Cynthia Stokes Brown's book, Alexander Meiklq'ohn: Teacher of Freedom. One passage tells ofMeiklejohn's response to Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter's suggestion that ''their common interests might be better served if Meiklejohn would spend three years in a good law school." Meiklejohn replied, Brown says, ''that he would be glad to do so, ifhe couldknowthatthe Justice would spend the same three years in a school of philosophy." Weiss describes how Meiklejohn wasthoughtofbythe St. John's community: "As a wonderful, thoughtful, elfin presence; as an educator par excellence, compared with what passed for education in other colleges and universities; as a subversive, in the best sense of the word." Meiklejohn died in 1964 at the age of 92. • Su3an Borden �Frolll the Bell To-wers ... INSTRUMENTALITY News about coming improvements in the laboratory apparatus inventory, and, in honor ofthe great moments ofthe SJC lab program, some photos ofantique instruments. •..........•..................•...............•....................•.................................•.•...••.•.......••••...•.. T he Millikan oil drop experiment, the Archimedes crown problem, examination of the beef heart and sheep pluck (lungs and heart), metal balls rolling down inclined planes, measuring the speed oflight - the great moments of St. John's lab classes remain constant even within the part of the program that has changed the most over the course of the past 60years. There used to be four years of1ab, now there are three; Lamarck used to be read, now students clone carrots; fruitflies used to be chloroformed, now bacteria are subjected to interrupted mating so their genes can be mapped. Reading the scientific classics and performing the experiments that led to them and from them <lllows students to see how the ideas of ~cience come to be, the logic behind the reasoning. The process of inquiry becomes real. But if the equipment doesn't work, the experiment won't work. Although there's a certain pride in coming to grips with the reasoning regardless of the success of the experiment, a clear result would once in a while be nice. Plus, to avoid "fossilization," St. John's has to find ways within its curriculum to recognize new classics as they emerge and to incorporate contemporary scientific advances. That's why both campuses have decided that laboratory improvements are in the highest category of priority for money-spending during the next few years. To jump-start the laboratory improvements, the college applied for and was awarded a $150,000 grant from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations for the purchase of new lab equipment - the funds to be split equally between Annapolis and Santa Fe. (Annapolis also has received a grant form the National Science Foundation, which was used to upgrade the astronomy observatory, and a grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute for the renovation of six biology laboratories.) The Arthur Vining Davis funds will be used to purchase equipment and materials to upgrade the biology, chemistry and physics labs in Santa Fe. Old equipment will be replaced and equipment that to date was either done without or borrowed (such as the ultra-low freezer at Los Alamos Labs) will be bought. Also planned are a second campus academic computer center in Evans Science lab and eventually renovation of space for a second physics lab, two classrooms, project stations, and storage. Examples of equipment needed are: analytical balance, spectrophotometer, ultra-low freezer, Millikan oil drop apparatus, Ruther- ford scattering device, Lenz's Law measurements, and projectile launchers, among others. In Annapolis, the money will go for: deionization system, micro-centrifuges, spectrophotometer, microtome, ultra-low freezer, Millikan oil drop apparatus, wave motion demonstrators, and photoelectric effect apparatus, among others. In honor of the great moments of lab, let's look at some of the antique lab equipment the college has. These pieces are on display in cases in Mellon Hall. Some are primitive versions of things like microscopes and spectroscopes. The speculations on their identification and explanations of their use are by tutor Howard Fisher and by Mark Daley, lab director. (Alumni who have differing or more penetrating insights about the instruments pictured are invited to let us know - write The Reporter, SJC, Box 2800, Annapolis 21404 or e-mail b-goyette@sjca.edu.) 8 Barbara Goyette 1. Biot's Polariscope: A late 19th or early 20th century device for studying polarized light and the polarizing properties of various materials. (A second mirror is missing at the top of the instrument.) 2. Electric Egg: Colloquial name for this 19th century' instrument. The chamber can be filled with various gases. When a high electric potential is applied, an arc develops; the properties of the arc depend on the gas present. 3. Parabolic or Spherical Reflector: That the surface is polished indicates that this instrument was used to focus heat or light, or it could be used to focus sound, speculates Mr. Fisher. 4. Model of a Piston Engine: This model of a steam-powered engine probably dates from the 1880s and was made with the look of a railroad engine in mind. Photos by John Bildahl 5. Spectroscope: Used for analyzing flame. Burn a gas in front of one telescope and look through the other short one; a known spectrum is introduced in the large telescope so that the unknown spectrum can be compared with it. �Frolll the Bell Tow-ers ... EXCERPTS FROM A TRIBUTE TO MR. SACKS at The Alumni Homecoming Dinner Dance in Santa Fe on Saturday, July 17th, 19 9 9 ...............•.••........•........•............•.......•...............•...••..•.. r. Sacks taught my freshman Greek class. Having taken Latin and French in high school I mistak:enly assumed that Greek would be easy. I was wrong... The result ofhis [Mr. Sacks'] intervention would be that our appetites would be whetted for further study and reflection. "Why was it," he would ask "that such a word would have such a meaning?" ... And "What were they really getting at by using such a word rather than some other?" Suddenly the very language that was being used to convey thought became thoughtful and exciting'. I cannot think of a better introduction to St. John's College. He turned it [language] into a door that opened the way to many shining new worlds: thereby offering an approach to the exploration of the great books in the St. John's program. Following his example, wisdom could be sought, even if no pat answers were ever guaranteed. Go cheerfully and directly, delve deeper, and pursue the quest was effectively his message. I would like to share a more recent story which illustrates the ongoing nature of Mr. Sacks' positive contribution to our college community and the consistency of his intent. Last summer, when I was observing an alumni association board meeting, the group was trying to determine just what their current mission ought to be. Mr. Sacks urged that it be to continue together the life of inquiry. And there you have it. True to form. He would sustain the connection for all of us past, present, and to come. We are encouraged by Mr. Sacks to continue as we initially did during our heady school days, and hopefully well beyond: to quest together, in good fellowship, and of course, with him, as ever our mentor and comrade. • Elizabeth Pollard Jenny (SF80) Lilli/put in the Heartland continuedfrom page 19 ......................................................... . became a woodsman, with an axe instead of a rifle, and Deddens painted a plaid shirt on him for fun. So much for sculpting-until a collector who had bought a kit of moldrnaking supplies encouraged him to come on over and try his hand at casting. He bravely broke the axewielding arm off his little woodsman, made a mold, cast the parts in a lead/tin alloy, put him back together, and voila! The collector encouraged him to do more figures, he sought the advice of the folks over at Art Things in West Annapolis about a medium and they turned him on to sculpting wax, and he was off, making first" a Civil War boat party in a little launch, and then an informal camp scene of an impromptu Navy band. Meanwhile he returned to the college's employ as the bookstore manager in 1990. Butwhen,inDecember of 1991, he took his work to the toy soldier show at the Loews Hotel in Annapolis, the collectors went wild, and he "sold a bunch" of the figures he'd cast from his wax sculptures. Civil War figures were unusual in the toy soldier world at that time because of the British beginnings of the genre, most soldiers were off to fight Napoleon, the Zulus, or somesuch, rather than on these shores. Around 1966 the toy soldier almost became extinct, because oflaws passed to protect children from lead poisoning. Up until then, most soldiers were intended as children's toys, and were hollow cast lead, painted with lead paint. (The hollow casting process was developed in the late 1800's by Britains, a leading British company, because while labor was cheap [picture a huge room full of little old ladies with paintbrushes], materials and shippingwen~exp~nsiye.) When the lead laws struck the industry, many companies switched to manufacturing other kinds of toys. And little boys got used to green plastic Army men. Those first TedToys did have lead in them, which was perfectly acceptable in collector figures not intended for children; but when Maris was born in December 1992, Deddens started thinking about the safety issues in his work-at-home pursuit, and eventually switched to a leadfree tin alloy, 94 % tin and the rest copper, bismuth, and other metals. AB interest in TedToys grew, and as he and Kate talked about what it would take to keep one parent at home with their daughter, and as they looked around Annapolis and wondered what was keeping them there in the high-rent district, they forged a getaway plan. "There's something about Kentucky," he says. "Everybody comes back." Deddens' parents, who had moved away from the state when he was an infant, returned to Owensboro in western Kentucky when they retired. His father, "besotted" with his new granddaughter, urged the young family to "come on out"; and they saw the wisdom in it. In 199 3 they bought a tiny house in Lewisport (a teeming metropolis of 1778 souls) and Ted stayed at home with 8-month-old Maris and worked at developing his soldier business while Kate worked a full-time job ("for a building supplies distributor-she had to learn a whole industry!"), did some free-lance writing and editing, and pursued a master's in mental health counseling at Western Kentucky University. In 1998 she received her degree, gave birth to Abby, and switched places with her husband: now she's the full-time mom (and part-time literary agent), and they are supported by TedToy Miniatures. A few years ago they fled the bustle of Lewisport for the peace of Fordsville, and found a much larger house on an acre ofland, where they enjoy the rural isolation more than they'd dreamed possible. They're twenty-five miles from the nearest town of any size. "We're just not in the mainstream anymore-it's a weird lifestyle," Deddens says. He credits his St. John's education with bringing this happy weirdness about. "Rather than giving me a particular direction, it affected my life as a whole. I became willing to do this rather than a lot of other more conventional things." He experiences culture shock when a toy soldier show (he goes to about five a year) takes him to a major metropolitan area. ("I was in Indianapolis for a show last March-next to a "Fashion Mall". Now, there's two bad things put together!") He knows it's not for everyone, but he warmly advocates the simple life. "People say, 'You actuallymake aliving doing what you do?' and I say, 'Hey we live in Kentucky!"' Like many an artisan, he sometimes dreams of (in his case literally) bigger things. "I would love to try my hana at sculpting larger figures, that wouldn't be covered with paint. But I don't have a strange enough vision to be an artist I'll always be a craftsman ... What I really need to do when I get the time is build a chicken coop. Kate wants to keep chickens, and I think it's a great idea." • Roberta Gable �Philanthropia ... IMAGES AS A PROMPT TO MEMORY .......••••....•.•••••.....••.•........•..••••......•.•.•.............•............•...........................................•. for April 2000. His esteemed partner (in the undershirt) is John Sifton. John is in his third year at New York University law school and James is in his second year of law school at Catholic University. They are both delighted to be "Mr. April" on your calendar. F rom Claiborne Booker (A84), c~air:r.nan of the commun1cat10ns committee of Philanthropia: By now most alumni have probably had a chance to open up the envelope that arrive~ in the mail from Philanthropia and look inside. The orange and black St. John's calendar with The Chairs on the cover sent to all alumni of both campuses highlights some of the milestones of the college, both for the current students and for posterity. (We hope you'll use the calendar to make note of your own milestones for the corningyear.) Moreover, we were able to draw upon the college's rich photo archives to reawaken those misty images of the campus of yore. For me, it was a wonderful time to reflect on the beauty of the settings and think once again about The Books. Classroom scenes (with smoking!) are timeless, as are the memories they evoke: Several alumni contacted us with anecdotes and/ or reflections about the college that were prompted by the images in the calendar. Perhaps you will help add to the memories they cite. From Bob DiSilverio (SF78/79): 1) I enjoyed the photographs and am glad Philanthropia sent the calendar. 2) After reviewing the pictures, I grabbed a pushpin and stuck the calendar to my wall. Someone on the unofficial SJC Alumni E-mail mailing list complained that the calendar does not have a hole drilled in the pages to facilitate hanging. Initially, I was of the opinion that this rein- From Sam Kuder (A54): I can identify many of the people in the Coffee Shop photo that appears for December 1999. First of all, it couldn't have been 1956, as identified in the caption. It nmst have been 1953 or so, because there are some members of the class of 1955 pictured. The woman on the far left is Emily Kuder who is my wife. She was in the first class of women, the class of 1955. Next to her is Hugh McKay, class of 1955. Next to Hugh is Carolyn Banks-Leeuwen.,~.a .... class of 1955; then Peter McGhee~ Barbara Dvorak Winiarski (both 1955) and Everett Wilson, class of 1956. I think the person on the far right is a tutor, and it might be Hugh McGraw. I don't know who the fellow in the front with the cigarette is, and and I don't know who has his back to the · camera. That's something from Apollonius's conic sections on the blackboard. A1, them was taken during November 1977. On Halloween of 1977, Matt Rowe, aided by Cullen Hallmark and yours truly, climbed the tower of Weigle Hall and impaled a jack'o'lantern on the topmost spire. It was visible there in various states of corruption and disintegration for quite some time. Thus, none of the Weigle Hall photos was taken in November 1977. QED. forced SJC's reputation as a Liberal Arts college and an ivory tower. (At an engineering school, the calendars would almost surely have featured a "hanging hole.") Upon further reflection, I concluded that the designers of the calendar had not overlooked the "hanging hole." This was an aesthetic decision. Obviously, the intent was that we would use neodymium magnets to affix the calendar to our refrigerators or filing cabinets. I felt really stupid for using a pushpin. 3) There are several pictures of the tower ofWeigle Hall. None of From Susan T. Case, parent of James Knerr (A96): That is my son, James Knerr, shown playing croquet in the photo Note: Philanthropia is the newly formed Alumni Development Council, a group ofalumni devoted to strengthening St. Johns by encouragingfinancial supportfrom alumni. ......•••••.•............................................ ......•.•..•.••..••.•.•• •..•..••....••••........•...........•.... ~ ~ HAVE YOU RECIEVED YOUR PHILANTHROPIA CALENDAR? Alumni volunteers for Philanthropia who will be class leaders, participate in phonathons, and act as spirit volunteers, met in Annapolis on September 18 to plan fundraising strategies for the coming year. They are (back row) Gary Edwards, SF79; Susan Eversole, SF79; Eloise Collingwood, A80; Ann Cruse, A76; Anne Schanche Ferro, A80; Marta Lively, A78; Rebecca Michael, A97; Rebecca Dzamov, A95; (front row) Brett Heavner, A89; Bill Blais, SF94; Natalie Arnold, SF94; Amber Boydstun, SF99; Sarah Liversidge, A94; Mike Mflerbach, A94; Lee Zlotoff, A74. If not, please contact the Advancement Office in Annapolis at 410-626-2507 or in Santa Fe, 505-984-6109. �- JAMES CAREY INTERVIEW... I nterview with James Carey, Dean, Santa Fe, on John Agresto's tenure as President of the Santa Fe Campus, 1989 - 2000. Mr. Carey was interviewed by Laura J. Mulry. might have been a hindrance. But, in fact, I don't see anyway in which his not being an alumnus has been a hindrance. One might say, but this is hypothetical, that an alumnus would have tended to be less critical regarding certain difficulties that needed addressing. LM: What has John done that contributes to enrollment? LM: John's tenure spans a decade. What do you see as the most significant dfff'erence in the College? ·JC: The coming to real maturity of the Santa Fe campus is part of it. We are financially strong now, and, during John's tenure, we've had a president who was fully committed to the program. Additionally, I think he has won many new friends for the college, including quite a few from the Santa Fe community. LM: What do you mean by the real maturity ofthe campus? JC: I think the campus is financially healthy. In my first term as dean in the eighties, our endowment was worth something in the neighborhood of $8 million dollars, all of it invested in bonds. We had to spend every penny of the annual earnings just to keep the College afloat. If the endowment earned 11 % or 12%, say, $1 million, in a given year, and sometimes it did, then $1 million is what we spent. And we needed to. But, as a consequence, the endowment did not grow at all on the basis of its own earnings as it did in Annapolis. The growth of our endowment in those years was not impressive, and it happened exclusively, or at least primarily, on the basis of gifts to the endowment. During John's presidency, the Board insisted, rightly, that we get down to a 53 spending policy so that we could put some of the yearly endowment gains back into the endowment. That way the endowment would grow with its own earnings. John had to oversee the management of the College during a period in which, though our endowment was growing rather impressively, the percentage we were permitted to spend was shrinking. Whereas we could spend about $1 million in endowment earnings in certain years of the eighties, we still cannot spend ·that much now, although the endowment principal has doubled in value since then. In the last five years or so, we have had to do a lot of painful belt tightening, some of it occurring in the middle of a capital campaign, and during a period of time when everyone could see that financial aid was getting out of control across the countrx. And even in the eighties, things were tight for us. We have gone through a time of real austerity on the campus, cutting back to the bone, and into the bone. John Agresto and Dean James Carey of Santa Fe. John has had to take the heat for this. But we are stronger now, and John deserves some of the credit. Our endowment has doubled and enrollment is the highest it's ever been, and attrition is down. And our campus is beautiful. One of John's achievements as president, and something that's easy to underestimate, was to make the look of the campus a priority. It was a bit of a risk because it's easy for people to say, "How in the world can he spend money on landscaping when we have all these other needs?" But it was part of a general advancement effort. It has, I think, already paid off, and it will continue to do so. Finally, I should say that John delayed, as long as he could, cutting into the instructional budget during this period of austerity. When he finally did have to do that, it was with the consultation and concurrence of the instruction committee. If John delayed making cuts in the instructional budget, he surely did not delay in making cuts everywhere else he could. I should say that I don't know of anyone who is able to represent what we do to a public audience, to potential friends, parents, or incoming students as well as John does. What he says is true, and how he says it is succinct, lucid, and appealing, without dumbing down what we do. He's a terrific stand-up speaker on behalf of the College. I don't know of anyone better. I've said this before and I'll say it again: John is the host par excellence. When he has people over to his home or when he meets people in the Schepps Garden, whether a small group or a large crowd, he's welcoming, hospitable, charming, and witty. He's laid a lot of ground, and it will pay off in our future advancement efforts. L)}f.•WhatwasJohn:s.greatest. challenge.from where you sit as a tutor and dean? JC: From where I sit as tutor and dean I would say keeping the respect and affection of the faculty during hard times. That's been John's greatest challenge, in my opinion. He has needed the support of the faculty to be an effective president. He has certainly been supportive of them. Occasionally, tutors who had doubts about John in one way or another have been pleasantly surprised to see how eager he's been to find ways to support them in their individual projects. More generally, John obtained funding for the Eastern Classics program that we wouldn't have had if he had not made a real effort · on its behalf. He had some reservations initially, but he deferred to the faculty. Without his energetic support, we wouldn't even have been able to set up the trial program we started with. He got us the Trigg tutorship and the recent Dodge Jones gift endowing faculty a raise in compensation. LM: John i,s not an alumnus of St. John~- Do you think this has been a help or a hindrance? JC: John's own education was oriented toward a classical conception of liberal education long before he came to the College, and part of his appeal as a presidential candidate was his commitment to reading and teaching great books. We didn't have to win him over to that. IfJohn had not been someone who was committed to a great books education prior to coming to the College, I think his not being an alumnus JC: John has worked hard with me and (assistant dean) Basia Miller in our efforts to improve the quality of student life. He has taken it quite seriously and been fully supportive, something I very much appreciate. I think that our efforts in this area have resulted in somewhat lower attrition figures for us, and John deserves some of the credit for that. In addition, he writes about as fluently as he speaks, and he's very good in coming up with a speech appropriate to his work as president and representing the college. He does that very well. When it comes to giving a taj~ welcoming par~nts to thec,61~ · , lege, nobody does it better than John, and I don't think anyone ever will. Again, it's something people might not appreciate until they no longer see it. LM: There have been several controversies over the past ten years - the mural, budget and spendingpriorities, tuition rates, faculty salaries - how do you think the college and Santa Fe have weathered these? JC: Takingthem one by one, John said some critical things about the mural on the second floor of Peterson, which had been painted shortly before he became president. But what he said was right on target, and in keeping with the same critical things that faculty and students had been saying before and after he arrived. There were exceptions, but, on the whole, the faculty did not like the mural, nor did students. The artist was in fact quite talented, but that mural was just not the best piece of work he had done. John was voicing sentiments that he heard when he arrived on this campus. But then one of our student set out to vandalize the mural. And John was as appalled by that as anyone, and he was prompt in apologizing to the artist on behalf of the College. As for budget and spending priorities, I guess it's no secret that we'd all like for the College to have more money. I don't see anything exactly controversial about that. As for how we've allocated what we've brought in, I know of no occasions where John has just overruled the dean, that is, where he insisted on one thing as a priority over something �... ON JOHN AGRESTO' S TENURE the dean insisted was more important. Maybe this has happened before, but I'm not aware of it. We've not always agreed, but almost always. I've worked with John on the finance committee with (SF treasurer) Bryan Valentine and with several vice presidents for advancement. We've worked by consensus. I don't recall an occasion ever where John said anything like, "'You folks think we should do x. I, however, think we should do y. Soy is what we're going to do." He doesn't do that. It's not his way. He likes consensus, and he works for it. John can be quite firm, and he has to be, once he has concluded where the College's best interest lies. But in deliberation he is open and willing to entertain alternatives. But, to cite one of our disagreements, a few years ago, we decided to go without January freshman class. I thought this was not a good decision. But John was not alone in thinking it as the right course of actio~:C,o,r ;1,1,s. Jp pa1:Jicular, L.arr~ Clendenin (SF Director of Ad.mis~ sion) agreed with John. He argued that trying to bring in a January freshman class every spring was getting in the way of our recruitment efforts for the following fall. And one could say that John and Larry were at least partly vindicated. The following year we brought in our largest freshman class ever. Tuition rates: That is a controversy. I don't fully agree with John on this. But he has wanted St. John's to be affordable for middle-class families and has been concerned that, by raising tuition as high as some have : µrged us to do, we might just price .them out of a St. John's College education. There is a real question of .whether we would actually have generated more revenue with a higher tuition. Surely, we would have done so if the financial aid burden had not grown disproportionately, and if increasing the tuition rates had not resulted in a decline in enrollment. Surely, we would have brought more money if had we been able to keep our enrollment moderately high and hadn't had to increase our financial aid budget. We'll never know whether that would or would not have happened. John has generally been for lower tuition rates. That's something it might be nice for the students to know. It's been for their sakes that he's held tuition lower than I, for one, have thought it should be. Then there is the Santa: Fe grant program - a source of unhappy controversy with our Annapolis colleagues. I think it is good program. It appears to have helped us get the en- a rollment up, and the tuition discount down, just as our consultants said it would. And I have been told that there has been zero attrition among the students receiving these awards. I do not think this program compromises our principles, not in the least. John was right to push forit. Faculty salaries: John has been as troubled as anyone around here that our salaries are not higher than they are. Under the circumstances I mentioned earlier- getting down to a 53 spending policy, right in the middle of a capital campaign and in the face of a rising financial aid burden - our salaries just could not keep pace with Annapolis's. It was not the case that John surveyed the expenditures of the college and then decided not to give faculty raises. That's not the way he's done things. People need to remember that there have been times when John himself went without a public relations director, and even without a vice president for a long stretch, rather than fill those positions and pay for them by taking motley from somewhere else-.I repeat, these were periods of real austerity at the college. time. You can do little with them in the Graduate Institute as is, and you can do next to nothing with them in the Summer Classics program. So, if we didn't have the undergraduate program we would have a second-rate Summer Classics program. On the other hand, if we didn't have the Summer Classics program we would still have a fine undergraduate program. You might lose other things, for example, getting the College better known. But the program per se is not particularly enhanced by the existence of the Summer Classics. Except in one important respect, namely, teaching experience with books that are not on the program. For instance, Frank Pagano (Santa Fe tutor) and I just led a Summer Classics seminar on a work by Nietzsche that is not read in the undergraduate program. That experience will color somewhat the way in which we read and think about Nietzsche and will, accordingly, have some effect on our teaching of:the Nietzsche selection that we do read in the undergraduate program. Of course, one might counter that you could read these books over the summer on your own. LM: DuringJohn's presidency, Butwhat's nice about the Summer a number ofnewprograms have Classics program is that it gives us an been started - Eastern Classics, Summer Classics, the Bradley Fel- occasion to read and think about something we'd like to read and lows - what impact do you think think about while winning friends for these have had on St. John's? the College and making a little bit JC: Eastern Classics and Summer more money for ourselves, because Classics have definitely had a posiwe do get paid for this teaching. tive impact on St. John's. The I think this question could also be Bradley Fellows program as well. raised about the Graduate Institute LM: It u pretty clear to the outin Liberal Arts and Eastern Classics side observer that one ofthe emprograms and about Executive Semipluises of John's adminutration n.ars. All of these endeavors, I think, has been to expose St.]ohn 's to the · presuppose the existence of the unoutside world. How do you think , dergraduate program in the form it thu sits with the College who sees ·presently has, I like to see these itself primarily as the teacher of other ventures as activities that radiundergraduates? ate out of from the undergraduate JC: It's the case that the underprogram. I don't think they conflict graduate program is and has to with it at all. Now, ifyou ended up remain our central endeavor, bewith a faculty that just taught in the cause it is there that one encounters Eastern Classics program or just the full scope of the liberal arts. That taught in the Graduate Liberal Arts means physics, technically demandprogram or just taught in the ing mathematics, Greek, music Summer Classics program, then that theory, and a wide range of things would have a bad effect on the intelyou could never do in the Summer lectual life of the institution. But all Classics program, and most of which of us do much the largest part of our you can't do even in the Graduate Inteaching in the undergraduate prostitute. When we were looking at the gram. That's not going to change. possibility of a third campus there LM: As the demands ofadminwas some thought that maybe only utration and.fund rauing have the Graduate Institute might be held been greater over the years, John on that campus. But we quickly realhas had less timefor teaching, ized that we could end up with a facwhich we know u a great love of ulty out there that was just not that hu. Youhavetaughtwithhim. well grounded in the liberal arts. There are technical features of the How wouldyou describe that exliberal arts that you just can't address perience and hu style ofleading a except across an extended period of seminar? JC: John and I led a senior seminar his second year here, and since then have co-led Executive Seminars and occasional seminars off campus. I enjoyworkingwith him. He's lively, quick, and likes to go to the heart of a question. He's good at making the case for points of view he doesn't share. It is essential that a tutor be able to do this. And according to the Polity the president is not just a member of the faculty, but a tutor as well. John can consider an opinion regarding a theoretical question or a possible course of action and ask, is this true or is it false. He is able to take an opinion that he himself thinks is true and subject it to critical scrutiny. He does this in seminar. I think that's one of the reasons he and I have worked well together in seminar. I, too, like to consider questions from a variety of perspectives. John and I both agree that questions by their very nature at least aim at answers. We also agree that liberal education deals with important matters and afleast films at replacing opinions about them with knowledge, however controversial this view has come to be at the College. So we work well together. I've always enjoyed doing classes with John. LM: What do you think John's legacy will be in twentyyears? JC: Aside from achievements I have already said something about, I would add that John has demonstrated that it is possible for an outsider to come to the College as president and work well with a deanship that is, and has to be, quite powerful. But this is possible only ifthe president, like John, has respect for the progran:l. I stress this matter because occasionally the question has emerged in presidential searches. "Can we really attract people who will be willing to be president of this institution where the dean is so strong, has so many people reporting to him, and reports directly to the Board?" You could expect that an alumnus, the right alumnus, might be able to do this. But John came here from the outside. And yet, because of his respect for our academic enterprise, he has worked comfortably with the president-dean relationship that the Polity wisely mandates. Sometime ago a former dean pointed to the well-known photograph of Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan on the steps of McDowell Hall in Annapolis, and said that the photograph caught something of what the Polity envisions in the relationship between president and dean, namely, mutual respect and support in working together to realize the ends of the program,. and friendship too. I think I have had that kind of relationship with John. • �.,. ·INTERVIEW WITH JOHN.AGRESTO The Reporter: Didyou ever dream ofbeing a collegepresident? Was this a goal ofyours~ say; when youwereworkingonyour PhD? JA: Never. R: Whatdidyouwanttodo? Didyou have a planforyour future? JA: I actually never thought of being anything other than a teacher or college professor until I went to the National Humanities Center and then to the National Endowment for the Humanities in Washington. After NEH, my plans were to start a classical high school until Bob Goldwin told me about the opening at St. John's. I applied and was selected. It was not something I had never dreamt about-never. SM: How has this experience changedyou? JA: First, I am 15 pounds heavier, grayer, and probably shorter. Those are the visible changes. Another way I've changed is that I have pretty much put aside any scholarly work that I was doing, and I miss that a lot. I know that no matter what I'm doing next I will be doing more -writing. Not more speaking since you can't do any more speaking than you do as a college president--but certainly more -writing and more research. The third change I can point to is a partial change in attitude toward the academy. One reason I never wanted to be a college president until I came to St John's was that I didn't have a high opinion of college professors, having been one myself and having seen the bickering, the fights, the pettiness, the arrogance. I saw much less of that at · St. John's. It isn't that I have a higher opinion of college professors generally but that I certainly have a high opinion of St. John's tutors. I think they are very good and very smart. They are devoted to the classroom, to teaching and to learning; and that is something that should be an eye-opener for any college president. Otherwise, I don't really think I've changed much. R: Once you were selected to be thepresident ofSt. John's did you layout any sort ofan agendafor yourpresidency? JA: I think there were three things I wanted to do. First, although it was rarely said out loud, I had the sense that financially the Santa Fe campus was on very thin ice. There were enough hints, and, as we know, it was true. So the first thing I wanted to do was make the campus more financially secure. That's been the hardest thing-no question about it. For the first five years of my presidency, the endowment remained essentially they were going to be in the company of great men and women, in the company of great books. Rather than viewing themselves as already fine and complete, I hoped to get students who would know that there were models of human life in the . books to which they might want to pay attention. And, I think, in large part, we've been successful. R: What has been your single biggest challenge at St. John ':s-? John Agresto and Eva Brann at President Agresto' s inauguration. flat. Still, we did manage to raise sufficient money during that time to give a 30-percent pay raise to faculty, and at the same time, to get our endowment spending down from 133 to 53. To do this we took spending down as far as we could and rebuilt the campus up from there. Since then, we've doubled the annual fund and almost tripled the endowment. Faculty salaries have risen steadily we are now giving 5% raises or more every year - and staff salaries have risen. We've come so far that one board member said to me "When you came, we did not know if this campus would survive. It is now so secure that it could be its own college." The second thing was to get the college better known, and I think we've made extraordinary strides there, especially nationally and in the education press. It is rare to find a person these days who is interested in education who has not heard about St. John's College-Santa Fe. And the third thing we tried to do was fight the battle - or at least to secure our position - against the onslaught of those who thought that what we're doing was a retrograde operation, a curiosity or something contrary to the new spirit in higher education and American culture, namely that we weren't politically correct or sufficiently multi-cultural. Ifwe didn't win the war, at least, we secured our position and lost no ground. Let me also add that~ partly be- cause we were on thin ice, like Avis, we in Santa Fe. always had to try harder. So we began new programs, new kinds of executive seminars, the Summer Classics program, the new art component in the curriculum. The dean managed to get and we helped him secure a new Eastern classics graduate program. We found new ways of packaging tuition and new remedies for our attrition problem. We hustled. R: Do you see a difference in today':s-studentthan IOyearsago? JA: Yes. What I'm about to say is controversial. When I came, I think we were still looking for students from the 60s. I think that was also part of our attrition problem-we were looking for free spirits, for "creative types." We were looking for people who marched to the beat of their own drummer-not a different drummer, their own drummer. But we have a curriculum that is better than that. It is a curriculum that offers to make students smart, even wise, about important matters; and I thought what we really wanted was not the fringe student but the solid core of students. We wanted students who were decent and good, who loved their parents, who loved learning, and whose ambition in life was to be good citizens, good parents and good minds. Wewanted students who did not have so high an opinion of themselves but, rather, those who had a bit of humility-just a bit. Students who knew that here JA: Fund raising, without question. Compared to that everything else was easy. For example, it is amazing how ea.sily the opponents of this kind of education are either put aside or quieted. It is also amazing to me how easy it has been to get in the papers. It is amazing how easy it has been to make friends with the town. Even getting off on an awkward footing with the mural matter and finding a town that was very standoffish regarding the college, it was amazing how easy it was to turn that around. I don't think we have any town-gown problems at all, but we sur~ly had town-gown problems of a historic nature when I got here. No, the big difficulty was fund raising. It is hard to raise money for liberal arts colleges, especially when the best place to raise funds is from alumni~ yet, we've never had an organized alumni fund-raising effort at this college before now. This has been a serious detriment to the promotion of the college. It is a curriculum that offers to make .students smart, even wise, about important matters ... we wanted students who knew that they were going to be in the company ofgreat men and women, in the company ofgreat books. R: You wouldn't say that that has changed somewhat with the capital campaign? JA: The capital campaign definitely helped. Sorue individual alumni helped greatly and now we have this new Philanthropia program which is one of the smartest and best things I've seen happen at the college during my 10 years. I am convinced that it is very hard to get people who have no connection to St. John's happily and willingly and consistently to fund other people's education. The only people who will and should consistently support the college are those who have benefited from it and that basically means alumni. �R: What changes wouldyou like to see thatyou haven't been able to enact over these I Oyears but that you think should be seriously considered? JA: St. John's, like all distinctive colleges, prides itself on its distinctiveness and cherishes and protects it. We know that we shouldn't be like other places or we will go away. But there is a danger in being insular, being forever the same. T: S. Eliot says at one point that if you have a white fence you still have to paint it every year or it won't remain a white fence for very long. You always have to be out there renewing and refreshing what you're doing. But in a college environment renewing and refreshing means somehow looking for different ways to deliver the same ideas, the same "product," if you will, and to be ever vigilant to try to find what we have to do next to keep ourselves and our mission healthy, alive, exciting and of interest to others. St Johns, like all distinctive colleges, prides itself on its distinctiveness and cherishes andprotects it. We know that we shouldn't be like other places or we will go away.. If I were to stay, I think the next area that we as a college should discuss is what we can contribute to the education of university professors, what can we do to contribute to the future teachers of students in other colleges. I think we might have some insight into what should be done to reform the doctoral programs in America - to change them from something that is now narrow and trivial to something broader and more liberal. If I were to stay, I would argue very hard to establish a doctoral program, somewhat along the lines of our current M.A. program-a program that promised to make people smarter rather than narrower. R: How does St. John's play into the nationalpicture? J.Vhat kind oflm~pt.ict ca:n a small college have Putting aside what we just talked about concerning a doctoral program, I think one of the difficulties of St. John's is that it is very small. I know we pride ourselves on the power of that smallness, but I think sometimes we fool ourselves. I think Dick Weigle's vision of many St. John's around the country was was the most controversial. It got · away from us in ways that I never would have wanted. We were on the verge of having a very amicable resolution with the artist to that awkward problem until the mural was destroyed. We were strong in our case that what was on our walls was our business and that if there as JA: For the most part. Still, what something on our walls, where we we can't forget is what influence we have in other things we do, for exam- live, that we thought was obnoxious, or pornographic or vulgar, we ple, in our executive seminars. I've should be able to remove it. It was a seen that we have brought in people controversial moment, because we who are already major figures in American politics, American society, couldn't finish what we had started, .embroiling the college in town poliAmerican economic life and have tics, as well as artistic politics, which made them, I think, wiser and better. is as nasty as educational politics. I I think that's a real contribution we think that was the last truly contromake while not disputing that our versial thing that happened and that main mission is the teaching of unhappened at the very beginning. I dergraduates. Still, I think we really can't say we won many friends by it, should be happy and proud of everybut we did win some. However, winthing we do that goes beyond that. ning friends was never the intent. R:Inlookingbackover 10 We just wanted to be able to lead our years~ whathasbeenyourmost own life the way we saw fit. Nothing embarrassing moment? else since has risen to the level of that controversy. JA: I tend to think about embarrassing things that I did, but someR: We've {alked aboutyour the most embarrassing most embarrassing and contromoment has to do with things that others did that I get caught up in. The naked student on the placita, who, sorry to say, recently died, and who, for all his embarrassment to me and ultimately to himself, turned out to be a very fine person, was probably the most embarrassing incident, particularly since I was touring the campus with a visitor who was being cultivated for board membership.Also, when I'm at a party and the municipal judge tells me that she is going to have before her court a few students who were found naked in a tree downtown-that's more than a little embarrassing. not only an interesting idea, but I think a necessary thing, an important thing. R: So movingfrom the bigpicture and the influence St. John ::Scan have there, it seems to me you 're saying that it ::S- on an individual basis.for the mostpart. R: Take itfrom embarrassing to controversial. There have been some controversies. How do you think St. John's and the town have weathered these? JA: The mural versial momenu. Asyvu look back over thesepast IOyears, what is your most cherished orfondest memory ofyourpresidency? JA: I think the things we've built on the structural foundation that I found when I got here. I'm thinking especially of things like the Summer Classics program where, starting with 12 friends from New York, we built the program that now has over 200 people each summer. To generalize, the proudest thing was to build on what we had here and to find new and different avenues to promote the liberal arts and to do that in conjunction with some very wonderful people-with David Levine, Jim Carey, Charlie Fassanaro, David Bolotin, Larry Clendenin, Bryan Valentine and Bill Darkey. In fact the list is many times bigger than that. . Also, to talk with and get to know people on the Annapolis campus. People who understand the principle that that which doesn't grow, dies. R: Do you think it was a help or a hindrance not being an alumnus ofthe college? ... the proudest thing was to build on what we had here and to find new and different avenues to promote the liberal arts and to do that in conjunction with some very wonderful people.... JA: Some alumni still think that it's amazing that a non-alumnus can be president or chairman of the board, but I always forgave them. Still, I do hear how wonderful it is that I know so much about the program never having gone through it, as if this were some kind of exotic · mystery that only those who are initiates into some secret rites could even get a glimpse of. It's an odd position since, first, none of the great books were written by Johnnies and, second, we know that all of them were written to be read by men and women of good will universally. That having been said, I do think in some ways it is an advantage not being an alumnus. It is especially an advantage when what you want to do is think outside the box, when you think of what might be done to move the program forward, into what areas, what changes might be needed, what new directions might be taken, what expansion should happen. I guess it's true of all alumni everywhere that they so revere their experience that it is sometimes hard for them to build �and move on it. So, in general, I think colleges are well served by having presidents who are not alumni but are absolutely committed to the mission of the college. any given month, week or day, be able to look at that clearly and intelligently, and then stick to the decisions you make. Roofs need to be fixed, sidewalks need to be built, steps need to be repaired, tutors need to be paid, students need financial aid. Still, the thing that always seems to draw you is raising money. Do but the day you think that's all your job entails, that's the day you shortchange all the other tasks. Sure. It's not much different from the beginning reading list of St. John's. Let's divide it in but don't ask me to pick one book. The list would definitely include the Plutarch, Shakespeare, Thucydides and all of Plato, Aristotle, and Dante. I think the other of the top 10 concerns us as Americans and goes from Locke to Jefferson to Madison to Lincoln and Tocqueville. ouesir:wn many times and I don't know! the answ,er J'las ch~uu.'fed since you gave R:AtSt. 'S, is there any glaring omission in your mind? JA:Rightnow,Ihaveto give the same answer I gave a month ago. I have some offers but I've said yes to none of them. They all involve either working with or establishing institutes or centers of higher learning, or going the route that many college presidents take these days, going from begging for money to giving it away. That has its charms. One thing I will not do is ·again be a college president, partly because I've been there, done that, President John Agresto and Mary Weigle, wife of former president Richard Weigle at Commencement. I don't think so. That's partly answered because we tend to cover the whole world, even if we cover it quickly. I think people on the outside might say that we don't do enough with the 20th century but I don't think that's true. However, I do think in some ways the founders of modernity get slighted in the program more than they should. R: JVhat are you reading right now? JA: Financial statements from the treasurer. I think there is a slow but sure movement, not at major universities but at small colleges~ to recapture something ofa core curriculum or at least to recapture some classical liberal arts offerings. People know we are a modelfor that. R: Is the life ofa president doomed to that? JA: More often than we would like to admit. Actually, I'm trying to figure out what are the best beginning Latin textbooks for people who want to homeschool their kids. If you look on my bedside table, there are five or six different Latin textbooks. Actually, I think treasurers' reports are better. R: JVhatdoyouthinkSt.John's legacywill be in 20years? JA: I think one thing that we are doing that will continue to make a name for us is we've become the teacher of other colleges. We have people from Oxford College, Mercer College, the Air Force Academy all coming to us to learn what we do and how we teach. I think there is a slow but sure movement, not at major universities but at small colleges, to recapture something of a core curriculum or at least to recapture some classical liberal arts offerings. People know we are a model for that; and, even if they don't follow us faithfully, they get something of the flavor of what andhowwe teach and they take it back to their institutions. R: JVhat do think you will be most rememberedfor? You've talked aboutfour orfive different things. Willitbeforoneofthose, or is it something ehe you think you will be most rememberedfor? JA: Different people will remember me for different things. Awkwardly enough, I will probably be remembered by most as the person who built the student activities center. And those who know me find this highly ironic. People probablywould consider me sooner to be a tugboat captain or an astronaut rather than a person who would make part of his life's work to build an athletic center. On the other hand, one board member said he was going to remember me as the person who kept the critics and the naysayers and the opponents of classical liberal education at bay. I think there are others who are going to remember me for having set the campus on a secure financial footing. There are also going to be others who are going to remember me as an arrogant s-o-b who wouldn't take no for an answer. R: JVhat do you hope students and alumni will say aboutyou? JA: That the campus got even better after he left. R: JVhat do you want on your tombstone? He always stood by his friends. R: JVhatwould you say to your successor? JA: The job can be like a funnel. Often, what it pulls you down towards is not promoting the program nationally, not in the arena giving speeches, not writing. Rather, the funnel always seems to draw you into fund raising. Fund raising is, to be certain, absolutely necessary. But I think the next person has to understand that this is a multi-faceted job. You are the spokesman for a kind of liberal arts education that is rare in the whole world, certainly rare in America, and you can't shirk the responsibility to be that kind of spokesman. You have constantly to keep up relations with other colleges, the town, the press and with foundations, centers, institutes. You are always on the line to explain, defend, promote what it is that we are. You need to understand thoroughly, the program at work. You want to be in the classroom; and therefore, you should want not only to be in class but to teach in class-be both a student and a tutor. On top of that you have to govern the college. You have to be able to sit with the finance committee, the treasurer, the dean, and the vice president to figure out what the priorities are in St. Johns, as manyplaces do, has the propensity to hide its light under a bushel, and somebodyhas to take the bushel off Maybe that sums up all I've tried to do - make this small light shine so that all the world can see it. and partly because I don't think there would be another place that I could go where I could find myself as compatible with what was being done as here. The only way I would look at a college presidency was if I found a college that wanted to be much better and didn't quite know how to do it. I might consider that-but then that's part and parcel of the missionary attitude that I brought to St. John's in the first place. St. John's, as many places do, has the propensity to hide its light under a bushel, and somebody has to take the bushel off. Maybe that sums up all I've tried to do - make this small light shine so that all the world can see it. e �The Progralll ... PRECEPTORIALS IN ANNAPOLIS Focus ON THE ANCIENTS ... I f preceptorial topics are an indication of interests in the college community, then the Annapolis campus is pretty interested in the ancients this year. Of 23 offerings, 11 involve Greek or Roman authors. Here's the list: •Nietzsche, "On Truth and Lying in a Nonmoral Sense, " "The Uses and Disadvantages ofHi.storyfor Life, " and ''Human, All Too Human;" led by Jonathan Badger •Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury; Absalom, Absaloml; and short stories; led by Andre Barbera • Observing and Understanding the Sky; led by James Beall •Dante, The Divine Comedy (Dante's understanding of the role of the poet in the world and his use of both the classical and biblical traditions for articulating that role. Consideration of Schiller's Letters on the Aesthetic Education ofMan); led by Gisela Berns •Shakespeare's Commercial Republic: The Merchant of Venice and Othello; led by William Braithwaite • Ethics as Related to the Medical Art (readings in Hippocrates and Maimonides, as well as other philosophy and fiction; examination of case studies; issues like the right to health care and allocation of medical resources); led by Nick Capozzoli help retrieve, sort, and criticize what students opine of human mental faculties); led by Chaninah Maschler •Plato's Alcibiades I and other dialogues; led by Robert Goldberg • The Soul (a range of readings that address questions about the soul, including Plato, Phaedo; Aristotle, De Anima; Plotinus, On the Soul; Thoreau, Walden; Tolstoy, What i.s Art?; Jung, Modern Man in Search ofa Soul); led by William Pastille •Plato, Meno (with Jacob Klein's Commentary); led by Erik Sageng o Machiavelli, The Prince; led by Michael Grenke •Aristotle, Metaphysics; led by Eric Salem •Edmund Burke, Reflections ofthe Revolution in France; led by Lijun Gu •Aristophanes, Clouds, Birds, Frogs, Knights, Assembly of Women; led by Adam Schulman •Thucydides, Peloponnesian War (including Aristophanes' Birds as a comic presentation of some themes in Thucydides' tragic account); led by Mera Flaumenhaft. • Sophocles, Philoctetes, Ajax, Women of Trachi.s, Oedipus Tyrannus; led by Katherine Heines • Iliad; led by Margaret Kirby • Nicomachean Ethics; led by Stephen Larsen • MelVille, Moby Dick; led by Jon Lenkowski •William James, Psychology the Briefer Course (using James' work as an instrument of recollection to e Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed; led by Judith Seeger •Lessing, Laocoon (focusing on what is peculiar to the arts of painting and poetry, and what they have in common, as the foundation for a general aesthetic theory); led by David Stephenson • Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy ofHi.story; led by Walter Sterling •James Joyce, Ulysses; led by Cordell Yee WHILE IN SANTA FE, SELECTIONS VARY ... FROM GREEKS AND GOD TO FRENCH AND FILM • Plato: Phaedrus; led by Jan et Dougherty •Aristotle: De Anima; led by Juan Carlos Flores • New Testament: Gospels of John and Luke, Acts of the Apostles; led by Stephen Van Luchene •Dante: Divine Comedy; led by Basia Miller. • Shakespeare - Sonnets; led by Caleb Thompson • Shakespeare: Richard II, Henry Iv, Parts I & II and Henry V; led by Claudia Honeywell •Marlowe: Dr. Faii.stus; Goethe: Faust, Part I, Mann: Doctor Faustus; led by Julie Reahard •Edward Gibbon: Decline and Fall ofthe Roman Empire; led by Georgia Knight •Racine: Tragedies (in French); (four tragedies by Racine, in the original French text; Andromaque, Berenice, Britannicus, andlphigenie); led by James Cohn. •Cosmology: (The course will examine a number of perennial issues about the large-scale structure of the Universe, with a significant observational/laboratory component accompanying readings from Aristotle to Edwin Hubble); led by Mark Rollins • Spinoza: Ethics; Spinoza's main systematic work, the one for which his Theological-Political Treatise is the preparation; led by David Bolotin •Hume: Treatise ofHuman Nature; led by Stephen Houser • The Poetry and Letters of John Keats; led by Susan Stickney • Holderlin: Poems and Fragments with Heidegger's Exegesis; selected poems and fragments by Friedrich Holderlin (1770-1843); led by Frank Hunt. •Hegel: Philosophy ofRight; led by Thomas Scally •Early papers of Charles S. Peirce; (we will read the works of Charles S. Peirce, a physicist by training and profession - and yet perhaps the most original, wide-ranging, and profound philosopher since Aristotle); led by Michael Bybee •Tolstoy: War and Peace; led by Katharine Mulford •Tolstoy: Short Stories and Prose, (Family Happiness, The Kreutzer Sonata, The Death ofIvan Ilych, Hadji Murat and others - stories of love, death, and the possibility of redemption); led by Elizabeth Engel • Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment and Nietzsche: Genealogy of Morals; (a marvelous opportunity for reflection on the moral dimension of social interaction); led by Victoria Mora •James and Freud: Selected Readings in the Science of the Mind; led by George Aigla •Marcel Proust: The Past Recaptured; Le Temps Retrouve; led by Glenn Freitas • Churchill: History ofthe Engli.shSpeaking Peoples, with supplementary readings; led by Jack Steadman • Camus: Fiction, Plays, and Essays; led by Robert Richardson •Flannery O'Connor; led by Maren Cohn •Films of Andrei Tarkovsky: Andrei Rublev, Solari.s, Mirror; led by Krishnan Venkatesh •Two Taoist Masters: Chuang Tzu and Lieh Tzu; led by Krishnan Venkatesh �Scholarship ... CONFUCIUS AND THE WAY OF HUMANITY A student and tutor discuss parallels between ancient Chinese and Greek thought. D espite the rigor of the program, Johnnies find time for additional reading and discussion. Thriving study groups at both campuses confirm the first line of the Metaphysics: tutors and students do, bytheirverynature, hunger for knowledge. During my years at Santa Fe and Annapolis I participated in study groups on the Presocratics, Aristotle, Shakespeare, English Poetry, and Nietzsche. These texts often had a close relation to the program books I was reading. In my senior year, however, I took a bold step towards the East to read the Chinese philosopher, Confucius. In response to student interest in Eastern classics, Annapolis tutor Lijun Gu led a series of seminars on the Analects. Mr. Gu selected the ·Analects because Confucius is perhaps the seminal figure in the Eastern tradition. Confucian thought has shaped not only the Chinese civiliza[;' ~ tion, but also the cultures of many ::r:: other Pacific Rim countries .. As the :E ~ only book where Confucius' sayings :>-, ..Cl are collected, the Analects is an ex~ cellent place to begin. The book's s:: title, Lun Yu, means "Ethical DiaTutor Lijun Gu explains the character for "humanity," which has one part meaning "human" and another meaning "relationship." logues," but like Cicero's Republic for Politea, James Legge'sAnalects tifies and dignifies man; an action cerebral, too abstract. Confucius Beijing. He was awarded a scholaror "literary gleanings" for Lun Yu stresses rituals and the necessity of that gives meaning to what would ship for study in United States and hasbecomethestandard.Forthe obtained an MA in International Repracticing to acquire virtue. otherwise be merely biological. study group (which had students Gu: In the openingpassage of the lations and a PhD in political science Ritual is a daily practice that must from every class as well as from the Analects he says, "To learn somefrom George Washington University. rest upon humanity and the root of Graduate Institute) Mr. Gu annothing and regularly to practice it- is I spoke with him in the Coffee Shop: · humanity is filial piety. The love and tated the excellent new literal transForester: When, as freshmen, we respect one has for his or her parents it not ~joy?" lation by Chichung Huang (New Forester: Exactly, and the practifirst read the Meno we are conis a special kind of human relation, a York: Oxford University Press, 1997). fronted with the question of virtue, love with distinction. The Analects cal aspect of Confucius's philosophy Who was Confucius, and what is is evident from his description of of human excellence. Similarly, the .suggest that filial piety was the best his philosophy? The word "Confuhow he learned: "At fifteen I bent ground for all the other human relaAnalects address the question of cius" is the Latinized version of my mind on learning; at thirty, I was tions, from friendship to political what it means to be a good man and Kong Fuzi, which means "Master established [ie. expert at the rituals]; the more basic question of what loyalty. If you think about this it Kong." Confucius lived in the Zhou at forty, I was free from delusion; at makes us human at all. makes a lot of sense. If you treat Dynasty, making him a contempofifty, I knew the decree of heaven; at Gu: The Chinesewordren (the other people as you would treat your rary of Socrates. He held several sixty, my ears became subtly percepcharacter is composed of human+ brother or your daughter you are government positions, the highest relations) has been translated 16 diftive; at seventy, I was able to follow going to act correctly. Confucius my heart's desire without overstepferent ways, even as "perfect lived at a time of political and culbeing Minister of Justice. After he tural instability, a time when tradiping boundaries." This is a practical retired from government, Confucius virtue." But "perfect virtue" may be tional virtues were constantly being movement towards virtue. misleading because it is an open travelled throughout China to disGu: The passage describes the undermined. He knew that restoring cuss his philosophy before returning question whether ren is the highest training of desire. The soul is shaped virtue a human being can attain. civic life could not be a process of to his home state of Lu. Like so that one no longer has the wrong Perhaps a better translation is "humere legislation, for the princes had Socrates, Confucius tailors his kind of desires. Here age should be "lost the way." He chose to ground manity." At the beginning of the teachings to the character of each of valued, experience should be valued. Analects Confucius tells us that filial the political on personal virtue, on his. interlocutors. He uses irony and piety is "the root of humanity." This the humanity that springs from filial As Aristotle says in the Ethics, the his sayings open themselves to sevyoung make good mathematicians piety. eral levels of interpretation. And like account of humanity is different . than the Biblical or Greek accounts. but poor philosophers. Yet Confucius Forester: So like the Republic, his Athenian contemporary, ConfuForester: In what way is it differthe Analects suggest that harmony in shares with Plato the idea that not cius can be playful: "It is all over. I everyone can become wise. Politithe city must rest upon a harmony ent? Are you suggesting that for have never seen anyone who loves Confucius, it is not our reason or our within the soul? cally, he differentiates between virtue as much as he loves beautiful kings, gentlemen and the masses. On spirit (the fact that we are made in Gu: Yes. women." an individual level, he sees innate Forester: And Confucius gives a Needless to say, one cannot do jus- God's image) that lifts us above the differences in people's capability. For animals, but some other human method for achieving this harmony. tice to Confucius' thought in a short example, he says: "Those who know That's an aspect that appeals to me quality? article. Howev~r, I hope that a conit [i.e., the way of humanity] at birth Gu: Man gives significance to his about Confucius: his emphasis on versation with Mr. Gu will raise belong to the highest category; those birth and death by marking them practice, on living virtue. There is a some of the central themes of the who know it through learning belong with ritual. By ritual Confucius does danger in Western thought, espeAnalects. Mr. Gu first attended colnot mean simply something ceremoto the second category; those who cially in figures like Epictetus and lege in China receiving a BA in Kant, for morality to become too continued on page 17 World History from the University of nial. A ritual is a practice that beau- �Scholarship ... BRUCE PERRY, PROFILED B ruce Perry began as a faculty member on the Santa Fe campus in 1990. His interest in teaching at St. John's seems natural since his academic background includes degrees in Greek and in classics. However, it was the possibility of,becoming a part of the Eastern Classics program in the Graduate Institute at the Santa Fe campus that led Mr. Perry to the Southwest, where he is one of very few scholars of Sanskrit and Indian philosophy . Mr. Perry's attraction to Indian philosophy was sparked by his intense interest in linguistics and in classics. He explains that in the past classicists regularly studied Sanskrit in addition to Greek and Latin. The structure of Sanskrit, the classical language ofindia and of Hinduism, relates to the structure of Greek and the study of both languages is complementary. Studying Sanskrit led Halebid (Karnataka) Mr. Perry to read Indian philosophy and to study other Asian languages. (In 1995 he completed his dissertation and earned a Ph.D. in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Pennsylvania.) Over the 1998-99 academic year, Mr. Perry was on sabbatical and returned to Chennai (formerly Madras), India, to continue research he began as a part of his graduate work. Through Mr. Perry's affiliation with the Kuppuswami Sastri Research Institute, where he was a student in a Tamil language program ten years ago, he was able to consult with friends and teachers on readings of Sanskrit texts and their translations. The Kuppuswami Institute hosts world-renowned philosophers, scholars on Sanskritic and Indological subjects, and statesmen. Mr. Perry's dissertation work focused on translations of and questions brought up by the Nyaya Sutra, the source-book of the Nyaya philosophical school. Nyaya is pri- Gangaikonducholapuram (Tamil Nadu) marily concerned with analytical approaches to the objects of knowledge and was founded by Gautama, who lived about 150 B.C.E. Five-hundred sutras comprise the entire Nyaya text, providing Mr. Perry with a lifetime of translation and interpretation work. During the past year, two of the translations he completedwere first-ever translations into English. In the future, Mr. Perry would like to write on the developments of scholarly opinion on the text and produce a larger work of commentary to accompany his translations. During his last three months in India, Mr. Perry worked with a colleague at the University of Madras on a Sanskrit text on New Nyaya, a technical and specialized approach to philosophy. This approach is not incorporated into the Eastern Classics curriculum, but Mr. Perry plans to introduce more students to New Nyaya with a lecture on the subject this spring. Despite the enormity of his project on the Nyaya Sutra, Mr. Perry found time to travel throughout Southern India during his sabbatical. He visited towns called "hill stations," which were created by the British colonists in high elevations as destinations for cooler weather and resorts. He remembers picturesque Ooty, called "the Queen of Kumbakoman (Tamil Nadu) on his continuing revisions of a study of part of the commentary of Simplicius on Aristotle's Physics. This work was begun during Mr. Perry's graduate work at the University of Washington, where he earned a doctorate in classics in 1983. (He received his bachelor's degree in Greek from the University of Washington ten years earlier.) Mr. Perry serves as member of the Faculty Library Committee. During the development of the Eastern Classics program, Mr. Perry prepared bibliographies of texts on Indian philosophy, religion, and translations. He has also assisted with the selection of Greek language classics. David Levine, Director of the Graduate Institute, stressed the importance of Mr. Perry's role in shaping the Indian and Sanskrit program and reading list for the Eastern Classics curriculum. Eastern Classics students are impressed with the Sanskrit manual prepared by Mr. Perry and have benefited from Mr. Perry's renowned colleagues who have spoken at the college and consulted on the program. During the summers, Mr. Perry has led Sanskrit courses for faculty members. Hill Stations" and the capital of the Nilgiri district. Ooty is home to one of the few remaining steam-drawn rail lines on the Indian subcontinent. Mr. Perry rode one of the narrow gauge "toy trains," which provided him with dramatic views of the gorges. He also went "templehopping" and explored some of the preserved temples from as early as the seventh century. His travels took him to Kandy, Sri Lanka, where he visited Dalada's Temple ofBuddah's Tooth. Kandy is the historic hill capital of Sri Lanka and lies about 100 miles inland from the capital Colombo. The Dalada Temple is one of the most sacred places in the world for Gangaikonducholapuram (Tamil Nadu) Buddhists and famous as a repository of a Mark St. John (SF82), director of sacred tooth of the Buddha. Inside, Student Activities in Santa Fe, dethe surfaces are covered with murals scribes Mr. Perry as a most valuable depicting different parts of Buddha's player during the annual Facultylife story. Mr. Perry also toured SinSenior softball game, skills he may gapore for a couple have honed when he played on the of days before the St. John's summer team in the ·santa end of his time Fe city softball league. He is also abroad. known as a Mac-devotee and a After nine months stereophile. in India, Mr. Perry Bruce Perry has great energy for traveled to Hamburg, the expansion of the Eastern Classics Germany, to conprogram and for the increased intertinue his study of change between Eastern and Western Sanskrit as well as of studies throughout the undergraduTibetan language and ate and graduate curricula. He is sure texts at the Institute to be instrumental in the program's for History and Culcontinuing development. • ture of Tibet. In Hamburg, Mr. Alisa Murray Smith (SFGI99) Perry was able to spend time at work Photos courtesy of Mr. Perry. �Letters ... PROGRAM SUGGESTIONS ECONOMICS Someone recently nominated a book by Hayek as a candidate for a modem great book in the field of economics. I apologize that I don't have the issue of The Reporter and thus the letter-writer's name handy, and also that I haven't yet had a chance to read the book nominated (I hope to do so but my book-reading pile is already quite high!). I would like to offer a multiplicity of other nominations, for possible feedback from other alumni. My nominations: virtually anything written by Kenneth E. Boulding, a recently deceased and highly esteemed American economist (of British origin). He had something like 27 honorary doctor's degrees and served as president of at least five scholarly associations (including the AEA). It was said in an obituary that his basic economics textbook (Economic Analysis, 4th ed. published 19 66) was better than Paul Samuelson's, but he was apparently far too creative and broadminded for the narrow interests of most economists, who found him stimulating, but who largely (and unfortunately) haven't followed him very far (yet). I am constantly impressed - this having nothing to do with ideology, but 'Yi.th clarity of intellectual analysis and simple brilliance of writing. I _ wonder if any of his works would be suitable for use in the program? Some of the books I've read and would highly recommend are (in alphabetical order): Beyond Economics; Ecodynamics: A New Theory of · Societal Evolution; Economics as a Science; The Economy ofLove and Fear: A Preface to Grants Economics; The Image: Knowledge in Life and Society; The Impact ofthe Social Sciences; The Meaning ofthe 20th Century; The Organizational Revolution: A Study in the Ethics ofEconomic Organization; A Primer on Social Dynamics: History as Dialectics and Development; The Skills of the Economist; The Social System of the Planet Earth; and The Three Faces ofPower. Rick Wicks (SF68) without much success until Mr. Bart took my hand and just started waltzing, teaching by example in trne tutor style. Mr. Ossorgin did the same, and the waltz party tradition was launched. The waltz parties continued periodically in the Great Hall with the kind consent of the powers that were, especially Miss Barbara Leonard - and the strong support of our first tutor guests, and, indeed, the whole college. I understand they are still continuing, although perhaps with more style than in our time, when most of us danced barefoot to non-stop hi-fi waltzes and polkas on record. In another connection I want to laud and again thank Mr. Schiller for his gallantry in escorting a foolish girl one lovely Sunday afternoon who had set her heart on walking out to the recently completed, grand Bay Bridge to see the view. Arriving after a long and later quite painful trek, we found to our dismay that we were not allowed on the bridge. Mr. Schiller had worn holes in the soles of his shoes, and I discovered when we returned, exhausted and sore, that he had to go do his student job in a few minutes - waiting on tables! I think he would have been a knight in shining armor in the days of Sir Lancelot. Lenke Vietorisz (A62) Thanks to Dave Schiller for giving credit to our earlier waltz parties. Actually, the academic year was 1958-59, towards the spring. My memory is that Lenke .et al. started them in reaction to, and to provide an alternative to, the beer parties that prevailed in all the common rooms on weekend nights. They said "No Alcohol" at their waltz parties, and they meant it. Many of us who had accepted the notion that alcohol was essential to having a good time were skeptical. But very soon, we were waltzing away to the Blue Danube in the Great Hall and having lots of booze-free fun. Yes, the weekend curfew for women was 2 a.m. (1 a.m. on weeknights). We all had to be back in Campbell Hall-the only women's dorm at that time. Alice Williams Meyers (A62) Garis are now deceased. Thank you for reviving fond memories of the time I spent at St. John's, Irving S. Lewis (A4!) KEY SCHOOL TEACHERS IRREPRESSIBLE Many thanks for the article on the Key School! It was heart-warming to see the picture of that configuration with those very small learners of so manyyears ago. I need to make a disclaimer. A great many things were happening all at once in those early days, and my memory of them is none too sharp. Bill Darkey has told me he is sure the ""Idea of a School" which was quoted in the article was really written by Corky Kramer. The thoughts which went into it were certainly some sort of common product, to which Bill himself contributed as much as anyone. But Corky it appears really should be credited as the author. Meanwhile, this preoccupation with teaching seems to be irrepressible. I've been helping in recent years with a most interesting Montessori school in San Antonio; the director is Jim Judson, SFGl95. Jim and I were jointly engaged in a preceptorial in Santa Fe one summer, where during lunches and any available odd intervals we discussed his concepts and hopes for the school. I've been down there several time since, doing seminars and, most recently, contriving mysterious magnetic fields with the elementary children. One other note. As those at the Key School are very much aware, crncial help and guidance was given to the school by Ford. K. Brown, a patient, witty, and untiring counselor. And over the years, the instructional program was given direction and spirit by Jascha Klein, who hosted many a Curriculum Committee meeting around his dining room table. Possibly most crucial of all was the try of cookies baked by Mrs. Klein and introduced at some critical moment during the evening, without which the teaching program would undoubtedly have fallen into confusion and disarray. Tom Simpson (ASO) ABoUTTIIOSEWALTZ PARTIES ••• I would like to thank David Schiller (A62) for updating (backdating?) the origin of the waltz party tradition (Summer 1999 Reporter). After enduring a lonely semester on our own at mealtimes (by our own choice for various reasons) rather than in the society of our fellow students, Maria (Flaschberger A62) and I, consulting with Alexa (Nadosy A61) decided to throw a Viennese waltz party- the theme seemed appropriate since we all shared an Austro-Hungarian backgroundcomplete with kafe und schlag and the richest torte we could bake. Our carefully selected guests included tutors Mr. Robert Bart and Mr. Michael Ossorgin (and wife, but she couldn't come}, but half the college came since the party was scheduled for the Women's Common Room. Of course, almost no one knew how to waltz, and we tried mass instruction CHASE STONE MEMORIES I read with great interest the article in The Reporter (summer issue) concerning "Chase." I lived in Chase for my sophomore, junior and senior years. Of particular interest is the photo of a 1941 scene in Chase. At that time Chase and Stone were separate buildings. I can identify three of the four Johnnies in the photo. All were in .the class of' 41. On the left smoking a cigarette is Charles E. Vayne. The Johnny wearing a white shirt and tie is Albert H. Jaeggin. Incidentally, Charles, Albert and I started the Student Employment Bureau, a first for St. John's. The Johnny on the far right is Atwood N. Garis. The person in the lower left corner is unknown tome. Vayne, Jaeggin and I lived on the first floor of Chase. Garis lived on the second floor. Vayne, Jaeggin and TIIE OTHERWORLDLY SIDE OF ST. JOHN'S: A GHOST STORY' During my time at St John's, September 1973 to December 1974, I saw the man reading by the fireplace in McDowell Hall that Sarah Waters mentions in her article in the Fall 1998 edition of The Reporter. Opening the door to one of the upstairs rooms in McDowell around 11:00 one evening, I was surprised to find myself in the threshold of a private study seemingly furnished in the 19th century. The amber glow of an oil lamp offered illumination of patterned carpets, paintings hung on the walls and shut windowpanes framed by heavy curtains tied back with fabric ropes. A roll-top desk was placed against one wall, while against the others stood bookcases filled with leather-bound volumes. Though the room did not feel particularly warm, a log fire, curiously silent, burned with a bright yellow hue in the fireplace. Ceiling, walls and floor chose to radiate a deep reddish tint. · Before the fireplace stood a leather Victorian wing-chair, the back of which faced, at a slight angle, the doorway in which I was standing. Wispywhite smoke curled upwards from the other side of the chair, while the sporadic sound of rustling papers could be heard above the steady "hiss" of the oil lamp. A sliver of a face wearing spectacles, and a hand grasping some object, were just visible. A man was sitting in the wing-chair reading and smoking either a pipe or a cigar. Alerted to my presence, the man raised his head slightly and after a pause half-turned in his chair towards me. Through the tobacco smoke one bespectacled eye of an elderly grey face met my gaze. As quietly as I could, I pulled the door shut, embarrassed to have blundered upon the old gentleman in his private study. I tiptoed away. At the time I wondered why I had not heard mention of the retired tutor who had quarters in McDowell. I was on the point of asking, but then two or three days later, coming out of a class in McDowell, I walked by the open door of the same room. In place of the cozy study I had seen that night was a plain classroom with the bare floorboards minimalist style of decor familiar to McDowell. Where on campus had the retired tutor been moved, I wondered? Then I thought that the gentleman might have died in the several days since I had seen him, and his belongings discreetly spirited away. Feeling it inappropriate to make inquiries in those circumstances, I didn't. An evening in summer or early fall is the most likely date for my encounter with the old gentleman and his study, as I remember thinking that the log fire was strangely inappropriate to the season. However, not thinking my experience might be noteworthy, I didn't make a note of the event. Until I saw Sarah Waters' article in The Reporter, it had not occurred to me that what I had seen that night in McDowell Hall was a ghost. Eric Hodges (A 77) �The Santa Fe -Alaska Pipeline continuedfrom back page . .................................................................................... . Alaska. Her lecture "The Nature of Seminar Learning/Teaching" drew a standing-room only audience. In late September, Santa Fe campus president John Agresto also visited Atheneum, speaking to an assembly of seniors at the area's largest public high schools, speaking and co-leading a class at the Atheneum, and giving a public address to over 150 Anchorage parents and citizens. (He also went fishing but, as he says, not catching.) Alumni across the country are active with Atheneum activities. Dr. Oliver Korshin (A63) enrolled his daughters, Natasha and AlexanPhoto by Lydia Ossorgin dra, at Atheneum when he saw an Max Gruner (SFGI99) with silver advertisement for the school and salmon. recognized Lydia Ossorgin as the daughter of his much-admired portunity to continue the style of edformer tutor, Michael Ossorgin. Dr. ucation he exper1enced at St. John's, Korshin and his wife, Rachel, were especially in his role as a teacher. instrumental in the initial fund.raisSanta Fe's dean, James Carey, was ing for the school. Other alumni also important in the early stages of who have taught through the Atheneum. He took several trips to Paideia Project or at Atheneum inAnchorage to assist Ossorgin and clude Tracey Wernet (SF94), Thea Holthaus with the opening of the Agnew (SF94), Arand Pierce school. In addition to acting as a (SF98), Jan Arsenault (SF82), consultant of sorts, Mr. Carey lead Michael Meehan (A59), and Do:rik seminars and gave t3.lks on liberal Mechau (A56). Along with Max education and the humanities in Gruner and Joshua Pagliasotti, Fairbanks and Anchorage for teachAngela Nusbaum (SF9 3) completes ers and educators in order to generthe current teacher group from St. ate interest in the school. John's at Atheneum and the three Holthaus remembers that during are referred to as "The Mod Squad." Mr. Carey's 1991 visit, the two men The group earned this nickname for went moose hunting and canoed their "sophistication, freshness, and down the Yukon and its tributaries. wildness that tames," says Ossorgin. They kept their Johnny spirit while While Gruner appreciates the hunting, and Holthaus reports that focus on the individual needs of stutheir dialogue on Kant and Hegel dents, something he sees as a differwas matched only by the dialogue ence in the approach taken by St. with the expansive country. On the John's, Pagliasotti welcomes the op- , last night, after a month out in the wild, wolves beckoned the two from the ridge tops around camp making it difficult for them to leave. ALASKANS IN SANTA FE Larry Clendenin (SF77), director of admissions in Santa Fe, described Anchorage's Steller School as a model in new education for the area. Former classmate Walter Featherly (SF77) was on the Anchorage school board during the early years of the Paideia Project and became instrumental in the effort to adopt a Great Books course and seminar program in the public schools. (Mr. Featherly is currently Atheneum'slegal counsel and a member of the school's Advisory BoaTd.) The Steller model fanned out to other public high schools in Anchorage, all of which became targets for recruitment for St. John's. Each year, admissions representatives from St. John's spend four to five days in Alaska. Currently, there are five students in the undergraduate program in Santa Fe. They described the similarities of the climactically different cities of Anchorage and Santa Fe as cities of isolated geography and as destinations for eccentric personalities. Andrea Quintero, a senior, was born in Ecuador but grew up in Alaska. She was first introduced to seminar-style courses at the Steller School. Seminars on texts such as "The Training of Youth" from Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Euripides' "Medea," William James' "On Habit" and on Charles Darwin were offered to Steller students through the Alaska Paideia Project. As a student in Santa Fe, Quintero has worked as a member of the Community Seminar Team, where she has led seminars in area schools and for home-schooled children. Tim Robinson and Mike Santillanes, both in their first year, also graduated from the Steller School. Before moving to Anchorage, which students from Alaska are quick to point out is quite distinct from the rest of Alaska, Robinson lived in the small fishing village of Dillingham on Cape Constantine. He hopes to one day return to Alaska and teach. Likewise, Santillanes would like to teach in urban schools, hoping to develop seminar curriculums similar to the way in which his parents have done with Atheneum. Kyle Wark, a freshman from Hoonah, Alaska, attended a small high school with ninety students. Although his school did not have seminars or outreach programs through Atheneum, the guidance counselor told him about St. John's. His admissions essay brought in the Alaskan landscape. Wark was surrounded by mountains and felt he needed a higher mountain to climb. St. John's is now that challenge for Wark. Forest Night, a freshman, is from Anchorage and attended the Polaris School, a "school-within-a-school" which allowed for alternative learning programs. Interestingly, for all of the exchange between Alaska and St. John's, there is not an active alumni chapter in the Anchorage area. The alumni in Alaska, however, may be among the most active ofanyin the U.S. in publicizing the St. John's program. e AlisaMurraySmith (SFG/99) Confucius continuedfrom page 14 ....................................................................................................................................................................... . ' learn it when baffled belong to the third category; those who do not learn even when baffled- such people belong to the lowest category." Forester: So Confucius is essentially aristocratic? One of the things that struck me as I was reading the Analects over the course of thesemester was the similarity between the moral and political teachings of Confucius and those of Plato and Aristotle. All three ancient thinkers challenge our democratic ideals. Gu: That's right. When reading the Analects, the problem is not so much the difficulty of understanding the Chinese language (although that is significant), but of the divide between ancient and modern thought. What Tocqueville says about the move towards equality applies to both the East and the West. Perhaps it is not so much East versus West, but Ancient versus Modern- that divide is much greater. Forester: I'd like to ask you about what the Analects tell us about death. I am thinking of the passage where Confucius mourns more deeply for his best student than for his son. He is accused of breaking the rituals, for surely a father ought to be grieve most for his own child. Gu: This is a very interesting passage. Confucius is showing that the kind of life one lives dictates the kind of death he dies. When, Ji-lu, one of the master's pupils says, "May I venture to ask what death is?" The master replies, "You do not understand life yet; how can you understand death?" Life illuminates death. Forester: Why isn't it the other way around? Rilke and Heidegger, the authors on whom I wrote my senior essay, would say that our mortality makes life meaningful. Gu: Consider Dante's Inferno. There the soul's state in death reveals something about our earthly life, tells us about the results of sin. Death illuminates life. Confucius is different. He is saying someone's death only becomes meaningful for us when we think of how the person lived. Perhaps there is parallel in Homer. Achilles' death is meaningful because of the heroic way in which he lived. Forester: We might say the same of Antigone~ What about Confucius, what kind of life did he lead? Gu: There are various passages in the Analects that describe his virtue. In the dialogues he is humble and never claims that he is humane. What we have to keep in mind is that, like Socrates, Confucius never revealed the depth of his knowledge. This is clear from the words of one of the master's pupils. A duke said that Zi-gong was more worthy than Confucius. Zi-gongreplied: "Take our enclosing walls for example. My wall is shoulder-high, over which one may peep at the comeliness of my residential quarters. The Master's wall is over twenty feet high. If one cannot find the gate to enter, one will see neither the beauty of his ancestral temple nor the splendor of a hundred official buildings. Those who can find the gate our perhaps few. That his excellency should have made such a remark- it it not natural enough." Forester: How are we to understand this? Gu: The duke saw Zi-gong's honesty, but he did not see Confucius' wisdom. Being morally upright, Zigong does not hide his harmonious private quarters. But Confucius is at a higher level. Only those with wisdom can follow the way he teaches. Only they can see that the political and the religious are the invisible foundation and one of the great goals of human life. Forester: So in a strange way, philosophyneeds the city just as the city need the guidance of philosophy? Gu: It's the return to the cave. In several passages Confucius praises the Taoist hermits, but refuses to follow their tradition of pure contemplation. A man of humanity has a responsibility to his fellow human beings. • Sean Forester (A9 9) �1999 HOMECOMING AND SUMMER ALUMNI PROGRAM T he term "Homecoming" usually inspires images of football games, barbecue cookouts, parades led bywavingyoungwomen, and the flavor of nostalgia. At St. John's however, Homecoming is something entirely different. Sure, the nostalgia factor still runs high, as it should at any gathering of friends from years past, but the nature of our college's program necessitates a unique style of reunion gathering. Seminars are, of course, the main event when several St. John's alumni are in the same room (begging the question: how many Johnnies does it take to have a seminar?). Homecoming includes picnics and games and brunches and hikes and lots of other great things too, but seminars certainly take center stage. Alumni seminars are of the most interesting variety because they include perspectives not only from alumni from a wide range of class arrive expecting to relive the reliengaged have given more to me than gious experience of their senior sem- I have ever given in service to them. inar are rewarded instead with the Thank you." exhilarating experience of a different seminar. For that is the nature of TOASTS dialogue - as an organic process it is At the Dinner Dance on Saturday bound to grow and develop with night, a number of toasts were made, time and a "changing of the guard." as is the custom. Joe Reynolds, SF69, And alumni who show up looking included in his speech the following for lost faces find new friendships as quote by Georgia O'Keeffe: "Well - I well. After all, a room full of alumni made you take time to look at what I including Annapolis graduates from saw and when you took time to really 1942 and Santa Fe graduates from notice my flower you hang all your 1994 is full of people who share simown associations with flowers on my ilar editions of the same exflower and you wrote perience. about my flower as if This year at HomecomI think and see what ing, alumni welcomed wellyou think and see of deserving individuals into the flower - and I the alumni community. don't." Joe also Janet Fennell, Joyce Rumsquoted R. H. Rilke: ~ " ... we compute the feld, and John E. Robson were awarded status as years and divide them Paula Maynes (SF79) and here and there and Honorary Alumni of the db . d Class of '99 and Benjamin Allan Hoffman (A49) stop an egm an R. Haggard and Paula Maynes, both hesitate between both. But how of SF79, received the Awards of Merit one piece is everything we enfor their outstanding contributions counter, how related one thing is to the next, how it gives birth to itself to alumni and to the college. and grows up and is educated in its "In my sophomore year one of my own nature, and all we basically have tutors told me the story of her 'first to do is to be, but simply, earnestly, year' experience" said Paula. "She the way the earth simplyis, and was a scientist, from the Rockefeller gives her consent to the seasons, Institute where she had authored her bright and dark and whole in space, dissertation (and I'm paraphrasing here) 'Color change as a result of not asking to rest upon anything other than the net of influences and chemical reactivity in angelfish.' Or forces in which the stars feel · something like that. She began readBeverly Angel (SFGI89) and Paul Martin ing Meno and made notes in the secure." (SF80) And, from Steven Thomas' Toast margin like 'False conclusion, not correct syllogism,' and things of that SF74: years, but because these alumni have "While it's been 25 years since I sort which you all can imagine. Then, an even greater diversity of experiabout four pages into the dialogue, graduated from St. John's, it's been 29 years since I matriculated here ences than they did as freshmen. The the marginal notations disappear. additional life experience alumni reand therefore 30 years since I was a That was the point when she knew "prospective" (remember them?). I ceive when they go into the real world that something else was going on. seenis to make them even more exIf we all search our hearts, there don't know about now, but in those cited about the seminar process. In days absolutely every piece of prowas a moment like that, in the still fact, the seminar-withdrawal alumni center of things, when we recogmotional material put out by the colexperience when they finish St. nized that something else was going lege prominently featured the slogan John's is so acute that the Santa Fe 'that splendid intencampus offers two weeks of seminars sity.' We would often, it is true, use each summer to handle the high the phrase ironidemand for stimulating conversation. Of course, before returning for cally. For example, when a fellow stuseminars on campus, most alumni need a few years to let their minds dent went tearing absorb the program and their lives up Monte Sol in a home-made suit of find dirt;ction. By the fifth reunion, chain mail, hacking however, there are plenty of alrrnmiat the pin on yearning for dialogue. Some return -- branches~with a· to campus hoping to reclaim an exJohn Robson with Janet Fennell and her sons Morgan (far left) broad sword, we perience they had years before. and Phineas (on right), would turn knowOthers return simply to see who ingly to one another and murmur, on here and that it could not be carishows up, who married whom, 'Ah, yes: that splendid intensity!' which tutors are still around, and catured or cleverly rebutted. I've "But the phrase does in fact capheard Ms. Brann describe it as the how many of their fellow classmates ture something of the experience of took longer to figure out what to do single step of the soul. Once you've made that step, nothing less will do our class so manyyears ago. The exwith their lives than they did. citement of the program, the chaland you have engaged with the ProExpectations of any sort are difficult to fulfill, just like freshman year gram and you are changed by it. This lenge of dealingwith each other, the tutors who tried to shepherd our little College and the greater community didn't turn out to be anything like wayward flock toward the discovery of persons who have been similarly what we had imagined. Alumni who of a broader horizon than we had when we entered- all this was indeed splendid, and, yes, intense. Accordingly, I would raise this toast to the splendid intensity of the Class of 1974~ and I would like to particularly note those members of our class whose splendid intensity has sadly departed from the world: Max Ball, Kelly Fike, Bob Grogan, Jim Hamilton, Meredith Murray and David St. John. And finally, at the special request of Barbara Lauer, I would like to announce that there is absolutely no smoking, eating or drinking in the Great Hall." Troy Lewis gave the toast for the youngest reunion class, the Class of '94: "Fine things are difficult. As most of you remember, this is one of the first expressions we translated from Greek. One might expand on the word 'difficult' and say that fine things are also 'time consuming.' And, with barely 1800 days separating us from graduation day, we members of the Class of '94 could be expected to still be defining our roles, both academic and otherwise, in the Elizabeth Jenny (SF80) and Susan Eversole Friedman (SF79) post-St. John's environment. And that is indeed the case. At present, we have alumns finishing up their Ph.D.'s, some are in law school or medical school or other graduate programs. Still others are making their mark outside the classroom. We even have a soon-to-be-published author in the form of Bill Kowalski. His book, by the way, is entitled Eddie~ Bastard. But, endemic to each of us is a keen awareness of the impressive accomplishments of those of you here who preceded us. By your own example, you set the bar high and never let us doubt that we were capable of achieving whatever we set our minds andheartsto. Manyofus, myself included, are the beneficiaries of such selfless alumni support. So tonight, as we 3:11 remember absent friends and honor longtime ones, we members of the Class of '94 would like to raise a toast of gratitude and respect to all of you. And we hope that you will share in our successes as we have shared in yours." As it turns out, Troy's eloquent words were scribbled on nothing other than an envelope sent to him from his student loan company. • Amber Boydstun (SF9 9) �Alulllni Profiles ... LILLILPUT IN THE HEARTLAND TedDedddens (A87) F The m<;>unted officer from the "Orders" set appears to bark out commands from his horse. Deddens says he prides himself on the details in his work, as seen in the painting of teeth inside the mouth, as opposed to the typical red stripe rep-resenting lips on othe-r toy soldie-rs. ordsville, Kentucky, is a town of five hundred twenty-two people. Five hundred eighteen of them are puzzled by the presence of the other four, Ted Deddens (A87), Kate Irvine Deddens (A87), and their daughters Maris, 6, and Abby, 1. People tend to live in a place like Fordsville because they grew up there - it's small, isolated, rural, and scarcely a magnet for liberal arts BAs. The Deddens clan, however, is there in order to pursue an idyll of family life and entrepreneurial venture: Kate homeschools Maris (with a classical approach to grammar, mathematics and all that basic stuff) and takes care of Abby while Ted toils meditatively in his studio above their garage, designing, casting and paintingthelittle men ofTedToy Miniatures, his collectible Civil War soldier business. Collectible "toy" soldiers aren't the kind of toys little boys play with. They're the kind of toys grown-up men play with. Deddens makes an amazing variety of Civil War figures, representing, among others, the Iron Brigade, the Irish Brigade from the Army of the Potomac, the 3rd Arkansas, the 29th Alabama, the 8th Georgia, the Butternut Infantry, Berdan's Sharpshooters, and the Washington Light Infantry. He offers cavalry, infantry, artillery, marines, sailors, buglers, guidon bearers, flag bearers, you name it, both Union and Confederate, winter dress and summer dress, all poised for war-in-a-nutshell action. He also was one of the first to make sets of soldiers in non-combat scenarios, from a drummer boy chasing a chicken he's hopeful of making into dinner, to Zouave infantry playing Ur-baseball against regular artillery, to an officer chewing out a private, a la Sergeant Carter and Gomer Pyle. His customers arc dedicated toy soldier collectors but he often finds new ones when he displays his wares at shows, and the bored spouses of diehards finally find in his work toy soldiers they can Ted Deddens talks about how he got started sculpting his miniature toy soldiers in his Fordsville, Ky., studio. Deddens sculpts, casts and paints the figures, which he sells through dealers and the Internet. Photos by Bryan Leazcnby I Messenger-Inquirer be interested in. Once the veteran collectors are called in for a closer look they find high-quality, 54mm (1/32 scale, the classic toy soldier size), gracefully painted soldiers, historically true to form, and brimming with action even the "crossover" audience can understand. Deddens is a one-man shop. (Some of his competitors in the growing Civil War market take advantage of inexpensive overseas labor, but TedToy products are 100% Made in Kentucky.) The process of making each soldier - designing the figure, sculpting it, dividing it into castable parts, making a mold, casting the parts in metal, gluing the parts back together, and then priming and painting it - takes untold hours, untold because he really doesn't make them one by one, but instead has himself a little assembly line. 'TH line up tWenty of them and paint twenty little belts," he says. "'It's therapeutic!" The profit margin on such laborious handwork is such that he doesn't wholesale to stores, relying instead on a devoted clientele, word of mouth, a mailing list he's generated from toy soldier show appearances, and his web site (www. Tedtoy. corn). The toy soldier dodge wasn't Deddens' s original career goal, but it gradually thrust itself upon him. While he was a student in Annapolis, he worked at the (now defunct) Ship and Soldier Shop on Maryland Avenue, having always been fascinated with miniatures. The toy soldiers sold there were typical, in simple, static poses and painted in a slapdash fashion, with little dots for eyes, and crooked belts. Deddens found some unpainted castings in the shop, and painted them for his own amusement, and eventually found himself a miniature painter in demand as collectors who were regulars at the shop saw his meticulous work. After his graduation in 1988 he and Kate Irvine were married, and she worked in the college library while he worked for a year as the college assistant bookstore manager, but still kept his hand in at the Ship and Soldier Shop, where the owner finally offered to make him the shop manager for a year. He took on some soldier painting jobs, and one day said to himself, "Hey, how hard could it be to sculpt these things?" He horsed around with various types of clay, and finally made a little figure, which he intended to be a Civil War soldier, because that was the period he knew something about and had an interest in. The figure didn't cooperate, though, and it Continued on page 6 �Alulllni Profiles ... ANNA MARIA PADILLA Musician Trained by Tradition of Thought ! wrote my Junior precept paper on Jane Austen's Emma, examining the imperfect Emma as our heroine and contrasting her with the seemingly flawless Jane Fairfax. Jane Fairfax is beautiful, talented, kind, and gentle, while Emma is shortsighted and meddlesome, yet we feel a connection to Emma that we don't necessarily feel towards Jane Fairfax. Jane Fairfax reminded me of Helen Hill, a girl I went to junior high with. Helen was always smart, well behaved, and very, very sweet. She was the President of the Four-Point-0 Club, never dated a boy unless she discussed it with her parents first, spent all her afternoons and weekends volunteeriug at the humane society, and was always at least two problems, or two assignments,.or two years ahead of me in our studies. She was the kind of daughter I'm sure my mother always wanted. As much as I wanted to hate Helen Hill, she never gave me any good reason to. No, I certainly didn't hate Helen, as much as I felt envy towards her perfection. But I knew we would never be friends. This summer I met Anna Maria, a recent graduate of the Graduate Institute, and Helen Hill has nothing on her. Among other things, Anna Maria is a classical guitarist who has produced four albums, including songs she has written herself, with two more albums on their way. She has started her own recording company, she has performed for the Prince of Spain at the U.S. Embassy in Madrid, she has played in Australia, she has performed across the United States, and she has been a guest on television programs viewed by millions. This summer she was the featured guitarist traveling with the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra. Her performances are booked through the year 2000. She has a Bachelor's Degree from St. Mary's College in Moraga, California, and a Master's Degree from St. John's in Santa Fe. Anna Maria is 20 years old- younger than I am. I met Anna Maria over salads at Zia Diner in Santa Fe. Not only is she bright, beautiful and talented, but she has a warm heart and bril.., liant spirit. Every 10 minutes or so, she would gently shift the conversation away from herself and towards me, asking me questions about myself, my interests, my future plans. It was not so much that she felt self-conscious in the interview, although I'm sure she did, but rather that she felt unbalanced in a conversation with a new friend where she had all the focus and I had none. Her answers to all my questions were factual and modest. Whenever I shook my head in disbelief that someone her age could have accomplished so much, she smiled a little shyly and thanked me for my compliments. There is no doubt that people have been telling Anna Maria for some time that she is very special. Yet her view is simply that she does what she feels compelled to do and what she thinks is right. She has very strong beliefs, yet she is openminded. She has no delusions about being older than she is. She is happy living with her parents, being single, and experiencing the life of a 20 year old. She has a strong circle of friends her age in Santa Fe. The fact that her ambitions and accomplishments, not to mention her maturity, are those of someone twice her age, does not seem to faze her. Born and raised in Santa Fe, Anna Maria began playing guitar at age 3. Always a precocious child, she graduated from the American School in Chicago when she was 13. The year after.she finshed, many students asked her advice on how to graduate early from high school. Anna Maria compiled a small booklet of information and insights on how to get the most from a high school education and how to accelerate if you want to. Northwest Publishers heard of her booklet, and asked to publish it. Anna Maria followed her mother's footsteps by applying to St. Mary's College in Moraga, California. She received her BA at age 18 and returned to Santa Fe, where this spring she graduated from the Master of Arts in Liberal Arts program at St. John's. Playing her guitar has always been important to Anna Marie. When she was 13, she got a job playing for La Fonda Hotel in Santa Fe. She also played at El Canon in the Hilton, and it was while she was playing there that the owner of Valley Entertainment Records offered her a record contract. Through Valley Entertainment, Anna Maria's first album, Quinceanera, was produced when she was 15, and was even more successful than she had anticipated. The album's success brought her into bigger venues. Last November, she was invited to the U.S. Embassy in Madrid to play for the 400th Anniversary of Spanish presence in New Mexico, and while she was there she met and played for the Prince of Spain. The State of New Mexico invited Anna Maria to do a cultural outreach program in Australia. "I'm very proud to represent our culture in New Mexico. I take any opportunity I can to do that, and I appreciate the opportunities I've been given," she says. She believes that music is effective as cultural outreach because "music is probably one of man's most powerful means of communicating our experience." Anna Maria has appeared several times on television, including performances for EWTN (Eternal World TV Network). Anna Maria has done three more albums. Navidad is a full-length Christmas album. El Rosario is a benefit for St. Mary's College. Spain Never Sleeps is a combination of traditional songs and Anna Maria's own compositions. She has a fourth album on its way called Santa Fe Silver, as well as a re-release of her original album, Quinqeanera, an album which she says is "about a coming of age, but also a declaration of what you want to do in your community." "For music to be effective," says Anna Maria, "it has to be a meaningful communication - not just notes." And in order to create a meaningful communication through her music, she feels she must understand the tradition of thought that has brought . us to where we are. It thus makes sense that a musician of Anna Maria's talent would choose to spend · two years of her life at St. John's. "I want to expose my thoughts and ideas to selection," she says. 'Tm always looking for better ones." The Great Books program was exactly what she wanted from an education. "St. John's has definitely affected my music," says Anna Maria. The Graduate Institute Program gave her anewunderstanding ofher own culture. "In order to communicate effectively," she says, "you have to knowwhatyou're going to say, and St. John's has taught me that my thoughts can never be stagnant." Anna Maria plans to enter a Ph.D. program at Notre Dame or the University of Dallas, but she says "I know that St. John's is going to be a part of my thinking for a long time." This fall, Anna Maria will perform in Los Angeles for the National Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Anniversary Celebration as well as present a speech for the Center for Entrepreneurship Conference in Chicago. In December she will be in Alabama for another television broadcast to Spain and Latin America. "I look forward to the times when I get to stay in Santa Fe," she says, "because Santa Fe is really home to me. But I love traveling and the opportunities it provides me. Right now I have the perfect balance. I couldn't be happier. I'm doing exactly what I want to do with my life." Anna Maria expressed gratitude for many people during our lunch. She is grateful for the love and support her family has given her and thankful for the opportunities offered her by the schools she has attended. I am thankful for the chance I had to meet someone who was not only inspiring, but also very warm and open. Anna Maria taught me that perfect people can be accessible to the rest of us. Who knows? Perhaps it's been long enough that I should give that Helen Hill a call and see how she's doing.• Amber Boydstun (SF99) �Alulllni Profiles ... NoExcusEs Casey Carter investigates high-performing schools in low-income areas. ···························~···········!························································································ St. John's. "The schools I found fas:J("ywork demonstrates cinating often had junior great that if we're going to books programs where students read chop off the top, the serious literature, often reaching bottom won't fall out," says Casey beyond basic skills to higher order Carter (A88), who spent the past thinking that is so essential if educayear as a Bradley Fellow at the Hertion is going to be not just skills for itage Foundation, a conservative the marketplace but the preparation public policy think tank in Washingof citizens to live in a democracy," ton. "The foundation's vision," says Carter. "Interestingly, one of Carter says, "is to roll back the welthe most important and profound infare state and foster an America fluences on my current research is where freedom, opportunity, and civil society can flourish." As a Carter's mandate was to find state and local success stories in education in an effort to answer the question: Is poverty an excuse for a poor education? He high-performing, high-povertv schools around the country, larlythose where 75 percent of the children were from low-income households and academic scores were at or above the 75th percentile nari on ally. It will come as no surprise to those involved in education to learn that leadership from principals was a strong element in the success of the schools Carter investigated. When the report on his study, titled "No Excuses," was released in May, the seven principals he profiled in the report were awarded the Salvatori Prize for American Citizenship by the Heritage Foundation. Among them are Irwin Kurz, principal of P.S. 161-The Crown School in Crown Heights, Brooklyn-where 98% of the students are from low-income families. Kurz's program, which includes standardized testing four Mortimer Adler's Paedeia Project, times a year, school uniforms, and which I remember from my years as a peer evaluation of teachers, has student at St. John's. To this day no brought student test scores to 71st one has improved on so sound a percentile nationally in reading and vision for American education; now 78th in math. His sixth grade has we have to work out the nuts and the second highest reading scores in all of New York, and, taken together, bolts of implementing that kind of curriculum in a fashion that respects his 6th, 7th, and 8th grades scored in the 9 3rd percentile in reading and the local autonomy of schools nationwide." the 96th in math. NOT THE STEREOTYPICAL "Once people realize what these POLICY ANALYST school have been able to achieve Education policy analysts are with scarce means and in often hostile environments, it will be time for easily stereotyped as making recommendations from offices far removed every parent in the country to from the everyday needs of students demand that their local school be at and the daily demands of classroom least as good," says Carter. "For life. Carter, however, does not fit thirty years the educational estabthis stereotype, having spent two lishment has said we cannot teach years as a teacher-although his years poor children, or perhaps we can teaching were somewhat atypical. teach them, but at great cost. What these schools have proven is not only While many Johnnies (20 percent} teach at some point in their careers, that these children can achieve, but that there's no excuse for the protec- Carter took an unusual route into the classroom: as a Benedictine tion of poor performance anywhere monk. in the system, once schools on the A year after graduation, Carter margins have set a new standard for entered thereligious life at high academic achievement." Carter's interest in education . Portsmouth Abbey in Rhode Island. The abbey ran a prep school for boys came in part from his experience at ' ' and girls where Carter taught Engregime which best complemented the dignity of the human being." lish, German, and math. After two Carter asked Novak for a position on years of teaching, Carter was sent to his magazine and was hired as an asOxford to study biblical languages and theology. Six weeks before his sistant editor in September 1994. In simple vows expired, Carter and his 1998, Carter became the executive abbot decided that he should not editor. take the solemn vows which ratify Carter sought to turn Crisis from the simple vows. a journal of opinion into a magazine. "I was a very happy monk," "We wanted a magazine that was enCarter says. "The monastic life is tertaining, beautiful, and thoughtful all at the same time," he says. "We not, however, something that you wanted a magazine that explained . can simply and celebrated the tradition of the choose to do if you wish. You .Church which uncovered the historineed the superphilosophical, and culnatural grace of tural patrimony of the Church in God to sustain terms that could be understood by an educated layman; which appealed you in the vocation. But my to all the senses; and which was imnatural preclismediately relevant to the political, positions were cultural, and ecclesiastical concerns not fully cooper- of the day." But not long after Carter became ating with that executive editor, he encountered segrace. I came to see my life as a rious differences of opinion with his monk too much business partner, and the grind of as a career. I putting out a monthly magazine began to catch up with him. In Seploved the religious life, I tember, 1998, when Heritage ofwanted to serve fered him the opportunity to focus the Church as a on education, he jumped at the priest, but as chance. the first order of "I love this project," Carter says. business I "There is something about think wanted to be a tank work that is so perfect for Johnteacher, and a nies. It takes someone with a broad headmaster: I education who can argue from prinwanted to shape ciple to be able to discern how govthe school ernmental power ought to be implerather than have mented. It requires a concern for our Chas Geer Photography th e re1. · 1gious lie ie country, the way I believe that we deshape me. It's fine to have profesvelop a concern for our polity at St. sional aspirations in the professed John's. You must have the intelleclife, but I came to realize that I was tual fortitude to work through some starting out on a long, hard road serious puzzles and the persistence with too few supplies." to wade through a great many deOnce Carter saw that, however tails. There are very few problems happy he was in the religious life, it that are as complicated, as sophistiwas not a lifelong calling, he and his cated, and as open to failure as abbot agreed that he was to find his public policy recommendations. vocation in the world. Upon leaving "Think tank life has many of the the order, Carter contacted theolobenefits of academia: a life of the gian and economist Michael Novak, mind, peopl~ who take conversation founder of Crisis, a magazine about seriously, and daily work with books, religion, culture, and public policy. without many of the downfalls of "I read Novak in high school along academia, namely, the faculty bickwith Herman Kahn, Irving Kristol, ering and the absurd politics of and a number of other neo-conserva- campus life. "The only downfall," tives jumping from the sinking ship Carter says, "is putting up with ofMcGovernite liberalism," he exabsurd politics of national life." plains. "I was a Reagan babywho Carter's Bradley Fellowship has genuinely believed the pro-freedom, been extended another year. He is pro-markets, limited government, currentlywriting a book-length verstrong national d_efense message of sion of "No Excuses" on 25 school the time. I was particularly drawn to principals, due out November 15. Novak because he explained for the The Heritage Foundation is presentfirst time, in theological terms that ing a national conference on "No Exwere consonant with the teachings cuses" and the effective practices of of the Church, that democratic capihigh-performing, high-poverty talism was both the best engine of schools on November 18 and 19. • real wealth creation and the political Sus3an Borden �Alulllni Authors ... BURIED TREASURE AND FAMILY GHOSTS A review of William Kowalski's Eddie's Bastard B illy Mann is Eddie's bastard: he is the son of Eddie Mann, a pilot killed in Vietnam before Billy's birth. Not only does Billy never know his father, but his mother is also missing, having left him in a basket on his grandfather's doorstep at the age of six weeks. Eddies BCIStard chronicles Billy's search for his identity. . an orphan, AB the identity he seeks is literal-who are his parents, where did he come from? AB an introspective young man, he searches for his identity in a metaphorical sense - what made him who he is, what is he destined to become? Billy looks for his identity among the ghosts of the family farmhouse where he is raised and the stories his grandfather tells him~ he sometimes gets a glimpse of it from the people ofMannville, a town namedfor Billy's once great (and now greatly diminished) family, and he learns something of it from his great-great grandfather's diary. Throughout the novel, the reader is treated to excerpts from this diary, such as the following, which includes the roughest outline of the novel (which itself offers a rich tale of the present, an imaginative look at the past, and a hazy peek at the future): The Delphic Oracle urges one to "Know yourself, "but how are Americans to know themselves? We have practically no history, and our future, although promising, is hazy We have only our present, which we are continually creating and recreating. For one to know the self, one must examine the past, and inquire without hesitation into the nature of the people from whom he has sprung. This way, we can avoid making the same mistakes which were made by our ancestors. Billy's continually created and recreated present of Eddies Bastard includes his relationship with his grandfather, with the wise and caring Dr. Connor, and with his neighbor and best friend, Annie, the girl he loves. Colorful episodes include an extended stay with the. Schumachers, a "loud, Teutonic, and vibrantly healthy" family and visits to Elsie Orfenbacher, a single mother to whom he delivers groceries and from whom he receives an initiation into the physical side of love. Billy's examined past includes the long-ago-hidden treasure of the Rorys, a Scottish clan that amassed its wealth through the slave trade, and the revelations of Billy's greatgreat grandfather, who allowed himself to be hailed by Mannville as a Civil War hero, even though he spent nearly the entire war in jail. The mistakes of Billy's ancestors are many, ranging from his parents' abandonment and his grandfather's alcoholism to the fratricide associated with the finding of the family fortune and the Fiasco of the Ostriches, in which Billy's grandfather loses that same fortune~ Kowalski tells all these stories with a winning combination of pathos and glee. AB for the promising future, Billy envisions it at the end of the book: Now that I was alone, the sole survivor ofhundreds ofyears, the same thought began to occur to me, and I knew that I wouldn't be the last of the Manns. More would come along, someday I would take them through the house as Grandpa had taken me, leading them through it by their tiny hands, room by room, telling them the stories of the Manns who'd once inhabited this place and were now long gone in body, but who lingered in spirit and would continue to do so for as long as their names were spoken aloud. William Kowalski's (SF94) first novel, Eddies Bastard, was published October 1, 1999, by Harper Collins with a first run of 75,000 copies. Foreign rights have been sold in France, Holland, Poland, Germany, Spain, and the U.K. Favorable reviews of the bMk have ap..., peared in Booklist, Publisher's Weekfy, and the Library Journal. Novelist Gail Godwin, author of the bestselling Evensong, writes of the book: ''A grand debut. Eddie :S Bastard is a beguiling blend of narrative con brio, human-heartedness, and zany surprises."• Sus3an Borden ALUMNI BOOK COLLECTION ave you written a book? If so, Santa Fe's Meem Library wants to know. Starting this Fall the Meem Library will actively collect and display alumni publications. Through the years, alumni have generously sent us copies of their books. We have cataloged them and made them available on the shelves. This new project, however, is different. Rather than scattering alumni publications throughout the circulating collection as we have in the past, this new collection will gather them together for a permanent display- a testament to the diverse achievements of our alumni. It is remarkable to see how the same beginning, a common conversation, has inspired us to pursue such differ- common endeavor, they are Johnnies; inquisitive investigators, risk ent paths. From Jae Holzman's retakers, brave explorers of the terra flections on the music business, to incognita of the blank page. Robin Chalek Tzannes' zany chilThe Meem Librai·y alumni author dren's stories, to Martha Jordan's collection, which will include works glowing poetry, to Glenda Eoyang's by former students from both camapplication of the science of chaos puses, will be on permanent exhibit and complexity to management practice, alumni books cover a broad in the Ault-Evers room. For further information about the alumni book spectrum of topics and genres. collection, or the faculty book collecIs there a common thread? Perhaps tutor Stickney said it best . tion - a similar project containing tutors' works -please call Inga M. in his preliminary remarks to an Waite (SF 87) the College Librarian alumni author lecture this past July. To paraphrase: if we look beyond the in Santa Fe at 505-984-6041, send various author awards and public ac- her an email at iwaite@mail.sjcsf.edu or write to her at Meem Library, 1160 colades, and set aside the term Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM "Author" with a capital ''A," we see 87501.:.4599 . • that these writers are engaged in a �- FALL SEMINARS AND EVENTS What's Happening in the Chapters ate _fall brings out the desire for seminars in alumni - they see students of every age going to school and they just can't resist getting in some heavy-duty reading and discussing themselves. Here's the schedule for some of the chapters: L Austin: The Austin Chapter held its Annual Meeting and First Annual Annapolis vs. Santa Fe Croquet Match on October 9th. On October 13th, they met for a seminar on Heinrich Kleist's "On the Marionette Theatre." Robert Glick, Vice President of the Santa Fe campus will lead a seminar on "Bartleby, the Scrivener" by Herman Melville· on November 13th. The Austin Chapter meets on the 13th of each month. For more information please contact Elizabeth Parton at: 512-685-5238. Denver: Retired Santa Fe tutor Robert Sacks, led a seminar on "A Commentary on the Book of Genesis." On Saturday, October 23, John Agresto, President of the Santa Fe campus led a seminar on "Alcibiades" from Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks. For more information on chapter activities please contact Elizabeth Jenny at: 303-441-3 I00. Northern California: Barry Goldfarb, Santa Fe tutor, led a seminar on Plato's Republic on October 9. For more information please contact Don Kaplan at 925-376-8252. San Diego: The San Diego chapter met on October 17 to discuss Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya. For more information regarding activities in the San Diego area, please contact Regina and Ken Oberlander at 619-624-0904. The next meeting of the chapter will be on Sunday, November 14. Southern California: Santa Fe tutor Matthew Davis, led a seminar on "Pericles' Funeral Oration" from Thucydides' The Pefoponesian War, for the newly revitalized Southern California Chapter. Attendance at the seminar was great and the chapter plans on meeting more regularly. The tentative reading for the next seminar is Plato's Lysis on November 13. For more information please contact Elizabeth Eastman at 562-426-1934. New York: On November I0, the chapter will hold a seminar on Seneca's Medea at 7 p.m. at the Princeton Club ( 15 W. 43rd between Fifth and Sixth Avenues). Seminar participants can dine at the club before the seminar (but, like SJC in the olden days, a coat and tie is required - no stipulations listed for women, though}. For more information, contact Justin Burke at 212375-7444 or justin@corbis.com. Washington, D.C.: The reading for November I0 is Mencius, Selections, for a seminar to be led by Annapolis tutor Lijun Gu. The reading for November 24 is the second epilogue from Tolstoy's War and Peace. Seminars meet from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Cedar lane Unitarian Church in Bethesda. For more information, contact Sam Stiles at 301-424-0884 or sstiles@cpcug.org. (Check out the chapter website at www.charm.net/-bfant/johnny/dcmdva .html.) North Carolina: On November 14, the chapter will meet for a seminar on Sun Tzu's The Art of War at noon in the Little Professor Bookseller in Durham. For more information, contact Susan Eversole at 919-968-4856 or susaneversole@netscape.net. (Check out the chapter websites at www.neighbors.com/ I 184/ and http://victorian.fortunedty.com/milton 15181.) Philadelphia: The chapter has set a tentative date of November 20 for a seminar on Richard Wright's Native Son. The group meets at the Whitemarsh Valley Inn; there's a social hour from I to 2 p.m. and the seminar from 2 to 3:30. Contact Jim Schweidel at 215-572-6903. Annapolis: The Annapolis chapter will meet November 13 to discuss selected stories of Borges, including "The library of Babel," "Pierre Menard," "Three Versions of Judas," and "The House of Asterion." The seminar meets in the Private Dining Room at the college; Howard Zeiderman will lead. For more information, contact Rebecca Dzamov at 410-263-4291 or dzamov@aol.com. Chicago: The chapter plans a trip to the Goodman Theater to see The Odyssey, directed by Mary Zimmerman, on October 30 at 2 p.m. The next day, October 3 I, at 2:30 they will have a seminar on The Odyssey led by Annapolis tutor Dan Kolb. Seminars are held in the Krensky Conference Room on the second floor of the Spertus Institute on S. Michigan Ave. For mor-e information, contact Amanda Richardson at 847-705-1143. Alumni Association on a Mission D id you know that all alumni of St. John's College belong to the Alumni Association? Of course, the Board of the Association would love it if all alumni paid their dues, because it means there is more money to carry out programs with. But even more than paying dues, what the Alumni Association seeks to do is involve Johnnies in the life of the college-to whatever degree they wish: by reading mail that comes from the college, by participating in chapter events like local seminars or parties, by thinking about their tutorials as they dean out their bookcases and come across that copy of Pascal's Pensees that hasn't been opened since junior year, by attending Homecoming or one of the summer alumni programs, by E-mailing a former roommate with the latest news. This Alumni Association newsletter that appears in The Reporter is sponsored by the Association and contains Association news and concerns. The Board would like you to consider this newsletter as a forum for your thoughts about St. John's, and will pose a question in every issue for alumni response. The mission of the Alumni Association of St. John's College 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. In light of this mission, the Board of the Alumni Association would like to ask alumni to respond to this question: What can the Alumni Association do for you? You can respond by calling the Alumni Offices in Annapolis, Roberta Gable (A79), at 410-626-2531; or in Santa Fe, Tahmina Shalizi at 505-9846103, by writing The Reporter, St. John's College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404; or by E-mailing the (temporary) Alumni Association newsletter editor, Barbara Goyette (A73), at b-goyette@sjca.edu. �Alulllni Notes ... 1956 1936 Gilbert Crandall writes that he and Col. Tom Smith, retired Super- . intendent of the Maryland State Police and an alumnus of the class of 1938, were next door neighbors in Islamorada in the Florida Keys this past January. They had been next· door neighbors in Annapolis while attending St. John's. 1939 Malcolm Silver reports: "I will be reaching the ripe old age of 82 this year and still have a full-time dental practice. Outside of dentistry, my life is kept busy with lots of things. Unfortunately, I had to leave _St. John's after one year and go home to work. I hope to join my class reunion in October." 1942 "Rat" Joe Bray says that he is "still depriving some doctor's kids of a college education." About his own children,he says one ~a.s her m3;ste.rs in socialwo\rkandth~ other IS de~ tective and diving instructor. a 1948 Peter Davies and his wife Phyllis celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. Peter Weiss and Gerry Hoxbywere able to celebrate with them, but several other classmates were not because of travel or illness. 1949 "Margie and I now have two grandchildren, parented by our son Jack and his wife Susan," writes Allan Hoffman. "Brian is three and Dana arrived may 23, i'999. In June while on vacation in Sweden, we met with Rick Wicks (SF68) in Gote-. berg and with Mir~daMcEvilly (SF92) and Danilo Marrone (SF90) in Stockholm." 1950 John Logue, president of the Greater Philadelphia Chapter of the United Nations Association and emeritus professor of political science at Villanova University, contributed an article entitled "Some Thought on Memorial Day 1999" to The Swarthmorean in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Bob Sperber has been diagnosed with Parkinson's. The expenses for in-home care and alternative treatment are exceeding all his available resources. Bob may be reached at 260 Camino Alto, Apt. 12, Mill Valley, CA 99941. (For more information, contact Donald Kaplan, president, Northern California Chapter, at donaldkaplan@worldnet.att.net. John Chase writes: "On both of my sojourns in Maine (the first as a farmer, the second as a sailor) lack of funds caused an untimely demise of my fortunes (pun intended). Consequently, I have turned to entrepreneurial activities in order to enhance my coffers and so return triumphantly to that magical land where 'Life as it should be' may be most fully realized ... I would be most interested in hearing from other alumni who are accomplishing, or have already attained, the only true means to Freedom: Personal Wealth." 1957 Thomas Sigman says he is living in Berkeley, California. "Ring me up. I'm in the phone book." 1961 Douglas Bendall, an Episcopal priest in the diocese of Newark, New Jersey, has founded and is president of an ecumenical and interfaith school of theology. The school's mission is to-offer seminary level education to lay persons in an interfaith and pluralistic context. Lisa Maria Bendall (SF86) is a doctoral student in Archeology at Cambridge, England. David Douglas Bendall (SF90) is a mathematician and is working in the pharmaceutical industry in California. He is married and has two children, Rhiannon and Morgan. 1962 "Chill-ping and I jus:t returned from Taipei, Taiwan (July 25-29, 1999) where I de:Livered a paper entitled, 'Moral Dilemmas, Human Rights and Jen (Humanity)' to several hundred Chinese philosophers at the 11th International Conference on Chinese Philosophy at Chengchi University," writes David Schiller. "The paper, which attempts to demonstrate that not only do human rights (supposedly only available in the West) and societal obligations (supposedly only available in the East) entail each other, but that Confucius had a way of preparing his students to implement them both, was very well-received and I became a regular 'star' for a couple of days. Even the conference's key-note speaker came up to talk with me about questions he had about it. I was warned that this Chinese philosophy' obsession' of mine would have no end and it seems to have become perfectly true:_ it just gets more and more fascinating the more I learn. Especially, the more I learn about the Confucius. After viewing a 5am sunrise on Ah Li Shan (Mountain), we flew off to Bangkok, where the people are still smiling as much as ever, but behind the smiles you can see that they are suffering deeply from the collapse of their economy. We explored the Grand Palace in downtown Bangkok, and to the north, the ancient ruins and the 'floating market' where people come in boats loaded with goodies to sell to the foreign tourists. Back home, I am already coming up with a couple of, I think, interesting ideas for my next paper." 1963 Paul Coleman Cochran is the new rector of the Episcopal Church of St. Jude in Wantagh, New York. Marcia E. Herman-Giddens says, "I enjoy getting The Reporter and wish more of my classmates sent in items for the Alumni Notes so I could see what they are doing. I am now working for myself as a child maltreatment consultant and teaching and conducting research when l am not in the garden or playing with my 4 grandchildren. I have a new address and E-mail- 1450 Russell Chapel Road, Pittsboro, NC 27312, 919-542-5573, meherman@mindspring.com." 1966 Ian Harris writes: "During the summer of 1998 in Durban, South Africa, I was selected executive secretary of the Peace Education Commission of the International Peace Research Associates. I have just published a book, Peacebuilding for Adolescents: Strategies for Educators and Communicyr-Leaders (New York: Peter Lang,19?9). 1967 "After spending almost 30 years in California, I moved to Paris three years ago," E-mails Phil Wood. "Together with a bookdealer from San Francisco I opened a secondhand bookstore on the Left Bank in October 1997. The name of the store is the San Francisco Book Company and it is located at 17 Rue Monsieurle-Prince in the 6th Arrondissement. I've also recently remarried, so it looks like the move to France is permanent." 1968 "After 25 years at the University of New South Wales in Sydney I have recently moved to a rural setting to become Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of New England in Armidale, NSW," reports William R. Albury (A). "As in many other countries, these are not easy times for the humanities or higher education generally in Australia. But it is an engaging and worthwhile challenge to keep the values of liberal education alive under such circumstances." 1969 Daniel Cleavinger (SF) says: "I've just returned from the 1999 reunion weekend in Santa Fe. Attending this event was one of the nicest things I've done for myself this year. My advice to all alums: Come to your reunions and enjoy! Get there!" Byron Wall (A) writes that his son, Alexander, is starting as a freshman · at St. John's in Annapolis this fall. Linda Torcaso Bernstein and Mark Bernstein (both A) live in Philadelphia. Mark is still a judge in the Court of Common Pleas. He has enjoyed the Executive Seminars with Chris Nelson the past two years. Linda is still an administrative law judge with the Social Security Administration. They are both active in tlie local Unitarian Church. Th~ygg to art films from time to time filth ··· Frances Burns (A69). 1970 Dr. Edward Macierowski (A) addressed the World Congress on the Philosophy of Mulla Sadra in Tehran, Iran oil May 25, 1999. His topic was the unity of being in the Essence in God acco:rding to Avicenna, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Mulla Sadra. Professor Macierowski presented a copy of his new book, "Thomas Aquinas' Earliest Treatment of the Divine Essence" and a copy of the Benedictine College Catalogue to the Director of the Congress Ayatollah Seyyed Mohammad Khamenei at an audience with several other Englishspeaking participants. 1971 George Elias (A) reports that his oldest daughter just enrolled as a freshman at the University of California, Berkeley ("not yet ready for St. John's") and his youngest daughter just started kindergarten. His wife is working on a novel about the NationsBank buyout of Bank of America. And he is starting to study Greek again. Cliff Martin (A) says that his biggest thing since St. John's (apparently not considering his Penn State PhD in physics to be large) is that he was one of the founders of the company that has become Visx - the corneal surgery business. He's also been the VP of engineering for a semiconductor lithography company, and has written some novels, but alas has not seen them published. Currently, he's a systems con- �Aluntni Notes ... sultant. He and wife Karen Zimmer (A74) live in Norwalk, Connecticut, and have two sons, Ross, 13, and Ian, 8. Karen has been working happily as a doula for the past four years, helping new mothers cope with nursing, and keeping their households from falling apart. to the Board of Director of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. He develops financial instruments for energy markets and will serve in the Economist Seat on the Board. Jay is a senior manager in the Research Department of the New York Mercantile Exchange where his prime interest centers on commodity markets "As a senior managerwith KPMG, for coal, emissions allowances and LLP, I have had the opportunity to other energy issues including nathire a number of consultants, but ural gas and petroleum. He has connever a St. John's Graduate until retributed chapters on coal futures to cently," writes Ray Beodecker (A). . two books on energy risk manage"I am happy to report that Sean ment and often presents his work to Stickle (A9 5) has come to work for forums of coal producers and utiliKPMG and we are currently assisting ties management around the world. the Real Estate Assessment Center In addition to his St. John's degree, of the Department of Housing and he hold a BS in Environment PlanUrban Development in building a ning from Western Washington Uninational database of properties inversity's Huxley College of Environvolved in public housing assistance mental Studies and an MBA from programs." Stanford University. He is pursuing From Dana Netherton (A): This his doctorate in economics and also summer we moved to our new home studies Jewish law and ethics. inSt .. Lo:uis, :where l will open a new company of my dwn. I will be doing Reliability Centered Maintenance BillMcClay (A) writes: "We've (RCM) - the same field in which I moved to Tennessee so that I could have worked for American Manageaccept an appointment as the Sunment Systems for about 10 years Trust Bank Chair of Excellence in now-but now "in association with Humanities at the University of TenAladon Ltd". I'll be moving from a nessee at Chattanooga. We are living company that helped the military in a house on Signal Mountain, and invent RCM, 30 years ago, to an inhaving a great time homeschooling ternational network of consulting our kids in this beautiful setting. It's a. firms that has continued to improve big change, especially after 12 years its methods and that now offers arat Tulane in New Orleans, a city that guably the best RCM training and is largely below sea level. It seemed consulting in the world. The name of the right time for a little elevation." the company is TED at this point. The move to St Louis was an easy decision, once I decided to liberate Seth Ginsburg (A) has a commumyself from AMS. We know that St nications research business in Plano, Louis is a great place to raise chilin the Dallas metroplex. "I work out dren. Especially one 3-yr-old who of my home (to the enthusiastic aphas declared that when *he* grows proval of my canine friends) which is up *he's* going to be a *baseball* great. My clients include a variety of player! (as he fiercelywaves a plastic advertising agencies (E.G., DDB recorder in the air like a baseball Needham, Ogilvy & Mather) and bat) (he probably has better control corporations (e.g., GTE, Frito Lay). of his pitches than a good proporMy work primarily consists of detion of the Cardinal bullpen this signing surveys and moderating season .. ) focus groups (which are a lot like seminars except that the 'texts' we discuss tend to be positioning stateRoger Burk (A) is now working ments or commercials instead of the as a senior program engineer with Great Books). The name of the busithe Aerospace Corporation, a notness is Sethburg Communications. for-profit rand d company that supBy the way, in the course of my busiports the Air Force and other govness dealings I have had the good ernment agencies. "In my spare fortune to meet with another modertime I'm an adjunct professor with ator and fellow member of the SJ C Virginia Tech; I teach an evening family, Pam Carter. Small world!" class at their Northern Virginia Oriana Rodman (SF) sends word campus. Wife Robin (A72) raises of Patrick Finnegan (SF) who is show dogs-English Cocker living in Santa Fe and has started a Spaniels." new venture called "Living HistoJay Gottlieb (A), an energy and ries" after 25 years of working in the natural resources economist, has film business. Using audio and been named by Gov. George Pataki video, he is producing family and in- 1972 1973 1975 1974 dividual portraits, like a photo album come to life. His E-mail address is finnmen@earthlink.net. Dale Mortimer (A) reports: "In addition to maintaining a full-time outpatient private practice in child and adolescent psychiatry/ general adult psychiatry, occasionally submitting (and having published) articles on psychopharmacology topics in medical journals, giving medical presentations to the community (the latest to junior high schools students on the medical consequences of gunshot wounds), being the de facto president of the unchartered Portland area alumni association, and being husband and father, I have recently taken a part-time position as a principal investigator for new psychiatric medication clinical trials. I hope to schedule a series oflocal seminars starting late this fall on recent attempts by the psychiatric community to more accurately describe the relationship of mind to brain. Anyone interested? E-mail me at mortimer@spiritone.com." Nancy M.P.King (A) was promoted on July 1 to Professor of Social Medicine and began a sabbatical to examine benefits in human subjects research. Elizabeth Bassan (A) writes: "I live and work in the Washington, D.C. area. My husband, Tony Pryor, and I have three kids, Madeleine, 14; Rebecca, 11; and Benjamin, 2 1/2. I manage a global health project for Save the Children and my husband words for USAID. We both juggle travel to lots of exotic-read developing country-destinations with a very rewarding family life and community ties." 1976 The Stabler-Talty family [Linda (SF) and Peter (SF82)] is settling into Southampton, New York, even while Peter's architectural work takes him around the United States and Europe. With Alexandria almost 11 and sister Seton almost 6, it's an interesting life (whew). We welcome any SJC visitors to re-establish our connections and continue our conversations. We've had the great fortune to keep close at hand with Kathleen Flynn (SFGI79) in Connecticut, and Temple Wright (A75) in Washington, D.C., but would enjoy hearing from others. 1977 Lauren Baillard (SF) has recently been designated as a Dislocated Worker Specialist working with federal funds under the broad new Workforce Investment Act. She's a seven-plus year employee of the Mayor's Training Center, a divi- sion of the Lexington, Kentucky, Urban County Government. "My job involves career counseling and job search assistance primarily to adults who've lost their jobs due to downsizing. I invite E-mail from former classmates and anyone in my field of work: LAURENB@LFUCG.com. 1978 Fred Bohrer (A) says that he has become a tenured professor of art history at Hood College and has organized an exhibit of 19th-century Iranian photography, entitled "Antoin Sevruguin and the Persian Image" which will go on display in the Smithsonian's A.M. Sackler Gallery starting in late November, through May 2000. There will also be a book to accompany the exhibit. Robert Perry E-mails: "It has been several years since I have contacted the Alumni news. I'm still a Professor of Physics at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. I served as Vice Chair of the department for two years to pay my dues, and have just finished a one year sabbatical based in Columbus (due to graduate students and family). I've managed to run nine marathons, one under three hours, which is an excellent way to manage a midlife crisis. My daughter Jessica is 13, and is introducing us to the joys of raising a teenager. My son Alex is 7,. and my wife Kathleen Squillace continues to work as a consultant in oncology. We had a great time at our class reunion last year and look forward to the 2003 reunion." 1979 JeffMcElroy (SF) writes that he and Enrique Noguera and happy to announce that they have completed the adoption of their four-year-old son, Raul Antonio Noguera McElroy. Kevin Stacey(}\.) says: "I have temporarily (?) stopped practicing law and am fully employed in administering our home LAN, and as head geek for www.216websolutions.com, a web page design company." 1981 Karl Stukenberg (SF) and his wife, Chris Mayhall, had their first child, a baby boy, on April 5. He was 8 pounds, 2 ounces, and is named John Mayhall Stukenberg. Marion Sharp (A) is married to Noel Blyler (A}, who has recently assumed the Director of Admissions position at Charles Wright Academy in Tacoma, Washington. They have two daughters, Susan (7) and Meg (2). "I'm hoping that at some point we will be able to buy a house here I'm weighing the pros and cons of -T �Alulllni Notes ... work (full-time, part-time) vs more schooling and juggling anything like that with childcare! " says Marion. Daniel Van Doren (A) reports: "My wife, Susan, and I live in White Plains, a suburb of New York City. Our son, Benjamin (5) is finished nursery school in may and is in the tee-ball Little League. His brother, Ross (2), keeps us on our toes. He's learning words and phrases at a fast and has mastered the word 'No' well. Through my work in a boutique real estate firm (family owned-mine) I am active in a business group that is studying light-rail alternatives for the New York City area." Emi Sarah Geiger writes that she is still living in the only mixed Jewish/Arab neighborhood in Jerusalem, "enjoying life and keeping very busy raising our four children (ages 6, 41/2, 3, and 11/2), working as a translator, editor, and gymnastics teacher. We hike a lot, travel when we can, and welcome visitors. E-mail us at Boazl@cc.huji.ac.il or sarah@idi.org.il." Julia Jenson (SF) says, "I continue to struggle with what has been labeled schizo-affective disorder, a combination of a thought disorder (schizo) and a mood disorder (affective, or affect). I received my BA from Thomas Edison State College of New Jersey in 1997 in a combination of math, physics, and computer science, and hope to return to school this fall for a teaching certificate to teach remedial math. Right now I am coordinating a social group for mentally ill adults and directing a children's choir. I would love to hear from people." 1982 Kelly A. Genova (SF) has joined the firm of Civerlo, Gralow & Hill as a workers' compensation group attorney. She will maintain her private practice in Downtown Albuquerque, New Mexico while working with Civerlo, Gralow & Hill. "After several years in Costa Rica, I am back in the U.S.," writes Lynn Gumert (A). "In December I completed my DM in Composition from Indiana University. My new address is 1839 Green St., #306, Harrisburg, PA 17102." 1983 An update from William Hill (A): 'Tm alive and well, practicing business law at big firm in Miami. I'm married to a beautiful and brilliant woman who hails from North Dakota 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. My Email is whill@steelhector.com. Liz Waldner (A) is now the Director of Creative Writing at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa. Her "most St. J ohnsish title found a home - won the Iowa Prize for Poetry (coincidence!); the University of Iowa Press will publish A Point is That Which Has No Part in March 2000." 1984 Maggie will be two in August and is already eagerly befriending the garter snakes, great blue heron, deer and owls we live among. We welcome human visitors as well and the sight of a St. John's friend on my doorstep, or a letter in my mailbox, would bring tears to my eyes. Poetry is what remains essential to me from my own sips from the Great Books geyser of St. John's. My first chapbook~ called Seasons of the StarPlanted Garden, self-published and illustrated with color reproductions of my artwork, is hot off the press. Call or write if you'd like to purchase a copy. Cindy Bradley Sharp and Gilbert Kyle Sharp (both SF) are living in Frisco, Texas. "It has been a long time since we have heard from anyone," writes Cindy. "We hope you are all happy and healthy and doing well. For those ofyou who haven't heard from us, we now have three children, all boys. Noah, age 7, will be in first grade this year. John, age 3 1/2, adores cats and trains and his big brother Noah. Ben, age 13 months, thinks his big brothers are pretty special too. Ifyou haven't guessed by now - I stay home with them (and the dogs!) and spend my time doing laundry! We would love to hear from youdrop us a note or stop by." Fr. Bruce Wren (SF) is presently the rector at the Legion of Christ's Novitiate in Cornwall, Ontario, where he is in charge of the formation of 18 young men preparing for the priesthood in the Catholic Church. He sends word that he recently read Dostoyevsky' s Demons. "I send hello's to Spence, Benson, Pope, Swanke, and the gang." Tracy Mendham (A) writes: "I have at long last returned to school. I began Vermont College's MFAin writing program this summer. The enthusiasm and thoughtfulness of the students there reminds me of my first days at St. John's. I still work at the School ofVisual Arts in New York and continue to live in Brooklyn with my partner of nine years, Dana Chenier. I'd love to hear from any old friends at tmendham@ Tom O'Dowd (SF) has opened adm.schoolofvisualarts.edu, espe· NorthStar Naturals, a vitamin and cially since I may not make it to the reunion this fall. herb shop specializing in fun stuff like organic coffee and aloha shirts. 'Tm boasting the largest free herbal/nutritional library and comJanice Cantwell (AGI) writes; "I puter research center open to the am working as a volunteer receppublic in the NW Rockies," he says. tionist, information consultant at Tom lives in Helena, Montana with both the Annapolis and Anne Arunson Quinn, 8. His E-mail address is del Visitors' Center and the Anne todowd6352@aol.com. Arundel Medical Center, Clatanoff Ed Weiss (A) reports: "After Pavilion. Please introduce yourself, being side-tracked fu various fields if you stop bywhen I'm on duty." of employment, I am finally doing A note from Alex Huemer (A): full-time what I wanted to do when I "For those who did not see me on came out to California - I ·am workJeopardy (back in January 26-27), I ing as a freelance trombone-player am alive and well. I am working this around L.A. and, of course, Hollyyear as a Visiting Lecturer in Ecowood, playing in a Latin dance band, nomics at the University of World various swing and jazz bands, pit or:Economy and Diplomacy in chestras, etc., etc. I love what I do." Tashkent~ Uzbekistan. I am also Mit Wanzer (SF) has thrown in teaching a Distance Learning class the tipi and cut his hair with amazin Southern California via the intering results (not sequential): He is the net, and hopefully will get some pichappy father of Emily Joelle Wanzer, tures of this place posted to my Web born to his wife Marcy on April 12~ site sometime soon. If anyone is in they are residing in Littleton, Massathe area (or just wants to drop me an E-mail) they can best reach me at my chusetts, surrounded by pine trees; Mit recently completed a Master's of current E-mail address: Education with Antioch New Enghuemera@ufn.net." land Graduate School. This prepared Liza Hyatt (SF) reports: "My him for his first year as a sixth grade little girl, Maggie, my husband and I science teacher at a middle school in have moved. (New address: 10333 Indian Lake Blvd. N. L>r., Indianapo- Stow, Mass. Larry O'Hahavan (A) is a Hollylis, IN 46236 phone: 317-823-6603). 1986 1985 wood boy! After a few years producing commercials, he's started his own production company, "See Spot Run." 1987 Chris Howell (A) and Sabrina (A88) welcomed their third child, Beatrice Katrina Anais Howell, in July. She joins Zeb and Calida. ''I am living at the farthest reaches of Southern Maryland enjoying the osprey and sunsets on the mightywide rivers here," writes Clare Fisher McGrath Merkle (AGI). ''After a 10 year career in the nowdepressed commercial real estate appraisal field, I settled in as a part-time grants researcher to spend the better part of days in freelance writing and studies as a secular Carmelite, unintentionally exploring the evangelical counsel of poverty. Am learning HTML by working on a virtual house of prayer web site while reading into .Edith Stein and up on Maryland history. My daughter, Kate, is a soonto-graduate 'post-modern' dancer/ choreographer at NYU. Her latest oeuvre was 'Agnosia' which explored the theme of alienation in the lives of NYC subway commuters." Mary Helen McMurran (SF) received her Ph.D. from New York University in November of1998. She will begin teaching at the University of Chicago in the fall of 1999. Marshall and Robin Miller (SF), with daughters Hilary (10) and Kiara (4) continue to be happily settled in Moraga, California, a town which happens to be home to St. Mary's College whose Great Books Program was influenced by St. John's .. Sarah Steel (AGI) began an internship this September with the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, which she says is "an exceptional opportunity to nourish my skills in integrated dance. My involvement in dog training classes will result in adoption of a service dog, who will probably become a dancingdog. Letthe dance begin!" 1988 Rick Craven (A) is working for Motorola as an operations analyst after graduating from the University of Tennessee with an MBA in supply chain management. His wife Debbie completed a degree in microbiology. They welcome news from classmates; their E-mail address is rcraven@ameritech.net. Joe Can (AGI) has been doing great with commissioned art work, and has packed his van to finally get out of Annapolis and become an itinerant artist. CLARIFICATION: It was incorrectly stated in a previous issue of The Reporter that Claudia Probst Stack (A) was married this summer. �Alutnni Notes·... In fact, she married Joe Stack last summer. 1989 "After 21 years of teaching secondary school math and science, I have decided that it's time for a new career," writes Beverly Angel (SFGI). "I'll be starting law school at the University of Texas this fall." Raymond Gifford (A) was appointed Chairman of the Colorado Public Utilities Commission this July. Daniel (AGI) and Deborah (AGI90) Reinke have a new daughter, Mariah Elizabeth, born May 12. She has an older sister, Makela, who is 5, and a brother, David, who is 3. George Turner (A) just finished his first year as a Deputy District Attorney in lovely Orange County, California. "Abril and I bought a house in Tustin, moved in in July, and are overjoyed and exhausted. There's plenty of mom (but not much furniture), and guests are always welcome." Dru.·iush and Lisa Liske Doo:randish (both A) are living in the village of Eggleston, Virginia, along the New River, with daughter Miriam, age 5. Daree is a potter, gardener, and tutor (presently reading literature and philosophy with homeschoolers). Lisa teaches cello at Washington and Lee University, plays in Emrys Ensemble (a flutecello-piano trio) with Chester Burke (A74) and Katherine Boyes, is associate principal cellist in the Roanoke Symphony and principal cellist with Opera Roanoke, manages and contracts the orchestra for Opera Roan,oke, and runs a Suzuki cello studio (Community Cello Works). They share care for Miriam, who also plays cello, takes dance classes, and is ahomeschooler. Seth Bagan (SF) writes that he is kept busy cactus farming in Tacoma, Washington. 1991 Cynthia Gavioli (A) is now a sales assistant at A.G. Edwards & Sons, Inc., and will soon be registered. Jeanine Bramwell (SFGI) received her Master's degree from Adams State College in Alamosa, Colorado, in community counseling in the summer of 1998; in the spring of 1999 she became a nationally certified counselor (NBCC). In May, Ines Azcarate (A) graduated from the University of Maryland, Baltimore campus, nursing school, and received her RN license this summer. In May 2000 she will marry one Robert Kolen (not an alum), a freshly minted Hopkins MD /PhD. Jeaneen McAmis (A) E-mails: "At Christmas, I returned from a year and a half in Indonesia (Ujung Pandang, on the island of Sulawesi) economic tailspin, riots in the streets: your usual trip abroad. Actually it's a wonderful place and it was a very interesting time to be there. I was the academic director for a school there, then spent about four months traveling around Java, Bali, Lombok, etc. Then I returned to Tennessee to teach (ESL) for about 8 months close to my family. Now I'm off again - this time to the north of Italy- and I hope my arrival will not result in similar repercussions for the country. I'd love to hear from people! E-mail me at jeaneen@hotmail.com." From Chris Newman (A): "I just wanted to let people know that we 're settled in Pasadena, California,. and would love to hear from any classmates who pass through. Home phone is 626-396-9551, and chambers (where I'm more likely to be found at virtually any hour)is 626-583-7904." Marco Valente (SF95) and Talbow (SF'91) report: "We married August 13, 1992. We have two sons, Luca Gabriele born July 10, 1994 and Noah Raffaele born July 8, 1996. After roaming the country following Marco's career as a professional dancer for five years, we have given up the life and settled in Tucson. Both of us have gone back to school to learn all the high-tech stuff we keep hearing about. Well, after St. John's and midwifery and massage therapy and ballet and parenthood and various other endeavors, maybe with semiconductors we can finally get a job. Our boys are beauties and growing fast. Luca is starting kindergarten, and Noah preschool, in a lovely Montessori school. They are also benefiting from having grandparents nearby for the first time, as are we. Our family is doing well but feels incomplete without all our old friends. We would love to hear from all our longlost loves. 1992 "I love my job as a statistical programmer for a women's' HIV study at Johns Hopkins," says Lorie Benning. "I love my new house in Baltimore City. Sarah is going into third grade. She played lacrosse last spring, but she hasn't started rowing yet. Life is good!" Elyette Block (SF) is living in Amsterdam and would love to hear news of old friends who'll be coming through the area. She can be reached by E-mail at ely~tte@hotmail.com. Dianne Cowan (A) is now in Boston. Her E-mail address was mistruth is that time with Mason is printed in the last Reporter. The cor- going by so fast, I wouldn't want to rect address is diannec@pciwiz.com. miss any of it." "I have made my long anticipated "I moved to Chicago after graduamove back to the Boston, MA-area tion and spent my time doing all sorts after nearly three years in Houston, of things in order to figure out what TX," writes Curtis Hyatt (SF), curmy life's calling is," writes Laura tishyatt@yahoo.com. "I am starting Knight (A). 'Tve lobbied for the ena new job as a North American oil vironment, tended bar, working in market analyst with an energy conreal estate (document recording, title sulting firm. Previously, I was an searching, etc.) and ended up at an editor with a London-based pubaccounting firm. Through all this, I lisher of energy news and informaconcluded that corporate America is tion. In the past few years, I have had not for me and am pursuing a career some great opportunities to travel, in teaching. I have been accepted to a especially in Africa. I even got as far Master's Program for math education as the end of the earth, Timbuktu!" at De Paul University and will begin Michael J. Deutsch (SF) was re·attending classes in the fall. I welcently promoted to assistant vice come any comments from Johnnies in president at Waddell & Associates, the teaching field (especially the high Inc. in Memphis, Tenn. Previously, school level) as well as any news from Deutsch served as a senior associate my fellow '92 graduates in Annapolis with Waddell & Associates, a and Santa Fe." provider of investment and financial Erika McConnell (A) is going to counsel. Prior to joining Waddell & graduate school in western MassaAssociates in 1994, Deutsch was chusetts to study urban planning and dean of admissions and head landscape design. "It will be nice to lacrosse coach at Christians Brothbe closer to family and friends for a ers High School in Memphis. In couple of years, but I plan to return 1995, Deutsch's lacrosse team won to Anchorage once I finish school," the Tennessee State Championship. she says. In his spare time, Deutsch volunBoaz Roth (AGI) reports: "My teers for the St. Patrick Center in March wedding to Jane Ballard was a Memphis and is currently training true SJC event. Ken Colston for his first triathlon on July 31. (AGI89) was my best man and my Erin Hanisee (SF) sends word via brother Gil (AGI95) carried mytalis E-mail: "I have been back and forth to the Hupah. In attendance were between Santa Fe and other locaformer Johnnies Helen Colston (A82), Sarita Cargas (A89), Jen tions since graduating, the latest being Washington D.C. where my Dilworth and Je:rry J anuzewski husband, Andrew Smith, works as an (AGI92). The reception following environmental and natural resources the traditional Jewish ceremony attorney with the United States Deowed a bit to the swing parties at SJC partment of Justice. Thankfully, we save for the hoisted chairs and other will be returning to the area permaacts of revelry. I hope to have a virnently and living mostly in out tual wedding album on-line one of house in De Vargas Heights and these days; keep your eyes peeled." sometimes in Denver where the DOJ has a field office. I have been teaching elementary Laura Anne Stuart (A) just school after receiving my second . started a new part-time job working degree in elementary education, but with teen girls who are part of the I am now taking a break to raise our HIV peer education program at the new baby girl, Mason Moore Smith, Malden YWCA. She also works fullwho was born on December 27th. time at the Massachusetts DepartMason is delightful - a happy, squeal- ment of Education, where she cooring, chubby (the thighs are full of dinated national conferences forolls), spoiled (in a good way) baby. cused on school-based HIV prevenMotherhood is tremendous! Who tion programs. She is really enjoying life in the Boston area, and can be would ever know that such uncondireached at ambiva@hotmail.com. tional love and heartfelt joy could Timothy Mahe1· (SF) received his possibly exist? JD from the University of Minnesota I do not plan to go back to teachSchool of Law. ing (although sometimes I miss it) until our children are school age. Scott Capehart (SF), his partner Having worked with children from Laura, and their son Lavran (almost all walks of life, I have seen the dif5 now) live in Seattle. Scott is slowly ferences between those raised at building his career as an actor home and those raised in childcare having completed his graduate facilities from three months of age degree at the University of Washingand I feel very strongly about my deton last year. In the meantime he is cision to raise my own. Besides, the, teaching piano and doing promo- 1993 �Alulllni Notes ... Who knows? Perhaps I will even take tional work for an exciting young company called TruMusic. He reup pig farming." cently finished a promotional docuSarah M. Coburn (SF) is currently mentary on the TruMusic Method. in her first year of Medical school at Ben Power (A) is a student at the . UNM in Albuquerque. University of Limerick in Ireland--he has completed a master's in plainchant (medieval music) and is now Ashley Fischer (SF) is currently working on a master's in traditional avoiding comprehensives and thesis Irish music performance (he plays work at the University of Dallas by the flute). teaching full-time at Christ the King School in Dallas. New E-mail is amfischer73@juno.com. Ketil Freeman is a land use planSusan Rzucidlo (A) is now atner for the city of Seattle Departtending the University of Bridgeport ment of Construction and Land Use. School ofNaturopathic Medicine. Nathan (A) writes: She and Brian McGuire are living in chaplain at Johns Connecticut about 15 miles from New Haven. Brian is a computer summer, I am now the chaplain and check processor and he is also a partreligion teacher at the Washington time law student at Quinnipiac ColEpiscopal School, an independent lege, School of Law. "We would love day school, K-8. My new E-mail is to get in touch with any of our lost NJHumphrey@hotmail.com." friends (they know who they are)," William Kowalski (SF) writes: says Susan. "We also invite any stu"I deeply"regretted that previous dent or alumni interested in Naturotravel commitments prohibited me pathic Medicine to contact us. Our from attending th.e fifth-year reE-mail address is susanrz@worldunion of Santa Fe's class of 1994. I net.att.com." have been traveling a great deal Zena Hitz (A)is studying ancient lately, including Australia, Ireland, and contemporary philosophy at England, France, and Canada, and Princeton University. an additional trip to New Mexico was Marine 2nd Lt. Michael Gaffney unfortunately too much for me to (A) recently reported for duty with handle. I am pleased to report that the 2nd Battalion, 10th Marines at my first novel, Eddie :S Bastard, will Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. be released in early September of Phillip Katz (SF) reports: "I rethis year by HarperCollins. Needless cently earned by Master's from U.W.to say I am delighted at the unexMilwaukee School of Architecture pected success of my first literary and Urban Planning. I won two reeffort. My second effort is still "in search competitions: a vital signs the womb," so to speak. I think it's safe to say it's about half done, and it case study competition from the University of California-Berkeley. 'Let too will be published by HarperThere be Light': A Quantitative and Collins, probably some time in late Qualitative Analysis of Natural Day2000 or early 2001. After that one is lighting in Modern and Pre-Modern finished I plan on taking some time Architecture; and a research award off and doing even more traveling. 1995 for thesis research into the history, culture, revolution, and tradition of sacred Jewish) architecture. I was married in Jerusalem in January to Anat David oflsrael and Venice, Italy. She earned her doctorate from Universitario de-Architectora a'Venezia- Italia. I am working at Kahler Slater Architects in Milwaukee, where I have served as an intern for two years." Ncdalina Dineva (A) and Milen Dyoulgerov (AGI96) were married in Bulgaria in August oflast year. Nedalina reports that married life is not much different from the last 14 years of unsanctioned communion. "We are still living in Annapolis and growing more and more fond of it. I spend my days reading books and managing an editorial office; Milen is finishing his Ph.D. in marine policy. We plan to grow up soon." 1996 Lenka Rosolova (A) is living in her home country, the Czech Republic, working in a big international advertising agency in Prague. She would love to hear from any Johnnies via E-mail: Lenka_Rosolova@bssaprague.ccmail. Scott Field (SFGI) is still married and is now doing improv comedy with Improv Boston and stand-up at any open-mike club. Amy (Norman) Morgan (A) and her husband Bill departedfor Mongolia in August. After a month of training in the capital city of Ulaanbataar. they settled in to teach English for a year in an outer province of the country. Leslie Norton (AGI) is beginning her third year of teaching at Loyola High School in Baltimore. "I have been teaching social studies, computers, and French, but starting this year I will only be teaching French." Steve Pearson (SF) reports: "Having decided that the MFA in Theatre Design required more artistic training than we received in the visual arts tutorial, I switched to the Master's program in Comparative Literature here at the University of Georgia. I must be doing something right, because in my first semester I had two papers accepted for conferences: in March I presented 'Senecan Violence in Hrotsvit's Plays' at the Conference of the Medieval Association of the Pacific, and in October I will present 'Astronomy and Order in The Arabian Nights' at the Conference of the Society for Literature and Science. (I'm so happy that reading Ptolemy paid off!) I am currently refreshing my Greek in order to study- finally!!! - Aristophanes in the spring, in preparation for my thesis comparing the satires of Academia in Aristophanes, Moliere, and Ionesco. Then I'd like to focus more on the history of science as reflected in dramatic literature. If anyone knows of anyone already working in this area, please let me know! And I apologize to all my classmates for being such a blankety-blank our senior year ... you guys arc the best!" Kate Mulde1· (SF) and GeoffMaturen (SF) were married in June in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Geoff is a graduate student in the classics department and Kate is in medical school at the University of Michigan. They have two adopted feline children. Howard Sauertieg (A) has completed his first year at Dickinson Law School at Penn State University. Dietsch (SF) is pursing an MA in secondary education mathematics at Hunter College in New York on a full tuition scholarship. She will be teaching math at a NYC public high school in the fall. Colin Fox (SF) writes: "I'm currently working as an Editorial Assistant for Warner Books in New York City. I get paid (barely) to read all the time, but I must admit, it's a far cry from all the reading I paid to do at SJC." Geoffrey Green (SF) says, "I'm back in New York, Brooklyn, and would love to hear from any of my former classmates whenever they're in the city." Genevieve Goodrow (A) has one more year oflaw school at the University of Virginia. "Summer jobs slaving away in litigation firms, Dallas and New York, have me thinking I need to become a permanent student!" Rebecca Michael (A) has just taken on corporate and foundation giving at the Washington Ballet in D.C. her E-mail is reveccam@washingtonballet.org. 1998 Alexandra Mudd (A) returned from India in early March. She's doing victim advocacy for girls incarcerated in San Francisco's juvenile hall through the District Attorney's office. "I'm heading in the direction of graduate studies-though as of yet I've not decided upon a program." �OBITUARIES Robert Biern Dr. Robert Biern, an Annapolis · cardiologist who was a friend and supporter of St. John's College, died August 7. Dr. Biem served as college physician during the early 1970s and continued his relationship with the college by leading the Friends of St. John's portion of the Campaign for our Fourth Century; by serving as president of the board of the Friends; and by serving on the board of the Mitchell Gallery Committee. He liked to attend concerts and seminars and with his wife, Mary Kay, was frequently seen on campus. In May, he was made an honorary member of the class of 1998 by the St. John's College Alumni Association. Born in Huntington, W-est Virginia, he was the son of a doctor. After graduating from Phillips Academy, he received his undergraduate degree from Princeton University and his medical degree from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. His internship and residency were at the University ofVirginia Hospital and the University of Cincinnati; he also was a lieutenant commander in the Navy for two years before returning to Johns Hopkins Hospital for a cardiology fellowship. In Annapolis, he was responsible, along with a group of other physicians, for opening the coronary care unit, for which he served as director for 17 years. Dr. Biern is survived by his wife, Mary Catherine, and by two daughters. A memorial service was held in the Great Hall on August 10. James F. Campbell James F. Campbell (Class of 1932), an executive of Campbell Coal Company and a retired oil company executive and former U.S. Ambassador, died in July. Mr. Campbell was born in Lonaconing, Maryland. After graduating from St. John's in 1932, he studied at the George Washington University School of Law. He also studied at the Naval War College in Rhode Island. During World War he was a Naval officer serving in both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters. He served as chairman of the board and managing director of Esso Standard Oil South Africa, and as an executive with the company in Havana, Puerto Rico, Panama, and Santiago. After his retirement from Esso in 1970 he was appointed Ambassador to El Salvador by Richard Nixon. Mr. Campbell was active in many civic, business, and international organizations. He is survived by his wife, Mary Frances, two daughters, a son and three grandchildren. Richard Kennington Richard Kennington, a retired professor of philosophy at Catholic University of America whose area of specialty was political philosophy and theworks of Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes, died September 10 in Annapolis. Mr. Kennington also taught at St. John's from 1962-1964, and later was a visiting tutor in the Graduate Institute. B.orn in Worcester, Massachusetts, he spent part of his childhood in China with his missionary parents. He was an economics graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and a political philosophy student at the University of Chicago's Committee on Social Thought. He studied at the Sorbonne in 1954 and 1955 and received a doctorate in philosophy from the New School for Social Research in 1966. He began his teac;hing career in 1960, when he joined the faculty of Pennsylvania State University, where he taught for 15 years. He was a visiting professor at Georgetown, Cornell, and Boston College as well. He taught at Catholic University from 1975 to 1991. At a memorial service held in the Great Hall on September 15, friends and former students played music and read selections from the Book of Job, Wallace Stevens, Winston Churchill, and others of his favorite authors. Those participating included Thomas Kronsberg, A77; tutor George Russell; tutor Katherine Heines, SF82; and tutor Chester Burke, A74. Tutor Frank Hunt represented the Santa Fe campus. Mr. Kennington is survived by his wife, tutor Pamela Kraus; by a daughter from a former marriage, Ellinor Michel; and by two brothers and three sisters. ·perfect life would be as a professor." In 1992, Shaffer joined the Peace Corps, teaching English in Turkmenistan, a former Soviet republic. While there, he also was on the support staff and research team for the International Monetary Fund. He returned home in 1993 to begin studying law at the University of Denver, where he also coached varsity tennis. While battling the disease, Shaffer served as a law clerk for U.S. District Judge RobertMcWilliams in the David Steve Shaffer 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. He David Steve Shaffer (SFGI93) began studying for the bar exam, died June 19 of a rare form of cancer, hoping to teach at the college level. in Denver. He was 31. As ca;>tain of In 1988, Shaffer began a letter to the tennis team at East High School, his grandfather with a quote from Shaffer was ranked in the top 30 in Alfred Lord Tennyson the country among players under 18. "though much is taken, much "He liked to tell that story that the abides, and though last time he played Andre Agassi, he We are not now that strength which beat him," said Larry Loeb, former in old days director of the Denver Tennis Club. "Of course, Devin was 12 and Andre Moved earth and heaven; that which was 9, but he beat him." we are, we are; Shaffer gradu~ted from the UniOne equal tempter of heroic hearts, versity of Pennsylvania with a degree Made weak by time and fate, but in economics and then earned a strong in will master's degree from St. John's in To strive, to seek, to findandnottoyield" Santa Fe. As he devoured the clasTo contribute to an at-risk youth sics, he also studied languages, tennis scholarship in Devin Shaffer's honing his fluency in Spanish while name, send donations to the Devin earning a working knowledge of S. Shaffer Memorial Fund, c/ o ColFrench, Russian, and Hebrew. "He orado Youth Tennis Foundation, loved to learn, loved academics," his 1911 S. Parker Road, No. 101, mother said. "He once said that the Denver, CO 80231 Jane Tolbert Jane Tolbert, widow of tutor and admissions director Jam es Tolbert, died September 6 in Annapolis. A native of Texas, she moved to Annapolis is 1953. She graduated from the University of Texas and earned a master's degree in social work from Smith College. She worked in the library at St. John's and then resumed her career as a social worker, when she worked for the Anne Arundel County Department of Social Services, Shepherd Pratt Hospital, and the Linwood Children's Center. After she retired, she worked for Arundel Hospice and Upjohn Health Services. She was active with St. Anne's Church in Annapolis. Mr. Tolbert died in 1988. Mrs. Tolbert is survived by two daughters and two grandchildren. NOTED: •Donald H. Brightball, Class of 1940 •Anne Browning Byers, A77 •Kevin Conduff, SF79 •Laurence R. Josephs, Class of 1944 •The Rev. Ernest Carl Lyon, Class of 1934 •Lloyd F. Taylor, Class of 1939 �Canipus Life ... WHAT I DID ON MY SUMMER VACATION ·············~····················································································••@•••························ T hey could have scooped ice cream at Storm Brothers or waited tables at Chick <n Ruth's, but these Annapolis Johnnies sought a little more adventure in their summer employment. MOSQUITOES IN MALI While most of us spent the summer swatting mosquitoes, senior Melissa Coleman spent ten weeks catching and dissecting them as part of a malaria research project in Mali, West Africa. Her work in Mali was part of a joint venture between the NIH and the University of Maryland Medical School, designed to interest students in tropical medicine. The bulk of her summer Melissa Coleman at the health center where she worked in Bandiagra, Mali. was spent doing an independent project involving malaria and pregnant women. Coleman explains that her project had two aspects: one involving molecular biology and the other epidemiological. "Pregnant mothers are a lot more susceptible to violent attacks of malaria because the parasites that cause the disease hide out in the placenta," explains Coleman. "The parasite that causes malaria has three different mutations. We wanted to know if it was the same parasite in the mothers' peripheral blood and in the blood of the placenta. "On the epidemiological side," she said, "we wanted to see if there was any association be(above) Vada Mussavat, who spent the tween pregnant women infected summer in Kosovo, took this photo (right) of· with the parasite and low birth a young Kosovar girl watching a fire set to a weight, anemia, and premature Serb-owned house in downtown Prizreil. birth." To perform the study, Coleman the patients knewwewere part of had to learn quickly many techan ambulance, as part of a nine-week the hospital-we needed to look like niques she had never before atwe were in total control. After a internship with the emergency detempted, such as finger pricks for while I learned to stand there, even partment of Bellevue hospital in getting blood, collecting blood from while the patients were screaming. " New York City. The internship in:.. the placenta, doing thick smears (a eluded rotations in pediatric and Nuttall says that a large part of the technique for making microscope adult urgent care, the emergency orientation was geared towards senslides of blood), and testing blood sitizing the summer interns toward ward,.,occupational and physical for anemia. therapy, the psychiatric ward, labor life in a public hospital. "Their "I had to learn a lot of things on and delivery, and the operating motto was 'no one turned away,' so the fly, which was very difficult, and room. there were a lot of homeless and disat times I thought 'what am I doing enfranchised people," he says. After a week-long orientation in here? This is crazy.' But the doctors I which he learned CPR and first aid, Unlike many summer internships, worked with were so helpful and nice Nuttall and about forty other college which are geared to promote careers I was able to learn the stuff." students found themselves transin the sponsoring field, some of the Coleman especially appreciated porting patients, getting x-rays, talk- · doctors and residents who worked the help of two Malian doctors who ing to patients, and watching more with the students were candid about helped to facilitate communication medical procedures than most of us the difficulties of a career in medibetween her, the midwives, and the will see in a lifetime-while trying cine, particularly in a public hospidelivering mothers. "My French not to cringe. "It was hard to watch tal. "One doctor compared being in isn't that great and my Bambara cerdoctors do some of the tests," he the ER to a Sisyphean task," Nuttall tainly isn't_so good," she says. said. "There was one where they had recalls. "You see the same homeless to put a needle in an artery, and it or disenfranchised people every SISYPHEAN SUMMER hurts a lot even if they do it well. It's time. People who are taking medicaSenior Galen Nuttall spent the difficult to see people in pain and tion for heart problems are still summer attending autopsies, watchnot to actively commiserate with drinking or taking methadone. One ing babies being born, and riding in them. But we wore red coats so that patient was given a blood thinner for his heart, and I saw him the next day on the street with a liquor bottle in his hand. I knew he would be back in the hospital in a few days." WHERE THE ACTION ls Following world events on CNN will never be enough for senior Vada Mossavat, who spent the summer in Kosovo and Macedonia taking photographs and serving as a relief worker. In June she flew with Will VanSant (A98) to Skopje, Macedonia, with no job or contacts, only a vague plan and an outgoing personality. Once in Skopje, the pair hung around the Grand Hotel hoping to find a reporter who could be of some assistance to "two young kids wanting to string," she says, referring to the practice of working as a stringer, or freelancer, for news organizations. After only two days, they hooked up with Michael Williamson of the Washington Post, who took them under his wing and gave them transportation in and out of Kosovo every day for a week. At the same time, the pair was trying to get work with an aid organization they had learned of through a man they met in the Skopje airport who worked with the International Rescue Committee. Ten days after their arrival. the jobs came through and they moved to Prizren in the German sector of Kosovo. There they worked with a shelter program for six weeks, coordinating the delivery of mattresses, blankets, tents, hygiene kits, and detergents. Back in Annapolis, Mossavat says she is not cut out for aid work. "The thing I learned was that need and want are the ugliest things in the entire world," she says. "There's nothing worse than having to look a grown man in the face who has just tried to steal twelve mattresses from you or having someone knock on your door at seven thirty in the morning saying that they need tents that you knowyou can't give them." She is, however, ready and eager to begin her career in photojournalism.' "I want to be a champion of truth and justice in the world and photojournalism is how I want to do it, especially being a war correspondent" she says. In addition to her trip to Kosovo, Mossavat spent a week taking photos in Bosnia in 1998. Her next stop after graduation? Sierra Leone. 8 Su3an Borden �... Cantpus Life ... PART-TIME STUDENT WITH FULL-TIME COMMITMENT feanDraganza, SF??? J ean Draganza is, at one and the same time, both extraordinary and normal. She is normal in the respect that Jean is one of any number of students at St. John's who could be interviewed, all for their exciting ideas and interests. I have learned, however, through my friendship with Jean, that she is unique in her perspective on life, in her undying passion for each new day, and in the contributions she has made to St. John's - both great and small - that are particular to her talents. Jean spent several years exploring a wide range of experiences life has to offer before arriving at St. John's as a freshman. Out of high school, she went to Argentina as an exchange student. She then attended a California State school and dropped out after her first year, still searching for what she wanted to do. Over the next years, she worked in Northern California and Canada doing fire fighting work, clearing streams, building houses, running chainsaws, and doing any number of other physical labor jobs. She took classes at a community college, worked in every odd job you could imagine, and spent her time looking at colleges. Oddly enough, for most of her life she was convinced that she couldn't do math or science. Yet, in her search Jean focused on schools that offer a strong math department. Jean found out about St. John's through a cousin who had met and been impressed with a St. John's alum. When she received the catalogue in the mail, she says, "I was just blown away." She was especially excited about the math and science curriculum in junior year, and unlike most freshmen who come to St. John's with the Greeks on their minds, Jean arrived looking forward to junior year. But then of course Jean read Plato, and as she says, "Plato spoke to me." She loved the freshman year program, and she decided to turn her attention to the freshman lab material. It is somewhat ironic that she felt she had not truly understood freshman lab the first time around as she would later become a freshman Lab Assistant, a position she has held for two years, in addition to being the Lab Assistant for two January freshmen tutorials this summer. Jean has done the second semester of freshmen Lab five times. This academic year she will serve as the Head Freshman Lab Assistant. Being a lab assistant allows Jean to experience the excitement of Freshman year each fall. "'I get to enjoy the new people coming in and becoming a part of grappling with all these questions," she says. "The best part is seeing the freshmen evolve into listening members of the same discussion." Jean says she is able to see the layers of pre-conceived ideas fall away replaced by a sense of wonder, prior "facts" becoming questionable. Jean has the rare ability to balance her views of beauty and function in her thoughts about science. During this interview, she described a particular lab exercise the freshmen perform early in the first semester. The students read a piece of writing by Annie Dillard entitled "On Seeing," and then they go to the meadow behind St. John's -you know, the one behind the water tower, remember? Each student picks a piece ofland to observe, usually just a small space about the size of a square foot, and the students watch their respective plots ofland for most of the class period. Then the students reassemble and share their observations. Most students take notes and sketch pictures, and all have something interesting to say when their observations are finished. "Since it's a plot ofland the students haven't seen before and haven't read about, it's simply a practice in seeing what's there," she explains. And for Jean, what was there was an incredible experience. "It's amazing how difficult it is to see what's there," she says. "There's probably an infinite amount of things that are there on that square ofland that we take for granted." When Jean did this lab for the first time, she picked her plot ofland because there was a nice rock to sit on while she watched the ground. Her plot ofland included a crippled ant making his way across the rocky terrain. Old, slow, minus one antenna, and missing one leg, the ant had to compensate for his handicap by climbing up and over rocks in a par- ticular way. He dealt with his injury because there was nothing else to do, and he lived out a large portion of his short life unaware that Jean was watching every detail of his movement. Appropriately, she named him Nestor Ant, and she became absorbed in watching his struggles. "I lost myself," she says. "I remember being in awe of the fact that even a crippled insect could learn to deal with it and live on." Jean has many great stories, but the story of Nestor Ant caught my attention. Not only because Jean has the strength of spirit to feel humbled. by such a small creature~ but because the idea of Jean sitting on that rock and looking at that ant is a perfect description of her. She is certainly one to stop and smell the flowers, and I envy her ability to savor life to its fullest. She made the decision after her freshman year that she wanted to attend St. John's part-time, a decision the administration approved, and she has not regretted that decision since. Concerned that she was not getting as much out of the books and classes as she could be, Jean wanted to have the time to better understand each reading and each author before moving on to the next. After taking a full load freshman year, Jean completed the sophomore curriculum in two years, took the junior math and lab classes last year, and is now studying the junior language and seminar curriculum. Although she has not yet decided whether to continue as a part-time student through her senior year or to try to complete all the senior courses at once, she is very excited about the upcoming material. And the senior Essay? She thinks she wants to write on the first two chapters of Genesis, depicting the two creation stories. "If there's one universe," Jean asks me, "then why do we need two creations?" It is only for special circumstances that the school will allow a student to reduce their course load to parttime, but in Jean's case it seems to have worked out well. "I feel that because I'm part-time I've been able to have a different learning dynamic," she says. "I've learned from more people than I would have going full time, and I love having access to so many fresh perspectives." Between her own classes and those for which she has served as a Lab Assistant, Jean has had tutorials or seminars with more than 20 tutors. She has also had the opportunity to share her learning with many more students than she would have if she had followed one class along for four years. Jean's part-time schedule translates into six or seven years at St. John's, but it also affords her some luxuries during her time there. For one, she has time to bike to and from school as often as possible (certainly not a short distance). Last year she rode her bike an average of 100 miles each week in training for the Santa Fe Century Race. She trained well, and was confident in her ability to participate in the race, but when she awoke on the morning of the race she decided not to go. "You didn't go?" I said at this point. "What do you mean you didn't go? You trained all that time and you didn't go?" And Jean looked at me peacefully and told me that on the morning of the race she simply didn't feel right. "I felt like I was doing the race just to prove something," she said. ''I didn't want it to be about proving something. It should be about something else." That's just like Jean, to teach me a wonderful lesson through subtle example. Jean's schedule allows her to tutor students at the Santa Fe Community College, an experience she truly enjoys. She also plans on taking a course in Calculus and Physics at the Community College in order to better absorb the material she read last year in Junior Math and Lab. "There's something about just doing problems that helps me with the concepts," she says. "Part of the fun of math is that it's about puzzles and that it's in its own world. Math is pure mental creation." About attending St. John's parttime, Jean says, 'Tm really grateful that the administration has allowed me to do this for myself." She believes that St. John's is much more than a school; it is an encompassing education. "I've found a way to incorporate my whole being in St. John's," she says, "and maybe part of that is being able to go half time. Instead of the books completely overwhelming me as I rush through to finish, I can stop and ponder the ideas. I have the time to assimilate in the moment." Indeed, as all alumni would probably agree, there are enough ideas explored through the Great Books curriculum that a student could take ten years to complete through the program and still need more time to study. It seems Jean certainly has the right idea. 8 Amber Boydstun (SF9 9) �SANTA FE - ALASKA PIPELINE ver the past nine years, dozens of students from Alaska have enrolled on the Santa Fe campus at St. John's. The Last Frontier, as the state is known, has welcomed St. John's alumni in return. Most recently, Max Gruner (SFGI99 in Eastern Classics), and Joshua Pagliasotti (SF99), began teaching at Atheneum, a private school in Anchorage founded by Lydia Ossorgin (SF77) and Kevin Holthaus (SF83). St. John's College is central to the founders of Atheneum. Lydia Ossorgin is the daughter of Michael Ossorgin, who was a tutor on both campuses. Ms. Ossorgin's two brothers (Michael Ossorgin [SF79] and Nicholas Ossorgin [SF85]) are Jonnies. She and her husband, Holthaus, founded Atheneum in 1994. Their son, Mike Santillanes, is a current student in Santa Fe and their other children are considering attending St. John's as well. Atheneum developed from the Alaska Paideia Project, a program for public school reform that brought Great Books seminars into public classrooms. After graduating, Holthaus co-founded the Alaska Paideia Project with Ken Zegan, a teacher from the Steller School in I r.IJ ea ~ •I""'( "'r~- ~ '"d = ~ crj ().) § Q,....... bD 0 ~u ~ "(f) =~ ~~ =~ ~ CJ'). tr.l 'tj'! I C,) (l) ~~ 0 0\ 0\ <l) ~ <fl q,) ::::! g' i::i:4 ~ ~,....., i:1 Q N 0 0 <fl~~ ·p ,.P§UOO~ :>-.·'"" 0 ~ !-< A ~ Z '"d'QJ S ~u tl .S ] <fl ;!::! i::i:4 c.;i :.=: crj u 0 & ~ v ~..a "§"§~ §'"d 1::l.dlo1,....., CJ')~ Anchorage. The Project implemented Socratic seminar programs in classrooms beginning in 1987. Ms. Ossorgin was hired by the project in 1991. After funding for Paideia was cut in 1994, Anchorage continued to be exposed to seminar Photo by Lydia Ossorgin education goals John and Cathy Agresto at Ressurection Bay, Alaska. when Atheneum, a direct elaboraSimilar to the experience St. tion of the Paideia Project by John's offers, Atheneum students deHolthaus and Ossorgin, opened its velop a personal stake in knowing the doors in 1995. structure of a proof or argument. Over the years, Atheneum has con- However, Atheneum uses classic tinued to be a private institution that texts from around the world in an supports and develops the public edemerging curriculum instead of one ucation curriculum. Atheneum offers that is fixed. community seminars and teacher Ms. Ossorgin described the hightraining through graduate courses light of Atheneum's 1998-99 acadeon classic texts and in course develmic year as the visit of Eva Brann, opment. The school has admitted tutor and former dean in Annapolis. approximately 100 students for this Ms. Brann co-led seminars for stuyear's 7th-12th grade program. It dents and alumni, visited tutorials, will graduate its first class of seniors and lectured at the University of this Continued on Page J 7 SrRAuss's EXPERIMENT: CONTEMPORARY Is a return to Conference ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, SANTA FE today? ofLeo Strauss s • his the Santa Fe campus presents a conference commemorating the lOOth anniversary of the birth of Leo Strauss entitled "Contemporary Obstacles to Leo Strauss's experiment: Is a return to classical political philosophy possible today?" Modern philosophy and modern political life pose serious obstacles to any attempt to return to classical political philosophy, for the insights and achievements of modern liberalism, modern natural science, historicism and modern social science would seem in one way or another to make such a return either impossible or undesirable. The conference will address Strauss's response to these obstacles, as well as the question on Strauss and contemporary political life. Reservations are required and seating is limited. To register, please contact Maggie Magalnick at 505-984-6106. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 12TH 9 a.m.-9:45 a.m. Opening Remarks Thomas L. Pangle, University of Toronto 10 a.ni.-12 noon Panel I: The Challenge ofModern Liberalism Moderator - John Agresto, St. John's College Wilson Carey McWilliams, Rutgers University Steven J. Kautz, Emory University 12:15 p.m.-1:15 p.m. Lunch NOVEMBER AND ' 1:30 p.m.-j:jU p.m. Panel II: The of Modern Social Science Moderator - David Levine, St. John's College Nasser Behnegar, Boston College W. Ceaser, University of Virginia 4 p.m.-6 p.m. Panel III: The Challenge of Modern Natural Science Moderator-James Carey, St. John's College David Bolorin, St. John's College Richard Hassing, The Catholic University of America SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 13TH 9:30 a.m.-11:30 a.m Panel IV: The Challenge of Historicism Moderator-Josh Kates, St. John's College Werner Dannhauser, Michigan State University James H. Nichols, Jr., Claremont McKenna College 11 :45 a.m.-1 p.m. Lunch 1:30 p.m.-3:30 p.m. Panel V: Strauss and Political Life Today Moderator - Abram Shulsky, Rand Corporation Hillel Fradkin, American Enterprise Institute William Galston, University of Maryland 4 p.µi.-5 p.m. Closing Remarks Christopher Bruell, Boston College � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The St. John's Reporter</em> Description An account of the resource College newspaper which started publication in 1974. Continued publication into 2000. Includes primarily historical content.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The St. John's Reporter" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=35">Items in <em>The St. John's Reporter</em></a></strong> <span>to view and sort all items in the collection.</span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 32 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context vol 26 issue 1 Fall 1999 Title A name given to the resource Reporter, Volume 26 Issue 1 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1999-10 Description An account of the resource Volume 26, Issue 1 of The St. John's Reporter. Published in Fall 1999. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Public Relations Office Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Goyette, Barbara (editor) Mulry, Laura J. (editor) Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf The Reporter https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/12e72605c5c2a33fb4371673e0855882.pdf 3d003ef2272736cc7e152477e17f38dc PDF Text Text ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE LIBRARY 1 1 1 1 1 1 1i~I1fil l1fil1 r~w1 ~1 1 1 1 1 1 1 3 1696 01138 2387 [ FAREWELL TO THE LIBERTY TREE The 400-year-old Liberty Tree, beloved by generations of Annapolis students, finally succumbed to age and storm damage .......................14 S!JOHN'S COLLEGE READING, WRITING & POKEMON ANNAPOLIS ·SANTA FE Thro groups of St. John's alumni are involved with alternative schools that stress student-initiated learning ..................................... 16 RECENT GRADUATES COOL JOBS Dane Owen (SF98) imports Japanese arts and antiques; Hillary Fields (SF97) writes romance novDeirdre O'Shea (A98) thinks for Priceline.com .................. 2L 24, 28 How the Santa Fe art tutorials work. .... . ........ 8 From the Bell Towers: The search for a new p..resident in Santa Fe; Newton's apple comes to SJC; Philanthropia reports success in fundraising; the College Creek shoreline gets a new marsh ............ 2 The Finding the music in ancient Greek. .......................... 9 ~chola1·sn11>: Annapolis tutor Beate Ruhm von Oppen has been working to uncover the actions and motivations of a hero of the German resistance ................................... 10 Alumni Profiles: Patti Nogales (A82) has written a book about metapnors; William Lang (A69) is a rare book librarian ................ 12" 22 ru.uia_puu.:::i, news of what's to come in Santa Fe ......... .. (JJ ..0 ..0 ~~c~~·.~·~·· Association: Awards of a.1.uu.uu., how the Class ... 20 ............................... 7 Q 1'. "' -5 C2 �Frolll the Bell To-wers ... NEW GOVERNANCE STRUCTURE APPROVED •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Presidential Search Underway N overnance Committee of the oard of Visitors and overnors, chaired by Glenda Eoyang (SF76), met this fall and proposed some changes in the way the college is administered. The committee's proposals were presented on both campuses in October and discussed by the faculty and staff. Members of the committee also visited each campus and met with faculty, staff, students, alumni, and administrators to answer questions. The proposals centered around an amendment to the Polity that would establish a Management Committee to oversee certain college-wide matters. "While recognizing the importance of having two presidents, one for each campus, the committee attempted to address issues of concern about college unity and effective strategic planning. The process entailed much discussion of arguments for and against the proposals. After presentation of the major arguments at the meeting of the Board of Visitors and Governors in November, the Board voted to amend the Polity of the college in accordance with the committee's recommendations. The amendment reads: Effective January !, 2000, there shall be a Management Committee for the college composed ofthe Presidents and Deans ofboth campuses. The Chair ofthe Management Committee will be appointed annually by the Board of Visitors and Governors. With the advice ofthe Committee, and in a collegial manner, the Chair shall exercise executive authority over the college as a whole with respect to matters assigned by the Board of Visitors and Governors. All otherprovisions of the Polity, including the duties ofthe Presidents and Deans, will remain in fall force and effect, except as modified hereby. This provision will terminate in five years from the date ofits adoption unless renewed by an affirmative vote of the Board of Visitors and Governors in the year prior to its expiration. The Board also passed several resolutions. First, that Christopher B. Nelson (SF70), president of the Annapolis campus, will serve as the first chair of the new Management Committee. Second, that the Management Committee will have executive authority over the college as a whole with respect to certain matters, outlined below, but not over curricular matters assigned to the Instruction Committee. The Management Committee will lead college-wide strategic planning efforts; coordinate advancement efforts on the two campuses, including external relations and publications that represent the college as a whole, development initiatives, and capital campaigns; approve policy for financial aid and admissions for each campus; oversee alumni relations efforts; manage a process for consolidated resource planning, including review of campus-specific budgets, preparation of a college-wide budget, and implementation of a college-wide information management system. With the resignation of John Agresto as president in Santa Fe, the Board also appointed a search committee to look for and recommend a new president. Search Committee members are: Brownell Anderson, Chair; Susan Ferron (SF77); William Tilles (A59); Jonathan Zavin (A68); Charles Watts (Board member and former president of Bucknell University); Eric Salem (A77, Annapolis faculty representative); David Levine (A67, Santa Fe faculty representative); and ex-officio, Harvey Flaumenhaft, Annapolis dean, and James Carey, Santa Fe dean. The committee is charged with recommending a candidate or candidates and with consulting with "all ... appropriate persons on both campuses." Final candidates will meet with members of the faculty and with the Instruction Committee on both campuses. According to Ms. Anderson, a national search has begun, with an advertisement in the Chronicle ofHigher Education and letters to the presidents of more than a hundred liberal arts colleges to solicit nominations. Alumni are invited to forward ideas for nominations to Ms. Anderson (c/o Division of Medical Education, Association of American Medical Colleges, 2450 N St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20037). • -by Barbara Goyette "WHY SHOULD THAT APPLE ALWAYS DESCEND PERPENDICULARLY TO THE GROUND?" avingrecentlymourned the loss of the Liberty Tree, St. John's hopes to soon acquire a new tree that is rich in history, grown from an apple ae:scE~naleafrom a tree on Isaac Newton's estate in England. Newton was inspired to formulate his theory of universal gravitation bywatching an apple from one of his trees fall to the ground. A gift from the 1999 graduating class, the apple is being cultivated at Historic London Town and Gardens, a restored 18th century tavern with a period garden and orchard in Edgewater, about five miles south of Annapolis. A seedling should be ready for planting on the Annapolis campus in about two years. The idea for the apple tree actually came before the demise of the Liberty Tree, accordto Kelly O'Malley (A99), senior class gift coleader along with Sarah Dawson Hood (A99). "Isn't it ironic?" she says. "We had no clue. There were jokes that there would be twu historic trees. Now, I guess there will be only one." The class came up with the idea for the gift after reading about the Newton apple tree in :E the Farmers Almanac. Miss searched ~ on the web until she came up with a source fm the apple tree: the National Trust in England, who agreed to provide an apple from Woolsthorpe Manor, Newton's estate. Miss O'Malley said the students were considering other gift ideas such as a new scoreboard for the gym. "That failed miserably," she said. When Jonathan Pezold (A99) stood up during a class meeting and suggested the apple, everyone loved the idea immediately. The apple itself was free, and the cost of postage was only 15 British pounds, so the students used the remaining class gift money to make a donation to Newton's former estate, and to set up a fund for the college's music library. Newton's early work on gravitation was done in 1665 and 1666 when he was 22 or 23 years old. He was staying at his mother's house in Woolsthorpe, where he had gone to avoid the plague. It was there that he saw the apple drop. Seve1·al reliable accounts describe such an event, although there is no indication that the apple fell on his head. The first was recorded by William Stukeley, an eccentric archeologistwho visited Isaac Newton on April 15, 1726. According to Stukeley's memoirs, after dinner they went into the garden to drink tea under the shade of some apple trees. AB they sat chatting, Newton told Stukeleythat "he was just in the same situation, as when formerly, the notion of gravitation came into his mind. It was occasion'd by the fall of an apple, as he sat in contemplative mood. Why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground, thought he to himself. Why should it not go sideways or upwards, but constantly to the earth's centre." John Conduitt recorded a similar story about Isaac Newton. ""Whilst he was musing in a garden it came into his thought that the power of gravity (which brought an apple from the tree to the ground) was not limited to a certain distance from the earth but that this power must extend much farther than was usually thought Why not as high as the moon said he to himself & if so that must influence her motion & perhaps retain her in her orbit." The apple tree is said to have died in but grafts were taken before it died. An apple from a tree descended from the miginal one on the estate was for the college, and the curator Manor. The is Flower of Kent, a very old variety of cooking apple. The arrived enclosed in a recycled toy box. Since the nearby historic site of London Town had experience cultivating apples for its own orchard, the college asked the site's director, Greg Stiverson, whether they could cultivate the seedling. London Town horticulturist Mollie Ridout agreed. The apple was surprisingly large for an old variety, according to Ms. Ridout. When she cut the apple open, she discovered it held only two seeds. In order to maximize their chances for producing seedlings, she sprayed them with a fungicide and then placed each one in a separate sand-filled ziplock bag in a separate refrigerator where they will spend the winter, in an environment that mimics the natural conditions of cold stratification. In March, she will put the seeds in potting soil and transfer them to a greenhouse on a heat mat. Ms. Ridout says she has had a 953 success rate in germinating apple seeds. When the Newton apple tree is ready to be planted at St. John's in a few years, the college will decide on an appropriate spot for the tree. • -by Beth Schulman �Front the Bell Tow-ers ... THE LEGACY OF LEO STRAUSS SWIMMING POOLS AND GREAT PROSPERITY cholars, disciples, former students: on November 12 and 13 they converged on the Santa Fe campus to explore the legacy of political philosopher Leo Strauss, still a controversial figure mme than a quarter century after his death. The conference, entitled "Contemporary Obstacles to Leo Strauss's Experiment: Is a Return to Classical Political Philosophy Possible Today?" commemorated the lOOth anniversary of the philosopher's birth. But it also commemorated the special relationship between Strauss and St. John's College. Strnuss first became involved in the co Hege through his friendship with Jacob Klein, one of the first tutors in the New Program. Klein, who served as dean in Annapolis in the formative years ofl949-1958, maintained a close relationship with Strauss, who was at the New School in New York and at the University of Chicago. At Klein's invitation, Strauss spent the last years of his life as a tutor and tutor emeritus on the Annapolis campus. Graduates of the '60s and early '70s will remember the "talks" for students and faculty, Strauss intense behind his thick glasses, cigarette holder invariably in hand. Numerous St. John's students and faculty studied with Strauss at the University of Chicago or in Annapolis, including current Annapolis dean Harvey Flaumenhaft and tutor David Bolotin of Santa Fe. In addition to his biographical ties with St. John's, Strauss's preoccupation with the conflict between the classical understanding of the political, social, and natural sciences and the modern direction makes his work especially relevant to proponents of classical education. The conference originated as the brainchild of Santa Fe tutor David Bolotin. After consulting with Santa Fe Dean James Carey and President Agresto, Bolotin and tutor Alice Behnegarworked together to formulate the five topics around which the discussion was structured, and to solicit participants from the ranks of the scholars familiar with Strauss' s work. Funding for the conference was provided by The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and The Earhart Foundation. Carey, Agresto, Graduate Institute Director David Levine, and tutors Bolotin and Joshua Kates all participated in the conference, as moderators and panelists. Other notable scholars included: Nassar Behnegar and Christopher Bruell of Boston College; James W. Ceaser of the University of Virginia; Werner Dannhauser, professor emeritus at Cornell University; Hillel Fradkin, fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and former vice president of the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation; William Galston of the School of Public Affairs at the University of Maryland; Richard Hassing of the Catholic University of America; Steven J. Kautz of Emory University; Wilson Carey McWilliams of Rutgers University; James H. Nichols, Jr. ofClaremontMcKenna College; Thomas Pangle of the University of Toronto; and Abram Shulsky, national security affairs consultant. The two-day conference was divided into five panels: The Challenge of Modern Liberalism, The Challenge of Modern Social Science, The Challenge of Historicism, and Strauss and Political Life Today, for a total of 12 hours of discussion. Question periods were lively by the presence of scholars in the audience, Michael Grenke from the Annapolis campus, William Shapiro of the Oxford College at Emory University, and Robert Faulkner of Boston College. And although the conference took place the weekend after fall seminar papers were attendance from Santa Fe faculty and students was high. Although none of the panelists were willing to comment on any "final" conclusions of the all involved seemed satisfied that the sessions had been ~~~~r:TT~ Susan S oc1Jmernts from the past can procharming insights into another time (and interesting takes on punctuation as well). The following letter written in February 1909 and asking alumni to contribute to the New Gymnasium illustrates the point. Of particular note is the reference to a swimming pool in the building (now known as Iglehart Hall)-a long-standing campus myth whose truth is now borne out. The pool was a small one suitable for doing laps. The reading room seems appropriate for SJC, but how about the bowling alleys and rifle range???? Fellow Alumni: You have heard of the great New Gymnasium, for we told you last summer that one was to be built, costing $25,000, but we have exceeded expectations, and all told the price will be about $40,000. The dream of years has come true and no place of our size has any such building. It has been practically completed. Commenced on Sept. 15th, it will be turned over inside of two weeks. And it is a beauty, far surpassing the most sanguine expectations of the most optimistic. Description would be vain, for you will not believe it until you see it. However, think of this, it covers more ground than any TWO other buildings here, precisely 160 x 97 feet. There is a great main floor with gallery and running track ( 120 x 60 feet), bowling alleys and rifle range, big locker room, shower baths, swimming pool, secretary's office, trophy room, reading room, locker room for visiting teams and a large spare room. Every convenience is within the and for drill, exercise, big meetings and dances, we are behind no one for facilities. You will be proud of it, but it has drained the College purse dry and we need lockers, gymnastic apparatus, etc., to make the equipment accord with this splendid building. It will cost $2500. It is up to the Alumni to provide it. Will you help? You have asked that St. John's show activity, here it is, and the greatest year for many a long decade, moreover we are now going to show the banner year of our history next year. Here's what you have asked for. Don't fail us. Give us what you can and as soon as you can. Help us yourself and get others to help. Don't lay this aside, answer today, NOW. Yours for the great Prosperity ofold St. Johns, signed by members of the board, R.P. T. R.C. R. J. B.V Cecil, E. B. Iglehart. • OnAmmst director of Student ence or12;m11zer demic observers ana paneusts were the level of the discussion. -- usually al these sorts of conferences., there are one or two interP:stinP0 Publication of the papers presented at the conference is being considered.~ by Caroline Knapp, SFOI �Front the Bell To-wers ... PROGRAM TO FUND INTERNSHIPS FOR CURRENT STUDENTS MELLON FOUNDATION AWARDS ST. JOHN'S $350,000 •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Faculty Groups to Study Geometry T he Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded St. John's College a three-year, $350,000 grant for faculty development. Summer study groups for the faculty, led by dean of the Annapolis campus Harvey Flaumenhaft, will explore the roots of modernity in classical Greek geometry and its revolutionary transformation by Descartes. Beginning in the summer of 2000, the grant will provide stipends for a total of 36 participants in the study groups, which will be held on both the Annapolis and Sante Fe campuses. Eight Annapolis tutors will participate the first summer and seven the subsequent two summers. In the second and third summers, the study groups will also be held in Santa Fe. The seven participants will include St. John's Santa Fe tutors and a few members of the faculty of Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, California. The first part of the program will be piloted in Annapolis and begin by studying the works of classical Greek geometers who lived in the third century B.C. The focus will be Book One of Apollonius's Conics, with some selections from Euclid's Elements. The second part of the program will begin with a consideration of the writings of classical Greek mathematicians Apollonius and Pappus with a view to geometrical problem-solving, and will then examine the arithmetical problem-solving of Diophantus. After that, the group will address the works of early French mathematicians: Viete, on the analytic art of problemsolving, and Descartes, whose seminal work Geometry provided the foundation for analytic geometry, calculus, and mathematical physics. The grantwill also have more far-reaching effects. Part of the grant will be used to finance a conference on the subject to be held in Annapolis early in 2003. In addition, Mr. Flaumenhaft plans to revise for publication the manuscript of his book Insights and Manipulations: Classical Geometry and Its Transformation in the light of his experience in the study groups. "I hope the study will lead to a better appreciation of what was lost and what was gained in the transformation of classical geometry, concepts that represent a pivotal point in the St. John's curriculum, in the mathematics component of the sophomore year," says Flaumenhaft. Because mathematics is at the heart of the rise of modern science and technology, the faculty study groups will also address the broader questions about its place and significance in the human enterprise. • by Beth Schulman S t. John's makes fewer promises to its students about the specifics of the rest of their lives than other colleges-the college doesn't say you will be prepared for a successful career in law (although 93 of alumni are lawyers), or in academics (although 123 become professors), or in business (although 213 are in a business-related field), or in farming, or the ministry, or research, or urban planning, or any of the myriad other fields where Johnnies find themselves. "We will not prepare you for careers, but we will give you the chance to discover a vocation," said Eva Brann in an article a few years ago. Both campuses have active Placement offices, where students learn how to write a resume' find internships. look for grad school programs, research careers, and get coaching on fellowship applications. Now the Annapolis campus is able to offer students an internship program that will provide more experience in the working world, so that the transition to life-after-SJC will be smoother. Thanks to a $1,184,558 grant from the Hodson Trust, the college will start the Hodson Internship Program. The program will provide internships for career development and funding for summer study that is directed toward eventual admission to graduate or professional school. Up to 25 intern- ships will be funded yearly for undergraduate students. Internship hosts will be both on campus and in the professional community in and near Annapolis. The internships will run for one semester, two semesters, or during the summer. During the summer, internships can be farther afield-the college is envisioning a nationwide program. Students will work with mentors in such fields as research, medicine, law, finance, social services, education, journalism, political action, art, and historic preservation. Stipends will be paid to the students, funded by the college through the grant. "Students who are studying the great books will go into the world and do great deeds as a result of this great gift," said Annapolis president Christopher Nelson at the December awards ceremony in Baltimore. The Hodson Trust, which awards grants annually to four Maryland colleges (St. John's, Johns Hopkins, Hood, and Washington), also provides St. John's with scholarship endowments that support student financial aid. Internship program administrator Donna Jay says she is looking for alumni interested in serving as mentors and employing students in internships. Contact her in the Placement Office at 410-626-2501 or via e-mail: d-jay@sjca.edu. • �Frolll the Bell To"\Vers ... NEWS FRoMcf/)HILANTHROPIA PHILANTHROPIAREPORTS EARLY SUCCESS Summer Classics in Alumni giving has increased dramatically over last year Santa Fe The Summer Classics progranI in Santa Fe, where participants can read and go to seminars on the great books, then attend the Santa Fe Opera and sightsee in the region, will be held this summer from July 16 to August 5. Each week of Summer Classics features a seminar on opera, coinciding with the Santa Fe Opera's performance schedule. The slate also includes DillllO~>onnv. science, and art. The seminars are as follows: Week I - Sundav. Julv 16 - P hilanthropia, the new alumni group whose aim is to inspire their fellow alumni to support St. John's financially, reports tremendous success in its first six months: in the last half of 1999, the number of alumni donating to the college increased by an astonishing 343 over the same last year. ''These initial results are very exciting. Our volunteers across the been working very hard to re-engage alumni with the college and these results reflect that effort. I know that St. John's alumni do strongly support the college's mission; our task is to translate that general support into financial support," says hllarntnropta chair Marta Lively "The most important statistic for us is the peTcentage of alumni who give to the college, not necessarily the total amount nrised. A high percentage of alumni giving sends a strong message to the £ philanthropic community. Corporations ~ and fmmdations look at alumni giving as an indication of11owwell the college is fulfilling its mission, so higher almnni translates into more support from these outside souTces." of media to ST. JOHN'S PROGRAMS FORTHEREST OF THE WORLD (AND ALUMNI TOO) ..... mganizat10n. All have met with great success. A nationwide teleuhone canmaieu has been ori;!,·amzed appr1oa<~rn~s other alumni. interest the phonattton alums about the ways in which donations ex121t:1ng· thm,g fm the who don't have a lot to allocate is that thev helu the colle!!e whatever Ermione/Rigoletto Shakespeare: King Lear Herodotus: The Histories Dante: Austen: Persuasion Charlotte Bronte: La Villette Weekll-Sundav. was one of the more than 50 volunteers Annapolis, Santa Fe, and Wasl!lin1gton Week III - Su:ndav. nurmJtgn atten1cun1g Alumni Association events. believe that the alumni can continue to be an part of the while the college becomes an lives. case you missed this message, you can read it the website click on "Alumni Advancement.") llllann1rojprnL n:as also recruited volunteers in reunion classes to contact their classmates and talk to them about the of alumni the A workshop in October brought Mahabharata The ·oflcons The Bear in Modern found classmates" and are in for information on the (505-984-6099) in Santa Fe for information on San Francisco. 1111cu1uuvprn kicked off its communications effort ·with a calendar mailed to every alumnus/ a of the college teattu:rmg elegant, evocative black and white photos of the two campuses. "The calendar was us as alumni to remember and reflect on all the best things about St. " says Tom Stern (SF69), who worked on the design. Last fall alumni also received a brochure titled "Strengthening the Community" presenting argi.unents for '--'"""L'-"'-"~'u"" alumni involvement in the college. In explaining the theme for this year, Philanthropia chair Marta Lively says, "Philanthropia hopes that almnni will always feel that they are a part of the college on many levels-through giv- Opera: Elektra Plato: The Republic Cosmology Marguerite Yourcenar: says, "This has me a chance to call all those old familiar names, to find out what been and to pass on some of the class news."Annapolis campus class leader comdinator is Sharon (A65); Santa Fe class leader coo:rdinatm is Paula Maynes (SF77). Class leaders are: 1959 - Bill and Carol Tilles; 1974 - Valerie Kozel and Lee Zlotoff and Celia David and David Wallace( SF); 1979 - Eloise Collingwood (A) and Gary Edwards and Susan Eversole 1989 - Brett Brad and :::itepname Takacs (A); 1994 - Mike Afflerbach and Sarah LiveTsidge (A) and Natalie Arnold and William Blais (SF). Looking to the second half of the fundraisingyear, Philanthropia hopes to continue alumni through its reunion network and phonathons, and to increase awareness of the college's financial state and need for alumni support thrnugh additional print brochures and an expanded website. "It is wonderful to see so many alumni become more involved in the college. The next six months will be critical for us," says Lively. "We will have to work hard to maintain the level of enthusiasm and involvement that we have enjoyed to date. However, all of us are dedicated to making Philanthropia a permanent and active part of the St. John's community."" Dream ·will be offered in a seminar and vvill be performed outdoors on the St. campus IJy Shakespeare in Santa Fe. Fm more call 505-9846104 or e-mail IS Smithsonian Institution and will offer "'•h1 rh;c. I rH1T' at the n.J..UHJL!J"'u" campus June 7-11 this year. The theme of the visit is American Classics; seminars for partic:rpants will be led by St. John's tutors Carl Page and Thomas May, and will featrne readings from the Federalist, de Tocqueville, l:!..n1ersm1, W 1110'.nrnri, and Washington. Valerie Pawlewicz (A89) is working for the Smithsonian coordinating study tours and seminars all over the She was insti·1unental in getting this program set up. For more information, contact the Smithsonian Associates at 877-EDU-TOUR; www.si.edu/tsa/sst. �Frolll the Bell To-wers ... THE RESTORATIVE POWER OF THE MARSH ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• College Creek gets new grass to prevent erosion and increase wildlife habitat he second semester of my sophomore year wasn't much fun. The winter seemed to drag on too long before spring came; I wrote a complicated essay about Augustine and Plato that the tutors didn't seem to understand; my seminar was so big I had trouble entering the conversation, compounding a feeling of frustration at the way some of my favmite books (Chaucer, Shakespeare) were being discussed; I missed my boyfriend who attended a college in New England; I got a lot of headaches and spent the afternoons dozing in a red leather (or was it plastic?) chair on the lower level of the library. My main solace was College Creek. I liked to take a canoe out from the Boathouse and paddle across the creek, poking into the little tidal bays and watching for wildlife in the marsh grass. That was the onlyplace I could feel really alone enough to think-even though the Rowe Boulevard and King Gemge Street traffic whizzed by on either side. 'I\venty-eight years later, the marsh is still there, forming a soothing sight from the St. John's side of College Creek. Not only is that sort of environment pleasing to the eye and restorative to the soul, it is healthy ecologically: the land remains undeveloped, the tidal zone grasses cleanse the runoff into the creek by filtering out nutrients, and fish, birds, and other creatures find a home in the midst of a mainly urban area. This year, two tutors, Nick Maistrellis and Kathy Blits, together with a group of students, are working on establishing a marsh grass colony on the Boathouse side of the creek. The docks and walkways around the Boathouse have been rebuilt (thanks to a grant from the Hodson Trust) so that getting the shells and other boats used by the crew team into the water will be easier. On either side of the new ramp and dock, the creek bottom has been regraded into severgreen cordal terraced levels. grass is in small bundles on the lower and the tutors have to grow a three-leveled marsh. marsh grass along the tidal shores of the C1Jtesap1~a.J<;:_e and its tributaries has become popular over the 15 years. It's an alternative to the more traditional ~ . which is to rocks or wood bulk11eads at the water's edge. The St. ect has some nvists on the usual marsh creation methods used. "The way in which the structure is held in until the plants can become established is differem," says Kathy Blits. "'Usually stones are used, but we used biologs made of coconut fiber so they will decompose over seven to ten years, once the roots of the grasses have become established. The whole underlying structure is underwater." The biologs are telephone-pole sized rolls held together with once they are placed in the water, you just pull the fibers apart in order to plant the marsh grass. While the grass is growing and spreading its rhizomes, it is held in place by the logs. The grasses Blits and Maistrellis used in the project reflect the composition seen on the rest of the creek. In its "natural" state, the creek has three zones: cordgrass in front, a mixture of bullrush and needlegrass in the middle, with hibiscus on the shore, and up on land, marsh elder and pepperbush, says Maistrellis. In one section of the project, the area adjacent to the King George Street Bridge, Maistrellis is conducting a competition study "straight out of chapter three of Darwin," he says. In sections demarcated by white PVC pipe, Maistrellis planted four different strains of spartina (cordgrass): the plants that originally grew on the creek and were dug up by the contractor at the start of the project and stored until it was time to plant; a variety called Bayshore, bred by the USDA for restoration; a spartina cultivated from local seed and grown at Anne Arundel Community College and Providence Center (a local center for the developmentally disabled); and a kind called Delaware Tall, which is (not surprisingly) from Delaware. Maistrellis and a group of students will watch the plots over the next several years to see whether one kind is becoming dominant, whether the grasses intermingle, or whether any other sort of grass invades. Spartina propagates by spreading roots and also by crosspollination and forming seeds. "The grasses are basically indistinguishable," notes Blits. "Some people at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey are developing a set of genetic markers so that we'll be able to tell the genotypes apart. This is a tool like the DNA analysis used in forensic work." Several students Students in boots and bare feet pause during an worked on the project with Blits and Maistrellis afternoon of marsh-making (top). The grasses planted by the King George Street bridge will last summer, and both help stabilize the shoreline and provide habitat tutors hope that lab {lower). classes will visit the emerging marsh as part of their classwork-the observation of visiting. I've seen bluegills and a living things as they relate to other long-nose gar. There's greater diverthings can be expanded beyond the sity, greater numbers of the kind we usual watching of squirrels and trees would expect to see in a healthy that students are accustomed to. marsh." "College Creek is much more Marsh grasses along CoUege productive and cleaner now than it Creek help keep shorelines from was ten years ago," says Maistrellis. eroding and in general improve the "This marsh, even though it's small, environment-as well as restoring the will help continue the improvement. troubled souls of school-weary I've already seen schools of small fish Johnnies.• in the grasses, and a great blue heron and a green neck heron have been by Barbara Goyette, A73 JOHNNIES AND LONGTIME FRIENDS FROM ANNAPOLIS RAISE BIG BUCKS FOR FIGHT AGAINST CANCER hree friends who met in Annapolis over 15 years ago came to the plate at historic Fenway Park in Boston to take their swings against cancer. One Saturday last October, Andrew Klipper (A80) was joined by Jim Gormeley, an Eastport resident, and myself, a fellow Andrew Klipper (A80) at the plate during the john Hancock Fantasy Day at Fenway Park. alumnus (A88), for the 8th Annual John Hancock Fantasy Day to raise money for the Jimmy Fund, the official charity of the Boston Red Sox. The three of us had played fm many years together in Anne Arundel County softball leagues, but had not been together in more than 10 years. It was a fitting reunion to renew our friendship back out on the field-and what better place than Park? Andrew Andrew was our team's has won a recent battle with cancer and is a vibrant survivor. He wanted to show children with cancer that you can indeed thrive with the disease. We suited up for action in the locker room at Fenway in the cage behind the Green .cuv.u""'"''-' to bat to see how we would do. Each '~n~.-'r"T'n,-.-.in solid contact with the ball. I even hit the wall, which netted an additional from event sponsor, Hancock. Our efforts netted us over $ and we were able to field a team of nine batters who weTe required to raise per batter to 15 against the fabled Green Monster. The total for the day was over $325,000-a record for the event. Annapolis alumna Kascha Piotrzkowski (A76) and husband Paul were on hand to support the team. • by Justin Burke, A88 �Letters ... ..... an Lecture In the last issue of The Reporter (Fall 1999) I wrote suggesting books by Kenneth Boulding about economics which alumni might enjoy (and almost any one of which might be a futme candidate for the "great books" list). I have nowverified that Boulding actually gave a lecture at St. John's in Santa Fe in October of 1968-at Charles Bell's invitation, I believe (they had been friends for a long Unfortunately, since I had graduated the previI missed the lecture, the title of which was ous "Mechanism and " A few months later Boulding published a short (two-page) article in the Friends' Journal (he was a lifelong Quaker) on a similar subject. I have now obtained a copy of that article, but my attempts to find a transcript or tape of the lecture have been unsuccessful. If anyone has any interesting recollections about that lecture, I would be very pleased to hear from them. -Rick Wicks SF68 I am writing in response to the article in the Summer 1999 issue by Sean Forester (A99) on the shortcomings of the junior math manual and what appears to be alack of overall vision in St. John's approach to the study of calculus. As a college math instructor currently teaching calculus to enlisted sailors in Japan I have some personal insights I would like to share. Firstly, mathematics is not a collaborative pursuit. Quantitative reasoning does not strengthen and flourish m1der the influence of divers views and critical judgments the way, say, a Greek play might. This is both the bleakness and the beauty of mathematics. So calculus, albeit the foundation of modern mathematics, physics, astronomy, engineering, and (current) economics, presents an intrinsically frustrating and perhaps unmanageable challenge to the tutorial method. Studying calculus proofs is someeven math majors don't do until their ultimate unde1l"grad1Lrnt:e course in analysis, while physicists and the rest "don't bother with that stuff." How then are we to integrate an historically and subject into the curriculum, no pm1 intended? I believe the answer in Newton's original motivation for developing what for him was a mathematical tool used to solve big questions about the heavens. Specifically he wanted to know should move about an ellipse with why the NEW the sun at one focus. What was the course for sweeping out equal areas in equal times? What I propose is that the junior math manual be re-worked and re-directed toward solving the same questions from astronomy that Newton was attacking. This would provide ample motivation and concrete application of the subject, as well as drawing together different strands of the Program. It would require learning concrete formulations of Newton's force laws and putting them into practice on projectile motion, orbiting bodies, etc. My own experience has been that physical application problems are generally more illuminating and rewarding to the student than pure theory as expressed in euswJn··ueua proofs, "With the rare exceptions known as math majors. Mr. Forester and the Student Committee on Instruction may disagree with some of my conclusions/pronouncements. My only response is that I come by them through ten years of college math teaching, a body of empirical knowledge which neither I nor anyone else can to anyone else. Johnnies might not like differentiating 5x2 and would rather contemplate the "meaning" of the theorems, but that road is only reached after a long and arduous algebraic climb. As for "taxation without representation," that was a democratic principle espoused by colonists compelled to obey laws they had not voice in making. Last I checked calculus was neither democratic nor compulsory. -Damon llllingston, A84 I am writing in response to the Summer 1999 article on the debate about offering advanced French (i.e., translation). According to the article, after the Instruction Committee eliminated advanced French as being inconsistent with the school's philosophy, the idea of a special French study group was fmther rejected (this time by students and tutors) because is was elitist, might lead to "specialization" and (worse) "foster competition." This seems rather heavy ammmrition. Does the school, in fact, run the risk of a two-track curriculum-beginners and advanced-across the board? Is there a problem with "competition" at St. John's? Isn't the aim of the Program to read-to the extent possible-the great books in the original? Reading La Rochefoucauld's "'The Princess of Cleves" and "Phedre" in junior-year French class in Santa Fe greatly enriched my St. I doubt that French grammar wou have left as enduring worth the to let other students The cover of the Fall 1999 Reporter should have stated that John Agresto has been president of the Santa Fe campus from 1989 - 2000. The Reporter 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 either campus: Arm<1tpcms - The Reporter, Public Relations St. John's College, Box MD 21404 or e-mail b-goyette@sjca.edu. Fe - The Reporter, Public Relations Office, St. John's College, I 60 Camino Cruz Blanca, NM 8750 I or e-mail classics@mail.sjcsf.edu. Santa There's a form for letters on the website at www.s1ca.eau; click on " then click on "Contact the Reporter:' IN SANTA new faculty members have been appointed in Annapolis: Black received a BA in history from the University of Toronto, and did graduate work in political science at Boston College, where he has been teaching. He is completing a doctoral dissertation on Rousseau's critique of science. In collaboration "With a professor of French, he is associate editor of the Bulletin ofthe Rousseau Society. Kor11•'""""'°'n received a BA in philosophy from Whitman College, followed by an MA and PhD from Emory University, with a dissertation that was an Aristotelian treatment of species and evolutionary biology. He has published articles on the nature of species and on Thoreau's Walden. He has taught at Seattle University, Emory University, and most recently at the University of Central Arkansas. Nathan Dugan received a BA in government with a minor in French from the College ofWilliam and Mary, followed by a PhD in political science from the University of California at San Diego. He wrote his dissertation on education in Plato's Laws, with emphasis on the civic role of the judging of music. Daniel Kolb received a BA in philosophy from Washington University, followed by an MA from Northern Illinois University and a PhD from Notre Dame, with a dissertation on Kant's view of nature. He has published articles on matter and mechairism in Kant, and on teleology in Kant as it relates to evolution. He has taught at Indiana University, Notre Dame, Mary Immaculate Seminary, Allentown College of St. Frances de Sales, Virginia Tech, and most recently at Radford University. Mark Sinnett received a BA in mathematics with minors in physics and chemistry from Texas Christian University, followed by an MA in mathematics from the University of Texas at Austin; a Bachelor of Divinity from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland; and a PhD in systematic theology from Cambridge University, with a dissertation on theological paradox in Eric Voeglin. He has published articles on Eric Voeglin, Paul Tillich, method in Austrian economies, ai1d theological implications of the role of proof in mathematics. He has written a book on Socratic dialect in the authorship of Kierkegaard which "Will be published soon. He has taught mathematics at Concordia Lutheran College, the University of Texas at Austin, Kansas University, and San Jacinto College; and he has taught theology at Cambridge University. continued on page 12 �The Progralll ... TALKING ABOUT ART How the Santa Fe art tutorials work hinking back on my time at St. John's, I am beginning to realize that the senior year art tutorial was one of the most enriching experiences in all four years. It taught me how to look and how to see. And yet Annapolis alumni (and Santa Fe alumni who graduated before the art program began in 1993) might not know anything at all about the structure of the program. The art program has two complementary components: the tutorial and the practicum. In the tutorial, students spend the semester looking at and discussing about 35 different paintings. The list changes from year to year just like the seminar reading list (see sidebar for the paintings being studied this year). There is a manual with reproductions of the paintings, slides of the paintings are projected to help students see subtle aspects of each painting, and the discussions are conducted in the usual seminar style. The first few tutorials are often somewhat awkward, just like in sophomore music tutorial when students are faced with a new subject matter that seems to demand a new way of talking. Initial impressions, such as "I like it," or "It's pretty," or "I don't get it - it just looks boring," are simplistic. But without many artistic terms to work with, more insightful discussions come slowly. The series of ten practica help immensely by providing a vocabulary of meaningful terminology. Students begin to bring words such as "weight" and "tone" into the tutorial discussions with more and more understanding and confidence. The first practicum is designed to increase awareness of the spatial relationships in a painting. Working with Giotto's The Kiss ofJudas, students use charcoal to sketch their main impression of the painting onto a clean sheet of paper. They are encouraged to recreate all the main images they see and to do their best to capture the "mood" of the original work. Then, putting the original painting away, they sketch their impressions of the first sketch onto a second sheet of paper. This process is repeated one more time, and then they engage in a discussion about the process as well as the results. I served as an art assistant for my class, a role that allowed me to observe each student's work in progress. Some worked awkwardly, trying to get it "right." Others reveled in the chance to explore a new medium. But each person held up a final sketch with new insights into the original painting. The final sketch was, of course, the most abstract and in most cases the least detailed. The images that were powerful enough to appear in the final sketch told us a great deal about how the original was affecting us, even if we had not noticed. For example, our initial discussion of The Kiss ofJudas centered around the bitter betrayal that formed a wall of tension between Jesus and T Judas. The painting seemed to us charged with anger and foreboding. Yet the result of one student's sketches in the practicum was a picture in which the two central figures reached for each other with such love and tenderness that an unknowing observer would identify the drawing as one of a mother and her child. Each practicum held something new for us: exciting insights into the paintings and into ourselves. With the experiences gained in practica to guide us, the tutorial discussions came alive. The Senior Art Program gives students access to great art in just the same way that our normal seminars and tutorials give us access to the great books. Yet the art program, not unlike the music program, also enhances our education with an understanding of a medium of communication that is not based on words. Here is a brief description of the nine other practica: Practicum II: Compositional Analysis with Black Squares - Using congruent small squares cut from black paper, we made art by pasting our squares onto white paper. First one square, then two, then three, up to five. Each time, we tried the exercise symmetrically and asymmetrically, always keeping the edges of our black squares parallel with the edges of the paper. Practicum III: Superposition and the Discovery ofthe Vanishing Point - Students find a place on campus where or walkways illustrate parallel lines that appear to converge in the distance, such as the halls in Peterson or under the ESL balcony. Sitting with backs turned to this view and using a china pencil, each student traces the images that appear in his or he1· mirror. The end result is a drawing, on the that accurately shows the properties of a "vanishing " used a real setting to help us construct this students are now able to create "~~"' ~•n •r from scratch with full understandin!!: of the linear and l"h"CHAT1TI IT series colored papers are mounted next to one another. able to tell whether the small orange the same color as the square inside a orange square inside a green one. Practicum VI: Form Value - We start out using our charcoal to fill a _ _ _ one end to black at the other, paying close attention to the infinite sub"The Kiss of Judas" by Giotto continued on nextpage �The Progrant ... MASTER CLASS •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Annapolis tutor AmirthanayagamDavid (A86) Greek Suslan Borden guage nasses, music of ancient Greek as he discusses his work on accent and stress in ancient Greek pr1onuncu1t11on and their relat]on to meter in the nerformance ancient I have a and I take questions. It's sort of like a master class or a lecture or perto1rn1," says Dav1d. "I Aritu.ror.ie which the classes are trans1atmg, but I also read Homer. I find it the most amazing thing-it's got an I find that my voice and my entire bearing change when I start reciting it; people tell me it's almost like they're witnessing a possession." Possession or not, what people are witnessing is Dav1d's interpretation of the relationship between the placement of accent marks and the placement of stresses in spoken Ancient Greek, a relationsbipthat had not been thoroughly explored before David took up the challenge as of his graduate work at the University of Chicago. "I set out to show how the place where a word is stressed is related to where the accent marks are placed," explains Dav1d. "I presumed there must be a connection, because there is no other language in the world where the accent marks don't coordinate with the rhythm of the words." The result of his endeavor reveals a musical language. "Every Greek word comes with a built-in melody, and when you combine lines of Greek verse you automatically compose a melody," he says. "When you read a word in Greek, by correctly interpreting the accent marks, you will know whether the word is falling on the downbeat or the upbeat, and instantly the words of ancient Greek sound like recognizable music with counterpoint." Although David gives his talks to language tutorials, he points out that the accents of Greek tie into the music tutorial as well. "What we're studying is musicae-the original music, the art of the muses," he says. "The pattern of stresses in Ancient Greek musicae is Plato described: rnovtoward ae:re<~men.t. David's discoveries about in his "The Dance of the Muses: Choral Poetics." ~ ended up ~ language and he origito graduate school to study Plato, and was particularly eager to learn to read the dialogues in the original Greek. "When I was a student at St. John's, I was very frustrated that I couldn't look across at the Loeb and read Plato," he says. It was a class on the Odyssey with Dav1d Grene that switched Dav1d's focus to Homer. "It was a wonderful class," he recalls. "I took it upon myself to read the Odyssey a couple of times straight in Greek-it was like a hazing; I learned so much in that time. 'It is a fool who says he knows Greek' is now one of my favorite sayings. "After that class, my interest in Homer overtook my interest in Plato, although I am still always going back and forth between them. But I learned that, for a student of Plato, the most interesting object in the world is Homer. You come to recognize that the Iliad and the Odyssey are postPlatonic in a certain way; they are written by someone who has really seen something, who has gone through the dialectic and has come up with a very finished work. There is nothing primitive about Horner." Dav1d describes himself as being "Plato's servant" in his early days of graduate school. "It was very frustrating," he says of that time, "but once I was no longer banking my future on Plato, once I became free of the need to come up with a theory tle variations along the way. We then perform a compositional study of sketching eggs. Bright lights help us to find shadows and highlights on the eggs. This is a particularly exciting class, because usually all the students walk away feeling proud of at least one drawing. Practicum VII: Perspective in Practice - Happy with the success of our egg drawings, the class is ready to embark on a more complicated compositional exercise. Most classes go to the Library Placita, where each student finds a spot to sit where there is a good view of a building. Using rulers, charcoal, and straightedges (and erasers, of course), we drawwhatwe see. This practicum is terrific because it allows us to incorporate our understanding of perspective (the large square tiles on the placita have parallel edges that recede to a vanishing point) with our knowledge of form and value (we use our experience with the eggs to make the columns above the Library steps look real). Most importantly, this is our first chance to create a unique work and to look at a drawing from the true perspective of the artist. I noticed that many students in my class stayed on the placita long after class was over, and I even noticed a few who returned later in the week to do a second drawing. Practicum VIII: Line Copying and Master Drawing - Working from several black and white life drawing sketches presented in our art manual, students try to recreate the original drawing. By imitating the strokes of master artists, we are able to gain the basic techniques of figure drawing. i of Plato, I again loved to read him. He became a much better friend when he stopped being my master." With Homer, however, Dav1d has had no such ambivalence. "Coming away from graduate school as a Homerist," he says, "Homer and I have not had to have a divorce." David received his PhD from the Committee on Social Thought in 1998 and became a tutor that fall. But after seeing the popularity of his sophomore language lectures and learning that he spent twelve years studying Ancient Greek at Chicago, you have to ask: is it hard for him to return to the world of the St. John's tutorial where language mastery is a low priority and lectures are the rare exception? Not at all, he says: "This is a language tutorial, not a Greek class." • For those who knew Amirthanayagam David as David Amirthanayagam in his student days, David explains that he followed a Tamil comingof-age custom ofswitching.first and last names. He made the switch on September 21, 1989, when he became an American citizen. And yes, David did marry Anne Boyle (AB 6). They live in Annapolis with their daughters Guenevere, age 5, and Rosalind, age J. Practica IX and X: Life Drawing- For two class sessions, students are invited to the art studio for drawing sessions with nude models. First we practice sketching quick 30 second impressions of the model's pose, trying to forget about the ideas of "right" and "wrong" and let our charcoal follow the lines of the figure in spontaneous strokes. Increasing the time allowed for each drawing from one minute sketches to five minute sketches, ten minutes and so on, students learn to relax their ideas of what an arm looks like, or a nose, and instead focus on capturing the geometric relationships of the model's body. Students who professed a fear of art at the beginning of the semester walk away proud of their work, and experienced artists in the class practice their skill within a new context. But more important than the products is the process by which we learn to see beauty in a new way. • The Santa Fe artprogram owes much ofits success to its director, Michele Beinder, and her husband, tutor Steve Houser. This couple has worked very hard to develop the program and keep it alive, and it is due to them that so many Santa Fe alumni have benefi,tedfrom an education enriched with an appreciation for art. The Summer Classics program in Santa Fe runs a class in the visual arts that serves to give alumni and others interested a similar experience. by Amber Boydstun, SF9 9 �Scholarship ... ACCOUNTING FOR HEROISM ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Annapolis tutor Beate Ruhm von Oppen has by a.figure from some German Resistance movement Barbara Govette happen when the nation as a whole realizes that this war is rliff<>-r<>nrhr f,.,.,,...,,, the trition and penance from this pun1!m1ne:nt, a new to live on?" These Questions that occupied the mind of von Moltke as he wrote to his from Berlin in late August 1941. on the staff of the German high com- he had access to information withheld from the and the media. Moltke himself would have been one of the men to carry Ge:rrntanv on after the war, a man of strong uiv·.La.L"' astute sense, and vision. But he didn't live to see his questions addressed. Moltke was executed Nazis less than four urri-i-incr the letter. ·....,."r_ .......,,"'r nephew of a famous Prussian • ._, Moltke became a to the Third Reich a that is almost inconceivably difficult to ine: totalitarian rule, the slaughter incursions into and occupation of su:rrounding countries, propaganda powerful enough to convince a populace of the necessity of national action and to mislead about seemingly obvious events. Moltke worked tirelessly from within the Nazi regime to undermine the illeffects of its outrageous policies, and, perhaps more effectively, to bring together a group of people including religious leaders, military officers, civil seTvants, intellectuals, and socialists, to address the problems of how Germany was to come to terms with itself and the rest of the world afteT its inevitable defeat. Moltke and his associates didn't use the word "Resistance," but it has been thrust upon them by history-they were active within the country in opposing Hitler's regime in a variety of ways. As a result of his deeds, Moltke was arrested in 1944, and executed 1945. The story ofMoltke's sacrifice has fascinated tutor Beate Ruhm von for many years. In Letters to a book ofletters from Moltke to his wife that se1tecre<1, u au;:-i.ta.vc~L, and editwas puonsnea m nngnsn. ti on of the letters was l-'""-'""-''.U'-·'-'1991 an enlarn:ed edition was pu.blJLSh.ed this a time letters from Moltke's mother 1Jo1ro1thv-to her in South Africa. was nublished in German. Coincidence in the Office Miss von fast heard of Moltke in 1946 when his farewell letters to his wife, written shortly before his execution, were published, but she had actually handled an intelligence communication from him before thatunaware that she was dealing with a she would spend many years ~ to understand. She had left school in Berlin in 1934, on her 16th birthday, because she found the nolitical situation increasingly troubling. "As a sub-teen I had read Hitler's book secretly under the bedclothes with a torch. It had been given me our she says. After her education in -''--'-'J-"'-'"-H'-'-• she made her in r.u1g-1<HH.l, where she was when the war broke out. She worked for the British Forei211 Office in the Political Intelligence "We analyzed what came out agency stuff and brnadcasts. We all knew that Goebbels of propaganda] lied, but one could learn a lot about German • watcJnng the " she says. As a and enemy she didn't have a "'",;,,,..,,.,, cH:~ar.amce, but nevertheless some imnn-r1"<>nt documents her desk. One an extraordinary piece copy It was an anonymous account of a student revolt in Munich. In 1941 the Catholic had lJionounced a sermon Clt)ClJ.H;:Jlinstitutions ~ had died from natural causes, but the truth had leaked out). The Nazis couldn't touch the bishpv,pLLILCL.<· Bntwhen un1w;rs1tv ue1rns-H1srnn~a by reports of that se1·m4Gn--p1nnted and disseminated leaflets protesting Nazi policies, the Nazis rounded them up and executed five of them, along with the professor who had helped them. The group became known as "The White Rose." The writer of the anonymous account treated the protest as very significant-not as a sign that German morale was disintegrating but as a sign that there were people in Germany who recognized the evils that were going on and who would be willing to address the issues that would face the nation after the war. The Teport had been smuggled to Sweden and then sent on to British Intelligence. Miss von Oppen recognized the importance of the report when it circulated in her department. She found out only after the war, after she became interested in Moltke for diffeTent reasons, that he was the author. Years later in the 1960s, Miss von Oppen a year at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton working on a book about the significance of the religious factor in the German resistance. The book "didn't ha1pp1~11, she says, she explored the topic in a lecture series and Two she Bonhoetter, a Protestant ministeT and impnca1tea in a number of plots and actions against the Nazis, including an elaborate scheme to smuggle Jews out of disguising them as intelligence officers. BonhoeffeT and Moltke had worked to~;etJ1er on occasion and both were executed in Moltke as a case juxtaposed with .L 1945. To Miss von Bonhoeffer. The Currents ...... "Moltke was a shining example," she says. "He'd been against the Nazis since before they came to power and he did what he could against them." She became friends with Moltke's who was living in Vermont. had all her husband's letters in her attic; she agreed that Miss von Onnen should select, and translate them for publication. �Letters to Freya (Alfred A. Knopf, 1990) covers the war period from 1939, when Hitler was on the brink of attacking, to Moltke's death in 1945. They chronicle the day to day contacts Moltke made-he tried to find like-thinking men and women in all parts of Ge1·man life who recognized the horrible effects of the Nazi regime and who wanted to work together after the war to heal Germany and Europe. As a lawyer who specialized in international he worked for the government in the Abwehr-the military intelligence service-and tried to make sure prisoners of war were treated properly. He argued against the practice of taking hostages. He traveled to Scandinavia, France, Holland, Belgium, and Turkey to establish contacts and attempt to Nazi it he remained exquisitely sensitive to the feelings of his wife, who was struggling to run the famii{rP:ismL in Silesia, and to bring up their two young sons. her discussed K:reisau's extensive oe1~K1:~ep11mr, whether to have the children say grace at the how the flower On Several were killed in the been hatched a group of civilians and renercussions were and 1V11ss von says, n-r•"'h'•h 1uone of the first to hear of the failed assassination <;1.ux;mp1.. of the 20th I was so excited that I could not about it and all could manage to do was the from the German news agency on my boss's desk. started bustling and everyone was very excited. The opinion from on :;:: high the next day was that it was good that that attempt had "' failed; Hitler's death would have interfered with the demand for :5! cil c .s:: unconditional surrender." .£. Moltke was not involved in the plot to kill Hider (he Beate Ruhm von Oppen, a tutor since 1960, with "A Life in Germany." favored a revolution, not a coup d'etat). In fact, he had been under arrest and imprisoned for six months at the time of the plot. But he ents. They were of Scottish descent but their families had been in South was among the many brought to trial in the wake of the attack. "The Nazis Africa for many decades. Her father, Sir James Rose Innes, was a liberal had wanted him out of circulation," says Miss von Oppen. "They rightly susjudge-finally chief justice of the Union of South Africa-who worked for the pected the intelligence service of carrying on work against the regime. They advancement of the African people before apartheid. gave Moltke's group a name-the Kreisau circle, after his estate." After Dorothy watched as Germany fell into economic despair after World months in the prison at Ravensbruck, Moltke was taken to Berlin and put War I, as the Weimar Republic came into being, as countless elections under indictment, tried in the Peoples Court of Roland Freisler (known as Hitler's "hanging judge"), and sentenced to death in January 1945. His final shuffled the agendas of Germany's 29 political parties back and forth. Although there were years-1924 through 1929-when the political and ecoletters to his family stress his Christian faith and celebrate it as the cause of nomic situation seemed much more hopeful, she saw with increasing alarm his condemnation. Moltke went to church very rarely but was nevertheless the rise of the National Socialists after the Wall Street crash in 1929 once driven in his moral assumptions by the more devastated the German tenets of Christianity. He had been in regueconomy. "As Hitler rose to lar contact with the religious leaders, both power in 1933 and 1934, she Catholic and Protestant, who opposed got more and more desponNazism. A letter he wrote four years earlier dent," says Miss von Oppen, sums up his view: "We must, it seems to me, "although as a Christian do all we can to instill [in the children] into Scientist she probably wouldtheir very flesh and blood the principle that n't have admitted to desponthere must be an accounting for every action dency. Nevertheless, she was and that all men are equal before God, so that whatever happens to one distressed by the dramatic and tragic events. She says she felt 'uprooted,' human being concerns all others too ... " and that she no longer belonged in the country." With four sons of military age, she worried when she anticipated the war that she knew must come. A Mother's Influence Dorothy died in 1935, unexpectedly, at the age of 51. Miss von Oppen When Miss von Oppen first started working on Moltke's letters at says the physical cause may have been a brain tumor (as a Christian Freya's house in Vermont in 1978, Freya showed her another set oflettersScientist, she was undiagnosed and never saw a doctor); "the metaphysical those from Moltke's mother Dorothy to her parents in South Africa. These cause was a broken heart," she says. Dorothy never lived to see her son's letters, in English, served as background for Miss von Oppen's investigation devotion to his fellow man, his constant efforts against a regime he loathed into Moltke, and she hoped that she could do a collection of them some ruling a country he loved, and his sacrificial death. Although he was not time. himself a Christian Scientist, he was heavily influenced by the degree of his "To understand the son, it helps to know the mother," she says. Several mother's faith. Her letters serve to illustrate a critical three-decade period years ago, she was ready to begin the task. In choosing which letters to in German history, and to foreshadow the thinking of an important figure in include in the collection, ultimately called A Life in Germany, and in decidthe post-war consciousness. ~how to edit she looked for clues about the mother's character that Ironically, Dorothy's letters were written in English and had to be transfound their way into the son. The most important is Dorothy von lated into German for publication there. Miss von Oppen hopes that an Moltke was a Christian Scientist, to that faith American publisher will find them of interest. "It would be highly Helmuth Adolf von Moltke. The two met in when desirable to publish the originals," she notes. The German edition of mother were visiting Europe and had stopped for a stay at K:reisau, the letters has received solid reviews from four papers, includMoltke estate. in 1905, after Helmuth's father died and he ing Die Zeit, Berliner Zeitung, and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The inherited K:reisau. Helmuth much of his time in Berlin, where he Frankfurt review, by historian Rainer Blasius, begins and ends with referserved in the upper house of the Prussian parliament, did public relations ences to the son, recognizing the letters as important in their own right as for the Christian Science church, and became a healer and teacher. Dorothy an intelligent woman's take on the times as well as illuminating about bore five children; Helmuth James, the future Resistance leader, born in Helmuth James. For the background the story provides about Moltke, who 1907, was the oldest. would go on to become a hero during World War II, the work is invaluableThe period from 1905 to 1935 was extremely busy politically in . don't we always want to understand what makes a man able to act with such Germany. Dorothy took a lively interest in it all and chronicled the weekly courage?• changes from the Kaiser's reich to Hitler's rise in letters home to her par- M o/tke worked tirelessly from within the Nazi regime to undermine the effects of its outrageous policies. �Scholarship ... METAPHORICALLY SPEAKING Suslan Borden ' are you going to do with a degree from St. John's?" This was the question Patti Nogales' (A82) father kept asking her after she graduated. . . . . ,_,.,'"'-"-"'"'the fact that she spent four years wrestling with "the big ques." she could think of no answer. Eighteen years Nogales has done quite a few things with her degree: she taught high school math and philosophy, studied and taught writing, taught and pursued a degree in rhetoric, studied computers and artificial intelligence, taught classes in how to use computers, wrote a computer manual, published duee computer books, developed and taught bilingual computer education classes, got a masters degree in English, studied psychology and linguistics, got a PhD in philosophy with a minor in cognitive sciences, and, finally, had her dissertation published as a book: Metaphorically Speaking (Cambridge University Press). "I :first became interested in metaphor because I used to write poems," Nogales says. "I saw that m£~ta~ph4:>rs were both in ~·rr·1rin,rr and in the reading that es1)ec1a!Lv after I got to St. John's; it seemed that often the critical tool in fiction was mi~rnpnor. adds she was also conceTned with the limitations oflogic and prose, a concern that she examined in a junior year preceptorial with Chaninal1 Maschler on catharsis and a senior year preceptorial with Howard Zeiderman on Heidegger. But her thoughts about metaphor served a far more practical purpose after St. John's, when she found herself in a number of teaching positions, from remedial math teacher at a private high school to T.A. at Stanford University to computer teacher for older students at an Illinois community college. «When I was teaching computer classes, I would tell my students that turning on the computer or loading software was like playing a record on a record player," Nogales says. "This gave them the whole idea of input and output and helped them get their footing." She explains that a metaphor can give a structure to something you don't know how to look at. "In a new field you're given a lot of information, but you don't lmowwhat to do with it. When someone gives you an analogy or a metaphor, they express this unknown thing in terms of something you know. This allows you to relax and get comfortable, and then it gives you a model for drawing conclusions." Nogales recalls that her older computer students were wonied about breaking the machine, about its cost, and about "A lot of things hadn't a computer is never going to laugh at you. I used to compare the computer to a Cuisinart. The Cuisinart itself can't do anything attachment on it, but depending on which attachment, it can be rather powerful," she says. "When you give they students an example like laugh, and when they laugh, they are in a much better position to learn." Nogales notes that it is not unusual for metaphors to invoke laughter, as well as other emotions. "In my case as a teacher, humor was useful. But metaphors can also invoke feelings of comfort as they transform the unknown into something familiar. And they are often used by politicians for their ability to invoke anger or security." As an example, Nogales discusses Lincoln's famous line from the Gettysburg address: "That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom ..." "Lincoln addressed the nation when the in He said, 'look, this is birth.' Ifit's the is now in context and Lincoln is saying that the nain is meaninclUI and you believe freedom. Most people, when they're experiencing pain, want it to go away," she says. "But this rnc>rn,r>hFVr shapes their view of that pain, so that it's acceptable . Nogales says Metaphorically Speaking had a long gestational period" its birth was not at "It was lege to explore something I am interested in for such a long time," she says. She thanks a long list of people for their '-vith her work, from tutors Chaninah Maschler and Howard Zeiderman to her committee members and advisors to her babysitters, and, of course, her family. NowthatNogales has her PhD, is the answer to her father's question any clearer? What is she going to do with her degree? "In the present I have an urge to reconnect," she says. "I am planning to visit relatives in Spain and Venezuela [where she grewup but has not been for ten years]. I also have a yebLIITLili2: for to stop and to uLU.U'-..LU? continued.from page 7 ........u .... uu., Louise Eastern recently won the firstaward for for heT work, "Bosque from the Santa Fe Reporter (no 1·elation to this She lives in Pecos on 200 acres of mountain wilderness and writes about nature. Ms. is wo:rlung on a book about and the sacred in the She is a Buddhist. .LijJ•WL.JU.._," In Santa tluee tutors who in Santa Fe last year have now become tenure-track members of the faculty: K~~h:lmJi:~vc:~rreceived her BA in mathematics from Wellesley College and her MS in mathematics from Massachusetts Institute Je11rnter Otsuki Reed College and then went on to earn her J\1A and PhD in literature from the at Irvine. She was an assistant onJiesscff ,_,,,,~.._,L..,..., and American Literature Umversitvfrom 1991-97. JLjiJl!=',LJl;:)H Ca:rolina doctoral studies at the of snecialization is quantum Carlos Flm·es is a 1992 graduate of Connecticut College where Averroes, Maimonides scholar in ~vilege, and the Katholieke Universiteit at u~.UV'LH, on of Ghent on Substance and Rernuvu Modes of Uncreated gn:Lduate of the received a MA in 1".t:l{"'tA111Thr this fall: ~.HJLU.'-LU.Lv of Cornell he was a summa cum laude in chemistry. In 1992 he received a PhD from the 1n•·"'°""'°,.t'"·"h'~.,. 0 1urndui 1g in a chorus of cries and calls the ,.,,.. .. ,..h;..,,., Cranes call from below then and climb of frost ,, .... ..,.... I/Jina and grass clumps standing alone. at .. and was the Coordinatm of Mathematics and Science at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. rrW'n>rlHClTQo of St. John's He received a PhD in ""·""·"u1,...,."""'""'''T of Texas at Austin in with a dissertation titled "Definition in Aristotle." He comes to St. from the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton. Nietzsche." U �ANNAPOLIS HOMECOMING he last Homecoming of the century whose first two digits are 1 and 9 proved worthy of millennial status-the festivities of October 1-3 brought well over 500 alumni, spouses, significant others, and children to Annapolis. Was there a theme to this party? Does "fun" count? From the extremely colorful and whimsical brochure to the seriousness of seminars, this Homecoming was about all that makes St. John's the college it is. Even the wounded Liberty Tree, surrounded by an orange plastic fence studded with '"No Trespassing" signs, couldn't suppress the crowd's good humor. Here's what was going on: The Class of 1994 Homecoming Lecture on "Galileo Agonistes" by Curtis Wilson. Mr. Wilson was also honored at the Decade of the '40s luncheon on Saturdav for his 50 years as a tutor. Two parties followed lecture-in T Reunion lunches drew big crowds1934 and 1939; 1944 and 1949; 1954; 1959;1964; 1969; 1974;1979;1984;and 1994. Notable for their spirit and numbers were the tenth reunion 1989ers-31 strong returned to campus to compare notes on graduate school, married life, babies, and jobs. Seminar offerings included program authors Kant, Euclid, Shakespeare, Montaigne, and Homer. Extra-program offerings were Isak Dinesen, Maimonides, Proust (tutor David Townsend and 19 alumni bravely tackled Swann 's Way), Wordsworth, Lee, and Milton's "Areopagitica." Members of the classes of' 64, '69, and '74 were invited to a seminar on Scott on_gurnl ,rl,a,,,.... -,~i--•nn of the New Saturday night brought the Homecoming Dinner in Randall Hall. Jeremy Leven (A64) received the Alumni Association Award of Merit story on page 18). After there was a the Great choice of either a or a rock in the Coffee Shop. Festivities concluded with the President's Brunch at the pn~sHlertt West Annapolis. whether emotion and intuition A choice of activities was available after seminar: an afternoon tea waltz in the Great Hall ·with Elliott £UCKe:rrnan; crew for more than 35 years; member of the Board of Visitors and Governors who has been active with the college years. (For more on the awards, Association Newsletter on page Leizman Jntzer.stanamp, and Violence in Charles Melson IL-'-'---'Jl'"""-' - The War That WouldNotEnd: US Marines in Vietnam 1971-73; and William Kowalski (SF94) -Eddie's Bastard. 9 14. Morning semi,,-,,--.-11,n·""' the world of Jane Eva Myers (SF72). Mr. William Darkey will join Ms. Myers in the afternoon to discuss the Brann and of Austen's era, Cowlner. . • Shelley and Samuel Week 2, from July 17 through focus on the question: What is the best education? Selections will be fromprogram books. The morning seminars will examine classical works in educational philosophy, and afternoon seminars will read works by John's own tutors and inducting Jacob Klein and Eva Annapolis President Chris Nelson (SF70), David Levine (A67) and Cary Stickney (A75) will iiluuuu Program will run 14Summer Alumni Program. This year's reunion classes are 1975, 1985, 1990 and 1995. re~ns1trat101n materials will be members of the reunion classes this spring. If you are not in a reunion class and would liketo receive a please contact the Santa Fe .n.rnu.u.uOffice(e-mail;tshalizi@mail.sjcsf.edu) or phone 505-984-6103. �'"\Vrien the seed that would become the Liberty Tree was pollinated, fell to the ground, and germinated, the East Coast of the United States was an undisturbed forest. No white Europeans had landed on its shores. Patuxent and Conoy tribes lived in small villages, farming and fishing, in the area where the river now known as the Severn met the estuary now known as the Chesapeake Bay. When the tree was barely fullgrown, about 90 feet tall with a fuUleafed crown and a tulip poplar's characteristic gnarled branches, Annapolis was designated the capital of the colony of Maryland. A year later, in f 1696, the colony's first school was I"' founded-King William's School. The ~ tree stood near the highest point in ~ town, where Annapolis' powder house would hold colonial-era munitions, and where, in another 50 years, the colony's governor would choose to build his governor's mansion. When American patriots began to stir up protests against Britain, the tree was a significant landmark. It became the meeting place of the Sons of Liberty, revolutionary types like_ Samuel Chase and Daniel Dulaney. Under the tree's protection, they ranted against British injustice and planned insurrectionary actions to protest the Stamp Act. They hung various officials in\effigy from the tree's branches. When they won victories, they draped the tree's boughs with festive banners. When the state of Maryland granted the newly chartered St. John's College the grand unfinished governor's mansion and four acres ofland in 1784, the tree stood on what was _,_ a cleared area in what would become the college yard. When Francis Scott Key graduated in the . _ _,_ was known as "The Ancient Tree," so remembered by his classmate Shaw who wrote a poem celebrating the tree's endurance. When persons unknown set the tree on fire in St. its sal- VV -5 ~ the blaze. When school ex1p101aea two of gunpowder in the tree's hollow trunk a few decades the the tree by destroying insect ---·~~~.,..,~ The tree survived storms, lightning strikes, pranks, decay, and infestations. In the late 1800s, the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution propagated a baby Liberty Tree and in 1889 it on the opposite side of front campus, near what is now the Greenfield In 1924, the good ladies erected a fence around the Liberty Tree to prevent souvenir-hungry tourists from stripping the trunk of its bark. When the tree seemed to be in failing health, its huge trunk hollow from decay, a landscape architect named John Withers traveled from New Jersey to clean the cavity and fill it with 5 5 tons of concrete-"the greatest single accomplishment of tree surgery in the world," he claimed in 1907. When storms battered the almost 400-year-old tree in the 1970s, the local company hired by the college to care for the Liberty Tree strung guy wires to support its endangered limbs. They fertilized and pruned the tree, treating it to all the latest methods available to geriatric poplars. When Hurricane Floyd whipped through Annapolis on September 16, 1999, it thrashed the area with 12 inches of rain and 65-mph winds. Thousands of trees were downed or damaged-including the Liberty Tree. Following the storm, the college called in Bartlett, the company that had cared for the tree since the 1950s, to examine a crack that had developed in the first main branch and extended down into the trunk. The news was bad: the damage was severe. The largest main branch could crash down at any time, pulling the already brittle tree apart, Bartlett's experts reported. The tree whose shade sheltered French soldiers on their way to Yorktown in 1781, Annapolis officials honoring Lafayette on his return to America in 1824, Civil War prisoners recovering from the trauma of battle, p1c:n11cKin~ Annapolitans dressed in their Victorian finery, gun-toting students practicing their formations in the tree past whose huge trunk strolled Klein and Winfree the tree under which inebriated clad players defeated semors and alumni married-couldn't it be saved? A team of administrators'"'"'""'"'"' GnnstOJ)fliE~r Nelson students. Six :rooms , looked as thoui!h the cracked branch An orange fence whose radius measured the of the tree 100 was erected around the tree. experts were consulted, including- local a:rborists .., _c ~ _c Cl.. �and the National Arboretum. The state of Maryland sent several of its tree care people to evaluate the situation. Everyone had the same bad news-the tree was too badly damaged; it should come down. Soon the media found out and there were stories in all the local papers and TV news shows about "The Nation's Last Liberty Tree." There were stories on National Public Radio, on BBC Radio, on local and national talk shows. Concerned people called from all across the country with suggestions: put some bolts through the crack, support the tree with a scaffold, inject the tree with an agent that would turn the wood to plastic, fertilize the tree with a special infusion. One of the experts who cares for the state of Maryland trees gave the college some hope; he suggested calling in a specialist on tree structure (as opposed to tree physiology-the Liberty Tree looked healthy enough with its full, green leaves and extensive root system, but what was in danger was the way it was held together). On October 5, almost four weeks after the storm, Russell Carlson, an arborist from Delaware, examined the tree for about five hours. He went up in a crane to measure the amount of solid wood in the trunk, major branches, and smaller branches. Ten days later he submitted his report. "The tree is in danger of massive structural failure," he said. In some places it had less than 5% solid wood; he found further that the "entire tree now consists of a hollow shell of wood, sometimes only two or three inches thick. .. much below the safe threshold level." Trimming the Liberty Tree would not work, he So much of the crown would have to be removed, the tree would not only look like a stalk of broccoli, it would enter a "death spiral" since not enough leaf surface would be left to generate nourishment. (The full is available online by links from the college site: w.s3ca.edu-click on "Liberty Tree Update."). It was not the damage from the storm that determined the tree's it was its brittleness due to its age and the amount of in its trunk and branches. obvious. but nevertheless difficult. In statement :released on October President Nels on accepted the said: "With sadness in our urnmH)IlS of a number dJl.UVJl.Jl.~l~, and we have determined that the down." There were letters to the editor the paper to the but in the seemed to understand that the tree had to be taken down. It had lived as the oldest of its species. In its more than twice as weakened state, it was a clear to students and to anyone else who happened onto campus. Saying Goodbye Befitting the tree's long and dignified life, the college held a ceremony to mark its end. AB huge pieces of machinery-a crane, several backhoes, trucks-were brought to campus, as a TV news helicopter circled overhead, as a dozen or so microphones were hooked up to the podium, and as television cameramen jockeyed for position, several hundred students, faculty, staff, alumni, and townspeople gathered to say goodbye to the tree. Speakers included the governor, Parris Glendening; Louise Hayman, from the Comptroller's office; the county executive of Anne Arundel County, Janet Owens; the mayor of Annapolis, Dean Johnson; and Chris Nelson. Tutor Peter Kalkavage sang the National Anthem. The Naval Academy sent its color guard. A little girl who had mailed the college two dollars to save the tree placed a wreath at the foot of the "Son of Liberty," the 110-year-old descendant in front of the Greenfield Library. Connecting the idea of national liberty that the tree symbolized to the notion of the liberal arts as at the colNelson said, "A liberal education frees the individual from the limitations of thinking about means, and helps him to think about life's purposes. To distinfrom evil, you must vourselves from the '-"'-"'-'-LUAV'U- Liberal education has to do ·with that kind ofliberation. The its citizens experitmc:1ng kind of liberation. The power to choose one's own ends in a government of the people and f I "' __r::; '"' continued on page 17 ~ __r::; "' ::!2 iii c __r::; .2, �READ ING, WRITING & POKEMON •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Two groups ofSt. John's alumni are involved with alterative schools based on the Summerhill model. Sus3an Borden at does it take to make a school? Most people would list classes, teachers, a principal, textbooks, classrooms, desks, and a curriculum as necessary components for any K-12 experience. Johnnies might add great books and class discussions for the pre-college set. But at some schools, all these are superfluous; at these schools, only freedom is essential. Students are free to choose their activities-not from a list created teachers-but from their own hearts and heads. On that penned in all day. It's the intensity of everybody's journey jangling around in that building." Hiner describes a similar scene at the New School: "Some kids play capture the flag or football or they paint or do papier mache. There is constant activity: some reading, some sitting on the sofa talking to some more traditional kind em~n11ng--b11tit's all all working on different parts of the self. We are not iust intellectual here see people every day pursuing things they really love. They aren't seeing someone being forced to learn, but seeing what learning really is: sitting for an hour or two and thinking hard about something or being part of a debate during afternoon tea. They see all these Most of the time you don't need someone to teach you. Children learn children say with friends. In the United States there are about 20 such schools . TWo the Fairhaven School in discussion with staff members and fellow students. But when students are left to 1Ja•~.-:>.1.•u.u;:>, their ~,,~~'-""~ don't fit neatl the subject categories you'll find at the local public school. Wells says that popular activities at Fairhaven include video games, Nintendo, Anyone who's read A.S. Neill's classic, Summerhill, ·will have a good Lego, a weekly rendition of "Whose Line Is It Anyway," movie watching, idea of what these schools are all swinging on a tree swing, wading up about. Students are encouraged to a stream, sandbox play, reading pursue their passions and teachers books, endless discussions, Pokemon, talent shows, fashion contests, painting, pottery, woodworking, dancing, electronic experiments, chemistry experiments, history, music theory, lessons, and sewing. '"You can positively hear the hum of activity," says Wells. "It's not that chaotic pent-up energy of kids on the playground Two students face off, friendly-style, in an interage who have been exchange common at the Fairhaven School. ened to include all ,...,,", '"~ rr to academic skills to foraging outside lawnmowers. for edible plants to wading up the stream and looking at fossils. The opportunity for learning is everywhere if a student is turned on and interested. Every moment holds some kernel of awakening for the student whose eyes are open. When you're driven from there's very little resistance to learning in any situation. The students here are inspired to forage through life looking for what fascinates them and to pursue it, to penevere even if that requires some drudgery or crossing deserts to get to that oasis that fascinates them." Hiner agrees. "So much is pening here, everyone is learning different things. If you're ten years old and you see a friend of yours who is sixteen reading the -writings of Jung and Freud, you walk up to him and you say 'what's that?' The kids teacher told her she could study anything she wanted as long as she discussed her progress with her. "That was the greatest gift," Hiner says. "I was the kind of kid who used to read encyclopedias. I wanted to study the Mongolian invasion of China and the Visigoths." The second experience was Hiner's math class, where the teacher frequently gave timed math tests: 25 problems in 5 minutes. "I would try to block that class out," she says. "I would sit in the seat closest to the door and hunch over my desk praying 'please forget, please forget this test.' My fear of math (which didn't get cured until St. John's) was in part due to that horrible experience." The third experience was Hiner' s reading Louisa May Alcott's �Little Men, in which Jo starts a instruction with a minor in philosophical education. "It was a wonderful time, a great time," she says. "I discovered that my thinking was way on the edge, way out there. I realized that everything in education was based on a traditional h-iPr!lr..-.hv on top down management, on education as a process of providing information. That's not what St. John's is and that's not what I am either." After receiving her PhD, Hiner traveled all over the east coast visiting private schools. "I read Summerhill and I knew it had to work," she says. Then a friend showed her Computers can become such a part of their lives an article about the that students at the Fairhaven School wind up reguSudbury Valley School in lating how much time can be spent at them. Framingham, Massachusetts, a school that is run along the same lines as Summerhill. College added another dimenIt was the school she sion to her thoughts on education: had been searching "St. John's, with all its emphasis on for. "The founder conversation, the testing of ideas, there-he'd start a the need to separate yourself from yom: ideas, the call to dissect things and get to the tTuth and fundamental principles-this had a lasting effect for me; conversation had was little more than become the essence of what schoola dream for Hiner was all about." until 1-1.,.1hr••!lir·v After St. John's, Hiner 1995. "I was homeof all in a California schooling my son, .l:'-'J.V<u.. ~ school and a Delaware who was six," she school but was dissatisfied with both recalls. "He came experiences. She then pursued a up to me and said PhD at the University of Delaware rnrwlr~~ .... ~~~~O~~lTT in cognition and 'I'm reallvtired of you talking to me about when you start your school. Why don't you just do it?'" The New School opened that September. school. "She takes a little violinist boy who's an orphan and doesn't make him study math, doesn't make him do anything. She just loves him and lets him play his violin," Hiner recalls. "After those experiences, I knew what school should be like." A Sudden A~'ak!en1lllg For Wells, the path to Fairhaven came not from a directed search but from a sudden awakening. She remembers when she first heard about the philosophy of schools like Summerhill and Sudbury Valley. "It was as if someone had thrown this huge ball into my lap. I was stunned and amazed and could only stutter objections: '"What about Shakespeare? "What about the really creative minds of our culture? How will the students get the opportunity to encounter them?' I slowly but surely realized that what I value, what I'm drawn to and find fascinating may not be what you value or find fascinating. I did a retrospective of my educational life and began to see ways I had lost opportunities, been handed subjects, topics, themes ... Who knows what I would graduate of the I) with the first School. have come up with on my own, where I would have gone?" Today, Wells has a better idea of where she's going. '"I continue to see myself deeply involved with Fairhaven and I have a fantasy of starting a school like this in New York City," she says. "I think it would be fascinating to try to create an environment like this in an urban setting. It seems it would be appropriate because so much is available in a city if you bring do"'W71 the walls of the school." Hiner also has a deep commitment to her school. "l can see myself ninetyyears old to afternoon tea. l have the extralOTd.n1m:y gift of getting to live my life's dream. It's one hundredtimes better than anything I imagined doing and it's cne hundred times harder than what I imagined as a 9-year-old." 1 To lean more about these scJwlns. vTjit their websites: www. the1zewschool. com and 15 . _ _ carries ·with it the awesome re:spi)11:s11J,ll11tv about what the purposes which we dedicate a >-. <J) ~ :I: ..<: µ 'ill ~ campus planted. m ltH:>'J; one on ttill given the nation's bicentennial in 1976; one in Kew Gardens in also from the 1976 propagation effort. Last spring, the state took from the Tree in hopes of cloning baby trees, one for each state. That effort is ,,,. . ...:1.0.,,.~wnr at the University ,.f1\Jf" ...ulanrl Goyette a small piece of the Liberty Tree wood cm1 call or e-mail office at 410-626-2507 or a-zolkower@sjca.edu. Some mementoes will be the college is still considering options. �SS lumn honor a ps ur orar and name ciati n al decisions is in trouble," but he , to be a member of the alumni cohort. M-::.·H-i-.e~\M<: the third hon- Homecommg in Annapolis the Alumni Association St. Colle2e oresented the ~ Matthews, and Charles Watts honI"' ornry alumni. -5 Sharon ~ where £ ,,, 0 remem- t5 bering that as a student, "he was a: cool:' Even in his St. john's days, Leven, a clinical psychologist who wrote the movies Creator in 1985 and Don Juan DeMarco in 1995, combined academic pursuits with the performing arts-he penned 'The Perils of St. John's," a satirical production, in 1965. leven's first novel, Creator, was written in 1980; he told Bishop it was the thesis he had wanted to write 15 years earlier as a senior. He has since written two other novels and is I Christensen, and Barbara Leonard compare notes on the {right). working on adaptations of them for the screen. "Throughout his career he has paid tribute to St. John's;' said Bishop. "Now it's our turn to pay tribute to him:' Leven told the gathered alumni that the college has had a great of influence on his life. He recounted a number of SJC anecdotes. One time, he said, he told Mr. Sparrow, his math tutor, that he had worked until 4 a.m. on a problem but couldn't do it; Mr. Sparrow answered "I guess you didn't work long enough." He remembered how "absolutely overwhelmed" he was by Mr. McGrath's recitation of Shakespeare. One day, Mr. McGrath read something out loud that Leven couldn't find anywhere. It turned out to be from the stage directions to one of the plays-"1 realized that anything he read sounded amazing!' Leven said, "I work in a world that is filled with sophistry and hubris," but noted that his St. John's experience is always with him. At the Alumni Association annual meeting, Wendy Allan brook, a former tutor and assistant dean, was named an honorary alumna. She is currently chair of the musicology department at Berkeley. While at St. John's, she worked on the music manuals and gave a number of lectures on Mozart. "I harbored a secret fear that I had exiled myself from paradise" in leaving St. john's, she said, but always continued to use the first person when thinking of the college. She thanked the Association for her use of "we" official. John Christensen. director of was named an honorary his tenure, the rate has doubled. He has served on the Campus Committee and was active in planning the restoration of McDowell Hall in 1989 (he wrote a book on the building as a result). In thanking the Association, he said, "Anybody whose job depends on the ability of 18-year-olds to make ration- his spirit, and his wisdom in advising students. heart is very said Matthews, who retired last year. "I feel blessed to be a part of St. John's. There's not a day that goes by that I don't think about it. I always wanted students to know that this is their home away from home:' The final honorary alumnus to be officiallywelcomed to the community was Charles (Charlie) Watts.A longtime member of the Board of Visitors and Governors, Watts was formerly the president of Bucknell University and dean of Brown University. "He is already one of us;' said Alumni Association president Allan Hoffman. Watts credited Harrison Sasscer (A44) with "leading me out of the swamp of D.C. and toward St. john's College:' He also remembered former college president Richard Weigle: "We fought together, mostly on the same side of issues." Association president Allan Hoffman with Charlie Watts (top) and Jimmy Matthews (lower), named Honorary Alumni. �HE ASS F ? •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• he Alumni Association has a stated goal: To reach more alumni more and in more rich and interesting ways. is not new; it grows out of the mission, This which has informed the work of the Association Board for many years. l'\.e1cer1uv we have restated it in these and (we hope) action-oriented terms.As a first step in this process, we included a auestion in the last Reborter. We asked. can the Alumni the community for a variety of contributions. Awards range from portraits of past l'"\!'"~><::1rl,,,.ni"c small gifts for Gls as range of nus receives a Keg1ster alumni. This document is funded the and the Association. Association I 7% of its uuu~1;:1.ed funds in reserve to cover this ,...,,,.,.;,..,.-1;,.. expense. Various communications absorb about 22% of the annual These include the Alumni all administrative purposes "11'-''""'"'"'V per year to support activities. The Alumni Association Board allocates funds from this total to support we do. that dues to the Alumni Association are separate from donations made the the Annual Fund dues mailer, letterhead brochure. In the near some of these funds will support an official Association website and other electronic communications. The remain in!! 33% of the Association dues are used to support one on each campus and the sprirg croquet celebration in forall alumni to renew old friendships and to discover new ones among alumniof many different classes. This budget summary provides a picture of what~he Association has done in the past to pursue its mission. With that in mind/What MORE can the Association do for you?" You can respond calling the Alumni Offices in Annapolis, Roberta Gable (A79), at 410-626-2531; or in Santa Fe, Tahmina Slalizi at 505-984-6103; by writing The Reporter, St.John's College, Box 280f.Annapolis, MD 21404; or e-mailing the Alumni Association newsletter edZor, Barbara Goyette (A73) at b-goyette@sjca.edu. of the '""'"''"".I:.''"· goes to pay for ,.,...,.,,,.~,1'• 14•,.,. expenses, financial aid, and instructional expenses at the Only about 5% of the revenues are us~d for :administrative purposes. Board members pay their own expenses for attending meetings, so dues Dues are Spent are used to cover phone, mail, and materials that are required to support the Association. One reason that the administrative costs are so low is that we receive tremendous support from the college through the services of the Alumni Directors on both campuses. Their long hours of creative work are provided by the college at no cost to the Association. Chapter activities are primarily funded by the chapters themselves, but the Association does budget approximately 6% of its dues income for chapter development. Because the college covers the cost of and tutor visits, the Association contribution can be dedicated to a varietv of activi- conversation was Twice each year, once on each campus, the Association hosts the Senior Dinners. This tradition was instituted to build a connection between the Association and new alumni as they prepare to leave the life of the Expenses for the dinners are shared among the Assoc1a.t1c>n alumni hosts, and the college. These celebrations consume approximately 6% of the Association _ One function of the Association is to recognize and reward members of - "' j that a large number have some n"' an network in Plans are for the group to meet at least t' engage in a wide range of activitiS from to ;> about books. Like many alumni from te '70s and '80s, Bob has reached ::iJoint of transition in his life. In the a successful career in hean management, he ch<ml':ec111:s sional direction ago. Now a successful ~ent for the New York Life lnsural'e Comoany professional flexibili- 11 "'"''"' and rh".:lnt-o.- nrl"..:irle:>nt by Glenda Eoyang in his interests in the St. Jonn-s comand he hopes to support the ,..,.,.~, .....,..,, .. as it others re-establish their Johnnie connections. He has been alumni in the area bv ohone and has discovered ...,,,,.,-,,,.·;r;,,., ic., he is return- to core valuesl1at he first articulated at the col!~e. He believes that the skills a~ insiJ?;hts he develwhile a secure and sa+,.,f;.,;,.,.., to talk and who do it so well. He sees a connection with the '-'-'''""J::.'"'• his n""''""'n,n::iu part of his persona this in his life. Alumni in the area are invited to contact Bob and his IVJn.,...,..,.., (SF76) at 505880-21 34 for details about the ,..,.,, ...+&, .. He that rh~•""i"''"" me~et1n2:s in the months to come will nurture a vibrant conversation among alumni who live in and around Albuaueraue �AluDini Notes ... 1935 Richard S. Woodman writes: "My brother Robert-class of 1937and I are still alive and I'm still active practicing law here in upstate New York." ~nib be, and founder of the Napoleonic Society of has the Ellen Snibbe Napoleonic _,_._._._._._.,._,._._ ..i, and magazines, pistols, guns, and music. The L'lapo1e<)m_c :,oc1ety has 1250 members in 22 countries. Next year the sail a three-masted luxury schooner to Corsica, Monte Cannes, Paris, and finally, Waterloo, to attend the annual re-enactment of the famous battle. 1946 Last May, Peter Weiss and his wife Cora helped to organize the Hague Appeal for Peace, which brought 10,000 people from around the world as well as Kofi Annan and other luminaries to the Netherlands for a week-long conference on the theme "Time to Abolish War-Peace Is a Human Right." He also authored the article "Legal Theories and Remedies" in the Encyclopaedia of Violence, Peace and Conflict, published this summer by Academic Press. "It's a steal for $650," he writes. 1948 Raphael Ben-Yoseflives in Israel, where he owns and runs a manufacturers' representative firm dealing mainly with heavy mechanical and electrical equipment such as boilers, large pumps, fans of 5000 HP, turbine generators, etc.-mostly sold in power stations, refineries and chemical plants. 1951 Alfred Franklin writes: "This summer myself, Ray Starke, and Herman Small met at Melbourne Beach, Fla., for the '2nd mini alumni meeting.' The time is now to plan for the 50th in 2001. Help wanted." 1960 In June 1999 Sarah Robinson Munson retired from the Arlington (Virginia) Public Schools where she had taught English as a Second Language to elementary school students since 1987. Col. John Lane writes: "NationsBank bought Bank of America. We're changing our name to Bank of America. We're now the largest bank in the U.S. and the third largest in the world. I am continuing to run distributing, computing, and networking for the bank." ._, in business administration in 1996 from California State and a masters in and information science in 1998 from San Jose State Universitv. She is at Ian Harris (A) is now the chair of the Educational Policy and Community Studies Department of the University ofWisconsinMilwaukee School of Education where he has taught for twenty-three yea1·s. He has taught courses in community education, modern philosophies of education, male identity, and nonviolence in education. He is the author of Peace Education and Messages Men Hear, Constructing Masculinities and is co-editor of Peacebuildingfor Adolescents, Strategies for Educators and Community Leaders. He received the 1997 Peace Educator of the Year Award from the Consortium for Peace Research. 1968 "We spent a pleasant day this spring hiking by the Mendenhall glacier and doing a bit of tour-guiding by car with Tom Geyer (A69) (and member of the Board of Visitors and Governors) who was traveling by cruise ship here in SE Alaska. The other 'visitor' is my fourth grandchild (and first grandson) Isaiah Cross," writes George Partlow (A). 1969 Joseph Baratta (A) is teaching world history and international relations at Worcester State College in Massachusetts. Hazel (A69) and Larry Schlueter (A67) have a new CD out called "John Saroyan Live and Pick.in' in New Orleans," available from them at home: 112.0 Bordeaux Street/New Orleans, LA 70115. Andrew Garrison (A) reports that his psychotherapy practice is very active. He is teaching a course on American Utopias and preparing another on problems of the self. edition New Yorker carried a "The f umiture Pl11ilc~so1pt1er~" Lawrence Weschler chronicled W'.i:>ir1h10.1'"~7P.t•'c; ca1pitali~;;t" to furniture _ _ we1r1t1E~r!i!•er contracted Parkinson's disease at the age of 40; he found t-h1in1.r1na about art, pieces of furniture based on almost precise measurements of lines, angles, and planes, helped give his life cabinetmaker named Scott Schmidt is able focus. A young New to his concepts into Influenced by a variety of art forms and historic movements, Weinberger's pieces epitomize the intersection of mathematical exactness (remember how the tutors always stressed that the word mathematica, the objects of mathematics, means "the knowable things" in and being. Several of Weinberger's pieces are in daily use at the college. Christopher Nelson (Sf 70) works behind his Weinbergef'designed desk in the president's office (pictured). There are also small tables in the dean's office and in the Mitchell Art Gallery. 1970 Steven Hanft (A) writes: "Me: dutiful husband of Ruth Sievers, my partner in life since 1980; proud father of Sam, who has been keeping us young since his birth in 1988." Fr. John Emerson (SF) is living in Europe and writing a biographical dictionary of the Cardinals of the nineteenth century. 1971 John Stark Bellamy II (A) is astonished to announce the publication of his third book, The Corpse in the Cellar and his listing in Who s Who in America (2000 edition). Linda Belgrade-Friehling (SF) is a pediatrician in Northern Virginia, outside of Washington, D.C. Her husband, Ted, is a cardiologist. But in their "spare" time, Ted has a rock band, and Linda helps with art and lyrics. Their first CD is available through the website: offtrax. com. 1972 Bradley Arms (A) has recently relocated to Simsbury, Conn., from Dallas to take the position of Senior Vice President for Health Care Delivery Transformation with CIGNA. 1974 Mary Geoghegen Jolles (SF) has recently been given the principalship of a second school in Colebrook-she is now principal of both Colebook Primary and Elementary Schools, with a total staff of 50, housing grades K-8. John Rees writes: "Three children under 5: Katherine, 4; Daniel, 2; and Maxwell, 1, make life joyous and busy. I recently saw Geoff Cockey (A) who drove through Orlando with 30,000 lbs. of frozen OJ. Who knows what tomorrow may bring?" Paula Hartman Cohen (SFGI) is writing for the University of Massachusetts-Amherst news office full time, after serving as a freelance reporter for Newsday and the Chicago Tribune, and as a writer for PBS science shows. Son Dan is now on his own, working as a computer engineer in NY, so Paula welcomed the chance to switch gears and move to a vibrant, academic community. She can be reached at UMass News Office, Amherst, MA 01003-602.0 or phcohen@admin.umass.edu. 1975 Leslie Johnson (SF) writes: "I have been working for the past ten �Alulllni Notes ... years as a staff research attorney for the Superior Court in Butte County, California, but checking the Daily Journal classified ads for that "tropical paradise" job opening I've been waiting for. I live on 12 acres in Chico with my husband, two teenage stepchildren, my little girl, Addie, and several other families-our 'land partners.' Hope to see lots of friends at the 2000 reunion." Michael Hendry (A) is now teaching the classics at Bowling Green University in Ohio. Peter and Mary Kniaz (A) and their five children (ages 3 to 18) are moving to Hopkinton, Mass., as Peter takes a position as Director, Information Systems, in the Boston Area. 1976 Adam Wasserman (A) is enjoying a year-long "sabbatical" from his government day job. His project involves analyzing generational change in the former Soviet Union. He's had to take his first classes-and exams-since finishing graduate school 20 years ago: the horror! Otherwise, life in Vienna, Va., is good. Gene Glass (A) and his wife Susan are living in the small rural town of Carroll, Ia. Gene continues his work as a clinical psychologist, while Sue teaches both aerobics (for adults) and drama (for high school students). They are involved in community theater productions and Gene has professional acting jobs occasionally in Des Moines. Gene is recently online at GeneGlass@webtv.net. He veTy much enjoyed the hospitality of alumni Rick (A) and Carol Katrina Plaut (A 79) and their children this past summer in Massachusetts. • , is director for the Agency for International Development in Mozambique. Thomas Dean Wise (SF) is now a computer network engineer for the University of California. Marion Freistadt (SF) announces the birth of her healthy son, Sha.fir Davim Wittenberg, on September 25, 1999. 1979 Deana Tosheff Sullivan (A) reports: "After eight years in Berlin and Frankfurt I am now in Stuttgart, where I work as a business translator at DaimlerChrysler. After leaving St. John's I studied business, then got a German accounting degree, and am now preparing for the CPA exam. I might also be working on the English translation of a Children's Bible which is to be published by the German Bible Society. If anyone out there is interested in biblical texts and/ or would like to share favorite devotions or stories please feel free to e-mail me at D.Sullivan@ DaimlerChrysler.com." Marilyn Schaefer (SGI) writes: "I retired in 1998 after teaching 28 years in the City University of New York. Have been doing a lot of reading, some painting, some traveling. Saw Comedy ofErrors at the newly reconstructed Globe in London recently. Spent a great morning in Southampton last year with Linda 1980 Guy Jennings (A) has been married to Laura for 14 years and has two sons: William (10) and Graham (6). He was named outstanding attorney by the U.S. Department of Justice Tax Division. Lisa Lashley (SF) writes: "I am still living in Santa Fe, where I'm teaching elementary music at St. Francis Cathedral School and cantoring for Wednesday morning mass at St. Francis Cathedral Church. Took up snowboarding two years ago • •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• THE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY GIG Deirdre 0 'Shea and some other Johnnies are thinking up a storm/or Walker Digital Corp. by Roberta Gable eirdre 0' Shea (A98) didn't graduate with much of a plan, but now she has a very cool job. When she was a senior, O'Shea worked for Palate Pleasers (caterers in Annapolis) as an assistant baker and apprentice pastry chef. She hung around town for the summer after she graduated but had a keen intention to "get out of Dodge," so decided to seek employment as a baker in one of three places: the San Francisco Bay area, where she grew up and still had family and friends; Portland, Ore.; or New York City. In the middle of the summer she had the pleasure of driving Abe Schoener's 1961 Chrysler across country for him (Schoener, A82, is a tutor on leave, toiling in the vineyards of the Napa Valley). There she found herself in one of her three target areas, but she wound up moving back to New York. It had turned out she was going to be something other than a baker. Back in April she had had, in a coincidental kind of way, a conversation with Andrew Van Luchene (SF96) who was working for Walker Digital Corporation in Connecticut. Walker Digital came up with Priceline.com-it's essentially a company that invents businesses. Van Luchene had come down to campus to do some employment recruiting and Heather Deutsch (A98), who was working in the placement office, asked O'Shea to hang out and chat with him while she pursued some urgent errand. O'Shea wasn't interested in the jobs he was talking about, so the conversation advanced to what she was planning to do. She told him about baking and about how it involved exploiting biofm food. He np·rcr1<>cii.orl ~u~uu~uio.,, she could go far in the intellectual nronertv dodge. So she went ahead and D intel1-r1J.1-.a-r"'\r1.o·u.r fit. p uJ>1Jlshed in After l3 years as a trial and 4 years as a development officer for non-profit organizations, (Stabler) (SGI76) and Peter Talty (SGI87) and their two girls." invention analvst .. , she In a way, yes. The company " that up solutions to business in various industries and boldly figure out innovations where no innovator has gone before. They read, they research, they push the hell out of the envelope; then they write "disclosures," which are the documents that go to the patent attorneys to get the ball rolling on new patents. Every other month or so, they all get together for big brainstorming sessions. O'Shea and Van Luchene, as well as Avik Mohan (A96), Keith Bemer (A98), Kathleen Van Luchene (A99), and Hardison Wood (A98) all get to do this for a living. Mohan and Wood both work in the Priceline.com side of things: it's a website of "buyerdriven commerce" where, in a reverse auction, you bid on things like airline tickets instead of just rolling over and paying what the airline thinks they can get out of you. Andrew Van Luchene ("our fearless leader," says O'Shea) has been working on a scheme involving easier change transactions at fast food places, among other things. After starting out as an intellectual property developer, O'Shea is now with another Priceline group. At Priceline Perfect YardSale she's going to be developing web strategy and marketing for some of the ideas she came up with previously. do Johnnies fit in so well at a cutting like Walker Diirital? O'Shea's take on it is that you need and creative-all mllt:~i:rP._ And she not a in those areas to come to technoloQ:ical stuff. of what she sees the pn:~ruc~tame sonaetnrntg like: the ropes, then million." ln:5teaa--s11r1)n:se--s111e school teacher. She's lie school ro~ots:te1os. to be the best teacher she possibly can. n11t1stung her lunch the interview for this story. Her fortune cookie said: "You are yearning for perfection." 111 �Alulllni ... and am learning to play the bagpipes (Scottish Highland). I am also a Girl Scout leader with a small but active junior troop." Daniel Van Doren (A) writes: "My son Benjamin ( 5 years has started kindergarten and loves it. The hardest part for us was seeing him off on the big school bus (he loves that too). Our younger son, has started preRoss (2 years school and enjoys it immensely-no problems with separation there." Sean Mulholland (A) lives in Arlington, Va., and has two sons: a three-year-old and a one-year-old. He teaches Latin and Greek at Maret School in Washington, D.C. MichaelN. Fried (A) writes: "I just received my PhD from the Cohn Institute for the History of Philosophy of Sciences and Ideas at Tel-Aviv University, having written a dissertation on Apollonius' Conics. Otherwise, I continue to work at the Center for Science and Technology teaching at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev-and I, my wife Yifat, and two daughters, continue to live at Kibbutz Revivim-located roughly at the geometric center of the roughly triangular Negev desert. Naturally, we are always very happy to hear from any Johnnie who happens to come our way!" Donna M. Contracto1· (SF) writes that she is now a tapestry artist with galleries throughout the country, one in Santa Fe. "Devendra (SF78) and I just took a two week to Ireland to celebrate our 20th anniversary! Two Jaidev, 18, is at St. John's this year, 8, is in third l!'rade. Tu-o onlv childTen." Barbara (A) writes: "During and afteT a prolonged tour of the social sciences in graduate school, I've been working in a nonprofit organization that raises awareness of the accomplishments in music (call for a free annotated resource guide! 1-800-634-6044). As I was a failed southerner in my childhood, I'm now surprised to find myself (as my partner, Jessica points out) an avid booster of the city of Durham, N.C., for the past nine years. Come and see us!" Christian Holland (A) has returned from 12 years residence in Europe. He is in his second yeaT of doctoral stuuy in comparative literature at Emory University in Atlanta. Anastasia Kezar (A) writes: "Life is good in the Glen-of-Burnie. I've finally finished advanced graduate studies at Hopkins and I've recently been promoted to Program Manager in Child Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical center-this really means lots more staff, spread sheets, crisis diversion and meetings:). After ten years I probably need to admit I even as I do a daily MSE. I hear from lots and can be reached at akezar@jhmi.edu. Long Live Inga Wong!" Lenore Parens (A) (Lenny ) is still a freelance developmental editor of college math textbooks and multimedia. She is, through no fault of her own, in Dallas, Tex., with her trophy husband, Josh Parens (A84), and her son, Rafi. David Walworth (A) writes: "Still designing boats on St. Croix. Michelle and I, along with the majority of St. Croix, survived Hurricane Lenny just fine. Had the eye gone about 20 miles further north, it might have been a different story. I still find that a thorough grasp of Euclid continues to come in handy on a daily basis while designing boats. Archimedes and his bathtub, of course, is ever present." i David Stahl (A) is a visiting instructor in computer science at Dickinson College and a senior software developer at Stoner Associates in Carlisle, Pa. Geoff Garner and his wife (A84) e-mail: "Our three-year tour in Sicily is drawing to a dose, and it has been great. Our daughters Madeline (8) and Adele (4) are doing well with Italian school. We still have a lot of traveling we want to fit in during the next 9-10 months. We are about to take off on a vacation which will include Naples, Rome, Pisa, Florence, and Venice. In Rome, I will be a delegate to the Anglican Synod, representing our parish in Taormina. I was pr<)m,otea to Lieutenant Commander last summer and I'm still finding the be a lot of fun. Next summer we will be moving back to Norfolk, where I will be assigned to the carrier Roosevelt for two years. In Norfolk, Mary plans to start the process of applying to Episcopal seminary. (SF) writes: l 1·ecently attended the induction of Alex Farnsworth (SF) into the Society of Charles XII in Stockholm, EX Lang (A69) takes care ofrare books Sus3an Borden skJohnnies how their college educaion has served them in their working life and you'll get some thoughtful responses. Some say they rely on the keen abilities they discovered in freshman language and finetuned in lab. Others say they'd be nowhere without the ability to express themselves well, an they trace back to seminar. And there are a few who credit their success to the critical thinking skills they claim were developed during all-night discussions in the coffee shop. William Lang (A69), gives a more concrete answer: he used his Greek on the job to read a bit of Aristophanes. Lang runs the rare books department at the Free Library of Philadelphia. The Aristophanes he read in Greek was part of an exhibit on the library's collection of incunabula: books printed before 1501-within 50 years of Gutenberg's Bible. He didn't have to resurrect all of his Chase and memories, however, just enough to figure out what the text was. "The incunabula make up a varied collection and a lot of the books decrees, collections of sermons," Lang says. "But we do have a certain number of classics in and I concentrated on those." Among those classics, he says, are a Greek Aristotle, a beautiful Pliny, the first edition of letters of Cicero, a wonderful Lucretius, and, of course, Aristophanes' Clouds. Lang estimates the :rare books department's holdings at around 100,000 volumes, but notes that the number is far from precise. "With a collection that has been around for as long as ours [ 100 years], we have long since lost track." Within the rare books department are several notable collections. The incunabula number about 1000 volumes. A col- lection of early chililien' s literature is over 13,000 volumes and includes books by Beatrix Potter, Kate Greenaway, and Robert Lawson (author of Ben and Me). A collection of over 20,000 books in AngloAmerican common law includes a complete run of editions of Blackstone as well as works that Blackstone d.Tew on and five Carta manuscripts. One of the more unusual holdings of the is an early 20th- century physical library, left to the library by William Mcintire Elkins. It includes impressive collections of Charles Dickens, Oliver Goldsmith, and Americana. "The Elkins family earned theiT fortune with the founding of street railroads in Philadelphia," Lang says. "Elkins built a great big house with a marvelous paneled library with open shelves, glassed-in shelves fOT his collections, a globe .... It was a huge room- 70 feet long, and in his will he specified that his library should go to the Free Library. His family understood that to mean everything: the paneling, bookshelves, oriental rugs, the whole kit and caboodle." How did Lang end up presiding over roughly 100,000 rare books and Elkins' kit and caboodle of a library? Like many Johnnies, he says, he had always liked books and when he was trying to decide where to spend his to in working life, he Drexel University's library sciences "The MLS degree was a went full time. one-year course I started with the attitude of 'what do I have to lose' and discovered I opportumty to run the Free Libraif s art ment. There I had a budget, the chance to build a collection, some say oveT the quality of services we gave to the public, and the opportunity to become involved with other people's intellectual work. What you do is always changing, and I just got hooked on it." " Visitors to the Free Library of Philadelphia this spring (March 15fune 30) will see one ofLang's exhibits. This one is entirely devoted to the Roman poet Horace. It will include his works in Latin and various translations, andfeature books from among the veryfi,rst editions printed in the fifteenth century as well as many 16th, 17th, and 18th century editions. �_ . . . . . . . . . . . . . .·Notes .. . .. Sweden. The Society seeks to promote Swedish customs and values throughout the world. Other members include the King and Prime Minister of Sweden. It was a great honor! Alex was admitted to the Society for his journalism on Swedish subjects." Erik Harder (A) is living with his vvife, Karen, and their 3-year-old Timothy, in seacoast New ..-.-nn.inchn•.o_ Qn,rl all share the last name "Mueller-Harder." Erik is thrilled to announce his newwebPraxis News Digest-today's news listed by topic http://pnd.praxisworks.com/ Mfra (SF) ·writes: "Any Johnnies passing through Copenhagen are welcome to give me a call. I've been here for approximately 11 years now, with my husband and three children-Tara (7), Tess (10), and Tai (4). I'm gradually inching my way towards a research degree in literary theory and if it weren't for the weather, I'd say things here are just peachy-I'd love to hear from Febbies and other Johnnies. Keep an eye out for the short film 'Teis and Nico' which just won eight international prizes. My daughter Tess is one of the little stars ... the proud parent reports." Al Haffa (A) is looking forward to Mr. Berns' visit to Phoenix College, where he will speak about censorship and Mark Twain. Andi·ew Sloniewsky (A) reports that his second daughter, Julia Natalya, was born in May. Todd Masilon (A) sends a report covering 20 years: "Since leaving St. John's, I've done stints as a high school teacher (Geometry, Latin, Etymology, Literature) on both the east and west coasts. I also time teaching gang members in LA's inner city. The bulk of my however, has been spent earning an MA in the Linguistics of American Sign Language from Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. Directly after I started on a PhD track in theoretical linguistics at UCLA. Unfortunately, after three years, I tii·ed of the of acadetook a second MA and called it even. In addition to classes at UCLA we will live at 702 Miller's Way/ Annapolis, MD 21401." Valerie works at the Smithsonian designing educational trips. She has worked with Jeremy Leven (A64) on a Telluride Film Festival seminar and will work with Warren Winiarski (A52) on a Napa Valley Food and Wine seminar. Look for "An1erican Classics at St. John's College," a June, 2000, Smithsonian Je11niter Hoheisel (AGI) writes that she, Eric, Will, and Luke Hoheisel are alive and well in New Jersey. Jennifer "'Will be teaching "Ancient, Medieval and Renaissance Thought" -interdisciplinary, discussion-focused seminars with an emphasis on primary texts (sound familiar?) at Villanova University starting in the spring of 2000. Eric is in his third year as a pastor at Oaklyn Baptist Church. Both boys Bob DeMajistre (A) and his are enjoying their enrollment in wife Anne welcome Elena school and in Hoheisels' basketball DeMajistre, born August 2, 1999. training camp. Jana Giles (A) is teaching at the Paul (A), Matthew (A92), and University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez Daniel Speck's (A96) Henry of campus. "Presently I've got all comPelham Family Estate Winery is one position courses: one advanced (fun) of Canada's top producers of premiand three basic (less fun)," she um VQA (Vintners Quality Alliance) writes. "In the advanced class we've wines. got a lot out of Leslie Marmon Garfield Goodrum (A) writes: Silko's Ceremony and next we'll try "I have been a vegetarian for the last Henry Petroski's The Pencil: A five years, having had my eyes History ofDesign and Circumstance. opened back then, by my now-wife, I'm trying to go to the beach more to the cruelty of factory farming to and assign fewer papers, to endure animals and its harm to the environfeeling homesick and keep abreast of ment. I am still a fiscal conservative, the news. Saludos a todos." Jana's ehowever. I am fully against tort mail address is jrngiles@caribe.net. reform! (I'm sure Ray Gifford's head Jeff Falero (A) e-mails: is spinning!) Life in Arlington, Va., "Everything is going well here at is not as sweet as it was in Annapolis Stanford. It really is an incredibly or Vermont, the latter being where I dynamic place." went to law school and met my wife, Katarina Wong (A) writes: "I Lucy Wheeler Goodrum (Smith just wanted to let folks know that I College '92). Hello to all my old graduated :from the Harvard Divinity friends!" School with a Master in Theological Stefanie Takacs (A) writes: "I Studies concentrating in Buddhist am enjoying working in Manhattan Studies last June and I am currently for a textbook publisher. As a manteaching art at the University of aging editor, I welcome e-mail from Iowa. I can be contacted at any Johnnie interested in freelance kwong@post.harvard.edu. As the writing opportunities." Her e-mail Grateful Dead song goes, 'what a address is stefaniet@review.com long, strange trip it's been."' Burch has been Lovan Ely (A, degree in 95) has in Boston for the last seven years completed his first year of med helping to run a high-end bread bakschool at St. Matthew University ery. "It's great to be of the School of medicine in sunny Belize. Boston scene," she writes. he's gotten his "I married David Vermette certification (Belize is on the second ago. We're two anda barrier reef in the Lovan says, sea divers welcome!" Get in touch at in the field with only my modest skills as a linguist. Currently, at age 35, I am husband to my lovely wife Renee and daddy to precious little Molly (1 yr., 4 mos.). Just under two years ago, I joined the U.S. Army as Specialist Masilon. After eight grueling weeks of basic training and 63 even more grueling weeks at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, I graduated as an Arabic linguist. I am now completing my training as an intelligence analyst at Goodfellow Air Force Base, Texas." Mary Helen McMurran (SF) received her PhD :from NYU in November 1998 and is now teaching at the University of Chicago. named executive director of the ~~+ 1 ~,,~~·T Roundtable while acoustic research related to the Dllonolc>2'1Cal ri<>"""" 1 ""''"'""~"'i- of normal young children as well as a to linguistic development of two deaf children in a I was also lucky enough to get the chance to study the Navajo language with a native speaker as if I were out And1·ew Elizabeth l"e1ru14~re;:ra!)S PhilanthrOJJ'Y magazine. Valerie Pawlewicz (A) writes: "Leo Pickens (A78) and I are buying a house. By the new millennium, 1991 Gandhi (A) writes: "I Sapna found a great job teaching ESL at a local elementary school! I teach children from Bosnia, Somalia, China, India, Iraq, and Mexico. What a change from teaching at the University! Would love to hear :from :friends." Boaz Roth (AGI) writes: "March 1999: Married. December 1999: Expecting!! St. John's has taught me not to waste time!!" Alec Berlin (SF) e-mails: "I'm living in Brooklyn and working as a :freelance guitarist in and around NYC-jazz bands, rock bands, Jewish music bands, country bands, you name it. More importantly, I recorded my first album of original jazz, 'Crossing Paths,' in September. I really love the way it sounds-it has a nice blend of styles and a good balance of composed and improvised music. Anyway, I expect to release it sometime after the first of the year. Stay tuned. In the meantime, my email address is alecberlin@hotmail.com. I'd love to hear from any and all." Lani Markholm (AGI) writes: "In 1997, I traveled for business on behalf of the U.S. Information Agency to Ethiopia, Kenya, Ivory Coast, and Senegal. In 1999, I became a Department of State employee as my agency was taken over by the State Department. Also in 1999, I pilgrimaged to Israel and had quite an amazingly wonderful time." Dianne J. Cowan's (A) e-mail address was misprinted in a recent Reporter. Her correct address is diannec@pciwiz. corn. Oliver and Ashley Vietor (A) welcomed their second daughter, Lucy Waring, to the world on September 25, 1999. Jennllc~r ...... ,,...,....,. _......_,,_(SF) and Curtis Ward were married on June 5, 1999, in Farmington, New Mexico. After Jennifer completes her PhD at Cornell on" · writes: my Masters in Architecture, Mike Mflerbach son." attorney and Andrew is a public librarian in Fairfax, Va. They can be contacted at 6166 Leesburg Pike/Apt. C307I Falls Church, VA 22044. AnthcmyF. Chiffolo is managing editor of the book program at Fordham University Press and has recently compiled and edited Pope ]ohn XXIJI· In My Own Words (Ligouri Publications). �Aluntni Notes ... Peter Bezanson (A) recently got a new job working for The Humanities and Sciences Academy of the United States. The job is a Johnnie dream come true-he was hired (specifically because he had a SJC background) to teach all aspects of a high school Great Books curriculum (from calculus to The Meno and everything in between). He encourages any current or former St. John's student who is interested in teaching the Great Books at the high school level and working with students one-on-one or in small groups to contact him. The academy is growing rapidly and opening new campuses, so they should be hiring regularly. Peter's e-mail address is: bezanson@ mail.mc.maricopa.edu. Brenton Him·ich.s (AGI) is Assistant Head ofHillbrook School, an independent K-8 school in Los Gatos, a town at the southern 50 miles south of San Francisco. He completed an MA at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education in 1998. His focus was education administration and policy. Sarah Van Densen (A) married Ethan Flynn and had a beautiful Henry Barlock Flynn, on 3. She is now in her first year at the University of School of Medicine. that he is alive and well and at the New of Music in Boston. "I am in the Graduate Theoretical Studies in Neuroscience from Georgetown_ doctoral dissertation University. focused on a common but incurable genetic disorder of the nervous system and I was fortunate enough to some ,_,,,_,~~~•-HF, respect to its diagnosis My research was conducted at Georgetown, the National Institute L~eur.01c1gi1ca1 Disorders and Stroke, and the Max Delbruck Center for Molecular Medicine in Berlin was a Scholar). I am currently finishing medical school at Georgetown and would love to hear from any alumni in the D. C. area. My e-mail is mashourg@gusun.georgetown.edu." Almost one year after graduation, AminaKhattak (SGI) ....__.n.._.,,.,....,...... Claassen (SGI) were married in a small ceremony in Annapolis. The DANE OWEN: CREATING SUCCESS OUT OF NECESSITY S t. John's College attracts many people who feel they "missed out" in their formal education and believe they can learn best from the great books. Sometimes they have gone from unsatisfying scholastic careers to successful roles in society-in business, family, or other endeavors-before discovering St. John's and rearranging their lives to study at the college. And sometimes their experience at St. John's causes them to rearrange the rest of their lives. Dane Owen (SF98) changed course both before and after St. John's. A native Californian, he began a career in restaurant management in Los Angeles while in his early 20s. Because he was CU51avpom1tea college he attended after high school, he had decided to leave before t2;r:aai11at:m,g-. In the restaurant business he became successful as a sommelier-a wine steward. His expertise in wine the restaurant he was managing into the pages of Wine Spectator magazine. But surprisingly, even two hours of daily wine tasting did not prevent Owen from making his way to Santa Fe to enroll as a freshman at St. College. An alum Owen gave him a to colleQ'es. tellinQ' him she thouQ'ht St. John's sounded .__, "''-"""'c' in Minnesota, liberal arts school for men, he returned the book and commented that the school didn't seem riirht for at all. his friend pomt:ed inSantaFe. arrived in Santa he Ha,,.__u_au y on for work with the top restaurants in town, where he worked as waiter rather than manager to leave time for his studies. As someone exnenenced in fine restaurants, Owen was able to earn for his tuition and Owen continued to pursue other interests, which was desirninir and "".:>o:ir-in,-,. had h-rrrn .--.-1-.1· 1 Owen that he sell Tansu, a unique form ofJapanese cabinetry that is considered both folk art and fine art. Jackson restores and sells Tansu in Chicago and curated a show on the art form at the Graham Foundation in Chicago in 1996. Although Owen planned to work at selling jewelry and tea pots at the flea market only as a part-time job while a student, he became increasingly interested in Tansu and other Japanese antiques. He gave up his restaurant jobs to concentrate on his new interest. The preoccupation is quite Johnny-like-Owen had no formal education in the area of Asian arts and antiques, but has read. He is also a fan of Samurai films and a student of the martial arts. Soon Owen was able to his flea market experience selling into a business. He Asian opened his own on Palace time he was a senAvenue is a beautiior. The ful space filled with a stunning array of Japanese furniture. tableware, screens, ceramics, paintings, textiles, Knnonos, an eclectic collection of antiques. Owen also sells fine rugs and specialty Japanese fermented tea. He and his friends renovated the space themselves. It is a ._,,__,.,_""--'-'-''-'-environment-fortunate for Owen who most of his time there. The (last year Owen took four work has off: Shibui was successful in its first year, beatin~ the dismal odds of small busi- 1 ""' grnw, Owen would like to his business to other cities. For the mo1nent, he concentrates on the of the he offers and a better understandJ,ng of Tansu and Asian folk art. Shibui hosts lectures, and educational programs various art sometimes in with other leries. Owen has organized and lectured on Jm)a11ese screens, on Japanese folk art in straw, and on and on Tibetan rugs. Owen travels across the search of ex< pieces for his and clients. He also travels far and wide via the Internet on his hunt for the nPTfP,.,tantiques. He has not, Tansu chest and other -uvuc;t,c; for or savvy, Owen says the college was instrumental in the financial necessity for his becoming an entrenreneur. He was determined to tuition without acc;urnu.LatL:ng rermlffE:d to establish the business. In aarunon, of Owen's errm1ov{~es business are www.shibuihome.com Melissa Sherman ms:pn~at1on <'11ll'\n<rYT'1° with ... .. ... table at the market attracted those who were experts, who shared their lmowled~e with him. David Jd'-'A~UH, an couple recently moved from Washington, D.C., where comhis JD at Georgetown Law and now reside in NYC. They would welcome hearing from any of their classmates. E-mails to: amina_claassen@hotmail.com. Clasby (A) called and said that after law school, he clerked for the Hou. Howell Cobb, Jr. (A44), United States District Court Judge in Beaumont, Tex.; now he's back in D.C., working at Hogan & Hartson. Christoph.er (A) and Jennifer Ranck write: "We have left the (SFGI99) rural comfort and safety of P.:>nn<:vhrnn-i<:1 for the Research be meeting my very first class of students next week at the Trinity School. Trinity is a small Christian private school that prides itself on having a classical curriculum. If anyone would like to contact us, �done, but I'm pretty happy to be our new address is: 5639 Chapel here in general. I'm really enjoying Hill Road, Apt. 403/Durham, NC the stuff I'm working on here, and 27707." would be glad to talk about just what Brian McGuire (A) writes: that is with any interested alums. "After three years of graduate study Also, if anyone knows of a political in philosophy at the University of science PhD program that has any Dallas [Brian expected to finish his master's thesis on Anselm's negative sort of gender emphasis (besides the one here at Rutgers), I'd be really theology at the beginning of happy if they'd let me know.. .I'm at September], I decided to get out of pooley_ d@hotmail.com." the speculative thought business Michelle L. Craig (AGI) is altogether. So, I became a reporter. beginning her second year in the Currently, I'm living in New Haven, doctoral program in history at the Conn., and writing for the National University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Catholic Register in nearby Hamden. She is focusing on the coffee trade of I've been in regular contact with the 18th and 19th centuries and is several A96ers since graduationteaching her first course, American Kirk Duncan, Kendall Golladay, Historyto 1865, this fall. Feel free Sean Leadem, Carter Snead, to e-mail her at John Sifton, Matt Caswell, Jeff mlcraig@umich.edu. Gara, Sveta Mendyuk, and honCourtney McKee (nee orary 96er Aaron Pease. Lawton) (SFGI) married Scott Carter Snead (A) and Leigh Fitzpatrick Snead (A98) are finally McKee (SF) in October 1996. After completing an internship with the taking their year in Santa Fe. After Santa Fe Public Schools, she now graduating from law school at teaches French and freshman Georgetown University this past English composition at Moriarty May, Carter is currently clerking for High School in Moriarty, New one year on the United States Court Mexico. She writes: "I use the St. of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, for Judge Paul J. Kelly. Leigh is working John's seminar style to teach some portions of Romeo and Juliet, The in the office of Governor Gary Johnson. They will be in Santa Fe for Odyssey, and Animal Farm to my one year, afterwhich theywillreturn 9th graders. They really love fornmlating their own questions, and we to Washington, D.C., where Carter all enjoy entertaining them! My will join the law firm of Wilmer, French II class and I are planning a Cutler, and Pickering. They would love to hear from anyone in the area! trip to France in April 2001, and to Montreal in April 2002. Scott conHeather Pool (SF) is currently tinues to work at Camera and in the Women's Studies MA proDarkroom in Santa Fe, on Galisteo gram at Rutgers University. She says Street, where he's in his fifth year. she's "having a fabulous time of it. We bought a home in Edgewood, Adjusting to New Jersey has not NM. I try to make it a point to attend been the easiest thing I've ever continuedfrom page 2 8 Travels. As for the writing of romance novels, Fields says, "Part of it is in spite of St. John's, and part of it is because; it's hard to tell which is which." Fields is on her way to becoming successful. In January 1999, St. Martin's Press published her first novel, The Maidens Revenge. She has finished her second book, Marrying Jezebel. Her third novel, set during the Crusades, is in the works. Still, Fields is a young and struggling artist. "Being a romance novelist," she says, "means getting a very small advance and praying like hell that people will pick up the book and like it enough to read another one." Her books may very well attract history buffs in addition to romance readers because they are set in a specific historical context. Not only does this enhance the stories, but it provides Fields the opportunity to study history. She has to research the period and read extensively on details of life in the given time and place. For her first novel, a swashbuckling romance about a female pirate, Fields investigated the life of pirates in England and the West Indies in the 18th century. Fields describes the plot of The Maiden's Revenge: "Lynnette Blackthorne, once a sheltered aristocrat's daughter, better known as Captain Thorne, commander of the sailing ship Maiden's Revenge, is a driven leader and a woman never bested in battle. She takes what she wants and lets no man get in the way. However, she's destined to find much more than plunder when she clashes with Captain Daniel Bradley, a merchant who's every bit her match on the high seas-and in love." The hardest part of the novelist life, Fields says, is getting the first book sold. Since she worked with literary agents, she knew the process of approaching publishers. community seminars, but find my hands pretty full with teaching English 101 at the University of New Mexico and French and English to teenagers; they're so great and really do love to learn. I'd love to hear from my classmates. Drop me a line at P.O. Box 3074, Edgewood, NM 87015 or e-mail me at honeycombhideout@earthlink.net." 1997 Annemarie Catania (A) is studying Classics at Johns Hopkins University. Anne K. Kniggendorf (SF) recently completed U.S. Navy basic training at Recruit Training Command, Great Lakes, Ill. Kniggendorf's eight-week training included classroom study and practical instruction on naval customs, first aid, fire fighting, water safety and survival, and shipboard and aircraft safety. Melanie Kirby (SF) writes from down in Paraguay, South America: "I am finishing my Peace Corps Volunteer Service in December 1999. I have been working with 'campesino' farmers to initiate and sustain small-scale 'Africanized-killer bees' bee keeping. Sounds scary and for the most part is adrenaline inducing work! I love it! The work has been fabulous and I look forward to returning to green chili and mountains. If anyone would like to contact me regarding the Peace Corps, my e-mail is ringofire@hotmail.com or basscadette@mixmail.com. After Nevertheless, she counts herself lucky to have had her book read in the first place, since an author usually sends a manuscript to hundreds of editors, who make highly subjective decisions. After buying the first manuscript, St. Martin's Press invited Fields to write another. With this commitment, she was able to quit her day job and work full-time on Marrying Jezebel, a historical romance set in 19th century Egypt and England. It's due out in October. The main character is Jezebel Montclair. When her uncle dies, Jezebel's new guardian, the my Peace Corps tour of duty, I plan on heading to Hawaii to work on a gardenia farm for about half a year." 1998 Larry McNeely (A) is pursuing a Masters of Public Administration at West Virginia University. 1999 Andre Scalfani (A) is in Oslo, Norway, where he is teaching Bible classes at a small private school. wealthy Rafe Sunderland, a very proper (and very handsome) scion of British society, determines to marry this unwanted burden off, sight unseen. Jezebel herself, however, has other plans for her future-and the instant Rafe Sunderland lays eyes on this beautiful, independentminded young archaeologist, so does he. Hillary Fields will be in Annapolis to sign The Maiden's Revenge over Homecoming Weekend in October of 2000. It's available in stores now, but as Fields warns, beware-these books are highly addictive.• by Jessica Godden (SF02) and Alisa Murray Smith (SFGI9 9) �Obituaries Stanley N ordstrum John William Wood Class 1919 John William "Jack" Wood, a World War I veteran who may have been St. John's oldest alumnus, died in December in Annapolis. He was 100. ~fr. Wood attended the Croquet Match last May, where he hit the opening ball. At the age of 9 3 he was the croquet champion at Ginger Cove, a retirement community in Annapolis. Mr. Wood, born in 1899, attended St. John's when it was a military school. After graduation he served in the Army during World War I and then attended the Naval Academy for two years. His career was as a metallurgist; he worked at the Naval Experimental Station, for Westinghouse Co., and for the Annapolis Metropolitan Sewage Commission. During his retirement, Mr. Wood was very active and played several sports in addition to volunteering with the Boy Scouts and the Anne Arundel Medical Center. He is survived by a granddaughter and a great-grandchild. Dr. George J. Weems, a retired family physician, died in January in Prince Frederick, Maryland. Born in Prince Frederick, he graduated from St. John's and from the University of Maryland Medical School in 1937. He established his medical practice in Huntingtown, Maryland, and then served in an Army medical unit overseas during World War II. He returned to his local practice after the war and continued as one of the last country doctors in the area, retiring in the 1990s. Dr. Weems served as medical examiner and as a Calvert County Commissioner. Surviving are two sons, two daughters, five grandchiland one brother. E. Carl Lyon Director ofBuildings and Grounds, Santa Fe Class of 1934 Monsignor E. Carl Lyon, founding pastor of St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in Silver Spring, Maryland, died in August. Monsignor Lyon was also a former executive director of the Washington Catholic Youth Organization. Born in Indian Head, he graduated from St. John's in 1934 and became a social worker in Baltimore. In 1946, he was ordained into the priesthood. He served as associate pastor of the Shrine of the Blessed Sacrament in Washington for 14 years before being appointed first pastor at St. John the Baptist in 1960. At the time, 175 families were registered in the parish; the number had grown to 1900 families when he retired in 1987. Survivors include two brothers and two sisters. George Udel, founder of the Baltimore Film Forum and promoter of film in the city, died in November. Born in Greenwich, Connecticut, and raised in he graduated from St. John's, then studied film and creative writing at _ Hopkins, New York University, and the New School for Social Research. He served in the Signal Corps in Japan from 1951 to 1952 and developed an admiration for the Japanese filmmakers. In 1954, he met his future wife, Joan Erbe, at a showing of a Marx Brothers double feature at St. John's. He worked as an editor and cameraman for WJZTV, as a systems analyst for the Social Security Administration, and then as a relations specialist He became for the Creative involved with the Baltimore Film Forum in 1969 and helped expand the film scene in Baltimore bringCinema to the Charles and other programs. He is survived by his wife, three children, and one grandchild. he Alumni Association of St. John's College wishes to express its affection and respect for Stanley Nordstrum, who died in late November. Mr. Nordstrum, supported by his wife Sis, served the college faithfully as the head of Buildings and Grounds on the Santa Fe campus from 1965 to 1979. Born in 1915, Mr. Nordstrum spent his early years and most of his adult life working on his family farm in Iowa. That environment nurtured the character of the man whom generations of students came to know and love. Stan was even-tempered. Even when students behaved outrageously, inexperienced staff misunderstood instructions, and the desert weather failed to cooperate, Stan maintained his patience. His warmth and humor provided a solid anchor for his staff and for the larger college community. Stan was resourceful. At a time when the college struggled to cover basic expenses, Stan and Sis discovered creative ways to stretch the college's dollar. They recycled and reused before the idea became fashionable. They both pitched in to make sure things got done. Many winter mornings in the upper dorms began with the sound of shovel on concrete as Stan and Sis cleared the walkways before anyone else was awake. Stan was understanding. He was often perplexed by the social and ethical questions students asked themselves. His common sense and traditional to life choices had served him well, but he never let his ethical sensibilities turn into bias or prejudice against students who did not share his views. He was willing to talk about and to listen to students' dilemmas of all kinds. Stan was committed to the college. He came to St. John's by invitation of Mr. Weigle. Stan and Sis knew most of the students by name and cared about the future of each one. They also expressed concern for the stability and future of the institution they came to call home. As the Santa Fe campus grew from a hope to a living Stan and Sis provided the caring and safe atmosphere that created a community out of a collection of would-be scholars. Since his retirement in 1979, the college has missed his and sustaining presence. with his passing, we will all miss the certain knowledge that there is someone who was able to turn bricks and mortar, adobe and chamisa, into a nurturing community. Mr. Nordstrum is survived by his wife, Sis, of Albuaueraue. and his children Bob and Mary. by Glenda Eoyang (SF7 9) for the Alumni Association T 172, Sr. Vice Commander 1991-92 of the Old Rail VFW Post in Mt. and Charter Member of the Society, his Connecticut and the Hartford worked for the Atlanta Public T-n~"tTA-r>cl1t-u when he was awarded the Brnnze Star. Before to western he worked as an Environmental Sanitarian with the Anne Arundel Health ,,,r,., ...-i-.....,,,,.,,.-r Member of the Viet Nam Veterans of America uu<:L1.11-c.1. who worked in Alice Whelan in Santa Fe for 13 years, Born in 1915 in of �Calllpus Life ... JOHNNY JARGON ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• A sampling ofsayings andphrases ~ diverse as the student population may be, Johnnies tend to develop common characeristics and a specialized vocabularyJohnny jargon. Sometimes the words and phrases are not unusual in themselves, but they develop a special meaning at St. John's. Sometimes the vocabulary itself is distinct-where else would you have sports teams named in ancient Greek? A request to the St. John's alumni e-mail listserve for favorite jargon stirred up many memories. Lee Mendelson (A89) remembered Natty Bo (National Bohemian beer, for those not familiar with Baltimore/Annapolis swill). He once stored 50 cases of Natty Bo in his room in Campbell during sophomore year in preparation for a huge party. Another discussion began after Sam Stiles (A54) sent the following post: «In the early fifties we said in seminar, 'Now take, for example, this ashtray,' (fairly large heavy glass ones) as an example of a very material object. I wonder what filled its place in metaphysics when smoking in seminars was banned?" In some seminars, Coke cans followed ashtrays, while in others the material example is usually a water bottle. Here's a sampling of favorite jargon from current and former students: • What do we mean by ... ? • Let's get back to the question. • Can you point to the text on that? Chris Quinn (SFGI) demonstrates a johnny gesture. • Being qua being, banana qua banana, substance qua substance, etc. • Nous nousing itself. • What's the Greek on that? • Who has another translation? • The question you're actually asking is .... • Can you say/do that again? • Could you clarify that? • What's at stake here? • Does that wash? • The "aha!" moment. • Your point is that which has no part. • Nar (for Seminar) '" The application of personal possessive adjectives to the texts, for example: "I have to read my Phaedo by seven." • "Thomas" or "Tommy" (for Thomas Aquinas) JFs (for January Freshmen) '" Guerilla Seminars • It's for Reality. by Alisa Murray Smith, SFGI9 9 PLATO IN THE MIDST OF BUREAUCRACY T he registrar on the Santa Fe campus has a lot more on his mind than schedules and transcripts. Ken Howarth is someone who also thinks about Plato and poetry and Sanskrit. Howarth is a rare alumnus who has completed both Master of Arts programs - in Liberal Arts and in Eastern Classics. He graduated from the Liberal Arts program in Annapolis in 1996. He decided to enroll in the Eastern Classics program and moved to Santa Fe, in 1997. After working for a produce brokerage in Santa Fe, he for and was hired as the college registrar. Howarth received his BA in ponnca1 science from Davidson Collee.-e in North Carolina. After finishing his undergraduate studies, he served as an Army officer on active duty. He refers to this time in his life simply as "a learning experience." He found out about St. John's from his parents, who moved to Annapolis while he was in college. "It was the comprehensive nature of the program that interested me," he says. From the beginning, he had an idea that he would like to study the classics of both the Western and Eastern traditions. His role as Tegistrar allows HowaTth to pursue a vai·iety of interests in a setting that Temains intel"I'm veTy pleased to be a part of the communi" he says. "The staff and faculty with are great, and I love the students." He finds the most .,,,,.L.lHLUOl.'U.UJ;:;. ~ , lS intense and the chore of running the office keeps him busy. Diane Martinez, the much-loved registrar who retired last trained Howarth in all aspects of the office. "Diane did a great job to get me up to speed," he says. And although he has made several changes in operations, such as utilizing computer software specific to the work of the registrar, he acknowledges that the job Martinez did still serves as his standard. In addition to his duties as registrar, he continues to be active in the academic life of the college. This fall, he led a community seminar on Adrienne Rich's poem exploring aspects of the cave analogy from Plato's Republic. Participants addressed "what light [Rich] shed on Plato shedding light on things." In the spring, Howarth will lead a Community Seminar Series on Montesquieu. He is enjoying his new role at St. John's, in particular the fact that "in the midst of the bureaucratic shuffle, we can still break into a conversation about Plato." 111 by Amber Boydstun, SF9 9 FASTS Santa Fe has joined the Annapolis campus in tundra1smg for Oxfam America, a hunger relief organization that serves 28 countries around the world. The fundraiser, however, differs from the average fundraiser. Students were not solicited for financial contributions. Instead of money, students were encouraged to forfeit a meal from their own meal plan to provide one for those less fortunate. With the cooperation of the respective campus food service offices, the money saved from all the students' fasts was donated to Oxfam. This fundraiser is not only because it enables people to give from the heart without to reach into the pocket, but also because a fast engenders a sense of on each campus. Additionally, now that Santa Fe has entered into friendly competition with Annapolis, the fundraising builds one more connection between the campuses of the curriculum. Tutor Tuck introduced the idea of the fundraising fast at Annapolis and it has been successful on that campus for seven years. They were able to break the record this year with an impressive 317 meals. Santa Fe, in its first year, surpassed Annapolis with 355 meals. However, some Annapolis students, faculty, and staff gave cash donations with the result that Annapolis raised over two and a half times the amount Santa Fe did. Needless to say, both campuses are quite proud to be able to together contribute over $1,300 to Oxfam America, and look forward to breaking this record in years to come. by Abigail Weinberg, SFOO �WRONG NAME, RIGHT ADDRESS ad news-good news time. The Colonial Day in Annapolis in bad news is that the little white 1926-found in a store house by the Campbell parking ('"excuse me, antiques lot that has always been known as shop," says Gable) in Johnson House" is really Pennsylvania. An old 45 rpm not the Reverdy Johnson House. recording of the "Ode to St. More about that later. The good John's" has been framed, as news: Alumni now have a real home has an old admissions proon the Annapolis campus. The motion piece from days gone Alumni Office has relocated to the lit- by titled "This Splendid tle white house in back of Intensity." Much of the furHumphreys; Alumni Director niture in the parlor comes Roberta Gable (A79) and her assisfrom the home of Mrs. Kaplan. Mrs. Kaplan, widow of tutor Simon Kaplan, tant Lynn Yarbro are happily died last spring at the age of 105 and left her house and furniture to the colensconced and are rapidly making it a lege. Yarbro is particularly fond of Mr. Kaplan's steamer trunk, marked "S. center on campus for all alumni. Kaplan," in which he brought all of his worldly goods to America in the ''It's a wonderful house for hold1930s. ing all sorts of parties and meetingsGable is attempting to compile a list of everyone who's lived in the everything from stafflunches to prehouse, including tutors, students, and directors of residence. The building ceptorials," says Gable. There are also served at various times as the music library and the infirmary. (Former rur() main rooms downstairs, an office denizens of the house are invited to contact the college with informationand the parlor. There's also a teensy the alumni office phone is 410-626-2531; e-mail alumni@sjca.edu). kitchen. Upstairs, there is a student One name not on the list of those who lived in the house is Reverdy workroom (the yearbook will be put Johnson (SJC class of 1811), senator, attorney general under Zachary Taylor, together there, and student aides will and minister to Great Britain. The house did belong to Reverdy' s brother, "C Q,) ..... be busy mailing various postcards John (SJC class of 1820 )-no slouch he was the last chan(I) and communications to alumni) and cellor of the state of Marvland and an accomnlished 1urist John and his wife & a small confeTence room. v v <;.) 'tjl IZ 0 The ambiance is decidedtS 'tjl ~ ,...; 0 .$: ly St. John's-esque. Agewise, C'l (I) sided abode was behind it in the gar..... <;.) ..s:::: ~ 0 Q,) ..... 0 the house dates den. After death in ...... H ~ H ~ from the first of the 0 lived in the little house. It "C '!) 0 u 18th ,-.,pr11tn1•-.;r v 1Z o until 1918. ~ u 00 (I) floors are crooked ;.::l ;.::l C'l ..0 ..0 ?'1 staiTs look like the way into ;::j ;::j 0 11.i 11.i i:;Q Batman's and have think before you walk ~ doorway between office and the because it's inches too short for a six-foot person," says the tallish alumni director. ''Whenever of stature comes in we have to shriek to alert them. It's one of the hazards of living in a house this old." ~ the house to St. The interior decoration deserves special mention. Gable and ~ Ban to move it to Yarbro have scoured the college archives and the Alumni Office :2, campus and use it for faculty housing. files for photos and other memorabilia to display. On the walls So on campus it is-but not as the Reverdy House. instead as the there are photographs galore, even a gallery of tutor photos taken by Robert Gable and Lynn Yarbro in the parlor of the Chancellor Johnson House, in Vivian Ronay (A65). There are two panoramics, one from 1918 and Chancellor Johnson front of a tableau of alumni pmn:u:s. one from 1926. There's a poster from when St. John's hosted to SJC alumni. (/] U] U] (/] ~ FIELDS: ROMANCING A~~~~~~~~ ·······••@••··············· ........................... . Fields (SF97) became addicted to romance novels while in high school. She once read aloud from a n51·np1rh51,,-.1< romance her friend was engrossed nu:en1arn1~ to make fun of what she o be frivolous non- she says, the novel was tongue in cheek, but she grew to love it. Fields continued to work on the novel while she was at St. John's (she spent her first year in Annapolis, the rest in Santa Fields' favorite aspect of her studies at St. was uT11"· 1 nno- papers. To her O'Wll '""·n..she found that papers tended to mimic the of the author of the book she was 1 ""' and Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead) that she realized that writing might be a strong career possibility. "The intensive focusing on a single "Writing project, a single changed my outlook and my she says. "I had never felt so life as I did while .,.,,.,..,i-,.,,,,.,. my essay, difficult and it was. I had never felt so accomp.u..,...ivu. or <.:aiiau1e rn'iT"UTi"1>All,P. completing the romance novel and then returned to New York with the manu:scr1pt. She landed a erary agency, but althOU!:.!:'h en-1oveawo1rK1m2 with authors out, she found that she had little time left over her own 'WfitV\711en ..., about the book deal she'd been she decided to return to the ti on." Came off sotmclmi:?: like Austen herself. But it was ..., the senior essay process subiect was Hamlet Pr,on1rfu··p do better and on her own romance. At much as pv:i;,.1.u.1.>c ., she does include references to the Great like ..--ic-t,-.,itl"' and Gulliver's shesaid.iviiu•vviu~ spent three more months in Santa Fe continued on page 25 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The St. John's Reporter</em> Description An account of the resource College newspaper which started publication in 1974. Continued publication into 2000. Includes primarily historical content.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The St. John's Reporter" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=35">Items in <em>The St. John's Reporter</em></a></strong> <span>to view and sort all items in the collection.</span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 28 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context vol 26 issue 2 Winter 2000 Title A name given to the resource Reporter, Volume 26 Issue 2 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2000-01 Description An account of the resource Volume 26, Issue 2 of The St. John's Reporter. Published in Winter 2000. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Public Relations Office Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Goyette, Barbara (editor) Mulry, Laura J. (editor) Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf The Reporter https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/44353aaa00c7bbd8e4629dcd19ca9d1e.pdf 1ec352c0de2f7c80c4c56905934a6473 PDF Text Text �(Frolll the Bell Towers ... $2. 9 MILLION FOR MELLON before adjourning, the General Assembly a bill providing $2.9 milin funding to restore Mellon Hall. The behemoth of a building, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright protege Richard Neutra in 1958, is in need of a major overhaul - heat_, and air electrical and plumbing a-..... 1·1a 711 11 '""' build" says campus trea"The renovation surer Bud should give us a much more livable building touches are planned, including perhaps a glassed-in coffee shop area in the presently unused courtyard. Of course, everyone has some pet peeve about the building - how about those steel louvers that have never worked to keep out the sun, for example? The building, as a part of the Historic District of Annapolis, can't be changed substanfrom the so all work •Nill be harmonious with the current look. Price is with the rest of the money from fundefforts and loans. The Baltimore architectural firm Ziger/Snead has been working with the Committee on the designs. First steps will take place this summer, when the parking lot between Mellon and the Plant will be expanded. • Mellon hall will get an internal update over the next three years. NEWTON ISSUE OF THE REVIEW NEWTON APPLE SEEDLINGS THRIVING 0 n the first day of spring in the new millenium, Mollie Ridout, the Director of Horticultural Programs at London Town, a restored historic settlement 10 miles south of Annapolis, carefully opened a plastic bag filled with sand that had spent the winter in a refrigerator. Inside, she saw that the seed she had placed there last fall had sprouted. It was an apple seed, and the fruit it came from had traveled from England, where it grew on a tree descended from the apple tree under which Sir Isaac Newton sat while thinking about gravitation. When the large, pedigreed apple was cut open last November, Ms. Ridout found only two slightly mildewed seeds. In order to maximize the potential of having at least one survive, she sprayed the precious seeds with a fungicide and stored them for the winter in sand-filled ziplock bags in separate refrigerators. "I was really thrilled to open up the stored seeds and see that the apple seeds had started out all on their own," says Ms. Ridout. "And it's continued to beveryreassuring to see how healthy and vigorous they look." The seedlings are now about two inches high, and have sprouted their first set of true leaves. They have been moved to a flat in the greenhouse, where they will stay until mid-May, receiving fertilizer and water. Ms. Ridout adds, "The seeds are sharing a flat with some seeds from the Liberty Tree, and although the Liberty Tree seeds have not germinated, I think that they're all in good company." In May the seedlings will be moved to a protected holding area outside the greenhouse, where they will continue to grow and develop throughout the summer. They will be taken indoors for the winter. Next spring they should produce their first blossoms. The seedlings will probably stay in the nursery for two years, until they are large enough to be planted out. At that time, St. John's will decide on an appropriate spot for the tree on the Annapolis campus. The college plans to donate the second tree to London Town. The apple came from Woolsthorpe Manor, Newton's former estate, and is descended from the tree whose falling apple inspired Newton's theory of universal gravitation. A uniquely appropriate gift to the college from the graduating class of 1999, the apple was obtained through the National Trust in England. Ms. Ridout agreed to cultivate the seedlings until they are ready for planting. • Beth Schulman A WINNING RESTORATION T he project to restore marshland along College Creek by planting grasses (described in "The Restorative Power of the Marsh" in the winter issue) has won an award from Annapolis Preservation Trust. The project was recognized for its "contribution to the preservation of the history and character of our state capital," said Joan Abel, an official of the Trust. Impetus for the project came from Joyce Olin, wife of St. John's president Christopher Nelson, and from Steve Linhard, assistant treasurer at the college who served as project manager. St. John's tutors Kathy Blits and Nicholas Maistrellis researched the creek's natural history, supervised the planting, and involved St. John's students in the work. The Maryland Department of Natural Resources provided matching grant funding. Additional funding was provided by grants through the Ducks Unlimited program at Chesapeake Bay Foundation and through the Chesapeake Bay Trust. Contractor for the project was Environmental Systems Analysis. The project, begun last fall, restores 170 linear feet along College Creek, near the King George Street bridge, by planting spartina and other native grasses and shrubs. Biologs made of coconut fiber were placed on the creek bottom to hold the marsh plants in.place. The biologs will decompose over the course of seven to ten years, giving the shoreline a completely natural look.• Y earning to think again about the fundamental issues of modern physics - like absolute space, the nature of experiment, or the mathematical basis for descriptions of the phenomena? Isaac Newton is the thinker behind all of these. The current issue of The St. Johns Review contains papers that were presented at the conference "Beyond Hypotheses: Newton's Experimental Philosophy," which was held in Annapolis in March 1999. The conference investigated the question of how methods of scientific investigation can give more than hypothetical ideas about things. Contents include lectures by Francois de Gandt ("Does Newton's Science Disclose Actual Knowledge of Nature?"), William Donahue ("Newton's Theory of Light and Colors"), George Smith ("How Did Newton Discover Universal Gravity?"), William Harper ("The First Six Propositions in Newton's Argument for Universal Gravitation"), Curtis Wilson ("Redoing Newton's Experiment for Establishing the Proportionality of Mass and Weight"), and Dana Densmore ("Cause and Hypothesis: Newton's Speculation About the Cause of Universal Gravitation"). If you'd like to receive a copy of this issue of The Review, please contact the Alumni Office by calling 410-626-2531 or e-mailing alurnni@sjca.edu. • �Frolll the Bell Towers ... Hor ESSAY TOPICS 74 YEARS AT SJC S am Kuder and George Doskow, both Annapolis tutors who have served as dean, are retiring. Between them they have been faculty members at the college for 74 years. ALUMNI REGISTER SURVEY COMING .:; ~ ~ "' '" s 0 T ~ E-< s ~ Mr. Kuder has been on campus even longer, since he is also an alumnus of the class of 1954. After graduating from St. John's, he worked as an Assistant Mathematician, Associate Mathematician, and Mathematician at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. From 1955 to 1961 he was also an instructor at American University. Curtis Wilson, dean of St. John's in 1961, asked Mr. Kutler to teach a senior math class that spring, even though he was already teaching advanced calculus at American and working full-time at Hopkins. Mr. Kuder agreed, and returned the following fall as a tutor. He served as dean from 1982 to 1985 and has held the Andrew W. Mellon Tutorship since 1972. Mr. Kutler has taught in the Graduate Institute and helped to develop the math and science segment of its curriculum. In 1990 he designed software to teach Euclidean geometry to school students. he's math and his interests include every other aspect of the program. At a retirement held the last week Mr. Kutler confessed that he didn't know what he would do next. "When I got the form from the dean's I wanted to teach next year, I put 'Coffee Shon' in the office blank space," he said. ~ i:: T he most popular senior essay topics in Annapolis this year: War and Peace, and math and science subjects like Newton, non-Euclidean geometry, and Darwin. Other frequently-writtenabout authors and works include Homer, Nietzsche, Plato, the Brothers K, Shakespeare, the Bible, and Hegel. Many topics, of course, were singular, and these were in the main literary: Austen, Middlemarch, poets (Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Eliot), Faulkner, Rabelais, Gulliver's Trav- :/i :::;::t:EI':'\'i~:i'!:\'~:rn:\ " ~ i:: oj :E ;>Ci 0 .i:: ~ 1957 received his Ph.D. 1n ..v"'""'n"' of Connecticut in his thesis was on Morte D'Arthur. He at the of Connecticut and '"''-'u'-,i;;;."' before the St. in 1965. He served as assistant dean from 1983 to and was dean from 1985 to 1986. Mr. Doskow deveJlon1edinterests in women's, African and Asian literature and has led preceptorials on works in these At the retirement he said that when people asked him why he came to teach at St. John's, his answer was always, "Because it's the only place where they would let me teach math." He said he had enjoyed working with his students and colleagues and loved studying in all the different parts of the curriculum. e he survey for the Alumni Register - the book listing alumni names, addresses, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and occupations - will be mailed this summer. Be sure to respond so that your friends and classmates will know where you are and what you are doing. The book version of the Register will be compiled and mailed to all alumni early in 2001. The project is funded by the college and the Alumni Association. What about having the Register available online? A great idea, but at this time St. John's doesn't have the resources to do it. However, this will probably be the last time a print version is mailed to all alumni - in the future next Register "''11r""'"~•n be in fou:ryears), the information will be accessible on the Web. lumni can now post their resumes on the St. John's lacement Office website. Advantages: you can give the URL to potential employers, who can check out your resume and also learn about your academic background by looking at the college's other alumni and those interested in the college look at the site and may be interested in JoJtlmrues. You can your resume when you move, add or decide to re-write it. The service is free. The resumes will be se1u11ne:: e-mail to the Placement Office. To send of an e-mail message an att:acJh.rn1en.t) to placemen@mail.sjcsf.edu. You will be notified when the resume is posted. Resumes will be posted in a standard format. The resume database is located at www.sjcsf.edu/ placement/resumes.htm. e A sampling of the most intriguing titles: "Can Science Know God? The Question Posted in Newton's Principia, The Answer Found in the BookofJob," "My Lines Meet! Why Don't Yours? Words and Picture in Geometry," "Aristotle's Insight into Quantum Theory: Or, Everything Aristotle Has Said is Right," "A Foolish Consistency: What Do Limitation and Suffering Tell Us About Human Nature and What is Their Role in Defining Wisdom?" e el,s. �•• @ THE PRESIDENTIAL SEARCH CESS A committee oftutors and Board members, most of whom are alumnz~ look for a new leaderfor Santa Fe. S everal books written for and about the role of the college or university trustee state that one of the most important tasks of a board member is the selection of the college president. Those of us involved in the search for the president of the Santa Fe campus of the college have taken the statement seriously and have worked hard to assure that the best possible person is chosen as president. The committee was named and ..,u.:u~,..,uin late November 1999. We in our activities, apparent that professionals be needed so that it would. appear in the final issue of 1999. The ad Bt1UCl1tzcm Web site. In a.uu.i.uvu, we to were seeklng in a dents of 235 other liberal arts colleges seeking them. I had received 47 letters from college pn~s1(J.er1ts, some with suggestions of possible candidates, and some that wished us well in our search. In addition, I had received 17 applications in response to our advertisement and some 23 nominations from Board members and friends of the college. For each of the applications I sent a letter, a copy of the college catalog, a copy of the college Polity i with the amended section concerning the new Management Committee, and a copy of an article by Eva Brann that had been published in Daedalus. I requested that the applicant return a letter and essay, of no more than 1500 words, discussing the Polity and the Program of Instruction. For all those persons nominated, I sent a similar letter and enclosures, with the additional request that, if they were interested in pursuing the position, include a :recent cu:r:riculum vitae. The committee reviewed every m~1te:rrnls, and a team of re~;po1nsunmy for recommendation as to whether the person should be invited for interview. Other committee members could or refute the suggestion that a person be hroui!ht for an interview. In late bnn!'l;nr their nominations In response to that received an additional 34 nominations and the same process was followed for these nommees. We held our first full committee the Board ~ interviews were conducted with smaller groups of the committee members and the chair present for all interviews. The committee met two times between December and April, in addition to the time we were together for interviews. Electronic mail proved to be invaluable in every aspect of our communication. I have no doubt that, without e-mail, we would still be trying to set up a meeting time convenient to all members. By the time of the pn~sH1e:rtcv, April Board meeting, we had received responses from 52 people to our request for an essay. There were three women considered during the process; two applied and one was nominated. The one nominated was unable to apply due to other commitments; one woman was not suitable for the position, and the third took another job before we were able to interview her. the time of the Board meeting we had interviewed seven of from the candidates. On 21 we interviewed four additional ~ ~ F:rom these interviews we identifor fied four persons to be campus interviews. The campus ininvolved one and one-half non-stop for the , that occurred in each case. The visits both the Santa Fe campuses. One of the four candidates withdrew his and three were to each campus. Those individuals included: Mr. John .nvu.:,,Ju, senior advisor of the investment firm Robertson Stephens, a former Board chairman and member of the Board for 22 years; Mr. Ted a North Carolina District Court Judge and a 1975 alumnus of the Annapolis campus; and Mr. John Balkcom, adjunct professor of economics at the Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago, principal in human capital consulting with the firm Sibson & Company, a Board member, and a graduate of the Graduate Institute (SFOO). The hardest job of the committee lies ahead. We meet in June to determine which of the candidates to recommend to the Board at the July meeting. All reports are that we have done our job well in selecting the three finalists. We are anxious to have the input of faculty, staff, Board members, and anyone who to meet has had the with the ca11dJ.,dat:es, decision. to I want to take this .,..,.,,f"''"h' the members of the have all the best person to serve as Presidem of the Santa Fe to A final comment. This is the second time I have chaired a search committee for St. If anyone EVER asks you to consider ro"hai .... 1-nn- a search committee, smile act flattered, say "no as quickly as you can, and flee the room. M Brownell Anderson, Chair Presidential Search Committee Board of Visitors and Governors ALUMNI BOOK COLLECTION ADDS VOLUMES ongratulations alumni! The nascent alumni book collection at Meem Library in Santa Fe is 44 volumes strong and growing. Started in the fall of 1999 as a tribute to the literary accomplishments of St. John's graduates from both campuses, the alumni book collection has attracted significant interest among Santa Fe students, faculty, and staff. The community is pleased to see the writings of friends, students, and colleagues amassed and permanently displayed in the Ault-Evers Room of Meem Library. Santa Fe College Librarian, Inga Waite (SF87), extends a warm thank you to those who have made this new project possible. The diversity and depth of the collection is impressive, spanning the range ofliterary possibilities: children's stories, criminal history, chaos theory, education, computer programming, literary criticism, weight training, theology, poetry, art theory, sociology, gender studies, and biography. The scope will continue to expand, Ms. Waite anticipates, as more colleagues share their published works. Despite the broad sweep of interests and chosen pursuits, each alumnus/ a represented in the alumni collection has at least one thing in common: love of the written word, a passion shared by all Johnnies. The authors who are represented in the collection include: J. Christoph Amberger (AGI91), Joseph Anthony (SF87), John Stark Bellamy (A71), Elaine Pinkerton Coleman (SFGI88), Lorin Cuoco (SF77, SFGI97), Glenda Eoyang (SF76), Richard Field (SFGI98), James Gilliam (SF77), Alfred Grant (SFGI83), Dean Hannotte (A68), Ian Harris (A66), Jae Holzman (A52), Martha Jordan (SFGI86), William Kowalski (SF94), Thomas Myers (SF75), Kim Paffenroth (A88), John Ross (A69), Gail Donahue Storey (AGI87), Marlene F. Strong (A77), and Robin Chalek Tzannes (A73). Some books were donated by the authors or their friends, and others were acquired with Library funds. "Due to our finite resources," says Waite, "gifts are encouraged and greatly appreciated." St. John's College remains a special place for all alumni in part because it symbolizes a lifelong commitment to education. Waite asks that authors continue to support the alumni collection by inspiring others with their achievements - "As we all know, St. John's is a community, and no community exists without individuals. Share your own work and that of your friends so that we may celebrate one another's accomplishments, and continue the tradition of cherishing the written word." For further information about the alumni book collection, or the faculty book collection - a similar project containing tutors' works - please contact Inga M. Waite, College Librarian, by phone, 505-984-6041, e-mail, iwaite@mail.sjcsf.edu, or by mail at Meem Library, St. John's College 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 875014599. �Catnpus Life ... SOLAR GREENHOUSE: SEEDS, SUN' SCIENCE IN SANTA FE .............................................•••................................................................................ I n a little frequented area of the Santa Fe campus, on the south side of the Fine Arts Building, there has been a construction project going on that would puzzle the uninformed chance passerby. A rectangular trench, 23 feet by 14 feet, with a depth of 18 inches and a width of 28 inches, was dug some weeks ago and is now being assiduously packed with stone and dirt. This primitive but elegant endeavor is the modest beginning of the long intended St. John's Greenhouse. I first came to work at the College in 1993 and had only been here a few months when I was approached by a student enthused with the prospect of building a greenhouse. Since I am the college gardener, and in that capacity could envision many uses for such a structure, I was strongly in favor of the project. However, not being a builder, I was not of much practical help. Despite that student's strong and sincere desire nothing came of it. In fact, that same experience has been repeated every year since. Each year a student, usually a senior, has adopted the project, but, for whatever reason, the only progress has been the establishment of a fund consisting of $2000. This year a number of factors came into play: Kairos (imtpoi;) which encouraged my crew and me to believe that we move the project forward. One of these factors was Mike Dimezza (SF98, SFGI99) my new assistant, whose presence has enabled me to greatly expand my activities. Also, this year's crop of work-study students included an unusual number of hard workers, some of whom possess talents that could be used for the construction. Finally, and perhaps most critically, is the presence on campus of David Perrigo, the architect overseeing construction of the new Student Activities Center opening this fall. David most generously drew us a plan that both coincided with his own appreciation for the traditional construction techniques of the indigenous peoples of this area and our own lack of experience in such endeavors. Except for the windows, the building will be mostly mud and stone, materials that are forgiving and hard to mess up. Even so, I'm confident that despite the simplicity of the construction and the agreeableness of the materials we could go mightily astray, but David has promised to hold our hands throughout the process. The building as envisioned is rather small with very few moving parts. I see no need for electricity, and water will be supplied by a hose coming from the Fine Arts Building. It will, in short, be a sort of glorified cold frame. It remains to be seen if it can be used through the winter months. It is possible that in the coldest months the temperature at night may drop below freezing, which would preclude keeping plants in there during that time. A system to cover the windows with a solar blanket in the evenings might work, but at this point the funds are not available. Solar buildings of this type depend primarily on radiant heat to keep them warm when the sun is shining. The source for this in our building will be the brick floor and the adobe walls. When the sun strikes these materials they become warm and then slowly release that heat as the temperature drops. Of course long periods without sunlight can sorely tax the building's heating system. Fortunately Santa Fe has such a sunny climate that there is solar gain even on cloudy days. The question naturally arises as to what we are going to do with it once it's finished. The most important advantage for the care and beautification of the grounds would be to start plants for both the vegetable garden and the flower gardens. Presently I go forth in the spring and buy plants from nurseries. This is expensive and limiting in that I can only purchase what is available. The diversity of seed is far greater and much of it can be gathered out of the wild from species whose seed is not commercially available and may be better suited to the growing conditions on Photos: Sylvaine Rarneckers (01) campus. I plan to have growing beds on the south side of the greenhouse and Hans von Briesen, Santa Fe director oflaboratories, thinks these may be used to grow peas and so duplicate the genetic experiments ofMendal. I am unaware of other uses applicable to the curriculum but perhaps some will become evident in time. I assume, based on the strong interest that the student body has shown for its construction, that they too have uses in mind. What they might be I hesitate to speculate but at the very least it will offer a green moist retreat when the weather turns cold and the earth shrouds itself in the brown mantle of winter. • PatMcCue The Gardener (SFGI83) The Clrus of2000 selected the Greenhouse Projectfor the Class Gift, contributing almost $2000 with 42 seniors participating (over 50%). The Senior Class Gift Executive Committee included Christopher Chew, Tilman Jacobs, Heather Moore, Flame Schoeder, and Abigail Weinberg. Photo, top left: MikeDiMezza (SF91, SFGl98) Photo, top right: Pat McCue (SFGl83) with Mike DiMezza Photo, above: Mike DiMezza, Gabriel Donaldson (SF03), DanielJohnston (SF03), and Zephyr Renner (SF03). Photo, bottom left: Daniel Johnston and Zephyr Renner �Calllpus Life ... LIFE AMONG THE JOHNNIES (1960-1985) .•.••••.•........•••.......•••••••...............••••••••............••••••••.............•••••••••••••••••••........•..........•. Deep within the archives ofAnnapolis s Greenfield Library are four oversizedfile boxes containing roughly half ofthe minutes ofthe student governmentfrom 1960 to 1985. The minutes detail the quotidiana oflife on the Annapolis campus, from the dorms and dining hall to the coffee shop and College Creek. As once-public documents, they are accessible to any who visit the library. Butfor those who can't make it to Annapolis, or who would rather spend their time watching croquet or drinking chocolate shakes at Chick 'n 'Ruths, we offer these highlights. Kms THESE DAYS May 1961: There have been many complaints about folk singing in the quadrangle on weekday nights. The people disturbed have suggested that people who must indulge in this art choose the more rustic and earthy setting of back campus rather than a location from which it is almost impossible not to .disturb many students. March 1962: The administration feels that it is the responsibility of the persons who removed the paintings from the Dining Room and the Great Hall, and tied the chandeliers in the Great Hall together, to return the paintings carefully to their proper places, and to release the chandeliers. April 1963: Students are reminded that while they have a right to enter a building if it is academically necessary, they do not have a right to enter by breaking in. Mr. Keiffer has keys, and is always reachable by phone. February 1964: From a letter to the student polity from Gerald F. Zollars, Executor: Since Tuesday night I have :received complaints from both students and tutors concerning the dress and personal appearance of various students. These people ask me to "do someabout the clothes students wear to classes, especially seminar, and urge me to force other students to wash and cut their hair. My response has been that it is not clear that this is a responsibility of the Student Polity. 1-<&>1r11r11uurv 1968: Mr. Keiffer's comments: The tradition of drinking Symposium seminars died ago and was buried. November 1981: Itwas at this time that Mr. Edelman had an existentialist crisis, shooting President Schiavo and everyone else with a water pistol. President Schiavo then threw him out, but not before he wrote "HERACLITUS" on the blackboard and said that "all things must change." February, 1985: Mr. Kidd described his participation in an unsavory attempted bell-ringing offense which involved his belt, some friends, a screen, a steep man-made precipice, and two brushes with death on the part of Mr. Kidd which culminated in minor property damage, for which Mr. Kidd and entourage will repay the school, and some embarrassment, which is generally not compensable. WHERE THERE'S SMOKE March 1975: Someone wrote a letter containing a solution to the problem of smoking in the auditorium: that students carry water pistols to put the cigarettes out. Mr. Glass suggested something much more final: that we fill the water pistols with lighter fluid. lFThUTIIWEREA WOMAN Early '60s: There will be a series of three lectures, required, for women. They will cover Psychology of Sex, Physiology, Hygiene and Sex in Marriage. From Spring 1963 's Rules of Residence: All women are :required to be in their dormitories by one a.m. from Monday to Friday morning and two a.m. on Saturday and Sunday mornings. It is unlawful for men students to be on campus in the company of a woman student or any woman other than relatives after curfew. With the exception of the common rooms, no men may be in the women's dormiand no woman may be in the men's dormitories unless a member of the or administration or a parent is present. HAIL TO THE CHIEF 1980: In with the oral tradition of St. John's, President Auerbach announced that he will read anybody to sleep by appointment. This week's selections are the immortal Wind in the Willows or the immoral Anna Karenina. "'-n 11 ~<>"""' November 1980: Mr. Auerbach, armed with the new tools of office, i.e. bugle, gavel, and spacesuit, opened the meeting by introducing himself to the council. Photo, top: Watch the Clock! At one a.m., these scholars will be breaking polity law Photo: Marion Warren from the college archives Photo, center: The Gourmand Club strikes again - there have always been hits and misses by the food service. Photo: College archives Photo, bottom: Blue jeans? Long hair? There ought to be a law! Student attire, circa 1971. Photo: Marion Warren from the college archives. �7 Calllpus Life ... December 1980: The President would like it known that locks of his newly shorn hair will be available to all members free of charge. THE GOURMANDS CLUB OF A_r.mAPOLIS Committee's su1!?;2:1est:io1n circa "The oatmeal was runny." "The Baked Chicken short cake was very Let's have more often." "The hamburgers were better .. .in fact were bigger." the whole lunch in and '-' ., '--' baked beans." "Fried chicken in of the week was a su:rpnse." "There shouldn't be any chicken skin soup, should there?" avo announced that Miss Connors had resigned from the office of secretary. She was to be new#2 Rivwas , a unanimous vote that Miss Susan Lord succeed on her past as a scribe when she was a Girl Scout. L .1.'\..c: µ µc;1 BREAKING NEWS October 1981: Mr. Harris informed the Delegate Council that 4th floor West Pinkney no longer exists; it is now Haiti. He put in a request for some trees. Watch out 4th East: plans are made for convertinir that floor into the legion: Baldy, Beckman, Hapner, Joe, Kelly, Kidd, Shea, Slakey, Wilson, and Lowry. October 1985: NancyTownsend nominated Ms. Sallie Fine as polity hostess. The council whole-heartedly the nomination. Miss Townsend's address stressed the features of such an "~;i=~i-nL-~~~ One of which is "all IF THE SHOE FITS ._,a dress and a .... around her neck. Ms. Fine was ::. µ•c:ic;\,ui•c:;:,:i and "all as she mmnrl<>rl us with red doilies and a selection .._,is Crown . and also _Alternate Deleof Randall. position of it is to engender merriment among the has been vacant. President Schiavo had no trouble a new """-''U.i:::.J, .. Mr. Claiborne B. a head and shoulders was eiectea RUMOR unable to attend tom,ght' meeting, asked us to conduct it in her stead. Messrs. Letaw and and Miss Lichtenberg were our number was who walked blazingly among us, to hasten us There was a motion floor to make President God. He did not nosition but did l.,H'UU.j::,.U The vote was unanimous. 1985: An Legion of Glorywas formed. Members of the A SKELETAL OF THE DELEGATE COUNCIL A mid-sixties document tells us the early history of student government at St. John's. "The Rules of Residence, now known as the Polity Laws, have been at the very heart of discussion about student polity. The perennial argument over student government has usually reduced itself to a wrangle over the formation and enforcement of effective rules of student conduct. Extensive discussions between faculty and students over this matter in the years 1942-1943 led to the first proposed student government. In a general student election in 1943 a pessimistic attitude toward polity prevailed, and this issue was voted down, only to be raised again a year later and finally in 1945 was voted in. The first meeting of the Student Assembly was held in the Great Hall on September 28, 1945, with Mr. [Charles] Nelson acting as Moderator and Mr. [John] Van Doren as secretary." For manyyears, the student government enforced the Rules of Residence, using dorm delegates, polity attorneys, and polity justices to police infractions and levy fines. But this system caused much friction, especially when the polity did not agree with the rules they were enforcing, such as those restricting when men and women could gather and dress codes. Today's government, known as the Delegate Council, limits itself (more or less) to dispersing student activity funds to groups ranging from the Small Chorus, to the T'ai Chi Chuan Club, to the Pink Triangle Society, to the Math Club.• 1985: Mr. Werlin, Polity Ambassador of Good Will to the Universe, opened with the stunning pn11oso1)n1cru observation that "A smile is just a frown turned upside down." It was later made known that this was, indeed, the thesis of his essay. Called at various times the tiaicch.us, the of Bacand the Son the S.O.B. is still active Here is the club's circa 1972: This is the Charter of the Syndicate tla.ccJtiu:s. otherwise known as Feast, a group of Johnmes to be henceforward in J.dU;;!,HH! ' ca- known as the Madman (or Madwoman, as the case may be) or the Good-time the GoodThese folks shall then ~ was sworn in as a ., she has been one for some time now. Since there was no Bible or Greek-English Lexicon she swore over a copy of Dante's meet soon. Mr. Booker reminds us that "A camel is a horse devised by a committee" and so our Constitution will be. . or Elzey remembered such a policy based on the commodities. WISDOM OF THE AGES 1983: The Constitutional Revision Committee will ::;e1pte:mlJe:r , lHliUlt:lUf) SO- cializin' on every scale and in any mode among students, tutors, and friends of the college. Sus3an Borden (A87) �101 -WHAT Ir Cosrs ro RUN Sr. JottN's, AND WHY EVERY DOLLAR CoUNrs COLLEGE FINANCES F reeze a moment in time: 8 p.m. on a Thursday in Annapolis. Students and tutors are gathered for seminar. In McDowell, chairs scrape on the wooden floors; books and pencils are fiddled with, adjusted. A rogue student shifts to a spot at the table where he's never sat before, disrupting the orderliness of habit. One tutor arrives early and chats easily with students, the other rushes in brusquely at 8:02. Silence falls, fingers tap, a passage is found, the question is asked. Replay that moment, as seen by an accountant. Everything costs money for that moment to occur. A far from exhaustive list includes: heat and lighting for McDowell Hall, chairs and tables, tutor salaries and benefits, library books, financial aid for students, construction loan on the latest McDowell renovations completed in 1988, materials and labor for painting that was done during the summer, staff salaries and benefits (for ad- missions staff, which recruits students; for administrators of the financial aid and student work-study programs; for counselors, placement office, athletic facilities, health office staff, buildings and grounds staff), phones, computers, security. In order for that one seminar to happen, for students and tutors to gather to discuss the Meno, or Thomas Aquinas, or Kant, or War and Peace, St. John's has to cover all of these expenses. A similar accounting holds true for Santa Fe. MONEY OUT The money to pay for that one moment comes from what is called the operating budget. The pie chart (Figure 1) shows the breakdown for the 1999 operating budget, which totalled $28,943, 709 combined for both campuses. Not included are costs for constructing or renovating buildings or costs to provide for room and board, the bookstores, and other so-called auxiliary ex- penses. The two largest slices of the pie are instruction (faculty salaries and benefits) and student financial aid. Over the past ten years, the greatest percentage increase in the operating budget has been in the costs to provide financial aid - up from 20.5% in 1990 to 27.9% now. The percentage of students receiving financial aid is relatively stable - around 60% on each campus and St. John's remains one of the few colleges that still offers aid based solely on need. Students who qualify for financial aid are offered a combination of a St. John's grant, federal and state loans, and a workstudy job. Federal grants provided for about half as much aid this year as ten years ago. This means that the college must make up the difference - hence the increase in the amount of the operating budget that goes to financial aid. A logical question might be "If ·the tuition were lower, wouldn't the financial aid needed by students be lower, thus saving the college money?" But tuition is the college's main source ofrevenue, providing almost three-quarters of its income, and even at the current rate of around $23,000 a year, tuition only covers a little more than 70% of what it costs to educate a student. Savings in financial aid could never compensate for the loss in tuition, and would lead to a net loss in revenue for the college. MoNEYIN This chart (Figure 2) shows the revenues for both campuses for 1999, which totaled $28,607,621. (Astute readers will notice that this figure does not match the "Money Out" amount. Not to worry- the budgets of both campuses are balanced. Extra income comes from the auxiliary sources not reflected in this chart: room and board charges, renting out campus buildings during the summer, the bookstores, etc.) AN ACCOUNTANT'S-EYE VIEW OF SEMINAR: Two HOURS ON THURSDAY NIGHT 1. Tutor salaries and benefits [Instruction] $ 1,198.31 2. Student receiving financial aid [Financial aid] $ 1,133.33 3. Winner of sophomore essay prize (endowed as a result of fundraising) [Institutional support] $ 788.05 4. Library books [Academic support] $ 199.04 5. Forward for the Guardians (participant in athletic program) [Student services] $ 373.71 6. Repaired broken lower rung on chair [Maintenance and plant operations] $ 373.71 7. New mouldings, added during 1988 renovation [Debt] $ 166.55 Total for two hours $ 4,232.70 Note: The photo is for illustration purpo.se.s only. Student identifi.cation.r arefictitious and are offered only to clarifypoint.s made in the article. The figures used here are ba.sed on percentages of the Annapolis operating budgetfor 1999. �While revenues come from a variety of sources, there are two areas the college is working to increase: endowment, income and gifts and grants. First, a word about the endowment. The St. John's College endowment is a pool of money and other investments held to protect the long-term well-being of the college. to underwrite its creditworthiness, and to provide income to support current operations. It is managed by very competent firms and overseen by a committee of the Board of Visitors and Governors comprised of knowledgeable analysts, investors, and managers (several of whom are alumni). The endowment value as ofJune 30, 1999 was $77,622.,064. There are several endowment accounts - one for Annapolis, one for Santa Fe, and a common account. Each campus draws about 5% ofits endowment principal every year for operating expenses; that's the 8.43 of total revenues on "Money In." A strong stock market and new gifts help the endowment grow, which means that more money is available for the campus operating budgets. The income from gifts and private grants is also important. Most of this money comes to the cam- FIGURE puses in the Annual Fund drive about which alumni receive letters, brochures, and phone calls each year. The Annual Fund raised $1. 75 million in 1999; alumni contributed $732,270 of that. Alumni also make substantial contributions to the endowment every year. For example, money designated for scholarships or in honor of a tutor goes into the endowment. Money contributed to the Annual Fund, on the other hand, goes into the operating budget. During fiscal year 1999, corporations and foundations contributed almost $1.8 million to the college, some to the Annual Fund and some to various endowment funds. This represents 353 of what St. John's raised last year. The support the college receives from corporations and foundations hinges in part on alumni contributions-the degree to which alumni support their college is viewed by these important sources of funding as an indication of the school's worth. Philanthropia, the alumni group formed to focus on fundraising, wants to raise awareness among alumni about the importance of every gift-no matter what the size. "We hope alumni can see that the need for their support is clear," says Marta Lively (A78) Philanthropia chair. "The college doesn't take alumni gifts for granted. They are essential: St. John's can't continue to offer the same kind of education we received when we were students-small classes, well-educated tutors, a commitment to the nurturing of the intellect, and financial aid for students who need it-without our help." Alumni contributions are an important component of the Annual Fund, which supports the college's operating budget. Freeze another moment in time: 10:07 p.m. on the same Thursday night. Again the chairs scrape. Students descend the creaky wooden stairs, filtering outside to smoke or to talk. Soon the Coffee Shop is filled. Tutors juggle their coffee and books as they continue "the great conversation." A little more than two hours have passed. A little more than $4,232. 70 has been spent from the college operating budget. e Barbara Goyette 1. MONEY Our 1999 Combined Operating Budget • 4.13 Instruction- 29.5% (tutor salaries and benefits, labs, music) Student financial aid - 27. 93 Institutional support- 19.43 (president's and treasurer's office,Jundraising, communications, security, personnel) • Student services - 9.23 (counseling, athletics, health, admissions, placement, Gadfly, student activities) Academic support - 4. 93 (library, dean's office) Maintenance and plant operations - 4. 9% (utilities, buildings and grounds staff) Debt-4.13 (repayment on borrowed m<:meyfor capitalprojects) IN . 1999 Combined Revenues 2.23 Tuition - 74.53 Endowment income- 8.43 n...... 8.43 -7 t Fi Gifts and grants - 8.13 Federal grants (for financial aid) - 3. 7% <•~ State support - 3.23 • Other-2.2%} �Calllpus Life ... THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION IN 2000 AMERICA'S COMPASS? I n. early sp.ring, the Santa Fe campus hosted Re-Elect America, a forum led by Dr. Balint Vazsonyi, director of the Center for the American Founding. A public Roundtable Discussion and Town Hall Meeting were held. Dr. Vazsonyi is conducting a national bus tour of the 50 state capitals to promote non-partisan debate on the principles at the heart of the American Constitution. Visit www.founding.org for information on upcoming tours. Panelists for the Roundtable Discussion were Dr. Vazsonyi; Grant Franks and Edward Walpin, both Santa Fe tutors; John Dendahl, chairman of the Republican Party of New Mexico and member of the college Board of Visitors and Governors; William Modahl, a retired New Mexico tax attorney; and Amina Stickford and Thomas Scerecz, both students on the Santa Fe campus. The Town Hall Meeting was conducted later the same evening, moderated by Mr. Agresto, with a panel composed of Dr. Vazsonyi; Tim Canova, a UNM law professor~ Dr. Tom Chavez, Director of the Museum of New Mexico; and Ernie Mills, a local news commentator. Inspired by the ideas formulated in his recent book, Americas 30 Year War: Who is Winning?, Dr. Vazsonyi is leading an effort to raise public awareness of the founding principles in the American Constitution: the Rule of Law, Individual Rights and Liberties, Property Rights, and the Common American Identity. Dr. Vazsonyi maintains that these four Constitutional principles are under siege by socialist tendencies and is urging their reinforcement as "America's Compass." The issues surrounding these four Compass Points led to much debate. The Rule of Law ensures that citizens are not subject to arbitrary authority · and can be apprised of the rules of conduct and their penalties beforehand. The Constitution is considered a set of rules "for the people and by the people," and can only be changed through due process. Much of the debate on this Compass Point centered around the idea that the Constitution may be flawed in that it tacitly allows social injustices such as slavery and denial of suffrage, which had to be set aright by special amendments. Dr. Vazsonyi was quick to declare that these injustices are not inherent in the Constitution, but rather, they descended from custom. The American Constitution, far from standing in the way of justice, promotes it through flexibility and amendments. Some panelists further entertained the possibility that the Constitution, having been written centuries ago, is outdated in the face of corporate America and the internet economy. Public property such as air waves and the internet, and drastic cultural shifts yet to come, were unanticipated by the founders, perhaps leaving the current Consitution open to potential abuses of power. This objection was countered with the idea that the American Constitution has successfully led this country and has a proven track record for more than 200 years, a reputation bolstered by historical examples of other failed governments. This staying power is attributed to the founders' reliance on ideas, and not specific situations. The concept oflndividual Rights and Liberties opened up debate about the Constitutional provisions for equality under the law. Some panelists felt that this principle has been twisted into "equality of outcomes," which strives to raise all citizens to the same level of privilege and opportunity. In this way, persons are differentially affected by the law, as evidenced by the introduction of affirmative action and 1960's New Deal legislation. Dr. Vazsonyi proposed that this compassionate socialism has gotten a foothold with the American people, and inevitably leads to the distribution of tax dollars for special-interest group rights, rather than basic common needs. Taxation, as envisaged by the framers of the American Constitution, gives the government the means to provide for common needs as they arise. The current barrage of legislation is often wielded by politicians to win favor with special interest groups. This "multicultural" development seems contrary to the sparse form of the constitution. Fewer laws require less enforcement, which in turn leads to less conflict between citizens and their government. Security of private property, the third point on the American Compass, led to debate about whether human rights could be derived from property and economic rights. Rousseau and Hobbes were cited as thinkers who believed that government conferred private property by distributing the country's wealth. This was contrasted to Locke, who asserted that the very ownership of private property itself was the origin of government. This dichotomy notwithstanding, the panelists entertained the idea that common human needs, such as food, clothing arid shelter, could very well fall out from secure private property and could reasonably be supported by taxation. Discussion on the existence of a Common American Identity returned once again to the multiculturalist movement and its effects. America, often regarded as a cultural "melting pot," is in fact the celebration of commonality with difference. If differences are over-emphasized, grievances arise and equality under the law is jeopardized. Debate over the perceived threat to ethnic heritage from Western values ensued. When pressed to give his definition of "Western values," Mr. Modahl offered up the faculty of self-criticism and empowerment which Americans exercise as citizens in the "land of the free." This Western value system was contrasted to the grievance identities and entitlements that multiculturalism seems to foster. Our common American Identity is derived, however, as this Re-Elect America forum highlighted, from the constitutional right every citizen has to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. AE, Dr. Vazsonyi remarked, "The principles which unite us are stronger than the issues which divide us." • Amina Stickford (SFOO) DESTINATION: NOGALES, MEXICO ~ ~ Q) s "' IZ Q) c: i <ii ~ 6: Top: On the way to Mexico Bottom: Washing dishes at construction site Students of Project Politae from the Santa Fe campus spent their spring break working on a project with Habitat for Humnity in Nogales, Mexico. The participants were: Gina Corso, Marcel Fremont, Maria Goena, Grant Goodrich, Lance Kirmeyer, Andrei Macaig, Meredith Mason, Joel Nowlin, Alexandra Rothenberg, Sylvaine Rameckers, Anna Stryker, and David Weiskopf. �QUIXOTIC? How the topic ofyour senior essay can resonate in your life ··•···············································•············································································· W: en it comes time to ettle on a senior essay opic, some students are vexed and grieved by having to choose, and others pick gladly, with happy hearts. But does the commitment have any significance in the larger scheme of things? It is, after all, for a paper that each student has considered a future possibility for at least four years. It is the Big Paper. Its title will appear under the student's name in the commencement program - implying that it has something to do with who he or she is. Is it just an essay, or does it reveal something about the character and/ or destiny of the writer? Let us consider, as a test case, essays on Don Quixote - below is a semi-random sampling of such essays and their authors from 1977 to 1987. We might hypothesize that those students drawn to an extended consideration of this story are themselves of a quixotic temperament. They're idealistic, perhaps, or even charmingly unrealistic. And possibly their pursuits are, shall we say, out of the ordinary. Take Therissa Libby (A82) (graduated in 1984 with •"For What I Want': Don Quixote and the Reading of Fiction"). She had a career as an addiction counselor (with adjunct pursuits in massage therapy, MariEL healing, acudetox (an acupuncture technique used as an aid in the treatment of addiction) and teaching and training addiction counselors, but found herself drawn to the study of neuroscience, and in 1998 entered a doctoral program at the University of Minnesota, focussing on the neurobiology of addiction. Her current research is on the cellular mechanisms of opiate addiction. "There are a number of ways in which my endeavors might be considered quixotic. One might expect that understanding addiction might be like tilting at windmills, but in fact, it is dealingwith the world's perceptions of addiction that better fits that description. I have worked in what one might call stigma reduction for a long time. Is it making any difference? I hope so, but how would I know? The politicians, parents, and academics I interact with still see the in much the same light, and have the same solutions: lock up the addicts and go to war with the ~ ,, since shown to be ineffective. va .... hn~~r the addict is the and I am its Sancho it around with only the dimmest understanding of what it's up to, and piping up in its defense when others cluck over its poor addled wits." Ben Haggard ( SF79) ("Cervantes' Knight of Faith: A Look at Don Quixote through Kierkegaardcolored Spectacles") is an environmental planner. "It's a little hard to describe what I do ... there's an ecological basis to it. I work to put people and place in a harmonious relationship. Not only should a development not damage either people or the environment, but it should enhance both, not just aesthetically but in every way. We work to solve the problem of how to do truly green development, that benefits ecosystems." And Don Quixote? "He had it right. He was peering through the surface of things into their actual meaning, their reality. I believe in and that characterizes me as a I look through what exists to see its potential. This is consistent with my time in art school, with my life as an aspiring painter, and certainly with my work." Joel Klein ("An Appreciation of Don Quixote") says that he dimly remembers the thesis of his essay. "I divided humanity into the Don Quixotes and the Sancho Panzas. A Sancho Panza is someone who takes the world at face value; a Don Quixote is an interpreter, one who sees the world as a landscape upon which he would exercise his vision." He agrees that he chose his essay topic for deeper reasons than just having something to write about. Klein is a commercially successful artist, with his own business, JeanPierre Studios, since 1992. He de. veloped a process, "vitreography," by which multiple levels of glass, with a lithograph in the back, create a drawing in three dimensions. ••1t's a pretty thin idea that I've pushed to the limit," he says. His work sells around the world, affording him the opportunity to ; ' I make other artwork. He works in oil on canvas, and, under the influence of his wife, a sculptor, also in wood and shaped canvases. So is the artist Sancho Panza, a student of appearances, or Don Quixote, the man of vision? "I hope my life is a lovely combination of the two gentlemen together." Margaret French Graham (SF83)(" ... and my hero, Don Quixote") is a stay-at-home morn, with Sarah, 7, Emma, 5, and John Andrew, born this March. She's an active community volunteer, organizing fundraising for a local safe house, leading a Brownie troop, volunteering at her church, and performing in the bell choir there. "Don Quixote is my hero because he believed in going out and searching and doing what he wanted to do. He had his vision and his purpose, and he followed it." And does the good Don inform her life today? "I couldn't say.... " But she did say that her mother doesn't think it's worthwhile to stay at home with the kids instead of having a "job"; but she knows that's what she wants to do, and she intends to continue doing it. Joe Macfarland (A87) ("The Knight of the Sad Countenance and the Merry God of Laughter") is a tutor on the Annapolis campus. When first buttonholed with this question about his essay, he said, "Oh, that's pretty personal." Why? "Because it's all about Dulcinea." Macfarland's study of Don Quixote came out of a question he tackled in his sophomore essay on the Divine Comedy: whether, as Dante says, "Love is the basis of all virtue and vice." Cervantes, Macfarland thought, had a different take on the issue, and he wrote his junior and senior essays on Don Quixote, and then returned to Dante's political thought for his dissertation (from the University of Chicago), considering the tension between reason and revelation, the separation of church and state, and the status of philosophy as either the handmaiden or something else entirely in relation to theology. But can Macfarland be identified with Don Quixote? Hey, he's a tutor-do we have to ask? Ken Hom (A80) (his essay was called simply "Dulcinea") is the senior producer of Weekend Edition Saturday on National Public Radio. His show is eclectic, whimsidead serious, and singleminded in its purpose: "We do stories that show the audience things about life." (Like for example the feature last spring on the St. John's/Naval Academy croquet rivalry.) When challenged with the notion that his essay topic choice of Don Quixote might reveal something about him, he says, "Of course it does. Don Quixote is a romantic character. It's about idealism. Whether he was right or wrong, he was going to pursue what he believed. And it was right-he believed in it." On the other hand, Hom points out that the Quixote phenomenon might extend to other essay writers as well. "The fact that we all went to St. John's was quixotic! We all have faith that as long as we pursue the path that is good, it will lead to something greater. We know that we must ignore some worldly demands, and pursue what we know to be worthy, and be our own heroes." Choosing Don Quixote as the test case indeed may have been stacking the deck. Hom suggests tracking down those who wrote on Job. James Elton Davis (SF86) CDon Quixote: The Man of Action"), now doing lighting for film ("mostly in the realm of commercials and music videos"), and in the process of making the transition to "gaffing" (being the chief tec:hnt1c1,an), agrees that his connection to Don Quixote may not be essay-specific. "Perhaps you should do your study on those who did their senior essays on Kant. Is Kant still a big in their lives?" I wrote my essay on Descartes' Rules For the Direction ofMind. Could be the whole idea is a Cartesian way to look at things ... Roberta Gable (A79) �e • G 8 Ir's AN ARr, ARr, ARr, ARr, WORLD Art historian Fred Bohrer (A 78) has been working on the relationship between representation and reality in 19th-centuryphotography. ...................................................•.................•......................•...........................•.•..... A rt historian Fred Bohrer (A78) cannot get away from his work. It's not just at Hood College, where he's been teaching since 1989. It happens when he's stamping a letter: there it is, art. When he looks at a CD cover - art again. Lawn ornaments - art. Billboards - art. Street signs - art. And now his work has followed him to Washington, D.C., his home for the past eleven years. From November to May, the Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington showed "Sevruguin and the Persian Image," an exhibit curated by Bohrer. After Bohrer was first approached about creating an exhibit, he spent two months looking through the Sackler's collections ("not through every object," he says, "that would take more than a lifetime"). He spent months talking to the museum's curators and archivists, asking them about the Sackler's holdings, and finally determined that the photographic works of Antoin Sevruguin (late 1830s-1933) would be his subject. "These photographs are so striking, some are so extraordinarily beautiful, and they were made by someone whose name I had never heard of," Bohrer says. As a historian of 19th-century art, Bohrer has always been fascinated by photography. "It makes a perfect 19th-century study," he says. "Realism is the central artistic movement of that century and photography is the most realistic form of representation that anybody had ever come up with. That does not mean that photography is true in any sense, but it is the culmination of a drive toward realism. "Photography is everywhere today and we think photographs are so true and have so much to do with reality that one almost stands for the other. Not too many people believed that in the 19th-century, when photography was one of many forms of image making," Bohrer explains. "So you can see modern perception coming into being when you look at it in 19th-century art, and this is especially true of photography." Sevruguin's work brings another dimension to Bohrer's interest in 19th-century photography. "This has to do with the relation between the east and the west," explains Bohrer, "because photography is fundamentally a western invention and it reveals cultural assumptions and practices like those of what was then called Persia, today called Iran. You can see in Sevruguin's work photography tried out in whole new contexts which had never been faced in Europe and America." Bohrer describes one of his favorite photographs, Mountain There are more than 900 images by Sevruguin in the Sackler's collection. I had to make a selection of about 50 for the show. After I made the selection, there was the question of groupings on the wall, explanatory text and labels, questions of conservation and condition. I worked with curators, archivists, conservators, and exhibit designers, each a separate operation with a whole cadre of people behind them." While this is certainly the major exhibit of Bohrer's career, it is by no means his first. That, as it turns out, was at St. John's. "I was the first curator of the St. John's College art gallery," Bohrer says, referring to the predecessor of the college's Mitchell Gallery. "I was present at its creation and there for its first show of African masks from the Baltimore Museum's collection." He remembers tutor Curtis Wilson as a great inspiration to him and former artist-in-residence Burt Blistein as a very important figure. "He was the one who first suggested I might want to be an art historian," Bohrer says. "People used to say things like 'art's third from the truth'-only at St. John's would they say that," he recalls with a certain rueful fondness. "St. John's was a great place to go and whatever it is I am now I started to become at St John's. Yet I was interested in art because it wasn't supposed to be great in some sense. It represented a degree of challenge to a reigning orthodoxy. I was formed by St. John's, yet at the same time I have reacted against St. John's. I have used its language (Continued on Page 26) As a historian of 19th-century art, Bohrer has always been fascinated by photography. ''It makes a perfect 19th-century study, "he says. "Realism is the central artistic movement ofthat century andphotography is the most realistic form ofrepresentation that anybody Jiad ever come up with. " Landscape, Luristan, which he says looks like a Persian miniature painting. "It is strange and disquieting to a lot of western viewers. It's not centered in the way of most western photos. It doesn't really have a particular subject. Different things are going on in different parts, and no one part is more important than another," he says. "It uses a border like a lot of Islamic art, and has an asymmetrical, very active way of using things. It is not very much about people. People are in it, but they are not made central; they are part of the overall scheme." Although he's a Europeanist with a sense of European representational norms, subjects, and styles, Bohrer's research has always focused on the image of the middle east. When he chose Sevruguin as the subject of the Sackler exhibit, he did so in part for the chance to collaborate with someone who specialized in Islamic art. Throughout the project, Bohrer worked with Massumeh Farhad, curator of contemporary Islamic art. But Farhad was hardly the only person Bohrer worked with. "When you're a scholar, it's mostly a solitary affair," Bohrer explains. "But when you're working on an exhibit, you're part of a team and that was really fascinating to me. People don't realize how much work goes into museum exhibits. Veiled Woman with Pearls by Antoin Sevruguin from Sevruguin and the Persian Image, Photographs ofIran, I 8 70 - I 930, edited by Frederick N. Bohrer I �Alulllni Profiles ... ENCOURAGING INDIVIDUALITY Peter Breslin (A85) is headmaster ofDesert Academy, a Santa Fe school thatfosters students' individuality. A bout 15 minutes south of Santa Fe, off a quiet, rural road in low hills of sage, 130 teenagers are clustered together in the halls of their school, bent over yearbooks, completing long messages for their friends to remember them by. On the last day of classes for the 1999-2000 school year, the assembly hall is filled with the booming of drum practice; the excitement of the students matches the intensity of the drummers. Peter Breslin (A85 ), headmaster of Desert Academy, makes his way through the groups of students to a quieter area of campus to describe the whirlwind of the past six years, building the school from the ground up. As he passes by, students call him by his first name and do not seem to have the usual trepidation inspired by headmasters. Desert Academy was founded in 1994 and began with a group of parents from Santa Fe dissatisfied with the choice of private schools .~X'i'h'l.">~ 'W'l:~N"»>">"i'.-..,."7™-~'11«~~.'>,~~: .... community characterized by educational diversity." Six years later, the school has come far in terms of material assets, but what truly prevails are the people and the vision. "I am always struck when I attend a Desert event by how close people are, how excited and committed the ;a; ; ~... ~'"~~# cian and writer. He graduated from Annapolis but spent his junior year in Santa Fe and then in 1987 returned to The City Different because he loved the mountain setting. He also wanted to take time to digest the St. John's experience and to find direction for his future. The same year, a major article in The New York Times Magazine gave St. John's tremendous publicity. "As a result," says Breslin, "My application for a teaching job at Valley Forge Military Academy in Philadelphia stood out among the other candidates' applications." Although he lacked a background in teaching, Breslin was hired to teach high school mathematics. A new teacher at Valley Forge, Breslin attempted to teach using Socratic techniques. He found that this method was not entirely successful. "The students were expecting standard math classes," says Breslin. "They found the added dimensions slightly threatening." Al- though it was difficult to generate excitement for the learning style he was encouraging, Breslin did not abandon it altogether; instead, he incorporated discussions into the more widely recognized program for math study at the high school level - learning formulas and solving problems. Using the Socratic method and the great books has been more successful for Breslin in his teaching at Desert Academy. In addition to his role as co-headmaster, Breslin teaches English and literature. He particularly enjoys these subjects because they allow him to introduce more of the texts he studied at St. John's, such as the Greek tragedies and the poetry ofT.S. Eliot. He credits his versatility as a teacher, his ability to be a teacher of teachers (mentoring new teachers at Desert Academy), and his listen(Continued on Page 27) !i.;:;1~"*--..~'ittX·:-i'N'.~"'»~">V»W«~~#;..-...;.y~.x~v.'*-~X-:i'~""'"h"l.""-.."'N".'"'"\~-..-..'«.'IN«"h~._-.. ........... ff*l\'.«":¥~~~11'~~'>~WH«":--."X For the difficult nascent years ofthe Academy, Breslin filled any role for which there was a need. He was a teacher, a bus driver, the physical education coordinator, a lunch cook - anything to meet the needs ofthe young school. Founding a private school requires enoramous dedication and more work than any ofthose involved had expected. in the area. They decided to establish their own school, enlisting a creative group of founders, which included the St. John's College graduate Peter Breslin. The mission of the school is "to foster genuine civility, an appreciation for learning, and a commitment to character." For the difficult nascent years of the Academy, Breslin filled any role for which there was a need. He was a teacher, a bus driver, the physical education coordinator, a lunch cook - anything to meet the needs of the young school. Founding a private school requires enormous dedication and more work than any of those involved had expected. It has been an all-consuming six years. Still, Breslin's hard work has led to the success and growth of the Academy. It has also rewarded Breslin with a leadership position at the school; he is the only founding member who has remained at Desert Academy. Peter Breslin's wife, Julia Goldberg (SF91), says that as a school, Desert Academy's very first assets were people and an idea, which is, as the school's mission statement reads, to "encourage the development of individual abilities in a students are to their classmates, and the real sense of community, for lack of a better word. I think that's the greatest reward of starting from the ground up," she says. Today, Desert Academy is a thriving school where students are encouraged to pursue their individual talents and interests. The student body includes a rodeo champion, a competitive snowboarder, and a talented student of glassblowing, among others. The school offers apprenticeship and independent study programs that encourage students' particular goals. Local businesses· and professionals are involved with these initiatives. Goldberg, the associate editor at the Santa Fe Reporter, mentors Desert Academy students interested in journalism, working with a journalism class at least once a year. She recently assisted two students, helping them generate story ideas and critiquing some of their articles. "Students at Desert have the opportunity to succeed in different areas," Breslin said. "They don't have to concentrate solely on intellectual success." This focus on developing talents and pursuing interests is also reflected in Breslin, himself a musi- FOSTERING CONNECTIONS The connection between Desert Academy and St. John's continues. In March, two St. John's students led a seminar on James Joyce's "The Dead" at the Academy. Andrea Quintero (SFOO) and Amanda Kennedy (SF02) were invited to lead the students of Linda Pittenger's class using seminar techniques the two Johnnies have honed. Quintero felt it was fitting to lead a seminar on the same text she would study for her last seminar before graduating. The Academy students were well prepared and had read other stories from Dubliners, to which they referred in the discussion. Rather than the seminar leaders using the 'opening question' they had prepared, the class began with questions from the students, who demonstrated their proficiency at uncovering the significance of relationships between characters and of the snow imagery in "The Dead." (One of the students participating in the seminar was Ross Hunt, son of Santa Fe tutor Frank Hunt.) Co-tutor Amanda Kennedy was also impressed by the observations and advanced discussion skills of the students. Not knowing what to expect from the experience, she was pleasantly surprised by the motivated, articulate students participating in the seminar. Typical of post-seminar encounters, the two Johnnies had an excellent conversation on the text themselves on the way back to campus. Quintero says that her role as facilitator of the discussion helped her see what she has learned as a St. John's student and accentuated the methods ofleading that foster conversation. This fall she hopes to carry these skills with her to Japan, where she will be an English language instructor for the Nova Group. Breslin looks forward to a continued collaboration with St. John's students and the teachers at Desert Academy to bring more of the great books into the program, through seminars or other activities. e �I n its first 35 years, the Santa Fe campus has contributed to the strength of St. John's great books program, and new aspects of the program helped the college reach out to more students and adults. The student body grew, achieved numerical parity with its older sibling in Annapolis, and enrollment today is more than two and a half times the enrollment of 1968. The daunting financial difficulties of its first decades have been overcome; in their place now stand a solid foundation, growing support, and a secure future. A student activities center and gymnasium, one of the last major components in the campus plan, is under construction and will open in late summer. The result, in 2000, is a sense of security and confidence on campus. THE CREATION In the 1950s and '60s, few liberal arts colleges received the attention that was lavished on St. John's College at Annapolis. The New Program, established in 1937 and based on the great books, was viewed as an enlightened curriculum emphasizing a broad education. "This was very heady stuff. We were reading works that had never been translated into English," recalls William Darkey (A42), first a student at Annapolis and later a founding tutor at Santa Fe. "The idea was that in some sense we were training people in general awareness and literacy, enough to talk intelligently as citizens. So they could talk to each other." So exciting was the program, so committed were the faculty and board, and so tightly packed was the student body at Annapolis, that the Board of Visitors and Governors and President Richard Weigle decided that the college should have another campus and expose its program to the rest of the nation. ENTER SANTA FE By late 1960, the peripatetic president narrowed the search to three locations in California. Then in January 1961, a former board member suggested that Mr. Weigle consider Santa Fe. That man, then the U.S. ambassador to Switzerland, was Robert M. McKinney, owner of the Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper. Architect John Gaw Me em, who had set the standard for Santa Festyle architecture, owned more than 200 acres on the northern slopes of Monte Sol. He offered his land to the college as a new campus site. In February, Mr. Darkey and three other tutors were dispatched to inspect locations in the Southwest. Both the faculty and the Board of Visitors and Governors quickly adopted their unanimous recommendation for Santa Fe. No one expected founding a second campus to be easy. "We had really immense faith in the people," says Mr. Darkey. "Opening a new campus was a pretty gutsy thing. It's hard to get any new institution off the ground. They did a remarkable job," says Christopher Nelson (SF70), now president at Annapolis, whose father was a member of the board at the time. The charter class of 1968 included Tom Stern, who remembers arriving in Santa Fe in 1964, and finding his way up the dirt roads to the foot of the mountains where the first buildings of the new campus were just being completed. "Everything was very provisional. It very much seemed like a beachhead," says Mr. Stern, now a motion picture lighting director who lives in Palo Alto and Paris. Two CAMPUSES - ONE COLLEGE In virtually every respect, the New Program was identical at the two campuses - seminar, tutorial, and laboratory, says Mr. Nelson. "When I was a student, the thing that mattered most was the life of the mind and work in the classroom. They are so much alike, and I found very little trouble in making the adjustment when I transferred between the campuses in 1969," he says. But the location offered some obvious differences. For example, the 84 freshmen who entered Santa Fe in 1964 were the only students on campus. No upper-classmen existed from whom they could learn the ropes about navigating through the program, part of what Mr. Stern calls "the sense of common enterprise that is pretty singular for St. John's." To George Bingham (SF68), who spent two years at Annapolis, served in the U.S. Army, and graduated with Santa Fe's charter class, the campus coffee shops were symbolically quite different. At Annapolis, the coffee shop was in the basement of a hall that Bingham found confining and uncomfortable, whereas in Santa Fe, he could view the 13 7000-foot peaks of the Jemez Mountains. Bingham, whose father was Santa Fe's first dean, Clarence Kramer (A49), said the view gave Santa Fe a feeling of openness and exploration, suggesting an environment that encouraged programmatic ehanges that began in Santa Fe. In 1967, the campusinitiated the teachers' institute in.liberal education for working teachers to broaden their education. The summer program evolved into the highly successful Graduate Institute in Liberal Education, now offered at both campuses with close to 160 students each year. The most recent Santa Fe initiative added a new dimension to the college's core emphasis in the western classics. The Eastern Classics program in the Graduate Institute was established in 1994 as a degree program, allowing the first ever course work featuring great works from India, China, and Japan. In the earlyyears, President Weigle and the faculty in Santa Fe reached out to the Santa Fe community, with luncheons and lectures featuring visiting scholars and authors. Today, people from town attend lectures, films, concerts, booksignings, Community Seminars, the Summer Classics program, and the popular Shakespeare in Santa Fe summer season on campus. "We're an educational institution. What we do best is teach and learn. What we offer the local community reflects the kinds of things we teach in the program," says James Carey (A67), dean and acting president at Santa Fe. Despite slight differences in the undergraduate curriculum and different programs reaching out to their local communities, the campuses share a common mission. The great books program is what unifies the campuses. "Despite the differences, there is so much more in common; we really are one college, doing the same thing," says David Levine (A67}, and director of the Graduate Institute in Santa Fe. Mr. Darkey's experience during the 1999 alumni seminars proves - the point. Of the 22 students in a 0 ..:: bJ) ~ ::; z .. ~ v) ~ ~ .... ~ Q) Dr. Richard D. Weigle and Mr. John Gaw Meem First graduating class �seminar discussion of "Prometheus Bound," some were Annapolis graduates, some Santa Fe. Some graduated long ago. some more recently. They came from around the country with professional careers in law, medicine, and business. None had met before. "I asked the opening question, and it started off as if they had known each other all of their lives," recalls Mr. Darkey. MEASURES OF SUCCESS The campus has also fulfilled the desire of President Weigle to establish a the college in an area where independent higher education was not a significant presence. Not only does the campus enroll students from New Mexico and the Southwest, but its location here has increased the visibility ofliberal arts and higher education throughout the region. Sophomore Emma Wells of Las Cruces, New Mexico, credits a teacher at OD.ate High School, Rosemary Kirby, with exposing her to St. John's. Ms. Wells recalls that at her first all-college seminar day, she was surprised to find three other Oiiate High grads in the seminar - a sophomore, a junior, and a senior. "I really enjoy being here. It's an amazing place with what we do in the program," says Ms. Wells. "You have to be involved in your own learning." As for influencing higher education generally, Mr. Nelson says it is not uncommon for teachers and administrators who attend St. John's programs to integrate great books discussions in their own secondary and post-secondary classrooms. "They see what we do, and how we do it, and they take it back to their own schools," says Mr. Nelson. "I think we'll see more outreach in the community, locally and nationally. The story of the power of a liberal arts education will spread over the next few decades." Perhaps the most significant measure of success resulted from the perseverance the college leaders exercised in the early years to overcome the campus's financial Mr. William Darkey difficulties. Money problems began with a controversial, $2 million loan from the Annapolis endowment to begin construction, and the fixed-income investments that provided income but did not allow the endowment to grow in value. Santa Fe native John Dendahl, the first business manager at the new campus, later treasurer, and now a member of the board, said the "touch and go" situation was aggravated by a mistaken impression "that the city of Santa Fe was a font of wealth and philanthropy." ''In the early days, when the campus was first established, there was a question of its survival," says Mr. Carey, who has taught at both campuses since 1979. "I respect what they did," says Mr. Stern, referring to the college's TUE FlrruRE In the life of a college, where the student body is constantly changing, the struggles of the Santa Fe campus's past are old history, and it is time to look forward, says Mr. Nelson. "I see a college on two campuses with a sustained enrollment of 875 to 900, and a Graduate Institute enrollment holding steady at 120 to 200, and a program of instruction very much as it exists today," he says. What will change in coming years, says Mr. Nelson, is growth of financial support, improved services to students, increased compensation for faculty, and completion of the construction projects underway. There will be more collaboration between the two campuses in ad- Meem Library groundbreaking; Left to right: James Carey, James Benefiel, Richard Weigle, Peter Wirth, Michael Riccards, Owen Lopez, andJ. Burchenal Ault board. "As a beneficiary, I'm certainly glad they undertook it. It put a tremendous amount of pressure on the college to have its resources stretched that thin. The board members should be commended. It took a lot of faith and commitment on their part." Today, Santa Fe is in a fairly secure financial position. The campus endowment, at about $23 million, is increasing steadily and financial support from alumni is growing, through the help of an organized, all-college alumni effort called Philanthropia. ministration due in part to the new management structure adopted last fall, in which the two presidents and two deans comprise a management committee. Annually, the board will appoint one of the presidents chairman; the committee will oversee college-wide issues like fundraising, budgets, and admissions and financial aid policies. Mr. Nelson is presently chairman. Financial stability, along with a unified administrative vision of the college as a whole, means that St. John's can continue to do what it has done since 1937, offer liberal Finial for bell tower on Weigle Hall arts education in the broadest, classical sense. "Happily, the more the circumstances improve at St. John's, the more the essence remains secure," outgoing President John Agresto said on the Santa Fe campus's 30th anniversary. Mr. Agresto, whose 10-year term as president at Santa Fe ends this summer, is credited with broadening the scope of the college's outreach, both locally and nationally. Mr. Nelson adds that the college's mission is more important now than ever, with a higher education environment that favors job skills and technical training over the values that are realized through a liberal arts education. "People are understanding that there are other things that we live for - a complete, rich and full life. We don't live in order to work, we work in order to live," says Mr. Nelson. As for the early vision of a galaxy of St. John's campuses around the nation, no one is ruling out the possibility of another campus in the future. "A third campus is a real possibility, but it's not on the immediate horizon," says Mr. Carey. Most important, the effort to refine and strengthen the 63-yearold New Program continues. "There are no grand visions for change and innovation," says Mr. Nelson. "The program has always been an evolutionary thing. Change and improvement generally come about in small increments, but they are everyday matters for us, too. This means that the faculty is constantly, thoughtfully considering ways to do better what we have undertaken here together, and changes in one part of the program or another are adopted throughout each semester. The program is very much alive for our faculty, just as it is for our students." e Ed Moreno is the executive director of the Council ofIndependent Colleges and Universities ofNew Mexico. �The Progralll ... FRESHMAN CHORUS: SOMETHING MAGICAL FOR THE UNMUSICAL Anne Berven (SFOO) brings music alive. A:n the rest of the Santa Fe ampus drifts into the rowsy peace of a warm Wednesday afternoon, a third of the freshman class is trapped with a piano and an instructor in the Great Hall in the Peterson Center. It's Freshman Chorus. And something magical is happening. "Stop, stop. Did you hear that?" Anne Berven (SFOO) demands of the thirty odd students, mostly January freshmen. They look around the circle at each other's faces, half apprehensive. "That's actually pretty darn good! " Relieved, they sing the chord again. This time they do hear it, and as the major chord rolls through the upper floor of Peterson, one can imagine the ghosts of Freshman Choruses past awaking, perplexed. Neither this confident sound nor these smiling students belong to common perceptions of the mandatory freshman semester in chorus. But Anne Berven is an uncommon teacher. "She's incredible," says Audrey Dolginoff (SF03) solemnly. "She's really inspiring." Outside on the balcony, the previous section is still in ecstasy over the recording of a 40-voice Tallis motet that Berven has just played for them. About the music itself, they speak almost reverentially. But on the subject of Berven, the little knots of students explode in praise. "She gets us interested enough in music to want to sing together," says E.J. Boise (SF03). "She loves it enough to make us want to love it too. And we sound really awesome, for a bunch of people who can't sing." Bryan Rosenberg (SF03) confides: "We're much better than we should be. For people who aren't musically inclined, she's an inspiration." After their session, the January Freshmen will sound the same note: "amazing," "passionate," "inspiring." Still later in the day, singers attending the bass and tenor sectionals of the thriving St. John's College Chamber Chorus will attest to the same power: "She brings this music alive." Clearly, Berven, herself a student, is working a revolution in a traditionally problematic portion of the curriculum. How St. John' s inspired her to do that, and what she in turn is inspiring at St. John's, is a story that reveals all that is best about the program. Four years ago, Berven was resolved never to work seriously in music again. After nearly completing a BA in music at several schools in Washington State, Berven had decided that she didn't want a music degree. But her hopes for a career as a jazz pianist had been cut short by a devastating injury to her hands that left her in physical therapy for three years. It was St. John's that inspired her to return again, at 26, to college. "The philosophy and inquiry had set me on fire in a way that music never had," she explained. "It was all that mattered to me. So I told myself'You're just not doing music anymore."' In 1995, the year before Berven arrived at St. John's, the college chorus had sung the Matthew Passion to some acclaim. However, the following year it dwindled to a dozen singers and disappeared entirely by the second semester. The Freshman Chorus was characterized by what one current senior described as "a singular feeling of ill-will." ».~~~-..~~'+»»..'*-~*~'*'-~ music. In the sophomore music program, in contrast to the teaching of all her formal musical training, Berven saw that "theory has to come after the aural experiences of listening and malting music." Her students therefore learn enough theory to read melody and rhythm, and spend the rest of their time doing what Berven calls "brealcing down the conception of music as this 'wall of sound."' That is, they make music. In her conviction that all students can do music, Berven again sees herself as being guided by the program. By making a full year of music part of every student's experience, the program rejects the popular notion that music is an accessory study, an 'ornament.' "I tell ·0 students again and again," she ex~ plains "music is your heart and J:! your soul. It's the sound of your ~ heart. That's terrifying, but it's also f what makes it so beautiful." In practice, getting freshmen to ginning was to prove a turning see the beauty of music sometimes point in both Berven's musical takes unorthodox forms. One week career and music on the Santa Fe it may mean listening to Bach's campus. The concert given by that cello suites, to hear the "sound ensemble in the spring, to a standyour brain makes when it's thinking room-only crowd in the Great ing." Another it may mean controlHall, was a success beyond expectaling breathing ("If you can breathe, tions. The audience's reaction to you can sing!" Berven exclaims.) the piece shocked even Berven: For the January freshmen in the "That people were moved by it, that Great Hall before Spring Break, it people cried, made me realize what meant not allowing Clyde Carlin moves me about music .... even if (SF03) to get away with claiming our performance wasn't profesthat he was tone deaf. sional, it had that spark of brilIn the middle of working liance in it that could really touch through Hodie again with the men, people." Berven stops the group: "Ha-ha! I Her personal rededication to heard that! You sang this beautiful music was matched by an unprecenote, perfectly in tune," she cries, dented response from the college. pointing at Carlin. Then, seeing his Peter Pesic, Santa Fe tutor and Muhesitation, she adds "You don't sician-in-Residence, describes the care." concert as simply "the best student ... •:::~·N«>o».."»>.."«-W~:..'-!-.~».~v»~~~'*~~::.»:««;.~"fJ'~'««" -.Y..-:.:«<-.~'«*-'»~!::::::~· o::;:::c:::::::.:1::e.:::c: That people were moved by it, that people cried, made me realize what moves me about music ... even if ourperformance wasn'tprofessional, it had that spark of brilliance in it that could really touch people. .1::~::::::i1:~:::: a::1~:+x:::::a1:::.::::::::: :.::»:#.~~«'**"+»»:»»»:+:.:-:·~·m»»>»:-."<~·»~'+»»»!->».-..,".:->:««i<>"~~"*A"-*'* But despite her resolution, Berven let herself be drawn more and more into the St. John's music program. Her sophomore year, already a music assistant for two classes, she found herself at the head of thirty students and tutors eager to sing Rachmaninoff's Vespers. At first, she resisted. "I swore I wouldn't direct it," she remembers ruefully. "I'll sing in it, I said, and I'll help find a tutor to lead it. I really wanted to sing it, and here was this group of people who really wanted to sing it, so finally I said 'OK, fine, I'll just do it."' This unwilling and unlikely be- performance in my memory." Inspired by that success, the dean asked Berven, who was herself a student, to be the first director of the Freshman Chorus. For Berven, her two years in front of the Freshman Chorus have been a lesson in how the program reaches beyond texts. "It was such a relief," she says, "to put music in the context of that kind of excitement that comes from philosophy and ideas." She has put new life into the college's vision of a class in which all students would sing. For her, this philosophy comes directly out of the St. John's approach to : : :::».~"Y.~~~~~"™ "I care," he answers. And they do. Not only are the freshmen attending like never before, and signing up for the free piano lessons which Berven is offering, but Berven's students are excited about continuing with music at St. John's. Several are already members of the Chamber Chorus, and one group has begun meeting after chorus to "sing more complicated things," as Maia Swanson (SF03) explains. Phoebe France (SFOO) who is in her third year as a music assistant, says that she has already seen improvement in the students who come into the sopho- �.....,.__..L_........ more program. Of this year's sophomores, she says "they know their stuff better. And they're more excited about it." This may become a trend. Berven has been asked by the college to continue her work with both the Freshman Chorus and the Chamber Chorus next year. She hopes then to continue her studies at the prestigious Indiana University School of Music. l\D Qll Whenever she chooses to leave the college, Berven will take with her a commitment to music grounded in the St. John's philosophy. For her, as for many of her students, it had its best illustration at last year's Winter Concert. After the Freshman Chorus had sung three numbers, to the happy surprise of the audience, which had been trained not to expect tunefulness from that particular group, GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL Messiah I n the latter part of his career the music of George Frideric Handel had become less fashionable, and his financial straits dire. Nonetheless, in 1741, Handel was invited to compose a work for a series of concerts in Dublin. This series culminated in the first performance of Messiah, in spring of 1742. The success of the oratorio was so great that Messiah was subsequently performed annually to raise funds for the Foundling Hospital for Exposed and Deserted Children in London. (The Hospital still maintains Handel's autographed score and performance notes, which he left to the institution upon his death.) Messiah marked the beginning of a resurgence in Handel's career; when he died, in 1759, he was able to leave a substantial legacy to a niece, friends, servants, and charities in England. Handel wrote for both the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches, but was primarily a composer of music for the court and the stage. The religious sentiment of mid.;18th-century England, however, steeped in the restrictive and solemn piety of the traditional liturgy, had little tolerance for the introduction into houses of worship of the theatrical genre that played so popularly with the English masses. In recognition of this, Handel advertised the first performance of Messiah as "A Sacred Oratorio" rather than openly publicize his dramatic setting of the story of Christ. Although Messiah's libretto relies substantially on the Old Testament, Handel found a wealth of dramatic possibility in the biblical stories that make up the Christian canon, and his ear for dramatic melodies married the sacred texts to the drama and immediacy of opera. This melding of the sacred and the secular, and Handel's use of an English setting of the text, resulted in a universal appeal that has lasted for generations. The spiritual breadth of Messiah is felt by many to be transcendent of any religious denomination. Messiah contains a creativity of rhythm and melody that powerfully evokes the emotion of the sacred text. Examples of this can be found throughout the work. In the setting of "All they that see Him, laugh Him to scorn," the mob's anger is clearly evident in the vocal line "let Him deliver Him." The phrase begins with three driving eighth notes punctuated with the open fifth, evoking a crowd with fists in the air. As the fugue reaches greater complexity, the sixteenth notes rapidly repeat, bringing to mind the contemptuous laughter of the crowd which has turned against Christ. The musical drama continues as the tenor begins "But Thou didst not leave His soul in Hell." The tone is still plaintive, but tinged with hope as the soloist sings of Christ's resurrection. The triumphant contrapuntal dexterity of "Thou shalt break them" leads into the "Hallelujah" chorus. This, the mostwellknown of Handel's choruses, has historically evoked the greatest emotion. Indeed, the tradition of standing for the "Hallelujah" chorus began with King George II, who, having heard the phrase "The Lord God omnipotent reigneth," was compelled to stand in admiration of God's and Handel's mastery. The surrounding patrons were compelled to follow the lead of their King. AnneBerven Program notes for the Santa Fe Symphony were written by Anne Berven (SFOO) who teaches Freshman Chorus and leads the Chamber Choir on the Santa Fe campus. Berven was scheduled to sing a Delibes duet with Consuelo Sanudo (SFGIOO). Hoarse from singing with the freshmen, Berven confesses that "I would have done anything not to have to get up there. But I had kept telling them 'it isn't the voice that counts - this is the sound of your heart. You have to give this music to these people.' The only reason I went up there was because I had told them that." The Freshman Chorus gave Berven a standing ovation. The St. John '.s College Chamber Chorus performance ofFaure s Requiem wa,.s held Friday May 5 to a full house. Caroline Knapp (SFO l) �Election of Alumni 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 nominated by the Alumni Association Board of Directors for election to the St. John's College Board of Visitors and Governors. For her second term: ROBLEY TIMMINS-LEVY (A56) La Selva Beach, Calif. Graduate work in history, Columbia University, New York, NY; consultant in governmental affairs, 1992-present; County Supervisor for the second district, Santa Cruz County, Calif., 19811992, and chairperson in 1982, 1984, 1987, and 1990; Member of Congressman Leon Panetta's Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary Task Force, 1989-1992; served on the Monterey Bay Unified Air Pollution Control District, Mid Coast Health Systems Agency, Library Oversight Committee, and the Santa Cruz County Bond Finance Committee; community-based activities include being a governor's appointee and public member of the California Central Coast Regional Coastal Commission, member of the Santa Cruz County Grand Jury, member of the Santa Cruz County Planning Commission, board member and consultant for the Live at Home Foundation, board member of the Cabrillo College Foundation, and an organizer and first president of the League of Women Voters of Santa Cruz County. For his second term: PAUL MARTIN (SF80) Austin, Tex. ··" General director and chief investment officer of Martin Capital Management, 1988 to present: stockbroker at Merrill Lynch/Oppenheimer & Co., 19851988; Commander, U.S. Naval Reserve, active duty, 1980-1984, reserve duty 1985 to present; Commanding Officer, Naval Reserve SEAL Delivery Vehicle T earn Two, 1996 to present; intelligence analyst, U.S. Army Security Agency, 1973-1976; former member of the St. Johr)'s College Alumni Association Board of Directors; co-founder, past president, and secretary-treasurer of the Austin Chapter of the Alumni Association, 1990 to present; vice president of the New York Chapter of the Alumni Association, 1987-1989; class leader for The Campaign for Our Fourth Century; president of the Southwest Texas Cound of Hostelling International, 1995 to present; trustee of The Jung Society of Austin, 1995 to present. For her second term: JEAN K. FITZSIMON, A73 Chicago, Ill. Married to Dr. Lee Fischler, SF68; Chief Compliance Officer and Vice President - Law Department, Sears, Roebuck and Co., in Chicago; a contributing author for "Collier on Bankruptcy," 15th Edition; author of numerous articles on bankruptcy issues; regularly speaks on a variety of bankruptcy topics; formerly in private practice in Phoenix, Ariz, and an official with the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., and Chicago in a variety of legal policy-making. legislative, and litigation positions; chair of an American Bar Association subcommittee; appointed to a panel of the National Academy of Public Administration for a study on privatization of the bankruptcy administrative system; served on a working group of the National Bankruptcy Review Committee; former member of the St. John's College Alumni Association Board of Directors and served as vice president of the board from 1982 to 1987. Notice is also given that nominations may be made by petition. The rules governing submission of nominations by petition are as follows: I . Petitions must be signed by at least fifty members of the Alumni Association in good standing. 2. Nominations must be accompanied by a biographical sketch of the nominee. 3. The consent of all persons nominated must be obtained. 4. The petition must reach the Direc tors of Alumni Activities NO LATER THAN DECEMBER I, 2000. 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 above will be considered elected. Terms will begin in July of 200 I. Election of Officers and Di rectors of the St. John's College Alumni Association In accordance with Article VII, Sections I and II of the By-Laws of the St. john's College Alumni Association, notice is hereby given that the following alumni have been nominated to serve as officers and directors on the St. John's College Alumni Association Board of Directors. For President: GLENDA HOLLADAY EOYANG (SF76) Minneapolis, Minn. Graduate studies in education, technical communications, computer programming, and instructional design for University of Oklahoma, East Central Oklahoma University, West Texas State University, and the University of Minnesota, 1976-82; doctoral candidate in sociology, Union Institute, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1995; President, Chaos Limited, a management training and consulting firm, 1993-present; Chair of the Board, Excel Instruction, Inc., a technical training and documentation company, 1986-present; Instructional designer and Director of Marketing, Quest Leaming System, 1983-96; high school teacher of physics, mathematics, and chemistry at Casady School in Oklahoma City, Okla., 197 6-8 I . Author, "Coping with Chaos: Seven Simple Tools." Founding president, Twin Cities Alumni Chapter, St. John's College Alumni Association; Communications Committee Chair, St. John's College Alumni Association; Class Chair, St. John's College Campaign for Our Fourth Century, 1993- ; Member, St. John's College Board of Visitors and Governors, 1995-2000. For Vice President: JASON TODD WALSH (ABS) New York, N.Y. MBA, Harvard Business School, 1989; executive vice president, Oncology.com, 1999-present; vice president of business development of Quest Diagnostics, 19981999; vice president/general manager, Long Island Region of Quest Diagnostics, 1996-1998; associate director for strategy and development for the Opto-Electronics Group of Coming Inc., 1993-1995; business manager, television components, Corning Asahi Video Products Company, 1990-1993; member of the St. John's College Alumni Association Board of Directors, 1990-1996, Treasurer of that Board, 1998- ; Race committee chairman, New York Harbor Sailing Foundation, 1998; member, St. John's College Board of Visitors and Governors, 1999. For Treasurer: BILL FANT (A79) Washington, D.C. Office of Tax Policy, U.S. Treasury Department. Special assistant to the Assistant Secretary (Tax Policy). Assist in preparing and represent Tax Policy's views in meetings and negotiations with other Executive Branch offices and in meetings with members of Congress and their staffs. U.S. Senate, Committee on Finance, Minority Tax Staff. Director of tax research for Senator Daniel Patr[ck Moynihan of New York.. President Fant Consulting and Information Services; Manager, National Tax, KPMG Peat Marwick; Manager, Washington National Tax Services, Price Waterhouse; Chief Tax Reporter, PrenticeHall, Inc. For Secretary: BARBARA LAUER (SF76) Laramie, Wyo. . JD with honors, University of Wyoming, 1984; LLM, University of Edinburgh; partner, Lauer & Newlon, 19931998; of counsel, Cook & Associates, 1995-1997; editor, legal publications division of Lugamo Corp., 1994-1997; lecturer in jurisprudence and labor law, University of Wyoming College of Law, 19891998; appellate counsel and assistant public defender, Wyoming State Public Defender, 1989-1992; judicial clerk, Wyoming Supreme Court, 1987-1988; administrator, St. John's College, Santa Fe, I '97 6-1981; serving second term as member of the St. John's College Board of Visitors and Governors; Vice President of the St. john's College Alumni Association Board of Directors; member of Order of the Coif, the advisory board of Land and Water Law Review, and various legal associations. For her first term as TONI WILKINSON ni.-............,... ... icn:::rno 7 \ Santa Fe, N.M. Resource Development Assistant for the Santa Fe Opera, 1999 to present; Development Director, Santa Fe Arts in Education Initiative, 1998; Development Di- �rector for Pets in Need, Inc., Redwood City, Calif., Bay Area Ridge Train Council and Compass Community Services, San Francisco, 1993-1997; Administrator, Friends of Langley Porter and Alumni Faculty Association, Dept. of Psychiatry, University of California San Francisco, 1989-93; Marketing and Project Administrator, New Mexico Federal Savings and Loan for Otra Vez Condominiums, 1987-88; Director of the Annual Fund, Alumni Relations, Public Information and Community Events, St. John's College, Santa Fe, 1984-87; Development Associate, The Santa Fe Operct, 1983-84. Past president of the Northern California Chapter of the St. John's College Alumni Association; served on its Steering Committee to help plan and execute chapter events. Currently serving on the Chapters Committee of the Alumni Association Board of Directors. For her first term as director: AMY THURSTON (A95) Fairfax, W. Va. Ms. Thurston is an information architect, designing, launching, assessing, and maintaining govern., , ment-sponsored Web sites as a member of the Information Technology Group of Caliber Associates, a government contracting firm. Her experience has concentrated in the areas of project management, training and outreach, usability engineering, interface design, marketing, and promotion. She is a frequent presenter at state and national conferences on the use of the Internet to promote government programs, policies, and initiatives in the human services field. For his first term as director: STEVEN D. THOMAS (SF74) New York, N.Y. Utterly astonishing all of his classmates, Steve somehow failed to enroll in management trainee classes at Hamburger U, thereby deftly avoiding a career at McDonald's. Instead, he worked for a while as a computer operator, then went for a year to graduate school (University of Texas at Austin, in Ancient Philosophy). He dropped out precipitously to become a gay activist in Texas, a role with limited career potential, as it turned out. Accordingly he took the path that so many cop-outs had pioneered before him: law school (University of Texas, 1984, law review, graduated with honors). Armed with a law degree, he next went on to the Big Apple, arriving just in time for the excesses of the 80s. He worked from 1985 to 199 I at the Wall Street law firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton, where his clients included both crack-heads trying to retain their miserable hovels in NYC (pro bono, to be sure) and the Republic of Kuwait during the Gulf War (don't ask). Tiring of that particular rat race, he decided to join another rat race: from late 199 I to the present he has been gulling the good people at Financial Security Assurance (a monoline bond insurance company) into paying him actual money. In exchange he graciously agreed to assume the title of Associate General Counsel. In his real life, of course, he continues to read philosophy and argue with anyone who has the patience for it. (He has also long been associated with the HIV Law Project, an organization that provides legal assistance to I.ow income people infected with HIV. But keep it quiet he doesn't like anyone to know that he's not just a dilettante.) For her first term as director: LINDA STABLER-TALTY (SFGl76) Southampton, N.Y. BA. Scripps, Claremont. Calif; M.Ed. Yale School of Architecture, 1991; multimedia producer for non-profit educational agencies; site photographer for American excavation in Sicily; Visual Arts Coordinator, Department of Cultural Affairs, New Haven, Conn., 198898; Urban Planning Consultant for project for Public Spaces, New York, N.Y., 1993; Director, Ninth Square Public Art Project, 1993-94; currently working on literacy and arts projects in the local public school system, and on the board of the Southampton Historical Museum. Director, St. John's College Alumni Association, 1980-83, 1986-92, 1994-1999; co-chair, Alumni for the Liberal Arts Annual Fund Campaign, 1982-83; Editor, Alumni Association newsletter, 1986-1992. For her first term as director: DORINE REAL (SF69) Westport, Calif. Work themes include education: organizing coop preschool program, aide in Montessori preschool, math, reading tutor for independent primary school, aide in special education classrooms, adult literacy tutor, computers: setup and training of a word-processing network for scientific publications group; and editing; Director, Westport County Water District; Director, St. John's College Alumni Association, 1993-1998; active member, Northern California Chapter, St John's College Alumni Association. 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 nominations by petition are as follows: I . Petitions must be signed by at least thirty members of the Alumni Association in good standing. 2. 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: Ms. Beverly Angel, 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, October 23 at 2 p.m. in the Great Hall, Annapolis. 4. The candidates for Offices and Directors receiving the highest number of votes for those offices shall be declared elected. Terms will begin on January I , 200 I . Proposed Amendments to the By-Laws of the St. John's College Alumni Association In accordance with Article XIII, Section I of the By-Laws of the St John's College Alumni Association, notice is hereby given that the following by-laws amendments have been proposed by the Alumni Association Board of Directors. These amendments will be voted upon at the Annual Meeting, September 23, 2000, 2 p.m. in the Great Hall, Annapolis. I. Amendment to Article VIII, Section V, VACANCIES Delete: "In the case of any vacancy on the Board of Visitors and Governors of St John's College caused by death, resignation, disqualification, removal or other cause of a member elected by the Association, the vacancy shall be filled by interim election conducted in the manner described in this article. Add: "In the event that for any reason there should be fewer than three alumni members in any class prior to the end of the term of that class, the vacancy shall be tilled by interim election by the Board of the Alumni Association. Such interim appointments will take office at the next meeting of the Board of Visitors and Governors." 2. Amendment to Article VI, Section V, DUTIES OF THE TREASURER Add: "and preparing the annual budgets and federal and state tax returns" and "and be a member of the Budget and Finance Commit- · tee." As amended, the Section shall read: 'The Treasurer shall: have general charge and supervision of the finances, investments, securities, accounts receivable and payable, contracts, books of account, accounting, auditing, and preparing the annual budgets and federal and state tax returns of the Association; have custody of all the funds and securities of the Association; be the chief financial officer of the Association and shall keep its Board of Directors fully informed of its financial condition; and be a member of the Budget and Finance Committee. The Treasurer shall perform all acts incident to the position of Treasurer of a corporation, subject to the oversight of the Board of Directors." 3. Amendment to Article X, Section I c. BUDGET AND FINANCE COMMITTEE Delete: "This committee shall be available to advise the College in raising funds and encouraging the increased participation of Alumni in the financial support of the College. It shall prepare budgets and advise the Board on budgetary matters." Add: "This committee shall review the Association budgets and be - available to advise the Board on all financial matters. It shall also perform any financial oversight of the Treasurer as required by the Board" �Alnlllni Notes ... 1931 "My brother Phil ( 19 3 2) and I were named in the December issue of Sports Illustrated as some of the 50 greatest athletes of the century for our outstanding lacrosse play while at St. John's - National Champions in 1929, 1930, and 1931," writes Edwin Lotz. ••Heading the list was Babe Ruth." 1939 Les Medford points out that the March issue of Lacrosse Magazine calls attention to the fact that St. John's classmate Nelson Shawn, who played on St. John's last lacrosse team, went on to Johns Hopkins where he played on the 1941 National Championship team and was a member of what is often considered to be Hopkins' greatest close defense threesome ever. 1940 William A. Carter earned his Ph.D. in 1998 from the International Graduate School of Berne University in St. Kitt's, in an interdisciplinary program in government and education. 1943 "Going to Alaska 6/15," writes Burton Armstrong. "My latest granddaughter, Grace, is four. Still playing at golf." 1944 Ahmet Ertegun, founder of Atlantic Records, received a "Living Legend" award from the Library of Congress in April. 1945 "Fiftyyears after 'completing' my studies at the all-elective Art Students League of New York, I have been taken on by the leading local art gallery and have actually sold some paintings," writes Gene Thornton. 1948 Peter Davies writes: "Just returned in late February from great trip to Cambodia to visit son and five grandchildren who live there. Visited a minefield area in support of 'Adopta-Minefield' project here in our community of Riverdale; took boat upriver to visit Angkor Wat, then on to Spain to Barcelona, San Sebastian, of course the Guggenheim in Bilboa. Now immersed in raising $30,000 through community groups, churches, schools, and colleges to adopt Boeung Krosol Village through the United Nations Association." "While physical problems prevented Rita (Annapolis High, '44) and I from getting to her 55th reunion last fall and my 50th at college," writes the Rev. Frederick P. Davis., "they haven't kept us from celebrating some big numbers this year. In March I turned 75 and in September we'll reach our 50th wedding anniversary, three weeks before Rita's 73rd birthday. On Sunday, April 2, we managed to celebrate early, when some 36 couples gath- ered at our Palm Springs church (each married 50 or more years in 2000) to renewvows." 1955 Priscilla Bender-Shore had a show at the Studio Channel Islands Art Center in Camarillo, California, · this spring. "Artist then, artist now!" she says. Having been cleared of prostate cancer, Jim Stone is urging his aging male friends to check their PSA scores. 1957 Joan Cole retired from Queens Borough Public Library in September 1998 after 32 years. She began as a children's librarian working up to become regional manger overseeing 20 branches. "Have been reading in daytime at last," she writes. "Have been attending conferences selectively according to my interest, although still professionally focussed. Refused to go to work, although there have been offers." 1959 Hugh M. Curtler has contracted with the Intercollegiate Studies Institute in Wilmington, Delaware, to produce his latest book: Recalling Education. The book is scheduled to appear in November and it proposes a revolution in educational thinking, the heart of which is embodied iri the St. John's program. ''Given the direction of education at present, a return to the Great Books would involve a complete revolution." Gay P. Hall (A59 and GI99) has been doing a weekly Touchstones group for about six months and really enjoys doing it. "The group is made up of 15-20 adult felons who are in treatment in a non-secure residential program. Each week we struggle with core issues from the Great Books and we all love every minute of it," he writes. Amy Jobes is now Diocesan Missioner, working with Episcopal churches in North Little Rock, Little Rock, McGehee, and Monticello, Arkansas. Jim Jobes (56), retired, is teaching part-time, variously at Hendrix College, U. of Central Arkansas, and U. of Arkansas at Little Rock. William Tilles was honored by the Cultural Alliance of Greater Washington for his outstanding volunteer effort with the Business Volunteers for the Arts. He began working with the program in 1996 and in 1999 donated 185 hours of service in areas such as long-range planning and board development. An organizational consultant, Bill worked with The Art League to develop and analyze surveys and served as a task force and board facilitator. He also worked directly with the board of the Theatre Chamber Players on strategic planning and board structure and has since joined their board. 1960 Mary Campbell Gallagher's extended essay on the history of the curriculum reform movement, in which she took part, "Lessons from the Sputnik-Era Curriculum Reform Movement: The Institutions We Need for Educational Reform," appears in Sandra Stotsky, ed., The Standards Wars (Peter King Publishing, Inc.), due out in mid-April. Mary's review of The Big Test by Nicholas LeMann appeared in The Weekfy' Standard in November. She has just completed a fellowship residency at the Virginia Center for the_ Creative Arts. 1961 News from Great Britain from Peg Llewellyn-Jones (Margaret Brown): "We moved into the city about 18 months ago ... husband David continues to be Professor of Earth Observation Science (in the Physics Dept.) at Leicester University and I continue to learn Latin and look after granddaughter Alice (now 17 months old) while daughter Sarah takes post graduate course at the Royal Academy in London. (She's a cellist.) Nearly 40 years since I finished at St. John's ... have lived the last 3 3 of them in England!" 1966 Julia Busser du Prey writes: "Next to music making, philosophizing is still my favorite pursuit. When will I ever grow up and get my head out of the clouds? Still living in Kingston, Ontario, performing and teaching, while Pierre (my husband) teaches at Queen's University. Our children are all grown up. Nicolas just graduated in May in political studies, and Beatrice is in her second year of university heading for medicine." Ian Harris reports: "At the end of May I will be participating in an international peace education forum at the University of Tel Aviv. At the beginning of August I will be convening the Peace Education Commission meetings at the International Peace Research Association conference in Tampere, Finland." 1968 John Farmer (A) was recently named Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of Family Practice, Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. Next year all four of his children will be embarked in higher education. "I am a Professor of Pediatrics, Physiology and Biophysics at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles," writes Thomas Keens (SF). "I was invited to speak at the Congresso Internazionale L' ospedale Pediatrico Virtuale in Florence, Italy, March 2000. I spoke on 'Home Mechanics/Ventilation in Children.' I continue research into the cause for sudden infant death syndrome. My wife Susan is a clinical psychologist running a day treatment program for severely emotionally disturbed children in a public school. Our daughter, Jenny, is a junior at the University of Southern California. Our son, Peter, is a junior in high school interested in computer sciences." Carol Neitzey Dale (A) describes her Year 2000: "Daughter, Taylor, graduating from Whitman College. Son, Hunter, graduating from Crested Butte Academy. Family celebrating with a raft trip down the Grand Canyon in June." George W. Partlow (A) writes: "Still working as a programmer/analyst, now for the Alaska Dept. of Labor, and enjoying my four grandchildren (Isaiah, the latest, arrived 8/17/99), but looking forward to retirement in 2002. Putting much energy into our local Habitat for Humanity affiliate. Still doing music: I'm singing the part of Leporello in a trio from Don Giovanni in a concert on April 8. Keeping in touch with Tom Geyer (A), Elizabeth Dobbs (A), and Kerry Nemovicher (A) byemail. I've started the '10-year reading plan' in Hutchins intro to the 'Great Books' set, but I keep skipping ahead: I'm currently re-reading Don Quixote for the nth time, and recently read The Wi'nter's Tale, which I'd unaccountably never read before. And I read Lysistrata beside the pool in Puerto Vallarta in February ...We love to play tour guide to Johnnies visiting Juneau!" This from Charlie Watson (A): "#1 son, Ivan, is now an Associate Producer for CNN in Moscow. A family trip to visit him is planned for June. Our youngest, daughter Anya, now 16 and driving, is a busy junior in high school with impressive grades and extracurricular activities. I still fail in efforts to interest this third and last in St. John's College. Seems lacks of Russian/performing arts are major barriers. Maybe medicine? We're only an hour from the Big Apple for traveling SJC types." 1969 Tom Stern (SF) did the lighting for the Oscar-winning film American Beauty. Currently he's finishing up work on a Clint Eastwood film called Space Cowboys. 1970 The Paul Lowdenslager Memorial Lecture series, celebrating the memory of Annapolis alumnus Paul Lowdenslager, was inaugurated in April at Western State College in Gunnison, Colorado. The first lecturer was C. Bradley Thompson, who spoke on the relationship between the current state of public education and school violence. The lecture series is made possible by gifts from Paul's family, friends, former students, and colleagues. Susan Rubenstein (SF) reports: "I am hosting the radio program Tuesday Night at the Opera on local FM station KFRS 90. 7. The program, previously automated, now airs live and I am preparing for the Santa Fe Opera season, having guest performers and conductors from the opera on the air. I do not presently know if the operas themselves will be simulcasting because the changes at the radio station as everywhere else are happening so fast. I continue to paint and read. Worth telling about, though belatedly, was the wonderful two-year Proust seminar, Remembrance of Things Past, led by tutor Jim Cohn. Worth boasting about is that my son Josh Swartzberg is currently starring in Murder by Night in L. A. dinner theater." �AluIDni Notes ... 1971 "In November 1999 I changed jobs, becoming Executive Vice President of SPC-Volta, a diversified industrial products company with operations in Israel, India, Brazil, and Turkey as well as the United States," writes Shire Chafkin (A). "My oldest son, Max, will be a freshman at Yale this fall. Laurie Peck and I will celebrate our third wedding anniversary in June." 1972 Richard Rhodes (SFGI) writes that he has been a member of a Great Books discussion group in Bellingham, Washington for 25 years. He is now singing bass in a chorus that rehearses at the same time. He is teaching job readiness skills, resume writing, interview skills, and market search strategy at local technical and community colleges. Leslie Starr (A) has taken a leave from her position as principal oboe of the Delaware Symphony to be acting second oboe with the Baltimore Symphony for the 1999-2000 season, where she participated in the inaugural concerts of new BSO music director Yuri Temirkanov. She is close to receiving a Certificate of Environmental Studies from the Johns Hop- kins Department of Continuing Education but field work in June oflast summer resulted in a lengthy bout of Lyme Disease, from which she has almost recovered. 1973 Bill Blount (SF) and his family are transferring from New Orleans to Houston. Bill is continuing his work as an exploration geologist. Melissa (A) and Steve Sedlis (A) write: '"Our oldest daughter, Betsy, is finishing her sophomore year at Barnard College, with a dual major in biology and psychology. Our middle daughter, Jenny, is graduating from the Fieldston School, where she is one of the top dancers in the Fieldston Repertory Company. As our St. John's College classmates will attest, this must be a genetic mutation, because neither of us could ever dance. Jenny is in the midst of the April angst of which college to attend. St. John's is not one of the choices. Betsy and Jenny were both varsity field hockey players, and the coach is hungrily eyeing our third daughter, Julia, who is finishing seventh grade at Fields ton. Maybe she will go to St. John's?" 1974 1976 Carol Calhoun (A) announces the formation of Calhoun Law Group, P.C. The practice, located in Washington, D.C., will specialize in the areas of employee benefits law and insurance product taxation. Lynne Cornell (SF) writes that she is working on a Master's degree in Library Science at College of Saint Catherine in Saint Paul. She has been single since 1989. "My son is a National Merit Scholar and a math major at New College of South Florida. My daughter is an all-A high school student. Very glad to hear Linda Belgrade-Friehling (SF71) is alive and well~ we lost touch years ago." John Farmer (A) was appointed to the faculty of Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine as Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Family Medicine. ''In the past year I've opened 'Algo Rhythms,' a digital audio mastering lab in NYC," writes A. T. Michael MacDonald (SF). "Recently I've started a massive project where I'm restoring and digitizing a series of historic opera performances from the great opera houses in Europe. Most of these tapes were recorded in the '50s and '60s and are in bad shape. In addition to the technical challenges I've had to learn about the artists, composers, and the histories associated with these tapes. It's been fun and rewarding." 1975 "For 13 years I have been a mama and a volunteer," writes Annette Tullier Staubs (A). "Still a mama to Peter (13) and Emilie (11), I'm joining the 'outside the home' work force again. My husband Charles, a family physician, is opening his own practice in July 2000, and I will be the office manager, but not quite full time-young teenagers need their mother. We live on the Eastern Shore in a log home in the woods. We enjoy canoeing and going to Assateague." 1977 "I'm now teaching at a residential 'therapeutic' high school for bright, troubled teenagers," writes Nancy Coiner (A). "Meanwhile Michael (Ponsor) and I are shepherding his two teenagers through the trials and turmoil of the high school years. I'm still working - slowly - on my book on women's spiritual autobiography. All in all, a very happy time in my life." GRUBB' S ODYSSEY 0 dysseus: hero of the Trojan War, husband to Penelope, and father of... adventure travel? That's how Peter Grubb (A80) sees it, and he's named his adventure travel company, ROW, in honor of the Man of Many Turns. ROW stands for River Odysseys West and Remote Odysseys World·wide, and its acronym refers to its roots and continued emphasis on river running. ROW offers nearly 200 trips a year, including rafting trips on Idaho's Snake and Salmon rivers, walking tours in Peru, Greece, and Italy, and barge trips in France. As the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark Expedition approaches, Grubb has devised trips along the Missouri River in the footsteps of the famous explorers. These trips eschew the popular two-person paddleboats in favor of 34-foot voyageur canoes (replicas of those used by early fur traders) that carry up to 14 paddlers and two guides. Aside from the added camaraderie these canoes afford, they also facilitate educational tours, where authors, historians, and interpreters discuss with travelers the history of the waters they are gliding through. Grubb's plunge into river running began his sophomore year at St. John's. A search for jobs as a camp counselor unearthed an ad for white water guides on the New River in West Virginia. That spring, in addition to reading Shakespeare, Descartes, and Machiavelli, Grubb traveled every weekend to the little town of Thurmond, W. Va., to train as a guide. When school ended, Grubb's future began. "I did 111 one-day river trips," he recalls. "And I was hooked." But there was one way that the experience did not measure up. ''I met a lot of neat people, but I didn't like saying hello at eight and goodbye at five. I wanted to develop meaningful relationships with people, so I started looking through the guide grapevine for five and six day trips. I heard that the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon and Idaho were the places to go." That winter Grubb went home to California, had knee surgery, got his pilot's license, and applied for work as a river guide. He was hired to work longer trips in Idaho through huge wilderness areas. "It was everything I hoped it would be: the excitement of sharing the week with people, the whitewater, the camaraderie, the natural and cultural history of the area. It was great seeing people, especially city people, light up and relax in an environment that was foreign but rejuvenating." It wasn't long before Grubb decided to strike out on his own. "After I worked in Idaho for a season I was enamored with the business and very naively thought, 'Well it can't be that hard to get people to go on these trips.' My first year I booked only 13 people, so I ended going back and working for the same company from the previous summer." The Grubb clan in front of the castle of the Knights of St. John on the island of Rhodes. By 1982, however, the business started to work, and in 1983, Grubb met his wife-to-be, Betsy Bowen, whom he initially hired as a guide. The two were scheduled to marry in September 1984 and planned to honeymoon in Turkey, which Grubb had visited in 1974. "I was living in Marseille with a French family, and for their August vacation, we drove from France to Turkey in a small Renault pulling a camp trailer. We had been in Turkey about ten days when fighter jets started flying overhead. Then the radio said 'Tourists go home.' The war over Cyprus between the Turks and Greeks had started, so we had to beeline back to the border. I always wanted to get back," he says. Grubb began to read about yachting trips for his honeymoon in Turkey, but when he saw the cost, he decided it was not realistic. "Then I thought, why not put a trip together and see if we could sell it?" Grubb says. He and Bowen designed a 10-dayyachting trip, created a brochure, and sent it to their mailing list, inviting people to come on their honeymoon. "We got eight sign-ups, all of whom had been rafting with us before. Those eight people paid for our honeymoon and we all had a wonderful yachting trip together. Then they left and we stayed and traveled in Turkey for another month," Grubb explains. "That was the beginning of our international division." Grubb and his wife continue to lead tours in both the international and U.S. divisions of ROW. Last summer, they and their two children, Jonah, six, and Mariah, nine (described as "family travel consultants" on ROW's Web site), led an Odyssey theme trip: a yachting program to the Ionian Islands, Athens, Delphi, Mycenae, Corinth, Epidarus, Olympia, and Ithaca, the pinnacle of the trip. During the tour, they read a child's version of the Odyssey as a bedtime story for the kids, and Grubb did nightly readings from the Fagel translation for the adult travelers. Says Grubb, "Odysseus figures prominently in this enterprise."• Su.s3an Borden �Alulllni Notes ... acquisitions librarian at Villa Julie College in Stevenson, Maryland. Nigel Hinshelwood (SF) is Academic Dean at Edmund Burke School in Washington, D.C. He can be contacted through Edmund Burke School, 2955 Upton St. NW, Washington, D.C., 20008, by phone at 202-362-8882 or by e-mail nigel_hinshelwood@ebs.org. Joe and Aimee Morris (SF) write: "As Technical Director at The Children's School in La Jolla, CA, runs the new Media Center which includes an iMac lab and a state of the art TV production studio. Aimee (81) is the President of the San County Foster Parent Association and is doing well in her legal practice. Our daughter Hand (16) is Catcher for the Torrey Pines School softball team and Sam \ lU) is a skateboarder." job at the University of Chicago as an Assistant Professor in Psychology. We will move in early summer. On December 28, 1999, our adopted daughter, Kyle Begley Kay, was born. And, after a long time trying, I became pregnant at the same time. We are expecting our second daughter on Labor Day, appropriately enough. I welcome friends to contact me via email: lkay@cns.caltech.edu {the adfor a long dress should be time)." Peter McClard writes: "Hello and much love to all my friends and schoolmates. I am well and tan at our company. (gluon.com) related soft\va:re, • Tuz, Susan Keeler Natalie moved into The Comi:~ou.nd hous1ng style arrangement are delighted ward to seeing everyone at the in 20001 ri ,.,.,, ~'h ,.,.,~ tor Anderson, California. "After 22 years in the retail insurance business I have ac•ceJ)tea tion with a D. C. serSafe Haven Outreach the/a/any natural course in gnevmg. I'm surrounded , ,_,. who don't understand poems, music, essays, short stories, and comic books. anvthinsr that semi-rural environment." In ""v'°'ir-irur sees the who are still wonaenng wnetne:r a St. John's education prepares its students fo:r the 'real world."' She says, "asking the :right questions in the midst of such a devastating tragedy and gathering people together to discuss their fears and concerns are two of the many gifts St. John's gave to me. I give thanks for the wonderful, practical education I received at St. John's. Thank you for the skills you've given to me to be a pastor and community leader in an urban setting." Marlene Strong (A) writes: 'Tm on a year's leave of absence from my research job, working as a social worker in a foster care agency. This is so I can complete my hours of experience for the Marriage and Family Therapist License. It certainly is different, being on the front lines. Exhausting in a whole different way than my last job, which involved doing studies for federal and state governmental agencies. I won't do it forever, but it is an interesting change for a while." 1978 Katherine (Katy) Culp-Kipp Wisniewski (SF and SFGI84) writes: "My husband died last October from lung cancer at the age of 53, a nonsmokerwi.th young children and a most youngish wi.fe. Presently, the kids are good and I have found our race," writes "Although I beat it's only because I sabotaged the wax on her skis. Anchorage is a nice place to live - maybe even a better place to visit - and I would love to hear from any folks who pass by this way." Larry's email address is Larry Ostrovsky@law. state. ak. us. From Sabrina Patrone (A): ''I'm well and happy living in Hershey, Pennsylvania, with my husband and two boys, Jimmy and Nicky (ages 8 and 6). I'm a radiologist at the Milton Hershey Medical Center. Life has been extremely good to me! Greetings to all." 1979 Carol Colatrella (A) and Rick Denton, and big brother Charlie Denton announce the arrival of Lena Denton, 6 lbs., 13 oz., 19.5 inches. All are well and preparing to spend fall term 2000 in Aarhus, Denmark, where Carol will teach courses in American and comparative literature and gender studies at Aarhus University as a Fulbright Fellow. Scott Fitzpatrick (A) is a freelance Web site architect in the Washington, D.C., area. He has three sons, Ian (12), Matthew (10), and Aidan, who will be four in October. Lynn Stonesifer (A) earned an MLS from the University of Pittsburgh in 1985 and worked as a reference librarian in a public library for 12 years. Since 1997, she has been the cian and teacher, and we have a son, Solian K. born on 2000. Please feel free to contact grandfather on Uecemoer He survived a 1998-1999 battle with cancer. He urges evnvonP contribute to the cancer their choice: American Cancer ety or The Fund/Dana Farber Cancer Institute. married John Baxter Weber in 1991. She and works at adopted a Chinese da1Lghter, Chloe Pearcy Weber, on who will be four years June 9. Richard Chief of Security campus, died in October of 1998 of leukemia. (Dalrymple) (A), maiden name and has taken still resides on Maryland's Eastern Shore wi.th their 16-year-old daughter, Kim, who is an avid music student. 1983 "We are happy and healthy in Tennessee," writes Jim Bailey (A). "Our daughter, Claire, is nine and Spence is five." Carmel Davis (SF) and Wendy Barnwell (SF84) are alive and well in Philadelphia. They will be moving to Swarthmore in March. Both Carmel and Wendy are in Graduate School Carmel for his Ph.D. at Penn State and Wendy for her MBA at Georgetown. They have a daughter, Natasha, who is eight years old. Leslie Kay (SF) writes: "I am currently a postdoc at Caltech in Neuroscience. I've been here since 1995, after I received my Ph.D. from Berkeley (Biophysics). I write to report my worst and then best year ever. In April 1999, my spouse, Maryellen Begley, was diagnosed with breast cancer. We are happy to report that she is well now and looks forward to a long and healthy life. Anyone who is interested in what we learned concerning various treatments is welcome to contact me. I have accepted a a crattsman treats with love and respect. Hrewm2 is meanwhile on hold until old Elizabeth Travis (SF} says hello from Sacramento, California. She wi.ll receive her JD from McGeorge School of Law, of the Pacific, on Saturday, 13, just about 16 years from the date of graduation from St. John's College. "I don't have a job lined up yet but am hoping to work in natural resources/ environmental law," she writes. "I guess I will have to take 'Rocket Scientist' off my business cards ... On a more personal note .. .I am still single and still a Californian, albeit one without a permanent home. Contact me via email: ejtravis@jps.net." 1984 On March 2, 2000, Cynthia Keppel Hellman, Ph.D. (A) was awarded the outstanding faculty member of the year award from the Commonwealth of Virginia. She was one of 11 recipients in the state this year. She is the youngest person ever to have won the award and only the second person ever to have won it as an assistant professor. This year she was also promoted to associate professor, tenured, and chosen as director for Hampton University's Nuclear High Energy Physics Lab. "Hello everybody!" writes Tom Loveland (A). "After a couple years at the University of Chicago I ended up in Baltimore, attracted by friends �Aluntni Notes ... from St. John's. Been here ever since. Yikes! Been with the same partner for 16 years. Finally married her five years ago. I built a 25-person computer company, Mind Over Machines, that now creates business and consumer web sites. Replaced myself as president there last year and now am founder and CEO of Mom.com, a venture-backed Internet portal for moms. Having a blast! If you visit www.mom.com, be kind - we have a lot of work to do yet. Am thankful for all my St. John's friends and memories. Best wishes to you all. Signed, tom@mom.com." 1985 Joel 'fyner (A) lives in New York and will marry Carol Haylett on July 8, 2000. 1986 Julie (Spencer) Moser (SF) is completely immersed in being a housewife and mother, and in homeschooling her two children, Joe (12) and Sarah (15 months). 1987 Sus3an Borden (A) and Glenn Housley will celebrate the first birthday of their son, Sam, on June 9. Jeremiah (Jerry) Cronin (SF) writes: "I recently received my Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction (Math Education) at University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. My dissertation was a statistical study of the Dine College Mathematics placement examination where I work as a Mathematics Instructor. Mywife and two daughters continue to be frequently involved in traditional Navajo and Jemez Pueblo dances. We reside in the Cottonwood/Tsalina chapter on the Navajo reservation which is west of beautiful Canyon de Chelly." Christopher Howell (A) and his wife Sabrina Wald (A88) welcomed Beatrice Katrina Howell in July; she joins Leo and Calida. Chris is a general manager for a high tech printing and design company. 1988 "I married Smita Lahiri in Ithaca, N.Y. on October 17, 1998, and again in New Delhi, India, on December 27, 1999," writes John Gibson (SF). "Rachel (Schroeder) Andreyev (SF), Melissa Johnson (SF), CJ DaJ.let (SF), Jack Lincoln (A74), and David Macdonald (SF89) attended the Ithaca wedding. David Macdonald and his wife Ellen also came to the New Delhi wedding. Smita is an anthropologist, studying religion in the rural Philippines. I've recently resumed my graduate studies in turbulence at Cornell. Smita and I both plan to finish our Ph.D. in the fall of 2000. Besides my thesis and my wife, my main interests are the piano and the free software community. Not a day goes by that I don't think of how SJC opened my mind and made me a better person." Christina ~"Miss Smith" Paige (A) is teaching at Kipa School in Tucson and taking courses towards a Master's in counseling. Since their marriage, Diana Shaw-McCarthy (A) and Jonathan have enjoyed extensive travel. From September 1997 to September 1998, they lived in Basel, Switzerland, travelling in that country as well as Hungary, Malta, Italy, France, Spain, England, and Germany. Now settled back in Manhattan, Diana is an editor at Standard & Poors and plans to pursue an MBA degree. Jonathan is an economist at the New York Federal Reserve Bank. 1989 After spending nearly ten years teaching mathematics and science on the reservation, Brendon Gordon (SF), wife Suzan, and four-year-old daughter Gianna have moved to Albuquerque, N.M. Brendon was recently selected as the Western Region Coordinator for NM MESA, Inc. MESA (Mathematics, Engineering, Science, Achievement) is a pre-college outreach program striving to increase the number of ethnic minorities choosing majors in math, science, and engineering. Brendon oversees eight mid-schools and eight high school MESA programs. Brendon and his family were not able to attend the ten-year reunion for the class of '89 because they were traveling in Europe for two months. They did the St John's curriculum geographically (literally!) travelling from Greece to Italy and then on to Northern Europe (Austria, Germany, Netherlands, and France). Brendon would love to reminisce about the days of endless and deep philosophical discussions, among other things. "Some news to share," writes Brendan Heffernan (A). 'Tm getting married this May and have bought a house in (surprising myself) Los Angeles. Oh unexpected paths. Hello, long unseen friends." Ted Merz (A) and Diana Martinez (SF87) still live in New York City and will celebrate their 10th anniversary in August. Ted is now bureau chief of New York at Bloomberg; Diana is assistant professor in the Brain Imaging Division at Columbia. "The Brain Imaging job is awesome," Ted writes. "It involves looking at the dopamine receptors in substance abuse." Their e-mail addresses are tmerz@bloomberg.net and martinez@neuron.cpmc.columbia.edu. Denise Pope (SF) writes: "I completed my Ph.D. in zoology at Duke University in November 1998, and then moved to Panama to start a National Science Foundation post-doctoral fellowship at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. I really enjoy living in Panama and will probably be here until mid-2001. My email address here is: poped@naos.si.edu." Tish WulickPylman (SF) is happy to announce the arrival of Anna Katherine Pylman, August 12th, 1999. Tish is enjoying full-time motherhood. Mike, Tish, and Anna are living on the Oregon coast and would enjoy hearing from Johnnies travelling their way: mlpylman@email.msn.com. Chris Tegeler (A) e-mails: "I am currently working for an extraordinary tour operator in Manhattan, specializing in educational cruises with themes such as The Journey of Odysseus, The World of St. Paul, Sailing to Byzantium, very much bring- ing history, literature and philosophy to life. I will be participating in one myself in April and May, The Great Battles of Antiquity, sailing around the southern coast of Greece and up the coast of eastern Turkey, visiting the sites of Thermopylae, Delphi, and Marathon, just to name a few. The visit to Thermopylae will be narrated from Herodotus. This particular program was over three years in the making. I would welcome greetings from any and all at: ctegeler@travdyn.com." George Turner (A) writes: "Abril and I are expecting a baby girl, our first, in late April." 1990 In recognition of 36 years of teaching in the Escondido Union High School District, the new science building at Orange Glen High School was named for Richard G. Brown (SGI). Mr. Brown taught biology, AP biology, physiology, world cultures, AP European history, and humanities, the latter course patterned after the St. John's College program. Mr. Brown retired in 1997. Joshua Kerievsky (SF) and Tracy Reppert Kerievsky (SF 91) had a little girl named Sasha in San Francisco on June 19, 1999. They can be reached at: joshua@ industeriallogic.com. Kelly Koepke (SF) reports that she married Don Pizzolato in Las Vegas in January 2000, but will be keeping her name "(who wouldn't with Pizzolato as an alternative!)." She and Don are moving to Albuquerque in May 2000. Sundance Metelsky (AGI) and Tom Oehser are thrilled to announce the birth of their daughter. Zina Xena Metelsk:y Oehser was born at home on March 9, 2000. She has a fouryear-old brother named Bela and her uncle is Johnny Metelsk:y (A94). You can e-mail Sundance at: Sundance@ toms.net. Olivia D. Neel (SF) received a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Cornell University Medical School and is doing a Post Doctorate at the University of California, San Francisco. '' r. Heidi C. Wernett (SF79) was awarded the prestigious FriendAward medal and by the State Administration of Foreign Affairs Experts in on September 1999. The Friendship Award is the award given to foreigners in China. In a total of 105 medals were awarded to distinguished experts who were among more than invited to China each year. "Dr. Heidi" as she is known in China was among the four women who were selected. After graduating she went on to study horticulture and obtained her Master's degree from Penn State University in 1982 and her Ph.D. from the University of Florida in 1990. Beginnng in 1985, she spent a majority of time in Japan learning about marketing in Asia before first coming to China in 1995, where she established a private floriculture training center in Yunnan Province. Afloriculture expert and independent entrepreneur, she set up CHINA Horticultural Business Services in 1997. Along with consulting for companies interested in entering the China market, Wernett is currently sponsor and director of Green Sea Flower Project, a demonstration flower farm to introduce farmers in China to horticultural technology for improving production management and marketing in order to enable them to succeed at growing quality flowers for export. �Alulllni Notes ... Daniel and Deborah Reinke (AGI) reside in Blue Hill, Maine, with their three children-Makaela, David, andMariah (born 5/12/1999!). Kenneth Turnbull (A) passed the Maryland Bar Exam and has been clerking for a judge on the Maryland Court of Appeals. This fall he will practice law at a firm. Things are going well. 1991 Teddi Ann Galligan (AGI) and David Diggs (AGI) joyfully announce the birth of their daughter, Sophia Emmanuelle Diggs-Galligan on Feb. 15, 2000 in Washington, D.C. They would love to hear from friends at Te~av@aol.com. Shum McShane (A) writes: "It has been a while, so I thought I would write up a blurb for The Reporter so my friends will find out I am not in the state pen after all. In '93, I served two years with the Peace Corps in Benin, West Africa, then took a long trip around the world. I later attended the Goucher Post Bae Pre Med program in Baltimore for a year, then moved to North Carolina, where I am now enrolled in the UNC med school. (Zoe Beatty, A91, is in her 3rd year here. Hi Zoe.) My e-mail is shum_mcshane@med. unc.edu. If there is anyone who wants to say hi or if there are any current or former students who want to talk about Peace Corps or the path from SJC to med school, please drop me a line. By the way, Andy Nelson (A91) (anelson@ kcstar.com) is getting married in May. Warm congratulations to him and his blushing bride. Oh, and if anyone has any good connections in South America, let me know." 1992 "I'm getting ready for yet another move," writes Martha Acosta (A). "In May, I'll be finishing up an MA in Instructional Technology and beginning a business plan for a company that designs Web-based instruction for traveling museum exhibits (trying to put together the MBA in Arts Administration with this latest effort). But most importantly, I'll be heading off to Loughborough, England, following my fiance, Robert, home. I imagine that the midlands of England will be very different from San Francisco, so I'll need advice from fellow alumni. Write me: martha@martica.com." Elyette Block (SF) reports that she will be getting married on July 29, 2000, at her parent's place in Northern Minnesota to Jonathan Kirby (not a Johnny). "We have been working in the Netherlands for a year and have just bought an apartment in Breda, with plans to stay here a couple more years. I work at Amazon.com and am still trying to finish my thesis to graduate from an MBA program. I look forward to meeting any friends coming through the Netherlands or anywhere close by. My e-mail address: elyette@ hotmail.com." Simon Bone (SF) has been working for McKinsey & Co. in Diiesseldorf, Germany, but this year has been selected as a Robert Bosch Foundation Fellow, in a program designed to strengthen the German/American relationship. He will work in several areas, including, probably, a post in the federal government, and in the editorial department of a German news station (Germany's answer to CNN) in Berlin. Look for him at www.ourfounder.com/bone. Trish Dougherty (nee Walker) (A) writes: "My son Owen will be two on April 12th. He's a wonderful, sweet, smart and funny boy who makes his parents very proud." "Currently working towards a master's degree with an emphasis on Border Studies," writes Aaron Garza (SF). "Proud new father of daughter Sofia Quetzalli Garza, born to my wife Azenett on March 25." Michael Kopple (SF) works for the Los Angeles County Public Defender's Office. He lives in the Hollywood area and welcomes contacts from all Johnnies. He can be e-mailed at mkopple@hotmail.com. Mark Parenti (AGI) writes: "I am living in Austin. Texas, with my wife, Meredith, my son, Carson (born August 7, 1999), and our two beagles. I work as an assistant attorney general for the office of the Texas attorney general." 1993 James Berrettini (AGI) and Anne Schuchman(A9l)announcethe birth of their first child, Samuel, born February 5, 1999. "He's an affectionate and very funny kid!" they write. Victoria Burgess (SF) moved to London in March and would love to hear from classmates and alumni living in the UK. Please e-mail her at burgessv@aol.com. News about Robert Drake (AGI) who was the victim of an attack in Dublin, Ireland, last year, was printed in the February 22 edition of the Baltimore Alternative. He has returned to the States and is living in Philadelphia, where he is undergoing rehabilitation. Alex and Vanessa Ellermann (A) write: "Ian Alexander Ellermann was born April 20th, 2000." He weighs 5 lbs., 11 oz. and we couldn't be happier! Julia B. Graham (SF) now lives in Boston where her partner, Nathan Mesnikoff, is in a Ph.D. program at Boston University. She writes: "I will return to graduate school at Boston College in September to become a nurse practitioner. The program is specifically for non-RNs with bachelor's degrees in other fields. and my colleagues-to-be sound like a great group - Peace Corps alumni, teachers, an engineer, a zoologist. The caretaker side of my nature moves more and more toward the front, and I'm trying to relax into that non-prestigious but very satisfying role. Jeff Seidman (A93) used to tell me, 'Never hurry one pleasure for another,' and that piece of wisdom continues to be of use." Charlie Henrickson (SF) is in his sixth year teaching science and rock climbing at the Orme School in Arizona. Thornton C. Lockwood, Jr. (AGI) is still working on an Aristotle Ph.D. at Boston University. He hopes to finish in the academic year 20002001. Maria Pumilia (SF) writes: "Still living in LA. Just recently, I was cast as 'Lead Zombie' in a film called 'Unusual Destiny.' I rose from the coffin with cheer befitting a rotting corpse - completely putrefied, skin peeling off my face, blood oozing and dripping, bones sticking out of my head, you name it. It was roe.kin! Until the shooting was over and I realized that the make-up putter on-ers did not have any make-up taker off-ers. So I had to go to the Sav-On in full Zombie Techno-color to get some cold cream. Nothing like being a rotting puss mass and strolling into the local drugstore to give you a feel for what it's like to be a societal outcast. I'm on the roster to be dead again soon in another film called 'Nacho vs. El Vampira,' a you-guessed-it vampire movie of the cheesiest proportions. I'm trying not to read anything into being cast as dead with such high frequency lately. So, between working full time as a project manager for an internet banking company called Digital Insight, and moonlighting as The Living Dead, I'm pooped!" "I have recently completed my Ph.D. program in classics at U.C. Berkeley with a dissertation titled, "The Relation of the Forms to the Intellect in Plotinus," writes Kenneth Wolfe (SF). 1994 Emily Brock (A) got a master's degree in evolutionary biology from the University of Oregon in 1997. After that she spent a couple of years living and working in Cambridge, Mass., and now she is in the first year of a doctoral program in History of Science at Princeton. "Greetings and best wishes to the class of 1994 members," writes David Brooks (SF). "I am pleased to report that I passed all of my comprehensive exams in existential-phenomenological psychology at Duquesne University. I have begun doing my dissertation research, a hermeneutic investigation of how clinical supervision in psychoanalytic psychotherapy effects a training therapist's clinical praxis." He works as a psychologist at PERSAD Institute in Pittsburgh. He will do an internship in Philadelphia next year. Bart Bryant (SF) writes: "I'm moving to Wyoming, home-state of the elusive Jean Escoz, and wonder if anyone knows his whereabouts. He was last spotted in Seattle." Patricia Greer (AGI) continues at the Department of Religious Studies at UVA, on the Ph.D. track. She is ABD and writing her dissertation on the Sanskrit epic, The Mahabharata. EmilyMackil (SF) writes: "In the midst of dissertation research for a Ph.D. in Classics at Princeton University, I've been awarded a Fulbright fellowship to study in Greece during the 2000-2001 academic year! The Fulbright award will allow me to conduct essential field research and study in regional museums. I'll be based in Athens, at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens." Lowell Fields Millburn III (SF) is a candidate for an MLIS at the University of Denver, and is currently working as Computational Ontologist developing knowledge management structures for an e-commerce venture in Westminster, Colorado. Accompanying a strict regimen of road cycling, triathlon, and salsa/merengue, Lowell and his wife Sarah are expecting their first child, a boy, during the 2000 spring equinox. Lowell definitely wishes to make it known that George Erving (SF96) should be admitted forthwith to the cycling pantheon. "Congrats on a great finish at Ramrod in Seattle, Dottore! Hi to Betsy, Ellen and Caroline!" Catherine McGuire (SFGI) is director ofJoslyn Castle Institute, a non-profit for sustainable design and development. She recommends Earth in Mind on Education, Environment, and the Human Prospect by David W. Orr "concerning what's missing in our education." She also recommends Better Not Bigger: How to Take Control of Urban Growth and Improve Your Community by Eben Fodor. Jason Slavin (SFGI) owns the restaurant Portofino Cafe Italiano in SE Portland, Oregon. 1995 Janice Cantwell (AGI) is the proud grandmother of Brian, age 9; Shannon, age 7; and Patrick, age 5 months. "Who,'' she asks, "is the future Johnny?" Dina Dineva (A) has won the Wilson Award, given by the American Society of Indexers for the best index of 1999. She works in Annapolis for Coughlin Indexing Services, Inc, a firm run by Maria Coughlin Van Buren (A73). Christina Griffin (AGI) sends the following report: "I am currently residing in Madrid, Spain. I am working on my Ph.D. at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and I am the �Director General of a Spanish company that is dedicated to training Spanish executives in international business relations. I do not know how much longer I will be here in Spain, because I have applied to MBA programs in Australia and at the London School of Economics." "Liz Hering (SF) and I are still shacked up and she is about one year into her osteopathic medicine degree," writes Chris Davis (SF). "There is increasingly less time for beer." Emily Murphy (A) writes: "I finally left the Maryland State Archives in July 1999, after four years. Now I'm finishing up my second semester at Penn State's Harrisburg Campus in the American Studies Program. I'm enjoying every minute of it and should be getting my MA in 2001. My e-mail is eam193@psu.edu. I'd love to hear from fellow Johnnies." This from Dan Nelson (A}: Johnnitas and Johnnitos ! You've heard of Cliff's Notes, haven't I Courtney McKee (nee Lawton) (SFGI) writes: After marrying Scott McKee in October 1996, I completed an internship with the Santa Fe Public Schools, and now teach French and Freshman English Composition at Moriarty High School in Moriarty, New Mexico. I use the St. John's seminar style to teach some portions of Romeo and Juliet, The Odyssey, and Animal Farm to my ninth graders. They really love formulating their own questions, and we all enjoy entertaining them! My French II class and I are planning a trip to France in April 2001, and to Montreal in April 2002. Scott continues to work at Camera and Darkroom in Santa Fe, on Galisteo Street, where he's in his fifth year. We bought a home in Edgewood, NM. I try to make it a point to attend community seminars, but find my hands pretty full with teaching English 101 at the ln-iu,,-,..,.;n, of New Mexico, and English to teenagers; so great and love to learn. love to near trom my me a line at P.O. Ede:ewood. NM 87015 ore- as a civilian or as an officer, but I could not find one. SO, I quit graduate school, put my belongings in storage, moved out of my apartment, and went to boot camp in May of 1999. Boot camp was a horrifying and fascinating experience that I would never repeat. While I was in boot camp I ran into Mark Schifflet who recognized me in the galley one day. He said that he began at St. John's in the fall of 1996 but didn't complete his degree. A few days after seeing Mark I saw Jeremy Schaub (A97). I heard my first name whispered behind me as I was waiting to cross the street one afternoon. (Note: in boot camp one may not speak on the street, nor may one speak to persons of the opposite gender outside of official business, nor may one call another "recruit" by his/her first name.) I turned to see my old friend Jeremy standing behind me. We were able to rendezvous at the chapel on a few different Sundavs and I learned that he school to learn about nuclear warfare. He was concerned about the of his knee, which he had in a race, so I don'tknowifhewas able to com- is cu:rre:ntJlv enrolled we have seven ~ drives them to school in our BMW, while I work in the Vallev develouine- where you shall see in livid detail. Those wno care: cm::ckit out and/or DROP ME A LINE! Those who don't: as Roger Daltrey says-Why don't y'all just f-f-ffade " Janet (SFGI) has clicked her heels and gone home to Kansas. She's living on the Kansas side of Kansas City, acting, writing, teaching, and preaching and having as much fun as Scott Field is having doing stand-up comedy. She would love to hear from any of you at: jsunder@blitz-it.net. Lucille Ward Walker (AGI) and her husband Marty announce the birth oflan Archibald Walker in December. "We are in awe-he's wonderful," she says. "Big excitement!" writes Tracy Whitcomb (A). "Changed jobs in July 1999. I now work for a telecommunications consulting company called Vertek Corporation. Feel free to e-mail me at: twhitcomb@ vertekcorp.com." 1996 Carol M . .Brinjak (SFGI) would love to hear from '95 and '96 alumni of Annapolis and Santa Fe. Heremail address is brinjak@worldnet.att.net. Erin Hearn (A) will marry William C. Furby IV on June 11, 2000, in Anchorage, Alaska. CarolineJackson (SF) is working at Knitmedia in New York City. "We handle the Knitting Factory," she writes. "Life is good and the city is exciting!" a Master's of Fine Arts to another school in Texas. After that Chair of the Waste Management Subcommittee. Jacob Keller (SF) writes: "Have become tight-rope walker in small wandering circus." 1999 Derek Alexander (A) is working for Data Union in Greer, South Carolina - it's a small company (five people) whose business is "Computer Network Solutions." Derek is having a great time - he says the job is "the revenge of my math side." He goes to businesses to solve their computer problems, and enjoys the reaction when he asks where the pencil sharpener is. You can reach him at: derek@dataunion.com. Rodino Anderson (A) writes: "I'm currently working at a Catholic high school in Tampa, Florida, teaching algebra, geometry, astronomy, and my baby, philosophy. I'm loving it here but wish my so-called friends would stay in touch with me. God knows I've tried. So a11:ain. I can be . I were married last June, and are now York. I am science at CardiMiddle and Todd ture. Women's Studies. She hopes to stick around the New York area to find a job with a women's rights organization in Manhattan. "Missing Santa Fe horribly," she writes. "New Jersey kind of sucks - too many people, too many clouds, too little space. But all (most) of my friends are here (as is my new girl!) and spring is approaching. Looking forward to summer drives to the beach in the 2nd Dart. All in all, things are pretty good." Jonathan Rowan (SF) completed his MA in Italian at Middlebury College in Florence, Italy. 1997 Taffeta Elliott (SF) won a National Science Foundation Fellowship that will pay for three years of her doctoral studies in Neurobiology and Behavior at Columbia University in New York City. She began her graduate studies last summer and is currently investigating sensorimotor learning. Anne K. Kniggendorf Stevens (SF) writes: "Yes, it's true: as the Reporter reported, I have enlisted in the Navy. I was working on my MA in linguistics at the University of Kansas when I decided that what I really wanted to do was learn a language well, not just learn about language in general (that's later). I wasn't sure how to go about this, other than by moving to another country which would have been a little pricey for me, but then I learned about the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, Calif., and it sounded perfect. I tried to discover a clever way to enroll is an active reservist • and is working toward an environmental engineering degree at Monterey Peninsula College. We have a tortoise and a gray cat. My email address is spidyhiney@aol.com." Lee Munson and Alison Bamert (SF) write: "Going on year 3 in NYC: Lee is a Senior Vice President at the investment firm Prime Charter Ltd. and Alison is a researcher at the Alexander Calder Foundation." 1997 Andie Streator (SF) married Scott Turner August 15, 1998. Andie is working at Los Alamos National Laboratory as an Environmental Safety and Health Trainer. She will be pursuing an MS in Industrial Hygiene/Environmental Management through the laboratory. 1998 John Carone (SF) works as a technical writer in his hometown of Corvallis, Oregon. He writes in his spare time, and takes informal ballroom dance, swing, and Argentine tango classes from the local college. He hopes his teachers still remember him when he gets around to applying for graduate school. He can be reached at johnrobertcarone @hotmail.com. He sends his regards to the "sophomores" who are now semors. Sara Galpin (SFGI) has been appointed to the Northern New Mexico Citizen's Advisory Board by the U.S. Secretary of the Department of Energy, Bill Richardson, to serve a two-year term. Ms. Galpin is also the coming months. We are interested in meeting recent alumni in the New York area. Johnson had a new 27: Maja Sofia Johnson. Paul Lochner (A) e-mails: "I have bought a studio in D.C. My address is 5500 Friendship Blvd., Unit 2424N, Chevy Chase, Md. 20815 and my email address is lochner@ starpower.net. I'd love to hear how everyone is doing." Tracy M. Nectoux (AGI) has completed course requirements at St. Andrews University, Scotland, and will begin writing her dissertation to complete Ph.D. requirements. Amina Stickford (SF) was awarded a fellowship and named a Humane Studies Fellow for the 19992000 academic year from the Institute for Humane Studies, George Mason University, for her essay on Hobbes. (The essay, "A Proscription for Liberty" is posted on the St. John's Web site at: www.sjcsf.edu/ library/ awardess/ stickford.htm.) �Letters ... REvERDY RESIDENTS WHERE'S THAT POOL? I just read the article about the Reverdy Johnson House in The Reporter (Winter 2000) and recalled many good times and adventures we had during my senior year ( 1967) when I lived in Reverdy Johnson with Helen Hobart, Lovejoy Reeves, and Deirdre Lenihan. Helen and I lived downstairs, with Lovejoy and Deirdre upstairs. I recall, perhaps incorrectly, that the previous year was the first (of our era, at least) that the house was a women's residence. The four seniors who lived there that year established a routine of spring-time gin-and-tonic gatherings on the grass outside under the trees, which we tried to maintain the following year. It was a wonderful place to live, with somewhat relaxed curfew and visitation rules - times were different back then. Thanks for reviving those memories with the article. I wasn't aware of the building's history and hadn't a clue about where its name, incorrect as it turns out, had originated. I certainly do enjoy receiving The Reporter, and with each edition I am reminded of my days at St. John's. I graduated in the class of 1940 after 2 ? years at Johns Hopkins School of Engineering. I grew up in Annapolis and have many memories of the events that took place there. You asked, "Where was the swimming pool in Iglehart?" We often sneaked a swim in the pool when we were kids as well as at the Naval Academy! As you entered Iglehart Hall from King George Street you turned left and went to the locker rooms. Entering the locker rooms the pool was to the right towards McDowell Hall in the far end of the east wing of the gym. We'd strip down and dive in. Nobody ever bothered us as we were well-behaved (Boy Scouts) and had full run of the campus and also the Naval Academy. I remember trying to get to the belfry of McDowell as we'd always heard of the cow belonging to Prof. Gladden that was hoisted up there. Of course, in later years the swimming pool was covered over by a wooden floor, but we knew it was there. We always left a window unlocked when we ran around the track. Later, when there was a basketball game we'd go up the corners of the gym holding onto the crevices with our fingers and toes. Naturally we always saw the games freebie, Also I was interested in reading about the new home of the Alumni Office in Reverdy Johnson House. We remember how these homes were moved through the streets of Annapolis. Quite an event in those days. Alice G. Chalmers (A67) QUOTABLE QUOTES Under the Winter 2000 "Letters ... " page, Rick Wicks (SF68) asked if anyone had any "interesting recollections" regarding a lecture by Kenneth Boulding at St. John's in Santa Fe in 1968. I was there, not as a student or tutor but the college's public information director. I am afraid the only Boulding comment I remember was to the effect that the ancient Greeks were a bunch of slavers with good public relations. It was a catchy phrase probably intended to catch our attention. -Maurice Trimmer (SFG/70) -Robert H Reynolds (40) MORE HISTOIRE SPORTIVE I am writing about the lacrosse team picture in the Winter 2000 issue. This is the 1931 team, not the 1932 team as indicated in the caption. Among those shown are Bob MacCartee, Brozz Hoff, Bobby Pool, Ed Lotz, all class of 1931, as was the manager, Charlie Athey, last left in the middle row. I was the manager in 1932. Maryland defeated us, and we didn't get to go to Los Angles for the Olympics. Henry S. Shryock (32) LIBERTY TREE RECOLLECTIONS I recall passing the Liberty Tree virtually every day on campus on the way to the Library; looking out at it from my dorm room in Chase-Stone; overhearing the tour guides through my open windows on Saturday mornings of its history; playing croquet beneath its and finally graduation beneath those same limbs. It's difficult to realize that it is now gone as it seemed so a part of St. when I was a student. It also there will be future classes who will seems inconceivable that a clone of the tree will be in the never have known it. I same spot on which the Liberty Tree stood. Gerard Poissonnier (A 77) ARTWORLD (continued.from Page 12) to define myself and to define myself in contrast with it." After St. John's, Bohrer studied art history at the University of ._, . where he received his MA and worked on his Ph.D. In an all-but-dissertation Bohrer ~LA~.U<:;. with programs at Research Institute, a center dedicated to ""''"hninu the of art. "It was an amazsca.nnmg the skies of scholH sentation in anthropological theory? After his year in the skies of scholarship, Bohrer finished his dissertation on Assyria in England and for an academic job. He landed at Hood College, where he is now Associate Professor tea.cnimg 19th- and 20th-centurv art IS I'm not afraid to think about questions," Bohrer says, and recalls with barely-subdued glee the kind of questions put to him in the course of his work. One day, he says, the big question was: what is the dominant model of visual repre- ""rr•"n1n~r templating the art of postage stamps, CD covers, lawn ornaments, billboards, and street signs. For the better part of the past decade, he has been working in libraries and archives: corresvond- behind the scenes in museums from New York's NJL~~tn)p<)ht:an te:1ctnn1g a biolo!list ways teaches a senior seminar on a differamong those he has are photography, feminism and art history, and theories of realism. And one class, "Meaning and Method in Art," is about looking at the visual, which leads to his con- interested in re::ietnng audience of scholars. an exhibit in a public museum like the Smithsonian was a great opportunity to do that," Bohrer says. Bohrer's work has brought him to homes far beyond Hood College and the Sackler He's lived in London, Paris, and Berlin, and has just returned from a to London and Edinburgh, where he lectured about art and posu~o1ont1a1 ,, and nationalism in the 19th PPT'ITHl"U But does an art historian who sees art in a world of and who lectures and researches on his travels ever feel the need to work? "For some pcovpHc:o, their research is their and then there's " Bohrer ex"I mean, I went to Greece on but I my mind along. There was a lot to think about." e Sus3an Borden �Obituaries ... CLARENCE "CORKY'' KRAMER Roger S. Peacock Roger S. Peacock, an amateur golfer in the 1930s who later supervised public golf courses in Maryland, died in January. Born in Lovettsville, Maryland, he attended St. John's (class of 1933) and Duke University, where he was a golf team captain. Beginning in the late 1920s, he won three Maryland State Amateur Championships and several regional tournaments. He received a law degree in 1940 from Columbus University in Washington, D.C. He worked for the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission overseeing the public golf courses, and he played in tournaments sponsored by the Professional Golf Association. Mr. Peacock retired to Florida in 1975. Survivors include his wife. two sons, and four L. Lincoln LCDR brother of C. Ranlet .uunAJ•iu, Clarence J. "Corky" Kramer, who graduated from St. John's in 1949 and was a tutor and the first dean of the Santa Fe campus, died in March. Mr. Kramer was born in Muskegon, Michigan. He spent his life as a teacher, at St. John's, the Key School in Annapolis, and Marlboro College in Vermont. His early college work was interrupted by service in the Army during World War II. He graduated in 1949, then earned an MA in literature at Marlboro College in 1950. He returned to St. John's later that year to conduct the college's Self-Study Program and was appointed a tutor. Along with other St. John's tutors, he helped found the Key School, a K-12 preparatory school in Annapolis. When the Santa Fe campus opened in 1964, Mr. Kramer served as the dean until the first class graduated in 1968. Following a brief stint at Comsat in Washington, D.C., he served as interim headmaster of the Key School before returning to Marlboro College as dean of faculty in 1971, where he continued to teach until his retirement in 1986. In 1991, fellow alumni honored Mr. Kramer with the St. John's College Alumni Award of Merit in recognition of his excellence in service to students. He is survived by two sisters, three children, five grandchildren, and six nieces and nephews. A memorial service was held in Corinth, Vermont, on June 3. • died in December. He was the father of Basia and K.m~stown, R.I. Theodore D. Ernst Theodore D. Ernst, a social work educator who graduated from St. John's in 1947, died in January. He spent his youth on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and attended Concordia College in Bronxville, N.Y., as well as St. John's. He received his Master of Divinity degree from Concordia Seminar in St. Louis and was ordained in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. He went on to earn a Master of Social Work from George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis and his Doctorate of Social Work from Columbia University in New York. He was a social work educator known for an innovative experimental social work program in Kansas City, Missouri. He also served as a professor, associate dean, and dean at universities. Survivors include his two sons and four daughters, as well as 14 grandchildren, and nieces and nephews. Also noted ... Edward Cochran, class of 1944 C. Edwin Cockey, class of 1922 Arthur Dowell, Jr., class of 1939 Wesley Robert Hewitt, A90 Dr. John W. Hildebrand, class of 1943 Phebe Jacobsen, wife of tutor emeritus Bryce Jacobsen Edward C. Sommer, class of 1937 The Rev. C. Robert Sutton, class of 1974 Earl C. White, class of 1935 ENCOURAGING INDIVIDUALITY (continuedfromPage 13) ing skills to his education at St. John's. Even administrative decisions at Desert Academy reflect the discussion-style method at St. John's as they are based on consensus. For example, a committee of parents and faculty working with teachers and administrators determines the curriculum. Both Breslin and Goldberg are active in contributing to conversations about reading lists for Desert Academy courses and their recommendations are influenced by the St. John's experience - taking into consideration books that make for a lively discussion. Breslin and Goldberg met when both were judges for the Baird Prize (given to the St. John's graduating senior who has demonstrated achievement in the arts, literature, mathematics, or the sciences). They married last year. When Goldberg was at St. John's, she never imagined she would end up with another Johnny. "I think what's nice about it, overall, is having a common, if bizarre, frame ofreference. It seems like it would be exhausting to have to explain what Realitywas, Don Rags, why tutors aren't teachers, why everyone is Ms., Mr., etc. Also, Peter and I both like to talk, and thanks to St. John's, you could almost say we are professional talkers now. And then, of course, there is the actual educational background we share. This comes in handy when one of us is trying to remember something from Hegel. You always have someone you can ask, 'hey, what chapter was Master and Slave in?"' she says. With the aim of improving his management skills, Breslin has found time to complete graduatelevel courses in education administration at the University of New Mexico. He hopes to continue his studies during the next academic year, while performing the duties of headmaster of both the upper and lower schools of Desert Academy and overseeing the school's move to the center of Santa Fe, on Camino Alire. (The current campus is part of the Sunrise Springs retreat complex, which will expand into the Academy's space this summer.) Breslin hopes to pursue other interests as well -jazz drumming and writing. He has played percussion since he was young and has performed in a variety of concerts and festivals. He has written for the Santa Fe Reporter; his most recent contribution an article on cactus collecting, and currently is at work on a novel. Breslin continues to be in close contact with his former classmates. "Most people will remember me," he said, "for my long hair and for how I used to inflict my music on my classmates at Collegium." He described the time he spent as an undergraduate as "life-changing" because of the ideas in the books and the discussions with friends. "The friendships I cultivated were profound and have proved lasting," he says, "because of the intensity of the experience and the similar natures and intelligence of the people I studied with." • Alisa Murray Smith (SFG/99) �WHAT FOOLS THESE MORTALS BE ~I ~' ~I ;.id Poor Caliban, witch's son - but what's this? Gender as bent as the monster's body, Rebecca Deming Ballantine, a girl! A truer beast was never play'd by men. Tortured beset beastie, not pitied fall, Just misunderstood, like sweet old Darth Maul. Prospero play'd wide-ey'd and with great madness, Lloyd Bricken in robes of magical arts Rules mightily offering no free choice To daughter Miranda or sailors sev'n. A man of enchantments and ego match'd, Bricken causes waves e'en as plans are hatch'd. ~ Trinculo, Stephano, Caliban, oh! Muy borracho and rolling in the sand Just as audience bellies roll in stands With mighty peals of laughter. Highjinks ensue. Drunken monster hides with jester little, Stephano with bottle, spraying spittle. Genie Stevens, director of Shake's show Not only breaks down yon mythic fourth wall, Casts rubble and debris at Mesmer's crowd. Methinks Shakepeare would have been quite honor'd Had he seen what Stevens did in a room With fine young actors playing Bill's plume. Jean Draganza, woman playing court clown with Rupert Pubkin, a name no doubt set Down before his birth to play the butler Lush, running around, bottle in his hand. Oh, come now Mister Pubkin, what think pyou? Drinking on an island makes you stink. Phew! Few good excuses found for missing this, So with haste, deflate your wrong assumptions Of this show being out of money's reach; Scrounge 'round in your couch for change ifyou must. The Tempest at St. John's, vibrant! alive! And all to be had for few dollars five. rl} £ rll I "iJ ~ •11"4 ~-- And Miranda: each time seen, a vision. True love of Ferdinand as yet unkown, Alana Hollingsworth, playing so sweet-faced As daughter and perennial student. Choreographer, too? Talent in spades. All this from a school that offers no grades. Her lover, Ferdinand, played by the man with Four names. He - Arthur David Kemp Owen, Softspoken and melody-voic'd young fellow Delights Miranda. As Ferdy, Owen, Whose name fills nearly a line of blank verse Is subtle as hell, and wonderfully terse. Benjamin Ripley seeks freedom; Ariel The airy spirit held by Prospero To do biddings of questionable sorts: A mighty player on a tiny stage. Full fathom five, he plays no "Out, damn spot!" Here he is: Ripley, believe it or not. -- '"O i=: ~ cd (J.) <:.,) 0 ~u ~ ,,,oo ~~ ~~ = ,µ ~Cf)_ CJ'\ CJ'\ ~ ~ cJ'l <l.l ;:::! a.>§"tj'g< b!) ~~ 0 And dear Gonzalo, played by Robert J. Przekwas II, much more than sequel To Bob first, honest to a fault, loyal To his king, but ain't it always the way It's not the true who pay the hardest price. Learn from Gonzalo and try to be nice. Come crash the waves and dash this ship ashore, Sails blow in thund'rous noise in the Great Hall. Such motion in wind and body raging _St. John's students aplenty on new sands. Say what you will of the worth of Great Books, Shakespeare's been endowed with some great new looks. "'C •11"4 8 0 <:.,) <l.l cJ1 i:::i::; ~,......, i:::: - I e ~ ·c N 0 0 .;:J§UOO~ p...·p § ~ t: ..Ocd.,...zo .-o'Q) <l.l ~ s cd ~u <l.l cJ'l ~uU~~ ~~O~.{j "§"§~ ~.-0 ~~T"""lcri--<- Nymphs waving like water for the lost drown' d Surround the scenes and add themes delightful. Maria Goena, Quinby Owen, Eilen Jewell, Alicia Moon Edwards, Bryson Finklea, and Emma Diane Wells; Dancing like butterflies, singing like bells. ~ Introspective Alonso, troubl'd kingMichael Esterheld gives you a true voice. Ask not what you can do for your country, But what Antonio has now planned for you. (As usurper, Matthew Ting has master'd Gunnar Nelson as Sebastian. Bastards.) Shadow puppets aren't from Mister Roger's Neighborhood. This masque scene a wicked sight, The goddesses, having just been nymphs, Take up arms and voice; silhouette divine. Caley Schwindt and Chelsia Wheeler play, For words of gods and men need songs to say. Cl' t3 ""' ~ ~ ] ~ ~ ~ t: Junior David Lloyd Bricken as Prospero - For two weekends in late spring, the students of St. John's College, under the direction of Genie Stevens, put on a production of William Shakespeare's The Tempest. Bill Hutchison wrote the following review which appeared in a slightly different form in the Santa Fe Reporter (May 3 - 9, 2.000) You'RE lease join us for two exciting weeks of Summer Alumni Programs and Homecoming Weekend 2000. During Week I of the Summer Alumni Program, from July 9 through July 14, we will explore the world of Jane Austen. Participants of Week II, from July 16 through July 21, will consider the question of what is the best education, with selections from program books. Homecoming Weekend is packed full of activities ranging from seminars to soccer and volleyball. We will be celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Student Activities Office and 10th anniversary of Meem Library. "lhave just returned from the 1999 reunion weekend in Santa Fe. Attending this event was one of the nicest things I've done for myself this year. My advise to all alums: Come to your reunions and enjoy! Get there." Daniel Cleavinger (SF69). Attendees will be pleased to learn that Tom Larsen (SF75)will be performing live music at homecoming. For more information, contact the Office ofAlumni and Parent Activities in Santa Fe, 505-984-6 J03 or e-mail tshalizi@mail.sjcsf.edu or visit our Web site at www.sjcsf.edu/ alumni/alumni.htm. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The St. John's Reporter</em> Description An account of the resource College newspaper which started publication in 1974. Continued publication into 2000. Includes primarily historical content.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The St. John's Reporter" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=35">Items in <em>The St. John's Reporter</em></a></strong> <span>to view and sort all items in the collection.</span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 28 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context vol 26 issue 3 Spring 2000 Title A name given to the resource Reporter, Volume 26 Issue 3 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2000-04 Description An account of the resource Volume 26, Issue 3 of The St. John's Reporter. Published in Spring 2000. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Public Relations Office Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Goyette, Barbara (editor) Mulry, Laura J. (editor) Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf The Reporter