2 20 38 https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/6ffdb7a1e7012b47113b0eefe1191ef1.pdf 3d717283c065d690f45ef06fd1636c79 PDF Text Text The College W i n t e r St. John’s College • Annapolis • Santa Fe Hegel T h e C l a i m t o K n ow 2 0 0 8 �On Hegel The College (usps 018-750) he ﬁrst seminar I attended at St. John’s, as a visitor to the Santa Fe campus, was on a section of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, considered one of the most challenging works on the Program. I found a volume in the Meem Library and spent several unproﬁtable hours on the reading. In the seminar, I discovered that many of the students were puzzled by Hegel, but they were fearless in offering their ideas and asking questions. And after three years with Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, and other precursors of Hegel, they were well prepared to consider Hegel’s ideas. I left with no greater insight into the Phenomenology, but with a deep appreciation for the seminar, for the Program, and for 18 young adults eager to take on such rigor. Born in Stuttgart in 1770, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel beneﬁted from an excellent early education. He enrolled at Tübingen University, where he studied philosophy and the classics before entering the theological course. (In spite of Hegel’s fondness for cards and lively company, his fellow students called him “the old man.”) By the time he ﬁnished his studies in 1793, he had no enthusiasm for the ministry and instead took a post in Berne as a private tutor. His father’s death in 1799 left him with a modest inheritance, enough to allow Hegel to accept an unpaid position lecturing at the University of Jena. There, he wrote his ﬁrst important work, Phenomenology of Spirit, sending off a manuscript to his publishing house a few days before French troops entered the town in 1806. His thoughts on watching Napoleon ride out of town hint at the quixotic in Hegel: “It is indeed a wonderful sensation to see such an individual, who, concentrated here at a single point, astride a horse, reaches out over the world and masters it.” (Hegel: The Letters) With the university closed and his ﬁnances severely strained, Hegel took a job as a newspaper editor in Bamberg. He spent a year there before becoming the administrator at the Gymnasium in Nuremberg. At age 41, he married for the ﬁrst time, to Marie von Tucher. He shared his ideas on philosophy with his young students and published his second major work, the Science of Logic. In 1818 he became chair of philosophy at the University of Berlin, where his reputation and following grew with the publication of the Philosophy of Right (1821) and his lectures. Shortly before his death, in 1831, he was at work on a second edition of the Phenomenology. In this issue of The College, tutor Peter Kalkavage makes a case for why it’s important to read the Phenomenology, which he considers one of the most important works on the Program. Also in this issue, we look back at the founding of the Graduate Institute more than four decades ago. Since that ﬁrst summer, the graduate program has allowed 4,000 adults to experience sitting down at a seminar table with others at St. John’s, looking to the text and each other for a greater understanding of great works and great ideas. T is published quarterly by St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD, and Santa Fe, NM Known ofﬁce of publication: Communications Ofﬁce St. John’s College Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404-2800 Periodicals postage paid at Annapolis, MD postmaster: Send address changes to The College Magazine, Communications Ofﬁce, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800. Rosemary Harty, editor Patricia Dempsey, managing editor Jenny Hanniﬁn, Santa Fe editor Jennifer Behrens, art director Annapolis 410-626-2539 Santa Fe 505-984-6104 Contributors Ann Deger (SF10) Daniel Lewkow (A10) Ann Kirkland Anna Perleberg (SF02) Andrew Ranson (AGI01) Anna Stubna (A02) —RH Magazine design by Claude Skelton Design �The College The Magazine for Alumni of St. John’s College Winter 2008 Vo l u m e 4 , I s s u e 1 Annapolis • Santa Fe {Contents} 10 “With a Clear and Single Purpose” d e p a r t m e n t s page 2 • Grateful alumni help build Santa Fe dorm. A Johnnie at the Peace Talks “To Strike the World” Santa Fe’s ultimate team A tribute to a fallen ofﬁcer “On Choices”: Santa Fe Convocation Celeste DiNucci (A87) wins it all. 32 biblioﬁle • Combine a larger endowment with strong alumni giving, and the result is a ﬁnancially sound college with a bright future. • • • • • 14 Hegel and Knowing from the bell towers page page 10 Tutor Peter Kalkavage offers insight into the shapes and images of the Phenomenology of Spirit. Andrew Krivak (A86) recounts a month of silence in The Long Retreat. 18 Green-Collar Johnnies 33 page parents’ voices A Johnnie parent carves a mid-life career out of reading great books with others. Environmentally-minded alumni launch sustainable careers in public service, building, and conservation. 34 alumni P RO F I L E S 24 Four Decades of Graduate Education page page 16 34 Pedro Martinez-Fraga (A84) takes on those who abuse their power. 39 Rave reviews for Sara Barker (A98). 41 Blake Sitney (SF91) opens a window to the world for refugees in Thailand. A bold experiment in Santa Fe one summer opened the door to graduate study at St. John’s. 42 in memorium/obituaries 44 alumni voices Peace Corps volunteer Anna Stubna (A02) ﬁnds friends and a purpose in Niger. page 24 46 48 on the cover Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel Illustration by David Johnson alumni association news st. john’s forever �2 {From the Bell Towers} A Lasting Expression of Gratitude Generous Gift Supports Santa Fe Dorm santa fe new mexican Warren and Barbara Winiarski (class of 1952 and class of 1955), who founded the Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars in Napa Valley, have made a $5 million gift to the college’s capital campaign. The gift will help fund the construction of a new dormitory on the Santa Fe campus. The Winiarskis said their gift was prompted by an enduring love for the St. John’s Program, a desire to support the community of learning and a special interest in enhancing the campus their two daughters (Kasia, SF83, and Julia, SF92) attended. Their gift was announced at the January meeting of the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors, of which Mr. Winiarski is a long-serving member. The new Winiarski residence center will allow the college to house an additional 60 students on campus, boosting the college’s housing capacity to 80 percent of its undergraduate students. In addition to student rooms and common rooms, the facility will add new seminar rooms and faculty ofﬁces. In describing their decision, Mrs. Winiarski spoke of how she enrolled in St. John’s, joining the ﬁrst class of women, although her parents wanted her to attend college elsewhere. It was a decision she’s never regretted. When a Santa Fe reporter asked her what prompted the gift, she answered: “The Program, of course. There’s no way I can tell you what this college means to me.” Barbara Dvorak Winiarski was a talented artist who was on track to study the ﬁne arts. “My parents expected me to go and study painting, and just as school was ending, a girl in my art class told me about St. John’s,” she recalls. “I came down for one weekend and I thought, of course, this is where I’m going to learn the truth about everything. It was beyond my expectations.” Warren Winiarski began his college education studying forestry at the Colorado School of Mines, and soon discovered that he needed to pursue a different kind of education. “I read How to Read a Book, by Mortimer Adler,” he says. “It talked a lot about St. John’s, and I realized that’s where I needed to be.” The couple ﬁrst met when Mr. Winiarski was serving on a student court, where his future wife turned up. “He was on that court because they regarded him as responsible, and I was absent without leave,” she explains. Fortunately, “they didn’t expel me.” After St. John’s, the Winiarskis met again and married. Mr. Winiarski pursued an academic career, studying for a PhD and lecturing at the University of Chicago. Along the way, he became keenly interested in viticulture, and his hobby became his career. He started out as an apprentice to other vintners before buying property and establishing Stag’s Leap. “My St. John’s education enabled me to Santa Fe President Michael Peters (l.) said Warren and Barbara Winiarski’s capital campaign gift will strengthen community in Santa Fe. acquire the proﬁciency and the skills I needed in a scientiﬁc ﬁeld,” he says. “I was an apprentice who asked very good questions.” At the famous 1973 blind tasting in Paris, Mr. Winiarski’s 1973 Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars S.L.V. Cabernet Sauvignon—his ﬁrst vintage produced with grapes from vines a mere three years old— emerged victorious among red wines, putting California wines on the map. The capital campaign, now in its ﬁnal months, has sought funding for many critical needs at the campus, from ﬁnancial aid to science laboratories. The dormitory project appealed to the Winiarskis because the college culture encourages learning outside the classroom. When students are excited about an idea in seminar or puzzled by a reading or a proof, they can always ﬁnd someone to talk with about it. “The St. John’s program is founded on the idea of community,” says Mrs. Winiarski. “The tutors are in the Coffee Shop, in the dining hall, interacting with students. That’s one of the big differences between St. John’s and other colleges.” As a member of the board and a long-time visiting tutor for Santa Fe’s Summer Classics program, Mr. Winiarski is attuned to the needs of the college’s Santa Fe campus and knew that the dormitory project would mean a great difference to the community. When he and his wife were students in Annapolis, there were fewer than 300 students. Most lived in the dormitories, but those students who chose to live off campus could ﬁnd affordable housing nearby. Today, it’s more difﬁcult for both Annapolis and Santa Fe students to afford rentals. More student housing, Mr. Winiarski says, makes for a more “intimate, cohesive St. John’s community.” Their gift allowed them to express in a concrete and lasting way their gratitude for the college, adds Mrs. Winiarski. She hadn’t realized how much she missed St. John’s until she was reading some of Julia’s essays. “Many St. John’s alumni feel [that the college] profoundly changed the rest of their lives,” she says. “We’re not alone in that.” x { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } -- Rosemary Harty �{From the Bell Towers} Waiting for Condi The world came to Annapolis last November, when the Annapolis Peace Talks took place next door to St. John’s at the U.S. Naval Academy. Among the journalists who spent the day covering the conference was Daniel Lewkow (A10), who represented the St. John’s news magazine, The Epoch Journal. On the eve of the Annapolis Peace Conference, I was standing in line with impatient reporters in the cavernous Navy-Marine Corps Stadium, waiting to get press credentials. Every press representative needed to have his or her picture taken, and there was one camera. So we waited in line. And waited. The White House Press Corps had permission to cut ahead of the other reporters. We were irritated by this, but most of us kept quiet, except for a French journalist from Le Monde, a short man with a bad temper. “How are we supposed to ﬁnd ze truth, if we are not all treated as equals?” he shouted, storming around. The Americans smirked and the Brits rolled their eyes. Two and a half hours later, I got my credentials and walked back to About the Class of 2007 Every year, the college’s Career Services ofﬁces interview as many seniors as they can round up, asking about their college experience and their plans after graduation. A few facts about the graduates: Annapolis (100 seniors interviewed) Youngest and oldest students to graduate: 21, 33 Percentage who took time off: 13 Interesting things they did: Traveled in New Zealand, tutored in Telluride, harvested grapes in Italy and Argentina, took part in outdoor leadership school in Patagonia Percentage who held internships while in school: 26 Percentage with ﬁrm work plans: 26, in jobs including Latin instructor, legislative assistant, astronomer, and teacher Percentage with ﬁrm graduate school or post-baccalaureate program plans: 10 Most frequently named disciplines for graduate study: Medicine, law, philosophy, education Santa Fe (103 seniors interviewed) Youngest and oldest students to graduate: 20, 48 Percentage who took time off: 16.5 Interesting things they did: Worked on a goat farm, as a ranch hand, for a Napa Valley winery, in a bookstore; studied Buddhist philosophy, art, and Greek; traveled Percentage with ﬁrm work plans: 14.5, including publishing assistant, midwife apprentice, wilderness educator, consultant Percentage who held internships while in school: 26 Percentage with ﬁrm graduate school or post-bac plans: 9.8 Most frequently named disciplines for graduate study: Law, psychology, literature, philosophy, medicine, education 3 campus. At nine in the morning, I walked back to the stadium to board a shuttle carrying journalists to the Naval Academy. I joined the hundreds of reporters who crowded into the academy’s Alumni Hall. I looked up to see President Bush, who was delivering opening remarks from another room, broadcast for us on a giant screen. JourDaniel Lewkow joined hundreds of nalists from The journalists covering the Annapolis New York Times, Peace Talks last November. The Washington Post, and National Public Radio were cranking out was a soft-spoken man, the ambassador from Saudi Arabia. stories. Camera crews rushed He made a brief statement and about. And there I was: a 20proceeded to take questions. I year-old student with a tape stretched my tape recorder as recorder and no idea what to close to him as possible, hoping do. No microphone, no producer, no network logo—just that it would pick up some of his words. Before long, a bodya press badge and a confused guard pushed me back, and the look on my face. diplomat swept out of the A bright light ﬂashed from a room. camera, and I squinted to see a Then came a lull. Three journalist interviewing a hours passed. I read my spokesman for the Israeli deleseminar reading from Augusgation. When the interview tine and staked out a good seat ended, I mustered my courage in the front. Another jourand made my move. Tapping nalist, an older woman, leaned the man on his shoulder, I over. “What’s your name?” she politely asked, “Sir, could I asked. “Daniel,” I said, “what’s please have a word with you? yours?” “I’m busy,” she I’m from my publication, The snapped, and went back to her Epoch Journal.” I ﬂashed my notes. A spokesperson for the press badge and prepared for State Department stood up and rejection. But the man nodded announced that Secretary of his head and answered the State Condoleezza Rice would questions that I managed to soon make closing remarks. sputter out. “What are your She was scheduled to arrive at hopes for the conference 5:30, but came at 6:45, an today?” “Would you be willing attractive, digniﬁed woman to talk to Hamas?” As he standing 15 feet in front of me. walked away, I was amazed that She made a few comments to he had been so receptive. close the conference, thanked My conﬁdence bolstered, I us, and turned to head back to sought out more interviews. I Washington. The conference joined a crowd of reporters was over. x clustered in a corner and was whisked along into a small —Daniel Lewkow room. Standing behind a table { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } �4 {From the Bell Towers} “To Strike the World” In early December 2007, the Santa Fe community combined a considerable number of students, faculty, and talents to stage a unique performance of orchestral music and spoken word. “To Strike the World,” a performance piece for 12 voices and 12 instruments, was a dynamic production that offers uniquely personal insights into the conduct and consequences of nuclear war. The words were written and arranged by tutor Phil LeCuyer, and music was composed by tutor John Cornell. LeCuyer conceived the piece about ﬁve years ago after reading letters by Harry S. Truman and Toyofumi Ogura in the books Dear Bess and Letters from the End of the World. LeCuyer convinced Cornell to compose the accompanying music, a process that began about two years ago, and was moved forward with the help of tutors David Bolotin, Christine Chen, and Peter Pesic, among others. The piece juxtaposed the letters and creative musings of President Truman against the remembrances of historian and author Ogura, before and after the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima. The portraits of Truman and Ogura were composites of their own words as found in their letters to their respective wives. Truman wrote to his wife, Bess, throughout their life together. Since Bess did not reside at the White House, these letters became an important record of Harry’s thoughts and beliefs during that critical time. Ogura did not begin writing to his wife, Fumiyo, until after the bomb was dropped. She succumbed to radiation poisoning two weeks later. Ogura’s experience was the ﬁrst survivor’s account to be published after the war. “Interspersed with Truman’s and Ogura’s words are the intimate voices of 10 private individuals, bringing into language particular experiences that have changed their consciousness,” says LeCuyer. The music helped the audience navigate the rather far-ﬂung moral latitudes covered in the text. Over the course of the almost two-hour piece, the music took the audience from the American heartland to the devastated city of Hiroshima, and back and forth from the historical voices of Truman, Ogura, and the 10 lyrical characters. “The musical sign for the piece is the ostinato accompaniment—rhythmic ﬁgures struck regularly in the bass—which in turns sounds tender, sinister, pastoral or urban,” says Cornell. The music draws on surprising afﬁnities between American Blues modes “To Strike the World” was a showcase of talent on the Santa Fe campus: Above, tutor Greg Schneider portrayed Harry S Truman; bottom left, David Best (SF10) played viola in the orchestra, conducted by Paul Franz (SF08), bottom right. and the scales of classical Japanese melody.” Similar musical motifs in widely changing contexts created thematic echoes that help the audience sense the eerie juxtapositions of poems and narratives, and intuit the mysterious connections of parallel lives,” adds Cornell. The production was performed entirely by members of the St. John’s community. Conceived from the start by LeCuyer as a community production, the piece involved about three dozen students, tutors, staff, alumni, and several friends of the college. “To Strike the World” was studentconducted (Paul Franz, SF08), student-directed (Jacob Gibson, SF09), and student-produced (lighting by Patrick Macala, SF10; sound by Jonathan Palmer, SF09). Dean Victoria Mora brought her daughter to see the piece and was thrilled by the production. “I think it is extraordinary that a liberal education like St. John’s, which does not specialize { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } in musical training, acting, or stagecraft, can prepare people for roles in a complex, provocative, and challenging piece like ‘To Strike the World.’” The college hopes that the piece will live on beyond its December performance dates. Audiovisual recordings of two performances are being edited into one ﬁnal production DVD, which may be used in education efforts in high schools. x -- Jenny Hanniﬁn �5 {From the Bell Towers} A Tribute to a Fallen Ofﬁcer service, and leadership. He said that crew members at the Naval Academy row for the honor of those who came before them, and that some of the lessons of the academy are only really learned when engaging in a team activity such as crew. Rowers understand the traditions of the academy and strive to emulate those who have gained honor for their actions. In this sense, Mr. Clothier pledged, Erik will live on in spirit in the boathouse. The ceremony ended emotionally as Erik’s parents and his young nieces and nephews christened the shell, as is the custom, with ﬁnish-line water, and the current crew team took the Erik Kristensen out for its inaugural row on College Creek. Erik loved being on the water, and so I suppose there is great synchronicity in the symbol of his name gracing the side of a new rowing shell. It also makes sense that the rowers in his boat would be learning what he embodied so well in his life— living for others. x Naval Academy Honors Erik Kristensen (AGI01) By Andrew Ranson (AGI01) Erik was killed on June 28, 2005, in the Hindu Kush mountain range in Afghanistan. He was leading a mission to rescue four members of his Navy SEAL team that had been overrun by Taliban ﬁghters. The helicopter transporting Erik and his team was hit by a rocket, killing him and 18 other SEALs and Army Rangers. He was laid to rest in the cemetery Andrew Ranson’s classmate and friend Erik Kristensen (AGI01) will be remembered as someone who lived his life for others. Books, Balance and a Frisbee There are more than 600 Ultimate college teams in North America, among them “The Books,” a group of Santa Fe Johnnies devoted to the game that combines elements of football and rugby with the ﬁne art of ﬂinging a Frisbee. The Santa Fe team takes Ultimate seriously. They practice indoors and outdoors with Frisbees customized with the St. John’s insignia. They run drills and ﬁne-tune their forehand and backhand techniques. “I love when the game is played really well—it’s graceful and beautiful,” says Alexander Kriz (SF09). “At St. John’s we ﬁnd beauty in philosophy, art, and literature, why not in Frisbee?” Each year the team, currently led by captains Nicholas Christou, Arik Doak, and Jessica Perry (all SF08), competes in several intercollegiate tournaments. Last fall the team took part in on the Naval Academy grounds, overlooking College Creek. When Erik was a midshipman, he rowed for the Navy crew team. Brooks McFeely, one of Erik’s boatmates, organized the fundraising effort to donate and dedicate the rowing shell. Among the 400 attendees were Erik’s close friends and family, his former classmates and fellow rowers, his fellow sailors and Navy SEALS, and commanding ofﬁcers, including Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and current midshipmen, including all members of the current crew team. Vice Admiral Joseph Maguire, an aide to U.S. Congressman Joe Sestak, read a resolution honoring Erik that was presented to the U.S. House of Representatives. Rick Clothier, Erik’s crew coach, said that the shell with Erik’s name would serve as a living memory of the qualities that Erik embodied: teamwork, honor, dedication to a two-day tournament in Albuquerque, with scrimmages on the ﬁrst day followed by formal matches against competitors including Colorado College, the U.S. Air Force Academy, the University of North Carolina, and the University of New Mexico. The Johnnies beat Colorado College. “All the games were close,” says Kriz. “It’s remarkable when you consider how much larger their programs are and how many more players they have to draw from. We have a real dedication.” x { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } amy raab On a bright, brisk Saturday morning last November, nearly 400 people gathered at the U.S. Naval Academy Boathouse for a ceremony to dedicate a rowing shell in the memory of Erik Samsel Kristensen, who was a student at the Graduate Institute in 2001, where he and I met. Erik was a Naval Academy graduate and a very close friend of mine. Nate Murray (SF09) tosses a disc on the soccer ﬁeld. �6 {From the Bell Towers} News & Announcements Hodson Grant Funds Scholarships Honors for Santa Fe Dean Mora Victoria Mora, dean of the Santa Fe campus, was a ﬁnalist for the 2007 Santa Fe Capital City Business and Professional Woman of the Year. The award honors women of distinction for Medal of Arts Winner Last November, N. Scott Momaday, noted poet, playwright, painter, photographer and storyteller, received the National Medal of Arts, the nation’s highest honor for artistic excellence. Momaday was among nine recipients who will receive medals from President George W. Bush in a ceremony at the White House; Annapolis tutor Eva Brann received the same honor in 2004. The A Portrait and an Artist National Medal of Arts, established by Congress in 1984, is awarded by the President and managed by the National Endowment for the Arts. Momaday, a former member of St. John’s College Board of Visitors and Governors, is a long-time friend of the college. His novel House Made of Dawn was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1969. Last year, Momaday delivered the commencement address in Santa Fe. New Tutor Duane J. Lacey has joined the Annapolis faculty. Lacey earned his bachelor’s in liberal studies and philosophy from Eugene Lang College of New School University, and master’s and doctoral degrees in philosophy from the university’s Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science. Prior to coming to St. John’s, he was an adjunct professor at Georgian Court University, a visiting scholar at the University of Notre Dame, and a postdoctoral fellow and visiting instructor at Bifröst University in Iceland. Santa Fe Homecoming demetrios fotos A $3.5 million grant from The Hodson Trust to the Annapolis campus will fund additional student internships, support information technology improvements, and fund a comprehensive master landscaping and facilities use plan for the campus. In addition, this year’s grant will establish a need-based scholarship in memory of Jeffrey A. Bishop (HA96), a long-serving vice president at the college, who died in July 2007. The grant sets aside $1.5 million to go to The Hodson Trust Bishop Scholarship Endowment. In addition to the annual grants, The Hodson Trust has established a scholarship program for men and women who have served in the military in Iraq and Afghanistan. The awards fully fund tuition, room and board, books, and other mandatory fees that are not otherwise met by federal, state, and other private sources. The scholarships are available to undergraduate and graduate students at the four colleges that The Hodson Trust supports in Annapolis: St. John’s, Johns Hopkins University, Hood College, and Washington College. Many signiﬁcant improvements to the campus were funded or partially funded by The Hodson Trust, including Gilliam Hall, improvements to the Greenﬁeld Library, wiring the campus for the Internet, renovating and expanding Mellon Hall, and renovating the college boathouse. their contributions to the city of Santa Fe. Mora was nominated for her work in the city’s nonproﬁt sector. When she was appointed dean of the college in 2006, she became the ﬁrst native New Mexican and the ﬁrst female to serve in that position. The award honors professional women who have distinguished themselves in their careers and in the Santa Fe community. Criteria considered in choosing ﬁnalists for the award included education, career achievements, and efforts on behalf of the CCBPW’s mission of building powerful women personally, professionally, and politically. Artist Simmie Knox, known for his portraits of Bill and Hillary Clinton, entertainer Bill Cosby, boxer Muhammad Ali, and many other prominent Americans, presented this portrait of James H. Gilliam, Jr. to the college in December. Knox was chosen to paint the portrait of Gilliam, a friend of the college and a trustee of The Hodson Trust, who died in 2003 at the age of 58. A grant from The Hodson Trust made it possible for the college to build Gilliam Hall, one of two new dormitories on the Annapolis campus. The portrait will be displayed in the building. Annapolis President Christopher Nelson (SF70) knew Gilliam as a colleague and a friend. “He was a man who represented the virtues we hope to cultivate in our students,” he said. “We are truly honored to receive this portrait.” { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } A group of Santa Fe alumni, concerned about the scheduling of Homecoming in Santa Fe in early fall instead of July, conducted an online survey of alumni registered on the college’s Online Community. The survey results show that of those who attend Homecoming, a preference prevails for summer reunions. Other questions asked why alumni don’t attend Homecoming at all (cost, travel expenses, and lack of time topped the list), and sought suggestions on what would make the event more enjoyable for attendees and their families. The survey drew responses from 582 alumni. A full report can be found at http://sjcsf-homecomingsurvey.com. x �7 {From the Bell Towers} Words and Music photos by gary pierpoint St. John’s brought gospel music to Annapolis for a free concert in January, a week before the observance of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. The brainchild of Annapolis treasurer Bronté Jones, the event featured eight gospel choirs and singing groups from the area and concluded with a dramatic reading of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech by students, tutors, staff, and community leaders. About 600 people attended the concert, many of whom were visiting the college for the ﬁrst time. “The Civil Rights movement was grounded in faith and gospel songs. We wanted to develop a program to bring together old and new friends of St. John’s College,” says Jones, who hopes to make the concert an annual event.x At left, tutor Tom May recites from King’s “I Have a Dream” speech; Above, Deshay Redd delivers a powerful solo. Champion of Champions Last fall, Celeste DiNucci (A87) joined an elite few by making it to the Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions, having won more than $50,000 on the show during the previous year. In what even the laconic Alex Trebek called one of the most exciting tournaments in recent memory, DiNucci emerged the victor and the winner of a $250,000 cash prize. Correct answers combined with savvy wagering in two quarterﬁnal rounds won her a spot in the semiﬁnals, which went to a nail-biting, one-question playoff when DiNucci and her opponent tied after Final Jeopardy. The playoff question was literature: “A Longfellow poem and a Lillian Hellman play about a girls’ boarding school share this timely title.” DiNucci rang in ﬁrst with “What is The Children’s Hour?” and won a spot in the ﬁnal. Next, taped all in one day, came the three ﬁnal rounds. The tournament champion would be the one with the highest three-day total winnings. DiNucci and her opponent were about $800 apart at Final Jeopardy. DiNucci got the answer wrong, but so did her opponent, and with $401 more in winnings, she emerged the champion. Back in Philadelphia, where she is completing a doctoral program at the University of Pennsylvania, DiNucci resumed work on her dissertation on Shakespeare and performance theory. She’s been recognized a few times by Jeopardy! fans and ﬁnds it fun to have achieved a small measure of fame. While her earnings will fund another trip to Italy (where part of her original spoils were spent), she’s most pleased to have a cushion to support her job search. “I should graduate in May, and then I need to ﬁgure out what I want to do when I grow up,” she says. x { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } For Celeste DiNucci (A87) knowledge pays. �8 {From the Bell Towers} On Choices Santa Fe President Michael Peters greeted 33 January Freshmen and 8 graduate students in Santa Fe by linking the wisdom they will ﬁnd in the great books with the issues and choices of a modern democracy. (The full text of his Convocation speech is available on the college Web site: www.stjohnscollege.edu.) nars and other classes to read, discuss and think about the meaning of character, leadership and citizenship—and you will see examples both positive and negative. These examples begin with the Iliad and Agamemnon, perhaps the Michael Peters, President, Santa Fe ﬁrst leader of a coalition of the willing in recorded history. And from there to the travels and perils Most of you had many other options of Odysseus, whose choices both saved and sacriﬁced the lives of to pursue your education, but you chose to come to St. John’s. his men and threatened his rule. And Odysseus’ wife, Penelope, a Why? woman whose incredible devotion, wisdom, strength and craftiI hope it is because you understand and appreciate the distincness ensured that Odysseus would have a kingdom to return to tiveness of our undergraduate and graduate programs. I hope it is because you love to read, think and explore with others. I hope it is after his wanderings. Herodotus, the ﬁrst historian, introduces you to the tyrannical Persian emperor Xerxes and to the Athenian because you value our commitment to liberal education and lifehero Themistocles, whose strength of character and bold decisions long learning. I hope it is because you want to be part of a commusaved Greece. nity of learning. But most importantly, I hope it is because you Plato’s Republic extends the conversation on governance and have thought deeply about your education. the responsibilities of citizenship. Thucydides in The PeloponBetween now and the elections in November both you freshmen nesian Wars illustrates the range of Athenian leadership and charand graduate students will have many opportunities in your semiacter from Pericles to Alcibiades and the implications of their choices. Pericles asks the Athenians to abandon the countryside in the face of the Spartan invasion and to gather in the city, and then watches helplessly as a plague devastates the population; Alcibiades’ reaction to the Athenian citizens’ personal affront leads him to betray his city and aid her enemies. In the fall before the elections, you’ll read and discuss the challenges and choices of ancient Hebrew leaders like Moses and David. You’ll study Plutarch’s descriptions of the character and decisions of Roman leaders such as Cato and Caesar as well as Virgil’s description of Aeneas’ sojourn from Troy to Italy. . . . While you are engaged with the Greeks this spring, the juniors will study Machiavelli’s The Prince, with its prescriptions on morality and rule. They will also be reading the founding documents of our republic—the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution—along with the Federalist papers which outline the difﬁcult choices faced by our Founding Fathers. The seniors will discuss key Supreme Court decisions, and next fall, just prior to the elections, they will examine Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. . . . So as this nation makes choices that will determine its direction for the next four years and beyond, you and your fellow students will be reading, discussing and thinking about the choices that nations and their leaders have made in the past and the implications of those choices on the lives of individuals and the course of history. “A St. John’s education is intended to extend, not limit, your horizons, your opportunities and your choices.” amy raab continued on next page St. John’s students read , discuss and think about citizenship and leadership, says Santa Fe President Michael Peters. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } �{From the Bell Towers} 9 Envisioning a Graduate Institute Center The Texas architecture ﬁrm of Lake/Flato presented its concept of the Norman and Betty Levan Hall, a new home for the Graduate Institute in Santa Fe, to the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors in January. The building is designed to be environmentally friendly and to blend in with the Territorial Revival architecture of the campus, as well as the beauty of the natural landscape. A gift of $5 million from Dr. Norman Levan (SFGI73) to the college’s Capital Campaign has made it possible for the college to build the long-needed center, which will house seminar rooms, common rooms, and faculty ofﬁces. The design is “respectful of” the Territorial Revival architecture style of John Gaw Meem, without imitating it, he added. Open space and soaring windows will ﬁll the center with natural light. The building will be designed to earn Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Silver certiﬁcation. The design next goes through extensive review by the City of Santa Fe; the college hopes to begin construction next fall. x lake flato A rendering of Levan Hall shows how the new graduate center will blend with the natural landscape and with Meem’s Territorial Revival style. In the spirit of sustainable architecture, the architects have trimmed the size of the building from a projected 11,500 square feet to 9,200 square feet without sacriﬁcing any of the building’s functionality, said project architect Steve Rake. continued But, of course, during your time at St. John’s you won’t be reading, thinking about and discussing only works on politics. You will also read widely and deeply in literature including Dante’s Divine Comedy; immerse yourself in language—translating Racine or Molière and reading Shakespeare’s plays; study science with Darwin’s Origin of the Species and Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity; and mathematics with Euclid’s Elements and Newton’s Principia; and philosophy—Plato and Aristotle; and music— Monteverdi and Bach; and possibly art, in a preceptorial. We read these and other great books precisely because they explore the most fundamental, important and eternal questions. Questions, and the choices they raise, that are as alive today as they were centuries ago. Questions of character and virtue, right and wrong; of human relations; of beauty and creativity; of power and politics; of war and peace; of the divine. We grapple with these questions, these choices, for insights to guide us today in our personal lives and in our lives as citizens and members of society. We grapple with these questions, because, ultimately, they inform our choices. . . . We believe that liberal education is dedicated to the “pursuit of fundamental knowledge” and the “search for unifying ideas”. . . . We don’t aim to be relevant or current, reacting to the latest whims in education or anticipating the priorities of the future. A St. John’s education is intended to extend, not limit, your hori- zons, your opportunities and your choices. In addition, you have chosen to engage in a lifetime of learning. If there is one thing that deﬁnes alumni and friends of St. John’s College, it is a commitment to lifelong learning. This commitment is equally shared by our alumni and friends whether they are investment bankers in New York, cancer researchers in Los Angeles, pottery artists in Northern New Mexico or restaurateurs in Paris. . . . In choosing St. John’s you have also elected to join other men and women who desire to be intelligently and critically appreciative of their common heritage. The programs you are embarking upon are based on Great Books in the Western tradition. We study these books in relatively chronological order, because the books build on one another and in their totality give us an appreciation of the ideas that shape our lives. They allow us, as David Brooks of the New York Times wrote, “to step outside [our] own immediate experience into the past, to learn about the problems that never change and bring back some of that inheritance. . . .” I am conﬁdent that when you graduate, you will have the means to become free and responsible members of society, a society that is hungry for your contribution. Only you can determine whether you have the will. It is and will be your choice, but I speak for the entire college when I say we stand ready to help you make that choice. x { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } �10 {Capital Campaign} “WITH A CLEAR AND SINGLE PURPOSE” What the Annual Fund Means to St. John’s ast November, St. John’s tapped a powerful fundraising force to help with a phonathon for the 2007-08 Annual Fund: crew team members eager for a chance to add to their boat fund. Gathered around a phone bank assembled in the Annapolis Conversation Room, 15 students tackled the phones with the same discipline they bring to 6 a.m. practices, the same competitive zeal they muster for regattas. Crew co-captain Hayley Thompson (A08) chatted with alumni from prior years about what students are like today, changes on the campus, and the needs of the college. “St. John’s was really good to me,” one donor told Thompson. Not only did he make a pledge, but he also offered Thompson advice on her essay on Plutarch. Over two nights, the crew team earned $1,000 for their boat fund and $41,283 in pledges and secured gifts to the college. “We got a lot of answering machines,” says co-captain Sandra Quintana (A08). “When alumni did pick up, they knew what was coming, but they seemed glad to hear from us. They were cooperative, they were friendly”—and most important—“they said ‘yes.’ ” L In addition to persuasive students, St. John’s had another tool in its Annual Fund efforts this year: the Fielding Challenge. Ronald Fielding (A70), chair of the college’s Capital Campaign, pledged to match every gift to the campaign that met one of three criteria: a ﬁrst-time gift, an increased gift, or a multi-year pledge. Fielding, who has already given a $10 million gift to fund need-based ﬁnancial aid at St. John’s, will match qualifying gifts up to a total of $2.5 million—a goal the college was very close to reaching in January. The Fielding Challenge piqued the interest of the alumni Quintana called. “They may not have known much about Mr. Fielding, but the challenge grant was very persuasive,” she says. “They wanted the college to get his money.” As of Feb. 1, 2008, the college had met its initial target of $125 million for The Campaign for St. John’s College. A remarkable 61 percent of the total raised to date has come from alumni. “This campaign has really cemented the culture of giving among our alumni,” says Fielding. “In many ways, this is just as important as the amount raised in the campaign itself.” The Annual Fund is the cornerstone of the college’s ability to operate each day, from providing ﬁnancial aid and { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } �{Capital Campaign} anthony russo supporting faculty salaries, to turning the lights on in the classrooms, replacing laboratory equipment, and paying staff members who keep the libraries open late at night. Tuition covers about 70 percent of what it costs to run the college. The rest of the money comes from interest on the endowment, federal and state programs, and the Annual Fund. This year, the college’s goal is $3.02 million, says Stefanie Takacs (A89), director of Annual Giving. The goal isn’t arbitrary, she explains. It represents the amount the college needs to make its annual operating budget after other revenue sources are tallied. This year, the goal represents 6 percent of the collegewide budget. As the goal is set higher each year, alumni continue to meet it. Philanthropia chair Brett Heavner (A89) believes that the increase in alumni giving stems from two signiﬁcant changes: the college has improved the way it explains its needs, and alumni have become more receptive to the message. Heavner was one of the ﬁrst members of a national alumni development council that evolved into Philanthropia, which is co-chaired by Sanjay Poovadan (SF83). “There was some momentum coming off the campaign at the time, and Jeff Bishop came up with the idea to develop an alumni group focused on fundraising,” Heavner says. Bishop, who died last July, was the vice president for Advancement in Annapolis at the time. His efforts to reach out directly to alumni to help carry the college’s message were instrumental in improving the college’s ﬁnancial health. Campaign Progress “With a Clear and Single Purpose”: The Campaign for St. John’s College covers fundraising from 2002 through June 2008. As of December 31, 2007, the campaign had raised $125 million in gifts and pledges. Financial Aid—Goal: $33 million; Raised: $39.9 million (120 percent of goal) Faculty Salaries and Development—Goal: $34 million; Raised: $28.9 million (85 percent of goal) Student Support (internships, libraries, student services, IT)—Goal: $8.5 million; Raised: $9 million (106 percent of goal) Buildings—Goal: $49.5 million; Raised: $40.4 million (82 percent of goal) Undesignated—Raised: $7.1 million Total: $125 million 11 Although the campaign target of $125 million has been reached, the campaign continues. Originally, $162.8 million in needs were identiﬁed by the college’s strategic plan. Important priorities remain: an addition to the Evans Science Lab in Santa Fe, renovations to the older dormitories in Annapolis, more support for faculty salaries; increased ﬁnancial aid. Every year, the college must raise Annual Fund dollars to provide for the difference in the budget that tuition does not cover. So far, gifts and pledges to the college endowment total $44.6 million—a signiﬁcant increase over the 2002 starting ﬁgure. But St. John’s still has a low endowment per student compared to peer institutions. We are moving ahead, but so is everyone else. Campaign chair Ron Fielding, A70, says: “While we have made signiﬁcant progress with the campaign, let’s see how much more we can raise. The needs of the college are still clear and important.” { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } �{Capital Campaign} clarke saylor 12 The Annapolis crew team spent two nights in November calling “The college has done a good job of keeping alumni alumni to ask for an Annual Fund gift. Student activities are informed, explaining its needs, and keeping the line open,” supported by gifts to the Annual Fund. he says. “Alumni have gotten into the habit of making an annual gift. What that means for the college is a stable and solid source of support.” help with Philanthropia, talking with other alumni and Heavner makes his Annual Fund gift for the simple attending networking events. reason that he’s a “believer” in the Her efforts led to her recruitment as Program. Like many Johnnies, he the college’s Annual Fund director—a supports other causes and has an job many of her friends warned her Percentage of Alumni afﬁliation with another educational would be difﬁcult, in part because of a Giving at Peer Colleges institution. “The uniqueness of St. perception that Johnnies don’t like 60% Amherst John’s really makes it a priority recipbeing asked to make gifts to the college. Bowdoin 60% ient of my charitable giving,” he says. However, Takacs believes it wasn’t “My law school was good, but St. John’s 60% Davidson reluctance, but a simple lack of informais not like any other place. It shapes tion, that hampered alumni giving. The Swarthmore 59% people’s lives.” percentage of alumni giving had Middlebury 58% The college has sought to be clear, hovered at about 20 percent for many Carleton 56% straightforward, and persuasive in its years, but in the past three years, Takacs 53% Haverford Annual Fund efforts, says Stefanie observes, it’s jumped to 36 percent. “If Claremont McKenna 48% Takacs (A89), who directs the fund for alumni know what the Annual Fund 44% Macalester both campuses. As a busy young profesprovides—funds for student ﬁnancial sional in New York, she sometimes set aid, supporting the library, for 41% Oberlin aside the college’s Annual Fund mailers example—they do believe it’s worth 37% Grinnell with good intentions, only to overlook supporting,” she says. 36% St. John’s them later. An “accidental fundraiser” Giles Anderson (A95), a literary agent Colorado College 35% who was working for a nonproﬁt in the in New York City, supports the Annual 28% Reed South Bronx, Takacs volunteered to Fund both because of his fondness for { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } �13 {Capital Campaign} St. John’s and his desire to see the college endure. In the lean years right after graduation, before he was established in his publishing career, Anderson began giving small gifts regularly to the Annual Fund. “Over time, as I’ve been able to give more, I have,” he says. “I’ve also realized how little money the college had when I was there and how great it is that someone like [Annapolis President] Chris Nelson (SF70) is willing to take on this challenge of reaching out to alumni.” The college’s deliberately small enrollment and low student-to-tutor ratio can’t be sacriﬁced without harm to the Program, Anderson says. “The stronger the college is ﬁnancially, the better it will be at doing the things that drew me to St. John’s,” he says. Along with alumni and parents, friends of the college are important and generous supporters of the Annual Fund. David Walker and his wife, Belinda, make a gift each year in appreciation of the college and the Program. For about 12 years, they have joined others who travel out to Santa Fe for a long weekend of seminars led by St. John’s tutors. Last fall, the group—now with 50 participants—read Joyce’s Ulysses. “It was tough going, but we sure had fun,” he says. Over the years, Walker has become very impressed by the St. John’s approach to education. “It builds in these young kids their ability to think, to be aware, to have judgment rather than driving them into a specialty at such a young age,” he says. “There is a tremendous skill that is the primary outcome of these seminars: you really learn how to listen to people, how to have a conversation about challenging ideas without injecting your ego or trying to win. There is a real partnership in terms of understanding a work and complex ideas—and that’s very rare in this world.” Walker has been persuading his fellow seminar participants from the West Coast to support the college as well. “The college has good leadership,” he says. “And it deserves our support.” Sanjay Poovadan (SF83) has some concerns that without the urgency of a capital campaign, the Annual Fund may not be able to sustain the growth that has made such a difference to the college in the past few years. As an alumnus who could not have attended his “dream college” without ﬁnancial aid, he always keeps his own experience at St. John’s at the front of his mind, both in his annual giving and his volunteer work for Philanthropia. “We’re not just sustaining a community by paying back, we’re paying forward as well,” he says. “As an institution, St. John’s is doing well, compared to where it has been.” But to be truly healthy, long-term, he adds, the college will continue to rely on the Annual Fund. x About the Annual Fund St. John’s College can sustain the Program only because of the success of the Annual Fund and the participation in it by alumni, parents, and friends. Here’s how an Annual Fund dollar supports the Program: • The Program of Instruction (including tutor salaries): 32 cents • Need-based ﬁnancial aid: 24 cents • Institutional support (IT, staff salaries, campus maintenance): 20 cents • Student Services (counseling, athletics, security): 11 cents • Academic support (libraries and labs): 5 cents • Other: 8 cents Sources of Revenue Annual Fund Spending Academic Miscellaneous support 5% 4.3% Student services 10.4% Instruction 32.6% Institutional support 21.9% Gifts (including the Annual Fund) 10.4% Federal & State 4.3% Other 2.7% Endowment income 11.4% Tutition 75% Financial aid 25.8% { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } �14 {The Program} HEGEL’S PICTURE GALLERY by Peter Kalkavage, Tutor “To help bring philosophy closer to the form of Science, to the goal where it can lay aside the title ‘love of knowing’ and be actual knowing—that is what I have set before myself.” Preface, PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT H egel’s Phenomenology of Spirit belongs to the quartet of greatest works on education. The others are Plato’s Republic, Dante’s Divine Comedy, and Rousseau’s Emile. Despite their differences, these works have important similarities. Each reﬂects on education through a story. In the Republic, this is the myth of founding the best city in speech, a large part of which is about educating the city’s guardians; in the Divine Comedy, it is Dante’s journey to God; in Emile, it is Rousseau’s ﬁction of playing governor to a child not his own by nature. The Phenomenology too presents education dramatically. It is the tale of how, in the course of his violent history, man achieves self-knowledge in the form of philosophic Science. Also, all are tales of liberation. They tell of how we are freed from bondage: from the cave of opinion (Plato), or the dark wood of spiritual amnesia (Dante), or the corrupting inﬂuence of society (Rousseau). In the Phenomenology, the obstacle to our freedom is natural consciousness. This is the realm of the familiar, with which philosophy inevitably begins. In the Phenomenology, human consciousness struggles to rise above the familiar. The power that accomplishes its release is dialectic. This is the logical process by which consciousness evolves by spontaneously generating the contradictions that sleep within it and propel it to its next stage. Finally, each work in the quartet explores the bond between man as thinker and man as the being who acts and feels. Each is about the totality of human experience. Hegel, like Plato, loves images. He calls the Phenomenology a picture gallery: a colorful display of human types or “shapes of consciousness.” These are the phenomena for which the Phenomenology provides a logos or account. In the course of the book, we meet all sorts of characters, as we do when we read Plato’s dialogues or Dante’s Comedy. We meet the Scientist and the Warrior, the Stoic and the Skeptic, the God-haunted Unhappy Consciousness, and the self-deifying Beautiful Soul. Sometimes we meet characters lifted from the pages of ﬁction: Antigone, Faust, and Rameau’s crazy nephew. All are stages on the way to our complete self-knowledge. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } �{The Program} The human spirit, for Hegel, comes to know itself not through calm methodical inquiry, but through passionate self-assertion. demetrios fotos —Peter Kalkavage, Tutor { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } 15 �16 {The Program} Each of these shapes embodies a speciﬁc claim to know that has appeared on the stage of world-history. The shapes do not ask questions but assert and sometimes act. The human spirit, for Hegel, comes to know itself not through calm methodical inquiry but through passionate self-assertion. Spirit is spirited. This spiritedness is also spirit’s folly: all its claims ultimately fall to the ground. They do so because they are ﬁnite or partial, because they fail to capture the whole truth. Hegel’s shapes of consciousness are the most revealing human types that history has produced. But they are also manifestations of the “universal individual.” This is the universal self, spirit, which undergoes the historical process, dying in one age to be reborn in the next. Here, we see the most striking respect in which Hegel’s book differs from other great works on education. The Phenomenology is not only the path by which man comes to know himself and God. It is also the path by which God, the divine Mind, comes to know himself in and through man. This points to Hegel’s ultimate goal: to demonstrate the presence of divine Mind within human history, eternity within time, God within the human community. Everything for Hegel is deﬁned by its history. But the Phenomenology is neither the history of philosophy nor the history of the world simply. The book does not highlight the teachings of philosophers. Indeed, often action rather than theory occupies center stage. For Hegel, the social realm, in which human selves interact and communicate, is the soil from which knowledge springs and the medium in which it lives. In the Phenomenology we witness how this realm transcends itself and becomes the realm of theoretical knowing—how life becomes knowledge. It is also an account of how knowledge, as self-knowledge, comes to life in the context of human interaction and community. The social world, no less than the inquiries of philosophers, is the work of spirit, which includes everything distinctly human. Spirit, the universal or communal self that both transcends and dwells among ﬁnite individuals, struggles in time in order to know itself. But before it can know itself conceptually, there must be a world that embodies knowing in a pre-conceptual or immediate form—a lived knowing. Spirit learns by making itself present to itself. It does this by generating a world of knowing. It must ﬁrst generate this world, or rather series of worlds, before it can know itself in and through that which it has generated, before it can “wake up” to itself. Antigone is not a philosopher, but she represents a world of knowing. This is the world of the ancient Greek citystate, in which Antigone knows and articulates her position regarding family, gods, and city. This world, together with all the other realms of social life in the Phenomenology, is essential to the perfection of philosophy in the form of Science. The Phenomenology is a series of fascinating unmaskings. It is the logical revelation of the apparent as such. A given shape of consciousness undercuts itself in the very effort to make good on its claim to know: it turns into its opposite. No gadﬂy Socrates is needed here: refutation is generated from within consciousness itself. But within this tragic motion of self-defeating claims, there is also resurgence. Thanks to the positive, productive work of Hegel’s dialectic, the death of one shape is the birth of another, higher shape. Spirit is like the legendary Phoenix, always rising up again out of the ashes of its past—or like the Son of Man, who breaks the bonds of the merely natural and rises from the dead. The series of shapes is ﬁnite. Eventually, the long arduous road, which Hegel calls a Way of Despair, reaches its destination, as the drama of unmasking gives rise, in the ﬁnal chapter, to spirit’s selfknowledge. At this point, all the ﬁnite claims to know, the heroic shapes that populate Hegel’s picture gallery, are preserved as eternal moments in the philosopher’s atemporal, purely logical grasp of the temporal whole. The six main stages of the journey of consciousness in Hegel’s Phenomenology are Consciousness, SelfConsciousness, Reason, Spirit, Religion, and Absolute Knowing. A ﬁgurative rendering of the story in terms of the wayfaring Self might go as follows. As Consciousness, the Self (Man) is fascinated by the external world, by nature and by nature’s promise of being the source and standard of truth. The Self at this stage is not interested in doing, making, or desiring anything. Its obsession with objectivity makes it a purely theoretical bystander, an accidental tourist in the world of things. As Self-Consciousness, the Self goes to the other extreme. Obsessed with itself as this particular individual, and overwhelmed by a desire for self-assertiveness and freedom, it enters the realm of action with the famous “ﬁght to the death” between proud warriors. But { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } �{The Program} 17 absolute, unconditioned truth, saggressive egotism eventually dissolves into an inﬁnite but only in the guise of images yearning for a pure unchangeand picture thinking. Absolute Knowing takes the able Self it can never reach. Now pictorial content of Religion in a medieval Unhappy Consciousits highest phase, Christianity, ness, the individual feels his and gives it a purely conceptual pride humbled before this form. It transforms image into higher Self. logic, divine pictures into divine As Reason, the Self once more asserts its individuality. It concepts. Selfhood or inwardglories in its sheer humanity ness is now completely trans(man without God), and seeks to parent to itself, knows itself, as master and possess the world philosophic Science. To use a Christian term central to through its own resources, to Hegel’s book, the Self experiexperience itself as the ences reconciliation with the meaning, purpose, and essence external world. Spirit is revealed of the world. Reason is a modern. But Reason’s will to as the unity of self and world, power is shown to be abstract, a inner and outer, subject and mere dream. For all its exertions object, thought and action, and idealistic projects, the Self meaning and life. In the condifails to generate a stable world tion of absolute knowing, Man and remains trapped inside its knows that the external world, as individuality. the product of history, is the At the level of Spirit, the incarnation of his inwardness or realm of external things, which “spirituality.” He is reconciled has always opposed the Self, to his mortality and no longer acquires selfhood and soul. It yearns for a transcendent becomes a social world or Kingdom of Heaven. He is concrete community: univercompletely at home in the true sality that is actual and alive. Kingdom of the here and now. Peter Kalkavage The Self is now fully conscious of The Phenomenology is not only the philosophic history of itself as embodied and substanspirit. It is also what Hegel called his personal “voyage of tial. World acquires selfhood or inwardness, and selfhood discovery.” The Phenomenology of Spirit is the book in has been made concrete and real as a collection of vibrant which Hegel became Hegel, just as the Divine Comedy was Greek city-states, the Roman Empire, modern French the poem in which Dante became Dante. It is the result of culture, and the dutiful German realm of Kantian Hegel’s struggle to unify the conﬂicting inﬂuences of his morality. At this stage, man is aware of himself as the self intellectual life. In reading this astounding book, we are and substance of the world, although he is not yet aware of history as the revelation of his human-divine nature. invited to share his personal journey—and to ask in what At the stage of Religion, Spirit as the communal Self sense it is our journey as well. x manifests itself in concrete teachings, stories, poetry, and Peter Kalkavage is the author of The Logic of Desire: An art—all modes in which man contemplates God, and God, Introduction to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, through man, contemplates himself. These modes capture published by Paul Dry Books. The Phenomenology of Spirit is the book in which Hegel became Hegel. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } �18 {Green Johnnies} GREEN-COLL AR JOHNNIES Young Alumni Build Sustainable Careers by Anna Perleberg (SF02) Numberless wonders terrible wonders walk the world but none the match for man— . . . the oldest of the gods he wears away— the Earth, the immortal, the inexhaustible— as his plows go back and forth, year in, year out with the breed of stallions turning up the furrows. And the blithe, lightheaded race of birds he snares, the tribes of savage beasts, the life that swarms the depths—with one ﬂing of his nets woven and coiled tight, he takes them all, man the skilled, the brilliant! I n this era of disappearing habitats and global climate change, Earth seems ever more mortal and exhausted, and Sophocles’ famous paean to “man the master” increasingly an indictment of our sometimes wasteful and destructive ways. Yet as the warnings become more dire, the response of committed, hard-working individuals to solving the problems facing the environment grows stronger. Here are four Santa Fe Johnnies who have chosen to make their life’s work serve the life of the planet. —Antigone, tr. Robert Fagles, 377-8, 382-90 { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } �{Green Johnnies} The Triple Bottom Line 19 learning via the Internet and conference calls make up the As environmental remainder of the concerns gain imporprogram, creating a tance in the world very different learning economy, colleges and community than he was universities have reala part of at St. John’s. ized the need to train “Work groups cut future business leaders across time zones: not just in traditional Paris, Puerto Rico, ﬁnance but also in Zimbabwe,” he says. concepts such as He describes the sustainability, in an program as covering effort to harmonize all the standard MBA corporate goals with classes, such as ecoecological needs. While nomics, accounting and many MBA programs ﬁnance, but always with offer relevant elecan eye towards what he tives, few address all calls “the triple bottom aspects of the degree line,” not only proﬁt but from the green people and planet. perspective. Michael “Presidio is unashamed Barber (SF05), at about referring to their Presidio World College in students as agents of San Francisco, and John change; their primary Gorczynski (SF05), at goals are poverty relief Dominican University and environmental best of California in San As a resource efﬁciency specialist for the City of Anchorage, Michael Barber practices that are also Rafael, have found (SF05) is helping the city install environmentally friendly lighting. good business pracprograms graduate tices, making sure those that integrate sustainline up,” he says. While able thinking across the board. studying economics, for instance, he considered not just Barber grew up in Anchorage, Alaska, where the economy is human inﬂuences but ecosystem services, “things like photofueled by heavy industry, mining, and ﬁshing. “You were synthesis, sunlight, water and snowpack that add value to the either for business—especially Big Oil, the energy sector—or economy but that we can’t control. How do we put a price tag you were some kind of tree-hugger who cared more about on these? Should we?” owls than community,” he says. “Feeling that you had to pick At Dominican University of California, John Gorczynski one at the expense of the other—that dilemma had lived with enrolled in the Green MBA program—the ﬁrst of its kind in the me all my life.” Presidio’s Sustainable Management degree U.S.—in the fall of 2006. He’s currently on a break in his homemaintains this is a false choice. town of Houston, Texas, helping with his father’s judicial Over the past year, Barber has ﬂown to San Francisco once a re-election campaign and employed by the mayor’s ofﬁce in month for four days of intensive study, living in Anchorage the the Department of Public Safety and Homeland Security. rest of the time, where he is a resource efﬁciency specialist at Dominican’s program offers traditional MBA subjects the mayor’s ofﬁce, involved in a project that will convert all framed in a message of environmental responsibility, city lighting to earth-friendly bulbs within the year. Distance { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } �20 {Green Johnnies} Gorczynski says, but it also emphasizes entrepreneurship. He characterizes the triple bottom line as “earth, social justice, and proﬁtability.” A favorite subject so far? His introductory marketing class: “Someone drawn into an alternative business environment inherits a mistrust of marketing,” he explains. “It was interesting and refreshing to study marketing in a way that’s conducive to life.” Responsible Spaces “Before I was into sustainable building, I was into building, and before building, I thought I wanted to study architecture,” explains Sarah Seitz (SF02). Soon after graduating from St. John’s, Seitz explored the latter at University of New Mexico and California Polytechnic State University, but it was soon clear that her passion was for practice rather than theory: “I wanted to have a space of my own, know how to do practical things,” she says. “I wanted to have a career that allowed me to A desire to work with her hands led Sarah Seitz (SF02, front row, second from right) to a career in green building. be outside in the sun, provide for myself, work with beautiful things and have a positive impact on the environment.” “Green building” can be deﬁned many ways. Seitz cites criteria from Clarke Snell and Tim Callahan’s book Building Green, that the structure should have low construction impact (leaving trees and other vegetation intact, sourcing materials that are renewable or local); resource efﬁciency in water and energy use; durability, so the building continues to meet the needs of future generations; healthy, non-toxic materials, safe for construction workers and inhabitants; and the more nebulous concept of beauty, which “has to do with stewardship and making the most of the spaces around you, because moving around constantly will inevitably generate pollution. So it’s { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } �{Green Johnnies} 21 ingly,” she says. “It’s pretty rare to have the chance to build an not exclusively a beauty that is constructed, but an entire building from the ground up, let alone to live and work innate beauty that is revealed through nurturing and mainwith a group of so many like-minded people.” She’s also taining a space.” Thus, she summarizes, “a ‘green building’ recently prepared displays for the Toronto Home Show and project might focus on the use of low-VOC [Volatile Organic built a utility shed on a rural waterfront property, mostly by Compounds such as hydrocarbons, prone to vaporizing herself. “Five years after I ﬁrst asked the question, I have now and entering the atmosphere] ﬁnishes, energy-efﬁcient discovered that yes, if I lived in Santa Fe and could no longer windows and appliances, using insulation with a high-R value, afford the rent, I could indeed tack together a lovely little and possibly incorporating materials with recycled content. something to live in,” she says. A ‘sustainable’ building might go further to incorporate Seitz is currently working for a builder in Calgary and site-harvested windfall lumber, locally sourced natural plasstudying for LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental ters, reclaimed ﬂooring, off-grid renewable energy systems, Design) certiﬁcation. She appeared on an episode of HGTV’s and the integration of the building into the surrounding site World’s Most Extreme Homes, and continues to learn and landscape.” and experiment with earth-friendly materials and building After taking carpentry courses at a community college techniques. in her hometown of Kingston, Ontario, Seitz enrolled in nearby Fleming College’s Sustainable Bridging Culture Building Design and Construction and Nature program in April 2007. Over the course Kina R. Murphy (SF95) holds an underof 20 weeks, she and her classmates graduate degree from the College of built the 1900-square-foot R.D. Santa Fe in conservation science and a Lawrence Place museum from design to master’s from the University of New execution. The museum “is named after Mexico in planning and resource a local conservationist and author who management, with an ecology minor. established a wolf sanctuary, and the In 2003, she received a Fulbright scholinside was designed to have an ‘out in arship that sent her to Linyanti, a the woods’ feel to it, with a log cabin at remote swampland in the “four its center.” Seitz was responsible for the corners” region of Botswana. Working Sarah Seitz (SF02) building’s ﬁxtures, working with subconwith the Centre for Conservation of tractors, donors, suppliers, instructors, African Resources: Animals, Communistudent teams and museum staff. ties and Land Use (CARACAL), Murphy The museum incorporates many aspects of the greenresearched human/wildlife conﬂict in the area. She explains: building philosophy, employing alternative materials such as “When the rains come, animals migrate into farms and straw bales and slipstraw to insulate the outside walls, nonvillages. Lions eat cattle (or people); buffalo or elephants raid toxic milk and mineral paints on the walls and “soycrete” crops or water tanks. My objective was to map wildlife moveto stain and seal the ﬂoor. Some elements were salvaged— ment toward the wetland, to see what time of day animals wood-frame windows that helped make up the permanent moved toward the river, to give people something to go on.” display cases—or donated, as in the case of several large pines The project was life-changing for Murphy. “I did not know donated by the local power company, which became exterior how to care about people until I went to Africa,” she asserts. posts. Says Seitz, “I especially enjoyed using a solid cherry log Out in the middle of the bush, she and her two daughters, then to build a leg for a vanity, and using stained glass to cover the 3 and 6, felt safer than in the U.S. because of the community vanity and backsplash.” that supported them. Her experience with tragedy as well as The museum ranks as Seitz’s favorite building project so far: fellowship—“I probably lost half of my friends in Africa to “With the students having put in so much thought and so AIDS or malaria or crocodiles”—led to action. many hours of hard work, the ﬁnished building was well- “So it’s not exclusively a beauty that is constructed, but an innate beauty that is revealed through nurturing and maintaining a space.” received by the local community and we celebrated accord- { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } �22 {Green Johnnies} As president of ConservaAt ﬁrst, she worked tion Assistance Internawithin existing conservational, Kina Murphy (SF95) tion groups, but was frusis building an institute in Malawi to train local trated by their methods: residents in natural “They’re often not effecresource and lodge management. tive because they’re not invested in the community,” she explains. and saw a 1.5 million pula “They’ll go in to help ($250,000) proﬁt in their elephants and not really ﬁrst year. deal with the people. The “They created a really measures have to come viable business from their from the community.” She natural resources without mentions one particular help from large conservaexperience in the tion groups,” she says. “I Okavango delta, working wondered why. I felt I had with a large conservation to come up with a mechaNGO: “They were trying to nism to help communities create community-based access resources in the resource management, and United States.” the natives would smile and With the aid of her nod and show up for the father, Donald Murphy, meetings basically for the former deputy director food. Maybe because I’m of the U.S. National African-American myself, Park Service, she created the natives started Global Conservation Assiscomplaining to me about tance. GCA, of which the conservationists’ attiMurphy is president, tude. They’d ask me, ‘Why empowers communities by do they think we want to asking about their needs live in a zoo?’” Kina Murphy (SF95) and helping to implement Too often, Murphy them—writing grant thinks, representatives proposals, getting fundfrom industrialized nations ing, training community sell Africans short. “People members in the skills they need. Recently, she was invited to in non-industrialized nations know what to do—they just Malawi by their Minister of Environment (now Foreign don’t have the resources, the education,” she explains. But Minister), Davis Chester Katsonga, to brainstorm how to when the impetus emerges from within a community, great address problems faced by the country. Malawi is a densely things can be accomplished: Murphy gives the example of a populated, mostly agricultural nation in southeastern group of Khwai, river Bushmen, who brought in consultants Africa; but its natural resources are not distributed well. to learn methods for economic development. On their own, Murphy marvels at the paradoxes created by inefﬁciency: they designed and built hunting and wildlife safari lodges, “Coffee is grown throughout Africa, but you can’t get a good “I did not know how to care about people until I went to Africa.” { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } �{Green Johnnies} 23 cup of coffee anywhere,” she They also agree that in an says. “Rice is imported on a emerging ﬁeld like sustainmassive scale in Malawi, even ability, it’s imperative to be though they grow several able to work outside your varieties locally.” Education comfort zone. “Whenever is an important factor in you’re doing something no resolving these issues. That’s one has done before,” says Michael Barber (SF05) one reason GCA is raising Gorczynski, “your technical funds to build a Freedom expertise is not the most Center at Lake Malawi. This holistic institute will serve important thing, but critical thinking, the willingness to several purposes: ﬁrst, training locals in natural resource learn and question conventional wisdom, understand many and lodge management, and sustainable product developdifferent viewpoints, understand science and keep current ment. The center will also provide a venue for these skills by with that.” serving as a high-end tourist lodge and a conference center “At St. John’s,” Barber adds, “you’re not just learning for visiting organizations, “a space where they can hold what you think you’re already good at. Sustainability is conferences and actually support a community.” what human beings are not good at.” GCA is also afﬁliated with other groups large and small, Gorczynski feels now is a perfect time for Johnnies to get including Artists for Africa, Conservation SOS, the World involved in green ﬁelds, since they’ll be at the forefront of Wildlife Fund’s One Europe More Nature program, and the what may prove to be the most profound shift in human Oprah Winfrey-founded National Underground Railroad thinking and behavior in this century. Freedom Center, which works to end world slavery. “Someday, when these topics are part of every MBA, Murphy regularly travels to Africa from Santa Fe—she Johnnies may not have the advantage,” Gorczynski says, returned to Malawi in January 2008—and remains “but right now there’s real opportunity, while these committed and passionate about her work: “It’s about programs are willing to accept that we come from an alterﬁguring out how we in our everyday lives can help each native educational path.” While the ultimate solutions to other.” many environmental issues are not yet apparent, encouraging discussion is the ﬁrst step toward changing the status Sustaining the Conversation quo–and St. John’s is joining the conversation. x When asked how St. John’s prepared them for a sustainable career, these alumni responded with strikingly similar answers. They all say that the ability to dialogue, to both talk and listen, is vitally important in forging connections among the disparate communities who must all participate Learn more: in the protection of the planet: corporations and environGreen MBA (Dominican University of California): mentalists, philanthropists and non-industrialized www.greenmba.com nations. Seitz appreciates the analytical thinking skills Presidio MBA (Presidio World College): www.presidrequired for “interpreting, challenging and navigating iomba.org, or contact Michael Barber directly at alaskabuilding code requirements, and in dialoguing with clients grown@gmail.com to determine their needs and design accordingly.” Barber Fleming College and the R.D. Lawrence Place Museum: credits seminar with giving him “a clear, competitive www.sustainablebuilding2007.ca advantage over almost everyone I meet. A lot of people need to waste years in the boardroom to learn to listen to Global Conservation Assistance: www.gcainfo.org; Conservation SOS: www.conservationsos.org somebody and get to the heart of an issue quickly.” “A lot of people need to waste years in the boardroom to learn to listen to somebody and get to the heart of an issue quickly.” { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } �24 {The Graduate Institute} “ W H Y D I D N ’ T W E K NOW ABOUT THESE BOOKS?” Four Decades of Graduate Education at St. John’s by Laurence Berns, Tutor Emeritus D uring the summer of 1965, St. John’s President Richard D. Weigle, on his own, applied to a grant program he ran across in the Chronicle of Higher Education, and St. John’s received a grant of $75,000 to produce a summer graduate program in liberal arts. At the ﬁrst faculty meeting that September, Weigle announced his success. A number of senior faculty members, bothered by what appeared to be a violation of the principle of complete control of curriculum matters by the faculty, reacted angrily: I remember phrases like “watering down the Program” and “cheap publicity gimmick.” Weigle was taken aback by the reaction. After some minutes of this I spoke up, arguing that it was certainly possible to work out a shorter, appropriate curriculum that did not fall short of or violate St. John’s standards, and that we could ensure faculty control by not allowing any curriculum or program to go through without faculty approval. I probably referred to my pre-St. John’s experience teaching in the University of Chicago’s “Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults.” In the Basic Program we would also sometimes seek advice, especially for leading seminars, from Robert Goldwin (class of 1950). The following morning, a Sunday, I received a phone call from Dick Weigle. “Would you be interested in { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } drawing up a curriculum for the program we talked about yesterday?” I said, “Sure.” Since we were planning for a summer program in Santa Fe, we agreed later that the planning was to take place there the next summer. Robert Goldwin was chosen to work out the structural and administrative matters, and the following summer, Goldwin became the ﬁrst Director of the Graduate Institute. I had been commissioned ofﬁcially only to draw up the ﬁrst summer’s program on Politics and Society. But I felt, and knew that many of my colleagues would feel, that we would want to see how what we were offering would ﬁt into some uniﬁed overall program, so I worked out tentative curricula for Literature, Philosophy and Theology, and Mathematics and Natural Sciences segments. After working out my ﬁrst plans, I tried to consult with any faculty member who would meet with me. That turned out to be most of the faculty at Santa Fe that �{The Graduate Institute} 25 Graduate Institute students at the coffee shop in Santa Fe, 1971. summer, including a few outspokenly against the idea. It was for me a pleasant illustration of the objectivity and openmindedness of my colleagues: everyone I showed my lists and schedules to said something like, “Oh that’s nice,” or “Pretty good list,” and almost everyone suggested one or two changes to get in favorite books of their own. One of my most pleasant meetings, was with (then dean) Bob Neidorf, concerning the Philosophy and Theology curriculum. “Larry,” he said, “you’re going to think I’m crazy. I think Plato’s Theaetetus should follow Hume and Kant. The Theaetetus is the answer to Hume and Kant.” I broke into a big grin and said, “I guess we’re both crazy. I reached the same conclusion last night.” Michael Ossorgin, tutor, ordained Russian Orthodox priest, Dostoyevsky expert, and musician, was perhaps the most sweetly intelligent man I have ever known. Some days after I had shown him { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } my Literature selections, he called to invite me to lunch. He had developed a better idea for that sequence, but he would never say that. As soon as we were seated for lunch he turned to me and said, “Larry, I think all of human life can be understood in terms of the Iliad and the Odyssey.” And then for about two hours he led me in a wonderful discussion about how the Iliad and the Odyssey clariﬁed the foundations of human life, at the end of which I asked him if he would redraw the literature sequence to extend the time for the Iliad and the Odyssey. The long study of the Iliad and the Odyssey is still the core of the Graduate Institute’s very successful literature sequence. Michael ﬁnally did produce a list of selections, but not without the prodding and help of Elliott Zuckerman, director of the GI in its second and third summers. The Graduate Institute was primarily conceived as a program for anyone who had received a bachelor’s degree from another institution, to give them ﬁrsthand experience in the St. John’s way of educating. But we expected that it might be especially attractive to teachers. Toward the end of that summer of planning, Bob Goldwin was preparing to meet with the New Mexico authorities for teachers’ accreditation. He asked me to write a short paper about why our program was especially appropriate for teachers. We did get the accreditation and that ﬁrst summer of 1967 the program attracted a large number of teachers, especially high school teachers. �26 {The Graduate Institute} The students turned out to be quite good, enthusiastic and serious. They appreciated how starting classes with opening questions promoted discussion, how tutors developed an art of questions, both for seminars and tutorials. But the one thing I heard most from students, especially the ﬁrst month, was, “Why didn’t we know about these books?” The Graduate Institute has always attracted a variety of interesting students, more than I can talk about here. I remember a Santa Fe physician who had scheduled a paper conference with me one afternoon. After about 30 minutes my phone rang; they wanted the doctor. A quick medical conversation went on. I remember him ordering some treatment instructions, then he hung up, turned to me and said sadly, “I never have time to contemplate.” His paper was for a preceptorial I called Practical Politics, using Books 3 and 4 of Aristotle’s Politics. The ﬁnal papers were to be about some contemporary political problem addressed with principles we had learned from Aristotle. Earlier that year serious rioting had broken out in Detroit. The doctor had written a very interesting nocturnal dialogue between Aristotle and the Mayor of Detroit about avoiding and controlling riots. The ﬁrst year in Santa Fe, we had a small number of inner-city teachers from Baltimore on Hoffberger grants. One of them came up to me after the ﬁrst few classes. We had been reading Plato and Aristotle. “You know, Mr. Berns,” he said, “that idea of the rational life—boy, that sure clears up a lot of things.” His language was simple, just as his thought was clear and deep. It was a beautiful thing to see how the vocabulary of the classics began to infuse itself into his own speech. After a month or so we were reading Hobbes. There was a lady in that class whom Hobbes had moved to speak: “Hobbes is the ﬁrst author we have read who has written about things as they really are. Nobody does anything for anybody else unless there is some reward in it for themselves!” The student I spoke of before was on the opposite side of the table. In his usual quiet and calm manner, he replied: “You know, you’ve been talking about rewards, internal rewards and external rewards, you’ve only been talking about external rewards.” I still remember how at the end of that ﬁrst summer of operation, Bob Goldwin and I were saying good-bye, and one of us, probably Bob, said, “We’ve done a good thing here.” Annapolis tutor Laurence Berns spent the summer of 1966 planning for the ﬁrst graduate segment, Politics and Society, on the new Santa Fe campus. Author’s Postscript: Goldwin offered a few additional thoughts: “You say that in the ﬁrst summer we attracted ‘a large number of teachers.’ As a matter of fact, we failed to attract a large number of any category. The budget drawn up, on which the grant was based, was for a much larger enrollment, but we only enrolled 35 students that ﬁrst summer of 1967. It { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } turned out to be lucky that we had enough for two seminars and not more, because the grant was just enough for a small operation. The business ofﬁce budget had been wildly off target and we squeaked through only because we didn’t attract more students that year. It was my ﬁrst lesson in academic economics: Since you lose money on every student you enroll, you have to keep enrollment small or raise more money.” �{The Graduate Institute} “I Was Just Determined” By Geoff Comber (HA95), Tutor Emeritus Somewhere around 1975 I began thinking: why haven’t we got a graduate program here in Annapolis? I started talking with other tutors and got various reactions, some positive, some negative. As soon as I came back from a sabbatical in late 1975, I began promoting it seriously. The reasons people gave for opposing the program were: 1) it would drain students from Santa Fe and 2) the faculty in Annapolis would be too stretched out because of the Febbie class in the summer. I just kept pushing because I thought the Graduate Institute was one of the best programs that the college offered. It was exactly in line with Scott Buchanan and Stringfellow Barr’s vision for the college, of opening the great books and seminar discussions to working people. I went about developing answers for the objections. Would faculty be strained? It turned out there was actually quite a good deal of support for summer work in Annapolis. Faculty members needed extra income doing interesting work. Then I found a way around the other objective, that it would take away students from Santa Fe. I thought the answer was to offer a ﬁfth segment, one not offered in Santa Fe. I was talking with tutor Harry Golding in the ofﬁce next to me, who suggested History, and he, Larry Berns, and Bob Goldwin worked with me to develop a reading list. But we still had a fair amount of resistance among faculty. When things were looking bleak, Eva Brann spoke up in support of the program at a faculty meeting. That began to turn the tide. Somewhere around the middle of 1976, the faculty agreed to it. Somehow, I became the director. I was operating out of 27 my small ofﬁce and I did it all on top of teaching, with no time off. I was just determined to do it. Funding was the immediate priority. Burch Ault, the vice president in Santa Fe, was a great help in leading me to money. We secured a grant from the Cafritz Foundation and from three additional sources in Philadelphia, including grants for teachers from the Philadelphia city schools. By the third year of the program, 1979, we won a grant to have 25 students from the Middle East attend. That ﬁrst summer we had four faculty members, Malcolm Wyatt, Howard Fisher, Michael Littleton, and me. The next year we had six tutors and 34 students. Within a couple of years, we had 80 to 100 students, and by the time I returned to serve a three-year team as the director in the 1980s, the program was year-round. The program was a great success, right from that ﬁrst summer. From the faculty point of view, there was an opportunity for faculty to get new readings in books that they liked a lot. And of course, the students liked it. I remember one man, in his 40s, who told me: “I’ve made a success of myself, I was trained very well, I went to a ﬁne university—and now I’m ready for an education.” That was the typical attitude of the students who came to us. They had careers, so we made a point of starting classes late in the afternoon. In those days, most of the students were in their 30s and 40s. I believe the average age for the ﬁrst three years was 38. The second year was particularly interesting because we had two students at opposite extremes: one 74 years old, one 16. I was nervous about that young man, but his mother pleaded for him. He was obviously bright, and he really wanted to come, so I cut a deal—that’s the advantage of having no one over you! He could do the work, but not for graduate credit, and I would write a comprehensive report on what he had accomplished at the end of the session that he could use in any way he wished. I ran into him several years later in a supermarket. He was successful, and he was so grateful for the experience he had at St. John’s that summer. I think it was in the third year of the program when someone came up to tell me about the “old man sleeping in his car.” An 84-year-old man who had been wandering around Mexico heard of the program and drove up to enroll. He had no money, so he was living out of his car. We got him a grant, put him in a room, and he was the oldest student I know of who studied in the program. x { T h e C o l l e g e • John’s College • Winter 2008 } �28 {The Graduate Institute} For the Joy of Learning Language and the Eastern Classics by Cary Stickney (A75) Sometime in the early 90s, the idea came about that maybe we could come up with an actual curriculum to study Eastern texts. The people who were most interested got together and proposed a pilot program. The faculty agreed to try it out. There were doubters on both campuses. I was something of a doubter. The rhetoric that I thought I detected that troubled me—and it may have been as much in my imagination as anywhere—was that one good of such a program would be that it would renew the zest for learning of the tutors who might be a little weary of the books of the undergraduate program and existing GI program. It would be a rejuvenation of their thinking and learning. And I had my doubts about that because I thought if you can’t ﬁnd anything more in the books we are already reading, then you should go teach somewhere else. But what I think now is a little different. I think it did bring new excitement, especially for [tutor] Ralph Swentzell (HA95) and maybe for some of the other tutors who were promoting it. It seems to me that what they enjoyed most was that it was being done for the joy of the learning. At ﬁrst we [the tutors] weren’t promising even so much as a degree, and we were ﬁnding our way in much the same way that we ask of our students all the time. As I worry a bit about the college becoming a little too regular, a little too much like other colleges, it looks to me that maybe what drew those pioneers in the Eastern Classics We consider certain Western books to be “great” for different reasons, and I think that’s true with Eastern books as well. Cary Stickney (A75) program as much as anything was a return to the aspect of the college that had to do with learning for its own sake. The pilot program had a fairly high proportion of recently graduated Johnnies in it, and they just loved it. And the people teaching in it loved it. It wasn’t hard to ﬁnd tutors to teach even at the beginning. There were people who wanted to do it. There were a couple of years when we’d barely have enough students to move forward, and would ﬁnd the last few students we needed at the last minute. There did come a moment, at the end of my term as GI director, that I was asked to give a report, and I said “It worked, we’ve done it, but the main problem was funding and recruiting.” My report also said it wouldn’t be a defeat for us if we decided to discontinue it and take it up another time. But no one took that seriously! No one was thinking of discontinuing it at that time. The program grew under the next director, and it continues to grow. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } by James Carey (class of 1967) One of the objections to studying Eastern Classics at the college was that we didn’t know the languages of these works. We had a faculty seminar on the Bhagavad Gita and discovered that a word translated as “grace” in one of the editions was translated as “force” in another. We realized that we needed to get closer to the texts. So those of us who were interested in the program set out, in our own St. John’s way, to learn the languages. In the early years there were about six of us studying Sanskrit together. Several more were studying Chinese. Bruce Perry came out here around that time, with a really impressive knowledge of Sanskrit. And Ralph Swentzell threw himself into putting together a Chinese program. We tried to get an understanding of these languages that would be roughly comparable to what most tutors have in Greek, another demanding language. Over the years we’ve found that the students, at least, think the language requirement contributes to making the Eastern Classics program respectable. It’s astonishing what the students put into their preparation for the language tutorial. Some students who have studied a year of Sanskrit at St. John’s have been able to move directly into third-year Sanskrit elsewhere. A difﬁculty for us in organizing the curriculum was what to do with the big epics of India. One way to read the Mahabharata is through retellings of it, which is how we did it the ﬁrst year. We read retellings of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana in maybe two or �{The Graduate Institute} 29 Alistair Hake (EC08) practices the art of Chinese calligraphy, which conveys thought as well as showing the abstract beauty of the line. amy raab three seminars apiece, as though they were novels. The seminars were enjoyable, but we were not dealing with the actual texts. It was someone’s inspired idea—not mine—to make the Mahabharata a mandatory preceptorial topic. That was a good decision. The Mahabharata has turned out to be a favorite text, even for undergraduates who also do the Eastern Classics program. It vies for the most popular text read on this campus. We consider certain Western books to be “great” for different reasons, and I think that’s true with Eastern books as well. The texts of the different schools of Indian thought are great like the Summa Theologiae of Aquinas or the Critique of Pure Reason; they are intrinsically interesting but are also technically demanding. Certainly the Mahabharata is a great epic; that’s incontestable as far as I can see. The Kumarasambhava is a wonderful play. Goethe had read it and was very taken with it. It’s quite beautiful, and it’s hard not to realize that you are in the presence of greatness when you read it. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } �30 {The Graduate Institute} A Genuine Love of Learning Since the Graduate Institute began on the college’s Western campus in 1967, 3,595 people have attended: 1,249 in Annapolis; 2,346 in both the Liberal Arts and Eastern Classics programs in Santa Fe. The graduate programs have attracted people in all walks of life, from younger students who have just ﬁnished a bachelor’s degree to octogenarians who want to devote time to reading great books with others. These three recent or soon-to-be graduates—a medical doctor, a teacher, and a marine—illustrate some of the motives that draw adults to St. John’s College. Major Kevin Brooks (AGI08) After he graduated from the Naval Academy in 1988, Major Kevin Brooks earned a master’s in English at the University of Maryland, then began active service in the United States Marine Corps. He expected to return to teach English at the Naval Academy within ﬁve or six years of commissioning. Then, the Marine Corps put him in a jet. “I was having too much fun ﬂying F-18s to go back to a classroom,” he says. He spent 15 years as a pilot and was deployed to hot spots and war zones ﬁve times, including most recently, a stint with Operation Iraqi Freedom combat forces based in Kuwait. When ﬂying assignments began to drop off, Brooks knew it was time to head to the classroom. And although his master’s qualiﬁed him for a teaching stint at the Academy, he still wanted to enroll in the Graduate Institute. With his job and a young son at home, he knew that embarking on a PhD would be “too big a hurdle for now,” he says. “With a little bit of cajoling, I convinced my wife that I should do the graduate program at St. John’s. I’ve been thinking that I’d love to teach at an independent school, and many use the classically-based model of St. John’s: great books, critical thinking, an emphasis on writing, appreciation of literature, discussions of issues like ethics and justice.” His career goals account for just a part of his motive. “It was refreshing to be in a class with such a diverse population of students, not only by age range, but economic background, polit- After retiring from the Marines, Major Kevin Brooks (AGI08) hopes to be a secondary school teacher. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } Patrick Hudson (SGI08) admits that his ﬁrst term at St. John’s was frightening— he hadn’t written as essay for 33 years. ical views, and education,” he says. “What brought everyone together was a genuine love of learning and sharing ideas. It helped me break out of the conservative military mode and really listen to wildly different opinions. And part of being an adult is that while you don’t have to agree with others’ opinions, you need to really listen to them and respect their point of view.” After ﬁnishing the Math and Natural Science segment last December, Brooks will march with his fellow graduates at Commencement in May, about the same time he retires from military service. And whatever he does in the next stage of his career, his experience at St. John’s will be valuable. “It enriches your life,” he says. Patrick Hudson (SFGI08) After completing studies in London to become a surgeon, Patrick Hudson began a planned one-year surgical residency at the University of New Mexico in 1974—and has remained in �{The Graduate Institute} “I am a better person for doing the Graduate Institute,” he says. “But more importantly, I am equipped with valuable knowledge about the world and myself.” Patrick Hudson, SFGI08 valuable knowledge about the world and myself.” Carolyn Thomas (SFGI02, EC07) Wherever she teaches next, Carolyn Thomas will be an inspiring role model—a zealous lifelong learner—for her students. Thomas ﬁrst came to St. John’s in 1998 to take part in a Summer Classics seminar with readings from Augustine. The educational philosophy she encountered in that brief summer session closely matched what she had been doing in her classroom at the Burroughs Academy in teri thomson randall Albuquerque ever since. After more than 30 years as a successful plastic surgeon, Hudson enrolled in the liberal arts master’s program at St. John’s. “I wanted to open my mind, to broaden my perspective, and to hone in on my value system,” he says. After completing his degree last December, he embarked on a master’s program in counseling at Webster University. He plans to do yet another graduate program in medical ethics. His ultimate goal is to offer counseling within the ﬁeld of medical ethics, combining his expertise as surgeon, the background in values and ethics gleaned from St. John’s, and his degrees in counseling and ethics. With the increased complications of access to medical care and health insurance, and ethical issues related to prolonging life, Hudson feels that he can contribute to medicine in a new way as he enters the next phase of his life. “Plastic surgery requires a high degree of dexterity and stamina, and I’ll be 60 next year,” says Hudson. “I don’t want to give up my contact with patients.” Being a “full-service ethicist,” he jokes, is a way to combine everything he has learned and studied to make a meaningful contribution in the world. He plans to provide counseling services speciﬁcally related to body image, life transitions, and men’s issues. Coming to St. John’s had been in the back of his mind for 15 years before he ﬁnally enrolled. What drew him was the depth and breadth of the reading list, and the chance to read great books within a program that emphasized education. “I am a better person for doing the Graduate Institute,” he says. “But more importantly, I am equipped with St. Louis, where she had taught English for 16 years. “I always wanted a pure liberal arts education,” she says. Believing the Graduate Institute would enhance her work as a teacher, she decided to use her sabbatical to study at St. John’s. “With half my forks and half my spoons, I moved to Santa Fe,” she jokes. Her plan was to devote a year to the program, return to teach at Burroughs, and complete the program during subsequent summers. But during her summer in Santa Fe, she grew enchanted with the college and the books read here. She decided to complete her graduate degree in four straight semesters and made Santa Fe her home. In addition to her graduate courses, she audited several undergraduate classes including sophomore music, freshman chorus, and senior seminar. Like many Graduate Institute students, she completed a ﬁfth segment when only four are needed for the degree. Then, with the desire to extend her journey to include books of India, China, and Japan, she enrolled in the Eastern Classics program. That degree took several years to complete, while Thomas continued her work as an educator. She taught, directed college counseling and served as assistant head at the New Mexico Academy for Art. She also enrolled in a doctoral program in philosophy at the University of New Mexico. With her coursework for the PhD compelte, she will focus next on her dissertation and seeking a college-level teaching position. x Carolyn Thomas (SGI02, EC07), at Commencement in May 2002, earned her two degrees while teaching and restoring antique cars. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } 31 �A Long Retreat: In Search of a Religious Life by Andrew Krivak (A86) Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007 In his memoir A Long Retreat: In Search of a Religious Life, Andrew Krivak shares his achingly human journey, in which he embarks on an eight-year period of Jesuit religious formation and then chooses another path for his life. The “long retreat” of his title refers to the 30-day period of prayer and silence when novices encounter the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola. Although Jesuits are well known for living active, contemporary lives in universities and communities around the world, during the Long Retreat, modern life comes to a halt. The experience shapes a Jesuit’s spirituality, teaching him the type of imaginative and meditative prayer he will practice on a daily basis “and giving him the skills,” Krivak says, “to discern the will of God in his life.” That discernment is at the heart of Krivak’s story. Krivak entered the Society of Jesus in August 1990 and began his 30-day retreat as a novice in January 1991 at a Pennsylvania retreat house. He and his fellow novitiates, about a dozen altogether, walked the same stone paths that hundreds of novices had for nearly a century, moving soundlessly down long, drafty corridors and praying in solitude in rooms no larger than a cell. The only conversation Krivak was allowed—for 45 minutes once a day— was with his spiritual director. “We were just a bunch of regular guys. We didn’t look like monks; no religious garb, no monk’s robes or cassocks. I prayed in a pair of jeans and a Patagonia ﬂeece,” Krivak says. “In the silence, you stop, begin listening, and ask: ‘What am I doing with my life? Excerpt: . . .The purpose of the First Week. . . is to face the reality of sin. From his own experience, Ignatius knew that this intial state of recognition was the darkest and most painful room to enter. . . . . . .In our rooms we were instructed to close the windows, pull the blinds, and be careful at all times for a period of two days to avoid distractions and not to make any unnecessary noise. The effect was truly {Bibliofile} What do I want to do with my life?’ And most importantly: ‘Where is God in all of this?’ There’s an element of Augustine’s Confessions at work. That’s what the retreat’s about.” That discernment he says, “has become the task of a lifetime. Loss is a theme that runs throughout Krivak’s memoir—he feels loneliness, even boredom at times, but also a stripping away of roles and expectations. “There are certainly things one gains by entering religious life,” Krivak suggests. “The satisfaction of serving others, the emotional support of living in strong faith communities, and the consolation that can come with a life of prayer.” But one also gives up a great deal, Krivak says, “such as those cultural expectations of love, respect, and professional success. It was St. Paul who said that faith is the substance of things hoped for. When you realize that you’ve pinned your life on a hope that you’re not supposed to achieve in this world, you feel the things you’ve lost with a tangible pain. It can chip away at your identity. The faith, the hope, even the love—it’s hard work.” During his eight years with the Jesuits, Krivak lived and worked around the world in Jesuit communities from the South Bronx and Syracuse to Bratislava and Moscow. In 1998 he was sent to Cambridge to study theology for the last stage of his formation before being ordained a priest. He made the decision to leave. “I was called to be a Jesuit, and I was also called to leave; through this process of eight years there was an examination of my conscience. There was not an ‘ah-ha’ moment.” Today Krivak, who lives in London with his wife and two children, says he reserves his solitude for writing—he has an MFA from Columbia and a PhD in literature from Rutgers. marzena pogorzaly 32 some kind of paradise lost, “The seat of desolation, void of light,/Save what the glimmering of these vivid ﬂames/Cast pale and dreadful. . . ” I conjured a Hell that roared through my senses with synaesthetic overload. Rancid, aching shouts that approached in terrifying increments, like the New York City subway in August, deafening and piss-smelling, a humid waft crawling beneath clothes and onto every inch of body, to settle there like a second skin. The { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } Andrew Krivak’s memoir about his eight years of Jesuit religious formation is part travelogue, part theological inquiry. Krivak ﬁnds a symbol for his spiritual journey in the Susquehanna River, a familiar landmark from his travels and his childhood. The river follows a meandering path through New York and Pennsylvania before it meets the Chesapeake Bay at the same longitude where it begins. “People who say they want to become a priest or a monk and then leave the seminary or monastery seem like sad and fallen souls to more traditional Catholics. You know, God is at the top of the mountain. You’re either up or down—a spiritual success or a lost failure,” says Krivak. “I don’t think it’s like that. Our paths take radical and disorienting turns without becoming different rivers altogether. That’s what I’ve found in my faith search: long retreats and great bends.” x —Patricia Dempsey No Exit terror of a homeless shelter, with its fetid stillness, disembodied shrieks, and tense boredom. Then, bodies around me became the body of a drowned black man I had seen once, skin emptied of pigment, the stomach bloated and pushing out vomit, eyes rolled back and staring at none of us who stood over him. Go on, Ignatius seems to say, think of what you know of as misery, and know that this is unimaginably worse. �33 { Pa r e n t s ’ Vo i c e s } Inspired by the Program A Santa Fe Parent Pursues the Classics by Ann Kirkland I am, no doubt, like many St. John’s parents—adults who nudge their children toward the education they wish they had had. I went to a large Ivy League university where I sat at the back of cavernous lecture halls, sometimes scribbling down what the professor was saying and sometimes doodling and daydreaming. By the time my own ﬁrst born was in her last years of high school in Toronto, I was a member of a great books group and had heard about St. John’s College. I encouraged her to consider opting for a very different experience from my own. She interviewed in Annapolis but chose the Santa Fe campus. Her experience was tremendous, but St. John’s also changed my life. At my ﬁrst Parents’ Weekend in the fall of 1994, both students and parents were assigned to small seminars to discuss Sophocles’ Antigone. I was hooked. That one guided discussion made me sad about what might have been way back when, but thrilled that through the Summer Classics program in Santa Fe, this opportunity was open to me again and again. I became a devotee, returning each summer to renew and sharpen my curiosity and ability to listen to others with an open mind. I fell in love—with literature, with learning, and with good conversation. Alas, the unfavorable exchange rate between the U.S. and Canada curtailed my annual trips to Santa Fe, but in a ﬂash of blind inspiration, I got the idea to bring the concept to Toronto. And that is how I began to turn this avocation, for which I never had enough time, into my vocation. I use the word “vocation” in both of its meanings: the more pedestrian “employment” and the loftier “call”—or as Fredrick Buechner says, “where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.” I abandoned a 30-year career in health administration, and based on my own happy experiences at Summer Classics and with the support of the Great Books Foundation in Chicago, I created a program at the University of Toronto’s St. Michael’s College called Classical Pursuits. I wanted Santa Fe Tutor Hans Von Briesen (HA03) took part in a Classical Pursuits seminar. to create opportunities for others to experience what I had come to cherish: coming together with adults from far and wide to read, discuss and reﬂect on the enduring ideas in great works of literature, music, and art. The program started with four seminar options in 1999: Plato’s Republic, Dante’s Inferno, Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, and Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. Today, the summer program has expanded to attract more than 150 people to participate in one of 12 seminar options. This coming summer marks the 10th anniversary, which will be devoted to celebrating crowning achievements created late in life. To this, I have added a spring program for Toronto locals (this year six Sunday afternoons on “Reading Ulysses”). In 2002, I launched Travel Pursuits, escorting a group to Italy to discuss Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose and to explore aspects of Medieval Italian life, arts and thought. Tutor Jim Carey (class of 1967), from the Santa Fe campus, was on sabbatical in Italy that year and joined us as a discussion leader. The travel program has proven so successful, it has grown to six or seven annual trips, ranging this year from “To Hell and Back with Dante” in Florence to “Mystery and Manners in Savannah,” Flannery O’Connor’s short stories and prose. The highlight for me, though, was “The Power of Place” in Santa Fe this past September in which retired St. John’s tutor { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } Hans Von Briesen (HA03) led our discussions of Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose. Whether it is Odysseus trying to get home to his high-roofed house in Ithaca; Aeneas dutifully pursuing a quest that was not initially his own; or Dante trying to save himself, literature reminds us that we are creatures whose natures cause us to long and to seek. Unlike many others setting out on a quest, I was no youth, but in the second half of life. Like the archetype, however, I had become disenchanted with earlier successes, conscious of failures, and increasingly aware of the ﬁniteness of life. What seemed to me at ﬁrst a straightforward and fail-safe plan turned out to be fraught with all kinds of unanticipated obstacles. There still are times like that, moments when I have been tempted to abandon this mission and more than a few dark nights of fear, especially after I burned all my previous professional bridges and realized I could not turn back. There have been many successes and much encouragement along the way, all from eager supporters. These often come just when I have felt ready to throw in the towel. The reward has been the creation of a growing enterprise that is enriching those associated with it, but there has been a price for my chosen path. I did not anticipate that, instead of having more time to read deeply and leisurely, I have less. Without question, I would do it again. I retain the zeal of the missionary, believing that what I am doing—in the St. John’s model—is contributing in a small way to improving the quality of reﬂective thinking and public discourse—essential ingredients for both meaningful lives and a civilized society. x Ann Kirkland’s daughter, Gillian, is a member of the Santa Fe Class of 1998. �34 {Alumni Profile} The Spirit of the Law Pedro Martinez-Fraga (A84) Pursues Justice by Rosemary Harty W hen Augusto Pinochet died in a military hospital in Santiago, Chile, on Dec. 11, 2006, Pedro MartinezFraga (A84) saw one of the most important cases in his legal career come to a deﬁnitive, though not altogether satisfying conclusion. Then a partner with Greenberg-Traurig in Miami, Martinez-Fraga was the lead U.S. counsel in the Republic of Chile’s case against the former dictator, accused of murdering and torturing thousands in the wake of the 1973 junta that brought him to power. Well known in the ﬁeld of international litigation, Martinez-Fraga was retained ﬁrst to help the Chilean Ministry of Industry recover $200 million stolen from the Central Bank of Chile. His success in that case led the Chilean government to hire him to prosecute Pinochet for tax evasion and theft from the national treasury. Drawing on obscure legal precedents that allowed him to pursue the case in the United States, Martinez-Fraga helped secure thousands of documents from banks in Miami and Washington, D.C. The evidence he uncovered allowed the Chilean government to ﬁle criminal charges against Pinochet in Chile. Though he never got Pinochet into a courtroom, Martinez-Fraga gained some satisfaction from the attention the case received in Chile. “Pinochet couldn’t go out as a hero who had saved the country from the grips of pernicious left-wingers,” he says. “He had taken credit for having brought Chile out of poverty, and the Chilean people were very much divided—a lot of people admired him. It became very clear that he was a thief, and they couldn’t forgive him for that.” Abuse of power and authority have always brought out the ﬁghter in MartinezFraga. As a young associate just starting out with Greenberg-Traurig, he worked as an unpaid, specially appointed public defender to gain trial experience. One of his cases involved defending a Cuban immigrant charged with using deadly force against a police ofﬁcer during a protest rally. After seeing a TV broadcast of the incident, Martinez-Fraga went to the TV station to ask for another look at the footage. “They allowed me to see the unedited version that showed exactly what really happened,” he recalls. “The police ofﬁcer was trying to wrest away a bullhorn from my client, who was always behind the line designated for the ofﬁcial protest.” “When you have experiences at an early age that are truly meaningful, that touch the soul, that touch the heart, they become indelible.” Pedro Martinez-Fraga (A84) Confronted with the tape, the prosecutors sought a plea bargain, but MartinezFraga went to court and won his client’s acquittal. Martinez-Fraga’s strong views on justice and injustice were shaped by two formative experiences: growing up as the son of a man imprisoned by the Castro regime for his political activity, and later, studying great books at St. John’s. His father, Pedro Martinez-Fraga Sr., also a lawyer, spoke out against Castro soon after the Cuban dictator took power. He went to jail in 1961 and was not released until 1980. “Though I met him only once [during his captivity], when I was 5 years old, my mother would always talk to me about my father,” says Martinez-Fraga. “He underwent every conceivable violation of human rights, { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } physical abuse, and interrogation, but he never lost his dignity or convictions.” Martinez-Fraga and his father were later reunited while he was studying at St. John’s. At the college, reading Plato, Aristotle, and the Bible also led Martinez-Fraga to contemplate how those in power seek to silence others. He remembers a sophomore seminar on a New Testament reading, led by tutor Nick Maistrellis, in which Jesus is rebuked by teachers of the law (Mark 3). “We came across the passage in which the sin against the Holy Spirit is the only one that was not forgivable,” recalls MartinezFraga. “For me, I think that sin is abuse of power, abuse of authority, and that takes many forms.” Pinochet abused the trust of his people. In the case of the jailed protestor, “the police ofﬁcer in that case knew he had everything in his favor. He had tried to silence a man who had every right to speak in what is purportedly a free country. The same thing happens in the political arena.” When his mother brought Pedro and his two sisters to Florida in 1966, they settled in the poorest part of Miami’s Little Havana. “For the longest time, all four of us and one dog lived in a one-room apartment. We had two cots we would put away every morning,” he says. His mother was “tough, but never bitter,” Martinez-Fraga recalls, though their new life in the United States was a far cry from the prestigious, comfortable life the family had known before Castro. “I remember her saying, ‘look how lucky we are, to have each other.’ She didn’t look at how much we had lost, but all that we still had,” he says. “When you have experiences at an early age that are truly meaningful, that touch the soul, that touch the heart, they become indelible.” Many of the young men Martinez-Fraga grew up with died violent deaths on the streets of Little Havana or went to prison. In his home, prayer and education were most important. His mother found money �{Alumni Profile} larry marcus to buy books and pay for private school. After scoring high on a national exam, he gained admission to Belen Jesuit Preparatory, where he thrived in a strict but stimulating academic environment. “It was there that names like Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle ﬁrst touched my ears,” Martinez-Fraga recalls. A counselor who knew of his interest in both mathematics and the classics told him about St. John’s, and even though Martinez-Fraga was more interested in Stanford or the University of Chicago, he followed his instincts and went to Annapolis. “St. John’s deeply inﬂuenced my life,” he says. “The readings created the conviction that an examined life based on introspection and constant inquiry is the only life worth living.” After graduation from St. John’s in 1984, Mr. Martinez-Fraga earned his law degree at Columbia University, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar. He joined Greenberg-Traurig right after graduation from Columbia in 1987 and decided to carve out a career in international litigation and arbitration. With today’s globalization, international law is a thriving area of practice, but 20 years ago, Martinez-Fraga says, “it was virtually unheard of, abstract and distant.” Martinez-Fraga’s task was to establish a national practice group in the ﬁeld of international litigation, an area of the law that encompasses everything from real estate litigation and standard breach-ofcontract cases to complicated criminal cases, such as securities fraud. Most of his cases have involved resolving high-proﬁle and complex disputes. For example, he represented Unión Naval de Levante, a major shipyard in Spain that was sued for $160 million on grounds of racketeering. “We reached a settlement that was far below what it would have cost to bring the case to trial. That’s the type of case that is typical of what I do everyday,” he says. International law never fails to provide Martinez-Fraga with the intellectual 35 challenge he seeks in his professional career. “It’s like playing chess or working a math equation,” he says. “Surely there is frustration when you don’t get to where you want to go, or when you get there in a way that is less elegant than in the way you’re capable of executing.” Most important and more difﬁcult to acquire is “an understanding of cultural nuances; at the deepest possible level,” he says. “Legal traditions and juridic cultures can be learned, but there really is such a thing as the spirit of the law. At the end of the day, the law is but a reﬂection of a people’s values.” In September 2007, Martinez-Fraga left Greenberg-Traurig to become a partner at Squire Sanders and Dempsey in Miami, where he will coordinate the ﬁrm’s international dispute resolution practice in Florida and Latin America, and co-chair that position for Europe and Asia. A more signiﬁcant milestone in his life occured in June 2007. Martinez-Fraga became a father when he and his wife, Liza, { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } Now a partner in a Miami law ﬁrm, Pedro Martinez-Fraga grew up in Little Havana; his mother raised him and his two sisters while his father languished as a political prisoner in Cuba for 18 years. welcomed their ﬁrst child, Alejandra Soﬁa. Martinez-Fraga has pledged to slow down— perhaps give fewer lectures at the University of Navarre, where he is a full visiting professor, or at the University of Miami School of Law, where he is an adjunct professor—and make more time for his family. He wants to share that experience of learning, growing and discovering the world with his daughter, who, as her father did, will grow up in a home ﬁlled with books and lively conversation. x �36 {Alumni Notes} 1935 RICHARD S. WOODMAN is “still working, though part time and traveling a bit—would like to hear from others from class of 1935.” 1948 Last January, JULES PAGANO was elected as a member of the Economic Policy Institute’s (EPI) Board of Directors. Pagano is Vice President of the American Income Life Insurance Company. The Economic Policy Institute is a nonproﬁt, nonpartisan think tank that seeks to broaden the public debate about strategies to achieve a prosperous and fair economy. 1954 ERIC CROOKE and SARAH COVINGTON CROOKE (class of 1955) have spent a half-century living in the same house in Silver Spring, Md. Sarah sent The College an update on the people and books in their lives: “Two handsome sons, both married, and two lovely little grandchildren. Eric’s got a ton of books in our basement. Over a decade since the cleanout of 2 Cumberland Court—Eric’s uncle, [former St. John’s President] John Kiefer, and his wife, Roxana, lived there many years—Eric has ﬁnally gotten the Kiefer books out of boxes and into some kind of order. The sheer weight of the books challenged our shelving. A ﬁvevolume set of Summa Theologiae— all in Latin—weighed in at 13 pounds. And a two-volume set of Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion came to more than four pounds. The real classical stuff now covers a whole wall; Plato alone takes several shelves. (One commentary on Plato is entirely in German.) The rest of the books have settled themselves in various nooks and crannies. Shakespeare has his own shelf just beneath our electrical entrance panel. Poetry— including Dante’s Inferno—lies against a wall as close to the furnace as the ﬁre code allows. Religious books are to be found just outside the toilet door. On free-standing shelves in the center may be found T. S. Eliot cheek-byjowl with H. L. Mencken, and the complete works of A. E. Houseman next to O. Henry.” 1959 DICK and MARY CAHALL are already looking forward to the 50th reunion of their class next year. Dick writes: “I went on to graduate school at the University of North Carolina and Mary at the University of Maryland. I then joined the IBM Corp and had a 30-year career there as a software systems architect. My wife taught humanities at the University of Maryland Open University Division for 15 years. I retired from the IBM Corp in 1992 and we moved to Central Oregon in 1996 to be grandparents. During my junior year at St. John’s, I began learning the ﬁve-string banjo and the music that is generally associated with it. Since retirement I have intensiﬁed that study and have expanded the repertoire from its origins in the southern mountains to the swing era and even to certain examples from the bossa nova. Whenever I get back to Annapolis, which seems to be every couple of years, I always get together with Neil Harpe. Neil and I go back a very long time, like the early ’60s. Neil is a master guitarist and bluesman and began his guitar studies about the same time as I began my association with the ﬁve-string banjo. My son lives in Annapolis so we always have a place to stay. 2009 will be our 50th homecoming and we both are looking forward to getting together with our classmates and Serious Stuff AROLD MORGAN (SF68) is co-founder of Capitol Report New Mexico, which has completed its ﬁrst year of operation. “Serious stuff for serious people” is how Harold describes the magazine’s reporting of public policy. The Web site is www.capitolreportnm.com. The blog is http://capitolreportnm.blogspot.com. The magazine is made possible by the Internet; the administrative ofﬁce is in Roswell, N.M., and the production director is in Austin, Tex., while Harold is in Albuquerque. x H particularly those who don’t make it back to ’Naptown as often as we do. Throughout my life, I thank my lucky stars that I went to St. John’s College, and that feeling has intensiﬁed over the years.” 1966 CONNIE LINDGREEN has moved to France. “We’re living in a small village, Montigny sur Loing, which is about 55 kilometers from Paris, more or less directly south of Fontainebleau, and we are but steps away from the forest of the same name, with its wonderful trails, moss-covered rockformations, valleys and plains and ever-changing light. It’s no wonder the impressionists were so enchanted with the area. There are wild boar and stags and hawks and hares in the forest, too, and we’ve seen some of them on our walks. Don’t get that much chance to walk, though...many days are devoted to establishing ourselves in the French system, which is complicated by the fact that I’m a U.S. citizen and therefore have to have all kinds of permits which Peter, being Danish and member of the EU, doesn’t have to have. After nearly nine months, thanks to persistence, a sense of humor and a lot of being-nice-tobureaucrats, I now have a Titre de Sejour! So I’m ‘legal’ for 10 years. A big relief and something we celebrated with champagne, I can tell you! { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } Now to get started on the renovations. The applications for permits are in, and if we’re lucky work will start in May. We still have our house in Denmark, but it’s on the market. Things in real estate are slow here, too; it doesn’t really bother us at the moment, however, since it’s a handy place to store our furniture —and especially the piano—away from the impending dust and disruption here. So life is pretty good. There’s a wonderful local market, a fantastic bakery, and a Saturday market with all kinds of local products. We’re also enjoying that side of just plain living here. Tennis and working on the house are keeping us ﬁt. Actually, the house is the most vertical place I’ve ever lived in and inevitably, being on the top ﬂoor, you want something on the bottom ﬂoor, so there’s lots of stairclimbing in the course of a day. It may seem illogical to be moving into verticality when we’re probably at the age where we should be considering ranch-style ﬂoor plans, but rationality is not really part of this move. It’s an old dream— now coming, bit by bit, to life. Here’s our new address: 35 rue du Trou de la Vente, Montigny sur Loing, F-77690 France.” 1969 News from TOM DOURMASHKIN (A): “I have been practicing emergency medicine now for 26 years in Western Massachusetts. I have three children: Jordan, a �37 {Alumni Notes} physician assistant in Harlem Hospital Emergency Department and father of our two grandchildren, Chloe and Lea (and third expected January 2008); Caitlin, a budding urban planner, an area director of a New York State “Empire Development Zone” in Brooklyn, N.Y.; and Susannah, currently enrolled at the Maryland Institute College of Art and spending a semester in India. I have written the application for a Rural Health Care Grant which brought $900,000 to Franklin County, Mass., for development of EMS services. I am currently engaged in studying certain areas of astronomy, which I hope to publish some day. I spend much of my free time bicycling and have ridden 18,900 miles, well on my way to my goal of cycling the circumference of the Earth at 24,902 miles. CINDY (Stratton, class of 1972), and I have now been married for 36 years.” 1971 JOHN STARK BELLAMY II (A) recently published Vintage Vermont Villainies: True Tales of Murder and Mystery from the 19th and 20th Centuries. The book is available from Countryman Press. 1972 PATRICIA RUMORE (A) just purchased her ﬁrst home: “I’m living in Albany, N.Y., and work for the New York State Department of Transportation with the state’s Capital Program. I also teach ballroom dance at Hudson Valley Community College in Troy, N.Y., and have continued with my love of dancing, from the time of our St. John’s waltz and polka parties. Just like ‘Dancing with the Stars!’ I’d like to hear from fellow alumni.” 1977 ED KAITZ (A) is working with and teaching Special Needs students, playing harmonica music for senior citizens, and editing/publishing a small Maryland journal that integrates mental health awareness, the arts and advocacy. “I hope to be doing some volunteer work with the Maryland Disability Law Center in early 2008,” he writes. 1980 News from MARIA “GINA” C. IRONSIDE (SF) and BENJAMIN D. GOLDSTEIN (SF79): “Ben’s Web engineering company, End Point Corporation, is going great guns after a long 12 years. Gina is with Fair Winds Trading, Inc. Ben is almost 13 and Ben (dad) coached their travel team to an undefeated season this fall. Also, hi to Dan & Theresa Raizen, whose son Nat called to canvas our donation to the Annual Fund. Warm wishes to all.” 1982 TRUDY KOCH (AGI) has retired from 31 years of teaching and opened a quilting and ﬁne arts studio/gallery on the shores of the wide Rappahannock River in the sleepy little town of Tappahannock. She makes quilts and her daughter, Alice French, designs stained glass windows. So drop in! The name of the shop is Water and Queen Studio, after the two oldest streets in town. Postscript from Trudy: “And I want to know where Yani Papidpoulis is!” Moscow in Winter ES MARGULIS (A70) writes from Down Under: “I have spent my business career in advertising, and I just returned from three years overseas, split between Kiev and Moscow. I live in Sydney, Australia, which is deﬁnitely my preferred watering hole. Kiev was lovely with lots of parks and clean streets. Moscow is the bottom pit of the earth and even if I stretched the truth it would be difﬁcult to say a nice thing about it. Don’t get me wrong, everyone should spend three days there and see Red Square, Pushkin Museum, and the Faberge eggs. The best time to see Red Square is deep in the winter when it is minus 20 and the snow is falling. It is truly a Dr. Zhivago moment. However, living there is another story. The infrastructure has not been updated since Stalin died, the metro cars are falling off the rails and streets have holes big enough to swallow a Chevrolet. But the good news is that local vodka was as cheap as Pepsi Cola and probably better for you. I am happy to say that nearly 40 years out of St. John’s, I am only two kilos heavier.” x L { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } 1983 LESLIE KAY (A) writes: “I am happy to report that I have been promoted to associate professor with tenure in the Department of Psychology at The University of Chicago. My laboratory studies the neurophysiology of olfaction and the mechanisms for the inﬂuence of cognitive context on sensory processing (http://kaylab.uchicago.edu). Maryellen and I live on campus in an old row house with our two daughters (7 and 8 years old) and our 2-year-old Golden Retriever. The minivan is parked outside. We welcome hearing from old friends, and I’m looking forward to the 25-year reunion!” 1986 STEPHANIE RICO (A) and TODD PETERSON (A87) report that Todd’s back in San Diego now after a year spent as a “geographical bachelor” out in the desert. Steph is directing a small grant to create a science teacher community to improve teacher retention. They write: “We had a great time at reunion last year, and we’re looking forward to 2011!” 1988 SHIRLEY BANKS (SF) was credentialed last fall as a Certiﬁed Sexuality Counselor by the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists: “I counsel Emory University students on any sexuality issue, including relationships, pregnancy prevention, STIs, HIV, sexual identity, unplanned pregnancy, pleasure, etc.,” she writes. “In addition to individual and couple consultations, my job also includes health education and promotion for groups of students. I love what I �38 {Alumni Notes} Welcoming Irene 1996 GILLELAN GOLDSTEIN (A96) and her husband, Stephen, had a busy summer: moving to the water in the Annapolis area and traveling to Ethiopia to bring home their new daughter, Irene Sintayehu. Now 10 months old, Irene loves books, swimming, cruising around the house, and waxing eloquent on “Da Da.” This photo was taken in Addis Ababa in the orphanage where Hannah and Stephen picked up Irene Sintayehu, 5 1/2 months old. They had been parents for “all of 45 minutes.” Joshua Gillelan (A68) and Dorcey Wend Rose (A68) are now grandparents, and George Wend (class of 1951) is now a great-uncle. Exhausted and eternally amused by her new life, Hannah welcomes contact at hannahgillelan@yahoo.com.x H ANNAH do! I also volunteer for American Hiking Society and the Benton MacKaye Train Association as a Trail Crew Leader.” JOHN SELLERS (AGI) writes: “Becky gave birth to Micah James in April 2006. I am teaching math and science at the Forest Grove Community School in Forest Grove, Oregon.” 1990 VIRGINIA BEHRENDS (AGI90) writes: “Well, we took in two high school graduations in June, one in Seoul, Korea (our third visit), and the other in San Diego, Calif.—both grandsons. Son #1 teaches for DOD, thus three trips to Korea, a gem of a spot. Now he is in transit to Ramstein, Germany, so we are looking forward to exploring Germany.” 1992 HALLIE LEIGHTON (SF) invites all Johnnies to join her popular (and free) Rhyme a Day e-mail list, which sends subscribers a word, a brief deﬁnition, and short, funny mnemonic rhyme early every weekday morning. All the words and rhymes are from her upcoming book, Rare Words II and Ways to Master Their Meanings: 500 More Unusual Selections, Some with Poetic Confections for Gleaning Their Meanings, out in March from Levenger Press (www.levengerpress.com). Join the Rhyme a Day e-mail list by sending a blank email to rhymeadaysubscribe@yahoogroups.com OR join at http://groups.yahoo.com/ group/rhymeaday and start your morning with a chuckle. 1994 KATE ROONEY (A) writes: “On May 23, I arrived in Tuscany for some long deserved R&R. The plan was to sit on a hillside, drink red wine, and catch up on my reading. But, about 5:30 that evening IAN SMITH (A03*, see classnote) walked into my life. We were married on October 20 and are living in New York City. Hope to see all our friends at croquet.” Postscript: “I didn’t rob a cradle, he started SJC nine years too late and should have been in our class to begin with!” CHRISTINE COALWELL MCDONALD (AGI) and her husband, Robert, announce the birth of their second child, Grace Murdock McDonald, September 7, 2007. Christine, Rob, and their ﬁrst child, Jefferson Coalwell McDonald, reside in Cornwall-onHudson, N.Y. 1997 MICHAEL CHIANTELLA (A) and his wife, Karen, welcomed Dylan John-Noel Chiantella on November 27, 2007. He was 8 lbs. 7 oz., and almost 21 inches. “I am working in a full-time job I love, as a web Creative Director at Weight Watchers in New York City, managing the Copywriting and Information Architecture teams,” writes JENN COONCE (A). “I’m also smack dab in the middle of earning my master’s degree in Modern Psychoanalysis, at the Boston Graduate School for Psychoanalysis—New York. I just ﬁnished a year and a half of ﬁeldwork with schizophrenic and psychotic patients. Anyone interested in either ﬁeld should feel free to contact me at jenn@panix.com. I’m very dedicated to both.” DOMINIC CRAPUCHETTES (A) has two great pieces of news to share: “First off, I am engaged to be married to a wonderful woman named Karen Litsinger! We are both very excited about making plans for the future. Secondly, my risky entrepreneurial venture is starting to pay off. Our latest party game, Wits and Wagers, has won 11 industry awards and is now carried at every Target nationwide.” MELANIE KIRBY (SF) co-owns and operates two small-scale beekeeping enterprises: Zia Queenbee Co., located in northern { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } New Mexico, and Superior Honey Farms, based in Marquette, Mich. “Specializing in queen honeybee breeding and rearing, I have utilized my Peace Corps Beekeeping Extensionist experience and queen-rearing training in Hawaii to develop a sustainable cooperative,” she writes. Visit www.ziaqueenbees.com. INYA LASKOWSKI (SFGI97) had a successful year showing her art in two major shows: at the Healdsburg Public Library, Calif. (Sculptures) with Chiyomi Taneiki Long and at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts, Calif. (Poetic Realities) with Andrei Wilenius. She is also presenting artsintegrated workshops for children at the Wells Fargo Center for the Arts in Santa Rosa, Calif. REBECCA E. MICHAEL -GAFFNEY (A) writes: “My professional play keeps me on my toes and continuously inspired. My company, Red Letter Days Events, LLC, (www.redletterdays.biz), is privileged to create celebrations for outstanding clients in homebase San Diego, as well as produce events across the country. I take in dance, theater, and a good book when I have a moment and always love to see old friends. Give a shout What’s Up? The College wants to hear from you. Call us, write us, e-mail us. Let your classmates know what you’re doing. The next issue will be published in May; deadline for the alumni notes section is April 15. In Annapolis: The College Magazine St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404; rosemary.harty@sjca.edu In Santa Fe: The College Magazine St. John’s College 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599; alumni@sjcsf.edu �39 {Alumni Notes} Black Comedy Becomes Her Sara Barker (A98) Shines in Regional Theater by Patricia Dempsey A at rebeccagaffney@cox.net if you’re visiting southern California.” smeared them on each other.” Her extensive repertoire also includes study at The Actors Center in New York, and the full gamut of ﬁlm, contemporary and traditional theater, including Shakespeare–she was ﬁrst seen as Isabelle in a St. John’s production of Measure for Measure, and she would later play King Lear. “Like Jackie-O, Lear was also spoiled kid,” she says. “It was all wonderful, but I was ready to leave theater. It can get really insular, especially in New York. I have always been interested in foreign policy and economics,” she says and upon moving to Washington, D.C., Barker landed a position as communications development coordinator with the Women’s Foreign Policy Group. But after urging from a friend over a 2 a.m. glass of wine, Barker decided to crash the audition for The House of Yes. “I was uninvited, [but I turned out to be] the person the director was looking for. I have a bit of Parker Posey in me,” she says, remarking on her quirky similarity with the actress who played Jackie-O in the ﬁlm version of The House of Yes. As for her plans to stop acting, Barker says, she’s content with both her day job and the theater. “I’m passionate,” she says. “I like to be all-consumed with my work; it’s a matter of quality of life.” x as “convincingly vulnerable, eccentric, arrogant—and crazy as a loon.” Shortly before auditioning for The House of Yes, however, Barker, who has a daytime career as a tech writer and editor, decided to stop acting. She moved back to Washington, D.C. this summer from New York City, where she spent the past three years acting in a wide range of productions, including several for an avant garde theater troupe, the International WOW Company. “In one show, the director wanted to ﬁnd out if human joy was possible,” says Barker. “We lined up, had a partner and grabbed a tomato, danced with the partner and bit into our tomatoes and washington shakespeare company s an actor, Sara Barker (A98) has made a career out of exploring the drama of the dysfunctional family. In a production of the offbeat play Independence, written by Lee Blessing, Barker played a daughter who copes with a maniacal “mommy dearest” by creating obscene sculptures in the backyard and coloring her hair pink. This winter, Barker continued to tighten the twisted family ties in the black comedy, The House of Yes, written by Wendy MacLeod and staged at the Washington Shakespeare Company in Crystal City, Va. In the production, she played a pill-popping, coutureconscious twin nicknamed “Jackie-O”—a nod to her obsession with the former ﬁrst lady. Set in McClean, Va., 20 years after the assassination of president John F. Kennedy, The House of Yes unfolds during the neurotic Pascal family’s Thanksgiving dinner. “JackieO is a nutcase,” says Barker. “She’s horribly spoiled, hence the play’s title—she was always told ‘yes’ for her every want. She’s also horribly jealous.” In her portrayal of the troubled 30-year-old, Barker embraced the lighter side of Jackie-O’s spoiled nature. “Being spoiled gives her a zest for life. It allows one to be spontaneous. When parents are strict, a person holds back,” she says. Her inventive interpretation of the role did not go unnoticed—a recent review in the Washington Post described Barker’s Jackie-O readings and open mic nights. The café has been featured in the Washington Post. 1998 1999 STU DAVENPORT (SF) and Lana Labermeier have opened Big Bear Cafe at 1st and R Streets NW, in Washington, D.C. They created a farmers’ market and a holiday art market, and also host poetry SARA J.E. PRIOLA (SF) writes: “Last summer, we welcomed our son, Lucas, into the world. Since then, we have moved back to Santa Fe to return to nature, the big sky and the seasons. So far, we are truly enjoying ourselves!” Sara Barker’s recent theatrical performance received critical acclaim. 2000 ALAN RUBENSTEIN (A) writes: “Heidi and I are moving from Washington, D.C., to Northﬁeld, Minn. We’ll be writing, quilting, and sledding—so look us up if you’re passing through the land of 10,000 lakes.” ERIKA J. (CARLSON) WARZEL (SF) recently took a new job as Historic Preservation Coordinator at Historic Denver, Inc., a { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } nonproﬁt organization in Denver, Colo., dedicated to preserving the city’s architecturally and historically signiﬁcant buildings and neighborhoods. She is running the organization’s Sacred Landmark’s program, assisting owners of historic religious structures obtain funding for restoration/preservation projects, and managing the projects through completion. �40 {Alumni Proﬁle} Celebrating Santa Fe’s Pioneers Members of the ﬁrst four Santa Fe classes (1968-71) are planning a reunion week from July 13-20 in Santa Fe, gathering members of these classes together after nearly 40 years. Although planning is still in progress, anticipated activities include a seminar on the Odyssey and two seminars on Billy Budd, one on the novella and one on the opera, which will be performed that week by the Santa Fe Opera. Additional activities include a tour of Los Alamos Scientiﬁc Laboratories, a historical tour of northern New Mexico, a hike up Mt. Atalaya, and a Festschrift in honor of Ken Kronberg (SF68), who died in 2007. The extended reunion, says Carl Bostek (SF68), is intended to celebrate the pioneers who, along with the 2001 2002 ALEK CHANCE (A) and IVA ZIZA (A00) have recently welcomed their second child, son Luka Marko Chance. Luka was born at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Mass., on August 30, 2007. He thus joins an older sister, Emma, who recently turned four. Both Alek and Iva are still graduate students, working on their political science doctorate and a law degree, respectively. JUSTIN NAYLOR (A) and his wife, DILLON (Wright-FitzGerald, A05), welcomed their ﬁrst child, Peter Wade Naylor, on July 17. Peter was 8 pounds, 9 ounces and 21 inches long, delivered by a midwife in Wilmington, Del. They write: “We live now in a northeastern Pennsylvania farmhouse. We are involved with Wyoming Seminary College Preparatory School and raise vegetables for sale in the summers.” REBEKKA SHUGARS (SF) has news: “October 1 made a year that Matt Strader and I have been married. It seems impossible I’m that grown up. We are living in Berkeley. I am still working with developmentally disabled adults, teaching independent living skills. I love my clients; they make my work fun. Matt is getting his PhD in chemistry in May 2008. Provided that a work trial period in February 2008 goes well, Matt will ofﬁcially be offered a post-doc with the Max Planck Institute in Stuttgart, Germany. I’m learning German with the hopes I’ll need it.” PrizeWinning Pie OHN “TOM” OSBORNE J (A02), was awarded the prestigious Blue Ribbon in the fruit pie category of the Cape Fear Fair and Expo held annually in Wilmington, N.C. The ribbon, along with the hard cash prize of $11, was awarded for his blueberry pie. This is the second Blue Ribbon awarded to Osborne; he was also the ﬁrstplace pie baker in the 2003 Fair and Expo. ﬁrst tutors and staff members, helped establish the Santa Fe campus. The event commemorates the 40th anniversary of the graduation of the class of 1968. Organizers have arranged for discounted lodging during reunion week. Information on the entire event is available online at: http://prosphorai.com. /reunion/index.html x LAUREN SHOFER (A) was named a recent winner of McDonogh School’s Dunloggin Scholarship to graduates of medical schools based on her 2006 graduation from the National University of Health Sciences in Lombard, Illinois, and her submission of an essay describing her educational program and interning to obtain her degree. She is currently a practicing chiropractic physician in Belgium. Lauren married Dr. Baldwyn Bourgois on September 29, 2007, at her parent’s home on the Severn River. RACHEL POLLACK, class of 2002, Osborne was also kind enough to share his prize-winning recipe: 2 tablespoons cornstarch 1/2 cup water 2 tablespoons water 4 cups blueberries 1/2 cup sugar 1 teaspoon lemon juice 1 pinch salt 1 precooked pie shell Boil 1/2 cup of water and 1 cup of berries. The berries will begin to burst and the water will start to turn purple. After this, simmer for 3-4 minutes to thicken the juice. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } and instructor in Art History at George Washington University in D.C., was one of her bridesmaids. 2003 ANN KATHRYN CARRUTHERS and STEPHEN MICHAEL ORSINGER (both SF) were married on October 27, 2007, in San Antonio, Texas. Stephen graduated from University of Texas Law School in May 2007 and is now practicing family law in Dallas. Ann is working on her PhD in Political Philosophy at UT. Since she has ﬁnished her course work and “only” has to take her comprehensive exams and write her dissertation, she can continue her work from Dallas. They write: “We are both looking forward to seeing everyone in Santa Fe for our ﬁveyear class reunion, fall 2008!” IAN SMITH (A) writes: “I went to Tuscany to sit on my ass, drink lots of wine, and read, but instead met a girl. Who is a Johnnie. Who stole my heart from the ﬁrst day we met. I’ve moved to New York, and on October 20th, KATE ROONEY (A94) became my wife.” x While still stirring, add the 1/2 cup of sugar, pinch of salt, tsp. of lemon juice. Mix 2 tbsp of cornstarch with 2 tbsp of water; add this to the mixture. Stir in mixture until the berry mixture thickens. It will get very thick and become “translucent.” The color will change from light purple to almost black/purple. After it has become thick, remove from the heat and fold in the other 3 cups of blueberries. Spoon this mixture into a prebaked pie shell. Let the pie cool for two hours. A refrigerator may reduce this time. x �41 {Alumni Notes} Opening a Window to the World Blake Sitney (SF91) Brings Technology to Refugees hough the Mae La Refugee Camp on the Thai-Burmese border has been home to Burmese refugees for more than 30 years, it’s still considered a “temporary” refuge, and as such, life is difﬁcult for about 50,000 people who live in crowded conditions, without running water, electricity or telephone connections. But thanks to Blake Sitney (SF91), who spent two months developing software and a database to make the vast Internet encyclopedia, Wikipedia available in a place where Web access is impossible, the window to the outside world opened a bit wider for the refugees. Between his sophomore and junior years, Sitney had taken a year off to travel through Southeast Asia, supporting himself by teaching when he could ﬁnd work and falling in love with the people and culture of the region. After he graduated, Sitney pursued a career in information technology, working in telecommunications sales for WorldComm before launching his own company, Marigold Technologies. The Seattle-based company offers business-to-business marketing intelligence to telecommunications companies. In 2006, Sitney decided to go back to Asia, not as a tourist, but as a volunteer with the Border Green Energy Team (www.bget.org). Sitney signed on to help build a micro-hydro system in Mor Ti Ta, a small Karen village on Thailand’s border with Burma. The system tapped the power of a small creek to spin a two-kilowatt turbine to provide electricity to the village’s one school, which serves about 300 children. The project provided just enough power to provide light and run a television, DVD player, and other small T appliances such as a rice cooker. “We lived with the villagers, they fed us, and we worked hard alongside them,” he said. “They put on a big celebration when the project was ﬁnally ﬁnished.” Working with the BGET volunteers were 10 students from the nearby Mae La refugee camp, all students in the camp’s Engineering Studies Program. Mae La is the largest of seven refugee camps along the ThaiBurmese border; it houses members of the Karen ethnic minority who ﬂed violence in Burma. The students described how the Burmese military burned down their villages, forcing them to ﬂee into the jungle, where they trekked for weeks to ﬁnd refuge in the camps on the Thai border. When the students from Mae La journeyed to Mor Ti Ta to work on the micro-hydro system, it was the ﬁrst time they had ever left the camp. Villagers live in bamboo huts with roofs made of leaves and mud. Humanitarian organizations support them with basic medical and educational needs, Sitney says, but otherwise, life is bleak. “There’s one little ray of light in this camp, and that’s the ESP school, and a man named Loh Doh, who has dedicated his life to educating his people,” says Sitney. “The brightest and most promising kids go the ESP, and their opportunities to learn are so limited. BGET had previously set up a 1-kilowatt solar system with enough power for 20 computers. I bought them several new computers, built up a network for them, and thought that the Wikipedia would be a great addition to the Internet-less network.” Sitney and his colleague, Mark Abene, downloaded all the text from Wikipedia in English and Thai, then devised a database program and software to create a searchable, static version of the online encyclopedia. The server setup is wireless, allowing multiple connections to access the stored data. Several teachers and students can access the vast Wikipedia archives at the same time, granting access to adults and children who are hungry for a glimpse of the world beyond their camp. The system Sitney developed provides access to information within seconds—almost as good as surﬁng the Web. “It’s an enormous resource for the students,” says Sitney. “They can look up everything from aerodynamics to zoology.” A brief sampling of the ﬁrst search terms students entered: Myanmar, the Bermuda Triangle, Britney Spears, the periodic table of elements, architecture, Ubuntu, Chairman Mao, aerodynamics, solar power, Rinaldo, America, Bon Jovi, and differential calculus. Sitney and Abene have taken the concept to Brazil, at the invitation of Cesar, one of the largest IT ﬁrms in Brazil. They brought with them a Portuguese and English version of the Wikipedia server and described how schools that are too remote for Internet access can still tap Wikipedia as a resource. His next goal is to try to ﬁnd a way to bring free online courses—now being offered by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, among others—to places like Mae La. He plans to go back in March to check on the ESP school and his friends in the camp. He also recently helped one of the former refugees get settled in Syracuse, N.Y., where he’ll be continuing his engineering studies. The success of his projects just feeds Sitney’s desire to do more to improve the lives of people through technology and a little ingenuity: “It’s gratifying to have accomplished a good thing, but I can’t help but think of what’s next? What else can I do? x Blake Sitney and students in the Mae La refugee camp in Thailand. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } �42 {In Memoriam} Remembering Al Stafford buy glazed donuts, still warm from the oven. He told us where on the dial to tune in to the radio program “Music Till Dawn,” which provided a soothing background accompaniment to latenight studying. Al gave us a helpful introduction to some aspects of college life, easing our way into a stressful ﬁrst year. On non-seminar weekday evenings, Al would have his door open and would heat water to make cups of bouillon. Two or three of us would drift in, drink a cup, chat for maybe 15 minutes, then go back to studying. Weekends Al would go home to the Eastern Shore where he played baritone sax in a local band. He had an excellent musical ear. My classmate Jim De Young once observed that when people were singing together in harmony, Al could always ﬁnd another part for himself to blend in. Al did not return to the college for his junior year, but instead joined the Navy with the intention of becoming an aviator. I recall seeing him on campus a year or so later, wearing his uniform with the dash and insouciance that could be expected of him. A few years later, I was living in Washington. Al found my name in the phone book, called, and we arranged to meet. He had taken time off from the Navy to ﬁnish college, this time at Washington College. We met at a place in downtown Washington where there was a piano player. We talked and drank beer. Al spoke in passing of the challenge of landing a jet ﬁghter on the deck of an aircraft carrier at night, but little else about his life as a Naval ofﬁcer. When the piano player took a break, Al went over to the keyboard and started playing the ﬁrst few bars of an old song that I recognized from a record Bing Crosby had made in the mid1930s. Al didn’t know the bridge, the eight-bar ‘B’ section of the AABA pattern of the standard 32bar format, so I sang it. He picked it up immediately, playing it once to make certain that he had it, then again with harmony and chords. That was the last time I saw Al. Some years later I learned—from a television news program, I think—that he had been shot down over North Vietnam and was a prisoner of war. Towards the end of the 1970s, I moved myself and my family to Maine, where I worked for Marine Maritime Academy. A few years later, Commander Richard A. Stratton, former POW, came to the Academy and gave a talk to the students, faculty and staff assembled in the auditorium. He was immediately recognizable: tall, lanky, with a thick crop of straight black hair cut short, he had been pictured many times on television news programs. I asked if he had ever encountered a POW named Al Stafford and Stratton’s face lit up. “He was my cellmate for two years.” In 1990, I moved to Amsterdam. One evening I was clicking through the channels and came across a Dutch documentary about the Vietnam War. Included was a clip from a ﬁlm made by the North Vietnamese. There, in black and white, were Al and Stratton, supposedly celebrating Christmas as POWs. I cannot think what was in the minds of their captors. Stratton kept his head down and did not look at the camera. Al did. His expression was grim and wary. Obviously, the two of them were under duress. Al looked pretty much the same as when I had last seen him in Washington, but drawn and a bit haggard. After learning of Al’s death, I did a search on the Internet and found much more information about Al’s Navy experience and the last years of his life. You can see the entire account here: www.pownetwork.org/bios/s/ s112.htm Here you can ﬁnd a picture of Al taken after he was out of the Navy, plus information about the injuries he sustained and about his capture: www.a4skyhawk.org/3e/va163/ stafford.htm I was opposed to the Vietnam War from the outset. However, that does not diminish my admiration and respect for Al. He chose his direction and followed it. He was a good man. x potentially dangerous diet drugs withdrawn from the market. Dr. Prout, who received his early education in a one-room schoolhouse in rural Maryland, attended St. John’s for three years before enlisting in the Navy’s V-12 program in 1943. From 1944 to 1946, he was a medical corpsman and attended the Medical College of Rich- mond. He later transferred to Harvard Medical School, from which he graduated in 1948. He completed an internship and assistant residency at Boston City Hospital, and later was appointed an assistant in medicine at Harvard Medical School. During the Korean War, Dr. Prout was deployed as a physician aboard a troopship in the Paciﬁc. He returned to Boston in 1953 to serve as an assistant in medicine at Boston University School of Medicine while completing his residency at the Veterans Administration Hospital there. A year later, he joined Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he completed an endocrinology fellowship. By the by Jacob H. de Raat, class of 1958 Amsterdam H.A. Stafford (class of 1957), died of cancer in 2003; Jacob de Raat wanted to make sure Johnnies knew about this decorated Naval ofﬁcer and Vietnam War veteran who spent seven years in a POW camp. Commander Stafford had retired and was living in Florida with his wife, Sheryl, at the time of his death. My classmate Bill Kingsley mentioned in an e-mail that he had read in The College the notice of the death of H.A. Stafford, class of 1957. I received my copy a few days later and saw that nothing had been written about Al except his name and date of his death. There ought to be more. I matriculated in September 1954, ﬁve years after graduating high school, most of the intervening time taken up by a stint in the military. The dorm room assigned to me was on the second ﬂoor of West Pinkney. Al’s room was a few doors down the hall. Al took the trouble to show me and a couple of other freshmen around the campus, telling us the names of the buildings and about campus lore and student life. He also led us to various places in town, including the Little Campus, La Rosa, the Little Tavern (which sold 10- and 25cent hamburgers we called “death balls”), and a bakery where, after being up until 5 a.m., one could THADDEUS PROUT, CLASS OF 1944 Dr. Thaddeus Edmund “Thad” Prout, a retired endocrinologist and ﬁrst chief of medicine at Greater Baltimore Medical Center, died in December in Sykesville, Md., at the age of 83. During his medical career, he was responsible for helping to get { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } continued on next page �43 {Obituaries} Robert Manson Bunker Santa Fe Tutor Emeritus Robert Bunker, who was a tutor at St. John’s College in Santa Fe from 1966 to 1983, died in his home in Chacon, N.M., with his beloved wife of 65 years, Priscilla Fleitmann Bunker, at his side, surrounded by his children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his sons, Stephen and James, and his son-in-law, William. Mr. Bunker grew up in Boston with his parents, Emily and Philip, and his brother, John. They had a summer home in Truro on Cape Cod. As a boy and a young man, Bob loved the freedom he found on the Cape, swimming, sailing, watching the hurricanes and walking the beaches. Shortly before his death he was heard to say that Dyers Hollow, an ocean-side beach, continued to be one of his favorite places. Mr. Bunker attended Roxbury Latin School in West Roxbury, Mass. After graduating with honors from Harvard in 1939, he left the East and traveled for the ﬁrst time to the Southwest. When he ﬁrst got off the train in Albuquerque, he wrote, “I’ve never seen land so ﬂat or mountains so high.” His ﬁrst job was with the Indian Service (now the Bureau of Indian Affairs) and on an assignment in Mexico he discovered he wanted to work with people. His books Other Men’s Skies and The First Look at Strangers are about his years with the Indian Service. During World War II, Mr. Bunker served in the Navy. He wrote, “I was lucky in wartime. Quite apart from losing neither my life nor my health, continued teachers across Northern Virginia for Marymount’s Education Department. Survivors include her husband of 47 years, Harvey W. Wynn of Falls Church; a son, Vincent Wynn of Killington, Vt.; a sister, Esther Jones of Cambridge; and a brother, William D. Gould of Ruxton, Md. late 1950s, he was an assistant professor of medicine and director of postgraduate training at the Diabetes Endocrine Clinic at Hopkins Hospital. When two hospitals merged in the early 1960s to create GBMC, Dr. Prout became the new hospital’s ﬁrst chief of medicine. ROSABELLE GOULD WYNN, CLASS OF 1957 Rosabelle Gould Wynn, who taught mathematics for 30 years in public schools in Arlington, Va., died October 27, 2007. Born in Cambridge, Md., Ms. Wynn was among the ﬁrst female students to attend St. John’s. She later earned a master’s in education from the University of Virginia. After retiring, Mrs. Wynn remained involved in education for an additional 10 years by supervising student JUDITH TOLIVER NEELY, A97 Judith Toliver Neely, who came to St. John’s College after raising four children and later embarked on a career as a community advocate, died in a car accident on Dec. 17, 2007, in Center Township, Penn. She was 58. After graduating from St. John’s, Ms. Neely earned a master of public policy degree at the University of Chicago in 2000. After a short time in New York City, where she worked for the Volunteers of America, she returned to her hometown, I wasn’t even one of those for whom the years were lost. I met Priscilla; we were married and had our ﬁrst two children.” “My wife and I came to St. John’s in 1965,” recalls Santa Fe Tutor Elliott Skinner. “The next year, three vital spirits arrived from Highlands University in Las Vegas, New Mexico: Bob Bunker, Stuart Boyd and Ralph Swentzell. How lucky we were! Bob had a great gift [as a tutor], leading, in his gentle way, the students into philosophy and literature. He held high standards for himself and others, but they were expressed with wry humor and a twinkle in his eye, always cast in the mode of delight in the vagaries of human experience.” Mr. Bunker received his PhD in American Studies (1956) from the University of New Mexico. He was a professor and head of the English and Philosophy departments at New Mexico Highlands University, Las Vegas (1956- Aliquippa, Penn., in 2002 with a mission to use her education, experience and energy to assist in revitalizing Western Pennsylvania. She served as seed director for Aliquippa Weed and Seed, a community-driven revitalization project, from 2002-2006. At the time of her death, Ms. Neely was working as a family therapist in the Pressley Ridge family-based mental health program, which serves families with children who are in danger of being placed out of the home. She was involved in multiple ministries at Triumph Baptist Church in Sewickley, provided education advocacy for parents, and served on the Quaker Valley School Board. She also served on the board of directors for Habitat for Humanity. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } Robert Bunker, shown here in 1983, was a tutor in Santa Fe from 1966 to 1983. 1966), and a tutor at St. John’s from 1966 until he retired in 1983. Mr. Bunker inspired his students, helping them discover how to read philosophy and literature, to love dialogue, to listen to the voices of others and to ﬁnd their own. x Reprinted from the Las Vegas Daily Optic, August 27, 2007 ALSO NOTED: NANCY CLARK ALBERT (class of 1962), Nov. 25, 2007 RAYMOND DROLET (class of 1969), Sept. 27, 2007. COMMANDER WILLIAM W. GRANT (class of 1941), Jan. 4, 2008 EDWARD GRAY (class of 1934), May 4, 2007 REV. FRANK HOWDEN (class of 1962), Dec. 9, 2007 WILLIAM J. JENKINS (SFGI71), Dec. 10, 2007 SUSAN LARRISON (A75), Sept. 28, 2007 HERBERT MOFFITT (class of 1970), Nov. 11, 2007 N’OMI ORR (AGI90), April 19, 2006 DR. RICHARD H. PEMBROKE, JR. (class of 1932), Jan. 4, 2008 RALPH SCHLEY (class of 1936), Oct. 17, 2007 �44 { A l u m n i Vo i c e s } An American in Niger by Anna Stubna (A02) As a Peace Corps volunteer, Anna Stubna lived among the people of Baoure, a village in Niger, where her neighbors called her “Amina,” a Muslim name given to her by a family she lived with during her training in Hamdallaye. H ot. Hot. Hot. There aren’t words for how hot I am. Impatiently I wring out the last sodden T-shirt and survey my yard critically. The sand is swept clean of leaves and twigs; the pattern of neat swirls left by the broom is only broken by the prints of my bare feet. Along the side of the yard, on a clothesline, my sun-bleached clothes drip dry. I hang up the last T-shirt, and fling the soapy water from my bucket in a swift arc. It splashes out and is gone, leaving only a dark residue of wet sand behind. Bucket and soap in hand, I stoop to enter my hut through the tiny door. Inside, the floor is concrete, a luxury that feels blessedly cool beneath my feet in this heat. The thick mud walls are whitewashed light blue, another luxury that took two days of intense labor to ﬁnish. My tiny gas stove And there I was, a recent college grad, with dubious French, a questionable skill set, and homesickness following close upon my heels. It was going to be an adventure. Anna Stubna (A02) sits in the corner, next to the water ﬁlter and my crusted oatmeal dish from breakfast. My foam mattress is propped in the corner, ready to be pulled outside at nightfall. I sleep under the stars and a mosquito net. Malaria is prevalent in this area. “Amina!” I hear my name and stick my head outside. A few women neighbors have arrived, kids and work in tow. I step outside to greet them, and we sit under the dappled shade of the largest tree in my yard. Zara, my closest neighbor and conﬁdant, is pounding grain for dinner. She moves with a graceful, powerful motion, her body long and roped with muscle, her rich brown skin shining with sweat. She is wrapped in layers of bright cloth, her youngest son, Isafu, snuggled to the small of her back like a precious backpack. She is telling me the news of her eldest daughter, Hadiza, who married only six months ago. “She is coming to visit, maybe this week,” she says. I am confused, and ask if she is happy with her new village and husband. “Yes, she is very happy,” Zara replies. “She knows how to take care of her husband. She has no family in her new village, though.” After prodding, for they are reluctant to speak of such matters plainly, it becomes clear that Hadiza is pregnant and will stay with her family until the baby comes. I am concerned. Hadiza is very young, only 16 by her mother’s closest guess. Above: During Anna Stubna’s two years in Africa, women like Zara helped her see life through the eyes of a Nigerien. Zara taught her to cook and wash clothes, and also used her inﬂuence to gain support for Stubna’s work in the village. Left: Zara’s son Isafu toddled after Stubna as she walked through the village. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } �{ A l u m n i Vo i c e s } Yakole, an ancient woman with few teeth, is leaning close to me under the tree, and she cackles at the discussion. She thinks it’s funny that I ask these questions about Hadiza; after all, even though I am white, I am a woman, and a young, unmarried one at that. After a moment, she comes to the crux of the matter. “Amina,” she screeches, pointing to my pants, “How will you ever ﬁnd a husband and have a baby if you always wear pants like a man?” This is an old game, and I have a ready answer: “But I don’t want a husband, and Zara is going to give me one of her children.” At this, Zara laughs and agrees, unwrapping Isafu from her back. I accept the baby and coo softly to him as conversation around me resumes. He is very sweaty and warm. Zara is a good mother, and he is clean and healthy. He is used to my strange color and only laughs when he sees my face. However improbable, I am home. Over a year ago, leaving the United States for Niger, West Africa, this scene was unimaginable to me. As a Peace Corps volunteer, I was as untested as the brand-new hiking shoes heavy on my feet. Everything I knew about Niger was in a thin pamphlet I held clutched in my ﬁst. The climate is dry, harsh and unforgiving. The Sahara desert has swallowed the northern two-thirds of the country. The remaining sliver of land is only slightly more hospitable. Because of a lack of natural resources, an enormous population growth, and an infant mortality rate of above 11%, Niger is ranked as one of the poorest countries in the world. Every dry season, starvation threatens the mass of her 12 million citizens, 80 percent of whom are sustenance farmers. And there I was, a recent college grad, with dubious French, a questionable skill set, and homesickness following close upon my heels. It was going to be an adventure. As a volunteer, I was given three goals by the U.S. government: to provide Niger with help in development projects, to teach Nigeriens about Americans, and upon returning, to share my experience with other Americans. The ﬁrst goal took some months for me to put into effect in my village. I held information sessions with the women about health issues such Yakole teased Stubna (nicknamed Amina in Niger) for “wearing pants like a man.” Hunger and disease lurk so closely on the fringes of life, it makes simple survival the clear objective. Anna Stubna as improving common hygiene practices, but they eyed me with suspicion. In time, I enlisted the help of Zara, a respected women’s leader, and my friend. She spoke to the women, entreating them to listen and learn. My biggest project was to replenish the depleted medicine stock in the village health facility. For months I traveled to the city to write a grant for money to buy the supplies. In the meantime, Zara taught me to prepare food, wash clothes, and work in the ﬁelds. I saw her children grow. Isafu took his ﬁrst steps in my presence. He toddled after me as I wandered the dirt paths in the village. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } 45 During the course of my 2 1/2 years of service in Niger, I came to recognize myself as an American citizen serving my country. My service was not defensive. I was not armed, or ﬁghting an enemy combatant. Instead, I think of it as a peculiar kind of offense, promoting understanding and acceptance through communication. My Nigerien friends listened to the radio avidly. They asked me questions about the news they heard. At ﬁrst, I wasn’t prepared to be responsible for every action of my government, to explain and answer their questions about our policies, our bombs, our wars. In the end, I simply shared my thoughts honestly, creating a forum for the exchange of new ideas. In turn, I was able to see the world through the eyes of a Nigerien, as a citizen of a country with neither money nor influence in world politics. Hunger and disease lurk so closely on the fringes of life, it makes simple survival the clear objective. Life is understood in terms of the proverb, “The world is like a chicken’s butt, sometimes you get an egg and sometimes you get shit.” Niger is waging her own primal war, on hunger and disease. Everyone engaged in this war knows it. Ado, one of the youngest men I befriended, loved to look through my tattered news magazines. One time in particular he was amazed to see pictures of homeless people in the United States. The poverty and hopelessness revealed in the pictures were things he grasped immediately; his wonder stemmed from the fact that this struggle still existed in our rich country. The ﬁght for the basic necessities of life is far from over, even in the U.S. As a country, we are funneling the vast majority of our resources, and the lives of our citizens, into the war with Iraq. Last year the U.S. budget for military defense was about $440 billion; the Peace Corps yearly budget is about .08% of that sum. Yet the very magnitude of our “war on terror” prevents us, as a people, from engaging in wars we should be ﬁghting. Poverty and hunger are real enemies, as real as any in Iraq. It is time for the words “courage” and “service” to have a humanitarian face. x �46 {Alumni Association News} From the Alumni Association President A s a student, I always appreciated the distinct way in which the St. John’s community received our Friday night lecturers. As lecturers (or musicians, on occasion) entered, we rose to acknowledge them, without applause—since they hadn’t yet demonstrated what they would deliver. After they ﬁnished—after they delivered—we rose again, now with applause for their accomplishment. As I write this, the year has just ended and our Chapters Committee has compiled its annual report on the activities of the chapters across the country. Reading it, I am impressed by the accomplishment of our chapter presidents, and wish that we could all rise and give them applause for what they’ve delivered. Chapter Highlights, 2007 In Northern California, 120 alumni and family members attended the annual Stags’ Leap Winery event, thanks to host Warren Winiarski (class of 1952). New president Reynaldo Miranda (A99) and the chapter held a variety of other events including seminars, potlucks, and concert/seminars. A young alumna initiated semi-regular happy hours. The Washington, D.C., chapter attracted nearly 80 alumni to a holiday party/book exchange. This was in addition to their biweekly seminars (except for summer). New this year were informal happy hours for recent graduates, scheduled on an impromptu basis. Approximately 25 different SJC tutors visited chapters. Annapolis President Our total alumni population is about 9,000. We have 17 active chartered chapters and another 7 active reading groups nationwide. Chapters hosted 250 seminars and other gatherings. More than 85 percent of our alumni live in an area supported by an active chapter or reading group and last year, approximately 1 of every 10 alumni attended at least one event. The tremendous effort of our chapter presidents has such a positive outcome for our alumni. They take time around their daily lives to develop reading lists, gather input from the chapter members, ﬁnd venues to hold events, and rally volunteer teams to organize parties and social events. The result is that more than half of our chapters hold 10 or more events each year. Most of these events are, of course, the seminars. These allow us to come together and think deeply about a text and engage in the conversation that we know brings greater depth to our individual consideration. Most chapters also have purely social programming and networking receptions, the latter being particularly helpful to recent grads, those who are new to the area, or anyone else seeking to make connections. Behind the scenes, the chapter presidents and the other leaders in that group work diligently to bring these programs to life. By the way, if there is something you would like to do that the chapter isn’t doing, reach out to the chapter president Chris Nelson (SF70) and Santa Fe President Michael Peters have also been visiting chapters for seminars and to bring news of the campaign. Readings selected by chapters and reading groups ranged from program books to Eastern classics and current literature. Some of the best attended seminars were those on the Symposium, Oedipus, Billy Budd, Henry IV, The Misanthrope, and The World of Physics and the ‘Natural’ World (by Jacob Klein). Boston alumni tackled The Magic Mountain (over four months) and Twin Cities alumni read Anna Karenina (over three months). Denver/Boulder alumni held a picnic, attended a performance of Julius Caesar, and followed up with a seminar on the play. x { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION All alumni have automatic membership in the St. John’s College Alumni Association. The Alumni Association is an independent organization, with a Board of Directors elected by and from the alumni body. The board meets four times a year, twice on each campus, to plan programs and coordinate the affairs of the association. This newsletter within The College magazine is sponsored by the Alumni Association and communicates association news and events of interest. President – Jason Walsh (A85) Vice President – Steve Thomas (SF74) Secretary – Joanne Murray (A70) Treasurer – Richard Cowles (A70) Mailing address – Alumni Association, St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404, or 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599. and volunteer to help make it happen. You will be surprised by how rewarding it is. To our chapter presidents, I stand and applaud you on your contributions to the alumni community! Jason Walsh (A85) Alumni Association President At-Large board members of the Alumni Association will be elected at the Association’s Annual Meeting on September 27, 2008, in Annapolis. Alumni representatives to the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors will be elected later in the year. Detailed information about the nominees and the election processes for these elections will be available online after July 27, 2008, at http://alumni.stjohnscollege.edu /?elections, or by calling the Alumni Ofﬁce in Santa Fe (505-984-6103) or Annapolis (410-626-2531). �47 {Alumni Association News} Thinking About Forming a Chapter? ANNAPOLIS Beth Martin Gammon, A94 410-332-1816 emartin@crs.org DALLAS/FORT WORTH Paula Fulks, SF76 817-654-2986 puffjd@swbell.net AUSTIN/SAN ANTONIO Toni Wilkinson, SGI87 512-278-1697 wilkinson_toni @hotmail.com BOSTON Dianne Cowan, A91 617-666-4381 diannecowan@rcn.com DENVER/BOULDER Elizabeth Jenny SF80 303-530-3373 epj727@comcast.net HOUSTON Norman Ewart A85 713-303-3025 norman.ewart@rosetta resources.com MINN./ST. PAUL Carol Freeman, AGI94 612-822-3216 Freem013@umn.edu PHOENIX Donna Kurgan, AGI96 623-444-6642 dakurgie@yahoo.com SEATTLE James Doherty, SFGI76 206-542-3441 jdoherty@mrsc.org NEW YORK CITY Daniel Van Doren, A81 914-949-6811 dvandoren@ optonline.net PITTSBURGH Joanne Murray, A70 724-325-4151 Joanne.Murray@ basicisp.net SOUTH FLORIDA Peter Lamar, AGI95 305-666-9277 cplamar@yahoo.com NORTH CAROLINA Rick Ross A82 919-319-1881 Rick@activated.com Elizabeth Ross A92 Elizabeth@ activated.com PORTLAND Jennifer Rychlik, SF93 503-547-0241 jlr43@coho.net SAN DIEGO Stephanie Rico, A86 619-429-1565 srico@sandi.net NORTHERN CALIF. Reynaldo Miranda, A99 SALT LAKE CITY 415-333-4452 Erin Hanlon, SF03 reynaldo.miranda@ 916-967-2194 gmail.com e.i.mhanlon@ gmail.com { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } SOUTHERN CALIF. Jan Conlin, SF85 310-490-2749 conlinjan1@yahoo.com WASHINGTON, D.C. Ed Grandi A77 301-351-8411 egrandi@aol.com WESTERN NEW ENGLAND Peter Weis, SF84 413-367-2174 peter_weis@ nmhschool.org ’s C ohn olle .J mn u CHICAGO Rick Lightburn, SF76 847-922-3862 rlightburn@gmail.com SANTA FE Richard Cowles, SFGI95 505-986-1814 rcowles2@comcast.net Al ALBUQUERQUE Robert Morgan, SF76 505-275-9012 rim2u@comcast.net PHILADELPHIA Helen Zartarian, AGI86 215-482-5697 helenstevezartarian@ mac.com ge Call the alumni listed below for information about chapter, reading group, or other alumni activities in each area. MADISON Consuelo Sañudo, SGI00 608-251-6565 sanudoc@tds.net n CHAPTER CONTACTS An annual picnic at Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars is a popular outing for the Northern California chapter. io A local alumni chapter can become an important ﬁxture in the life of alumni, with seminars providing opportunity to converse in a way that no other part of one’s intellectual life can quite duplicate. The elders of a chapter can tell stories about Scott Buchanan, while new graduates keep us up-to-date with current projects, issues and personalities. Several chapters have been active for more than 25 years. It’s just a matter of getting started. The ﬁrst steps are ﬁnding out where alumni are, then setting up an organizational meeting. If your chapter is east of the Mississippi, contact Jo Ann Mattson (A87) in Annapolis; Western chapters are coordinated by Michael Bales (SF06) in Santa Fe. The alumni ofﬁce will compile a mailing list for your geographic area and will send postcard announcements and e-mail reminders for all your events. The ﬁrst meeting will probably be devoted to getting to know each other and ﬁguring out what you want to do. Chapter events always include regular seminars, and most chapters start as reading groups. The college can provide travel funds for occasional tutor visits to chartered chapters and reading groups, and tutor-led seminars usually draw a large group; however, a tutor is by no means necessary. Santa Fe President Michael Peters and Annapolis President Christopher Nelson (SF70) also visit areas with a number of alumni. Many chapters call themselves “St. John’s Alumni and Friends” because of the spouses and friends who become longterm members of the seminar. Seminars need incur no cost at all. Libraries provide meetings rooms, and sometime chapter members can provide conference rooms at a university or place of business. A restaurant with a quiet back room may also serve the purpose and be a good place for after-seminar socializing. Special events usually require a budget or charge, and deﬁnitely require sharing the task of organizing chores. Holiday parties, picnics, winery tours, potlucks, theater, St by Joanne Murry (A70) movies, art events, bowling, river cruises, all these work well. Special events will often draw from a different population or age group than the usual seminars. The Alumni Association draws on the energy of Carol Freeman to coordinate chapters. She compiles lists of readings and events for use of all the chapters. The college coordinates monthly conference calls for chapters to discuss speciﬁc topics of interest to chapter representatives. When you become a chapter, the chapter president or a designated representative may serve on the board of the Alumni Association. Once at a board meeting, you may ﬁnd yourself enthusiastically drawn into some other project, such as mentoring students or helping with career networking. There is a great deal of support out there: the college alumni ofﬁces, the chapters committee of the Alumni Association, and other chapter leaders. The alumni Web site is also a resource. Click on “Alumni” from the St. John’s home page (www.stjohnscollege.edu), go to Association, and there you will ﬁnd guidelines for running a chapter. In the online community, you can also ﬁnd out what other chapters are doing, who lives in your area, and how to connect with a discussion group. While you’re there, don’t forget to register for the online community. x i A s s o cia t Providing opportunities for more alumni to connect more often and more richly �{St. John’s Forever} greenﬁeld library 48 A Community of Learners I n the early days of the New Program, Dean Scott Buchanan organized seminars for the wives of St. John’s tutors. Buchanan was a great believer in adult education, having been involved with the People’s Institute at Cooper Union in New York before he came to the college. The seminars were seen as a way to involve tutors’ wives in their husband’s work, Emily Murphy writes in A Complete and Generous Education: “In addition to being exciting for the women, these seminars served to bring the college community closer; learning and discussion could go on continuously, { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } over the dinner table as well as the seminar table.” In Annapolis President Christopher Nelson carries on the tradition by offering lunchtime seminars on short ﬁction, and faculty wives—and husbands—have participated along with tutors, students, and staff. x �{Alumni Events Calendar} Alumni Calendar Sunday on the Lawn with the Naval Academy This year, the annual match for the Annapolis Cup takes place on a Sunday, a move to accommodate the Naval Academy’s schedule. That gives the college an extra day to offer local and far-ﬂung alumni some activities to ﬁll the weekend. Saturday, April 19, 2 p.m. Informal croquet festivities on the front lawn, including alumni/student tournaments and children’s activities. 10 p.m. -The Croquet Cotillion, Randall Dining Hall (formal attire requested) Sunday April 20, 1 p.m. on the Front Lawn Join your fellow alumni, current students, midshipmen, Naval Academy alumni, and Annapolitans for the annual match. Piraeus Join alumni and their partners for the college’s new alumni continuing education program. Santa Fe Dred Scott Decision and Selected Lincoln Speeches, led by Jim Carey (A67) and Walter Sterling, Sr. April 11-13 Cost: $230 per person, includes all seminars, receptions and Sunday brunch Annapolis Homer’s Iliad,* led by Judy Seeger and Eric Salem (A77) June 5-8 Cost: $320 per person, includes all seminar, receptions and Sunday brunch On-campus room and board $200 per person for three nights *Note: The section led by Eva Brann (HA89) and David Carl is full. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2008 } �P ERIODICALS P OSTAGE PAID P UBLISHED BY THE COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE P.O. BOX 2800 A NNAPOLIS , MARYLAND 21404 ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The College (2001-2017) Description An account of the resource The St. John's College Communications Office published The College magazine for alumni. It began publication in 2001, continuing the St. John's Reporter, and ceased with the Fall 2017 issue. Click on <a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=56">Items in The College (2001-2017) Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, Md. Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context thecollege2001 Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 48 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Title A name given to the resource The College, Winter 2008 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2008 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf 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 Type The nature or genre of the resource text Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context The_College_Magazine_Winter_2008 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Description An account of the resource Volume 34, Issue 1 of The College Magazine. Published in Winter 2008. Misnumbered as volume 4. Graduate Institute The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/44e76d23da077302e9cfee62b4cea998.pdf a62f21ee86f7d52aa8698c1115c13583 PDF Text Text �On Galileo SIJOHN’S College ANNAPOLIS • SANTA FE “7 don y know ’—what a beautiful expression that is—so candid in its honesty. ” Galileo Galilei bserving the natural world raised questions for Galileo, for example: Why did the water on the surface of the earth slosh around once or Born in 1564 in Pisa, Galileo at ainmonastery considered becoming a monk, twice a day, studied like water a swingingand container? Galileo rejected the but his father insisted that hethe study medicine. Galileotowas intrigued mathe idea that moon had anything do more with it. Instead,with he concluded matics, which he studied with a tutor dropping out of the around University that itindependently was because the earth was before both rotating and moving the of Pisa altogether. He later returned to the university to teach, but at a very low salary, and sun, constantly speeding up and slowing down, generating the tides. It his appointment to the of Padua saved him from poverty. Galileo alsoled pursued wasUniversity a rare mistake for Galileo, whose thought experiments him to potentially prohtable projects; one of these,Ofa course, telescope, proved successful. such brilliant insights. he had the quite big picture right.He turned his instrument to the heavens with more questions, publishing his observations in Starry Messenger. Always a prudent scientist, Gahleo nevertheless made mistakes, for example, overesti mating his political connections and friendship with Pope Urban VIII when he published his Dialogue on Two Chief World Systems in 163a. He had finished the work on Christmas Eve, iGag, but the bubonic plague delayed the news of his work, which challenged the Catholic Church’s ban on teaching Copernican theories, getting to Rome. Galileo never married, but he had three children with his housekeeper, Maria Gamba. In her book Galileo’s Daughter, Dava Sobel documented the especially close relationship he had with his daughter, Virginia, whom he settled in a convent as a young girl. When she joined her order, Virginia took the name Maria Celeste. Although she lived a cloistered existence, she followed her father’s career and worried about him. After his trial in 1633, in which the Roman Inquisition found Galileo guilty of heresy, Maria Celeste took on his penance. Galileo had hoped to persuade the church to consider purely scientific matters apart from faith. Instead, the Dialogue was banned for aoo years. Galileo was forced to publicly confess his error and was sentenced to house imprisonment for the remainder of his life. He died in 1642. We read his works at St. John’s, follow his thinking, and replicate his experiments. But the spirit of Galileo is reflected in laboratory in another way; Johnnies are asked to be gadflies when they consider science. Like all other classes at St. John’s, “laboratory proceeds in the mode of radical inquiry,” explains Michael Dink < A75), dean in Annapolis. “We don’t want simply to assimilate the conclusions of science; we want to raise questions about not only its conclusions, but also its methods, and indeed the whole enterprise. Thanks to the interplay of seminar and laboratory readings, we are in a position to see the project of modern science as novel and questionable.” This issue of The College celebrates inquiry, both in laboratory and in the work of five alumni engaged in fascinating pursuits in science. -7?// O The College (usps 018-750) is published quarterly by St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD, and Santa Fe, NM Known office of publication: Communications Office St. John’s College Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404-2800 Periodicals postage paid at Annapolis, MD postmaster: Send address changes to The College Magazine, Communications Office, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800. Rosemary Harty, editor 443-716-4011 rosemary.harty@sjca.edu Patricia Dempsey, managing editor Jenny Hannifin, Santa Fe editor Jennifer Behrens, art director The College welcomes letters on issues of interest to readers. Letters can be sent via e-mail to the editor or mailed to the address above. Annapolis 410-626-2539 Santa Fe 505-984-6104 Contributors Christopher Allison (SF97) Ethan Brooks (Aio) Shane Gassaway (SF06) Ruth Johnston (A85) Cathi Dunn MacRae Tom Nugent Deborah Spiegelman Erica Stratton (A08) Kea Wilson (A09) Jennifer Wright (A08) Magazine design by Claude Skelton Design ® Mixed Sources I J FSC Product group from well-managed forests, controlled sources and recycled wood or fiber www.fsc.org Cert no. SW-COC-002404 O 1996 Forest Stewardship Council �"I "I College The ZINE FOR Alumni of Vol y St. John’s College Annapolis • {Contents} PAGE (J DEPARTMENTS Commencement 2008 In Annapolis, the chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities tells graduates to be grateful. In Santa Fe, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations asks Johnnies to be citizens of the world. PAGE ZO Talking About Science PAGE 8 Johnnie researchers tackle big questions dealing with the human brain, dangerous diseases, and basic mysteries of the universe. 3a ALUMNI PAGE 14 Progress An aspiring writer ponders whether artistic expression can co-exist with the demands of the Program. PAGE • • • Eastern Classics helped Lisa Levchuk (SFGI05, EC06) finish her novel, Everything Beautiful in the World. Radical Inquiry A Work in Celebrating capital campaign success New outreach effort in Annapolis A dream walking Cultivating outdoor skills in Santa Fe Helping high school students get to college Deconstructing a greenhouse Annapolis’ weekend warriors A new GI director in Annapolis Salvatore Scibona (SF97) found inspiration for his first novel. The End, in his heritage. Z^ PAGE FROM THE BELL TOWERS • • • • • 30 BIBLIOFILE No part of the Program has undergone as much revision as the laboratory. PAGE a PROFILES 3a Singer-songwriter Buddy Mondlock (A82) finds success in the music business. 36 The Peace Corps introduced Melanie Kirby (SF97) to a life with bees. 40 Adrian Bordone (AGI96) helps nonprofits prove their worth. Z^8 45 OBITUARIES In Love with Croquet Remembering two dedicated Annapolis staff members. For one day a year, Johnnies are bloodthirsty Spartans. PAGE 48 47 ALUMNI VOICES Christopher Allison (SF97) finds purpose in the foreign service. ON THE COVER Galileo Galilei Illustration by DavidJohnson 50 ALUMNI ASSOCIATION NEWS 5a ST. John’s FOREVER �{From the Bell Towers} The Campaign for St. John’s Exceeds $125 Million Goal When the college formally declares its success at campaign celebrations this July in Santa Fe, and September in Annapolis, there will be quite a few people to thankLed Zeppelin among them. The legendary rock band reunited in December 2007 (with Jason Bonham replacing his late father on the drums) in London for a tribute to Ahmet Ertegun, class of 1944 and founder of Atlantic Records. Proceeds established the Ahmet Ertegun Education Fund, which benefits four educational institutions, St. John’s among them. Many individuals-from an anonymous donor who made a $12 million gift to strengthen the college endowment to a recent alumnus who made a first-time gift of $20 to the college’s Annual Fundcontributed to the success of “With a Clear and Single Purpose”: The Campaign for St. John’s College. As of June i, 2008, more than $130 million has been raised in the campaign, an extraordinary achievement for a small college. “We have been able to address important priorities such as financial aid and faculty salaries, as well as improving the physical facilities on the campus,” said Annapolis President Christopher Nelson (SF70). The Santa Fe campus, which is marking the 40th anniversary of its first commencement this year, will see some of its most impor tant long-term goals come to fruition as a result of campaign gifts. Among them are the Norman and Betty Levan Hall, a new home for the Graduate Institute; a new dormitory; and the Ariel Intern- Great things have already been accom plished THROUGH THE CAPITAL CAMPAIGN. Dr. Norman Levan (SFGI74) made a $5 million gift for a new GI building in Santa Fe. Below: Gilliam Hall in Annapolis was made possible through a GRANT FROM ThE HoDSON TrUST. left: ship program that provides work experi ence for students. “The success of this campaign will mean a stronger, more vital campus community in Santa Fe,” said Presi dent Michael Peters, “Innovation and vision have always meant a lot to this campus. Financial stability, increased support for student financial aid, and improved facili ties position us for a bright future.” The campaign formally opened in 2006 with opening celebrations in Annapofis and Santa Fe. On July 25, Santa Fe will host the first closing celebration, a Fiesta for New Mexico alumni and supporters. On September 13, Annapolis-area alumni and college friends will celebrate the successful completion of the campaign. Strong leadership gifts, most notably from Ronald Fielding, campaign chairman, started the campaign out on a high note. Fielding directed his gift to the endowment, for financial aid. To stimulate giving in the final year of the campaign, he issued a $2.5 million challenge to alumni, matching first-time gifts, increased gifts, and multi-year pledges to the campaign. The challenge worked-alumni met and exceeded the challenge, prompting Fielding to raise the challenge and match qualifying gifts through June 30. One of the greatest achievements the college can celebrate in this campaign. Fielding noted, is the creation of a strong culture of giving among alumni. Leadership gifts from donors such as Fielding, a strong response to the annual fund from alumni, and the support of foundations all contributed to the campaign’s success, says Sharon Bishop (class of 1965), chair of the Board of Visitors and Governors. “I think this campaign has reinforced our central beliefs about St. John’s,” Bishop says. “First, St. John’s stands for something important and valuable in higher education. Secondly, our alumni believe in our Program and are willing to support it with their dollars, more than they ever have in the history of our college. Finally, we have gained the admiration and financial support of foundations and friends which have been critical to our success.” When the celebrations end in the fall, the college will embark on a new strategic plan, one that establishes priorities and iden tifies challenges for the college in the coming years. Bishop says. “Because this campaign has been such a resounding success, we can move on to the next chapter, firmly grounded in our purpose and confident about our future.” - Rosemary Harty {The College -St. John’s College • Summer 2008 } �{From the Bell Towers} Reaching out in Annapolis BY Ethan Bkooks (Aio) In past years, Annapolis students have engaged in community service in a variety of ways, from tutoring local children to working on Habitat for Humanity proj ects. Early this summer, a group of students who are concerned about the social issues of the wider Annapolis community launched a new project: Epigenesis, a lo-week leadership program for Annapolis youth “who have experienced serious difficul ties in life,” says Jamaal Barnes (Aio). The idea, says Barnes, is for Johnnies to support teenagers as they “work through the Annapolis community to create the change they want to see.” Four students created Epigenesis: Barnes, Rachel Davison (AoB), Raphaela Cassandra (Aio), and Joshua Becker (A08). The group already has seed money: a $10,000 grant from The Davis Projects for Peace program. The effort arose from a growing concern among students over social problems in Annapolis, including drugrelated violence, a high drop out rate for students of color, and a lack of opportunity for area youth, says Barnes. “Epigenesis was inspired by a love for the Annapolis community,” he says. “Instead of being worried and concerned and sitting in our The founders of lofty positions on campus, our education inspires us to act. If something’s wrong, we should try to fix it in whatever way we can.” Epigenesis founders began their project by making contacts with social service and community organizations in Annapolis, including Annapolis High School, We Care and Friends, Asbury United Methodist Church, and the Boys and Girls Club in Annapolis. “We thought it was important to partner with other groups and get the support of other community programs,” says Ms. Cassandra. The program began in mid June with a leadership work shop for a dozen area teenagers, selected with the help of community partners, at St. John’s. The group will continue to meet throughout “A Dream Walking” St. John’s lost one of its biggest fans last February when writer, newspaper columnist and conservative pundit William F. Buckley, Jr. died. Buckley was the Commence ment speaker in Annapolis in May 1996. Shortly afterward he praised the college in his nationally syndicated column, focusing on the titles of the senior essays he read about in the Commencement program. Not easily impressed, Buckley described his column as “a lullaby to the forlorn on the theme of: Believe it or not, some American students learn.” He described expressing his astonishment at the “academic and intellectual sophistication” of the students to Ray Cave (class of 1948), who sat next to him on the podium. He listed many of the authors read on the Program, and concluded with a line that the college has treasured since: “Did you ever see a dream walking? Go to St. John’s.” 4" the summer to plan and carry out projects in their own communities. Students will develop programs to address the social problems they see as the most critical in the Annapolis community today. Barnes says these could include open-mic nights and community fairs. Johnnies Epigenesis HOPE TO EMPOWER AnnAPOLIS YOUTH TO WORK FOR CHANGE IN THEIR communities: (l. to R.) Rachel Davison (A08), Jamaal Barnes (Aio), Raphaela Cassandra (Aio), and Josh Becker (A08). {The College- 3 St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } will help facilitate the program as advisers, office assistants, or group leaders, “to help the teens in whatever way possible,” he says. �{From the Bell Towers} Ah, Wilderness! Search and Rescue Fosters Outdoor Skills Thanks to wider cell phone coverage, fancy GPS devices, and better wilderness and safety education, fewer hapless hikers are getting lost in the mountains near the Santa Fe campus. That’s meant a shift in focus for the college’s Search and Rescue Team. Brendan O’Neill, Athletics and Outdoors Program coordi nator in Santa Fe, has been involved with the team since 1998. Since Search and Rescue was founded in 1971, the team would field 30 or so rescue missions a year, he says. With fewer rescues, the team has focused more energy on teaching Johnnies leadership and outdoor skills. O’Neill says extended training is focused in four main areas: navigation, including map reading, compass skills, and GPS; wilderness medi cine; communica tions, including using radios; and field certification, which the state of New Mexico requires for search and rescue partici pants. The team has about 30 members, 35 of whom are St. John’s students. Team members are encouraged to attend at least two sessions a month. In the pastyear several courses Nate Murray have been held on the Santa Fe campus, including a wilderness first-response course taught by Wilderness Medical Associates, an amateur radio license class taught by the Los Alamos Radio Club, and an avalanche course. Cultivating leadership skills is still an important goal of the team, O’Neill says, and to that end students take on important roles such as presi dent, training officer, and logistics officer. All this training means a safer and more effective mission when Search and Rescue heads off campus to the mountains. In January, three searches in four days involved members of the St. John’s team. In the first, the hiker turned up while rescue teams were mobilizing-“the best result in a mission,” says O’Neill. The second involved a rescue that was completed just before a snowstorm. The third rescue, in which two people were lost for three nights in the Santa Fe Ski Basin area, required 13 teams working in blizzard-like conditions. - Jenny Hannifin (SF09) IMPROVES HIS COMMUNICATION SKILLS. A Book That changed your life Is there one book that changed your life? Opened your eyes to something you never considered before? The College is collecting stories about how one or two (three at the most!) books affected alumni. Send your thoughts to the editor by email: Rosemary.Harty@sjca.edu or mail to; The College Maga zine, PO Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404. The deadline is September 15. We’ll print as many as we can fit. Here’s a sampling to inspire you: Erin Hanlon (SF03): ''War andPeace brought me to a belief in God. That part where Pierre is searching and meets the old Mason kind of paralleled my own searching, and when Pierre goes through the initiation ceremony it somehow dawned on me that God existed. That said, I did not become a Mason, but instead an Orthodox Christian. The other book that had a big effect on me was The Boxcar Children in third grade. It was the book that made me realize I loved to read-and I became a bookworm after that.” {The College- Anna Perleberg (SF02): “Alot ofbooks have been influential in my life-kind of like breathing. But the first was Mystery at Lilac Inn, a Nancy Drew that my kindergarten teacher gave me when she realized I’d read all the picture books in the class room. Not only did it have exciting girly adventures, it began to instill confidence in me that I could educate myself at my own pace and not have to fit into a mold.” Rhonda Ortiz (A04): ''''Pride andPrejudiccw^s, the first ‘grown-up, thinking’ book that I read and enjoyed. This coincided with taking a class from my most influential teacher in high school, Mr. O’Malley (AP history). Together, they mark the beginning of my adult thinking. Reading Euclid and Apollonius taught me to appreciate and love the beauty of mathematics. The Bible and the liturgy, however, have been the most formative of my life.” St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } �{From the Bell Towers} 5 Determinate Negation: Razing the Santa Fe Greenhouse BY Shane Gassaway (SFo6) In early January, a call went out from Mike DiMezza (SF98, EC99), former assistant gardener. He was spreading the word to those who helped him huild it that the adohe greenhouse behind the Fine Arts Building would soon he taken down. Its decommission makes way for a fire safety road that will serve the Norman and Betty Levan Hall, the center for the Graduate Institute, on which construction will begin later this year. For many people, the green house, built in 2003, stood as a legacy and a proud accomplishment. It was distinct among buildings on the Santa Fe campus in that students conceived of, designed, and built it-with help from alumni, the Buildings and Grounds office, and friends of the college. A “green” structure, it served as a model for owner ship, stewardship, and belonging in the St. John’s community. Even though its destruction makes way for a great benefit to the college, many will feel its loss deeply and for a long time. That’s why, when Mike suggested a recon vening of some of the old crew to deconstruct the greenhouse, I agreed to join in. We would salvage the materials to be reused elsewhere-perhaps for another greenhouse built by a later generation of students. Upon reflection, of course, the idea seems a bit crazy. After all, Mike was calling me in New Orleans from his place in Brooklyn, where he lives with his wife, Amy, and one-year-old son, Lucca. The old crew is scattered to far corners at this point. But as Mike said later in Santa Fe, “So many people helped build that green house, so much heart, love, and care went into the site, to have just destroyed it would have been too much to bear.” In March, Mike and I flew to Santa Fe. Together with some students, staff, old guard B&G workers and David Perrigo, the campus architect, we brought down the greenhouse in four days. I delighted in seeing John nies again with tools in hand. It felt similar to building the greenhouse as a student along side other students. The work had been a diversion for some of us, or an outlet for the stress of the trials of the class room; for others it was a means of honing thoughts engendered therein. For all, it meant learning a practical application of the St. John’s method by addressing each task, if not as a knower, then as a thinker. It meant learning to take stock of the tools and resources at one’s disposal, however few they were and Deconstructing the Santa Fe GREENHOUSE WAS AS MUCH A LABOR OF LOVE AS BUILDING IT FOR Mike DiMezza (SF98,EG99). Materials were preserved to REBUILD THE GREENHOUSE WHEN THE BEST SPOT IS CHOSEN, {The College- St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } however crude, and using them to the utmost with creativity and deliberation. For five years the greenhouse stood as a monument to that invaluable lesson, and as a refuge and place of beauty for the students, faculty, and staff of Santa Fe. Will it have a future incarnation? As Santa Fe President Michael Peters told me, a greenhouse does belong on campus. Materials salvaged from the greenhouse were saved, and the structure will be rebuilt as soon as the best loca tion has been determined. Until then, it shall live in the hearts and works of those whose hands shaped it and whose lives it touched. * Shane Gassaway is enrolled in the PhD program in philos ophy at Tulane University. In New Orleans, he’sput his building skills to use in assisting in the construction ofa playground through a program called Kaboom, whose mission is to build a playground within walking distance ofevery child in America. �6 {From the Bell Towers} Weekend Warriors Armed with Padded Weapons, Johnnies Pursue Honor BY Erica Stratton (Ao8) The Melee Club, which wages a (bloodless) battle on the soccer field after lunch every Saturday afternoon, has an important niche at St. John’s: It reminds armchair Iliad enthusiasts what hand-to-hand combat was actually like. Forget that these weapons are foam instead of bronze and that the partici pants fight not for honor, but until the last man is standing. That’s not to say that there aren’t moments of stoicism that would do any Spartan proud: though no face or groin hits are allowed, everything else is fair game. “Things like Melee just evolved out of warfare, like most modern forms of martial arts and weapon practice,” explains Michael Sloan (Aii), who has been playing since he came to St. John’s. “The only difference is that while things like fencing and Aikido teach the tactics and procedures of a specific form of combat. Melee is simply a brawl.” No specific physical prowess is needed to play-though many of the veteran players will be happy to demonstrate techniques that would make any zombie fighting ninja proud. The traditional Melee weapon is a foam sword called a “boffer,” though soft rephcas of axes, spears, and shields are also common. They all have a core of PVC, wrapped in pipe insulation foam in the shape and size appropriate to the kind of weapon needed. After the glue has set, the entire weapon is wrapped in colorful duct tape to add durability. Archon William Kunkel (Aii) says, “The name ‘boffer’ is probably based on the sound one makes when hitting someone solidly. With a well padded one, it actu ally sounds like ‘boff.’ ” This year’s Melee group numbers around 20 students, including several women. The rules of battle are simple and the objective is clear. Club members split up into two opposing “armies,” chosen by “captains” as if it were a soccer game. Usually the opposing teams stare at once another for a few seconds, then suddenly rush at each other, screaming a battle cry. Combatants get their arms and legs “cut off’ with the slap stick glee of a Monty Python movie. Once a limb is “disabled,” the player must act as if it no longer functions, leading to the classic Melee pose of hopping after someone on one foot. And, though they might start out as two armies, loyalties are fluid and any game can quickly become “everyman for himself.” With all this treachery and risk of bruising, why do people play? Killian Gupton (Ari), who just started playing this year, says, “I play because I really need an opportunity to wail away at someone and let off steam without hurting anybody. It just helps me relax and get something out of my system.” Kelly Trop (Ari), one of the female players, gets straight to the point: “I play mostly because it’s fun to attack people with giant foam weapons.” The origins of Melee on the St. John’s campus are lost to those who play the game now, but Archon Jason Ritzke (Art) believes this particular game is unique to St. John’s. “Many other padded-weapon fighting groups exist,” he says. “However, this has the special nature of allowing us to truly communicate (to a classmate) what we really thought about that point made in seminar.” Above, Scott Jones, Michael Sloan, and Bill Kunkel let off STEAM in pretend BATTLE. Bottom left, Kunkel, Scott Jones, Cameron Thompson, Sloan, Jason Ritzke, Robert Mercer, and Daniel Dausman mount a charge. All are members of the class of {The College. St. John’s College . Summer 2008 } aoii. �{From the Bell Towers} News & Announcements New GI Director in Annapolis Tutor Marilyn Higuera is the new Graduate Institute director in Annapohs, taking over for Joan Silver. Higuera has heen a tutor at St. John’s since 1979. She earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the Univer sity of Michigan and spent two years as a mathematician at the Apphed Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University. Having taught graduate students at St. John’s, Higuera is excited about spending the next four years strengthening the institute, recruiting new students, and supporting students. “They have come to St. John’s after earning an undergraduate degree some where else, and they know that they’ve really missed some thing. Many of them have fulltime jobs and commute long distances to come to the college,” she says. “I’m touched by their level of commitment, the lengths that they go to in order to be here.” One of Higuera’s most important charges as the new director, succeeding tutor Joan Silver, is to continue to promote the Hodson Trust Teacher Fellowship. The program pays up to 70 percent of the total cost of attending the program for kindergarten through rath-grade teachers. Honors for Aicla Head Sensei Ferol Arce, 9th Dan and one of the highest-ranked martial artists in the country in Karate-Do, came to the Santa Fe campus for his first visit in February aoo8, with three other Black Belts. St. John’s Dojo members, including tutor Jorge Aigla, were pleased to be able to work out with him. But Arce also had a surprise in store: he awarded Aigla a 7th Dan, making Aigla the highestranked martial artist in New Mexico, according to Arce. Aigla has been teaching Karate-Do free of charge on the Santa Fe campus for 22 years and has been practicing for 39 years. The St. John’s Dojo has about 15 committed members and comprises students, faculty, and staff. Aigla accepted the award on behalf of the St. John’s Dojo, adding that “this distinc tion really belongs to the students and to the college.” New Look for the Web Site The St. John’s College Web site was redesigned this spring by Baltimore firm no/inc, with the college’s Web team imple menting the changes. The new look prominently features the great book authors, and offers improved navigation through drop-down menus and quick links. Staff News Anna Sochocky is the new College in Santa Fe. She brings 18 years of experience in areas of media cultivation, advertising, promotion, and electronic and print pubheation development. During the past 10 years, she has operated a successful consulting business in these areas as well as government rela tions and creative writing. Most recently she was director of Pubhc Relations and Marketing at the College of Santa Fe. Sochocky earned a bachelor’s degree in history and political science at Macalester College and a master’s in liberal studies at Hamline University. Melissa Latham-Stevens, art director/senior graphic designer for the Santa Fe campus, has been recognized for her design talents by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). LathamStevens won a Silver Medal in the Alumni Relations Pubhea tions category for her design of the St. John’s Homecoming 2007 brochure. Correction In the Winter 2008 issue of The College, an article on the Annual Fund incorrectly identified Jack Walker. We regret the error. director of Communications and External Relations for St. John’s Tutor Marilyn Higuera Helping High School Students Get to College The Ronald Simon Family Foundation, which helps high school students prepare for and succeed in college, chose St. John’s College as the site for its tutoring efforts in Santa Fe, creating opportunities for St. John’s students interested in education. The foundation provides educational support in areas including test preparation, college admissions counseling, and tutoring. Steve Simon, coordinator for the foundation’s New Mexico program, chose St. John’s as the Santa Fe tutoring site because of the college’s emphasis on classical education. In the fall of 2007 the foundation hired St. John’s students and alumni to tutor local high school students participating in the program. {The College. Martin Timmons (SFLA07, EC05) is the tutoring coordinator, and works with Kay Duffy (SF04, EC05), Jennifer Fain (SF09), Liam Goodacre (SF08), Juhan Gress (SFio), Kathryn Leahey (SFii), Brooke Nutini (SF05), Adam Perry (SFii), Aaron Kane Turner (SF09), and Nicholas Weeks (SF05, EC06). St. John’s College . Summer 2008 } Brooke Nutini (SF05), left, tutors HIGH school student AdRIANNA Romero. �8 {Commencement} “A Shared Experience” inutes after Cole congratulated the the reces parents of the 106 graduating sional seniors and 2,2 Graduate Insti marking the tute students who obtained end of the master’s degrees by leading a ai6th round of applause. He praised Commencementthe in Annapolis, college’s “democratic” Nancie and Bill Lee education, of Mi I i Ian which i, he described Hawaii, hurried to McDowell as “the sense of a shared expeHall carrying two Banana rience-what one St. John’s Republic shopping bags with alumnus has described to me as their gifts: 130 purple orchid an ‘intense commonality.’ ” leis, one for each new graduate Appointed by President and their tutors. In Hawaii a lei George W. Bush to chair the is a gift of affection and celebra NEH in 2001, Cole was previ tion. The Lees, whose son ously Distinguished Professor Justin was among the Class of of Art History and Professor of aoo8, presented the leis in the Comparative Literature at spirit of community that is at Indiana University in Bloom the heart of St. John’s College. ington. He praised the value of Bruce Cole, chairman of the a liberal arts education, but National Endowment for the emphasized the unique nature Humanities, touched on this of St. John’s. “I can say with spirit when he described his confidence that the great books meeting with the students who education you have received at visited him at the NEH to invite St. John’s is truly one-of-a-kind. him to speak at Commence At this college, you haven’t ment: “One thing that struck acquired knowledge in the form me when I met with some of textbooks and lectures, pre members of this graduating packaged for easy consumption class in January was how consis like a frozen TV dinner. You tently all the students spoke in haven’t absorbed these great works through the filter of terms of‘we,’ not ‘I,’ when discussing their experience another person’s mind, however here at the college,” he said. brilliant that person might be.” Graduates of St. John’s, Cole said, leave the college with a “moral sense” acquired through books and discus sions. “By their very nature, most of the books you have encountered at St. John’s have forced you to constantly ask yourselves, ‘What should I do? What does it mean to live a good life?’ On too many campuses today, these funda mental questions are M {The College- Above: The Lee family brought leis to help graduates celebrate (l. to r.): Jessica Lee, Bill Lee, Justin Lee, and Nancie Lee. left: John Travis Pittman (A08) celebrates. Right: John LEAVE the college WITH THE TOOLS TO LIVE A “gOOD AND FLOUR ISHING PRIVATE LIFE,” NEH CHAIRMAN BrUCE CoLE SAID. Bottom, nies left unasked-sometimes, as incredible as this might sound, because other questions are deemed higher priorities; and often, simply because it is presumed that ultimately we cannot find the answers. At St. John’s, these questions have guided your whole education, and for that, you should be profoundly grateful.” By educating students through careful reading and genuine conversation. Cole said, “St. John’s has given you more than just the means to St. John’s College ■ Summer zoo8 } make a living-it has also given you the tools to make a life, a good and flourishing private hfe as an individual, as a spouse, as a parent, as a friend.” —Patricia Dempsey PwiZThe College magazine online at www. stjohnscoUege. edii to read the commencement addressesfrom both campuses and view aphoto gallery ofthe ceremonies. �{Commencement} “Great Books for a t the 41st Commencement on the Santa Fe campus, 89 undergraduates and 30 Graduate Institute students received their degrees. Rain was in the fore cast, hut Saturday’s sky was clear, and the weather not unlike a brisk fall day. The Artemis String Quartet provided music for the procession and recession, and the college Commencement Choir sang pieces by Palestrina and de Cristo before and after the address to the graduating class given by Richard N. Haass. director of policy planning for the Department of State and a Haass is the president of the principal adviser to Secretary of Council on Foreign Relations, State Colin Powell. He has been an independent, nonpartisan vice president and director of membership organization, foreign policy studies at the think tank and publisher dedi Brookings Institution, a senior cated to helping the public better understand the world and associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International foreign policy. He has authored or edited 10 books on American Peace, a lecturer in public policy at Harvard University’s foreign policy, the most recent John F. Kennedy School of of which is The Opportunity: Government, and a research America’s Moment to Alter associate at the International History’s Course. Prior to Institute for Strategic Studies. serving on the Council on “We were so pleased to have Foreign Relations, Haass was Global World” At left (l. to r.): Joel Klein, Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, A {The College- 9 AND father of GRADUATE JuLIE Howard Klein; Commencement speaker Richard N. Haass; President Michael Peters. Bottom, left (l. to r. ): Eliiah Berry, Louise Blake, Adam Braus, and Elyse Brejla. Right: A beaming Abigail Petry, followed by Jessica Perry, with their diplomas. someone of Richard Haass’ stature and experience speak to our graduates about great books, great ideas and their link to global issues and the lives of our graduates,” said Michael P. Peters, president of the Santa Fe campus, who before joining St. John’s was executive vice president of the Council on Foreign Relations. Haass began with an outline of the nonpolar nature of today’s foreign relations, operating within a world that has moved from concentrated power to one of distributed power. “All of you-no matter your career path-will be affected by nonpolarity. The world is not Las Vegas: what happens there will not stay there.” He referenced Thucy dides’ The Peloponnesian War, with its many exam ples of hard-headed analysis. “Through his exploration of the politics, diplomacy, and conflicts of the great powers of his day, Thucydides provided foreign pohcy insights that remain relevant in our time,” said Haass. He St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } suggested five books that would add greatly to one’s knowledge of foreign policy: Hedley Bull’s The Anarchical Society, Henry Kissinger’s A World Restored, Michael Walzer’s Just and Unjust Wars, Carl von Clausewiz’s On War, and George Kennan’s American Diplomacy. “Understanding of the world is essential not only for your role as competitors, but also for your duty as citizens,” said Haass. “This understanding will enable you to meet your obliga tions to society and to live up to the credo of this wonderful institution, namely, ‘to make intelligent, free choices concerning the ends and means of public life.’ ” — Jenny Hannifin �{The Program} TALKING ABOUT Scien ce CONSIDERING THE CHALLENGES OE LABORATORY BY Jenny Hannifin AND Rosemary Harty ate April, 9 a.m. Tuesday, senior lab: With Reality George Doskow, then dean in Annapohs, said: “The lab program parties behind them and graduation days away, it’s remains, as it always has been, the most problematic part of the understandable that the students in tutor Adam program.” Schulman’s laboratory have trouble mustering up The reasons he hsted remain issues today: enthusiasm for the Lederberg-Tatum experiment. But • How do you cover such a scope of material in three years and as the students move away from the table to the laboratory to beginstill allow time for thoughtful discussions and meaningful agitating E. coli bacteria, even the most serious cases of senioritisexperiments? are chipped away by the beauty and simphcity of the experiment, • How do you present difficult material in a way that makes it which Schulman enticingly touts as “bacterial sex,” This experi accessible to students and to faculty who lack scientific ment, demonstrating gene transference in bacteria, is the last one backgrounds? these students will do at St. John’s, completing an education in • How do you make room for new discoveries without dropping science that began when they read Theophrastus’ Inquiry foundational works? Concerning Plants and went outside to carefully observe the The first question remains open-ended. Neither campus is actively magnolia trees in Mellon Courtyard. considering adding more time for laboratory, although some tutors As with every aspect of the Program, laboratory at St. John’s is a would hke to see it revisited to slow down the pace and allow more work in progress. The classic fruit fly experiments of the r95os are time for biology. The remaining questions can be considered in the gone; students today work on Einstein’s photoelectric effect and context of junior and senior laboratories. Though an essential work Millikan’s oil-drop experiment. Manuals have been revised and re in junior lab. Maxwell’s Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism is revised. Study groups have introduced new and interesting material described variously as a “hard slog” and a “stretch,” especially for to tutors, who work them into laboratory. Through it all, laboratory students for whom math does not come easily. And in senior labora remains grounded in Barr and Buchanan’s basic plan for science at tory, a lack of experiments and a need to include some of the new the college. “These laboratories,” Buchanan wrote in the 1937 discoveries in biology have prompted both campuses to think about Bulletin ofSt. John’s College, “wiU provide a proper pre-professional including different works and experiments in laboratory. scientific training, will illustrate the hberal arts in the liveliest “A Continuing Quest” contemporary practices, and will focus the past on the present for the whole course.” A fundamental question for the college, says Annapohs tutor Nick Nevertheless, the college has faced challenges in its laboratory MaistreUis, is “what is the place of science in a hberal arts educa program over the years. In A Search for the Liberal College, tion?” That raises other questions, he adds, such as: How should the J. Winfree Smith recounted how faculty and students in 1948 college accommodate modern science in a curriculum based on the expressed concerns that science was becoming less integrated with classics? “That’s the great problem St. John’s has always faced in lab, the rest of the curriculum and that faculty were employing conven and it’s a continuing quest,” MaistreUis says. tional textbooks. The decision in 1976 to reduce the laboratory When MaistreUis joined the college in r967, lab had already program from four to three years, so that students could devote more changed away from the direction set for it by the Program’s founders, attention to the sophomore music tutorial, was controversial. And in “Under Barr and Buchanan, lab focused a lot on using scientific a report he gave to the Board of Visitors and Governors in 1985, equipment and experiments, on measurement and quantifying L {The College- St. John’s College • Summer 2008 } �{The Program} things. It did not follow the normal division of the sciences.” The change of direction happened under Dean Jacob Klein, who was urging the college to focus more on the deeper questions of scientific theory. Maistrelhs has been involved in some of the changes and improvements to the laboratory over the years. Thanks to investments made in the laboratories on both campuses-many funded by grants and gifts to the college-the labs are better equipped and more functional. Without a doubt, the program is stronger, more coherent, and more vital, he says. But in his view, more time is needed for biology. Back in 1976, Maistrelhs supported the move to reduce the labo ratory to three years. Students were clearly overburdened and soph omore lab was a weak part of the program. “It involved dissecting a lot of animals and tended to be very much hke a standard biology course,” he says. Now, students have biology in freshman year and in the last semester of senior year-in all, just 23 weeks for biology. To accommodate modern developments and allow for a slower pace, Maistrelhs would hke to see “the question of getting more time for laboratory raised.” What we do in biology at St. John’s, we do better than in pastyears, Maistrelhs says. The program has already improved by shifting away from “dissecting dead things” to more observations on the biology of hving things. More freshmen are spending laboratory classes down at the restored shoreline of GoUege Greek, a hving laboratory. Students in Santa Fe take advantage of a verticle mile of chmate zones-including high desert, transitional and sub-alpine—when learning about classificiation. “New and wondrous things are being {The College. Laboratory—IN 1941 and today—is not a history of science or “physics for poets,” but an integrated part of the Program. discovered all of the time,” he says. “Biology is a living and progres sive science and we should always he attentive to what we’re doing. The very best thing about science at St. John’s, Maistrelhs says, is the simple fact that “everybody does it all. The students do it, the tutors all teach it. The way we do it, there’s an emphasis on hands-on experiments and discussion, making science something to be talked about.” How Hard is Too Hard? Considering Maxwell For Bruce Perry, who served as archon for junior lab in Santa Fe last year, the second year of laboratory illustrates how well science speaks to and draws from other aspects of the Program. “We start with Galileo, who’s sort of the father of modern science, and it’s beautifully sequenced with other readings,” he says. “Students do some Newton in math, they do Newton in lab. They do Leibniz in math, and Leibniz in lab. So you’re seeing the same author in two different paths: one as a mathematician, one as a physicist. It’s really interesting.” After considering Gilbert, Ampere, Coulomb, and Oersted, junior lab devotes a month to Faraday. “Everyone knows how magnets work, but people didn’t know that magnets and electric currents could interact or that you could have magnetic fields. And then people noticed that currents could attract. So you start seeing aU St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } �12 {TheProgram} these weird overlaps with these phenomena,” says Perry. “Faraday sorts out all the phenomena, and a way of accounting for them.” One reason laboratory devotes so much time to Faraday is to set the stage for Maxwell, who in turn sets the stage for studying Einstein in senior mathematics. For lo weeks, students read Maxwell’s Treatise and attempt to translate Maxwell into modern vector calculus. The material can be frustrating for students, some of whom find it a “hard slog,” says Perry. To explore Maxwell, Santa Fe uses a manual originally developed by tutor Peter Pesic and subsequently revised by tutor Jim Forkin. Annapolis uses a book by Tom Simpson that comprises three short papers by Maxwell and many notations by Simpson, supplemented by further notes by tutor Chester Burke. At i,ooo pages, the Treatise is “not very approachable,” so Santa Fe juniors read ao to 30 pages of it along with many pages of tutor notes. Perry says. “There’s a division about whether we’re going to stay with the Treatise as what we do here in Santa Fe, or do something like what Annapolis does.” A faculty study group is meeting this summer in Santa Fe to explore this issue in depth. A balance is needed, he suggests, between working out the equa tions and understanding the process. “The whole idea is to under stand where the science comes from, why one hne of thought emerged, why some other path did not. It’s not just theory, it’s not the history of science; it’s more like seeing what science looks like in the actual messiness of how it emerges, and the limits of what one knows or doesn’t,” he says, adding, “that’s one of the things at the college that’s wonderful.” In Annapolis, tutor Dylan Casey agrees that Maxwell is difficult and that students can get frustrated. As a physicist, one of the things that drew him to St. John’s was the college’s inclusive approach to science and mathematics-everybody does it all, regardless of their particular aptitude for math and science. Frustration is only a problem if students give up, but Casey believes that juniors have adapted to working through difficult material. “We read the Republic, we read the Metaphysics, and there are all sorts of things there that we acknowledge that we find confusing. But we say, ‘let’s try to understand it.’ I think that works well here at St. John’s.” The quest to comprehend Maxwell’s equations while following the development of his ideas, Casey suggests, is similar to memorizing Ancient Greek paradigms to approach the Meno. “You want to learn the language, but you’re not there to learn it in itself, to master it,” he says. “There’s a similar tension in Maxwell. We’re confronting a very challenging thing, and mathematics that students recognize but that many are not comfortable with: differential equations and proto vector calculus. Maxwell is developing what he calls a physical analogy and he’s presenting it through mathematical work, but because we are less facile with the mathematics it makes it harder for us to see the work in a physical analogy.” Underlying the tension is that at St. John’s, we strive not to take anything for granted. Casey questions whether this is always possible. “When we study Euclid and mathematics, we want to understand the geometry, but a lot of the focus is on trying to under stand why he is trying to say what he does,” he says. “With Maxwell, we may have to take some things for granted and then see how his argument plays out, to look at it in itself.” {The College- Perhaps some of Maxwell’s derivations can be taken for granted to allow for more time to discuss his conclusions. “It’s a little bit hke understanding how to drive a car without understanding how the car was built. It might be helpful to understand the physics, but really, only part of that really matters,” he says. “I think we overestimate sometimes how much doing the derivation will enhghten us as to what the final equation means. It’s something we have to work out every day.” The college will always grapple with whether there’s too much, whether the pace is too quick and where precious time is best invested, but Casey anticipates that “the basic shape of the junior lab is going to stay the same.” Brave New World: Senior Laboratory Senior laboratory, says Marilyn Higuera in Annapolis, has two chal lenges to address: i) not enough experiments and 2) a need to get from Darwin and Mendel to beyond Watson and Crick. Both of these issues speak to heightening the excitement of discovery and wonder in students. “For a while now, tutors have thought maybe that the story of the gene is not as thought-provoking as it once was,” Higuera explains. “Students already come to the college knowing that Mendel’s factors are in some way connected not only with the chromosome, but with part of the chromosome. The articles are still quite interesting but students already know pretty much what they were looking for.” Higuera also wants to see more experiments in senior year. The problem is “evolution, in general, doesn’t lend itself to experi ments” that can be done in the time allotted for laboratory in senior year, one month less because of essay writing. Right now, the labora tory experiments with fast-growing plants that are similar to the ones Mendel used in his genetic experiment. “After that, we’re a bit puzzled,” Higuera says. “We do some chemical things with bacteria, but you can’t see the bacteria until they colonize. So we’re hoping, eventually, to include more plant work in the lab and maybe in Annapolis we can take advantage of our wetlands.” Faculty study groups offer a way for tutors to help shape improve ments to laboratory. Annapolis faculty members who participated in tutor Kathy Blits’ 2004 group on ecology and evolution went away excited by the subject matter, and Higuera later chaired a lab committee that met to review papers that could be studied in senior lab. “We began to be aware that there are really philosophically interesting questions coming up as scientists try to refine their knowledge of how the gene works. It’s not clear what you want to identify as its function. We are entertaining the notion that there might be papers we want to read and ways of raising these questions in our own classes.” Higuera is fascinated by the norm of reaction, a phenomenon of genetic development referring to the fact that organisms with exactly the same genes do different things when exposed to different environments. “There are so many interesting questions,” she says enthusiastically. “How does an ‘organism’ recognize that it’s in a different environment? What should one call the environment? We tend to think of it as ‘outside your body’ but genes have an environ ment and they interact with their environment. Where do you draw the boundaries? These are wonderful questions that have scientists St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } �{TheProgram} 13 as Kant thought it was, but it’s really a statistical connection.” As for second semester, Houser sees it as “a pretty coherent whole” that starts with Darwin and the issue of inheritance, then moves to Mendel and the discovery and exploration of the function of chromosomes, and how those might be related to heredity. Houser would like to see the college include The Triple Helix, a book by Richard Lewontin: “That’s the perfect way to end the semester because he talks about the broad-ranged questions that come up for us, and lots of new questions as well. But he brings back the question of the role of reductionism in the question of evolution, to some extent, what an organism is,” Houser says. If Houser would suggest one improvement for laboratory, it would be finding away to better unite the biology of freshman year with that of senior year. “The larger debate in biology is the debate between those who take a more holistic view-environmentalists, ecologists, that sort of thing-and reductionism. Some of the tendency in the freshman year has been to go in the holistic direction, and yet most of the work we do in the second semester of the senior year is reduc tionism. If we’re going to engage in a reductionist enterprise in the senior year, then maybe we ought to do a httle bit more preparation in the freshman year.” Tammie Kahnhauser and Daniel Rekshan (both A08) THE CLASSIC HeRSHEY-ChASE BLENDER EXPERIMENT. replicate Guiding Principles wringing their hands.” It always comes down to the question: where do you fit it in? “It would be tough to get from Darwin to that level, but I think tutors and students would be really interested in that.” While he agrees that more time must somehow be made for biology, Stephen Houser, senior lab archon in Santa Fe last year, is fairly satisfied with senior lab these days. The first semester of senior year is particularly exciting he says, because of the questions it raises through the study of quantum physics about the nature of science and the human relationship to the world we’re observing. These are questions that “don’t get asked in other parts of the Program,” he says. “We just scratch the surface, but certainly the Indeterminacy Principle is one of those areas that suggest that, in some way, our minds and the world may not be fully commensurate. There are a number of different aspects to that. Particle-wave duality is another example, which is also connected to Heisenberg. That’s just another place where it seems like our minds are not geared toward what seems to be a paradox in reality.” The arrangement of having quantum physics in the first semester and biology in the second is a “historical accident,” says Houser, but there some connections. In Santa Fe, students read Shrbdinger’s What is Life? that helps connect physics to biology. Although he explores questions of entropy before the discovery of DNA, Shrodinger suggests “there was some large complex molecule that did govern the operation of cells,” Houser says. “That’s an inter esting problem, because living organisms represent a very high level of order, and it’s hard to understand how they can maintain that order because they don’t have the statistical basis upon which order is based in the rest of the world.” Shrbdinger’s text underscores the discovery in first semester that “cause and effect turns out not to be a necessary connection. {The College- The St. John’s way of doing science-no matter how vigorously the college fine-tunes it-will always have its detractors. One would have to experience the Program in its entirety to see the beauty and wisdom of science’s place at St. John’s, says Higuera. “What I love to see is that aU our students awake to all of these fascinating questions and they develop a certain kind of confidence in their own ability to think about them. That’s true for everything in our Program.” As far as science goes, studying a magnolia leaf, carrying out the oil-drop experiment, and colonizing bacteria are valuable even when they don’t work exactly as they should. “We try to see through the eyes of the scientist, follow his thinking, and see if we agree. That’s a valuable skill to practice-for science, for any disci pline. Students are engaging in observing the world and thinking in a way that one doesn’t if one is just memorizing laws and working problems,” she says. Because the goal is to cultivate an ability to ask questions and consider conclusions with a skeptical eye, experiments have a different role at St. John’s than they would in an upper-level course in organic chemistry or developmental biology at another institu tion. “An experiment is always a work in progress,” says Houser, more like a “brief encounter with the material world.” Last year in Santa Fe, Houser’s students were discouraged because their Millikan experiments didn’t turn out as expected. “That’s one of the lessons that could be learned in the lab,” he says. “That is the difficulty and level of frustration you have to live with as a scientist.” Casey points out that when students discuss Lavoisier and the problem of naming, the first question they may ask is “why is this problem important?” For Casey, that’s what sets the college apart. “We put our hands on things. We ask questions and we try to read between the lines,” he says. “That’s what made me really interested in St. John’s.” St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } �{Radical Inquiry} RADICAL INQUIRY at the heart of the Program prepared them to explore deep questions in their respective fields. Graham Redgrave (SF90) uses analo gies to Homer along with MRI scans in his work with patients diagnosed with eating —Francis Bacon, The New Organon disorders. Cynthia Keppel (A84) divides her mong the characteristics that time between applied and basic science, work unite Johnnies, across disci rooted in her fascination with nuclear physics. plines and time, are these: At the National Institutes of Health, Steven A burning desire to investi Holland (A79) seeks genetic links to infec gate theories for themselves. tious diseases. Patricia Sollars (A80) hopes Boundless curiosity. A will her work in a tiny area of the brain may clues about the biological clock. And ingness to doubt even the mostprovide entrenched in her laboratory at the University of Chicago, doctrines and ideas. Perhaps most important is a willingness to doubt themselves, to hold Leslie Kay (SF83) learns more about the brain their judgments up to a critical light, by studying how rats distinguish one odor abandon what doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, from another. In some cases, these determined inquirers and formulate new ideas. These are traits shared by the Johnnie scien have more questions than answers. But tists profiled here, who attribute at least a instead of finding “despair” in their dead share of their success to their experiences at ends, they draw satisfaction from the contin St. John’s, not just in the laboratory but in all uing quest. aspects of the college. The “radical inquiry” “Byfar, the greatest obstacle to the progress of science and to the undertaking of new tasks and provinces therein is found in this—that men despair and think things impossible. ” A {The College- St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } �{RadicalInquiry} 15 Why do people get sick? Graham Redgrave: Psychiatrist BY Tom Nugent When the youthful patient began to describe the alluring temptation of self-starvation and binge-eating, the psychiatrist tried a metaphor. “Have you read the OdysseyV' She nodded. “Do you remember the scene where his sailors tie him to the mast?” As the two of them continued to discuss the ways in which her psychological disorder tempted her to engage in binge-eating, he asked her: “Are you saying you feel like Odysseus, as you struggle with the impulse to overeat?” The patient nodded. “That’s right,” she told Johns Hopkins University psychiatrist Graham W. Redgrave, M.D. (SF90), during a recent therapy session atHopkins Hospital. “I can see that when I’m tempted to start gorging on doughnuts or cookies. I’m like Odysseus hearing the music of the Sirens.” Helped along by Homer’s great epic poem, the discus sion at the eating disorders clinic continued, as the patient told the doctor that although the “singing of the Sirens was beautiful, Odysseus knew he shouldn’t hsten, because if he got distracted by the music, his ship would crash on the rocks.” Redgrave listened carefidly-then used the metaphor to reassure that patient that it was all right to “give up” the disorder and then “go home” (like Why does a the wandering Odysseus) to a healthier way of living-a concept that the troubled patient had been strugghng to accept. healthy woman starve herself? Graham Redgrave ( SF90 ) COUNSELS PATIENTS WHILE CONDUCTING RESEARCH ON THE NEURAL MECHANISMS INVOLVED IN EATING DISORDERS. For the 40-year-old Redgrave, who last year won a coveted NARSAD Young Investigator grant for his groundbreaking research on the functional neuroanatomy of anorexia nervosa, that “In the case of that particular patient, the discussion about recent conversation about Odysseus at the hospital’s nationally Odysseus was an important part of the dialogue, because it helped renowned Phipps Psychiatric Clinic in Baltimore was a “fabulous her achieve some useful insights about the recurring ‘temptation’ example” of how the liberal arts (and especially classical philos to engage in an eating disorder that was wrecking her life.” ophy and literature) can often play a helpful role in the practice of psychotherapy. During the months that followed that therapy session in the faU of aooy, Redgrave says his patient “continued to make important “More than anything else,” says Redgrave, “a psychotherapy strides in understanding the psychological issues-the areas of session is a conversation in which both participants are trying to broken meaning-that had been key factors in causing her episodes communicate about problems related to what Freud described as of starvation and overeating. ‘broken meaning.’ ” And so, in one way or another, the challenge “As a psychiatrist, I feel very fortunate to be able to work in a is always to persuade patients to lay aside these broken meanings by gradually bringing understanding and insight to them. setting where I can study both the physical brain and the ideas that emerge from it,” the therapist and researcher explained. “More {The College- St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } �{RadicalInquiry} i6 ''Eating disorders affect millions in this country and cause immense suffering Graham Redgrave (SF90) and more, it’s becoming clear to me-in my [brain] research and also in my clinical treatment of patients-that knowing how to patients,” Redgrave recalls. “This doctor was achieving some very positive results among a highly stressed, inner-city population, and organize the knowledge you gain in a coherent epistemological 1 was intrigued by that. When he described his approach to patients framework is absolutely essential to effective psychiatry.” as ‘based on Dr. McHugh’s system,’ and then as 1 watched him interact with the patients and saw how effectively he communi Ask Redgrave to account for his passionate interest in “the hnks between epistemology and psychiatry,” and he’ll tell you that it began during his junior year in Santa Fe .., when he agreed to take on the “marvelously exciting” challenge of analyzing and then writing an essay on Plato’s Theaetetus. “That was an extraordinary experience,” he recalls with a nostalgic smile, “because it forced me to think long and hard about what knowledge really is. When can you be sure you understand an idea accurately, and what should you do with the knowledge you’ve obtained? What’s the best way to think about an idea, if you really want to grasp its essence?” cated with them, 1 was struck by how clear-headed and sharply focused that approach really was. “After a few months of working with him, 1 realized that the McHugh approach was a truly deep way of thinking about psychi atry, and that it was based on an epistemological system that in many ways seemed to have come straight out of Plato. That was very helpful for me, because it showed how effective psychiatry must be built on a clearly focused epistemological framework.” Born in London in 1968, Redgrave moved with his family to the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., as a fourth-grader, then More than a decade after his graduation in Santa Fe, Redgrave landed on the Annapolis campus of St. John’s in the faU of 1986. A says he was “just amazed” to discover-while en route to an even tual residency in general psychiatry at Hopkins-that the legendary JHU psychiatrist and co-author of the classic The Perspectives of dedicated classics student in high school (he took four years of Latin and loved it), at St. John’s he liked the way “the education flowed out of the continuing ‘conversation’ between you and your Psychiatry, Dr. Paul McHugh, had centered his entire approach to tutor and your classmates. I remember being blown away by Euchd, psychotherapy on a carefully thought out epistemological frame work based in large part on concepts Redgrave had first encoun and by the elegance of his definitions. “You got the sense that you were right there at the intellectual roots of Western civilization,” he says, “and the conversation kept tered in the Theaetetus. “During my first year in medical school at Johns Hopkins, 1 wound up ‘shadowing’ a psychiatrist who was treating HIV/AIDS getting richer and richer. And everything we read was part of that hving conversation. In many ways, I think the reason I’m so excited about doing research in psychiatry these days is because I get to participate in a similar conversation, but now it’s about the brain and the mind and behavior and meaning.” After meeting his future spouse, Brooke, in Santa Fe (they’re now raising three young children in the Baltimore area), Redgrave spent several years working as a computer programmer in San Francisco, then opted for med school in 1994. “I found computer science very challenging,” he says today, “but psychiatry ulti mately seemed much richer and more complex. What I really like about my current role at Johns Hopkins is that I’m able to conduct MRI-based research on brain function in eating disorders, while also treating illnesses like anorexia and bulimia. “As our treatment methods continue to get better, it’s a privilege to find yourself working in both arenas. Eating disorders affect miUions in this country and cause immense suffering. The stakes are high, and we need every tool-including the Greek and Latin classics [-that can help us to better understand these illnesses.” Redgrave spends many of his afternoons (and more than a few of his nights) in a speciaUy designed, state-of-the-art “imaging lab” at {The College- St. John’s College ■ Summer 200S } �{RadicalInquiry} The Johns Hopkins Hospital. His quest: to pinpoint some of the key changes in hrain function that take place during episodes of the eating disorder anorexia nervosa-a potentially lethal behav ioral syndrome in which young women starve themselves as part of a pathology that often involves several different psychological factors. In his role as a chnical psychiatrist, Redgrave treats eating What are 17 the fundamental BUILDING BLOCKS OF MATTER? Cynthia Keppel: Experimental Nuclear Physicist and Cancer Researcher BY Rosemary Harty disorder patients in psychotherapy sessions that explore the psychological vulnerabihties contributing to anorexia. During these encounters, the psychiatrist employs the standard tech niques of traditional psychotherapy to help patients overcome a disorder that reportedly affects up to one percent of the U. S. female population (or about 1.6 million American women). Once he steps into his lab at the Hopkins Hospital’s Phipps Chnic, however, the chnician puts on a different hat. He becomes a researcher who’s more interested in the activation of brain regions At some point, every thinking being looks to the stars and wonders about the nature of the universe. Where did all of this come from? What is everything made of? What keeps everything from flying apart? “These are probably questions that we all ask ourselves at one time or another,” says Cynthia Keppel (A84). “Some of us just become a little obsessed with them.” Keppel spends her days probing questions that could keep a than in behavior patterns among struggling patients. Although the neuroanatomy involved in Redgrave’s studies is person busy for a lifetime-several lifetimes, perhaps. Most of complex, the strategy behind them can be easily understood. By using (MRl) technology to chart the flow of oxygen-carrying are bound together tvith gluons that form into larger particles them deal with the behavior of quarks, elementary particles that such as protons and neutrons. “My approach to physics is very hemoglobin in the brains of patients with severe eating disorders, St. John’s-like. I’ve always been most interested in the big the researcher can monitor the ways in which the neurons (brain questions,” Keppel says. “There are so many basic, fundamental cells) respond to anorexia-related “cues” in the behavior of the test subjects. Hopefully, gaining a better understanding of the and compelling questions to pursue.” patterns of activation involved in such disorders will aid position as University Endowed Professor of Physics at Hampton Keppel balances many professional roles: She holds a joint researchers in developing interventions (such as new drugs or University in Virginia and Staff Scientist at the Thomas psychotherapy techniques) that will eventually help to reduce or Jefferson National Accelerator Facility. She also directs the even prevent them. Explains Redgrave: “By studying the change in levels of oxygenation in areas of the brain such as the dorsolateral Hampton University (HU) Center for Advanced Medical Instru mentation and a joint medical physics program with the Eastern Virginia Medical School, where she is leading efforts to develop prefrontal cortex or the insula, we can measure the activity that’s advanced diagnostic and treatment tools using nuclear taking place in neurons in women acutely ill with anorexia and technology. compare it to healthy women. “Studying neural mechanisms of eating disorders is a relatively Keppel has a fourth job that takes top priority; she and her husband, Barry Hellman (A84), a pathologist, have three new frontier in psychiatry, and the rapid evolution of imaging tech children, ages ar, r4, and 7. It’s not unusual for her to be at nology makes this an especially promising area of research. I don’t think we’re going to find a magic bullet for eating disorders the university laboratory in the morning, return home to “hang with the kids” in the afternoon, and head back to the anytime soon, but we are getting closer to understanding the basic laboratory for late-night research. “I think the greatest advance building blocks of the disorder, which may one day help relieve the in my work,” she quips, “has been the development of the suffering of anorexia patients everywhere.” home office.” One of her most exciting endeavors is directing the scientific and technical aspects of Hampton University’s Proton Therapy Institute, a $200 million project to treat cancer patients more safely and effectively. Five proton therapy centers are {The College- St. John's College • Summer 2008 } �{RadicalInquiry} i8 Cynthia Keppel (A84) currently operating in the ENJOYS A CAREER THAT COMBINES THE BEST OF BOTH THEORETICAL AND APPLIED SCIENCE, ALLOWING HER TO WORK TOWARD BETTER TREAT MENT FOR CANCER WHILE PROBING MYSTERIES OF THE SUBATOMIC WORLD. United States. Hampton’s center is under construc tion and scheduled to treat its first patients in August 3010. As the Scien tific and Technical director, Keppel is respon sible for machine opera tions, nuclear science, and winter breaks at and treatment planning for St. the patients. computer modeling and “It’s not news that radiation kills tumors,” imaging, gained skills in John’s. applied She did mathematics, Keppel explains. “The and trick is to kill the tumor about physics. She chose read extensively side American University for effects and increasing graduate studies prima while reducing safety for those under rily to work with Ray going the therapy.” Traditional radiation Arnold, who was among therapy directs a photon making exciting discov beam eries in particle physics to the Keppel says. the prominent scientists patient, As force carriers, photons “interact at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center all the way through the (SLAG) in California. At patient’s body, even some SLAC, it costs $100,000 times all the way through a day to run an experi the table.” ment on the particle In contrast, protons beam accelerator, but deposit all of their energy into a well-defined (tumor) space and interact only minimally secure time for her experiment on resonance electroproduction, beforehand with healthy tissue. After careful positioning, the subject of her dissertation. Resonances are extremely short patients are exposed to the proton beam for only about a minute, lived elementary particles (they exist for about 10-33 seconds) as an intense energy burst is targeted precisely to the tumor. that are produced in proton scattering experiments. Keppel managed to “That translates into exactly what you want for battling cancer,” “When you hit a nucleon, like a proton, they might do elastic she says. Her work has had direct and beneficial medical applications, scattering, like billiard balls striking each other, and stay intact. Or the electron beam can hit the proton and completely break it and that has been immensely rewarding for Keppel. But, at the apart. Another thing that can happen is that the electron hits Jefferson Lab, she spends her time exploring abstract and the proton, but the proton absorbs it and goes into an excited puzzling questions of experimental physics that first captivated state and grows. The quarks then have to align themselves into her while she was a student at St. John’s. different spin structures. That’s a resonance state.” Keppel first gained experience in scientific research What Keppel was exploring then and continues to probe by working at the Naval Research Laboratory during summer today is the question: how do quarks align themselves to remain {The College. St. John’s College • Summer 2008 } �{RadicalInquiry} 19 ‘7/2 my research, n e re irorkinyon questions we may not know the answers tofor 20 years. Cynthia Keppel (A84) bound in a resonance state? What force holds quarks together, engineering [at other colleges and universities] have been and how does it differ from the force that holds nucleons working so many problems, not in a global sense, but sitting together? “The strong force that holds quarks together must somehow there with paper and a computer, and doing lots of applied also be the same force responsible for holding protons and something we don’t do at St. John’s,” she says. “Nevertheless, neutrons together,” she explains. “For physicists, these are we make it.” phenomena on vastly different scales. How do we link these math. That is a skill on its own and thinking on its own, and it’s In her sophomore year-when she first settled on a career in science-Keppel seriously considered transferring to another things together?” Scientists understand the force that holds quarks together institution; instead she listened to a “strong feeling” that she through quantum chromodynamic (QCD), a quantum field had a lot more yet to learn at St. John’s. Getting comfortable theory of the strong interactions based on the exchange of force with difficult questions in the liberal arts-posed by Hegel and carrying gluons between quarks and antiquarks. But the force Aristotle as well as Einstein and Bohr-prepared her to be a tena holding nuclei together is “fraught with mystery,” Keppel says. cious and creative researcher, still filled with wonder at the “It doesn’t fall into any of our fundamental field theories.” mysteries of the universe. “In my research, we’re working on questions we may not know Keppel’s work straddles classical and modern science, prac physics. “Nuclear physics is like classical mechanics-it works. the answers to for ao years,” she says. “One of the most valuable things I learned at St. John’s was to keep at it-to keep ques We can make MRI machines, smoke detectors, nuclear power tioning. tical and theoretical applications, and nuclear and particle and bombs. On the other hand, we know from a couple decades of experiment now that quarks and gluons are the fundamental things that everything should be made of.” But there’s no bridge between nuclear and particle physics. Why do people get infections? Steven Holland, M.D.: Physician and Researcher “That’s my little niche,” Keppel says, “trying to find that bridge.” Physicists at the JLAB probe these questions about subatomic After a morning of hospital rounds at the National Institutes of matter by running experiments in the Continuous Electron a young boy whose lungs were under attack by a mysterious Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF). The accelerator allows fungus, a young woman with an unidentified infection causing Keppel and her colleagues to propel electrons at a nucleus and painful skin rashes, and a woman in her 30s with a rare genetic then study the output: data such as energy, wavelength, and disease that has killed four members of her family. Health, Dr. Steven Holland (A79) was up to speed on the cases of geometric patterns. Getting time on the particle beam acceler As Chief of the Laboratory of Clinical Infectious Diseases at ator at this national laboratory is extremely competitive, says NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Keppel, and takes much more time than the actual experiment: “You describe what the experiment is, who your 50 to 100 Holland devotes much of his time to research. But periodically he takes his turn as the consulting physician at the Institute’s collaborators are, and you write this whole thing up and present hospital in Bethesda, Md. For a month, he works in close contact it to a Program Advisory Committee composed of internation with the medical staff who treat the sometimes stubborn, baffling ally distinguished scientists. The committee approves only a fraction of the proposals submitted and invites researchers to and debilitating infections that have brought patients here. The team began with an update on the condition of the 12-year- present their experiment.” Her St. John’s education is helpful in old boy. “He has fungi in his lungs, and we’re working very hard to that Keppel knows how to state her case succinctly and effec figure out what his problem is,” Holland explained later. “It must tively, as well as stand up to prolonged questioning. be genetic and it must be profound, and we’re desperate to figure In one way, her analytical skills were sharpened at St. John’s, it out because he’s got a fatal problem.” but Keppel notes “there’s no sugarcoating” the disadvantage Getting to help patients while researching the causes of their Johnnies may encounter in graduate school in the sciences. “Most people who find out they want to do math, science, and disease combines the best of two worlds for Holland. “What I get to do as a physician is to identify the problem, meet the patient. {The College- St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } �ao {RadicalInquiry} try to understand her illness at a molecular and genetic level, and Everyone is exposed to mycobacteria in air, water and dirt. Infec try to treat it with specific, directed therapies,” he explains, tion is extremely rare except in severe cases of HIV, in patients adding with a grin: “That’s pretty fun.” with profound immune defects, and a third group that Holland is The NIH is like a small city, and Holland’s laboratory has a investigating: North American and Western European women hroad charge, studying everything from frightening staph infec who are post-menopausal, Caucasian, and thinner and taller than tions and drug-resistant tuherculosis to preparing a defense for their peers. “This is a new disease we’re studying, and it must potential hioterrorist attacks. The welfare of each individual have some genetic basis,” Holland says. “It’s got ethnicity and patient is at the heart of their work. “It’s a wonderful thing to he morphological restriction, and we’re very interested in trying to here because patients come who have rare or undiagnosed prob definitively characterize it and identify the genes responsible.” lems, and we get to take a holistic approach that nobody else can afford to take anymore.” convinced he would find a genetic defect in their immune system After graduating from St. John’s, Holland earned a medical that was responsible for their lung disease. Holland’s newworking degree from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in thesis is that these patients have normal immune systems, but When he first began studying these patients, Holland was 1983. He stayed at Hopkins as an intern, resident, and chief share some genetic flaw in the lung surface itself. His research resident in internal medicine, followed by a fellowship in infec team now includes a lung specialist as well as infectious disease tious diseases. He joined NIAID in 1989 to study the molecular and immunology specialists. “Part of the fun in doing science is biology of HIV, and in 1991 moved to the Laboratory of Host every now and then being able to say how wrong you were,” Defenses to study phagocytes and phagocyte immunodeficiencies. Holland says. That’s why studying science the St. John’s way was He’s been Chief of the Laboratory of Clinical Infectious Diseases valuable, he adds: following the thinking of scientists throughout since 2004. the ages-even when they were wrong-fosters resilience and creativity in problem solving. In medical school Holland developed an interest in working in the developing world, perhaps speciahzing in tropical diseases or “Ptolemy is wrong-elegantly, definitively, comprehensively nutrition. He eventually focused his interest on infectious wrong,” says Holland. “I was like Ptolemy, but not as smart. The diseases such as tuberculosis, largely eradicated in the U.S. but beauty is once you get to realize that you’re wrong, then you stiU have space to go to find out what’s right.” still a major killer in the developing world. “With the advent of HIV, which came up just as I was starting medical school and resi Holland and other researchers were successful in making dency, the importance of infectious diseases to global health really became obvious,” he says. important discoveries about the genetic cause of a devastating The research side of Holland’s work is driven by a desire to often causes painful boils, one of the many trials God inflicted on understand why human beings are susceptible to diseases. The more interesting question to think about, Holland suggests, is: Job. “It’s a fascinating disorder in which one gene is mutated, but it affects the function of everything, from brain to bone, to why don’t more of us get sick more often? “It’s been many immune system to lung, to heart,” says Holland. He led an NIH millions of years since [humankind] began, and we’ve become the research team that discovered that Job’s patients had an immune disease called Job’s Syndrome-so named because the disease dominant species,” he says. “It isn’t because of antibiotics, it’s system that was doing part of its work too well, with white blood because we’ve really become damn good at fighting off infections. cells in overdrive, attacking systems of the body, but other parts incompetently. We have found an accommodation with all the biome in the world that has, most of the time, for most of us, kept us pretty happy.” A decade ago, Holland and his collaborators published the first Holland examines immunodeficiency at the molecular level and comprehensive paper on Job’s. For the past decade, he and other at a functional level, seeking to pinpoint the reasons individuals develop rare diseases. He has a driving interest in genetic causes researchers hunted the gene that caused the disease, and just last year, they determined that mutations in the STAT3 gene were of disease because “so much of immunity is genetic.” responsible. “We’re still working on how to use those genetic At any one time, his laboratory runs dozens of clinical protocols observations to guide us to therapy,” Holland explains. “Finding dealing with infectious disease. One seeks to find the genetic a mutation is exciting; understanding exactly what that mutation cause of mycobacterial infections, which are similar to TB. does is more complicated.” {The College -5:. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } �ai {Radical Inquiry} ""Part ofthefun in doing science is every now and then being able to say how wrong you were. ” Steven Holland {A79) Not unlike the St. John’s Program, research science calls for quality of life, and perhaps he can gain knowledge that can help asking questions and making connections in unfamiliar territory. her relatives. He admires her courage, and he’s grateful for all his For the last four years, Holland has been working with a patient in team has learned from her. “I’m a pretty hopeful guy,” he says, her 30s, who first sought medical attention for a movement “but I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t think there’s a chance we can disorder, but was referred to him because of the infections she also suffered. Her family history was intriguing: her grandfather, help her.” The day that started at 8 a.m. will extend to well after 6 p.m., father, sister, and brother all died young of the disease, which also when Holland will conclude an interview with a fellowship candi caused infections. date. His wife. Dr. Maryland Pao, is a child psychiatrist who also Holland had no answers until he delivered a paper at a confer has a demanding job as deputy clinical director for the National ence and providentially decided to stay through the meeting, Institute of Mental Health. The couple have three daughters most of which was outside his research area. “Somebody ranging from rg to 9 years old. For fun, “we stay home,” he says, presented a case that was exactly this woman,” he says. Back in although once a week he makes time to play ice hockey. his laboratory, Holland looked up the gene responsible in that Holland draws interesting parallels between the college and his case and arranged to have his patient’s DNA sequenced. He work at NIH. “St. John’s is about trying to come up with new discovered a deficiency in the Thyroid Transcription Factor-r insights about the past in general. It’s wonderful and I loved it. (TTF-i) gene. “It controls the function of some of the cells in the I wouldn’t have gone any place else.” At NIH his work is about “trying to come up with new insights brain that control movement, the formation of thyroid factors, some of the lining of the lungs, as well as some of the neurological about the future. There’s a greater opportunity for failure, but function of the intestines. It also controls the production of some there are real opportunities for tangible success. When some of the immunoglobulins, also called antibodies, which fight off body gets better, that’s fun. They get up and they do what they’re infections in the body.” This woman’s case allows Holland to explore compelling ques supposed to do.” As for the answers he doesn’t have yet, “I don’t mind not tions about genetics and infectious diseases. TTF-r requires two knowing,” says Holland. “I would mind if someone said you don’t know and you can’t know. That would be irritating. That’s why I copies, one each from the mother and the father; only one was have a laboratory. The beauty of passed along to his patient, and this haploinsufficiency is what has made science is that there’s a reward for her so ill. What turns this gene on? both saying, I don’t get it, and then How could it be stimulated to do its saying, I want to figure it out. You don’t get penalized for being igno- work? rant-you get penalized for staying In early spring, the woman had ignorant. ”4- already spent three months at the —Rosemary Harty hospital, undergoing experimental treatments to boost proteins in the TTF-r gene to stimulate it to func tion better. It’s the first time anyone has tried any therapy for patients of this disease, Holland notes. “Now we’re going in to give her a second set and see if we can’t push her cells to finally make enough of this protein that she has not had all the Even modern scientists hit road years of her life,” he says. blocks Perhaps he can make significant improvements in this patient’s find AND dead-ends, SAYS Dr. Steven Holland, who hopes to CURES FOR BAFFLING DISEASES SUCH AS Job’s Syndrome. {The College St John’s College • Summer 2008 } �{Radical Inquiry} 2,2. What Patricia Sollars (A80) regulates THE body’s internal studies the BIOLOGICAL CLOCK THAT GOVERNS CIRCADIAN RHYTHMS IN MAMMALS; HER RESEARCH MAY BE HELPFUL IN DEVELOPING REMEDIES FOR JET LAG AND SEASONAL AFFECTIVE DISORDER. CLOCK? Patricia Sollar.s: Neuroscientist questions related to the brain function, and Pickard focuses more on anatomical research. Located in the hypothalamus, the superchiasmatic nucleus is the primary in Sollars eventually completed her mammals. It cues human heings to the doctorate at the University of Oregon. regulator of circadian rhythms sleep-wake cycle, and it tells creatures She completed a fellowship at the Univer with seasonal breeding cycles that it’s sity of Pennsylvania, where she served on time to get going. the faculty, then joined her husband at As a graduate student in neuroscience, Colorado State University. Until this Patricia Sollars (A8o) first thought about year, she was a research scientist at the the concept of an internal clock in a purely Department of Biomedical Sciences at abstract, St. John’s way: “I thought, ah, Colorado State University; this fall she temporality-what is time?” she says, and her husband will move to the Univer laughing at the memory. “Of course that’s sity of Nebraska, where they will teach and conduct research as part of the not even in the same ballpark.” university’s new veterinary program. Sollars was studying at Columbia * University, rotating through laboratories In Nebraska, Sollars will continue to that were studying various questions in research the SCN and its role in the circa nucleus (SCN). Although her initial concepts of the internal dian system. The term “circadian” comes from the Latin, Sollars notes, for “about a day.” Most human neuroscience, when she first learned about the superchiasmatic clock were “naive,” she says, the SCN captured her imagination beings have a circadian rhythm of about 24 hours-unless some in the same way in which she once pondered the nature of time thing knocks it out of balance, for example, shift work or flying along with Augustine. In one tiny area of the brain, she discov across time zones. In her research, Sollars has deliberately ered a rich source of inquiry: Does the SCN alone regulate the altered the circadian rhythm of mice, hamsters, and rats to try to internal clock? Is it part of a distributed network in the brain? demonstrate that the SCN-relying on cues relayed through the When sight is taken away, how does the SCN continue to regulate circadian rhythms? optic nerves-autonomously regulates an important character istic of circadian rhythms. “Here was this one little nucleus that sits just on top of the Sollars devised and carried out an experiment she believed optic chiasm in the brain,” she says. “It was always there, but would show definitively if the SCN was the master circadian people knew so little about what it was doing. There were so many questions to ask, so many experiments to develop, on a oscillator. She based her experiment on the knowledge that each species, and even strains within species, have different endoge molecular and a behavioral level. All biological creatures have nous circadian rhythms. “If you keep a mouse in constant dark the ability to regulate their activity to day/night cycles, and in ness with no temporal cues, it will run [on an exercise wheel] mammals that is thanks to the SCN.” with a period 0123.5 hours, and every day it gets up a half an hour Sollars met her husband, Gary Pickard, then finishing up a earlier,” she says. A golden hamster has an endogenous “free- post-doctorate fellowship in neuroanatomy, in the laboratory at running” rhythm of 24.06 hours, and a rat, 24.3 hours. Sollars’ Columbia. They have collaborated on research for most of the experiment involved a little meddling: what would a hamster do past 35 years, though Sollars is more interested in pursuing with the SCN from a mouse brain? If the clock was in the SCN, {The College- St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } �{Radical Inquiry} a3 ''The best thing about St. Johns was the chance to get to play with ideas. ” Patricia Sollars (A8o) Sollars theorized, the hamster should have the mouse’s circa other physiological phenomena in your body are out of phase,” she says. Knowing more about the SCN’s regulatory role may dian rhythm. The first step was for her to test her transplant theory from lead to the development of better remedies for jet lag. hamster to hamster. “That worked like charm,” she said. It’s in her nature, Sollars says, to demand to be intrigued, “When you lesion out a hamster’s SCN and transplant one from invigorated-even entertained-by her work. After two years of another hamster, it restores rhythmicity at 24.06 hours.” studying biology and chemistry at the University of Michigan, Next, she knocked out a hamster SCN and implanted one from she started over again at St. John’s. Here she discovered how a a mouse. When the hamster started running in his exercise good question, paired with a sound method of inquiry, could lead wheel, Sollars didn’t know what to expect. Amazingly, the to discoveries-or at least, new and more interesting questions. hamster established a reliable rhythm of 23.5 hours-exactly that “The best thing about St. John’s was the chance to get to play of a mouse. “Then,” she says with a sigh, “I made the mistake of taking it with ideas,” she says. “We’d have these long discussions, and one step further.” She implanted the SCN of a rat into the was most important.” you’d never know where they were leading because the process hamster, expecting a 24.3-hour cycle to emerge. “When the “That’s what I loved most about the Program and that’s what I rhythm was restored, it was 23.5-the mouse again,” she says. “I carried into the study of neuroscience. When you take on some transplanted a rat SCN into a hamster, and the rhythm that thing as vast as the human brain, one of the most important comes back out is that of a mouse.” Far from being discouraged, Sollars has an entirely new line of things is the ability to ask questions from a variety of perspec inquiry: “One possibility is that this is species-specific. Perhaps don’t expect.” tives, to be open to all sorts of possibilities-to look for what you the mouse and the hamster have autonomous clocks in the SCN —Rosemary Harty and the rat could have a distributed clock network. Perhaps when leaving part of the clock behind.” She published the findings of How DO WE CREATE OUR INTERNAL COGNITIVE WORLD? her experiment in \\\& Journal ofNeuroscience (March 1995). Sollars had to put this question aside while she devoted more of Leslie Kay: Neuroscientist you transplant the SCN from the rat into the hamster, you’re her time to raising her children: Galen, 23, and Emilia, 17. She has continued to work with her husband on laboratory experi Why do people who suffer from Parkinson’s disease lose their ments at Colorado State that are more concerned with the sense of smell as the disease progresses? How does a whiff of anatomical underpinnings of the SCN, several of which may have Coppertone trigger memories of family beach vacations? And what exactly is happening in the network of our brains when we beneficial medical applications. Among their current projects is an investigation into the SCN’s role in Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), a debilitating condition linked to the shorter days of winter. Evidence suggests that a serotonin deficit makes some people more vulnerable to the disorder. “With this particular deficit, you’re not as responsive to the light input from the outside,” she explains. “You end up having an altered phase relationship, then that affects hormones, affects mood, and a lot of other secondary components.” Another clinical application of her work is the link between circadian rhythms and jet lag. Is there a way to enhance the way the internal clock works with other systems in the body to help individuals adapt to major shifts in time zones? “Your internal clock, it turns out, will rapidly shift to a new time-hut all the stop to smell the roses? Leslie Kay (SF83) can’t answer these questions yet, but she knows a lot more about how our olfactory system interacts with other circuits in the brain than when she began conducting research 17 years ago at the University of California at Berkeley. As an Associate Professor of Psychology and Director of the Institute for Mind and Biology at the University of Chicago, Kay spends her time studying what happens in the brains of rats when they are faced with the task of distinguishing between two similar but distinct smells. Her research may someday contribute to a better understanding of devastating diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. Kay came to St. John’s after dropping out of Stanford to take some time off. She went to Santa Fe with her then-husband, a {The College. St John’s College • Summer 2008 } �2.4 {RadicalInquiry} Johnnie, sat in on some classes, and soon enrolled as a January Freshman. The Program, she says, was a good choice for someone interested in too many disciplines to choose just one to study. “I was flipping hack and forth between being a writer, a scientist or a mathematician. At Stan ford, I switched my major four times,” she explains. “The freshman year at St. John’s hooked me. I love geometry, and studying Euclid, I was in heaven.” Between Kay’s junior and senior years, St. John’s tutor Gerald Meyers helped her secure an intern ship at Los Alamos National Laboratories with GenBank, an international repository of known genetic sequences from a variety of organisms. At that time, a clerked typed in the sequences, and Kay and the other students annotated coding regions and proteins. Still unsettled on her career path, she ended up working there for two and a half years after graduating from St. John’s. Kay went to grad school at UG Berkeley, dropped out, and worked as a programmer for several years before returning to the GenBank project, where she was a scientific reviewer and software designer. With programmers in great demand, Kay worked in the insurance industry for a brief time, but the attractive pay wasn’t enough for her. In search of something fascinating, she returned to Berkeley, where she studied math, physics, and biology. Convinced that she had found her niche, she walked into researcher Walter Freeman’s neuroscience laboratory and asked to do computational modeling of the brain. “He was a gruff guy, and said, ‘we’ll see.’ He gave me data to analyze. I came up with an effect in the data, but not enough to prove it. I had to do experiments, and the experiments got me excited.” Her “secret love” of statistics, combined with a desire to test theories for herself, propelled Kay into serious laboratory research. For her doctoral thesis, Kay studied how different regions in the rat’s brain talk to each other when the rats perform an olfactory task. At CalTech, where she did post-graduate research, she narrowed her focus to the activity found in single neurons. She tried to draw conclusions about objective odor responses from her research, “but it didn’t work.” She did discover, however, that even at the level of a single neuron, the activity of the first cells in the central olfactory pathway are strongly modulated both by the {The College- Rats can tell scientists a great deal about circuits in the brain INVOLVED in the SENSE OF SMELL. ShOWN ARE (l. TO R.): DoNALD Frederick; Leslie Kay (SF83), with RG07 perched on her shoulder; Cora Ames; and Daniel Roias-Libano. meaning of the odor (whether it suggests a sweet or bitter taste to the rat) and the behavior the rat is trained to carry out in response. After her post-doc, Kay had her choice between two positions: one in New York at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories, and one in Chicago. “The University of Chicago was the only place I interviewed where they were excited by the fact that I went to St. John’s,” she notes. While her laboratory focuses on the olfactory system and brains of rats, her findings may some day help scientists learn more about neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s and Huntington’s, because the sense of smell is affected early in the progression of these devastating diseases-sometimes many years before other symptoms appear. “The interesting thing in the olfactory system is that you go directly from the nose to the olfactory bulb in the cortex,” she explains. Then information is transmitted to the limbic system, including the hippocampus, amygdala and hypothal amus, which is important in emotional states and in memory St. John’s College • Summer 2,oo3 } �{Radical Inquiry} formation. The signals are also carried to the basal ganglia, which is involved in disorders snch as Parkinson’s. Kay and her students implant electrodes inside the brains of rats to record brain waves while they perform various odor discrimination tasks. When animals inhale, the olfactory bulb is as It has been shown that part of the olfactory deficit in Parkinson’s disease is due to difficulty in sniffing, and Kay showed in a paper in 2005 that sniffing behavior couples the olfactory bulb with the hippocampus when rats learn odor asso two to ten cycles per second-are observed. But when a mammal must distinguish between one smell and another, faster gamma ciations. “We lose some of our olfactory sense as we age, but changes seen in Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s are more pronounced, and the reason is unclear. We also know that if the olfactory bulb is taken out of rodents, they act depressed, waves of 40 to 100 cycles are observed in the olfactory bulb. their eating patterns change, they become more afraid of However, in some circumstances when a rat has learned the association for a smell, a different pattern of 15- to 30-cycle beta frustrating, and not because they can’t smell, but because the stimulated, and theta waves-slow electrical pulses ranging from open spaces, and they give up more easily in tasks that are waves emerges. Gamma and beta waves are both evoked when rats smell the odors-but the results change dependent on the behavior olfactory bulb is missing,” she says. “If they are treated for involved in the experiment. This breakthrough came when Kay and her students observed differences in two experiments they were conducting. One researcher directed her rats to press the my attention all these years is: how do we create our internal cognitive world? The olfactory system offers a nice way to study left lever for one odor, the right for another (a two-alternative choice task). The other student conducted a “go/no go” task, in which the rat would press a lever for one odor, and not press the lever for the other. In the latter experiment, the rats learned the task faster and displayed enhanced beta oscillations. In the former, they learned slowly and showed large gamma oscilla tions when the odors were difficult to discriminate. It appears the go/no go task was much closer to what an animal does in its natural environment. she explains. “When an animal is foraging around and smells something, depression, they improve. “The question I got started on, and the one thing that’s held that question because it is connected with all these other systems. And the circuitry is relatively simple-or it was. It’s turned out we just didn’t know as much as we thought we did.” A satisfying part of Kay’s work is training graduate students to interpret data, to look for effects “that aren’t visible to the naked eye.” This analysis demands patience and skepticism something philosophy teaches, too. Kay has never been willing to take anything for granted. “You think you know something and you go looking for the thing you know. It’s like the hubris of the Sophists. We have a lot of prejudice Reading List: Hume and Descartes, and those guys it’s either something it eats, runs away from, or approaches,” says Kay. Disconnect the link from olfactory bulb to the higher brain-for example, by injecting lidocaine into the pathways and the system only makes gamma oscil lations, not beta. “Through many different studies, what we’ve seen is that beta waves are not isolated; they involve the entire olfactory system all the way into the hippocampus,” she says. In this Particle Physics: A Very Short Introduc tion, by Frank Close The New Cosmic Onion: Quarks and the Nature ofthe Universe, by Frank Close The Ideas ofParticle Physics: An Intro ductionfor Scientists, by G. D. Goughian, J. E. Dodd, and B. M. Gripaios Don’t Fear the Big Dogs, by Bill Vancil happening in the higher brain, indi Naked to the Bone: Medical Imaging in the Twentieth Century, by Bettyann Kevles cating that “the whole system is working Suggestions from Cynthia Keppel task the brain wave activity in the olfac tory bulb correlates with what’s about what the sensory systems might be telling the brain. I always go back to together,” says Kay. {The College- St. John’s College • Summer 2008 } it’s really about constructing our internal representation of the world.” “The thing about biology “ Kay adds, “is that we can make hypotheses, and almost invariably [the answer] comes out somewhere in the middle. Then you have to do to more experiments to understand that result. We never quite prove anything. And I find that fascinating.” —Rosemary Harty �{Student Voices} A Work in Progress BY Kea Wilson (A09) ost St. John’s students spend their last night before freshman year trying to cram that last sweater into an over stuffed suitcase and get those last 20 pages of the Iliad read. I spent mine at a $2 million benefit gala in Miami, where Placido Domingo shook my hand and Vanessa Williams gave me a kiss on the cheek. A week earlier, I had flown to Florida as a finalist in a youth arts competition to which I had submitted a short story on a whim. Twelve master classes, eighteen hotel lunches and one ridiculous photo-op in a botanical garden later, I found myself at this surreal party with a medal hung around my neck, starstruck and eating hors d’oeuvres with the playwright Sam Shepard. Three hours after that, I boarded my plane to Albuquerque, still unsure of what had happened to me. From the moment when I landed to the moment I write this now. I’ve been a little embarrassed about telling this story. But I’ve been embarrassed, too, of calling myself a writer at all, and especially so since I first dragged my trunk onto the Santa Fe campus and began to call myself a Johnnie. No i8-year-old with an ounce of perspec tive would ever presume to say she had gained the experience, insight, or originality necessary to call herself an artist by the time she had finished high school, no matter how many awards she had won, or how much encourage ment she had received. No i8-year-old who’s just finished reading about the burial of Hector in the lobby of the Sunport would even dare to think that she was an artist, regardless of where her plane had just arrived from. After three years at St. John’s, I’ve often wondered just how many students have had Laurel Price (A09) makes TIME FOR MUSIC AND DRAMA ALONG WITH HER STUDIES AT St. John’s. {The College- St. John’s College • Summer 2008 } moments like these. While I’ve managed to write almost every day since coming to St. John’s-despite my embarrassment and often my own best efforts to quit-many of my friends have either banished their guitars to the dark recesses of their dorm room closet, or else been too caught up with Newton to ever take it up in the first place. From my original 28-student January freshman class in Santa Fe, at least six left to pursue some form of a career in the arts. I’ve been the editor of a literary magazine, a member of a filmmaker’s club, and devotee of a dance class that have all lapsed due to a lack of student interest or energy. When I first decided to apply to St. John’s, I was especially swayed by a video of then-Santa Fe Dean David Levine (class of 1967), posed in front of the Meem Library: he said that “there should be no realm of human endeavor that we should feel ourselves excluded from” once we have completed the St. John’s education. Why, then, is the artistic realm of human endeavor so cut off from many Johnniesand could we make art, even if we wanted to? Making Time for Art Needless to say, I didn’t come to St. John’s to be a writer-and I’d venture to say that even fewer students come to the college to play the clarinet, or act, or more generally, for any reason other than to read great books and attempt to understand them in a community of intelligent people. After all, I had spent the past four years of my life learning to be a writer at a fine arts high school, where I had saddled myself with a creative writing major at age 14. By the time I graduated, I had taken enough English and creative writing credits to fulfill St. John’s entrance requirements six times over, not to mention written a port folio of my own terrible amateur writing that had a page count roughly equal to that of War and Peace. When I applied to college, there was no doubt in my mind that I knew how to write, �{Student Voices} at least insofar as I’d done it, consistently and with varying degrees of success, every day for years. When I walked into my first seminar, I still hoped to pursue my writing professionally-hut like most young artists. I’d listened to the advice of my parents, my guidance counselors, and every successful writer I’d heen lucky to meet while at arts school; “Have a hack-up plan.” “Study something you enjoy.” “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” I ran across St. John’s and marveled at the Weh site, which adver tised itself holdly and with QuickTime video testimonials, as a strong foundation for any endeavor I might undertake. I thought I’d found the answer. I hgured out pretty quickly that many of my friends had the same idea when coming to the college. After years of classical piano training, Sam Richards (SF09) had not only learned the nuances of his sonata repertoire, hut also the slim odds of success in the music world. “I actually chose St. John’s partly because I was so interested in playing music,” he says. “Knowing that it would be hard to actually have a career as a professional musician, I figured that it might help me to have a ‘strong liheral arts education’ as a hackup.” Once immersed in the difficult work of the tutorials, however, Richards found that there were simply too many “lah read ings, Newton to figure out, Racine to trans late, Nietzsche to read... .Part of me feels really had because just about everyone I know ends up telling me that I’m a talented musician, I should keep playing the piano. I’m good enough to be professional, and so on. . . but I just don’t feel it anymore.” It’s no secret that all too often, the rigorous work of the Program eclipses the often extraordinary time and energy it takes to practice and perfect an art form er, God forbid, produce any new material yourself. But this argument isn’t enough to explain why so many Johnnies manage to find time for week-long rock climbing trips in Arizona and so few manage to find time to write a novel. While Eron Wiles (SFio) doesn’t “find St. John’s to be discouraging to art in particular” and has even managed to sustain her own interest in the arts through a craft club, time in the pottery studio and small sewing projects, she misses the sustained community she enjoyed as an art major at a previous college. “A big part of going to art school is a class critique of each other’s work. I know I was constantly comparing my work with others.” At St. John’s, students not only lack the time, but simply the common vocabulary necessary to critique one another’s composition or use of a certain rhyme scheme. For some, however, St. John’s doesn’t only lack a common artistic dialect, but actually demands that we speak about books, the arts, and everything else through the rigidly defined analytical language that we’re taught in seminar-and in the process, neglect our artistic impulses entirely. Caitlin Cass (SFog), a rising senior and prodigious visual artist, says that she is “constantly blown away by how apathetic our student body is when it comes to anything that does not involve critiquing [or] discussing the work of others.” While many students are discour aged by the lack of artistic community at the college, however, Cass has taken it as a form of encouragement: she says that her “frustration with this is probably the only {The College - John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } a? Fine arts classes—offered free to STUDENTS—OFFER AN OPPORTUNITY FOR STUDENTS INCLUDING SaRA FrY (Alo) TO EXPLORE THEIR CREATIVE SIDES. reason I’m even considering a career in the arts. The one truly useful thing I’ve learned at St. John’s is that I could never spend my entire life discussing what other people have created. I need to create things myself.” Like Cass, Simon Tajiri (SFog) came to the college with a passion for art, but quickly found himself saddened by “how much talent people have shelved in order to do the Program.” A talented poet, blues guitarist, songwriter, soundtrack composer and general Renaissance man himself, Tajiri quickly found himself feeling stifled by the St. John’s “culture which says that there’s a certain way of writing, a certain way of speaking, a certain way of reading, thinking. If you want to be part of the conversation, heard by your tutors and your �2,8 {StudentVoices} Magdalen Wolfe (A07) portrays Desdemona in the King William Player’s Othello production. Tutor Will Williamson played the title role. classmates, it’s got to go a certain way. And there’s room for individuality in that. But not rehellion.” Finding A Voice Like many of the subjects I interviewed, I’ve neglected my art form for months at a time while I’ve become embroiled in life at the college. During my sophomore year in Santa Fe, I logged countless hours on the layout computers in the basement of Peterson Sudent Center, painstakingly adjusting page margins on the school literary magazine rather than writing anything new of my own to submit. I’ve spent more than a few excruciating semi nars biting my tongue rather than commenting on Shakespeare’s use of word play, if only because I knew that my comment would be met by a round of silence if I spoke. And while I am, absolutely, still dying to understand just how Shakespeare, as a writer, frames a sentence or captures Iago’s specific brand of ego in words. I’ve come to be just as hungry to understand what Shakespeare, as a thinker, has to tell me not just about writing, but about human life. My freshman language tutor, Cary Stickney (A75) has always stood out in my mind as the first person who showed me what it truly meant to study at St. John’s. He was the first tutor to tell me, point blank, in my don rag, that it was not enough for me to simply love books the way I had loved books in high school-as something I wanted to write and the way I wanted to spend my time-hut that I must love books as a testament to the infinity of human perspectives they represent, and the invaluable mirror they provide for myself and the species I’m a part of. He also stands out in my mind as the tutor who could always be seen on the lower Placita on Wednesday afternoon, mandolin in hand, surrounded by students and other tutors making music. When I asked him whether or not a St. John’s student could pursue a career in the arts, Stickney responded that “insofar as the chief thing is to love the beauty and depth of the work that is possible in any given art so as to be inspired to produce that kind of work oneself, I do indeed. Insofar as really getting anywhere with Kant or Newton requires that same appli- {The College .St John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } cation of the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair, that same eager, stubborn persistence that a career in the arts requires, yes, there again I think so.” But he was also careful to question whether or not there had “ever been a school that knew how to turn out great artists. It is hard enough to get students to speak their minds and ask their own ques tions and listen to one another and to the texts. If the creative arts are about finding one’s own voice, then I think St. John’s may be one of the best places to prepare to practice such arts.” And Stickney’s question is, after all, not a purely rhetorical one. While it remains to be seen whether or not any school can guarantee their alumni that specific breed of creativity, inspiration, sensitivity to beauty, personal richness and yes, success that any artist craves and requires, it cannot be ignored that St. John’s does produce alumni who go on to successful careers in all manner of art forms. One alumnus that I spoke with, David JLidd (A85), came to St. John’s after abandoning his dream of becoming an architect, and ended many years later restoring classical homes as part of his larger practice as painter, muralist and restoration artist with Kidd Studios. While the road was not a direct one for Kidd (he also spent several years in the Navy and had a successful career as the senior clinical trial researcher for the neurosurgery department at Johns Hopkins University), he says that it was his broad-based education at St. John’s that taught him the adaptability not only to draw on the skills he learned from every fork in his career path, but to eventually gather the courage to apply those lessons to his new career as an artist. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ll be painting a mural and need to use perspective and I’ve fallen back on what Winfree Smith taught me [in freshman math],” says Kidd. “And �{StudentVoices} doing clinical trials and helping people with chronic pain symptoms, it doesn’t feel hke that was a waste of time at all either, not in any way... I learned all this stuff about grant writing and business and managing people, and there were all these hfe skills that came with it that even if I didn’t stay in that career-I took to the next thing.” While Kidd makes no pretensions that it was this adaptability alone that led to his success as an artist, he cannot help but credit his education here for providing him with the foundation not only to pursue any field he chose, but also to address those essential human questions that artists, in particular, explore when they assert their perspective on the world through paint. stone, or pencil. “[Program authors] were able to look at the same thing, the same group of data and come at it from different directions and give it a whole new meaning,” he says. “1 swear that’s what art is. There are artistic scientists, and there are pedantic artists on both sides of the divide. 1 think real art and real creativity crosses all the disciplines like anything else.... [The things that Johnnies are taught] are broadly applicable to every thing from writing a computer program to saying ‘1’11 put this element on this painting here because that’s where it will look good in the composition...’ Every thing that goes on around us, as we are able to understand it, is logical. It may be chaotic, and maybe we don’t know what the 2,9 process is, but there’s always a process. If you can bring that to your art, 1 think it only improves it. That ability to synthesize, to take a bunch of disparate things and pull them together into a composition, that’s what an artist does, and the training here just gives you practice.” As 1 stumble through Newton, Kant, Maxwell, and the other challenges of junior year-and inevitably, editing whatever stub born metaphor in whatever short story I’m writing at the moment-I often find it difficult to follow Kidd’s advice. It’s hard sometimes, as I’m trudging through the electro-magnetic equations, to understand how my fiction can even fall under the same umbrella as the vast and brilliant works of the minds we encounter here, and how I’ll ever be able to say something as new, as daring, or as genius as they have already said. I’m only comforted to know that generations of St. John’s students before me have struggled with these ideas and emerged in awe, with an expanded faculty to enjoy and marvel at the world around them, and more courage to express their reverence and perplexity and excite ment for those ideas than when they entered. I’m comforted when I hear the words of a current St. John’s student, Simon Tajiri, and to know that they echo my thoughts exactly: “I’m pretty sure that I’ll spend my life creating, whether it be writing, music, whatever. I don’t know if it’ll be any good at all, or if people will want to hear what I have to say. But I want to be responsible about it. I want to make sure I’m hstening to the conversation before I jump in. I want to be honest about what I’m thinking and I want to be disciplined enough to be loyal to my beliefs... I don’t want to create more dogma. I just want to be honest and I want to be able to tell when what I’m saying is real. Maybe St. John’s can help me do that. Here’s hoping, anyway.” ♦ St. John’s may provide an ideal education FOR AN ASPIRING WRITER, SAYS KeA WiLSON (A09), BUT EVEN THE MOST DEDICATED ARTISTS FIND DIFFICULTY BALANCING CREATIVITY WITH THE Program. {The College. St. John’s College • Summer 2008 } �30 {Bibliofile} The End__________________________ Completing The End was a io-year quest FOR Salvatore Scibona (SF97), who drew on HIS experiences at St. John’s for scenes in Salvatore Scibona (SF97) Graywolf Press, 2008 HIS NOVEL. BY Rosemary Harty Salvatore Scibona’s first novel begins on the Feast of the Assumption, in the fictional Italian enclave of Elephant Park in Cleveland, with Rocco, the baker: He wasfivefeet one inch tall in street shoes, bearlike in his round andjowlyface, hulking in his chest and shoulders, nearly just as stout around the middle, but hollow in the hips, and lacking aproper can to sit on (though he was hardly ever known to sit), and wee at the ankles, and girlish at his tiny feet, a man in the shape ofa lightbulb. Having devoted himself to work, Rocco can’t grasp the latest piece of bad news in his sad life. Confused and heartbroken, he finds himself at Niagara Falls, confronting a deceiver in the guise of an ice cream man and learning the ultimate truth about his fife. The novel ends with the memories of Costanza Marini, a widow who runs an illicit but profitable business in her Elephant Park home. Mrs. Marini harbors a fierce but oppressive love for those she cares about, rich memories from her youth and marriage, and persistent demons: Fouryears into her widowhood, Satan visited her in her garden. She was on her knees, yanking the quack grass out ofthe spinach. Iridescentflies dappled the carcass ofa bass in thefurrow. “Egoist, ’’said the tempter. “Despair!” To despair is a sin. But, true enough, she had no hope. She could not remember having hoped. “Die! ” said the Devil. Rocco, Mrs. Marini, and many other char acters, from a menacing jeweler to a restless and intelUgent young man named Ciccio, had been hvingwith Scibona for a third of his life as he worked on his novel. The End. The characters and the world he created for them became so real that he was bereft at leaving them behind when he completed the novel, published in May. He came to think of them as individuals with their own will, an understanding that ultimately made it easier for him to write. “In the last few years, I went from thinking of myself as being the characters’ parent, to being their peer, to finally being their child,” Scibona says. “I respected them as elders.” Throughout the novel, Scibona changes the point-of-view and plays with time, some times retreating to the past of one character and at other times abruptly shifting back to another character in the present day, which in the novel is r953. To write genuine char acters and speak genuinely for them means “cultivating a human relationship with someone who’s not really there,” Scibona explains. Mrs. Marini, for example, can be “severe, judgmental and nasty,” Scibona says, but she’s also extraordinary, and he grew to love her for her independent spirit and generosity. A third-generation Italian American, Scibona grew up in the suburbs, but he {The College- St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } spent a great deal of time with his grandpar ents and enjoyed hearing about the old days in their old neighborhoods. Their stories inspired him to create Elephant Park, and he dedicated his novel to them. “I ate up their pasts,” Scibona says. “I felt as though the suburb I grew up in was such a culturally vacuous place, and the neighborhoods where they grew up in Cleveland seemed full, vibrant, awake.” After graduating from St. John’s, Scibona went to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he earned a Master of Fine Arts degree. There he learned to develop a writing habit to complement the reading habit he formed at St. John’s. “St. John’s was the perfect place for me, and I miss it every day. Rut at the Writers’ Workshop I finally made up my mind that-out of all the many options St. John’s allowed me to entertain-I wanted to write novels. I didn’t want to do anything else with my time, and I had to make aU my other work and financial decisions accordingly.” Scibona won a Fulbright Scholarship to study in Italy (where he worked on his Italian and conducted research for his novel); held fellowships at the prestigious artists’ colonies at Yaddo and MacDoweU; and taught writing at Iowa, Harvard Summer School, and Boston University. He won the Pushcart Prize for his short story “Prairie” in aooo. It was pubhshed in The Pushcart Book ofShort Stories: The Best Storiesfrom a Quarter-Century ofthe Push cart Prize. “The Platform,” a short story that later became a chapter in The End, was selected for pubheation in the Best New American Voices in 2004. Since 2004, he’s been the writing coordinator at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Mass., a part-time job that allows him time to write. His body of work is relatively small, Scibona says, because for 10 years, he devoted himself to the novel, which began to form in his mind while he was a student at St. John’s. The first half-dozen drafts went into the trash, Scibona says, as he struggled to find an authentic voice. “I learned how to write by writing this book,” he says. “I wrote longhand, then typed what I had onto �{Bibliofile} a manual typewriter, then marked it up with pencil, and retyped, over and over, trying to get the sentences to sound the way I wanted them. All of the other changes-to plot, to character, to the book’s ideas-came out through revision of the sentences.” St. John’s was an indispensable experi ence for Scibona, and he creates a similar experience for his character Ciccio in the form of a rigorous Jesuit school for boys. Ciccio endures oral examinations that are very much patterned on orals at St. John’s, fielding questions that are “straight out of sophomore year.” Scibona includes concepts from Aristotle, Aquinas, and Kierkegaard in Ciccio’s dialogues with his teacher, a dying priest. “The book tries to express its ideas as much as possible in action and in things. But the boys’ school resembles St. John’s because I needed a way to briefly ask certain Johnnie questions in an overt way,” Scibona says. Scibona’s girlfriend, Emily Shelton, came up with the title The End. (He had briefly considered somehow using “being-at-workstaying-itself,” from Annapohs tutor Joe Sachs’s translation of entelecheia, but even tually decided it would be “kind of absurdly and laughably overblown.”) The title he settled on reflects a main premise of his story: that each fife is a purpose in itself, each fife has an ultimate end. “It’s the telos end,” he says. “Hope fully, if our fives have meaning, then they’re culminating, not just stopping. When we die, it’s not like someone just pulled the plug-your end has meaning in the Aristotelian way.” For the stonemason, Enzo, his end is a well-deserved rest. For his son, Ciccio, the end is a departure, a “coming into being of the potential.” As he wrote about Ciccio, Scibona remembered his own departure and begin ning. “I will never forget the first day I got out of my car and walked up the steps in Santa Fe-I thought, ‘now I’m a real person.’ That’s what St. John’s meant to me,” he says. Everything Beautiful in the World Lisa Levchuk, SFGI05, EC06 Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008 BY Deborah Spiegelman A novel’s journey from inspiration to fruition can find a short cut or meander for years, and in the case of Lisa Levchuk (SFGI05, EC06), the direct path finally was 3^ Studying classic works of the East helped Lisa Levchuck (SFGI05, EC06) finish her first novel. revealed in the Bhagavad-Gita. Freed from focusing on the result. Levchuck was inspired through the Eastern Classics program to complete Everything Beautiful in the World, which will be published this fall by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Fifteen years in the making, Lisa’s debut novel began as a short story in her MFA program at the University of Massachusetts. During her thesis defense, she was told that it could be something longer. Degree in hand. Levchuck decided to settle in Massa chusetts and by 1993 was teaching English full time. Meanwhile, the short story stubbornly refused to take on the shape of a novel. Looking for a break from teachingLevchuck admits to a penchant for accumu lating degrees-she decided to apply to the St. John’s Graduate Institute. After completing the Liberal Arts program, she was drawn to Eastern Classics. “I’d been working on the book on and off... and I was blocked up with expectations of what would happen if I ever finished,” Levchuck remembers. “Reading Krishna’s words to Arjuna in the Bhagavad-Gita helped me to understand that anticipating outcomes is really deadly to the creative process,” she says. “I wish I could return to that mindset now. It’s proven to be quite elusive.” Studying Sanskrit also played a supportive role. “Doing Sanskrit taught me focus,” Levchuck recalls. After sitting in the library for hours with her Sanskrit dictionary, writing her own book felt fike a pleasant distraction. By the time she left {The College- St. John’s College • Summer 2008 } St. John’s, Levchuck had the lion’s share of her novel completed. Everything Beautiful in the World is set in New Jersey, where Levchuck grew up in the early 1980s, a time “closer to what I remember [about high school],” she explains. It is the story of 17-year-old Edna dealing simultaneously with a gravely ill mother and with her own relationship with a teacher. According to advance copy from the publisher, Edna figures that “the only good thing about having a mother with cancer is that people are willing to let [her] get away with pretty much anything.... But there’s one thing Edna’s fairly certain even she can’t get away with-her burgeoning romance with Mr. Howland, her fourth period Ceramics teacher.” While broaching a sensitive subject, the book “is more about the relationship between two people who both suffer in the end,” Levchuck summarizes. “And it is funny, too,” she adds, suggesting that even serious subjects can be examined through the lens of levity. While Levchuck claims that the idea for the story “just came to her,” she also acknowledges having been interested for a long time in issues facing adolescent girls. As the novel took shape. Levchuck shared sections with a few of her creative writing students at the Williston Northampton School, where she has taught for 10 years. “They made really great comments about making it more realistic to high school.” In the classroom, she shares both the pleasures and the frustrations of writing. Not infre quently a story resists the telling. “Some times, you just can’t know at 17 years old [what someone will achieve]... It doesn’t mean that someone can’t tell the story later,” she reasons, keenly aware of her own journey. Reflecting on her summers in Santa Fe, Levchuck credits the Graduate Institute with not only making her a better teacher, but also changing her approach to peda gogy. “My emphasis as a teacher shifted from talking to listening and responding,” she says, admiring the way her St. John’s tutors would approach ostensibly familiar texts “always with a sense that each discus sion might turn up something new.” �{Alumni Profile} 3a The Kid Who Ran Away With The Circus Buddy Mondlock (A82) BY Cathi Dunn MacRae f you listen to legendary folksingers -particularly Peter, Paul & Mary and Art Garfunkel-you may have been caught in the net of a spell binding song called “The Kid,” a contemporary classic written by Buddy Mondlock (A82). I I’m the kid who ran away with the circus Now I’m watering elephants If you were on the Annapolis campus in 1978 or 1979, Mondlock might have been sitting next to you in freshman or sopho more seminar. You couldn’t have missed the long-haired, blue-eyed, soft-spoken Mondlock playing guitar on the Quad, but even he couldn’t have imagined then the success he would later find as a musician and songwriter. Alumni who made it back to Annapolis for Homecoming in 2007 were treated to a concert of original music by Mondlockpoetic, punch-packing songs relieved by humor as gentle as his voice. Introducing his fifth album, The Edge of the Worldwinner of the Indie Acoustic Project’s Best Album in 2007 by a male singer-songwriter -Mondlock sang in the Great Hall about skin, mud, and the breakup of a marriage, ending with the affirming “I Count You My Friend.” Mondlock’s music features dramatic lyrics, entrancing melodies, and intricate guitar. “The Cats of the Colosseum” is hypnotic, with Roman cats “older than the ruins.” A sprightly dance down “Magnolia Street” transforms “a funk/Going ’round and ’round with thoughts you already thunk.” Mysterious “New Jersey Sunset” evokes uneasy flashes of “The Sopranos.” He first recorded his signature song, “The Kid,” in 1987 on his debut album. On the Line. David Wilcox gave it further exposure on his 1989 album. After Mond lock recorded it again on his self-titled 1994 album, Peter, Paul & Mary included it on their 1995 Lifelines album and then invited Mondlock to sing it with them in their 1996 TV special. It won the 1996 Kerrviffe Music Award for Song of the Year. Seeing it “headed for the canon of folk songs,” Richard Shindell, Lucy Kaplansky and Dar Williams chose it for their rggB Cry Cry Cry album. Mondlock recorded it again with Art Garfunkel in 2002. Mondlock admits that he’s “the kid” whose circus is “this life as a folksinger/songwriter/troubadour. It’s a romantic notion to be traveling around as a professional musician, but in real life it has its ups and downs.” Is it scary without a net? He laughs. “Itwasn’t scary when I was younger. It’s scarier now! It’s been a mostly happy and rewarding life so far. Even though ‘The Kid’ has never been a big radio hit, people in the folk world have run across it, which means a lot to me.” Growing up in Park Forest, Illinois, Mondlock heard about St. John’s College from a neighbor. “The history of Western thought seemed so fascinating,” he says. “Part of my goal in going to college was to figure out what I wanted to do in my life. St. John’s seemed like a natural place to start.” Bonding with fellow Febbies, he was “into everything going on in my freshman year, Aristotle and Homer and all that really chewy stuff.” As a sophomore, he found the Romans and Aquinas “a lot dryer” than the Greeks, so he spent more time with his guitar. He had been playing since he was 10 years old, when he wrote his first song. After listening to Simon & Garfunkel and the Beatles and harmonizing with his sisters on Crosby, Stills, & Nash songs, songwriting seriously snagged him at 16. Writing songs and performing ARE “inseparable” FOR BUDDY Mondlock (A8a), who has recorded albums with legends INCLUDING Art Garfunkel. {The College . St. John’s College . Summer 2008 } �33 {Alumni Profile} ""My [songwriting] workshops reflect what we were doing [at]St. Johns. ” Buddy Mondlock (aSs) Back home for the summer of 1979, Mondlock was encouraged by his musician cousin Ray to play open stages at a folk club, the Earl of Old Town in Chicago. Instead of returning to St. John’s, he “jumped into the music with both feet.” When he was 21, Mondlock opened a New Year’s Eve show for folk icon Steve Goodman. “Steve was a big influence on my style and one of the best performers I’ve ever seen. He had this impish light dancing in his eyes; he could totally capti vate an audience. Getting to open for him at such an early stage in my career was a real validation.” Mondlock’s own “No Choice” appears in the CD of songs inspired by Goodman that accompanies the recent biography, Steve Goodman: Facing the Music by Clay Eals. “No Choice” also launched Mondlock’s career. Influential songwriter Guy Clark, who hosted the open stage at the Kerrville Folk Festival in Texas, reports: “This kid in a bathing suit walked up and played ‘No Choice’ to an audience of 30 to 40 people. By the time he got to the second verse, he had 200 people singing along with him. He blew me away! ” “Guy walked straight over to me after ward,” says Mondlock, “and asked for a tape of the song. I gave him the tape and didn’t expect anything more. A couple weeks later, I got this phone message: ‘This is Guy Clark and I hke the songs. We’ll see if we can get you into the music business.’ I’m doing back flips in the kitchen!” Clark’s recommendation “couldn’t have been a better calling card,” says Mondlock. “Guy Clark says listen and people listen.” Among those who heard was Bob Doyle from ASC AP, a performing rights organi zation. “Bob invited me to stay in his spare room in Nashville, and I thought, wow. I’m off!” Mondlock won Kerrville’s 1987 New Folk Competition for Emerging Song writers and released his first album. As a Nashville staff writer, he received “a draw every month, just enough to live on without having to work at 7-11. It was an advance against royalties I might make.” Collaborating with other songwriters, “you make appointments and get out your notebooks and trade ideas back and forth.” One collaborator was “a fellow from Oklahoma named Garth Brooks. We wrote several songs together.” When Brooks became a country mega-star, he recorded one of those songs, “Every Now and Then,” on his 1992 album. The Chase, which sold about eight million copies. Mondlock’s share of royalties amounted to “what a good dentist would make over a couple years.” When Mondlock played at Nashville’s Bluebird Cafe, Janis Ian turned up in the front row; they ended up writing songs together. “I brought Janis this raw stuff from sitting up in one of the writer’s rooms at EMI, looking out the window writing down images: ‘Just the pattern of sunlight on a building, just a flash in a window I was passing.’” Wondering where this haunted story was taking place, “we kicked names around: Cincinnati, Schenectady. One of us said Amsterdam.” His images became the first verse of “Amsterdam,” which appears on the Buddy Mondlock album and Ian’s album, Billie’s Bones. Ian played “Amsterdam” for her friend Joan Baez, who promptly recorded it herself. Mondlock’s most intensive collaboration began in 1999 when producer Billy Mann invited him to make an album with Art Garfunkel and Maia Sharp. “The chance to work with Art was pretty exciting,” says Mondlock. “We were both a little intimi dated because the songwriting process was new territory for Art.” Mondlock found the germ of their first song, “Perfect Moment,” in a poem in Garfunkel’s book, Stillwater. The album. Everything Waits to Be Noticed, features Garfunkel, Mondlock, and Sharp performing songs written together and with others. Mondlock’s and Garfunkel’s high tenor voices sing in unison for a double-tracked effect; Sharp’s harmonies weave around them. After the album was released in 2002, the trio toured 25 U.S. cities followed by a month in Europe, including a thrilling appearance at the Royal Albert Hall. Mondlock drives all over the countryand Europe-performing in folk clubs, house concerts, and festivals. He also presents songwriting workshops. “Writing {The College- a song is like writing a short story or character study. My songwriting work shops reflect what we were doing at St. John’s seminar: asking questions and not taking things for granted; looking deep into the words that are appearing in front of us; thinking things through logically and then emotionally; and looking at art in all the ways that it can impact us.” In Mondlock’s musical epics, Johnnies will discover an evolutionary song as well as cameos by Newton and Einstein. How does the writer in Mondlock interact with the performer? “Before I was writing songs,” he says, “I was playing music and loving it. But then the writing became such an important part of my art. To me, they’re inseparable. To write a song is to want to sing it, too.” St. John’s College • Summer 2008 } For more on Buddy Mondlock, visit: WWW. buddymondlock. com. Discography: On the Line. 1987. (Due back in print.) Buddy Mondlock. Doyle/Lewis Productions, Inc., 1995 and 2007. Poetic Justice. Sparking Gap, 1998 and 2007. Everything Waits to Be Noticed. Manhattan Records, 2002. The Edge of the World. Sparking Gap, 2007, �{AlumniNotes} 34 1946 Along with 200 other “last simdvors,” PETER WeISS (class of 1946) went to Vienna in May at the invitation of an organization sponsored by the Austrian government, which has put 40,000 high school and university students in touch with people who survived the camps or had to flee Austria after the Anschluss: “I visited both the high school I attended from 1935 to 1938 and the one to which I was expelled for reasons of ‘racial purity.’ Got my grades, could have been better. Meeting in Parhament on the theme ‘I was never a child.’ Gave human rights lecture at the faculty of law. Interesting but unsettling experience.” 1949 Allan Hoffman continues to be involved with the college: “I’m an honorary member of the Board of Visitors and Governors of the College and an emeritus member of the Alumni Association Board. At BVG meetings, I see Chuck Nelson (class of 1945) and Ray Cave (class of 1948). At N.Y. SJC chapter meetings and seminars, I frequently see JOHN VAN DOREN (class of 1947). I stiU ski and enjoy fishing and swimming. This June Margie and I will spend about four weeks touring Newfoundland by car on our own. We have four grandchildren; they keep us on our toes. We are looking forward to the Class of ’49s 60th reunion in the fall of 2009 in Annapolis. If any of you, dear friends, who read this have any ideas on how to make this Homecoming as good as possible, please contact me.” 1959 Patience Garretson Schenck wants her classmates to start planning now to attend their 50th reunion in 2009. “Let’s have a great turnout and opportunity to see classmates we haven’t seen in many years.” Immense Delight Vowels (A73) shares her “immense delight at being granted tenure at Washington College, and being promoted to associate professor. I teach Management Information Systems in the Department of Business Management, and I love being part of a wonderful liberal arts community while being able to share what I’ve learned in the world of industry. It has been a great joy to embark on this second career, and I am looking forward to many, many years of teaching.” usan A. 1965 Bruce Preston writes: “A couple of years ago I began to take classes at the National Cathedral, and evidently as a consequence, I was baptized this past Easter. I have just signed up for a four-year program given by the University of the South School of Theology. The program is called Education for Ministry and my motives, while not entirely clear to me, may have something to do with reconsidering questions raised by Kyle Smith (and others) in sophomore seminar: the garden, the serpent and the apple. In any event, this may keep me out of trouble as I begin to wind down my architectural practice and move into semi-retirement. I am also writing when I find the time, and I have a httle personaf essay coming out in the Washington Post in August.” 1966 Christopher Hodgkin has two new grandchildren to celebrate. “My identical twin daughters, having married identical twins, have within the pastyear each given us a wonderful grandson to enjoy. With both daughters living next door to us, we are able to see (andbabysit!) the grandchildren every day. I am continuing to slide out of my law practice into full-time retirement. Should be there within a year or two!” Sylvia Shapiro is retired and hving in Mexico: “My husband, Paul, and I have a lovely house with a huge yard and swimming pool with solar heat. We could not even afford an apartment in California for the rent we pay. I volunteered at the Animal Shelter for three years, acquiring five dogs. Now I am looking for more intellectual stimulation, playing Scrabble by S e-mail and applying for jobs that might interest me enough to return to California.” moved from an active retirement to an even more active semiretirement. 1967 1969 Karen Shaven is a doctoral Mike Anthony (A) writes: student in Educational Leadership for Changing Populations at the College of Notre Dame in Maryland. She passed her compre hensive exams and is working on her dissertation. In a moment of insanity, she was looking for another challenge, something completely different from her assessment work in beginning reading at the Maryland State Department of Education, so she joined the firm of Keffer Wdhams Realty in Baltimore. If you are thinking of buying, seUing, or investing, contact her. If she can’t help you, she can find an agent in your area who can! “On June i, my daughter, Efspeth Anthony, wilf be graduated from Linfield College/Good Samaritan Hospital in Portland, Oregon, with a BS in Nursing. In July, Beth will start work in the ICU at Salem Hospital.” 1968 Byron Wall (A) writes: “I recently completed my term as Master of Norman Bethune College at York University in Toronto and am now enjoying the reward of a sabbatical at Cambridge University. When I return in the fall, I will take up a new position as coordinator of the new Science and Technology Studies Program at York. Last year I was also promoted to senior lecturer in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. This August, my son Alex (A03) will marry Kristin Ah in Toronto.” W. R. Alhury (A) writes: After retiring from full-time employment at the University of New England in Armidale, NSW, Australia, at the end of 2004,1 was able to enjoy a few years devoted entirely to research, some consulting work and family responsibilities. At the end of 2007, however, I was appointed Chief University Ombudsman at UNE, giving me a new range of duties to fit in with my previous activities; so I have now {The College. Sf. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 ) 1970 Rabbi Yehoshua (Jeff) Friedman (A) sends news from Israel: “My wife, Janet, and I just celebrated our sixth wedding out of eight children. We have 15 grandchildren, aU hving here in Israel. I teach at Yeshivat Ma’ale Efraim in Israel’s Jordan Valley. Anyone planning a visit to Israel or otherwise interested in �{AlumniNotes} conversation can contact me by e-mail at friedyoy® netvision.net.il, U.S. phone 216-455-0500 or Israel local phone oa-994-1965. Discussions of the Athens and Jerusalem question are especially welcome.” Les Margulis (A) writes: “I am semi-retired now, which means I consult rather than have a full-time job working for someone. Just as a reminder, I am in advertising and for the last three years hved in Kiev, Ukraine and Moscow, Russia. I am now back home in Sydney where the weather is a bit better. I have been lucky as far as assignments go. I spent two months in Johannesburg (scariest place I ever lived-everyone lives with violence every day of their hves). Then I worked in Israel for a month. I am going to Dubai for a month and America for several months. So I am keeping busy and trying to stay out of trouble. I hope the rest of the classmates are all good and I assume that most are looking at retirement jobs.” For the last several years, HUDI Podolsky (SF) has been teaching at San Jose State University in a master’s program for teachers who are seeking to become adminis trators and other types of educational leaders: “I also work with high schools that are engaged in restructuring into smaller learning communities. I volunteer with a non-profit school for children with disabUities, and I tutor in a wonderful middle-school reading program. After a long career in high tech. I’m back where I’m happiest-in education. My beloved husband, Joe Podolsky, died of lung cancer in July 2007.” 1972 Barbara Rogan (A72, graduated from Santa Fe in ’73) invites fellow alumni to visit her brand new Web sites and say heUo. Her home site, www.barbararogan.com, features her work as a writer, with lots of information on her eight novels and other books, a recently revised bio (why should politicians be the only ones who get to revise their pasts?), and “in the writers’ lounge, lots of useful information for published or aspiring writers, based on my checkered career in pubhshing as an agent, editor, and writer. I’ve also created a new site that focuses on my teaching and editing work: www.nextlevelworkshop.com.” 1973 Michael Aaron (SF) has been promoted to the role of IBM Director of Banking and Financial Markets, Asia-Pacific. In this role, Michael is responsible for the Banking and Financial Markets Industry vertical and joins the IBM executive team. Michael continues to hve in Sydney, Australia, with his wife, Danuta, and his two sons, Daniel and David. Richard Cohen (SF) has been a journalist for more than soyears and is currently the editor of two publications in the healthcare field: Healthcare Marketing Report and Physician Referral & Telephone Triage Times', and one in higher education: Admissions Marketing Report. “I am also the founder and chairman of our nation’s principal annual conference for healthcare call center managers. I have used St. John’s educational principles to great advantage both in journahsm and in conference planning. I hve in Decatur, Georgia, am married to a Unitarian-Universahst minister, and have a son, Ben, graduating college this year with majors in film and history.” Jon Ferrier (A) retired from the Family Court a lit tle over a year ago. “Sadly, I only lasted a couple months as a gentleman of leisure before I flunked my retirement and went back to work, part time, practicing domestic relations law with a firm here. It’s been a good move for all, and my long-suffering spouse is particularly pleased with the resumption of my productive life, given that she has a few years to go before she takes a crack at ‘retiring.’ I was starting to fear I’d have to push her out the door to continue working, had this new position not come along. It’s been an adjustment, the sometimes amusing spectacle of an old dog trying to learn new tricks, but I’m deeply grateful for the opportunity to continue being of use. For those of my fellow alums burdened with the disturbing memory of my first novel, “My Long, Hard Journey to Enhghtenment,” the encouraging news is that you must wait a bit longer for the sequel! One of these days. I’ll get around to it, however, so take appropriate precautions. For now, my only writing will remain the oxymoronic ‘legal writing.’ Can it be only 35 years since we met Walter Cronkite’s mother at graduation? Reminds me of sophomore seminar with St. Augustine on time: when after about five minutes of preliminary silence, the seminar leader (forgotten who) finally remarked, ‘Time passes.’ The ever-sublime Fred Mattis (A73) replied: ‘Does it?’ That turned out to be the opening question that evening, and a good one to ask ourselves. From my perspective, the answer is yes! And the only real question is, ‘how did it pass so quickly?’ ” 1974 Karen Cook (SF) writes: “I graduated May 10 from the University of Alabama with my PhD in Communication and Information Sciences. My research was a history of the Mississippi Freedom Libraries, established by civil rights activists during the 1960s. Currently I am employed as the government documents librarian at the University of Louisiana at Monroe. My first grandchild, Moushumi Stella Huffman, will be one year old on August 15. (I could go on and on about my six children and daughters-in-law, so I won’t start.)” {The College. St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } 35 “How does anyone ever get anything done before retirement?” wonders MARGARET SanSOM (SFGI). “I have been so busy since retiring in June 2004 that I can scarcely believe I ever had time to work.” She has been traveling, taking courses, and starting a foundation, the Friends of Central High School, to award scholarships to students who have been out of school for a few years and have discovered the desire and/or necessity for further education/training to reali2e their dreams. “Central High is an alternative high school (where I taught for 34 of the 38 years of my teaching career) for those students who either do not want or are not allowed to remain in the regular high school program; therefore, many either do not graduate or do not continue their education beyond high school. Many finally find out that they do not want to remain in a dead-end job, but they often have no clue how to obtain assistance to become a barber, welder, chef, nurse, or whatever. This foundation will not only provide scholarship money but also aid in obtaining additional funding. It’s been exciting to finally realize a dream that I held for a number of years. We are in the beginning stages of fundraising and will kick into high gear this summer.” 1975 Mary and Peter Kniaz (both A) continue to live in Hopkinton, right outside of Boston. “Three of our children are at, or have graduated from Thomas More College in Merrimack, N.H.,” Peterwrites. “Thomas More College has a traditional liberal arts program somewhat similar to the St. John’s program.” After spending many years as a director of information technology, Peter is now working as a business development manager for a distri bution company in New England. “Mary continues to homeschool our younger two children.” �36 {Alumni Profile} Sting Operation Melanie Kirby (Sb'gy) Raises Gentle Bees BY Deborah Spiegelman queen bees) to other beekeepers and eing persistent, inquisitive, and open to various perspectives is are happy to share their expertise. a lesson from St. John’s that Concentrating less on honey produc tion and more on the propagation of apphes to many things in life, quality genetics, Kirby and Spitzig are says Melanie Kirby (SF97). It’s involved in a niche within a niche: especially important in her sustainable queen-bee rearing and work breeding productive and hardy queen beekeeping management techniques. bees, avocation she discovered through her Sustainability in the beekeeping work as a Peace Corps volunteer. Kirby joined the Corps after graduating industry means, among other things, from St. John’s, pursuing her grade-school avoiding use of commercial chemical dream and the path inspired by her mother’s pharmaceuticals, making sure that own journey in the late 1960s. “I recall her honeybees are placed in safe (organi sharing her stories fondly and I thought I cally certified) zones, and achieving would like to serve my country (without healthy bees through nature’s carrying a weapon) and immerse myself in a “survival of the fittest” dictum. different culture,” Kirby says. Her assign “Queen bees are the heart of their ment; agricultural sector beekeeping exten hives,” Kirby says. “Without them, sion volunteer, in Calle Mil, Guaira, there is no colony.” Paraguay. Assisted by a grant from Western “I was probably one of a few who penciled Sustainable Agriculture Research in [on the Peace Corps apphcation] that they Education for the Southwest Survivor wouldn’t mind working with stinging Queen Bee Project, Spitzig and Kirby insects,” she guesses. After her Peace Corps participate in a rigorous breeding stint ended, Kirby learned more about program to produce queen bees that commercial beekeeping and breeding thrive in the diverse, challenging through subsequent jobs with companies on microclimates of the Rocky Mountain the Big Island of Hawaii and in Florida. The regions. Their business caters to clients of aU “bees found me,” she says. “I also found that types-from amateur to professional-who the experience of keeping bees is profound.” have in common “the strange capacity to Zia Queenbee Co.-the name honoring her work with stinging insects” and who benefit pueblo (Tortugas) and southern New from the bees’ exceptional pollinating Mexican heritage-is based in Dixon, N.M. ability, whether the result is a glorious Partner Mark Spitzig established sister garden or robust crops. company Superior Honey Farms on Beekeepers require freshly mated queens Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. They sell their on a regular basis. Kirby and her partner hardy and productive bees (Rocky Mountain share stock with other experienced Reinas and Great Lakes Sooper Yooper beekeepers, hoping to perpetuate “a quality genetic pool of honeybees chosen by beekeepers for beekeepers.” They also collabo rate with local research institu tions, community organiza tions, and others to develop B Top: Melanie Kirby breeds HARDY queen bees AT A TIME WHEN honeybees ARE ENDAN GERED. Bottom: Honeybees are POLITE AND gentle, SAYS KiRBY, WHO LEARNED HER PROFESSION AS A Peace Corps volunteer in Paraguay. {The Cxj.l lege • St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } sustainable, environmentally responsible projects and to inform people about the need to promote habitats for these beneficial polli nators. Honeybees originated in Europe, and today present as orange, black, eggplant, or a mix of browns, reds, and grays-not, Kirby says, the black-and-yeUow cartoon image which more accurately depicts yellow jackets or hornets. Worker bees are all female. And the worst enemies to honeybees, she says, are human beings. “Honeybees are quite polite creatures,” she explains. Kirby prides herself on raising gentle queens, which involves painstaking attention to behavior and other traits. Because keeping aggressive honeybees can be a liability and requires specialized management, gentle bees “who respond to Mother Nature’s dynamic interface are in high demand,” she says. For Kirby, beekeeping is a humbling profession. “It keeps me constantly yearning to learn more,” she says. “My mind repeat edly succumbs to the addictive Johnny-esque inquiries of‘why and what does that mean?’ The mystery is the allure.” �{AlumniNotes} K.C. Victor (A), an executive recruiter for lawyers in Los Angeles (www.victorls.com), is delighted to report that her good friend Ed Bronfin (SF78) has been appointed District Court Judge for the Second Judicial District of Colorado (the City and County of Denver), effective July i, 2008. 1976 Rick Lightburn (SF) has become a docent for the Chicago Architecture Foundation, giving tours on the “historic” and “modern” skyscrapers in downtown Chicago. Adam Wasserman (A) began working last March on the National Security Council’s staff in Iraq. Dinah Wells (A) has a solo art show running from June 29-July 23 in Stony Creek, Conn. The 33 paintings in the show are all watercolor insects. 1979 Marie Toler Raney (A) and Jon Raney (A74) “are getting close to our first offshore voyage in our intrepid steel sloop, Phoenix. Our plan is to hoist the sails June 16 in Washington state and arrive in Hilo, Big Island, Hawaii, in early July. We would spend a month saihng amongst the islands and then return to Washington in August. We are being joined on the outbound voyage by two good friends and able sailors: CHUCK Hurt (A79), who has quite a bit of offshore experience single-handing his sailboat based in Florida, and Warren Buck, who has done many voyages in the Atlantic tropical waters. More information can be found at our Web site, www.svphoenix.net.” 1980 This year the New York Public Library is commemorating the quadricentennial of the birth of the poet John Milton with a small but artful exhibition. WILLIAM Moeck (A) was responsible for putting together a series of free lectures on various Milton-related topics-blindness, heresy, Goethe, and Norman Mailer, to name just a few. More information is available at www.nypl.org/research/ calendar/class/hssl/talks.cfm. 1981 Buffy Bowser (A), now the Rev. Elizabeth Affsprung, is serving as pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Sunbury, Penn., an hour up the Susquehanna River from Harrisburg. Husband Eric is a psychologist in the counsehng center at Bloomsburg University. Their boys, Joe and Daniel, are into football and blacksmithing respectively, with acoustic and bass guitar thrown in. She writes: “Class of 81: please mark your calendars for Thanks givingweekend, come to our hometown of Lewisburg, and join us for a big 50th birthday party! ” Joshua Berlow (SF) is now a realtor in Baltimore! “Ifyou want to buy a house in Baltimore, please e-mail romarkin@gmail.com or call 443-858-5527. I’m with City Life Realty on The Avenue in Hampden. My real estate Web page is atwww.joshuaberlow.com/ real.htm. I’m also getting back into acting and recently appeared in a Heinz Ketchup commercial. My acting resume, headshot, and some chps (including the Heinz commercial) can be seen online at www.joshuaberlow.com/actor.htm. If there are Johnnies skilled in Web design who can suggest improvements to my Web site, I’d hke to hear from them. My daughter Meira is three and a half. Her favorite philosophers include Dora the Explorer, Spongebob Squarepants, and Hannah Montana.” Marilynn Smith (SFGI) retired from pubhc school teaching in 2002, but taught Enghsh part time at the community college in Palm Desert, Calif., for three more years. “In July 2005,1 sold my house in California and moved to Spring, Texas, about a mile from where my daughter and her family live. It’s much more interesting and fun to be here to watch three of my grandchildren grow up. They were in kindergarten, 4th grade and 7th grade when I moved here, and it’s wonderful to attend their field days, hoedowns, concerts, baseball games, gymnastics practices, etc. I’m stiU teaching-my grandchildren, tutoring at my church, and two online tutoring sites.” 1982 Phillip E. Bovender (A) writes: “Despite the divine retribution I deserve for my own student mischief (perhaps as a result of it), I have become a clinical instructor in Adult Health at the University of Maryland School of Nursing in Baltimore. A perpetual student, I am following the education track for an MS in Health Services Leadership and Management. I just concluded 18 years at bedside in the multi-trauma ICU at Shock Trauma in Baltimore and look forward to being a teaching assistant in addition to being a student/ instructor this fall. My nephew, born my freshman year, just finished his MBA at Duke.” John (SF) and Elizabeth (SF84) Bush of Blacksburg, Va., having nothing major to report to fellow Johnnies and friends. Summer gardening and fly fishing are the two biggest things going on, as well as some camping and hiking in the {The College -St. John’s College . Summer stooS } 37 Blue Ridge Mountains. John is planning an addition to the house on 203 Wharton Street and also is trying to use his grill as often as possible. Elizabeth is hoping to be able attend the reunion this fall in Santa Fe and also visit with son Salem, who fives in Vail. “Warm wishes and summer fight.” Jonathan Edelman (A) has reason to celebrate: “I recently passed my PhD Qualification Exam in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford! Now I can go on to research and write my dissertation. My work goes under the title: The Agency ofRepresentation in Engineering Design. My wife, Annie, has found work in the Bay area as both a consultant and an actress. Our son Liam is nearly three years old and is a mean pirate! I would love to hear from you guys! You can e-mail me at: edelman2@stanf0rd.edu.” Peter McClard (SF) writes: “I’m currently running three businesses: Gluon.com, CaptureWorks.com, and TechneMedia.com, and raising my darling children: Sohan, 8, and Karina, 6, with my lovely Russian wife, Valeriya, in New Jersey. I still love my guitar(s) and I have an art persona which is viewable at www.tracymac.biz. So thanks, St. John’s, for fostering my inner Renaissance man! Now let’s hope our nation can rebirth itself to a greener, nicer, smarter, and more hopeful future. Love to all my actual and potential friends! pm@gluon.com.” 1984 Peter Green (A) is in New York where he’s a real estate editor for Bloomberg News, watching the U.S. housing market crash and burn, living la vida local, and learning Spanish. MarkNiedermier (A) recently completed his second year as head of school at Pacific Northern �{Alumni Notes} 38 Academy in Anchorage, Alaska. After serving 15 years as head of school for Friends School of Minnesota in St. Paul, he decided a change was in order and made the move north. His daughter Sophie just completed third grade at the school, and his son Caleb will enter the school’s early kindergarten this fall. His wife Karen is a provider at a pediatric chnic, and together they enjoy the unique mix of urban hving and wilderness access of Alaska’s largest city. integrating profit with social justice and environmental care. “Our daughters, Melissa and Faith, are now teenagers considering their own right livelihoods,” writes Demi. “We’re using our property for permaculture, developing resilience in our local communities, and striving to do good well.” 1986 Renee Bergland, (A), an 1985 Judy Houck (SF) recently earned tenure in the departments of Medical History and Bioethics, History of Science, and Gender and Women’s Studies at the University ofWisconsin, Madison. In 2006, Harvard University Press pubhshed her book Hot and Bothered: Women, Medicine, and Menopause in Modern America. News from Demi (A) and Eric (SF) Rasmussen: Eric finished his undergraduate work at Stanford while getting his MD. He was a Navy physician until 2007, retiring with 25 years of service as Chair of the Department of Medicine at Naval Hospital Bremerton. While in the Navy, he focused on refugees, weapons of mass destruction, and humanitarian assistance, carrying out the Strong Angel series of exercises and demonstrations (www.strongangel.org). He worked in Iraq in 2003, in New Orleans after Katrina, and in Indonesia after the tsunami. Eric is now CEO of InSTEDD (www.instedd.org), a nonprofit sponsored by Google and the Rockefeller Foundation that focuses on global information sharing for urgent pubUc health response. Demi received her MBA in Sustainable Business in 2007 from the Bainbridge Graduate Institute (www.bgiedu.org). BGI is a triple-bottom fine start-up business school near Seattle, intent on changing business for good. She focuses her writing and editing on English professor at Simmons College, published a book this spring: Maria Mitchell and the Sexing ofScience: An Astronomer Among the American Romantics (Beacon Press) tells the story of a forgotten scientific heroine. “I couldn’t have written it without the solid background in history of astronomy that St. John’s gave me,” she writes. Michael Silitch (SF) writes: “After five years in Switzerland, we are back in Chamonix, France, where I run my small mountain guiding company. I guide people skiing and climbing around the Alps and have been developing spring and fall rock-climbing trips on Mediterranean Islands like Kalymnos, Sardinia, and Mallorca. My wife (Dartmouth ’94) and I have two boys now: Anders, 2, and Birken, 4. They are both dabbling in skiing-the younger one to try to keep up with his brother. Chamonix is a nice small town and a great place for the boys and for my business. I take the tram up into the high mountains in the mornings and am usually home for dinner.” 1987 From Michael Smith (A): “In May 20071 graduated summa cum laude from Wesley Theological Seminary, receiving my Master of Divinity degree with a concen tration on Biblical Interpretation. I was appointed to serve the Arkport United Methodist Church in Arkport, N.Y. My wife, Kristen, and I took up residence last summer. We love Arkport, a rural village in the Finger Lakes region ofwestern New York. In September, we added a new member to our family: a dog named Baby. We love to stay in touch with old friends, electronically or in person. I can be reached on the SJC alumni site or on Facebook. My email address is msmith@codefu.com. Blessings to all!” By day, Brett Surprenant (SF) teaches algebra to D.C. pubhc school students. At night, he is the father of three energetic boys, and a husband, and is pursuing a master’s degree from George Washington University in secondary mathematics. 1988 Rowing Champ Rachel Ankeny (SF) moved from Sydney to Adelaide, Australia, at the end of 2006, to take up a ike van Beuren (A75) captured the world position in the history department indoor title for his age group at the World at the University of Adelaide, Indoor Rowing Championships (also known teaching in a gastronomy (food as the CRASH-B Sprints) held at Boston studies) program and continuing University in February. (CRASH-B stands her research in the history/ for “Charles River All Star Has-Beens.”) philosophy of biomedicine and A lifelong rower and former crew team member and assistant bioethics. She was promoted to crew coach, van Beuren covered 2,000 meters in 6 minutes, associate professor of history in 45.1 seconds, on the ergometer. He won the title for the 2008 and also gave birth to a men’s 55-59 lightweight division, coming out on top in a field gorgeous baby boy, Luca De Grazia of II, and listing St. John’s College as his affiliation. Ankeny, in March. She and Luca A denizen of Hartland, Vt,, van Beuren was inspired to give unfortunately will be in London the competition a try as he faced the milestone of his 55th during the class reunion, but she birthday. He began training in May 2007 and put in some sends her best and would be pleased where between two to three million meters on the erg. He to hear from classmates, especially was awarded a golden hammer for his achievement, and he anyone traveling to Australia. Her listed St. John’s College as his affiliation. contact details are available on the For two months every year, van Beuren returns to University of Adelaide Web page. Annapolis to work with his old friend. Athletic Director Leo Pickens (A77), on coaching the St. John’s crew team. Pickens Shirley M. Banks (SF) writes: was mightily impressed with his friend’s dedication to the “I recently earned the credential of challenge. “In doing it by example, he’s helping me give our Certified Sexuality Counselor by rowers a workout,” Pickens told the Valley News, van the American Association of Sex Beuren’s local newspaper. Educators, Counselors, and For those who want to view van Beuren’s victory, the video Therapists. I was also named to the is available on www.youtube.com. M {The College ■ St John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } �{AlumniNotes} executive board of the Emory University President’s Commission on LGBT Concerns and will serve as Co-Chair in the aoog-aoro academic year. Other thrills come from maintaining hiking trails for the Benton MacKaye Trail and American Hiking Society. It has been a pleasure to re-connect with a few Johnnies lately via Facebook.” Ted (A) and Kate (Irvine) DedDENS (A87) are living in Owensboro, Ky. They classically homeschool their four children; Maris (15), Abby (10), Ted (7), and Samuel (whom they welcomed into their family on November ri, 2007) and just opened Tedtoy’s first retail store, Tedtoy: Miniatures, Books, and Toys. The store is a fusion of Ted’s military miniatures (www.tedtoy.com) and their small book business. Boarding House Books. This summer they are celebrating 18 years of Tedtoy Miniatures, almost a decade of homeschoohng, and their 20th wedding anniversary. They’d love to hear from you, so call (370-6894060), e-mail (cmided@aol.com) or visit them on the banks of the Ohio River. Bernard H. Masters (A) writes: “I can report that I left my law firm in Dallas after 17 years and decided to take an in-house position as associate general counsel with a company that moved its international headquarters to Salt Lake City, Utah. I have been here for one year and the family loves the change. I five in Cottonwood Heights and the really important news is that I caught a brown trout in the stream 15 minutes from my front door. I would love to hear from my classmates of 1988, particularly if they are going to be in town. I can be reached through the SJC Web site.” 1989 Burke Gurney (SFGI) and his wife, Deborah, have two children. He completed his PhD in physiology/biochemistry from the University of New Mexico in 3000, and is currently an associate professor in the Physical Therapy Program in the UNM School of Medicine. 1990 David Long (A) writes: “We have had a busy year. After turning around a financially troubled Chicago-based college, I have left my career as a corporate executive to launch Trapped Bee Productions, an independent film company. Back in February, Liz gave birth to our first child, Benjamin. When not filming or changing diapers, I consult for universities and companies seeking to launch new businesses. dblong@trappedbee.com.” David Marquez (SF) has returned to Santa Fe after nearly a decade away. “I am currently studying film editing at the New Mexico Filmmakers Intensive. Where Ufe leads at the conclusion of this five-month program is a mystery at this point, but no matter where I end up-New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Vancouver, or good old Albuquerque-I’ll be happy to be in contact with any of my classmates (most of whom seem to be alive and well on Facebook, by the way).” Christopher Newman (A) is moving to Arlington, Va., this summer. “I will be starting my new job as assistant professor of law at George Mason University School of Law. I will be teaching Intellectual Property and Civil Procedure, and am looking forward to being back within day-trip distance of the AnnapoUs campus.” Joshua Kerievsky (SF) and Tracy Reppert Kerievsky (SF91) welcomed their third daughter, Eva Katherine, on March 30, 3008, in Berkeley. Michelle (Baker) Vest (SF) is happy to say that she and her family are doingvery well: “My husband. Matt, started a video editing company two years ago. Along with working, he is participating in a five-month editing intensive through the NM Film Institute, along with fellow classmate and core-group buddy for three of my four years at St. John’s, David Marquez (SF90). Our son, Wil, turns 3 this summer. He keeps us beyond busy. Thankfully, his energy is contagious.” 1991 39 1993 Jane McManus (A) writes: “I was just named the New York Jets beat writer at The Journal News, meaning I’ll be covering the NFL this season, and I am still working as an adjunct professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. I have also joined a roller derby league, and my alter ego, Leslie E. Visserate, will be competing all summer long. Johnnies in New York/Westchester can e-mail me at janesports@ hotmail.com to check it out or join.” James Lank (A) is now General Counsel of Tesco Corporation, an international oilfield services company based in Houston, Texas. He and his wife, Theresa, have three children. Kemmer Anderson (AGI) John C . Wright (A) has a new published an essay, “Those Tenured Tyrants: How Milton’s Tenure ofKings and Magistrates Influenced Jefferson’s Dedaraiion ofIndependence’' in the book. Milton in France. Last fall at the Milton Conference in Murfreesboro, Tenn., he presented a paper on “How Jefferson Might Have Read Milton’s Lycidasi” He win present a paper on “Gardening by the Book” at the 9th International Milton Conference in London, celebrating Milton’s 400th birthday. novel. Null-A Continuum, in bookstores now. “This book is a sequel to another author’s work: the Golden Age great A.E. van Vogt. His most famous book, now sadly neglected, was World OfNullA, first published in 1943. This book was a seminal attempt to use science fiction as a vehicle for exploring the concepts of the ‘NonAristotelean’ Philosophy (or ‘NuUA’) of Alfred Korzybski, a pioneer in multi-valued logic systems. This book had a profound effect on my youth and the development of my philosophy. It is the book on which I wrote my entrance exam to get into St. John’s. Desiring, as an adult, to write in the background of the most cherished storybook of my childhood, I contacted the Uterary agent representing the estate of van Vogt. He expressed reluctance: he said no pubUsher in the field could handle a new van Vogt book, except for one David Hartwell. It was with infinite pleasure that I told him David Hartwell was my editor. With that happy coincidence, the deal was made. It took over five years of negotiations to hammer out the JonArno Lawson (A) published two books this spring. Im Inside Out: Children’s Poets Discuss Their Work (Walker Books, London), he selected 34 different children’s poets from around the EngUshspeaking world and asked them to write about the origins of one of their poems. A VoweUer’s Bestiary (Porcupine’s Quill, Erin), is a book of hpograms for children. JonArno and his wife are also expecting their third baby in June. continued {The College. St. John’s College ■ Summer zoo8 } �{Alumni Notes} 40 From Human Services to Social Solutions Adrian Bordone (AGIq6) BY Rosemary Harty altimore native Adrian Bordone (AGI96) was eagershows to leave hisas home Popular television such Homi townhave behind when he the cide and The Wire dramatized enrolled in the Graduate city’s problems for a national audience, Institute Fe.how but Bordone could see in forSanta himself social problems such as drug use and unemployment were hurting the city. It was a little ironic, then, that the classic texts Bordone read at St. John’s ultimately led him back to Baltimore, where he would work for seven years in human services before helping to launch a company devoted to helping nonprofits operate more efficiently. Bordone attended the Naval Academy for two years before deciding a military career wasn’t for him. He studied history at the University of Baltimore, where he discovered a desire to read and learn more. “The first seminar I did at St. John’s was on Lucretius, and it was every thing I hoped it would be,” he says. Books such as Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics inspired him to think about justice, citizenship and social engage ment, he says. “I wanted to be a more active citizen.” He transferred to the GI in Annapolis and finished his last semester while working as a teacher for disadvantaged youth. Later, he joined an organization called the Learning Bank, where he developed and implemented coursework and activities designed to foster personal accountabifity and other employ ment-related skills in his students. “It’s unfortunate that in Baltimore, individuals and famihes can be beaten down by the chal lenges they face,” he says. “We were able to show folks a path through which they could move with our assistance to a more sustain able and long-term employment opportu nity.” Bordone left the Learning Bank to help start the Maryland Genter for Arts and Tech nology (MCAT), dedicated to improving training and education for Baltimore’s underemployed residents. Along the way, he reconnected with Steve Butz, a former Adrian Bordone (AGI96) never EXPECTED TO BE A SOFTWARE ENTREPRE NEUR, BUT HIS WORK IN HUMAN SERVICES LED HIM TO A NEW CAREER. B Yspent thefirstyear working in a coat—and loving it. ” Adrian Bordone (AGI96) colleague from the Learning Bank, who told Bordone about his efforts to develop soft ware to help nonprofit agencies better track their efforts and outcomes. Bordone had been trying to do the same thing at MCAT, where he became chief oper ating officer. He supervised six teachers, five case managers, a job developer and fundraisers, and spent much of his time tracking outcomes and crunching numbers for reports and grant applications. Butz and Bordone started out by adapting off-the-shelf software and from there devel oped their “Efforts to Outcome” program, a Web-based application that enables organi zations to measure the effectiveness of their programs. They released their first version in April aooa and today have 25,000 users in 5,500 nonprofit and human service agen cies. Their clients include the Girl Scouts, United Way, the New York City Department {The College. St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } of Education, and Casey Family Services. As vice president, Bordone works with new cfients, customizes the software to their needs, conducts training work shops, writes proposals, manages legal affairs including contracts, responds to requests for proposals, hires and manages staff, and does anything else a small business requires. Starting a new business just when the tech bubble was bursting meant Bordone and his business partner had to work harder to attract funding and prove their business model was viable. They launched Social Solutions in a warehouse that was leaky, windy, had no air-condi tioning, and very httle heat. “I spent the first year working in a coat-and loving it,” he says. “As a small business that was entirely self-funded, we’ve remained lean, and that’s helped us remain close to our chent base. We’ve always been very respectful of the few dollars we have.” Human service agencies typically have small budgets for administration, so the company has to demonstrate that their soft ware will help them serve their clients better. “We’re a tech firm by default, but more importantly, we are a firm that has a social venture,” he says. “Everyone who works with our cfients is a former practitioner of human services, and we understand the work that they do.” Social Solutions now operates in better quarters in an emerging technology center in Baltimore’s Canton neighborhood. In aoo6, the company was named Maryland Incubator Company of the Year, and in 2007, one of 50 incubator companies nationwide. The tough part of Bordone’s job these days is frequent travel, long hours away from his family (his wife, Gatina, and three young children) and building a business with a very lean budget. “I’d love to say that I spend my spare time re-reading my copies of Moby-Dick and the Brothers Karamazov ” he says. “Right now, I work a lot.” �{Alumni Notes} legal details before all parties were satisfied, and, at times, the project seemed dead. I persevered and eventually prevailed. The book was written, sold, and is now pubhshed and distributed. Preliminary reviews have been positive. To write in your favorite author’s background and decide the fate of your favorite characters from childhood is a privilege few others have been granted. I also converted from atheism and joined the Roman Cathohc Church this year. My new name is John Charles Justin Wright, named after Justin Martyr, patron saint of philosophers.” 1994 Jean Holman (A) is pleased to announce her engagement to Youngstown, Ohio, native, Clinton Pavelko: “We will marry next summer in Erie, Penn. We live in Washington, D.C., and plan to settle there after the wedding. Clinton never went to St. John’s and never heard of it. Otherwise, he is handsome, young, and devoted. Besides a husband. I’ll be getting a stepson as well, Chris Pavelko, aged two and half” Mathieu de Schutter, (SF) MD, MPH, writes: “Sara (Roahen, SF94) and I have moved back to New Orleans from our post Katrina exile. Her book Gumbo Tales, about assimilating into the New Orleans culture while working as a restaurant critic, should be released as a paperback by now.” (Ross) Mosheh Vineberg (SF) writes: “I have been living in Jerusalem, Israel, for the last eight years. My wife, Tamar, is Israeli, we have a httle girl, Naomi, who is 2 years old, and we are expecting another baby this June. I am learning Torah in the mornings in a koUel, while my wife is finishing a medical degree in another two years. I’d love to visit Santa Fe again with my family. Maybe in a few years we’ll do it.” 1995 Geoff Giffin (AGI) writes: “ Life is good in White Rock, B. C., just a few kilometers from Vancouver (the best city in the world in which to live, according to many surveys). In my second year as a beekeeper here, I am struggling along with aU other beekeepers to understand what is happening to this most important of animals. We are not helped this year by having had a very long, cold, wet spring in the Northwest, but there are larger problems. Honeybees are responsible for about 30 percent of all human food and if they disappear, as they are increasingly doing, we will add yet another problem to the global food crisis. On the positive side, bees are endlessly fascinating and amazing stress reducers. I can watch mine for hours, seeing the foragers come home with different varieties of pollen, the guards inspecting everyone who approaches (Homeland Security should be so efficient!) and the signahng between individuals to pass on information about nectar sources, etc. “When I’m not working with my bees (which is most of the time), I am mentoring engineering/physics students at UBC, getting my 38' Ericson sailboat ready for summer cruising, reupholstering furniture and gardening. I also have a new job: I am the unpaid assistant to my wife, Senga, who after a long career as a teacher and school adminis trator has taken up a career in real estate. Anyone who wants to move to this most incredibly lovely part of Canada should contact me so that we can give you insight into what living here is really like.” Veronica Gventsadze (AGI) writes: “This spring I graduated with a veterinarian degree from the University of Guelph and two weeks ago launched a brand new career. My httle Yaris made it all the way across Canada to the mountains north of Vancouver. As I write, I hear a cat in the background complaining about the service in this hospital. I disagree: I think this hospital is a great place to work, though at times it feels overwhelming. The days go by fast, the learning curve is about as steep as the surrounding mountains, and my propensity for muffing things over is effectively curbed by the need to make prompt decisions. At the end of each day I take a miniholiday as I walk or bike the mountain trails. The mountains are majestic, the coastal rainforest must not have changed much since prehistoric times, and the real estate prices are obscenely high. (A popular excuse is that the 2010 Winter Olympics will be just up the road in Whistler.) There is even a new university up in the mountains. Quest University. I would love to hear from anyone who remembers me, and to catch up on our hves since St. John’s. You can reach me at vgventsa@telus.net.” Clara Murray (A) writes: Wesley and I were married in 2003 in a small but beautiful ceremony on the Hudson River. Several Johnnies were in attendance. Ezra Alexander Beato was born in December ’04. He’s a total joy intense, inquisitive, and very active. Talks nonstop from the time he wakes up to the time he goes to sleep. (Future Johnnie?) We are enjoying family life in Brooklyn, though occasionally dream of leaving the city in favor of a vegetable garden and preschools that cost less than St. John’s. We are both working, Wesley as a business research manager (I’m not sure what he does either, but suspect aU these years of ‘civilization’ help). I continue to work with Early Intervention, doing verbal behavior-a form of applied behavior analysis, with chUdren diagnosed with autism. I’m also enjoying classes at the Art Student’s League. Would love to hear from former classmates and friends. You can e-mail us at clmurray@usa.net.” {The College. 5t. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } 4^ Heather Nordloh (AGI) writes: “CHRIS (AGI96) continues to serve as CFO for a Chicago based non profit. Nick is 31/2 and very into Spiderman. Chris and Nick Nordloh spent most of the spring in Hong Kong with Heather’s job.” Bethany O’Connell (SF) writes: “I find myself teaching and working on the alumnae magazine at Stoneleigh-Burnham School, an all-girls’ boarding and day school in Greenfield, Mass. While teaching French, I am often looking out for those young, inquiring minds who I can encourage to apply to St. John’s. I can stiU smell the pinon burning on a clear winter night! I hope to bring my family back for a visit soon.” Kira Zielinski (SF) is taking a break from flying helicopters and has turned her attention to learning the ropes of being a small business owner. “I bought a coffee shop here in Mobile, Ala., in March-the experience has been amazing! Little by httle my fiance, Nathan, and I are turning it into the community crossroad that we’ve been craving in our fife. Not to mention I’m enjoying the stress of syrup and whipped cream ‘emergencies’ to engine malfunctions over the Gulf of Mexico any day! Our first addition to the coffee shop was, of course, a library. You can catch a glimpse of our shop at drjava.com.” 1996 Jenny Bates Glaubrecht (A) is a second grade elementary school teacher in Palm Beach County. She earned her master’s degree in education, has acquired ESOL Endorsement, Gifted Endorsement and a real estate Ucense. J. Stephen Pearson (EC) passed his dissertation defense and will be graduating in August from the University of Georgia with his doctorate in Comparative Literature. �{AlumniNotes} 4^ Teresa Taylor (AGI) and her husband Steve Bromley gave birth to Brock Remington Taylor Bromley on May r, aoo8, at nearly to pounds. Teresa has been practicing law as an associate at the British law firm, Clifford Chance US LLP, in international white collar/litigation defense for financial corporate clients. She will be leaving the firm this summer following maternity leave in search of a law position that does not require extensive international travel and extreme hours so she can enjoy being a new mom. Prior to Clifford Chance, Teresa was a federal law clerk in Virginia, and previously spearheaded a non profit organization focusing on international humanitarian law violations and justice. Steve is also doing weU, having started a renovation company in Annapolis. Teresa would love to hear from former classmates. The Bromleys reside at 700 Caleb Lane, Annapohs, Md 21401. my PhD in English Literature from the University of Cambridge. Living abroad was fantastic. Cambridge is an international and vibrant place filled with beautifid architecture, too many distracting activities (like rowing and May Balls), and fascinating and brilliant people. All the same, it’s good to be back in the U.S. to catch up with family and friends and enjoy the New Mexico culture and scenery.” Leah Fisch (SE) writes: “I am working as a reorganizer of businesses and homes here in NYC, Massachusetts and the tri-state area. Beginning in July, I will be offering workshops in the East Village to foster community between those with difficulty with clutter/efficiency, as well as offer easy-to-implement tips to reorganize on their own. If any Johnnies are interested in attending the workshops, please e-mail me at leah@leahfisch.com, or feel free to call me at 917-678-9634.” Will Gorham (A) writes: “Siobhan Boyer (SF99) and I 1997 Amy Ryce Knowles (A) writes: “1 teach mathematics at Durham Academy, and recently visited India to tour schools there. My husband is wrapping up a PhD at Duke University in Medieval English Literature. 1 have a 4-year-old son named James. I attribute my appreciation of math to the St. John’s curriculum. My encounters with Descartes, Apollonius, Newton, and Ptolemy continue to inform my teaching as well as my perspective. Working with teenagers is inspiring and because of them, there is never a dull day at work.” 1998 Jana Giles (A) is back in the U.S. “After four years of living in the United Kingdom, and wishing I’d taken even more Easyjet and Ryan Air flights to Italy, I’ve completed said our first “Hey, baby! ” to Larkin Rose Kate Gorham on April 23 in our new hometown of St. Petersburg, Fla., after 25 hours of... let’s call it ‘gentle coaxing.’ Larkin took in the scene, howled at the heavens, and began the long process of learning to love us for who we are. Other than that httle 7-pound 8-ounce bit of everything, not too much is new here in Paradise. Siobhan is bringing home the big slabs ofveggie bacon as an environmental biologist. I’m finishing a novel and also working for pay as a researcher at the St. Petersburg Times (where classmate WILL Van Sant [A98] also makes news/a hving). Our dog Hektor has giardia and our cats Mason and Dixon hate him for it since it means they can’t come out to play. Florida and parenthood are great. Both are tiring and exciting at the same time. Full of great ideas and weird, often stinky, results. We’d be happy to get coffee or worse with any Johnnies who come to the Tampa Bay area. We’ll drive you past ah the fancy mansions for {The College - foreclosure and introduce you to the Most Recklessly Sunburned Homeless Dude Ever. Ifyou’re here on a weekend, we’ll do even more.” Amy Marcetti Topper (A) is working as a consultant doing education research, and has enrolled in Arizona State University’s PhD program in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies. “Claire, my daughter, is about to turn 3 and doing all those wonderful and frustrating things toddlers do at this age,” she writes. “Love to hear from SJCA friends: amtopper@hotmail.com.” 1999 Since graduation, Gary Temple (A) has been splitting time between China and Easthampton, Mass., working variously as a freelance writer, English teacher, music producer, mental health counselor and clothing designer. “These days I’m narrowing my focus to music production with a hit of newspaper writing and clothing design thrown in. This fall I’ll be starting a yearlong intensive Chinese language program in Beijing. Please let me know ifyou’re going to be in town, or if you need some music produced, or an article written, or some clothing designed.” 2000 Deberniere Torrey (AGI) is marrying Nathan Devir on June 27 at Penn. State University. The couple win move to Vermont in July, where Nathan will teach Hebrew at Middlebury College. Valerie G. Whiting (A) of Washington, D.C., recently returned from Antigua, where she was working to prevent HIV/AIDS through education as a Peace Corps Response Volunteer. The country of Antigua and Barbuda is located in the Eastern Caribbean in the middle of the St. John’s College • Summer 2008 } Leeward Islands. Whiting was working with the AIDS Secretariat to provide assistance in behavior change communication efforts. In doing so, she was to assist in the planning, designing, implemen tation, and evaluation of national HIV/AIDS public education and awareness activities. Whiting helped produce HIV education and awareness activities at national events and developed educational/promotional materials for local target groups. Whiting previously served as a community organization Peace Corps volunteer in Panama from 3001 to 3003. Among her accomplishments, she led a youth group that took part in national HIV/AIDS programs and also organized and succeeded in an effort to pave the five-kilometer entrance to her site. Whiting has begun a master’s program in international training and education at American University in Washington, D.C. Logan Wink (SF) writes: “I finally finished medical school and I am now busy working through my first year as a psychiatry resident at Indiana University School of Medicine. I married Chuck Pate last June, and we are hving and working in Indianapolis, Ind. No babies yet-I spend way too many nights at the hospital for that. Chuck finished his MFA in ceramics in December and is working on establishing his career (currently he is teaching kids to throw pots at the local community art center). Please look us up ifyour path leads you through the heartland! ” 2001 Riana Kettle (SF) is back in Colorado and getting married this summer. She also recently finished a master’s degree in secondary education in mathematics and has been teaching math for the past �{Alumni Notes} several years. “I’m still singing opera. Hope everyone is doing well!" Eric Maddox (SF) writes: “I just returned to the States in March after five months spent conducting research for my MA in Conflict Resolution. While based out of Ramallah and Dheisheh Refugee Camp in Bethlehem, I traveled around Israel and the West Bank filming interviews with elder Israelis and Palestinians who experienced the 1948 war that created the modern State of Israel and the first Palestinian refugee crisis, also known as Al Nakba or ‘The Catastrophe.’ The film footage will be used to produce a short documentary film project for Defense for Children InternationalPalestine. Concurrently working on my master’s thesis, which focuses on the role that these events have played in shaping the individual and collective identities of the Jews and Arabs who experienced the events of 1948. Hoping to do future conflict-documentary work (where I actually get paid) in the near future. Looking for opportunities in Africa, Southeast Asia, or the Middle East.” 2002 Jessica Godden (SF) and Peter Speer (A) were married on A Johnnie Haven ouisa Griffin Parkinson (SF93) is married and L succulents, everywhere I can place them. I’m also still fiddling with Web comics, Web pages, and dashing out strange stories when I get the chance. So I guess I am still figuring out what I am supposed to be doing, but I’m doing well regardless!” John Rankin (SF) writes: “This Justin (A) and Dillon (A05) Naylor will be serving as dorm fall I will leave my position as a spokesman at the U.S. Treasury Department to enroll in the MBA program at the University of California Los Angeles. This means the end to nearly five years in Washington, D.C., at various communications jobs in the Senate, on political campaigns, and in the Bush administration. After business school, I will probably shift my focus to the private sector. Johnnies in the Los Angeles area (or SF for that matter) should drop me a note at johnrankin@gmail.com.” Sean Nelson (AGI) is currently hving in Cairo, Egypt, and studying Arabic. 2004 Tatiana Hamboyan Harrison has two children, Mariana (4), and James (6). (A) has been busy doing a lot of They are “living luckily on the Eastern Shore of writing (trying to get a picture book Maryland in Easton, which strangely enough pubhshed!) and reading (mostly seems to be a Johnnie haven. Johnnies pop up books about writing): “I’m also everywhere: one instructs my children and me in having surgery on June 30 to get tennis at the Y, another teaches knitting at the local holistic my left wrist replaced. I’ve been arts center, while others still make local news by impeding doing quite a bit of beUy dancing airport growth via kick-ass estate planning. And without fail, I and have been very involved in my meet people at dinner parties and fundraisers who ‘wished Quaker meeting. Anyone who they’d gone to St. John’s’ but nonetheless satisfy their thirst for wants to contact me can do so by knowledge by attending some seminars ingeniously offered e-mail, or by visiting my Web site at through the college. Their enthusiasm really can make you feel www.thefunnel.org.” like a rock star! Anyway, greetings to all my fellow Johnnies in Santa Fe and Annapolis.” Conor J. Heaton (AGI), in his first year of lawyering, is a litigator in a small civil litigation firm in Dave Prosper (SF) writes: “As of Mark Stratil (SF) is hvingand Chicago. “I graduated from Loyola teaching high school physics in now I’m still living in Oakland, University Chicago School of Law Brooklyn. He and his band. Judge Calif., and working in IT at Bio-Rad and had the pleasure of studying Roy Bean (www.myspace.com/ Laboratories. I’m currently pulhng under JUDGE Thomas More judgeroybeanband), are celebrating double-duty and trying not to burn Donnelly (SF81). My wife, the release of their first album. out doing both as a support systems Ashley, is four months pregnant Shovelhead, available on iTunes. administrator and PC support for and we just bought our first condo “If any of you are going to be in my company’s Hercules, Calif., in the Lakeview neighborhood of New York this summer, come out location. I’m also gradually turning Chicago. I was delighted to hear and see a show! ” he writes. my apartment into a bizarre version that we defeated the Academy in of that garden ship from Silent this year’s non-sanctioned croquet Running (much to my roommate’s battle.” chagrin) with plants, especially Feb. 29, 2008. parents at Wyoming Seminary Preparatory School next year, where Justin teaches Latin and math. “We continue to grow vegetables, teach cooking classes, and cater private events at our farmhouse in northeastern Pennsylvania.Our son, Peter, will be a year old in July! We have a guest room and welcome visitors to the farm.” 43 2003 Aaron M ac Lean (A) was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps on November 30, 2007. “I’ve just learned that I’ve been selected to attend the Infantry Officer’s Course at Quantico, Va., this summer, which will put me out in the fleet as an infantry officer by this fall. Anyone who wants to is more than welcome to contact me at aaron.maclean@gmail.com.” Jeffrey Zwillenherg (AGI) was married last August to Jennifer Goulston: “We now five in our new house in Baltimore, Md. Most recently, I accepted a new job in development for a nonprofit organization (New Leaders for New Schools) in Baltimore. On another note, while snowboarding at Stowe in Vermont with CoREY HaydEN (AGI06), we encountered another Johnnie, owing to my St. John’s bcense plate. We are everywhere!” {The College. 5t. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } Kimberly (Bryan) Gaud inski (A) and Martin Gaudinski (A) were married on December 29, 2007, at the Shrine of the Sacred Heart in Baltimore, Md. “Now local to D.C., we went on a phenomeno logical honeymoon to a plane of existing in the District that we will rarely inhabit until many years hence,” writes Martin. “We dined at some of the finest restaurants the city has to offer. While celebrating our marriage at Citronelle, Kimberly met the eidos of black beans. Martin finally understood Plotinus after his first sample of the Chateaubriand. Now firmly back in our normal fives, Kimberly is teaching kindergarten at Potomac Crescent Waldorf School in Arlington, while Martin is in his first year of professional training at Georgetown University School of Medicine.” ■ Kristi Meador (A) writes: “I’ve been sojourning these past two years in the former Soviet bloc �{Alumni Notes} 44 Gwen Gurley (A) writes: Happy in Alaska “I thought I would send an update letting the school know that I am receiving my master’s degree in Italian Studies with a focus on translation and linguistics from Middlebury College this August. I have been in Florence, Italy, for the pastyear working on my degree and will be home in July. From there I’m moving out to the West Coast, hopefully to Portland, Ore.” elissa (Fecht) Hougland M (SFGI06) moved to Fairbanks, Alaska, in aooywith her husband, Jarrett, to take the associate director position with the Fairbanks Arts Association. “Seven months later, on November 15, 2007, we were blessed with a beautiful baby boy, Blaise Anthony Hougland. We are all happy here in Alaska, loving both the a4-hour summer sun and the -40 degree winters!” country of Belarus. I’ve also been blessed with visits to the Ukraine, Lithuania, Russia, Denmark, Hungary, Egypt, and South Korea. My time has been focused on studying Russian, helping university students wrestle with important questions in their search for God and truth, and loving orphans and foster children. I’ve been reading a wide range of Russian hterature and after four years have found myself immersed in The Brothers K once again. My next destination is Kentucky, where I will be eagerly awaiting the arrival of my fiitiue niece from Ethiopia! I’d be glad to hear from Johnnies. I can be reached at kristimeador@gmail.com.” 2005 Samantha Buker (A) writes from Baltimore, Md: “I’ve recently taken the mantle of associate editor and managing editor of five financial pubheations for a fabulous outfit caUed Agora Financial. In my spare hours. I’m writing a new novel-delightfully absent of murderers, devils, and afterlife sequences. Think the morally immoral French novels of Balzac and Zola meeting the vivid lyricism of Gatsby in the form of a hardboiled hero of contemporary Wall Street. Yes, as with Zola, there’s a courtesan. But unlike Nana, she’s no fool. Nor are the father whose mistress she is or his son (who is in love with her). At bottom, it’s a critique of the modern American financial system. And, unlike most who post to these pages.. .1’11 not tell you of nuptials or newborns. I subscribe to Gustave Flaubert’s style of living: Stay out of the thick of Paris, and when your lover barges into your study uninvited: throw him out! But true, close friends should plan to visit often: sam.buker@gmail.com.” Dwight Knoll (A) has become a partner at Music Works Publications (musicworkspubUcations.com). “Also the podcast I am working on at FAQautism.com is really starting to take off,” he writes. “Finally, I’m going to Delft, Holland, this July to participate in a servant evangelism event.” Miranda (Foster) Merklein (SFGI) is a PhD candidate in English / Creative Writing at the University of Southern Mississippi. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in many hterary j ournals and magazines, including The Columbia Review, South Carolina Review, Permafrost, and others. She is currently completing her first book of poetry. “I am a certified yoga instructor registered with Yoga Alliance and have my own yoga business. Yoga Edge, teaching privately at studios and at universities. My Web site is www.yoga-edge.com.” Jonathan Coppadge (A) is finishing up his year as a St. John’s admissions counselor. He wiU be returning to Phillips Academy Andover this summer to teach philosophy and French before coming back to Annapolis in August and beginning at Indian Creek Upper School in Crownsville, where he will teach English. He is happily settled into fife as an Eastporter, and reminds his classmates that they always have an open door and furnished table when they come back to town. “I am currently an AmeriCorps member building houses for Habitat for Humanity in Raleigh, N.C.,” writes DEBORAH ManGUM (A). “Anyone interested in traveling, experimenting with different fields, gathering different experiences after/during/before college should look them up at americorps.org.” Joshua Suich (A) was a youth Heather Cook (SF) earned her private pilot license in September 3007, and is enjoying flying around northern New Mexico in her Cessna i8a. She also wrote and published her first book, the Aviation Scholarship Directory 2008, in October 3007, which is helping flight students, pilots, and other aviation professionals to find and win aviation scholarships. Heather is stiU living in Santa Fe. Paul and Anita Fairhanks (SF) are delighted to announce the birth of their daughter, Charlotte Eden, on May 20, 2008: “She has brought us so much happiness,” Anita writes. “We are living in Columbus, Ohio, where Paul is studying business in preparation for dental school. I am simply enjoying motherhood; my current ambitions are to sing lullabyes and read great books aloud.” {The College. pastor in Florida for a year, then spent a little over a year teaching EngUsh in the public school system of Daigo, Ibaraki, Japan. “Daigo is the city, Ibaraki is the prefecture, which is a few hours north of Tokyo. I climbed Mt. Fuji and saw the sites and had a great time. I kept a travel blog of it: www.jsuich.blogspot.com. Right now I am back in my home town of Augusta, Ga., working as the head swim coach of the Augusta Country Club and will be going to GordonConwell Theological Seminary in Charlotte, N.C., in the fall.” 2006 Erin Callahan (A) and Mark Ingham (A05) married on April 37, 3008. This August the Inghams move to Santa Fe to do the Eastern Classics program. Erin writes: St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } What’s Up? The College wants to hear from you. Call us, write us, e-mail us. Let your classmates know what you’re doing. The next issue will be published in October; deadline for the alumni notes section is September 10. In Annapolis: The College Magazine St. lohn’s College, P.O. Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404; rosemary.harty@sjca.edu In Santa Fe: The College Magazine St. John’s College 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599; alumni@sjcsf.edu �45 {Obituaries} Chris Colby Print Shop Manager, Annapolis Chris Colby, a 30-year member of the St. John’s College community, died of cancer on Thursday, March 27, 2008, at the age of 58. He joined the college in 1977 as assistant manager of the Print Shop and was promoted to manager in 1979. Earlier this year, he guided the purchase and instal lation of a new press that greatly expands the college’s printing capabilities. He was known by those who worked with him as a gentle and kind man, a hard-working and helpful colleague, and a talented artist and craftsman. He enjoyed-among many things-weaving, cooking for friends, writing short fiction, and sharing stories of his adventures in life. At a memorial service held at the college in April, friends, co-workers and students remembered Colby’s gifts to the community. John Chris tensen, the college’s director of admissions, said Colby missed vacations and weekends to finish Print Shop projects on deadline, but also “gave of himself’ in many ways outside of work. “For some, he built book shelves in our apartments or houses; for others he repaired harpsichords and other musical instruments; for still others he built kitchen cabinets and helped construct decks,” Chris tensen said. “He loved these projects for the lasting friend ships that often resulted, but also because he simply enjoyed putting his skills to use for others in the community. .. . “I think he was at his happiest in these activities, but he was also happy in another role-that of mentor and surro gate father for any number of students, some of whom worked for him and some of whom he met in the writing workshops he attended or through working with them on the Gadfly and Energia." Howard Morsberger worked alongside Colby since 1981. “He was so much more than just a ‘boss,’” he said. “He was above all a mentor, a friend, and a companion. Chris was a passionate, but calm and softspoken man who gave me room to make mistakes and grow from them.” Jack Brown (A08) described his initial dismay at being assigned to work at the Print Shop; as he grew to know Colby he realized how fortunate he was. “I had requested a job at the library, or IT, and did not relish spending a year standing in the dark making photocopies while a vaguely sinister-looking man looked on from the shadows,” Brown said. “As you can probably guess, that atti tude changed; the Print Shop quickly became my home away from dorm-room, and Chris my St. John’s mentor. It was in the Print Shop that I learned unofficially about the college. I heard the latest news, absorbed the 30 years of lore Chris had stored up in him and loved sharing. . . When I look back on four years here, Chris will be one of a few people who really stand out. He was one of the people I was most looking forward to keeping informed about what I was doing with my life, and visiting when I came back.” Colby became his unofficial mentor and career adviser. Brown added. “I will go better places for having known him, my experience at this school was enriched for having known him, and I cannot express my profound sadness for the knowledge that when I leave here. .. I will be leaving behind a school, a Print Shop, and a community that is a lesser place for having lost Chris Colby.” Colby’s wife, Mary-who worked for 15 years in the college’s Admissions officepreceded him in death. They are survived by their daughter, Yve. Associate Admissions Director Roberta Gable (A77) described how St. John’s was like another home for Colby. “He loved the college, and he loved the Print Shop, and he loved us,” she said. “And I would say that the Print Shop was the great love of his life if it weren’t utterly eclipsed by the great and steadfast and abiding love he had for Mary and Yve, a love which was, I think, the defining purpose of his life.” Also Noted Laurie Fink Colberg, class of 1966, June 21, 2007 IsAiAS Grandes del Mazo, class of 1955, February 22, 2008 Commander William W. Grant, class of 1941, January 4, 2008 Marigene Boyd Hedges, class of 1958, November 19, 2007 Lawrence Myers, class of In his 30 YEARS AT St. John’s, Chris Colby mentored STUDENTS, SHARED HIS STORIES AND TALENTS, AND EARNED THE FRIENDSHIP AND ADMIRATION OF THE GREATER COLLEGE COMMUNITY. {The College. St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } 1951, February 2, 2008 Anjali Pai (SFGI08), March 30, 2008 Richard H. Pembroke, Jr., class of 1932, January 4, 2008 �46 {Obituaries} Al Toft He worked quietly at night in a basement work shop IN Mellon Hall, and laboratory in Annapolis relied on Al Toft. BY Mark Daly, Director of Laboratory Albert Ritchie Toft, who was a lab technician at St. John’s College in Annapolis from i960 to aoo5, died of complications from Parkinson’s disease April 30 in Annapolis. He was born August 1,1933, in Pasadena, Maryland, attended George Washington University, and was a scientist at Goddard Space and Flight Center in Greenbelt for 35 years. I heard about Al when I was hired as director of Laborato ries at St. John’s in July 1985. He worked as a machinist along with a carpenter named John Cooke in the laboratory’s physics workshop. The physics workshop was, and still is, located in the basement of Mellon Hall. As Director of Laboratories, one of my responsibilities was super vising the workshop. I would collect broken equipment, equipment that needed to be modified to suit the college’s needs, and pencil drawings of ideas from me, students and tutors, and place them on a workbench in the empty physics laboratory during the day. Al worked evenings and weekends, so I communicated with him through notes and pencil drawings. The next day I would return to find my equip ment repaired or modified, and my pencil drawing coming to life with a note, “Is this what you wanted?” Most of the time, Al would take our ideas and improve on them. I would push his creative talents further with a revised drawing, place it on the empty workbench, and the next day the new creation would take shape. I could dream, scribble down an idea, and put it on that empty work bench, and he, with his gifts of knowledge and creativity, would make it happen. When I finally got to meet Al, he lived up to the picture I had painted of him in my mind. I walked into the dusty old base ment workshop to be greeted by a cheerful, “Hello, young man.” Here was the man who could make those drawings come to life. He looked like a scientist: clean cut, dark rimmed glasses, and a lab coat. He was friendly and had an intelligence that commanded respect. Some time later, I visited Al at the Goddard Space and Flight Center, and he gave me a tour of the facilities. I came to realize the prize St. John’s was keeping in that dusty physics workshop. Al was hired at Goddard as an entry-level tech nician and worked his way up. He was now a leading scientist in the optics laboratory. His major contributions to the space program were inventing a new coating for the mirrors in space and inventing a way to coat them uniformly. He was a distinguished scientist with published works and his accom plishments were noted in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. Al was a problem solver who loved a chal lenge. His posi tive outlook and problem solving abilities perme ated his entire being. As his Parkinson’s disease advanced, he remained upbeat and always talked about the future. I remember once he pointed to a dollar bill on the bench, and told me, “I couldn’t reach to pick up that dollar and put it in my pocket. I took my pill, sat down for five minutes, and now I can do it.” He was fascinated by his affliction; he looked at it as a scientist. Al was a caring and compas sionate man. When his good friend John Cooke was approaching 90, he was still working in the workshop. His vision was going, and his work suffered. Al wouldn’t hurt his friend and tell him to retire, so he came up with a way to do it gently. I learned from Al’s example, and when Al’s Parkinson’s began affecting his work, I offered him the same respect and compassion. Today as I walk through the laboratory classrooms in Mellon Hall, I see Al’s legacy around me. The equipment that was repaired, modified, or created by his hands speaks to me. Some speak to me of the brilliant scientist, the problem solver. Others remind me of his compassionate, friendly nature. They just say, “hello, young man.” {The College -St John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } Rozanne Kramer (SFGI68) Rozanne Edwards Kramer, a St. John’s Santa Fe Graduate Insti tute alumnus and former manager of the St. John’s Annapolis bookstore, died March 31, 3008. Ms. Kramer was born in Leavenworth, Kansas, and as a child of an army colonel, she traveled extensively throughout her childhood. She earned a bach elor’s degree at Oberlin College and worked on The Evening Star in Washington, D.C., and The Evening Capital in Annapolis. She joined the St. John’s staff as manager of the Annapolis bookstore. When St. John’s opened its Santa Fe campus, she moved West with her thenhusband, Clarence Kramer. After earning her graduate degree at St. John’s, Ms. Kramer earned a second master’s degree in Special Education and enjoyed a 15year career as a teacher and drill team coach. She is survived by three children, five grandchildren, and three great grandchildren. John Droege (A85) John Patrick Droege, of Plymouth, Mass., died on January 38, 3008. He was 46 and was employed as a tech nical salesman. After graduating from St. John’s, Droege earned a master’s in American History from the University of Notre Dame. An avid outdoorsman, Droege was a member of the Manomet Center for Conservation Science. His parents, John and Aileen Droege, would love to hear from classmates and tutors who knew John; contact them at; JDroegei@comcast.net. �{Alumni Voices} 47 The Face of America BY Christopher Allison (SF97) was to discern those who planned to follow uring my years at the rules from those who did not in the St. John’s, I never space of a two- to three-minute interview. suspected that Thucydides, In places like India, where wages are lower Plutarch, and Machiavelli and poverty more widespread than in the were secretly preparing me I am a Foreign Service Officer (FSO) U.S., this is no simple task. I typically for a career in diplomacy, of the U.S. Department of State. FSOs did 75-roo interviews every day. It was hut in hindsight it seems so obvious. compose the U.S. government’s diplomatic interesting work, though often draining. corps, staffing embassies and consulates in At the conclusion of my assignment to more than 250 cities around the world. As India, I transferred to Japan to work at such, we represent the United States to the Embassy Tokyo. Japan and India could not governments of other countries and look be more different, and the abruptness of out for the welfare of American citizens this transition left me reeling. Where India abroad. As my employer frequently reminds is colorful, noisy, and a trifle chaotic, some me, I am the face of America overseas. I people find Japan to be grey, rigid, and know this may seem strange to some of my subdued. Despite its recent economic classmates who haven’t seen me in a few progress, India is still very much a devel years, but it couldn’t be a more natural fit. oping country, where the morning After joining the State Department in commute is regularly impeded by ox carts the spring of 2004,1 was first dispatched to or free-range cows blocking major thor interview visa applicants at the U.S. oughfares. Japan, by contrast, is one of the Consulate in Chennai, India. One of the most highly developed economies and most core functions of American consulates is orderly societies in the world. While I am reviewing visa applications of foreign normally the type of person to enjoy the nationals who wish to travel to the United sensory stimulation of the developing States. Though I joined the State Depart world, after two years of it, Tokyo’s more ment as an Economic Officer, adjudicating muted tones were a welcome change visas is a sort of rite of passage for FSOs. of pace. Every newly hired officer is required to do The work could not be more different as at least one year of consular work upon well. I currently work on the staff of U.S. joining the department, and this usually Ambassador to Japan J. Thomas Schieffer, means working the visa line in a place helping to keep him informed about a wide hke Chennai. array of issues requiring his attention. (Incidentally, Ambassador Schieffer has a St. John’s connection: his son Paul gradu During my two years in India, I stood at a window much like one might encounter at the Department of Motor Vehicles and listened patiently as people explained why they needed to travel to the states. In order to approve most types of visa, an officer must be convinced that the applicant plans to depart from the states after a short period of time, regardless of why they wish to visit. Of course, there is also a responsibility to try to keep out criminals, terrorists, human traffickers, drug lords, and other undesirables. My job D {The College. St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } ated from the Annapolis campus in 2007.) In some ways, I am little more than a stan dard-issue bureaucrat: I read reports, I go to meetings, I brief people, I compile reports, and I push papers-some virtual, some made of actual paper-from one place to another. But that’s only one part of the job. I have a ringside seat for what former Ambassador to Japan Mike Mansfield famously called “the most important bilateral relationship in the world, bar none.” My boss is on the nightly news on a regular basis. In the next couple of months, Japan will host the G-8 Summit, and I’ll be in the middle of it. I have met cabinet secretaries, members of Congress, one former and one current Vice President, and the home run king of Japan. Not bad for a humble bureaucrat, if you ask me. This may seem like a strange career choice for someone who not that long ago spent his days playing Frisbee in front of Meem Library and his nights pondering Kant, but I can’t imagine doing anything else. The Foreign Service is, in some ways, like St. John’s: a small and somewhat obscure organization with a lot of tradition and a culture all its own. The variety of different skills-and different parts of my brain-that the work requires on a daily basis is also familiar. I have to speak persuasively, write clearly, struggle with foreign languages, and work through countless situations that lie outside of my core competencies. If St. John’s provides the ultimate generalist education, then the Foreign Service is the ultimate generalist career. The longer I do this and the more I come to understand the values of the Service, the more I feel like this is what St. John’s was preparing me for all along. Chris Allison (SF97) shown HERE WITH HIS WIFE, BeTH Rollins, at the statue of the Great Buddha of Kamakura, Japan, revels in Japanese culture and traditions. �{Croquet} 48 IN LOVE WITH CROQUET Jennifer Wright (Ao8), a wry observer oflife at St. John’s, offered this tribute to croquet, herfavorite time ofthe year, after her last match as a student. ’ve secretly smuggled a book to every football game my family has ever taken me to, raising my head only sporadically to say things hke, “when they jump on each other-is that good?” Usually around that point, the man sitting next to me spills a plate of nachos on me, possibly out of rage. 1 fare no better when it comes to understanding the rules of croquet. This is not for lack of trying on the part of the members of the croquet team, who have gallantly attempted to explain it to me. But they start rambhng about wickets and driving the ball into the ground, and I get distracted, and end up asking them what their costumes are going to be for the match this year. My total lack of understanding of the rules of the game has proved advanta for a group of people who don’t particularly geous, at least during freshman year. I heard care for sports. Much of our bookishness at wild cheers from the audience and assumed St. John’s may stem at least in part from our we’d won. We hadn’t. 1 went around inability to compete with our peers on the congratulating everyone. No one had the soccer field. While students at other schools heart to correct me until the next day. remember their winning touchdown, John That does not in any way change the fact nies remember striking out at T-ball. that croquet day is the best day of the year. Which makes it even more amazing that In fact, croquet is the perfect sporting event we’re good at croquet. In fact, we’re the top I ranked team in the country. My assuming we’d won was a fair assumption, considering the fact that we usually do. As a result, we’ve occasionally taken to having the victory party the night before croquet. And the party is almost as amazing as croquet day itself. The big band music plays hard and fast. And everyone is united in a single, bloodthirsty. Machiavellian desire to beat the Navy-though the bloodthirstiness, to be fair, is tempered by Cole Porter and straw berries and champagne. For one week in the spring, we have a bitter school rival. We chant things about how we will “sweep” by winning every round of croquet. I learned after freshman {The College- St. John's College ■ Summer 2008 } year that when members of the croquet team come up to you and scream “how are we like a broom?” the correct answer is to scream back “we sweep! ” and not to meekly reply “we remove debris?” We enact in essence, the rituals seen on most Big Ten campuses that rarely make their way to quaint little St. John’s. Because in a way, beating the tough guys at Navy at any sport seems to make up for the fact that were always picked last for dodgeball. Watching the Johnnies sweep on the croquet field, we feel, as we rarely do, like wild Spartan warriors. Just for a Uttle while though, before we go back to reading our T. S. Eliot for language class. So, if you haven’t yet made it, venture to Annapolis for croquet. You’ll be glad you did. And nobody will judge you for bringing a book. �{Croquet} Heavy rain 49 threatened cancellation of the CROQUET MATCH, BUT THE COMPETITORS PLAYED ON AND THE WEATHER IMPROVED. The result: 3-a St. John’s in a hard-fought and HONORABLE MATCH. OPPOSITE: IMPERIAL WiCKET Ian Hanover (A08), sporting a navy “uniform” BOUGHT online; Jennifer Wright and Jessica Perry (A09). Clockwise: John Ertle (A84) and HIS son, David, io, and President Christopher Nelson (A70); MaryIrene Ruffin Corrigan (A04) WITH DAUGHTER MACKENZIE; FASHIONABLY ATTIRED Johnnies: (l. to r.): Sasha Munters (A09), Ellen Barnhart (Aio), SamYelton (A09), Elizabeth Fleming (Aio) and Elsabe Dixon (Aio). Todd Grier (Class of 1938) opened the match by STRIKING THE CEREMONIAL FIRST BALL; MaRY GiLLMARTEN, MOTHER OF CHARLES (Ao8), OFFERED CUSTOM-MADE CROQUET COOKIES. {The College. St John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } �5° {Alumni Association News} accept his Award of Merit. (Mr. Ertegun continues to contribute to our community through the Ahmet Ertegun Education Fund; Led Zeppehn reunited to raise money for scholarships on the Annapolis campus as well as several European schools.) Our Award of Merit winners represent a broad spectrum of alumni in many different fields. Also in the music industry, there’s Jac Holzman (A52), who started Elektra Records in 1950 when he was a student. In journalism, Ray Cave (A48), editor of Time magazine; in filmmaking, screenwriter Jeremy Leven (A64) and cinematographer Tom Stern (SF69), whose many films include Unforgiven, American Beauty, and Mystic River, Annapolis tutor Howard Zeiderman (A67), was honored in 2002 for his work with the Touchstones Discussion Project. He shared the podium that year with classmates including Candace Brightman, who created the light ast night I saw Martin shows for the Grateful Dead. Our alumni Scorcese’s Shine a Light, a have also made tremendous contributions concert film of the RolUng in government, industry, and in not-forStones at New York City’s profits and non-governmental organiza Beacon Theatre. The final tions as well as significant contributions image of the film is a photo to the future of St. John’s. We recognize graph of Ahmet Ertegun, class of 1944; these at the Homecoming Dinner on the him is dedicated to his memory. Saturday night. Mr. Ertegun, co-founder of Atlantic Our Honorary Alumni are welcomed Records, was hackstage at the Beacon on into our community each year during the the hrst night of this concert, October 29, All-alumni Gatherings held during the 2006, when he suffered the fall that led to day on Saturday of Homecoming. These his death later that year. are individuals who have demonstrated Seeing that tribute from a remarkable an outstanding commitment to our hlmmaker to a legend in the recording educational program and the community. industry made me think about the ways in Last year, we gave the award to two which we honor people. St. John’s, unlike members of the Annapolis community, most other colleges and universities, Robert Hunt and Alton Waldron, each of doesn’t grant honorary degrees to the whom has participated in the college’s distinguished individuals who speak at community seminars for 50 years. Often, Commencement each spring. However, the we honor retiring tutors and long-time Alumni Association, since r949, has staff members, recognizing their honored people in two ways: granting the Award of Merit to our alumni “for distin guished and meritorious service to the United States, or to his/her native state, or to St. John’s College; or for outstanding achievement within his/her chosen field,” and granting Honorary Alumnus/a status to people who have had such close involve ment in the St. John’s community that we want them to join us as “permanent members of the college.” Ahmet Ertegun, who shaped the careers of so many amazing musicians and co founded Rock ’n Roll Hall of Eame, was proud to come to Homecoming in 1994 to From the Alumni Association President L These are individuals who have demonstrated an outstanding commitment to our educationalprogram and the community. Jason Walsh (A85) {The College - Sr. John’s College • Summer 2008 } ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION All alumni have automatic membership in the St. John’s College Alumni Association. The Alumni Association is an independent organization, with a Board of Directors elected by and from the alumni body. The board meets four times a year, twice on each campus, to plan programs and coordinate the affairs of the association. This newsletter within The College magazine is sponsored by the Alumni Association and communicates association news and events of interest. President - Jason Walsh (A85) Vice President - Steve Thomas (SF74) Secretary - Joanne Murray (A70) Treasurer - Richard Cowles (SFGI95) Mailing address - Alumni Association, St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404, or rr6o Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599. impact-people like Barbara Leonard (HA55) and Brother Robert Smith (HA90). Last year, we again honored Jeffrey Bishop (HA87), the long-time vice president of the college, who died last July. Jeff was one of the very few Honorary Alumni to also be recognized with an Award of Merit, presented posthumously, for his great contributions to the college. This year at Santa Fe Homecoming, the Alumni Association will also single out a special group for recognition: the Class of 1968, the first students to graduate from the campus. These men and women were bold enough to be the pioneers of an emerging campus and they deserve recognition. Complete lists of our Award of Merit recipients and Honorary Alumni are on the Alumni Association Web site. Go to the St. John’s Web site at: www.stjohnscollege.edu, and click on Alumni. If you would like to nominate indi viduals for the Award of Merit or as Honorary Alumni, contact the Alumni office on either campus: Jo Ann Mattson in Annapolis, jamattson@sjca.edu; or Michael Bales in Santa Fe, michael.bales@sjcsf.edu. The Nomina tions Committee of the Alumni Association will be pleased to consider your sugges tions. Jason Walsh (A85) Alumni Association President �{Alumni Association News} Seminars, Croquet and Fun California Johnnies Enjoy a Lively Chapter know, the quality of the readings for week after St. John’s put seminars, and whether a tutor is leading away Navy during the the discussion,” says Miranda. Younger annual croquet match in Johnnies, especially those new to the area, Annapolis, a group of tend to look for networking opportunities. Johnnies were carrying on “This is one of our great challenges, how the tradition 3,000 miles to better meet that need,” he adds. away by taking on some recent graduates Fortunately, the Northern California Informal happy hours for recent alumnifrom the University of California, Berkeley. chapter of the Alumni Association also coordinated by Laura Manion (A04) every carried on the tradition of winning. two weeks-have been popular among Co-Imperial Wickets Jessica Finefrock younger members of the chapter. (SF05) and Nathan Stalnaker {A04) led the Johnnies to a dramatic, down-to-the wire victory in the first-ever Westside Croquet Match. Stalnaker hit the winning stroke: “It went through two wickets-all from one swing,” he says. About 25 chapter Reynaldo Miranda (A99) members and friends attended the match and a picnic afterward at Lake Merritt in Oakland. The event could become another The 2008 season of seminars and tradition for this lively chapter that dinners was launched by a January visit combines social events and seminars that from Santa Fe tutor Phil LeCuyer, who led appeal to younger and older alumni alike. a seminar on Hans Jonas’ essay, “Is God a “The spirit of the chapter is fun,” says Mathematician? The Meaning of Metabo chapter president Reynaldo Miranda (A99). lism.” Fifteen chapter members attended Despite the challenges of travel the seminar, hosted by Neal Allen (SF78) distances and hectic schedules, chapter at McKesson Corp, headquarters in San events are popular draws for alumni of all Francisco. Then attendees drove an hour ages. “I think what inspires people to come to savor more conversation over dinner at and join in is seeing other Johnnies they Cafe Zoetrope, a restaurant at filmmaker A ^The spirit ofthe chapter isfun. ” 51 Valley. Andrea S. Hines (SF05) hosted the dinner. In February, Santa Fe President Michael Peters led a well-attended seminar on Shakespeare’s Henry V', about 65 alumni turned up for a reception afterward. Tutor Peter Pesic led two seminars on Heidegger in San Francisco, and many alumni traveled to nearby Moraga to attend Pesic’s piano recital at St. Mary’s College. The chapter also invites local tutor emeriti and former St. John’s tutors. For example, Jim Forkin, a former Santa Fe tutor, delivered a lecture on Shakespeare’s Tempest and Machiavelli. Former tutor and Annapolis dean Tom Slakey (HA94) of Sacramento usually leads one of the semi nars at the chapter’s annual summer Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars reunion in Napa, hosted by Warren and Barbara Winiarkski of the classes of 1952 and 1955 respectively. Last year, Howard Zeiderman (A67) drew a crowd of 49 for a seminar on Jorge Luis Borges’ stories “The Library of Babel” and “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quihote.” Participants filled a long confer ence-room table and some sat along the walls, but as big as the group was, the seminar worked, he says. “I think all the people participated. Also there was a wonderful blend of text, experience, and reflection on the college, so it was never merely academic.” Francis Ford Coppola’s winery in Napa CHAPTER CONTACTS Call the alumni listed belowfor information about chapter, reading group, or other alumni activities in each area. ALBUQUERQUE Robert Morgan, SF76 505-275-901^ rim2u@c0mcast.net CHICAGO Rick Lightburn, SF76 847-922-3862 rlightburn@gmail.com ANNAPOLIS Beth Martin Gammon, A94 410-332-1816 emartin@crs. org DALLAS/FORT WORTH Paula Fulks, SF76 817-654-2986 puffjd@swbeU.net AUSTIN/SAN ANTONIO Toni Wilkinson, SFGI87 512-278-1697 wilkinson_toni @hotm ail.com DENVER/BOULDER Elizabeth Jenny SF80 303-530-3373 epj727@comcast.net BOSTON Dianne Cowan, A91 617-666-4381 diannecowan@rcn.com HOUSTON Norman Ewart A85 713-303-3025 norman.ewart@rosetta resources.com MADISON Consuelo Sanudo, SGIoo 608-251-6565 sanudoc@tds.net PHILADELPHIA Helen Zartarian, AGI86 215-482-5697 helenstevezartarian@ mac.com SANTA FE Richard Cowles, SFGI95 505-986-1814 rcowles2@comcast.net MINN./ST. PAUL Carol Freeman, AGI94 6l2r822-32l6 Freem013@umn.edu PHOENIX Donna Kurgan, AGI96 623-444-6642 dakurgie@yahoo.com SEATTLE James Doherty, SFGI76 206-542-3441 jdoherty@mrsc.org NEW YORK CITY Daniel Van Doren, A81 914-949-6811 dvandoren@ optonline.net PITTSBURGH Joanne Murray, A70 724-325-4151 Joanne.Murray@ basicisp.net SOUTH FLORIDA Peter Lamar, AGI95 305-666-9277 cplamar@yahoo.com NORTH CAROLINA Rick Ross A82 919-319-1881 Rick@activated.com Elizabeth Ross A92 Elizabeth@ activated.com PORTLAND Jennifer Rychlik, SF93 503-547-0241 jlr43@coho.net NORTHERN CALIF. Reynaldo Miranda, A99 415-333-4452 reynaldo .miranda@ gmail.com SAN DIEGO Stephanie Rico, A86 619-429-1565 srico@sandi.net SOUTHERN CALIF. Jan Conlin, SF85 310-490-2749 conlinjani@yahoo.com FOR MORE ALUMNI WASHINGTON, D.C. Ed Grandi, A77 301-351-8411 egrandi@aol.com SALT LAKE CITY Erin Hanlon, SF03 916-967-2194 e.i.mhanlon@ gmail.com {The College. Sf. John's Providing OPPORTUNITIES College ■ Summer 2008 } WESTERN NEW ENGLAND Peter Weis, SF84 413-367-2174 peter_weis@ nmhschool.org TO CONNECT MORE OFTEN AND MORE RICHLY �52. {St. John’s Forever} An Emerging Campus rider stops to gaze up at the worked with the architecture firm Holien St. John’s campus in the and Buckley on the master plan. early 1960s. A few years In a piece he wrote for a college promo before, St. John’s President tional brochure, Meem described the Richard Weigle described Territorial style and why it was right for the property-the bulk of St. John’s. “The buildings of St. John’s which was a gift from architect John Gaw College in Santa Fe will reflect practically Meem and his wife. Faith, as “240 acres of all the historical phases.... Their pinon- and juniper-studded land on the terraced, flat-roofed masses recall their lower slope of Monte Sol.” ancient aboriginal American origin; the This was the campus that greeted the balconies, portales and patios recall the members of the class of rgGS when they Spain they came from, and the stuccoed first arrived in Santa Fe. As Weigle raised walls with their brick cornices will remind funds to build the new campus, Meem us of our Territorial past.” A {The College. St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } The campus’ design would be “completely contemporary and yet reflecting the rich inheritance of the past,” Meem wrote. “Perhaps in a small way, this may be a worthy symbol of the way St. John’s College looks at its task in the world.” Many more buildings have been added to the campus since, and more will be added in the next few years: a new residential center and the Dr. Norman and Betty Levan Hall, which will house the Graduate Institute.4" �{Alumni Events Calendar} Alumni Calendar Make plans for Homecoming! Annapolis^ September 26-28, and Santa Fe. on October 10-12. See you there. Santa Fe Alumni Art Show: “The Lunatic, The Lover, The Poet” September 19 - October zi, 2008 A highlight of the fall semester in Santa Fe each year is the opening of the Annual AllAlumni Art Show, marking its eighth year in 2008. This year’s theme is inspired by a passage from Shakespeare’s^ Midsummer Night’s Dream: “Lovers and madmen have such seething brains. Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend More than cool reason ever comprehends. The lunatic, the lover, and the poet. Are of imagination all compact...” Eagerly awaiting the next Homecoming in Annapolis Opening Reception: Friday, September 19, 5-8 p.m. Closing Reception for Homecoming attendees: Saturday, October ii, 6-7 p.m. In Paca Garden, walled and dry they built the Old World in the New, and there walked girl and woman, I with man and boy (remember?), you. a flash of gold; I wore it round my neck for days. You wondered why I prized the broken chain you found; you feared and could not meet my eye. As if to keep all life at bay and shut our eyes to hear a story we dressed the truth in solemn play: my quiet house of ancient glory, We played pretend, but much came true: our Old World gave us the refrain, with words dictated by the New. I have, but never wear, the chain. linen and tea; your Russian home, the dying count, a summons back. Were those bricked streets our sunny Rome, or Paris? You spotted in a crack Like faery queen and knight of old we lingered in determined bliss: a string of nonsense, trampled gold, a small thing, but too bright to miss. {The College- St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } —Ruth Johnston (Stayer, A85) �STJOHN’S COLLEGE ANNAPOLIS • SANTA FE Published by the Communications Office P.O. Box 2800 Annapolis, Maryland 21404 ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED Non-Profit Org. U.S. Postage Paid Annapolis, MD Permit No. 120 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The College (2001-2017) Description An account of the resource The St. John's College Communications Office published The College magazine for alumni. It began publication in 2001, continuing the St. John's Reporter, and ceased with the Fall 2017 issue. Click on <a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=56">Items in The College (2001-2017) Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, Md. Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context thecollege2001 Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 52 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The College, Summer 2008 Description An account of the resource Volume 34, Issue 2 of The College Magazine. Published in Summer 2008. 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 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2008 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context The College Vol. 34, Issue 2 Summer 2008 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Harty, Rosemary (editor) Dempsey, Patricia (assistant editor) Hannifin, Jenny (Santa Fe editor) Behrens, Jennifer (art director) Allison, Christopher Brooks, Ethan Gassaway, Shane Johnston, Ruth Dunn MacRae, Cathi Nugent, Tom Spiegelman, Deborah Stratton, Erica Wilson, Kea Wright, Jennifer Johnson, David The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/04f2e5973a9519d5d018d3bf1f840469.pdf 531bdd67c2dd2180e39de8baec734f42 PDF Text Text �STJOHN’S College ANNAPOLIS • SANTA FE On Mozart magine what Mozart would have thought of the sweeping claims made of his music today, and of the various commercial enterprises that sprouted up as a result. Listening to Mozart, according to some studies, can help produce smarter babies, stimulate creativity in adults, and even motivate cows to produce more milk. This report on the “Moozart” effect can be found on ABCNews.com: “On Hans Pieter Sieber’s Priegola dairy farm in Villanueva del Pardillo, Spain, the secret to success is not some newfangled technology or machine. . . Rather it is the dulcet, layered tones of classical music.” In this case, the report claimed, Sieber’s 700 heifers went more happily to their milking stalls when exposed to Mozart’s Concerto for Flute and Harp in D Major. As the recipient of a “Mozart effect” CD, I can find no evidence as to whether Mozart’s music has rendered anyone in my family smarter, more creative, or a better test taker. However, personal experience has shown that “5oare sia il sento” from Cosifan tutte, played on a continuous loop, has been proven to soothe both colicky babies and desperate adults in the middle of the night. While Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus gave Mozart a new prominence in the aoth century, it also reinforced in modern popular culture all the myths that begin as rumors soon after Mozart’s death in lygr. Here was a genius hounded, undermined, and ultimately driven to death by that sulking mediocrity, Salieri. The fact that Mozart died while trying in vain to finish his Requiem, along with reports that his body swelled up dramatically in his final hours, helped to contribute to the conspiracy theories. William Stafford debunks a dozen or so misconceptions about the composer in his book The Mozart Myths. In short, Stafford concludes: Mozart was not poisoned, but died from an infection; rheumatic fever may have factored in his rapid decline. Mozart didn’t suffer from mental illness, wasn’t the playboy or drunkard he is sometimes made out to be, and by most accounts was devoted to his wife, Constanze. Salieri, while no genius, really wasn’t such a bad composer. Mozart’s professional and financial failures had more to do with his inability to play along with the patronage system and to cater to the popular tastes of his time. At St. John’s, juniors discuss Don Giovanni in seminar and listen to several other Mozart works in tutorial. Annapolis tutor Bill Pastille says the opera is sometimes a challenge to discuss in seminar. For him, the archetypal Don Juan story of the libretto doesn’t quite measure up to the superb music of this opera, though he points out that Kierkegaard found the opera fascinating. Pastille prefers The Marriage ofFigaro, often discussed in music tutorial. “The last two minutes, the scene in which the countess forgives her husband, is a beautiful moment. It’s like grace shining into the world.” This issue of The College^ celebrates music at St. John’s by focusing on some of our tutors-and there are many more at the college than can be profiled in these pages-who share their musical talents with all of us. -KU I The College is published three times a year by St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD, and Santa Fe, NM Known office of publication: Communications Office St. John’s College Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404-2800 Periodicals postage paid at Annapolis, MD Send address changes to The College Magazine, Communications Office, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800. postmaster: Rosemary Harty, editor 443-716-4011 rosemary.harty@sjca.edu Patricia Dempsey, managing editor Jenny Hannifin, Santa Fe editor Jennifer Behrens, art director The College welcomes letters on issues of interest to readers. Letters can be sent via e-mail to the editor or mailed to the address above. Annapolis 410-626-2539 Santa Fe 505-984-6104 Contributors Ann Deger (SFii) Sara Luell (A09) Brooke McLane-Higginson (AGI09) Anna Perleberg (SF02) Deborah Spiegelman Magazine design by Claude Skelton Design J “ 170/^ J? Mixed Sources Product group from well-managed forests and other controlled sources www.fstorg Cert no. SW-COC-0024<M O 1996 Forest Stewardship Council �I -| College The ZINE FOR Alumni of St. John’s College Annapolis {Contents} PAGE ZO DEPARTMENTS From Freshman to Johnnie Was it speaking up in seminar, finishing up the freshman essay, falling in love with Ptolemy? Members of the class of 2011 share experiences that helped make them feel like a Johnnie. PAGE Zz^ The Book that Changed My Liee Sometimes a book is so powerful it can change your life in subtle or dramatic ways, suddenly or over time. PAGE 2 FROM THE BELL TOWERS • • • • • • • • • • Celebrating campaign success Developing young leaders in Annapolis What the tutors did last summer Keeping the great books alive in Chicago It’s all about community in Santa Fe High praise for St. John’s The reading list A Graduate Institute family Levan Hall update News and announcements 9 LETTERS 30 BIBLIOFILE Toby Barlow (SF88) explores lycanthropes in love in Sharp Teeth-, also, new alumni books in brief, and what the tutors are reading. 2(0 Music in the Key oe Liee 34 ALUMNI Exploring another side of our multi-talented tutors. PAGE PROFILES 32 Deputy Police Chief Clark Kimerer (SF78) keeps law and order in Seattle. 36 Judge Jean K. FitzSimon (A73) aims for fairness in bankruptcy court. 38 Austin architect Francois Levy (SF87) designs sustainable buildings. 40 Abby Weinberg (SFoo) is saving forests. 28 Alumni Voices On Saturday nights, the fishnets are on and the gloves are off for Jane McManus (A93) and her roller derby alter ego, Lesley E. Visserate. 48 SANTA FE ALUMNI RETURN 50 ALUMNI ASSOCIATION NEWS PAGE 32 ON THE COVER Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Illustration by David Johnson 52 ST. John’s forever �{From the Bell Towers} Celebrating Unprecedented Success Exceeding the most ambitious fundraising goal in the college’s history called for saying thank you in a big way, and of course, saying it twice: first in Santa Fe on July 25, when the college announced it had raised $134 million, and again in September in Annapolis. Alumni, parents, board members, community supporters, and friends from across the nation joined together to celebrate a land mark achievement. In both cities, the college marked how much has already been achieved through gifts to the campaign and thanked those whose contributions made the campaign a success. In Santa Fe, President Michael Peters hosted a distinc tively Southwestern-themed celebration that began with a reception in the tented parking Spirits were high at Santa Fe’s July 25 “Celebracion.” lot of the Student Activities Center. Monsoon rains that visited the campus earlier in the parents, and foundations, as well as its faculty and staff and the week yielded to sunny skies, and mariachis in studded charro suits communities it serves, is what has been most heartening to me.” greeted arriving guests. The main event took place in the SAC Among the speakers were Reed Dasenbrock, secretary of the basketball court, transformed by draping, banners, black carpet New Mexico Department of Higher Education, and Santa Fe and strikingly decorated tables. A jazz ensemble entertained as Mayor David Coss. Both expressed their appreciation for the guests enjoyed dinner and dessert. college. “I grew up with St. John’s as a neighbor, and I am proud “Without every gift, no matter how large or small, we would that St. John’s is here,” said Coss. “You fit in right from the very not be here tonight celebrating the campaign-a campaign that beginning.” achieved virtually every one of its goals-increased college Ray Cave (class of 1948), a member of the college’s Board of endowment, student internship programs, new dormitories in both Visitors and Governors and chairman of the college’s previous Santa Fe and Annapolis,” Peters said. “This enthusiastic participa campaign, was called upon to lead a champagne toast. He referred tion, the knowledge that St. John’s is valued by its alumni, friends. to a draft of a proposed new strategic plan for the college, which The Campaign for St. John’s College raised $134 million for the college, much of which is already at work in supporting the Program; • $43.6 for the support of financial aid • $14.4 for improvements to student life, the libraries, internships, and grants for teachers to attend the Graduate Institute • $29.3 million for increased faculty salaries and faculty development • $12 million for the construction of Gilliam and Spector halls in Annapolis • $13.5 million for the renovation of Mellon Hall • $5 million for the construction of Norman and Betty Levan Hall, to house Santa Fe’s Graduate Institute • $5 million for a new dormitory in Santa Fe {The College- states: “mere survival is no longer an issue for St. John’s.” “So I propose a toast. First: to a St. John’s where ‘survival is no longer an issue.’ Second: To the glorious prospect that-once again and for the foreseeable future-with due thanks to a successful capital campaign-the following teachers will return to St. John’s each fall: Homer and Plato, Kant and Descartes, Tolstoy and Twain-along with too of their friends,” Cave said. Although the news was already out, the celebration in Annapolis, held in the FSK Lobby, was no less ebullient. A group of grateful Johnnies sang “Ode to Joy” and Annapolis President Christopher Nelson (SF70) thanked supporters for helping the college surpass the $125 million goal for the campaign. “We knew from the very start that to reach such an ambitious goal we would need the support of everyone who knew and cared about the college: our alumni, our friends in Annapolis and Santa Fe and across the nation, and the parents of our alumni and students-everyone had to play a part,” Nelson said. “And you St. John’s College ■ Fall 200S } �{From the Bell Towers} 3 Honoring Two Exceptional Supporters Ron Fielding (A70) is named a Fellow of the college, to the APPLAUSE OF (l. TO R.) AnNAPOLIS DeAN MiCHAEL DiNK (A75), BVG Chair Sharon Bishop (class of 1965), and Santa Fe Dean Victoria Mora. The July campaign celebration included a special presentation to two alumni whose contributions were essential to the success of “With a Clear and Single Purpose”: The Campaign for St. John’s College. Santa Fe Dean Victoria Mora and Annapohs Dean Michael Dink (A75) named two new Honorary Fellows of the College, a distinction that has been bestowed by the faculty of the college to just a handful of people over the years. Ronald Fielding (A70) was honored “in appreciation of his outstanding leadership as chair of the Campaign for St. John’s College, his extraordinary generosity to the college, and in recognition of his accomphshments in the field of finance.” Sharon Bishop (class of 1965) was recognized “in appreciation of her distinguished service as chair of the Board of Visitors and Governors, her generosity and leadership during the period of the Campaign for St. John’s College, and her contribution to the field of human resources and social services.” Both were moved by the honor, with Bishop noting, “none of my tutors ever would have expected this from me! ” Philanthropist Paul Mellon (class of 1944) and Columbia University’s Mark Van Doren (HA46) were made honorary fellows of the college in 1958-59. In 1996, Ray Cave (class of 1948) and Stephen Feinberg (HA96), co-chairs of the Campaign for our Fourth Century were made honorary fellows. came through! Boy, did you come through! My heart is so filled with gratitude toward all of you for what you have done to secure the future of this small but important college. We can’t say thank you often enough for the good things you’ve helped us accomplish.” Before the speeches gave way to swing dancing, Elsabe Dixon (Aio) took a moment to thank donors for what their gifts make possible for St. John’s students now and in the future: “You have given us the ability to be a great college through your contribu tions to financial aid, student housing and student internships,” she said. “You are the ones who have put in the time as a commu nity to continue to support this community. And for everything that you all have done for me and my fellow students, I am grateful beyond what these words can say.” {The College. Above, clockwise: Santa Fe students offered a hearty thanks to CAMPAIGN donors; TUTOR ToM MaY AND HIS WIFE, PAMELA, AT THE Annapolis; Luke Russell, Sam Porter, and Robert Shaver (all Aog) perform; Dr. Norman Levan (SFGI74), Santa Fe GI Director Krishnan Venkatesh, and BVG Member Michael Uremovich (SFGI05). reception in St. John’s College ■ Fall aooS } �{From the Bell Towers} Learning Leadership a Long Way from Home This past August, three St. John’s students and alumni traveled with five Annapolis teenagers to the Dominican Repuhhc, where they spent a week living and working in the remote mountain village of El Ramon. The service trip, designed to foster leadership skills to prepare the teens to make a difference in their hometown communities. was organized by Epigenesis, an outreach project created and led by Annapolis students. Last spring, the group’s founders (Jamaal Barnes, Aio; Raphaela Cassandra, Ato; Joshua Becker, Ao8; and Rachel Davison, Ao8) received a $10,000 peace grant from the Kathryn Wasserman Davis Foundation for their program. They contacted local community groups to develop ideas and support for the program, then recruited their participants. Beginning last June, they met together in Mellon HaU for seminar-style discussions on topics including leadership, race, and social activism. The international trip offered the students an opportunity to put their training into action. Cassandra, Becker, and Adam Meyers (A07) made the trip, serving as chaperones for the teens. The Dominican Republic’s Ambassador to the U.N. met their plane in Santo Domingo. They stayed at a local Cathohc school near El Ramon for two nights, then packed up their gear and two heavy suit cases filled with books donated by The Annapolis Bookstore for the village’s library. Next came the steep ride up the mountain to El Ramon. “It was so steep we had to get out and push at Johnnies and their Epigenesis PARTICIPANTS IN THE DOMINICAN Republic. Back row (l. to r.): Yosy Valasquez, Bryanna Greene, Tobi Yusuf, Adam Meyers (A07), Joshua Becker (A08), Raphaela Cassandra (Ato); Front row: Timothy Greene and Tony Connor. What the Tutors Did Last Summer Ah, the lucky tutors. Each summer they get to delve into something new, seek a deeper grasp of a familiar work, or study unfamifiar subject matter to prepare for a class they have yet to lead. AU we get to do is go to the beach. In Annapohs, six tutors read Virgina WoolFs The Waves. Tutor Tom May, who led the group, said, “Our study of the novel ranged from close and lengthy consideration of the imagery of the interludes and their relation to the foUowing sections, to the development and aging of each of the six characters, to the larger effort that Woolf makes to refashion the novel as a literary form.” The group also read and discussed two poems that resonated with particular sections of the novel: Wordsworth’s “Lines Written on Westminster Bridge,” related to Bernard’s arrival in London, and W. H. Auden’s “Stop aU the clocks” in connec tion with NevUle’s account of Percival’s death. A group of Santa Fe tutors delved into comedic hterature with a study group that arose from tutor David McDonald’s {The College -5f. aooy lecture on Rabelais. The lecture sparked a dialogue between McDonald and tutor Alan Zeithn, and the two began discussing ways in which comedic works might be better apprehended in the Program. “Comedy has a reputation of being hard to talk about at the coUege,” said McDonald. The two had three principal aims for their summer study group: to help participants become better readers of comedic writings, to look at the many deep and intrinsically interesting questions raised by the study of these works, and to John’s College • Fall 2008 } times,” Cassandra says. In El Ramon, the group settled in on sleeping mats at La Esperanza Community Center, a concrete building with stone floors, but no running water or electricity. They shared long days of hard work and learned to dance the merengue at communal dinners with local village leaders. They also discov ered “the parallels to service work in the United States, and the ways we could have an impact back here in Annapolis,” says Becker. Working with Peace Corps volunteers and local leaders, the group conducted a census of the 350 families in El Ramon. They also ventured into the lush rain forest outside the village to dig up plants for a prayer garden they created near the village’s community center. “The garden was a way to cross the language barrier,” says Cassandra. “We learned how to work together, planting side by side.” For more on the project, visit the group’s Web site: www.epigenesisprogram.org. —Patricia Dempsey consider carefully the place of comedic works at the college. They set out to look beyond surface-level comedy to discover deeper meaning. “Being amused [by a work] too often means dismissal of its intellectual seriousness,” said Zeitlin. The group was startled by how different from each other various comedic traditions were-Aristophanes from Terence, Chaucer from Lucianyet all managed to show how our expectations of the world are at odds with our experience of it. “Comedy teaches us the hmits of being able to control our world,” said McDonald. �{From the Bell Towers} 5 Summer in Santa Fe In Santa Fe, the bustle of campus life doesn’t slow during the summer months-in fact, it just gets busier. January Freshmen and Graduate Insti tute students are joined by conference attendees from around the world. The campus hosted i6 groups this summer, including Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf School of English, the Santa Fe Institute, the Glen Workshop, and a bevy of biolo gists, cosmologists and physi cists from Los Alamos National Labs. During the month of July the college also hosted partici pants in the Summer Classics Johnnies and Santa Feans of all ages spread blankets on the athleticfield. program, a diverse group of alumni, Santa Feans, and friends from across the nation who gathered for week-long seminars on works including the Mahabharata and the Iliad and on topics such as World War I in prose and poetry. This summer marked the third year of the college’s enormously successful Music on the Hill series, envisioned as a way to bring St. John’s and the Santa Fe commu nity together through family centered concerts. This year. Music on the Hill kicked off June II, beginning six weeks of performances that drew crowds of up to 1,500 people (up from 450 in the first year). National and local acts representing a range of styles from jazz to folk to reggae to blues graced the stage each Wednesday. John nies and Santa Feans of all ages spread blankets on the athletic field to mingle, picnic, dance, and enjoy music on beautiful summer evenings. This summer also saw the college’s participation in the 5th Annual International Folk Art Market, a global celebra tion of international craft tradi tions and the artists who partic ipate in them. More than 100 artists from 40 different coun tries attend the market, which provides an opportunity for artists and craftspeople to share their work, exchange ideas, and create sustainable economic opportunities for their home cultures. St. John’s housed artists in the dorms the first year of the market, and many of the original attendees recall their stays on campus fondly. Some, particularly those hailing from troubled or strife-torn regions, remarked that the market was “one place we could always feel safe.” As the event has grown. artists no longer stay on campus, but the college continues to sponsor the event, and President Michael Peters sits on the market’s board of directors. St. John’s also hosts and organizes the One World Dinner, a festive meal for more than 350 people that allows artists, organizers, sponsors, and international dignitaries to join together in cross-cultural conversation. The success of the International Folk Art Market played a role in Santa Fe’s recent designation as a UNESCO Creative City. —AnneDeger (SFii) Above: Participants in the International Folk Art Market. At left: Summer aoo8 MARKED THE THIRD SEASON OF Music {The College. St. John’s College ■ Fall 200S } on the Hill. �6 {From the Bell Towers} Supporting Chicago’s Great Books College Against all odds, a small, independent liberal arts college with a great books curriculum overcomes serious financial difficulties to survive. Sound familiar? Shimer College, “the great books school of Chicago,” shares many aspects of its history and educational mission with St. John’s. In addi tion, Shimer shares Christopher Nelson (SF70), president of the Annapohs campus and current chairman of the Shimer Board of Trustees. Since he joined Shimer’s board in 2005, Nelson has helped advise the college in critical matters such as fundraising and student recruit ment, a move from Waukegan to Chicago, and choosing an interim president. He also assisted in the search that led Shimer to its new president, Thomas K. Lindsay, deputy chair of the National Endow ment for the Humanities. Nelson has known of Shimer since the early 1970s, when as president of the Chicago alumni chapter, he met several St. John’s alumni who were teaching at the college. “I was very interested because Shimer has a core curriculum that looks a lot hke St. John’s and a faculty that was clearly dedicated to the college’s mission,” he says. Shimer was founded in 1853 in Mount Carroll, Illinois. Under Robert Hutchins’ guid ance, it became the great books college of the University of Chicago from 1950-1958. When Chicago pulled out, the great books remained. Falhng enroll ment and crushing debt led the college’s trustees to desperate measures in the 1970s. They voted to close the college and sell the buildings and campus in Mount Carroll; however, a group of faculty and students refused to give up. They borrowed money to keep the doors open, and the college moved to Waukegan in 1979. “A dedicated group of people kept it going,” Nelson says. “The faculty did all the administrative jobs, as well as teaching, and even the maintenance. Students continued their studies, and the college rebuilt itself.” In part because St. John’s also struggled to survive at times. Nelson finds Shimer’s story inspiring. Although students can choose major fields of study at the college, a required core curriculum includes seminars on the great works of Western civihzation. Nelson’s involvement with the college began when he became a friend of Shimer’s former president, Donald Moon, who remains on the faculty. Throughout the years, Nelson offered Moon advice and support, and he joined Shimer’s board at the invitation of Presi dent William Rice. Nelson even tually became vice chair and began his term as chair in 2007. Nelson is pleased that things are looking up for Shimer. Two years ago the college sold its Waukegan buildings and moved to the campus of the lUinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. Last year, the college was profiled in the New York Times and earlier this fall, the college welcomed 45 freshmen, its largest entering class in 30 years. “It’s important that this school survive,” Nelson says. Cassie Sherman {A04) is one of four St. John’s alumni among Shimer’s faculty and staff; like Nelson, she’s determined to see Shimer succeed. As assistant admissions director, she does everything from visiting high schools to producing student recruitment material. “I feel hke I’m doing a good thing,” she says. {The College- As CHAIRMAN OF ShIMER ColLEGe’s BoARD OF TRUSTEES, AnNAPOLIS President Christopher Nelson (SF70) advises the college LEADERSHIP. “The Most Important Ideas of our Civilization” St. John’s is often mentioned favorably in books about educa tion, but it’s always nice when a highly respected figure issues high praise. In this case, it’s Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, who for 30 years was the president of George Washington University. In his newly pubhshed memoir, Trachtenberg mentions St. John’s in a chapter titled “The Ideal University”: “St. John’s College ... is a smaU, intimate, teaching-oriented, classics-focused institution that is sometimes mentioned as one ideal. I remember when in 1954 a St. John’s representative came to speak to a parent/student meeting at my high school in Brooklyn. As interested as the parents were in what the man had to say about the college, it was clear that they were needlessly concerned that if their kids chose St. John’s, they wouldn’t be able to get into medical school. To them, it was, perhaps, too unconventional a place that was following a curriculum they perceived as too far from the norm to be recognized by professional schools as providing a legitimate education. But for many other people, St. John’s was and stiU is the very best form of undergraduate education, a chance to immerse oneself in the most important ideas of our civihzation.” St. John’s College • Fall 2008 } �{From the Bell Towers} Levan Hall Plans Approved Building in environmentally sensitive Santa Fe is never an easy feat, but the college’s longawaited center for the Graduate Institute, Levan Hall, has made its way through the city’s extensive review and permitting process, and building should begin in the spring. A gift from Dr. Norman Levan (SFGI74) made the project possible. The first step, approval from the City of Santa Fe Planning Commission, was achieved in June. The next hurdle was cleared July aa, when the board approved a height exception (the building is 39 feet at its tallest, compared to the regulation 16 feet), but required college officials to return for approval of additional design features, including some varia tion in design from surrounding buildings, and the architect’s use of COR-TEN, a resilient steel designed to weather to a pleasing copper color. The review board approved the college’s plans on Sept. a3. Levan Hall is being designed With plans approved, the college should begin Levan Hall CONSTRUCTION NEXT SPRING. to achieve a silver rating in the United States Green Building Council LEED rating system. Reading List CHANGES In with Medea, out with the Rat Man The Instruction Committees on each campus have made some changes to the work in progress that is the seminar reading list. In Santa Fe, where the committee focused on All in the GI Family Two GENERATIONS OF THE ThOMAS/GrOENENDYKE FAMILY, SHOWN WITH President Michael Peters (l.), graduated from the GI last May. Abbie Thomas (not in regalia) received her degree in May in Annapolis. Her mother, Cheryl Groenendyke, and Cheryl’s HUSBAND, Richard (a BVG member), received their degrees a week later in Santa Fe. Ms. Thomas was awarded a prize for her preceptorial essay, “Rereading Proust,” an honor announced AT the Santa Fe ceremony. freshman and junior years, some of the more significant changes involve replacing Plato’s Sophist with the Protagoras, swapping “The Two-Part Prelude of 1799” for “Tintern Abbey,” and replacing Euripides’ Hippolytas with the Medea. All three replacement texts have been on various reading lists before, and it is likely that all will appear again in the future. One plan, adopted a few years ago, was to alternate the Sophist and the Protagoras on a regular basis. Similarly, Medea might likely find itself replaced with another Euripides play, and “Tintern Abbey” could give way to a different Wordsworth poem. To take the Sophist off the reading list is “to lose a great good,” says tutor Matt Davis, but the Protagoras has its own virtues. Considered one of Plato’s most dramatic dialogues, the Protagoras is a literary masterwork offering students an opportunity to learn about Protagoras-the representative of relativism-in more than one dialogue (Theaetetus being the other). By studying the dialogues together students learn more about one of the most important problems of our (The College. St. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } 7 time. The dialogue also allows greater insight into Socrates: readers see him in a slightly less saintly role and learn about his relationship to the Sophists. It has been about eight years since Medea was on the freshman reading list, Davis estimates. Medea elicits questions about the status of the Greek heroes and about mortals’ relations to the gods. “Tintern Abbey” can present a challenge in seminar due to its brevity, but one virtue in reading shorter texts is the opportunity for a deeper, more leisurely conversation. In Annapolis, freshmen will have two seminars on De Anima, with their Lucretius seminars moving to sophomore seminar. This exchange undoes a long-standing, but anom alous, departure from the rough chronological order that prevails through most of the reading list. Annapolis Dean Michael Dink (A75) says, “it is hoped that freshmen will benefit from bringing the three major Aristotle readings together: Physics, Metaphysics, and De Anima. The other changes all followed the principle that any author worthy of being on the Program is worthy of at least two seminars.” That means in sophomore year, a second seminar will be read on Calvin. Seniors will have two seminars on Faulkner, with additional selections from Go Down, Moses, and two seminars on Heidegger’s Intro duction to Metaphysics, instead of one on “What is Philos ophy?” Removed from the reading list are Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel in sophomore year. Sacrificed in senior year: Flannery O’Connor’s “Parker’s Back” and Freud’s “Notes on a Case of Obsessional Neurosis” (Rat man). �{From the Bell Towers} 8 News & Announcements New Tutors The following tutors have joined the Santa Fe faculty: Arcelia Rodrigue/, received her BA, MA, and PhD in Government and Politics from the University of Mary land, College Park. Her areas of special interest include political philosophy and international relations. Seth Braver received his MA in Mathematics from the University of California at Santa Cruz and his PhD in Mathematics from University of Montana. Before coming to St. John’s Braver was adjunct associate professor at the University of Montana. Topi Heikkero received his MA (Theoretical Philosophy) and MTh (Theological Ethics and Philosophy of Religion) from the University of Helsinki, Finland. He special izes in the ethics of technology and the philosophy of tech nology. Llyd Wells received his BA in Natural Science and Ancient Near Eastern Studies from The Johns Hopkins University, and his MS and PhD in Oceanog raphy from the University of Washington, Seattle. Before coming to St. John’s, Wells held a Mellon postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania, and was scholar in-residence at Sterhng College, Vermont. Annapolis welcomed the following tutors: Michael J. Brogan earned a PhD in Philosophy from Villanova University, where he also earned his master’s degree. He was a visiting researcher at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium and earned his bach elor’s degree at Swarthmore College. Matthew S. Linck joins St. John’s from The New School of Social Research, where he was an adjunct professor in the New School for General Studies. He has also taught in the honors program of Long Island University, SUNY’s Purchase College, and New York University. He is author of The Ideas ofSocrates (London: Continuum, 2007). He earned a BEA in Painting at Syracuse University. Marcel Andrew Widzisz earned a PhD in Classics from the University of Texas at Austin, where he also earned his master’s in Greek Litera ture. He earned three bach elor’s degrees from Southern Illinois University: in Classics, French, and Philosophy. A visiting tutor in the Graduate Institute this fall, Sarah Benson earned a BA in Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University, an MA in Comparative Literature from the University of Texas, and a PhD in the History of Art from Cornell University. Members New BVG Members The college’s Board ofVisitors and Governors welcomed these members: John M. Belcher is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of ARINC Incorpo rated. He has more than 30 years of experience in the aviation, information tech nology, and defense industries, and is a leading authority in aviation and air traffic services. Stephen Jon Bohlin (SF81) retired recently after a long investment career with Thornburg Investment Management in Santa Fe. He also serves on the New Mexico State Treasurer’s Investment Committee as a public member. Michele C. Farquhar is a partner at Hogan and Hartson law firm in Washington, D.C. She is a member of the Cali fornia and Washington, D.C., bar associations and is on the board of trustees at her alma mater, Duke University. Jana Howard Carey retired as a Partner at Venable, LLP, in December 2003 after 26 years of law practice. She is an active of the aikido club go through their moves as part of a STUDENT activities FAIR EARLIER THIS SEMESTER. {The College -St. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } community leader in Maryland. Richard A. Groenendyke, Jr. (SFGI08) recently retired after a 35-year career in the law. Most recently, he was a share holder and senior litigator with Hall, Estill, Hardwick, Gable, Golden & Nelson, Attorneys at Law, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. John C. Jeeferies, Jr. recently stepped down as dean of the University of Virginia School of Law. He is a member of the bar in both Virginia and the District of Columbia. Awards In October, Annapolis Treasurer Bronte Jones was one of six recipients of the Fannie Lou Hamer Award, named for the groundbreaking civil rights leader. Presented by the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Committee, the award recog nizes women who continue Hamer’s efforts. Jones was also accepted to the HERS Institute at Wellesley College. The Arts Council of Anne Arundel County earlier this fall presented Annie Awards to Lucinda Edinberg, art educator for the St. John’s Mitchell Gallery, and Anna Greenberg (HA96), honorary member of the college’s Board ofVisitors and Governors. Edinberg was named Arts Educator of the Year, and Greenberg was recognized as Arts Patron of the year. The Epoch Journal, a magazine on current affairs published by Annapolis students, was named a finalist in the American Collegiate Press’ 2008 Magazine Pacemaker Award, which recognizes excellence in student journalism. For more about the Epoch, visit the publication’s website: http://news. epochjournal, org/.-^ �{Letters} A Loss FOR THE COLLEGE On a hot summer day in 1997, Chris Colhy (HA08) showed me how to use the most intimidating machine in the Print Shop: an industrial-grade paper cutter, armed with a hlade powerful enough to sever a hand. 1 stiU recall Chris’ patient, soft-spoken manner when he explained how to operate the menacing machine. Thankfully, for my sake, the machine had a fail-safe method of operation, requiring the use of hoth hands to trigger the cutting mechanism. 1 had the privilege to know and work with Chris, not while I was a student, hut after I gradu ated. For a year, before 1 went to law school, 1 was a hookmaker, among other things, at the Touchstones Discussion Project, which required my almost daily presence at the Print Shop. Chris trained me in the art of paper cutting, binding, and copying. Soon, not only did 1 lose fear of operating copying machines, I also became part of Chris’ Print Shop family, and my tedious work became much more enjoyable. During my time at the Print Shop, Chris and 1 had many conversations about pretty much every subject. 1 recall one partic ular anecdote he related about his grocery shopping habits, which 1 try to practice to this day. He recommended going to the store with specific meals in mind so as not to overspend or buy on impulse, thus defeating the expectations of the grocers. Chris had a rebellious streak in him. He said, in his matter-offact way, that one saved much money that way. After threeand-a-half years of St. John’s (1 was a Febbie), 1 appreciated Chris’ real-world savoir-faire. While Chris.. .was unable to finish college, he was well-read, knowledgeable and informed. In his time at the college, he had caught the “Great Books bug,” having read many of the books Christopher Colby (HA08) students read, which always made for pleasant conversation, as we discharged our respective duties and tried to drown out the repetitive noise of the printing presses and the copiers. Chris also enjoyed an unexpected perk from the tutors who came every day with mate rial to copy for their classes. Chris would keep an extra copy of any material that interested him (short stories and poetry in particular) and would read them at his leisure. I last saw Chris during my 10year reunion in aooy. He showed me the many improve ments in equipment and tech nology that he had accom plished since I had left. As we toured the Print Shop, I could not help but think how proud Chris was of the changes that had occurred. He had brought the Print Shop from the Guten berg years to the aist century. Chris was a humble, loyal and dedicated member of the college community. I am not only saddened about his death, but also about the loss for the college. Juan Villasenor (A97) Applauding TheLogic of Desire I recently read and was entranced by.. .Annapolis tutor Peter Kalkavage’s The Logic of Desire: An Introduction to Hegel’s Phenomenology.... The book is a remarkable embodiment of the teaching art. Kalkavage creates a living joining of inwardnesses, which he is able to awaken and hnk in a remarkable way; the inward ness of Hegel’s written words, his own inwardness as medi ating presence, and the inward ness of the reader. The paradox to me was that when I’m able to teach like this, it’s because I can stand in the thing to be under stood and in the particular embodied learning soul of the student before me and adapt what I say to the way that student learns, while watching aU the time not only what the student says but the modulation in the student’s eyes, opaque or melting to insight, resistant or ardent. Kalkavage does the same thing, but without the individual student before him. Yet he addresses the reader in such a way as to reach a wide array of individual readers. His book is a model of this art. Kalkavage writes, “Commen taries on the Phenomenology tend to give the reader a summary of its conclusions and teachings, often brilhantly, without necessarily helping him become a better reader of Hegel’s book.” Becoming a better reader of Hegel’s book means to be able “to make sense of things from the inside as they unfold.” [This] points to a deeper effect of Kalkavage’s way of shaping our experience of reading his book. Let me try to say succinctly why this is so by starting with a comparison. Ifyou read John Bunyan’s great narrative. The Pilgrim’s Progressfrom This World to That Which is to Come, you will be able to share in the immediate experience of Christian as he moves from one crisis of Christian growth to maturity after another. This is aimed to support more of an inner transformation of the reader than a doctrinal summary of Christian teaching might do. Similarly, Hegel wrote The Phenomenology ofSpirit to enable the reader to share in the {The College ■ St. John’s College ■ Fall aoo8 } 9 immediate experience of spirit through its intrinsic and neces sary sequence of stages and transitions as it moves through one crisis of growth after another toward its complete realization. In helping us become better readers of Hegel, Kalkavage stays within the perspective of spirit at each point of its unfolding as Hegel represents it. In this way we are helped to pace and share an unfolding that is also happening in each of us. Thus Kalkavage’s commentary, as Hegel intends, supports a self-reflection that helps us discover who we are. Such more than personal yet also personal self-reflection as this enables is a great gift. Where do I find myself in Hegel’s great gallery of arche types of stages of spirit’s self consciousness? Master? Slave? Stoic? the Unhappy Conscious ness? Rameau’s Nephew? Beautiful Soul? Or any of the many other archetypal states of consciousness? I will confess only that I recognize myself only part of the way along the course of spirit to maturity and no doubt as I read I reduce Hegel’s description of what is ahead to fit the lens of my present consciousness of self and the world. Nevertheless, I’m grateful that I found myself, almost by accident, among “the courageous non-specialists” for whom Kalkavage writes. Richard Freis (class of ig6i) The College welcomes letters on issues of interest to readers. Letters may be edited for clarity and/or length. Those under 500 words have a better chance of being printed in their entirety. Please address letters to: The College Magazine, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis MD 21404. Letters can be sent via e-mail to Rosemary.Harty(@sjca.edu. �{The Program} IO FROM FRESHMAN TO JOHNNIE Interviews by Sara Luell (Aog) AND Jenny Hannifin he College posed this ques tion to members of the Class of 2011: Was there a moment during your first year when you felt like you really became a Johnnie? Their answers were as individual as their own personal experiences have been at St. John’s, but also reflective of the college as a community of learners. Hein Myatt, Santa Fe. “It was definitely the moment I first spoke in seminar. It took me a long time to speak up; it was very challenging for me. I’m from Burma, and we didn’t have these kinds of discussions in school. I wondered: ‘what if I say something really stupid in front of the class?’ My tutor, Ms. [Janet] Dougherty, was very encouraging. She said, ‘everyone says stupid things at times; you say them, and then you can learn from them.’ So, when we were talking about the Odyssey, I was moved by it, and I finally spoke. From there, it got a lot easier.” {The College* Jake Simon, Annapolis. “I really became a Johnnie when I realized how deep the Program was, during freshman essay writing. When I was writing on The Sophist^ I turned in a rough draft to my language tutor. She told me just to reread it with a question in mind. WTien I was rereading it, I realized that there is so much more going on than I thought was possible. And then I was like, ‘Oh wow, aUofthe Plato that I’ve read, I haven’t read it at all.’ Then feeling that I could spend years going over just this book. The Sophist, just with one question in mind. It makes you feel incredibly impotent, going up against these great minds.” Natasha Barnes, Santa Fe. “There are so many little times when an experience allows you to step outside of yourself for a second and say, ‘Oh wow! I’m really a part of this.’ It usually hits you right after a class. You’re so engaged when you’re in the class, so if you’re going to have a great experience it’s because you aren’t thinking about other things in the middle of it. You get out of seminar and start talking to people about it, and all of a sudden you think‘Oh my gosh! This is crazy! I’m in the middle of this, which is exactly why I wanted to be here. So that I could have this kind of experience.’ I feel like [as a freshman] you feel something starting, because it’s really a longer process. Because you’re never aware that it’s actually happening until later in the year: you realize that something has changed from when you first got here. That now you’re not looking at this community of thinking, you’re in the middle St. John’s College * Fall 2008 } �{The Program} of it as much as anybody else is. And that happens throughout the whole year.” Freshmen still have to contend WITH their first DON RAG, BUT AT LEAST “running THE GAUNTLET” IS ONE FRESHMAN EXPERIENCE TODAY’S STUDENTS don’t HAVE TO ENDURE, AS THESE Johnnies did in 194a. Lucy Ferrier, Annapolis. “I think the first time that I sort of became aware that I belonged was coming home from Thanks giving break. Coming back to the campus, I felt like I was coming home. You have to be away to appreciate it. Everyone was running up to me saying, ‘Hi, how are you?’ I was back with people I knew, everyone knew who I was, I knew where my stuff was and where my life was based.” After years of self-identifying as a liberal arts major. I’ve discov ered a deep love for lab tutorial. The study of grammar now beguiles me, instead of boring me. I even like Ptolemy. I did not expect to love the Program itself as much as I do, even as I find I do not love the culture of the school, the culture that brought me here.” Anne Deger, Santa Fe. “Although my feelings about being a Johnnie changed over the course of the first year, at the end of the first seminar, sitting around the table, I definitely experienced an ‘I’ve come home’ feeling. But I think the most compelling momentof-Johnnieness I’ve had has come this year, after talking to freshmen. I feel more a part of it now that I’m introducing other people to St. John’s, so perhaps it just took a while to find my place. I am an older student, and this may be part of the problem. I’ve been disappointed in the lack of rigor I see in some of my fellow students, though I hope that much of this may be attributed to the process of growing up. And that learning to live in a community takes time. Still, that’s a poor excuse for skipping readings or coming to class stoned. My ovm expectations of the school varied as wildly from the college’s nature as my classmates’ natures. I’m happy to have had some of those expectations proven false. {The College- Nathaniel Torrey, Annapolis. “I would say the moment when I really felt like I was ‘in the club’ was the night I turned my freshman essay in. As soon as that seminar was over, I was in it to win it. From then on I was like, ‘I made it.’ Because every thing else was a weird freshman trial at the college, it was so unknown. I felt like I had done the big thing that everyone else does every year. I wasn’t just a freshman who had just shown up. I had actually proven my mettle, I fought, and I deserved to be here.” Nareg Seferian, Santa Fe. “‘Does it bother anyone else that these figures can be conceptualized, but not visualized?’ Thus spoke a classmate, as we were starting Euclid. No, the circle or triangle, as he describes it, simply cannot exist in ‘the real world’ (whatever that is). We can think of it, though, think in terms of it, work with it, prove things with it. I think all the time, about all sorts of things, but there come these moments- St. John’s College • Fall 2008 } �la {The Program} Tutor William Darkey leads a math ematics TUTORIAL FOR THE FIRST FRESHMEN IN SaNTA Fe, IN I964. HoW MANY FRESHMEN LEARNED TO LOVE MATH BECAUSE OF EuCLID? and I’ve had a fair few at St. John’s already over the past six months-where one is compelled to be extra pensive. It’s invig orating and refreshing. ‘Good for the soul’ is a classic way of expressing it. This ‘antiquarian’ sense that comes with St. John’s is reinforced in Santa Fe by an idyllic setting: nestled amidst hills, with arcades of pillars supporting a small commu nity of learning. Some may criticize the philosophy behind the college, and in response to that, all I can say is this: St. John’s is indeed not for everyone, but it fulfills the function of filling the very unique gap it fills, for those who yearn for just such a place. That’s what it does for me, anyway.” Dave Maher, Annapolis. “The first time I realized I was a Johnnie was the first time in seminar when I realized that someone hadn’t done the reading, and it made me very, very angry. The college is essentially a communal effort to come to learning and these people were not doing their part.” {The College. Anna Goold, Annapolis. “Before I got here I had a different view on what I thought a Johnnie was. I just assumed that all my classes and all my seminars would be perfect, that we would get somewhere with all of them, and we would come to great conclusions. I think that changes when you start having classes that aren’t that way, and you realize that everyone is struggling through everything. That was the big differ ence for me, when I felt like I belonged here. It probably was by the end of the first semester freshman year, when I was able to differentiate between it being just seminar and it being awesome. Being able to look at each problem we were discussing, whether it was good or bad, whether I thought it was going somewhere or not, whether I thought it was perfect or not. I think a lot of people [come to the same conclusion]. For a lot of us, this was the only school we applied to and we worship it as this ideal institution. It is kind of when we realize it is not ideal that we realize we are just people grasping at ideas.” Kyouhee Choi, Santa Fe, “Was there a moment when I felt like I really became a Johnnie? Sure. When I balanced a seminar chair. When we do Archimedes, we learn about balance. There’s a saying that seniors have: if you can balance the seminar chair, you’ll graduate, and if you can’t, you won’t. I knew that it was stupid and not true, but it irked me anyway. So I was really relieved when I balanced the chair. I even took a picture.” Martin Greenwald, Annapolis. “I think it was in the period of the couple of seminars before winter break, when we were reading Thucydides and the Republic, when the workload had picked up, and our seminars picked up. Everyone settled into their routine, everyone got what was going on. One big thing St. John’s College . Fall 2008 } �{TheProgram} [about being a Johnnie] is being able to take the attitude we have in seminar and try to cultivate that in everyday conversa tion, try to bring the respect and open-mindedness of seminar to conversation anywhere. Always looking at a text for what it is worth, without prejudging it beforehand. Trying to get a coherent view of the Western canon and our civilization, and where it’s been and where it is taking us.” Han Qi, Santa Fe. “One who has gone to a normal college probably would never think of college as personal and humane as St. John’s. I certainly never did. From my experience, when a student registers for four courses at a generic school, four professors each demand a considerable portion of his time according to some regimented syllabus, expecting him to produce projects almost every other day-a five-page interpre tation of a Shakespeare sonnet on Monday; a Microeconomics presentation, Tuesday; a quiz on Spanish verb forms, Wednesday; and on Thursday, he is supposed to know the difference between Paul’s messages to the Corinthians and the Romans. Students at work in a freshman laboratory STUDENTS STILL READ GaLEN AND HaRVEY. class, circa 1945. The {The College. 13 It is sheer madness. At St. John’s there are fewer readings in mathematics, language and laboratory classes, but more focus and more time to reflect and remember. Tutors let students digest rather than devour. A school does not become personal just by having a small pool of students. It has to give students space and time to connect their learning with their life. The moment I felt I became a Johnnie was in my first don rag. A tutor criticized me for being overly prepared. Something as singular as this has only happened to me at St. John’s, and I am convinced that for a place so special, you cannot prepare to be ready. You must be here in person to experience it.” Matt Hendershot, Annapolis. “It sort of came gradually, after winter break, maybe, when you’re coming back onto campus, and you’re no longer a novelty. You’re no longer some little freshman, wide-eyed and rubbernecking, talking about how excited you are about the Program. You’re still excited about the Program, but you are excited to be a part of it, now. You’ve faced down your first don rag, sat in real open-faced criticism ofyourself andthe wayyou conduct yourself. There’s a lot of overblown talk about how it is all about finding a personal philos ophy, or coming to rest at home in the classics, but plenty of people do that without ever being John nies. What really makes you a Johnnie is the fact that you are here with all sorts of other people that really want the same thing out of life and out of their educa tion. You and the people around you really come to accept that when you’ve made it through that first semester. It can be tough. I know my class lost a few, even in the first couple weeks. So I feel like you are really here to stay, and people sort of know that when you step off the plane, and you come back, and it is like coming back home.” labs may be more modern, but St. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } �{books} 14 THE BOOK THAT CHANGED MY LIFE he College asked alumni to to me about the anti-historical approach that the Program describe a book that was represented. I did not return to the college that fall. I did manage to important in their lives. What resolve my dilemma, as it were, and returned to St. John’s we received in return were the following fall, to graduate three years later with my stories of career paths found, “new” class of 1954. But Spengler has remained the single greatest influence in my life. He gave me a context in which dilemmas resolved, passion I could comprehend various stages, or the ‘development’ of and purpose discovered, faith strengthened, a particular people (for example, the Greeks, or time, or how to imagine what Beethoven’s late quartets meant in our and questions answered. T “A Fruitful Tension” Edward Bauer (Class of 1954) I spent the summer after my freshman year at St. John’s (1949-50) at home, trying to come to terms with the Program’s total absence of “historical background,” which of course is an issue of critical importance for the Program. I don’t remember how I came upon Oswald Spengler’s huge work. The Decline ofthe West. But I soon became convinced that a broad knowledge of the history of an era (or of a work of literature, or a particular architecture or art form, etc.) was absolutely necessary for understanding it. Since I felt that so strongly, I did not see how I could return to St. John’s in the fall. I wrote to Mr. [Jacob] Klein, the dean, and tried to explain my decision, and I will always be grateful to him for his understanding and for taking the time to write {The College- earlier Western culture). I also understood howwhat we are experiencing now in the late stages of Western civilization is one more historical example of the birth, growth, achievement, and decline-the biological analogy, in a word-of a particular cultural entity. In a very real way, my whole life has exemplified this tension between historical and anti- (or un-) historical. I would like to believe it has been a fruitful tension. “A Meaningful Life” Isaac Smith (A03) I tend to date the point when I stopped being a teenager and started to become an adult to the time I was reading Middle march in junior seminar. Middlemarch being, of course, the great novel of dashed hopes and bruised idealism. It had been a few months after the September ii attacks, and I was coming to grips not only with my own mortality (the passage when Casaubon stares death in the face is one of the novel’s St. John’s College - Fall 2008 } �{books} high points) but with my own anonymity, the knowledge that all my deeds, thoughts, and high ideals would be swallowed up by time and forgotten. As a result, I strongly identified with Dorothea, Ladislaw, and Lydgate, and their attempts to carve out a meaningful life for themselves even if the results weren’t what they intended. For similar reasons, I also fell in love with Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being-'which in its own way grapples with the same themes. BOOKS HAVE THE POWER TO INFLUENCE OUR LIVES, EVEN WHEN We’rE NOT AWARE OF IT AT THE TIME. school, which turned me into quite a little snot until St. John’s classes and discussion thankfully beat that out of me. My first big-people book was War ofthe Worlds by H.G. Wells when I was 8, so that set the stage for everything. “The Question “Watching Stars and Planets” of Opportunity” Jennifer Hoheisel (AGI89) by Dave Prosper (SF02) I suppose an actual Program book that changed my life would be Ptolemy’s Almagest. As wrong as he turns out to be, I found his descriptions of how to watch the sky extremely useful, and thus I tend to stay up watching stars and planets and debating if I should just ditch the computer-job thing and become an astronomer. Then I remember that my math skills are lacking and decide against it. There was also Carl Sagan’s Demon-Haunted World., which was a nice skeptical smack in the brain. I realized that my weird dreams when younger were just memories of weird dreams and not weird memories of actual aliens poking around in my room. I can blame a Johnnie by the name of Whitley Strieber (A67) for that earlier confusion, thanks to Communion and his vivid descriptions of naughty, nosy aliens. I also read The Prince and Johnny Rotten’s autobiography simultaneously during high {The College- 15 Before reading Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, I hadn’t really thought about the fact that for centuries many women were in a cycle of constant pregnancy and childbirth that left little energy or brain power to do much that was academic. Personally I was in no frame of mind to do philos ophy for at least a few months after each of our two sons was born-although I know women who feel otherwise. The cycle of frequent childbirth also was bound to interrupt the studies of those few women who did have access to higher education. All of this helps to explain why we don’t have many works from women prior to the advent of birth control and the opening of many institutions of higher education in the 20th century. (I know there are exceptions; I was writing a disser tation about a 14th-century female mystic when I was in grad school at Georgetown.) Woolf’s book speaks about the need for women to have both the time and the financial independence to be able to write. St. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } �{books} l6 Y discovered thepower ofsheltering myselfinside a story Erin Martell (A98) Not only did the book cause me to think about texts from women, it also made me realize how few women had been part of my higher education to that point. As an undergraduate majoring in Classical Civihzation at the College ofWilliam and Mary, I never had a female professor, and at St. John’s, all my tutors were male. I am not saying that there is anything inher ently different about male and female scholars; rather, it made me think again about the question of opportunity. In my own family, my extremely bright grand mother was sent to work in order to send her brother-a man who took seven years and didn’t finish the degree-to college. In the next generation, my mother was given the opportunity to go to college and was expected to excel, but her parents then assumed that she would marry, raise a family, and not work outside the home. When my sister and I arrived, we were expected to go to college and establish ourselves doing what we loved before we even thought about marriage. It was quite a difference among the three generations. Woolf’s book caused me to think about all these issues related to scholarship and opportunity for the first time. It made me appreciate anew my room in Humphrey s Hall and the luxury of time to read and read deeply. “A Profound Experience” Erin Martell (A98) One of the first “big kid” books my mother read me was The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Order triumphed over chaos and I discovered the power of sheltering myself inside a story. I tore through the remaining books as fast as my newly-learned-to-read brain could process. I read This PresentDarkness\3y Frank E. Peretti at a time in my life when I was seeking the answer to a question I didn’t even know I had. As I finished the book, I realized with sudden clarity that I couldn’t accept the religious precepts I’d been taught, their fundamental contradictions caused my constant struggle against the church, and that it was time to give up, be free and figure out what I believed on my terms. Last, as it {The College- A Room OF One’sOwklw Jennifer Hoheisel (AGI89) TO THINK ABOUT women’s OPPORTUNITIES. was for many others. War and Peace was a profound experience for me. I don’t think I captured the thoughts quite right in my senior paper, hut the idea that difficult things are worth doing and worth surviving even if the surviving is all you have in the end has stayed with me. “Challenged and Transformed” Laura Anne Stuart (A93) When I was a sophomore in Santa Fe, I came upon the book Angry Women while browsing at a record store in town. This book contains interviews with women artists, activists, and writers, most notably sexuality educators Annie Sprinkle and Susie Bright. My view of femi nism and female sexuality was challenged and transformed, and I began to think that the field of sexual health might he where my passions lay. It hadn’t even occurred to me before then that it could he a job! While at St. John’s, I followed my passion by co-coordinating the Women’s Literature Study Group and organizing trips to Washington, D.C., to attend the 1992 March for Women’s Lives and the 1993 March for Lesbian, Gay, and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation. After graduating from St. John’s, I earned my master’s degree in public health and worked as a sexuality educator for more than a decade. This year, I published a sex education curriculum for young adults and became the proud owner of a sex toy store in Milwaukee, the Tool Shed. When I finally met Susie Bright, she was amused to know that one interview that she had given years ago had started me on my career path. I spend a lot of time teaching and mentoring young people and hope that I can inspire someone in a similar way. St. John's College ■ Fall 2008 } �{books} 17 Ybelieve only authors are capable ofchanging our lives. Christopher Benson “A Lifetime’s (SFGI07) Christopher Benson says authors, NOT books, have THE POWER TO Pursuit” Harrison Sheppard (Class of 1961) CHANGE LIVES. Plato’s Apology did not merely change my life; it virtually formed it. When I was 16, an uncle of mine-who had introduced me to “literature” when I was eight years old with an eight-volume set of the works of Edgar Rice Burroughsgave me a small volume containing five of Plato’s dialogues: the Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Sympo sium, and Republic. I vividly recall the moment, more than 50 years ago, riding on a Philadelphia subway train, when I finished my first reading of the Apology. That Socrates was willing to give up his life, defiantly, rather than abandon the search for knowledge as he had been pursuing it, had a stunning effect upon me, an effect that was simultaneously thrilling and exalting. I left that train transformed. It was a year later that I learned about St. John’s College. But it was the Apology that awakened me to a lifetime’s pursuit of self-knowledge in its deepest sense, the difference between what appears to be and what is, and living with integrity based upon one’s self-recogni tion. Along with my experience at St. John’s, it also accounts for my chosen professions as a lawyer and writer and my enduring devotion to what one might yet learn from reading Plato and his companions in “The Great Conversa tion” (as Robert Hutchins termed it). “In Search of Resonant Voices” Christopher Benson (SFGI07) To the shock of every Johnnie, no book has changed my fife! I believe only authors are capable of changing our lives. St. John’s was a transformative experience for me because the institution facihtated an intimate encounter between reader and author, an encounter that crosses time and culture. I read in search of resonant voices. To borrow an insight from Ralph Waldo Emerson, a resonant voice is “spoken over the round world” but comes “home through open or winding passages.” {The College- It is a voice that I ought to hear, that belongs to me, that vibrates on my ear, consoling me when I am downtrodden and guiding me when I am lost. It is a voice of inex haustible pleasure and needful wisdom, never flattened by the tyranny of time or the vicissitudes of fife. It is a voice that treats my dark inertia, risks my securities, heals my hidden wounds, deepens my faith, awakens my somnolent imagination, expands my imper fect sympathies, and shapes my “final vocabulary.” I am tempted to mention other favorite authors-Dante, Shakespeare, Pascal, Thoreau, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Dick inson, and Frost-hut I will discipline my list to include only the resonant voices: Jesus: His subversive wisdom and edifying teaching inaugurate an upside-down kingdom-both in my soul and in the world-where the low is brought high and the high is brought low. Saint Augustine: When the Bishop of Hippo authored his autobiography. Confessions, he authored the biography of every Ghristian. His prayers and tears are my prayers and tears. His conversion is my conversion. He reminds me of a terrible truth, “Without God, what am I to myself but a guide to my own self-destruction?” Gonsequently, “nothing is nearer to God’s ears than a confessing heart and a life grounded in faith.” Soren Kierkegaard: In Fear & Trembling, Philosophical Fragments, and Works of Love, Kierkegaard goads me, against my own sheepish obstinacy, in two directions: to enter the prodigious paradoxes of the Ghristian faith and to five the scandal of the Gospel. G.S. Lewis: I read the apologetic works of Lewis-Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, Miracles, The Great Divorce, The Problem of Pain, A Grief Observed, and The Abolition of Man-tsot as an “outsider” who surveys the St. John ’5 College • Fall 2008 } �{books} i8 ''Thatfateful, rainy Saturday morning, I wanted something to read... Valerie Pawlewicz (A89) landscape before undertaking a difficult journey, but as an “insider” who leaves the famiharity of the boat for a thrilling deep-sea dive. The analogical imagination of Lewis turns the Christian faith intelligible, challenging, and winsome. No one has done a finer job of holding the Fact and Myth of Chris tianity together. His translation of theology into the vernac ular is magical, leaving me with goosebumps of wonder, just as Lucy experienced when she first beheld Narnia. “More than Thought” Steven T. Brenner (SFGI83) When at age 15, I read Albert Schweitzer—An Anthology (edited by Charles R. Joy) I knew I’d been spared a lifetime of susceptibility to the dogmas and pretenses of the world, for which in return I would owe a lifetime debt of higher endeavor. Schweitzer’s thought is more than thought; it is heroically won conviction born of total engagement with the mysterious condition in which we find ourselves. It never ceases to challenge me to revolutionary change in my own thought and way of life. Until I discovered Hermann Broch’s The Death of Virgil 37 years later, I had no idea that such knowledge was avail able to human beings in their mortal state. Overwhelming as it is on first impression, a single reading of this human and cosmic creation poem-the most profound, most difficult, most beautiful work I know-barely contains a glimpse of its true riches. I still don’t understand a tenth of it, but I know there’s nothing to fear. “A Second Chance” Charles Green (AGoa) Pride and Prejudice, in addition to being the funniest novel I’ve ever read, also showed me the importance of giving books a second chance. I first read the novel in loth grade, and failed to see its point. Re-reading it during my junior year in college, I was amazed at how accurately Jane Austen captured aspects of myself in the main characters. I could see that some days I’m Elizabeth Bennet, witty and charming, while at other times I’m like Mr. Darcy, haughty and isolating, and every once in a while. I’m a silly, shame less flirt like Lydia Bennet. {The College. “The Wonder of Life” Valerie Pawlewicz (A89) A book that affected my life-although I didn’t know it at the time-was a garden book called Making Things Grow by Thalassa Cruso. She was a British gardener who hved in the Boston area and in the 1960s and 70s had a gardening TV show called-ta da!-“Making Things Grow.” In a bunch of books my mother sent me when cleaning her house out about IO years ago, in the middle of my busy life, I found this book about keeping houseplants ahve. At the time I was working at the Smithsonian, commuting, putting in intense hours, and not quite content with the frenetic way of hfe in the Big City. That fateful, rainy Saturday morning, I wanted something to read, and on a whim, I opened this book. Inside I discov ered a world of calm, of green living things, and good, plain common sense. What surprised me was her delightful prose style. It was like having breakfast with a good, enjoyable friend. She would tell a story, give plant characteristics as if they were people, throw in details about growing up in a great house in England before World War II, explain what she looks for in buying plants from a local nursery, and share personal failures (growing gardenias) as well as successes (growing almost anything else). The reason that this book “changed my hfe,” as I see it now, was that it inspired me to learn more about gardening. I don’t grow many houseplants, and I don’t really work that hard to maintain the ones that I do. But I have learned to acknowledge my love of being outdoors and being with green things as a worthwhile way to spend my time and earn my money. I had always thought that working outdoors and gardening was for other people, a waste of my education beneath a “true” career. During the next 10 years, I took courses on the side, experimented in my garden on sunny weekends, and read more gardening books on rainy week ends. Along the way I found other good garden writers like Geoffrey Hamilton, Penelope Hobhouse, and Michael Dirr, who add as much personality as information when they write. Eventually, four years ago, I turned to gardening full-time and now run my own personal gardening business, working only with private residential clients to help them to infuse something of themselves in their private gardens. I came to gardening late in life, being too busy to realize it was okay to be happy while I was busy. Now I have a business that is hard St. John’s College • Fall 2008 } �{books} 19 ''From all sides, friends offered su^esfions ofbooks to read... Christopher Sullivan {A89) work but a delight. It involves my brain and body equally. It requires patience, research, labor, focus, art, and lots of techne. I also work closely with my clients to introduce them to the wonder of life growing right outside their door. For some clients, I am the most regular person in their lives-someone who knows about their worries, their careers, their doctor’s visits, their dogs, their chil dren, their security codes, their birth days, their art, and their opinions about the upcoming election. I am the only person in the lives of my clients who knows their outdoor spaces as well as their personalities. I don’t think I’ve actually read the hook in years-I just remember the feeling I got the first time I opened it up and became involved in her story. Now I feel I am living the book. Thalassa would like that. “Attending the Particular” Alan D. Hornstein (AGI86) Reading Vico’s Nuova Scienza in a preceptorial with [tutor] Howard Fisher transformed my way of thinking. As the product of American legal education and with a career as a law professor, I had generally approached matters through the manipulation of ahstractions-a thoroughly conceptual approach not only to the life of the mind, hut to life itself. Vico’s (and Fisher’s) insistence on attending the particular, in all its singularity, was a revelation-one that I continue to struggle with, hut which has also enriched my life and understanding enormously. “A Very Metaphysical Place” Christopher Sullivan (A89) Following several sudden and unexpected deaths of people close to me, I fell into a miserable depression revolving around the fear of my own mortality and the mortality of those dearest to me. From all sides, friends offered sugges tions of hooks to read, people to talk to, workshops to take. Law professor Alan Hornstein (AGI86) FOUND A REVELATION IN ViCo’s NVOVA Scienza. mind-hody work to do, and medica tions to take to try to lessen the hitter sting of the depression. I read Viktor Frankl, the Dalai Lama, Epictetus, Lin Yutang, and so many more, hut for months, no matter what I tried, no matter how much wisdom from throughout the ages I exposed myself to, that grim, immohilizing fear held its horrible grip. Then in a slow process of distrac tion that led me from gym workouts to reading mystery novels and almost everything in between, someone recommended yet another book, one I’d never thought I would read, though I’d heard of it-even thought of as a joke!-foryears. Surprisingly, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill offered the first chink in the depression’s armor that finally let me begin to climb out and get back to my life. After several chapters of vague and business-oriented ideas, in chapter 15, he shifts into a very metaphysical place. Addressing the fear of death, he reminds the reader that as we learned in elementary physics, the entire world is made up of only matter and energy. According to the concept of conservation of energy, one can transform into the other, but neither can be created or destroyed. Suddenly my years of worrying and wondering about soul and afterlife and reincarnation and death came to a peaceful resolution. At death, I realized, whatever energy makes each of us the person that we are loses its connection to our body, but it is not lost or destroyed. From there, all those ideas about “we are all one with the Universe” or “God is within” or that life and death are an unending cycle came, finally, into a clearer focus. Exactly what becomes of that energy, that “soul,” remains a mystery, but I found it hugely comforting to recognize that simple, physical, scientific truth. And I’m immeasurably grateful. {The College. St. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } �{Musical Tutors} MUSIC in the KEY OF LIFE BY Deborah Spiegelman AND Rosemary Harty ach Friday afternoon, after the last elass ends, Annapolis tutors Carl Page and Eric Stoltzfus join with seven students to sing sacred music. From the Pendulum Pit, the voices of Primum Mobile send the beautiful sounds of Palestrina’s “Missa Papae Marcelli” resonating through Mellon Hall, a gift to everyone else within earshot. Around lunchtime on the Fishpond Placita, Santa Fe tutor Cary Stickney (A75) may be found opening his guitar or banjo case, ready to play and sing with any music lover who has the time and inclination. Spontaneous dancing is always welcome, too. Just as conversation spills out of the classroom at St. John’s College, music enlivens and unites our college communities beyond the bounds of freshman chorus and sophomore music tuto {The College- rial. Many talented tutors help make it possible: through formal groups and polished perform ances, community sing-a-Iongs and Collegium, jam sessions, and musical mentorship to students. The college is fortunate to have gifted pianists in Elliott Zuckerman in Annapolis and Peter Pesic in Santa Fe. On Wednesday evenings in Annapolis, Peter Kalkavage leads a commu nity chorus of students, staff, and tutors emeriti that practices all year for a spring performance. In Santa Fe, Phil LeCuyer and John Cornell collaborated on “To Strike the World,” a performance of orchestral music and spoken word that brought together musical tutors and students last December. Among the tutors profiled in these pages are individuals who found their passion for music later in life and those who had early and exten sive training. Several perform regularly as part of professional music groups. Some compose, one won’t sing, but all consider music one of the great passions of their lives. St. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } �{MuSICAlTuTORS} 2,1 "There s this tension between the intellectual and this wacko rock bass-playing side ofme thatsjust been something Tve decided to negotiate all my lije. ” Henry Higuera It’s only rock ’n {The College roll but St John’s College • Fall 2008 } Henry Higuera likes it. �{MusicalTutors} Long Live Rock______________________________ Henry Higuera play lead guitar on some of his favorite rock songs. When he came to St. John’s, he sometimes joined up with students who put on loud concerts in the Coffee Shop. Marriage (to tutor Marilyn Higuera, current director of the Annapolis Graduate Institute) and children (Adam and Helen), along with the busy life of a tutor, meant his instruments were often at rest in the basement. Having a steady group of musicians and singers at the college (with various membership over the years) has given him more opportunities to play, and he’s always eager to strap on the Gibson or the Fender for a concert. “There’s this tension between the intellectual and this wacko rock bass-playing side of me that’s just been something I’ve decided to negotiate all my life,” says Higuera. “It’s so intense, it’s so loud. The only thing more exciting than being at a concert is being on stage five feet in front of your own large amphfier. You can see how it can get in the way of other more refined pursuits you have in your life.” In tutor Henry Higuera, a rock star lurks beneath the surface. Just watch him strum his Fender Telecaster, even when it’s not plugged in, and you’U get a hint that here is a man on the verge of rocking out. In 1966, Higuera bought a bass guitar. (His first instrument was a ukulele.) With his neighborhood friends in Evanston, Illinois, he formed a garage band called the Knight Lords. They played songs hke “Louie, Louie” and “Gloria” on second-hand instruments and with amplifiers heldtogetherby duct tape. After listening to Beatles songs on his transistor radio, Higuera learned that rock music opened up to him in a whole new way when he first heard songs from the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane on a good stereo. “The songs to me sounded a million times better, and what made the difference was the bass,” Higuera explains. “The bass sings —Rosemary Harty underneath the melody. It’s not obvious, but it gives the song its structure.” Fantasy for Violin____________________________ In junior high, Higuera invested $300 in his first quality bass, a Christine Chen Gibson EB-3. The Knight Lords never made the big time, but they played teen clubs, parties and junior high dances. They were an Santa Fe tutor Christine Chen’s proclivity for music became enthusiastic group, Higuera remembers. “But we would have made evident when she was quite young. Her instrument of choice was a lot more money if any of us had been able to sing,” he says. a Quaker Oats cereal box and her bow a ruler. “It was in the key of Music followed Higuera to Cornell, where he earned his under granola, ” she says ofher makeshift violin. graduate degree. He joined a band of hippies that played in Ithaca’s most popular bars, and Higuera was good enough to consider pursuing music as a career. But watching musician friends eke out a meager existence and traveling from gig to gig made it all seem less romantic. “It was really part of my identity, and I had to rework that,” he says. “After junior year, I wasn’t playing, but I always had the bass with me.” At the University of Toronto, as a doctoral student in political philosophy, he played music for fun with housemates and friends. One of his professors was Allan Bloom, author of The Closing ofthe American Mind. “That book was based on an article he wrote for the National Review, and I was his ‘big expert’ on rock,” says Higuera. Higuera tried to make a case that rock ’n roll was about more than just sex and drugs; it could play a powerful role in political reform. But by the time Bloom began working on the book, Higuera was “dethroned” as Bloom’s rock expert. Santa Fe tutors David Bolotin and Christine Chen have performed together Higuera was teaching at Dickinson College when SEVERAL times AT THE COLLEGE, BOTH AS A DUO AND AS PART OF A TRIO, IN WORKS FROM he bought the Telecaster, a six-string that lets him Bach to Shostakovich. {The College- St. John’s College • Fall 2008 } �{MusicalTutors} Equipped with a more responsive instrument, she soon embarked on a 13-year journey through the competitive world of adolescent classical musicians. Under the tutelage of Eudice Shapiro at the University of Southern California School of Music, Chen seriously considered a career in music. “I thought long and hard about conservatory, but I decided I’d rather have a liberal arts degree,” she says. While Chen earned undergraduate and graduate degrees at Wellesley, Harvard, and Yale, her music remained a central part of her life. She played in the first violin sections of the Yale Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra. Her teachers included Nancy Cirillo of the New England Conser vatory and Sidney Harth, former concertmaster of the Chicago Symphony and professor at the Yale School of Music. As a doctoral student at Cambridge University, Chen helped found the Rusalka String Quartet. When she spotted an ad for St. John’s tutor positions, Chen thought, “this is really perfect for me.” That was more than three years ago, and Chen has successfully fit music into the challenging work of being a tutor at St. John’s. Weaving in the musical context during seminar discussions is “a way of connecting disparate parts of learning,” Chen suggests, adding with a laugh, “I prob ably [do it] to an annoying extent.” Chen has discovered that a surprising number of tutors play an instrument, including a group that regularly plays bluegrass music. Ensemble playing involves the “necessity of being better attuned to the other musicians,” she observes. Along with colleagues including David Bolotin, Chen played the viohn in the 2007 performance “To Strike the World.” Bolotin introduced her to a 70-year-old cellist in town, which led to the formation of an all female string quartet with seemingly unbounded energy for music. In addition, Chen will soon appear with The Serenata of Santa Fe, a professional chamber music group. In a setting where the emphasis is on the mind, Chen finds it refreshing to be able to step into the realm of music.The college, she adds, has given her the encouragement and support to perform in addition to teaching. “Music reminds me that there’s something else besides what I’m doing,” she says. “It is deeply important that a college has a sustained musical life.” a3 “I always told myself that I’d return to the piano,” Bolotin says. He began piano lessons at age 6. Music followed him to college, but slowly receded to the background as lessons became increas ingly sporadic. Engaging with academia more fully, Bolotin thought his piano-playing days were over. Born and raised in western Pennsylvania, Bolotin earned a doctorate at New York University and lectured in classics at Yale before joining the Annapolis faculty in 1974. In 1981, he trans ferred to the Western campus. Four years ago, music reentered his life. “I saw an ad for a digital piano, and then suddenly I had one,” Bolotin says. He played casually for about eight months until a student showed him a book of 17th-century songs. While Alexis Segal (SF05) set about mastering the vocals, Bolotin accompanied her. Thor oughly hooked, he resumed his long-discarded practice of regular lessons and loved it. Musical performance also found its way into a seminar on Chekhov. When the discussion focused on a passage the class found depressing, a student suggested that “in a musical, this would be the cue for an upbeat song.” Bolotin challenged the young man to write the piece. The student not only wrote it, but also found a fellow student to present the song. Bolotin has been taking lessons for more than three years from Jacquelyn Helin, an internationally known classical pianist and teacher who lives in Santa Fe. Since the auspicious digital-piano purchase, Bolotin has acquired an upright piano as well as a grand. “Two years ago, we remodeled our house to make a sound proof piano studio out of our former one-car garage,” he adds. What Bolotin really enjoys about music is the intimacy of performing with others. Ensemble playing-collaborating with both students and fellow tutors-is a source of deep satisfaction. He was Segal’s accompanist in a recital this spring. “ She wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer,” Bolotin recalls. Most recently, he joined tutor Christine Chen and recent graduate Susanne Ristow (SF06) in July in a performance of Brahms and Haydn piano trios in the college’s Great Hall. “I’m so lucky to have a community to make music with and a hall to do it in,” Bolotin says. — Deborah Spiegelman Deacon Blues — Deborah Spiegelman T. Andrew Kingston Piano Man David Bolotin When Santa Fe tutor David Bolotin talks about music, his voice is unmistakably reverential, which might have something to do with his recent reunion with music after a hiatus of nearly 40 years. {The College- Four years ago, while awaiting the arrival of his moving van and family from the East Coast, T. Andrew Kingston occupied himself much as any new musician on the scene would: he found a blues club in Santa Fe and became a fixture there-at least until it was time to unload the truck. St. John’s College • Fall 2008 } �2'4 {MusicalTutors} Raised in Chicago and Washington, D.C., Kingston came to music through classical training on the piano and his parents’ influence. Both amateurs, his father favored the church organ and his mother lyric opera. In high school, Kingston played various instruments in school bands. He credits two people with bringing him to jazz; Miles Davis, whom he heard in concert in 1981, and a teacher at Kenyon College who was a jazz pianist. Resuming regular piano lessons, Kingston began exploring what many jazz musicians insist is true American clas sical music. During his junior year abroad in Padua, Italy, he traveled with a local blues group. At Boston University, his graduate studies in an interdisciphnary program combining the philosophy of aesthetics and music were largely financed by his blues and jazz gigs around town. While at BU, Kingston learned of a pianist and teacher proficient on a wide range of instruments. Three years after putting his name on Charlie Banacos’s waiting fist, Kingston began lessons. “He is a great jazz educator,” Kingston says, and in a month of lessons, “he changed my fife.” Ultimately, the hard fife of a full-time musician wasn’t for him. Instead Kingston returned to Kenyon to teach before becoming a tutor at St. John’s in Santa Fe, where his musical and teaching fives are well integrated. “Tfie seminar is like jazz interpretation,” Kingston notes, sharing an observation made by a fellow tutor. The greatest jazz musicians are those who can listen and work with others, similar to seminar in that individual contributions create a whole piece. Like jazz, the seminar moves along on interpretation and improvisation. Musical expression is a regular feature of campus fife, including botfi scfieduled performances and spontaneous jam sessions. Kingston offers piano lessons informally and has helped form a number of jazz groups, alternately composed of students, tutors, and local musicians. “There is a chance to work with the students who are here,” he says, noting that an instrument that might not fit, strictly speaking, into an ensemble presents an opportunity for some innovative arranging. Kingston has kept his hand in the music scene in Santa Fe (his latest endeavor: salsa gigs), and is grateful for the freedom to play {The College- Like jazz, the seminar moves along on INTERPRETATION AND IMPROVISATION, SAYS Santa Fe tutor T. Andrew Kingston. music at his own pace. “Music is a way of talking about being human.” — Deborah Spiegelman Songbird Judy Seeger Judy Seeger is always singing. The Annapolis tutor sings at home, she sings in the car, she sings with colleagues and students in formal groups and impromptu gatherings. When she gave the Commencement speech in 2006, it was natural for her to urge everyone to join her in a chorus of “The Water is Wide,” even though she was struggling with laryngitis. There is no occasion, Seeger believes, that can’t be made more joyful by adding a song. “My mother tells me that I sang before I talked,” says Seeger. Her earliest memories are of singing in her family’s Pittsburgh home with her father, a Gulf Oil executive who loved to play the piano. Seeger sang while her father played music from Schubert, Schumann, Beethoven, and others from a collection of songs stashed in the piano bench. “Not Bach,” she says. “My father was not a fan of Baroque music.” As a child, she studied the piano, but like her father, she always preferred to play in accompaniment to a song. A love of music brought Seeger together with her husband, Tony, a member of a musical family (folk singing legend Pete Seeger is his uncle). The two met as youngsters in New York City, and in their teens, they both attended the Seeger family’s Camp Killooleet, where campers sing folk music and traditional songs all summer long. Seeger also learned to play the acoustic guitar at the camp. “Music was one of the things that brought us together, and it’s one of the things we keep on doing together,” she says. Seeger earned a bachelor’s degree at Harvard and master’s and doctoral degrees in Romance Languages and Literature from the University of Chicago. Her husband became an ethnomusicologist. Together they spent nine years in Brazil St. John’s College • Fall 2008 } �a4 {Musical Tutors} Raised in Chicago and Washington, D.C., Kingston came to music through classical training on the piano and his parents’ influence. Both amateurs, his father favored the church organ and his mother lyric opera. In high school, Kingston played various instruments in school bands. He credits two people with bringing him to jazz: Miles Davis, whom he heard in concert in 1981, and a teacher at Kenyon College who was a jazz pianist. Resuming regular piano lessons, Kingston began exploring what many jazz musicians insist is true American clas sical music. During his junior year abroad in Padua, Italy, he traveled with a local blues group. At Boston University, his graduate studies in an interdisciphnary program combining the philosophy of aesthetics and music were largely financed by his blues and jazz gigs around town. While at BU, Kingston learned of a pianist and teacher proficient on a wide range of instruments. Three years after putting his name on Charlie Banacos’s waiting list, Kingston began lessons. “He is a great jazz educator,” Kingston says, and in a month of lessons, “he changed my fife.” Ultimately, the hard life of a full-time musician wasn’t for him. Instead Kingston returned to Kenyon to teach before becoming a tutor at St. John’s in Santa Fe, where his musical and teaching fives are weU integrated. “The seminar is like jazz interpretation,” Ki ngston notes, sharing an observation made by a fellow tutor. The greatest jazz musicians are those who can listen and work with others, similar to seminar in that individual contributions create a whole piece. Like jazz, the seminar moves along on interpretation and improvisation. Musical expression is a regular feature of campus fife, including both scheduled performances and spontaneous jam sessions. Kingston offers piano lessons informally and has helped form a number of jazz groups, alternately composed of students, tutors, and local musicians. “There is a chance to work with the students who are here,” he says, noting that an instrument that might not fit, strictly speaking, into an ensemble presents an opportunity for some innovative arranging. Kingston has kept his hand in the music scene in Santa Fe (his latest endeavor: salsa gigs), and is grateful for the freedom to play {The College. Like jazz, the seminar moves along on INTERPRETATION AND IMPROVISATION, SAYS Santa Fe tutor T. Andrew Kingston. music at his own pace. “Music is a way of talking about being human.” — Deborah Spiegelman Songbird Judy Seeger Judy Seeger is always singing. The Annapolis tutor sings at home, she sings in the car, she sings with colleagues and students in formal groups and impromptu gatherings. When she gave the Commencement speech in aoo6, it was natural for her to urge everyone to join her in a chorus of “The Water is Wide,” even though she was struggling with laryngitis. There is no occasion, Seeger believes, that can’t be made more joyful by adding a song. “My mother tells me that I sang before I talked,” says Seeger. Her earliest memories are of singing in her family’s Pittsburgh home with her father, a Gulf Oil executive who loved to play the piano. Seeger sang while her father played music from Schubert, Schumann, Beethoven, and others from a collection of songs stashed in the piano bench. “Not Bach,” she says. “My father was not a fan of Baroque music.” As a child, she studied the piano, but like her father, she always preferred to play in accompaniment to a song. A love of music brought Seeger together with her husband, Tony, a member of a musical family (folk singing legend Pete Seeger is his uncle). The two met as youngsters in New York City, and in their teens, they both attended the Seeger family’s Camp Killooleet, where campers sing folk music and traditional songs all summer long. Seeger also learned to play the acoustic guitar at the camp. “Music was one of the things that brought us together, and it’s one of the things we keep on doing together,” she says. Seeger earned a bachelor’s degree at Harvard and master’s and doctoral degrees in Romance Languages and Literature from the University of Chicago. Her husband became an ethnomusicologist. Together they spent nine years in Brazil St. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } J �{MuSICALTuTORS} living with the Suya Indians and studying the role of music and song in their culture. In 1989, Tony joined the Smithsonian Institution as Curator of the Folkways Collection and Director of the Smithsonian’s Folkways Recordings, and Seeger joined the St. John’s faculty. The place of music at the college, both in and outside the classroom, was one of the factors that drew Seeger to St. John’s. “The whole college is a musical community,” says Seeger. “Where else do all the freshmen sing?” With Annapolis tutors Jon Tuck, Henry Higuera, and Chester Burke, and Santa Fe tutor Cary Stickney, Seeger is a part of a continuing tradition called “Begone, Dull Care,” a musical gathering meant to brighten the winter doldrums. The event started at the behest of Eva Brann, who was looking for an event to brighten the dark days between winter and spring breaks. After a few experimental years-including a performance in the Pendulum Pit with Seeger, tutor George Doskow and then-music librarian Tina Davidson, the gath ering found its home in the Great Hall. A folksy, high-spirited community sing-along that takes place every winter in Annapolis, “it lifts people’s spirits,” Seeger says. A song has the unfailing power to get people to put aside their individual pursuits and come together. “We do music at St. John’s the way we read books,” she says. “You read the book by yourself, butthat’s not the end ofit-it’s when we come together and talk about it that the magic happens. It’s the same way with music.” — Rosemary Harty as Galloping on the Guitar Chester Burke (A74) Playing the pedal steel guitar takes more than just musical ability, says Annapolis tutor Chester Burke (A74). It’s a feat of coordination and concentration. Burke was first drawn to the challenge by the sounds he heard in country music: a happy twang, a mournful wail, a nameless longing, all produced by masters of the steel guitar. But there’s great risk involved: when played poorly, the steel guitar can produce some of the most wretched sounds known to the human ear. The pedal steel guitar has two necks, each with 10 strings. It has seven pedals and five knee levers, which control the volume and pitch of the string. With his right hand, Burke plucks the strings with two finger picks and a thumb pick; the left hand (instead of pressing against the fret on a guitar) moves the steel “bullet” up and down the frets to raise and lower the pitch of the notes he’s plucking out on the strings. “It’s many instru ments in one instrument, and it takes longer than most instru ments to master,” he says. Burke has been a serious musician since childhood, starting with the violin, cello, and piano before setthng on the flute as an object of serious devotion. After graduating from St. John’s he studied music and performed in Paris. He returned to the states to earn a master’s degree in performance at the Univer sity of Michigan. Since 1982 when he returned to the college, initially as lab director, he has played the flute professionally as a member of the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra. The steel guitar began to intrigue him, especially when he became the temporary custodian to colleague Walter Ster ling’s treasured collection of classic country music. “In the country venue, the steel guitar is the instrument that best accompanies the singer,” Burke says. “It best imitates the emotions.” Determined to play the difficult instrument, Burke took lessons from one of the best in the business. Buddy Charlton, who played with Ernest Tubb and the Texas Troubadours. He invested la years in lessons and practice before he was comfortable performing before an audience, but he began carting the instrument along with his flutes for concerts and special events. Burke is now turning his efforts to the acoustic guitar. So far, he’s not producing the sounds he so admires in Andres Even if she wanted to, SINGING. {The CoLLEGE-5f. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } Judy Seeger couldn’t keep from �2.6 {MusicalTutors} Segovia, but he’ll keep trying. “The sound of the guitar intrigues me,” he says. “But it’s much harder to play than the flute, and 1 feel I’ll never get very good at it.” At St. John’s, every musician is fortunate to have receptive audiences, whether it’s Purcell in the Great Hall or Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young on the quad. “As audiences go, the St. John’s community listens very well-we make a practice of hstening to one another with respect and appreciation, and it’s a pleasure to perform here,” Burke says. And while he’s game to try almost any instrument, Chester Burke will never sing. “I’m terrified of singing,” he says. — Rosemary Harty Practice Makes Perfect Stephen Houser Santa Fe tutor Stephen Houser routinely powered his habit of practicing the guitar into the early morning hours with peanut butter-and-jeUy sandwiches-but that’s getting ahead of the story. Growing up in Lakewood, Colorado, Houser started taking piano lessons at the age of five, received a guitar for Christmas at ten but “didn’t do much with it,” and played oboe in the juniorhigh band. A high-school friend with an electric guitar was his first musical influence. Together, they bowdlerized several guitars to create their Frankenstein, dubbed “the Astrocaster.” Houser later upgraded to a better electric guitar, with which he dutifully annoyed his family. During his first semester at St. John’s in Santa Fe, he met a fellow student who played clas sical guitar. “I was mesmerized,” he recalls. “He helped me choose a clas sical guitar to buy, and I practiced my brains out.” Houser saved up money from a job with the U.S. Postal Service and invested in a steel-string guitar, a 1943 Martin. He dedicated his summer after freshman year to music, prac ticing IO hours every day, and made a habit of daily practice through college and after graduation. Returning home in the evenings from his day job as a paralegal, he would eat his sandwiches and practice until he couldn’t keep his eyes open. But Houser “had an itch” to pursue music more seriously. So he enrolled in the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he studied, took master classes, and played in a bluegrass band until the money ran out. Returning to Santa Fe, he taught guitar and “on a lark,” applied to the college as a tutor. He joined the faculty in August 1983. Houser has been at St. John’s ever since, except for sabbaticals and the 1987-1990 academic years, when he pursued his doctorate in philosophy at the University of Virginia. He tried to keep up practice, but it became too difficult as he became more involved in extracurricular obligations at the college. Music, however, continued to play a role in class discussions. “I rely on the common experience that students-sophomores, juniors, and seniors-have with music,” he says. “Music was a very important part of my St. John’s experience [as a student]. It was natural and easy for musical things to happen.” Houser has collaborated musically with students and tutors, including playing the lute with young singers and accompanying a tutor who played the recorder. More recently, he has been concentrating on the violin-guitar repertoire and currently is partnering with a viohnist from Santa Fe Pro Musica on “enough pieces for a concert.” He is hoping to reach beyond the St. John’s audience to make a contribution to the community. Houser also understands the soothing quality of music, having in the past played guitar for the residents of nursing homes and, most importantly, for his mother as she battled a form of bone-marrow cancer. When his mother moved to Alaska to be cared for by Houser’s sister, he sold his 1943 Martin and bought recording equipment to make CDs of his guitar music for his mother’s solace. After 25 years at St. John’s, Houser consciously integrates music into his fife as a tutor. “I want to make some space for my music,” he explains. On sabbatical for the 20082009 academic year, he will be doing just that. —Deborah Spiegelman Annapolis tutor Chester Burke (A74) PLAYS flute for the BALTIMORE Chamber Orchestra, but says the guitar is the hardest instrument he has tried to learn. {The College s?. John’s College • Fall 2008 } �{MuSICAlTuTORS} Johnnie Song Book ”" hen a group of St. John’s tutors performs for special events, these two Johnnie clas sics are showstoppers. Tutor Henry Higuera wrote the “Battle Hymn of the Republic of Letters” in the early 1990s, after someone announced a contest for a new St. John’s anthem. Although the contest never materialized, Higuera’s muse took over. “I was idly amusing myself with various joke anthem ideas when all these great lines from specific books started occurring to me, all set to the tune of the ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic,’” Higuera explains. “After about a year of this I showed it to some seniors, and the rest is history.” Tutor Jon TRick’s “The Western Canonball” was inspired by both Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon, published in 1995, and a lively song about a train. “There was a certain pomposity about the book that I found amusing,” says Tuck, who has always liked Roy Acuff’s “The Wabash Cannonball.” “I put the two of them together, and just started fiddling around with it. My words are funnier when you know the original lyrics of the song.” Audiences love his booming, Opry-inspired delivery of the song, but Tuck remains modest. He loves performing for college events, big or small. “It’s a wonderful fringe benefit of being at St. John’s,” he says. “You don’t have to be any good. I’m always invoking what I call the Pyramus and Thisbe principle: the worse you are the better you are.” W The Western Canonball From the great Atlantic Ocean, from that European shore. From Athens and Jerusalem come the authors we adore. They’re dead and white and masculine, they’re known and loved by all. They’re the regular combination of the Western Canonball. [Chorus: ] Oh, listen to the Logos, and listen to your heart. As you glide through all the authors, through every lib’ral art. Hear the mighty rush of the Freshmen, hear the lonesome Seniors call, “I’m traveling through the jungle on the Western Canonball.” Now the Eastern books are dandy, say the folks in Santa Fe, From the Vedas to Confucius, and Lao-Tse by the way. But we won’t give up Plotinus, till the darkness round us fall. No changes can be taken on the Western Canonball. [Chorus] Here’s to our daddy classics, may their name forever stand, And always be remembered, and taught throughout the land. Though their earthly race may falter, in the West’s decline and fall. Still we never study history on the Western Canonball. [Chorus] The Battle Hymn of the Republic of Letters My mind has seen the glory of th’ Idea of the Good, That it’s not the same as pleasure I have firmly understood. And I wouldn’t take a tyrant’s power even if I could. I’m marching from The Cave! Marching, marching towards the sunlight. Marching, marching towards the sunlight. Marching, marching towards the sunlight. I’m marching from The Cave! The Fool conceives of God but thinks the faithful are deceived, BUT a “Greatest Being” whose reality is not believed Is a being than which something greater still can be conceived, Which contradicts itself! Ontological rebuttal. Ontological rebuttal. Faithlessness will ever scuttle, For it contradicts itself! The State of Nature’s character we know from good report To be very solitary, nasty, brutish, poor and short. So let’s give the Sovereign all our rights and every gun and fort. And then we’ll all survive! Ratify the Social Contract... Deterministic limits on my freedom are erased By the transcendental ideality of time and space. So my atoms are determined but my will’s a different case. It’s pure autonomy! Hail the Transcendental Ego... They came from old Chicago U. some sixty years ago; As they rolled into the Program, you could hear the whispers go: “There’s Homer, Hobbes and Hegel, there’s Plato and St. Paul, They came with Scott Buchanan on the Western Canonball.” [Chorus] I’ve been through all the steps in my phenomenology. So it’s Master, Slave or in between it’s all the same to me. I’m Unhappy and I’m Conscious so I’m absolutely free. I’m fully synthesized! I’ve undergone the Dialectic... {The College - 27 John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } �2,8 {Alumni Voices} The Secret Life of a Roller Derby Queen Dressing Up and Acting Out on a Saturday Night BY Jane McManus (A93) it was my first night scrim maging. I was part of a visiting roller derby team in an ancient skating rink called Roller Magic. The women there had names like Bleeding Rainbow and Pinky Swears, and I knew once we got started they were going to try their hardest to knock me off my skates and onto the polished wood floor. And as much as I had butterflies, I wanted to get at them first. My 5-year-old daughter was at the snack bar, playing with some of the other kids tagging along with moms, and a few fathers, tattooed or nose-ringed, casually watched over them. First two-minute jam, I was a capable blocker. I can do this, I thought, and I rammed into Pinky. Once I got comfort able, one of the veterans threw me the jammer helmet cover, meaning I was the only one who could score points for the team. The whistle blew, and I cut through the pack of skaters quickly and cleanly, beating the other woman at the spot. I skated out fast and glanced at the tables to see Jean jumping up and down. “Go, Mommy, go!” I knew I was going to like roller derby before I pitched the story to the newspaper I write for. The Journal News in the New York City suburbs. I’ve worked as a sports writer for the last to years, covering most sports from amateur to professional. Some I try, some I like better than others. I loved roller derby from the start: the physicality of it, the speed and, let’s face it, the fishnets, I joined the local league. Suburbia Roller Derby, and adopted a name a sports writer can live with-Lesley E. Visserate. I got an e-mail from longtime sports broad caster Lesley Visser after I told her. Subject In ordinary life, Jane McManus (A93), on the right in this promotional poster, is a jour line: “How are we doing?” nalist AND the mother OF TWO LITTLE GIRLS. On SATURDAY NIGHTS, SHE BECOMES LeSLEY E. Visserate, roller derby queen. Some background on me. I am in my, ahem, 30s and I live in the New York suburbs. I have two little girls, ages 5 and 3. Stockings, stripes and Jolly Rogers But I love derby for the same reasons you Although I got my first tattoo at age 19, you colliding in a tangle of wheels and limbs. I can find features on the sport in any news wouldn’t know about it unless you work out like the theater of it, and the fact thatpaper lucky enough to have a hometown at my gym or know me really, really well. So before the crowd and the DJs at a public league: it ’ s sex and violence in one sporty I’m not the usual derby demographic on bout-it’s just a group of women practicing package. the surface. T SATURDAY. JUNE 28 - 7pm {The College- St. John’s College - Fall 2008 } �{Alumni Voices} for months on a dusty sport court at the police gym in Yonkers, drenched with sweat hy the end of the night. For me and for a lot of women who I play with, roller derhy means getting out of the nest, out of the life that has been made comfortable. Out of the world of white collar workers and academia, out of affluence and covering other people’s achievements. For a night, it’s my chance to be cheered, to dress up and act out. In the last five years, roller derby has attracted thousands of women. And, in an age when the WNBA has to beg for the insignificant coverage it gets, women in ponytails and skates get the front page of the sports section. It reminds me of the mid-1980s, when a women’s basketball team had players dress in unitards to titil late the fans. I am a basketball player first, even now, so that double standard irks me. But I don’t blame derby for being sexy. Wlien she bats her pretty eyes at me, it’s hard to stay mad. American audiences still have a hard time with women and sports. Tennis has short skirts, so it gets a pass. Softball might have lesbians, so that’s scary. Volleyball players are in bikinis, which is awesome. Just like in life, pretty athletes get the coverage-why, hello, Danica Patrick! Who are you wearing? Given what I do for a living. I’ve given this some thought. I also noticed that it was really hard to find a women’s basketball league nearby. After the passage of Title IX in 1973 and the millions of women who started playing sports, I assumed there would be legions of women playing basket ball once I got out of St. John’s in 1993. I’m still waiting. ''Although Igot myfirst tattoo at age ig, you wouldn i know about it unless you work out at my gym or know me really, really well So Im not the usual derby demographic on the surface. ‘7 sat on the chicken sandwichfor the go-minute drive home, shifting uncomfortably in my seat the whole way I thought about what I was doing— wedgingfrozen meat under my tailbone—and whether it was really a sensible decisionfor me to play a sport like this. ” And so are a lot of soccer players, lacrosse players-in fact, most anyone who played a team sport. Adult women’s leagues are few and far between in my area just north of New York City. I did a story on this a year ago, and I actually sat down and counted, calling up leagues and recreation departments and talking to women who once played a sport in high school. You want to know why so many women run? It’s because there aren’t a lot of other options, and it’s easy to schedule. I’ve talked to women who hate running, but hate being inactive just slightly more. Some of those women come over to the dark side. Kimberly O’Leary, a woman who goes by Vixen Von Bruisen on Suburbia, played seriously in high school. You can see it from the way she leads practice, very hard physically, but fun. As much fun as it is put on a flirty uniform on the Saturday nights we hold our bouts at E.J. Murray’s Memorial Rink in Yonkers, there is a ton of work leading up to it. We are a young league, just a year old, and we are still learning. Some of our players come from other leagues and could mop up the court with us rookies, but it really is a cooperative environment where we try to help each other get better at the basic skills. My learning curve is slow. I have a competitive streak, and I want to be the best player out there immediately, which I definitely am not. I throw my elbows, which is just one of the illegal habits I have. There have been nights I’ve been so frustrated with myself that I wanted to quit, and other nights when I wondered if I was insane. In early February, I was blocking Jeri Fling’her (a mother of two and health tech nician who lives in Connecticut). I was a little off balance but thought I had her. I missed her and fell backwards, slamming my tailbone on the floor. It hurt, but I told myself to get the $ *#% up and finish the jam. {The College -St. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } After practice, I drove to a gas station in a crappy part of town and asked, through the bulletproof glass, for a frozen sandwich. The guy tried to sell me a refrigerated Hot Pocket but I said, “No, it has to be solid ice.” Just then my teammate Black Star Heroine pulled up in a station wagon to ask if I was OK-a woman in a sketchy neighbor hood wearing fishnets-and I paid for a chicken sandwich. I told her what happened and that I was in a lot of pain. “Oh, that happened to me, too,” Black Star said. “It’s probably going to wake you up for the next few nights.” I sat on the chicken sandwich for the 30minute drive home, shifting uncomfortably in my seat the whole way. I thought about what I was doing-wedging frozen meat under my tailbone-and whether it was really a sensible decision for me to play a sport like this. I did wake up in pain. I popped Advils. I couldn’t drive my stick shift for weeks. It is a solid six months later, and my tailbone still aches. You know it’s the one bone they can’t do anything for when it breaks? Still, I was back at practice the next week. Call it my midlife crisis. I’m staving off the creep of mediocrity. I had my lame old tattoo redone in brilliant colors and invested in fishnets of every variety. My body has emerged from the years of preg nancy and nursing, wonderful in their own way, but over. I have abs again. This might not last forever. I’m covering the New York Jets for the first time this season, and I’m aware that I could get an injury tomorrow that causes my little hobby to intrude on my real life. But I will savor my tenure as a roller girl while I can. �30 {Bibliofile} Ee, tutor Ben Kraus had a trunk fuU of Marvel comics. I was always moving between the trunk of comic books and the great books.” Sharp Teeth Toby Barlow (SF88) HarperCollins, aoo8 A lover’s revenge takes on satisfying and creepy possibilities in Toby Barlow’s darkly humorous thriller, Sharp Teeth. Early in the story, set in the sprawl! ng neighborhoods of Los Angeles, a certain “She” muses about a failed romance with yet another lover. “She” finds comfort on the shoulder of Lark, a successful attorney, werewolf pack leader, and long-time friend. As they have a latenight chat Lark promises her something that will change her “completely...with it comes a certain power.” Instead of offering another glass of wine. Lark slices open his forearm and invites her to mingle her blood with his. By morning “She” wakes up as “her own brand of beast,” a werewolf in Lark’s pack. Sharp Teeth is a romantic thriller that threads multiple plot lines teeming with rival gangs of lycanthropes, high-stakes card games, dog traffickers and catchers, and organized crime in the seething underbelly of Los Angeles. In blank verse that jumps like rap music, Barlow dances between human consciousness and the musings of lycanthropes. With almost scientific authority Barlow sifts through the centuries, describing how small packs survived, biding their time, roaming the wilderness and surviving by killing “men that no one would miss.” Rest assured, Barlow chants, despite technology and surveillance, “the blood sugar fever still survives.” Barlow dispels the myths about how humans transform into lycanthropes: “It’s not the full moon. That’s as ancient and ignorant as any myth. The blood just quickens with a thought... So that one can self-ignite...becoming something rather more canine.” Unlike popular science fiction stories in which aliens inhabit human bodies (revealed when one is face-to-face with their green reptilian eyes) there are no clues-only surprises-as to who is and isn’t a werewolf in Sharp Teeth. “Even the werewolves do not recognize another werewolf,” says Barlow. Yet what makes the novel so gripping is not so much the strangeness of the mysterious crossover into a fycanthrope that characters like Lark deftly navigate. Rather it is the human struggles-the beast that resides within each of us-the desires, rages, loves, competitions, that makes the book a page turner. “A classic werewolf fears the transforma tion and the deeds he might do as a beast. —Patricia Dempsey Racing Odysseus: A College President Freshman Again Becomes a Roger H. Martin University of California Press, 2008 deeds he will not remember; but my were wolves, like humans, are wholly conscious,” says Barlow. They remember their blood thirsty deeds, and like us, they have long ings, regrets, dreams, and heartbreaks. Sharp’s Teeth is populated with hip char acters such as a persistent LAPD detective, a blonde surfer-chick (who is also a werewolf), a Hispanic meth manufacturer, and Cutter and Blue, bridge tournament finalists who just happen to be werewolves in Lark’s pack. These lycanthropes are clever. So is Mr. Venable, a mysterious sage that Barlow says “pays homage to an old tutor at St. John’s, Bruce Venable. He was a man out of time, a dichotomy, and a tremendous amount of fun. Like my tutor, Mr. Venable in the book embraces fife in all its highs and lows.” Barlow, an executive creative director at an advertising agency in Detroit, didn’t plan on writing a book. But several years ago when he was living in a Chicago hotel room, an article on a dogcatcher caught his eye. “I needed something to pass the time and at a certain point the char acters came alive.” Barlow did intend for Sharp Teeth to be visu ally rich, just like the comic books he discov ered at St. John’s. “When I got to Santa {The Colleges?. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } When he was 61 years old, and then still the president of Randolph-Macon College, Roger Martin decided to become a freshman again-at St. John’s College. Having survived melanoma against tremendous odds, Martin was looking to find new perspective and new challenges when he joined the freshman class in the fall of 2004. He sat in on freshman seminar, became a member of the crew team, and even attended waltz parties in the Great Hall. In this honest and deeply personal memoir, he chronicles his journey from a life in which he was an over-controlling, efficient time manager to a life in which he became a student immersed in the liberal arts. At St. John’s, Martin writes, he redis covered the art of questioning, conversa tion, and contemplation. He shares his great admiration for St. John’s students and tutors, and has special words of praise for Athletic Director Leo Pickens (A78), whom Martin got to know well as the harddriving coach of the St. John’s crew team. Toward the end of his stay at St. John’s, Martin wrote: “I have arrived at seminar 15 minutes early...I am finally enjoying myself. I’m enjoying being a member of the crew. I’m enjoying reading the Great Books. I’m enjoying hanging out in the Coffee Shop and meeting students. I’ve attained nirvana.” Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table Sara Roahen (SF94) W.W. Norton, 2008 There are as many gumbos in Louisiana as there are accents writes Sara Roahen in her book. Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place �{Bibliofile} at the New Orleans Table. But in New Orleans her favorite gumbo is “as thick as a cypress swamp in flavor.” In post-Katrina New Orleans, Roahen finds another reason to savor gumbo-as a symbol for the city’s resilience. Roahen lived in the Crescent City for several years, while her husband attended medical school. In August 2005, Hurri cane Katrina disrupted their lives and forced a move to Philadelphia, but Roahen frequently returned to New Orleans to taste gumbo and other favorites. The result is not a compendium of recipes, but essays about food and place. She cobbles together aromas and flavors, conversations with patrons at local eateries, oral histories, and food history in this personal celebration of the city’s culture. Roahan explores the wonders of familiar dishes such as po boys, red beans and rice, crayfish bisque, coffee and chicory, beignets-“naked or sugared”-as well as dishes introduced by the city’s varied cultures, including Vietnamese pho and Sicilian braciolone. Roahen and her husband, Mathieu DeSchutter (SF94) are now back in New Orleans. Violent Video Game Effects on Children and Adolescents: Theory, Research and Public Policy___________________________ Craig Anderson, Douglas Gentile (A86), Katherine Buckley Oxford University Press, aoo8 Do violent video games contribute to aggres sive and violent behavior? Douglas Gentile (A86) has coauthored an insightful explo ration of this question that incorporates both scientific research and pubhc policy in an exploration of a possible link between violent video games and aggression. Gentile is a developmental psychologist, assistant professor of psychology at Iowa State University and director for the National Institute on Media and the Family. Violent Video Game Effects presents the results of three studies that use various measures of aggression and research on elementary, high school, and college-age students. The authors note that critics confuse the scien tific question (Are there harmful effects?) with the legal question related to First Amendment rights. In the meantime, as the debate rages on, the book offers tips for choosing video games and a wealth of What the Tutors Are Reading Frank Pagano, Santa Fe: “I am revisiting Philip Roth’s American Pastoral. The novel is not about the (late) ‘60s generation so much as what they reacted against: the perfect American, Roth’s Seymour Levov, the Swede. Roth brings to life the all-Amer ican boy, and shows why the baby boomers chose to make him the enemy.” David Levine (class of vjhy), Santa Fe: “I’m just finishing Henry James’ The Princess Casamassima, which is the first James novel I’ve read. Published in 1886, it’s about the fate of culture amidst the rise of popular democratic movements.” David Carl, Santa Fe: “Steven Pressfield’s The Virtue of Warts a work of historical adventure fiction based on the fife of Alexander the Great, which gives a very engaging fictionalized vision of the fife of the great Macedonian general. Pressfield is perhaps most famous for his novel Gates of Fire, a fictional account of the Battle of Thermopylae (before the comic book and movie goo brought it to pop culture atten tion). Pressfield’s portrayal of Alexander is an inspiring vision of conflicted leadership, perhaps even of the tension between philosophy and politics.” Nick Maistrellis, Annapolis: “I’m on sabbatical leave so I have much more time to read. I have read a novel named/ZZZ, by Phillip Larkin who is a well-known English poet. The novel is about a lower middle class scholarship student at Oxford in 1940 and his attempts to fit into an upper-class world. The novel is beautifully written and quite moving. I’m also reading Out ofthe Labyrinth, by Robert and Ellen Kaplan. It {The College- St. John's College ■ Fall 2008 } 31 resources on how to be an involved consumer and citizen. Says Gentile, “The media are far more powerful than we want to admit, but we are far from powerless to control the effects.” The Theater of Insects___________ Jo Whaley, contributions by Linda Weiner Chronicle Books, 2008 Santa Fe tutor Linda Weiner wrote the primary essay for The Theater ofInsects, a new book by Jo Whaley. Weiner’s identifi cation of the insects accompanies Whaley’s dazzling, theatrically-staged photographs of butterflies, beetles, dragonflies and other colorful bugs. The collaboration resulted in a work that echoes the style of natural history dioramas, and-thro ugh Wiener’s contribution-offers a thoughtful reflection on the intersection of art and science. The Theater ofInsects, titled after a 1658 work of the same name, is published to coincide with a series of exhibitions across the country, including the Photo Eye Gallery (Santa Fe, N.M.), the National Academies Keck Center Gallery and National Academy of Sciences (both in Washington, D.C.).-^ is the best book on teaching and learning mathematics I have seen.” SamKutler, class ofig54, Annapolis: '''The Warriors, by J. Glenn Gray. He describes many of the horrors of war and reflects on them. My father was in the first World War, and my childhood is steeped in memories of the second World War. The day he received his doctorate in philosophy. Gray received a letter from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt which began ‘Greet ings.’ He found that all the philosophy he had been studying no longer meant anything to him because the war became his whole world.” Pamela Kraus, Annapolis: "Posthumous Keats by Stanley Plumly. I have a long standing interest in Keats, so I read a lot of things by and about him. Plumly, who is a poet and occasional essayist, has written a reflective account of Keats as living on through his fife, poems, and reputation. It’s a lovely book.” dlk �32 {Alumni Profile} Seattle’s Philosopher Cop Clark Kimerer (SC78) BY Patricia Dempsey the distant horizon but completely here have been misses the immediate threat.” moments in his 25When making split-second year career when decisions, Kimerer can’t afford to Seattle’s Deputy Chief be contemplative. “It’s a time to of Police Clark stand watch. If you think too much, Kimerer (SF78) has you won’t survive.” questioned his line of work. In Kimerer honed his ability to aoo6 when a Seattle gunman shot make split-second decisions several young adults at a rave dance during stints as a patrol officer, after-party and then pulled the SWAT Team training officer, chief trigger on himself, Kimerer and his hostage negotiator, captain boss. Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske, charged with vice and narcotics, were called to the scene. Kimerer and today as head of emergency had to share the grim news with the preparedness for the city of victim’s families, brief the media, Seattle. After he joined the force as and console the teenagers who were a patrol officer 25 years ago, his grieving for their friends. “It was survival depended on being one scene of human despair after constantly alert and mindful another over a six-hour period,” because “the situation could says Kimerer. “When it came time degenerate instantly.” Kimerer to walk through the scene, I turned excelled at making critical deci to Gil and said, ‘I’m not sure if I sions under pressure and in 1985 want to walk through another became a SWAT Training Officer slaughter. I see my own kids every and Team Member, handling lifetime I do.’” and-death situations every day. He “You have to do it,” Kerb kowske trained “the guys [who] crash told his deputy chief. “One, you through the front doors, the have in your life been devoted to deadly force cadre [whose] goal understanding this. Everything you always is to save lives. I had to have read and thought about the create a curriculum dealing with human endeavor to find out what is these issues as well as post-trau good in the world, you have devoted matic stress syndrome. We were yourself to. Two, you have to do it to often faced with making a good show the world that you care. And choice among many bad options.” three, you have to do it to show Kimerer’s education at St. John’s yourself that you care.” “is a real conversation starter when As Kimerer walked through the In his 25-YEAR CAREER, Clark Kimerer (SF78) rose from sitting in a roomful of pohce grisly scene, trying to make sense PATROL officer TO SECOND-IN-COMMAND OF ONE OF THE NATION’S LARGEST POLICE FORCES. He’S GAINED A NATIONAL REPUTATION chiefs.” He is a gifted leader who of what his eyes were taking in, he FOR HIS EXPERTISE IN EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS AND HOMELAND studied at the FBI, Northwestern thought of readings from Plato, SECURITY. University, and the Program on Montaigne, Homer, and Hegel. Negotiation at Harvard Law “Snippets went sweeping through School. He is a philosopher cop my mind: What is good? How can who reads voraciously and is as you find sense in this kind of Yet Kimerer is quick to note that deep compassionate as he is rational about his slaughter? How do you make peace with reflection does not always have a place in fellow human beings. Kimerer volunteers to what is bad? If you don’t make peace, the the line of duty. “Where do the readings not help disabled adults, particularly the home alternative is despair. Kierkegaard was belong? They do not belong when there is a particularly poetic in how he explored this.” danger in thinking too much. In Moby-Dick, less, and embraces Oscar Romero’s libera tion theology, which maintains that values Each day Kimerer asks himself, “How do Melville describes how the last person you and ethics should be part of public policy. these great works have a place in my small want in the crow’s nest is someone ‘given to Kimerer never loses sight of the irony that life as a police officer? To make sense of the unseasonable meditation’ up there with a he has “one of the most unusual job good is one way of dealing with the bad.” copy of the Phaedo, because he’s looking at T {The College. 5t. John’s College • Fall aooS } �{Alumni Profile} descriptions in civilization” and as deputy chief, he uses “coercive force to keep law and order.” As second in command of the igth-largest municipal police department, with a $aa6 million dollar annual budget and 1,870 employees, he also investigates cases, prevents human misery, and “protects every citizen, day in, day out.” Ultimately Kimerer is a public servant, “bound by duty and responsibility, rather than authority and prerogatives.” Kimerer also oversees emergency preparedness and homeland security for the city of Seattle. Most city police departments do not oversee large-scale emergency and disaster response; however Seattle is a port city and headquarters of the Microsoft Corporation, a symbolic target for terrorist threats. Seattle is also vulnerable to natural disasters such as windstorms, landslides, and earthquakes. In 2001 the Nisqually Earthquake (magnitude 6.8) under the Puget Sound caused over $200 million in damage, and in 1999 the city’s New Year celebration was cancelled when a man was caught smuggling bomb-making materials into the U.S. at Port Angeles, with plans to stay in a hotel near the city’s famed Space Needle. To keep abreast of emergency response and terrorist-prevention methods, Kimerer travels globally to meet with his counterparts in various governments and also advises the Major Cities Chiefs, an organization for the chiefs of the nation’s 56 largest police and sheriff departments, on such strategies. “Here in Seattle we have a leading edge with data and communications systems that are interdependent. All these things help us to manage disaster.” Just five years into his career, Kimerer faced disasters of a different kind. He was tapped from SWAT Team training to become Chief Hostage Negotiator (a posi tion he held from 1985 to 1992). In the midst of a tense situation, Kimerer learned to calmly persuade another human being by hstening and asking questions. “It’s a real devotion to understanding through listening,” he explains. “Basicallyyou’re trying to get a desperate person, someone who’s taken over a hostage, on a wavelength where you can reason with him or her.” Kimerer has seen 300 to 400 such scenarios in the past 25 years. “There are so many causes-behavioral disorders, chem ical disorders-but the one thing each hostage taker has in common is singlemindedness, an inabihty to look beyond a self-formulated view of a course of action to be taken.” As a crisis negotiator, Kimerer built a rapport. “I had to convey a profound level of attention to the person. I had to try to let the subject construct a larger universe, one that had options and other choices than suicide or murder.” Just as the horrific shooting scene from the rave after-party lingers in Kimerer’s mind, so too does one hostage episode in which a suicidal-homicidal man, obsessed with his caregiver, barricaded himself and the woman in a clinic. “In this incident, you’re looking at a lot of things. Sometimes that person wants to do what’s called ‘suicide by cop.’ He wants the cops to kill him in front of someone that he’s angry with; he wants to act out in a murder/suicide in front of those who have wronged him,” says Kimerer. “I’ve seen hundreds of those cases.” ''How do these great works have aplace in my small l^e as apolice officer? To make sense of the good is one way of dealing with the bad. Clark Kimerer (SF78) In this case, Kimerer took it step-by-step. “The first thing I had to decide was who not to involve, such as the ex-spouses and psychiatrists. A lot of hostage takers have issues with authority and even clergymen can create problems. There are a lot of sensitive spots and each situation is different. The second thing I did was try to draw the hostage taker out to assess his personality by constantly asking question after question: ‘Why would you want to put her at risk?’ ‘Let’s not do anything until we can keep exploring this. Let’s keep talking.’ ‘Where’s the weapon?’ I get him to put the weapon down, if possible. It’s a dialectical exercise. It’s Socratic. We know what we want the answer to be. It’s not an openended, unconditional exploration. But you only see hostage takers change when they learn for themselves and discover for themselves.” {The College -John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } 33 Finally there was a breakthrough. Says Kimerer, “The subject admitted that the woman was I ike his mother and he was abused as a kid. Here was a chance to make contrasts, to point out that the woman he was keeping as hostage and planning to murder was not his mother. I could progress the dialectic along, tell him, ‘This is not your mother. Let’s talk about the differ ences and start creating some separation and some options.’” Kimerer’s ability to walk such delicate situations with skill and patience makes him a natural for law enforcement. Yet even though he grew up in a police family, Kimerer had no intention of joining the force. “My stepfather and my mother were both assistant police chiefs. My mother was the highest-ranking policewoman [in the country]. When she retired, she became a U.S. Marshall. My great uncle was a fire chief, my brother was chief of police, so the whole family was involved in the police force. I grew up socializing with the chiefs, so I was never intimidated by them or the paramilitary culture.” After he graduated from St. John’s, Kimerer worked as assistant director of admissions in Santa Fe and studied at the Graduate Institute while his (now) wife Julie Berg (SF79) finished as an undergraduate. Today they live in Seattle and are raising three teenage sons. When they first moved to the city in 1979, Kimerer worked in a small business for several years, but he wasn’t fulfilled. As a Big Brother volunteer, he got involved in a case where he worked closely with police detectives who were on the trail of a child molester. The criminal was sent to prison for several years, and Kimerer gained appreciation for the detec tives’ dedication. “I discovered that I was really excited about justice, even if it’s not perfect justice,” he says. From his 8th-floor office with views of the Puget Sound, Kimerer recollects the dangerous days of his career; “I lookback on my life, my St. John’s education, the cop who spent four years looking at great books and argues vehemently for the rights of the downtrodden. Is this unusual? I don’t know, but this is where my life has gone.” Today Kimerer is more likely to be dashing to a meeting than to a crime scene. “When I’m called out, that’s when it’s really bad, like the mass killing at the rave after-party. Otherwise, the biggest threat I might encounter these days,” he says, “is a paper cut. �{Alumni Notes} 34 1935 Richard S. Woodman writes that he is still enjoying life and the practice of law in lovely upstate New York. 1937 Jack Owens sent a poem to The College: Let the music and adventures play on Until we must give up the gift of life Then comes a place of mercy to give us relief and liberation from The tangled web we have woven in our busy life in wonderland Full of good works, and vanities, plus all the ills and pains We leave all of these our history. Our love will live forever So sail away to this new place of supreme rest and peace Now when friends and family, smell a new blown flower. Or hear a joyful tune, or see a graceful wild bird-they will think of you 1943 “Peg and I have been married for 65 years,” writes BURTON Armstrong. “And it all started at St. John’s.” 1953 “In a spirit of reason and good will,” Jennie Alexander has put away her former name, John D. Alexander, Jr., and gender. She continues to perform with the Baltimore Jazz Trio. Indeed the trio once again performed at McDowell Hall during Homecoming. Alexander also continues her study of American vernacular post-and-rung chair making and 17th century joinery. She has recently co-authored an article on chair making to be published in American Furniture 2009. 1954 Bernard Jacoh completed 29 years as a law teacher at Hofstra University Law School and was granted emeritus status as of the 2008-09 academic year. 1962 My profile in View, the journal of the Library of American Landscape History, describes me as a “preservation hero” because of my efforts at Hampton in Maryland; Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens in Akron, Ohio; and Ford House in Grosse Point Shores, Mich. I retired June 30, 2007,” writes JOHN FrankLIN Miller. Steve Almy writes: “My wife and I are happily retired in California, on the western slope of the Sierras, a really beautiful spot. I am the president of our local chapter of the National Active/Retired Federal Employees Association, Hangtown Chapter 1503, in Placerville, Calif. Our goal is to protect the earned benefits of retirees from the federal government. Congress has tried to cut our pensions but we have (so far) successfully resisted. We were visited recently by another class member, George Jones, and his beautiful wife. I wonder how many classmates realize we have a genuine war hero among us. I spend my time Ashing, reading and gardening, very relaxing after a lifetime spying against our country’s enemies. My wife is the world’s greatest cook of food from the Middle East and Southeast Asia, where we lived for so many years, so I am constantly fighting the battle of the bulge. I’d like to hear from anyone in our class, particularly if you’re going to be in the area and can drop by, Yia sasC Cecil Wade reports that his daughter Cynthia won the Oscar for Short Documentary at this year’s Academy Awards ceremonies. 1966 Barbara Hockman just retired 1964 i960 teaching English in China. “My kids are a lot more daring than I am! ” she writes. Arlene Andrew is still working full time as a senior planner for the city of La Verne, 3.3 miles from her home in Claremont, Calif. She has no immediate plans to retire. Her daughter, Abby Banks, has had a book published: Punk House, a photo documentation of the homes of groups of “punk” young people she visited as she traveled across America. Her son. Josh, is after 30 “delightful and intense years” teaching English as a Second Language at the City College of San Francisco: “I taught all levels and types of ESL from vocational and crosscultural studies to many years of advanced academic classes. I was helped in my work by my St. John’s foundation followed by five years abroad, teaching in Japan, and traveling overland around the world. Now I’ll have time to paint and focus on my Tibetan Buddhist studies and practice (ongoing for more than Decorating Idea Leo Pickens (A78) wants to give alumni the first shot at a bargain: two classic wooden AyLING sweep oars, made in 1971, WITH THE DISTINCTIVE St. JoHn’s ORANGE-AND-BLACK DESIGN ON THE BLADE. They’re 12' long, ideal for either dedicated rowers or those WITH AVERY BIG HOUSE TO DECORATE. PiCKENS IS ASKING $250 OR BEST OFFER, AND SAYS ALL PROCEEDS GO BACK TO SUPPORT THE ROWING PROGRAM. Call 410-268-2558 or e-mail leo.pickens@sjca.edu. (The College -Sr. John’s College . Fall zoo8 } �{AlumniNotes} 25 years), simplicity dictated by a teacher’s pension. Feel free to send me an e-mail.” 1967 Division of Pediatric Pulmonology at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles. He is married to Susan Keens, PhD, a clinical psychologist. Daughter Jenny is a fifth-grade teacher, and will be married this summer. Son Peter is a computer programmer. Ezra Harris (A) and Eve Cohen Olman (A6g) got married about three years ago at the Keren Or center for special education in Jerusalem. “It was a gas. We have recently been blessed with the birth of our fourth grandchild. Praise the Lord!” 1968 More retirement news, from M. Joy Avery (SF): “After completing three careers, I finally retire at 62 years: 5 years as a technical writer, 26 years as an interpreter to the deaf, 10 years as an occupational , therapy assistant.” Tom Keens (SF) is the chair of the Pediatric Pulmonology Sub-board of the American Board of Pediatrics: “This is a seven member board who writes the board examination for pediatric pulmonology, which aU physicians wishing to be certified in this subspecialty must take and pass. Members serve a seven-year term. In my last two-years, I was elected chair of the subboard. I was initially reluctant to agree to serve, but I realized that this group has important obligations not only to write the board examinations, but also to determine the knowledge area which defines pediatric pulmonology as a subspecialty. It has been a very interesting seven years.” Tom is also a Professor of Pediatrics, Physiology and Biophysics at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, and he holds a faculty position in the 1969 Joseph P. Baratta (A) writes: “My big book. The Politics of World Federation (2004), continues to make slow, scholarly progress. It has been reviewed eight times. It has been cited in the first note of Paul Kennedy’s The Parliament ofMan. It is also cited in a note in Joshua Goldstein’s International Relations and in a Wikipedia article on “world government.” My website on the book contains the introduction and pictures of me, worn out with labors to realize the dream of world peace and justice: http://web.mac.com /Josephs aratta. ” L. Luis Lopez (SFGI) has published three books of poetry. Musings ofa Barrio Sack Boy, A Painting ofSand, and Each Month I Sing (October 2008). He teaches Latin, Ancient Greek, Greek and Roman Literature, and Mythology at Mesa State College in Grand Junction, Colo. His daughter, Reina Lopez, is preparing to enter the Graduate Institute in Santa Fe in January. “To all who wished me well,” writes BARBARA MORDES BOSS (A), “it has been six years since I was hit by a truck and I am finally feeling good. The hardest part of healing was going to the doctors. Most doctors merely prescribed drugs, and then more drugs. Two months ago, a new doctor. Dr. Brilliant and Beautiful, ran her fingers over my body, from my ears to my wrists, and then from the back of my head to my {The College. 5f. 35 Dancing All Night DELL Kesselman (SFGI76) has been working in Phoenix for four-and-a-half years as a psychotherapist at a nonprofit agency, “using my liberal education daily. In March, my only child became a Jewish wife, and I danced and smiled all night. Living with my two cats, I continue to sing and purr with abandon, laughing more as I near 60 than ever before.” I wrist. She then forcefully declared that I must decaffeinate and she immediately ordered an echocardiogram. I stopped all drugs as so ordered and after one week, felt better than normal. Still do. Last week I went to the heart ultrasound doctor. I was not able to see the screen as he probed and muttered, but what I heard was rather creepy; retarded valves not quite clapping, coughing and wheezing, as they applauded the heart. (The doctor had muttered ‘What a beautiful heart!’ upon finding a good viewing spot. At 60, any compliment to a body part is nice to hear.) Through the splashing and whistling he made comment on my ‘heart murmur’ describing my weak mitral valve. If any friends have advice please pass it on. Truth, Beauty, and the Good have not languished in my heart but is there not an aspect of each, particular for the aged? Any thoughts, let me know. I do not dream of my Rock ’n Roll time; not Dylan, The Stones, The Doors, Jimi, nor even Hiatt... every night I dream of St. John’s!” “Retired, built a new house (Curmudgeon Castle West), got a new dog (Simon) and kept the important stuff: wife (Sarah), health (like bull) and business (for the dogs),” writes JAMES Scanlon (SF). The view to Monte Sol is a bit dim; it seems to be just over the curvature of the earth from here (about 4000 miles). Reflection on the St. John’s experience progresses from pricey at the time to priceless over time.” 1971 George Elias (A) writes: “After more than 20 years seUing businesses, I have embarked on a new career as a financial advisor with Morgan Stanley. I am part of a new program that began late last year in New York and is now piloting in San Francisco. My job is to help people preserve and grow their financial assets- so that they can enjoy a long, comfortable retirement. A curious fact: two members of my office are longtime clients and admirers of Dan Sullivan (A71), President/Owner of the Strategic Coach. Go Dan!” Susan Volkmar (SF) moved from Raleigh, N.C., to the Boston area. She continues to be active with the National Association of Science Writers and the New England Science Writers. 1972 Melissa Kaplan Drolet (SF) was happy and proud to attend the graduation of her daughter, Megan Josephine Drolet (SF08) in May: “Also in attendance were my sister, Sharon Kaplan Wallis (Class of 1964) with her husband Leonard Weeks and my brother, cont. onpages'^ John’s College . Fall ^008 } �36 {AlumniProfile} The View from the Bench Jean FitzSimon (A^g) BY Rosemary Harty he Philadelphia couple was drowning in deht. They hoth held low-wage jobs: she as a waitress, and he as a retail clerk. A compulsive gambler, the man hid $120,000 in credit card bills from his wife. When he finally hit the jackpot, he spent some of the money and gave her the rest to pay off their mortgage. But other creditors were waiting, and that’s what brought the man before Judge Jean K. FitzSimon (A73) in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania last year. In a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, a debtor can seek a discharge of certain debts, preventing creditors from taking further legal action to collect. It’s unusual for FitzSimon to deny a discharge, but in this case she ruled that the man intended to “hinder, delay, and defraud” his unsecured creditors. “This is not the action of an Presiding over the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Judge ‘honest but unfortunate debtor’ seeking a Jean FitzSimon (A73) seeks the gray areas in the cases that come before her. fresh start,” she wrote in her ruling. Reflecting on the case later, FitzSimon said it was a difficult one for her. “It’s not ever forced to use a credit card, but teaser She later moved to Chicago, where she was my fault that this man gambled. But you interest rates, credit checks, confusing appointed Acting U.S. Trustee for the have this poor woman and her two children language, and other marketing devices are Northern District of Illinois, gaining who will effectively be out on the street at best ethically questionable, FitzSimon expertise in bankruptcy law. unless they can refinance their home,” she says. And no one in Washington paid atten After IO years with the government, she says. “It was very clear that these were tion when the economy was booming. needed a new challenge and launched a poor people who were in a bad situation, FitzSimon speaks from personal experi private practice in Phoenix, working on but the code was clear. The only thing ence. Right out of law school (the Univer behalf of debtors. Apart from the long that’s harder in what I do is when someone sity of Notre Dame), she acquired two hours, she enjoyed working on her own. actually has to lose their house.” credit cards, each with an $1,800 limit. She But a headhunter led her to a job as in At a time when many Americans are used them to equip her first apartment, house counsel for Sears, which was dealing struggling financially, FitzSimon sees the buy work clothes, and acquire the neces with legal troubles stemming from its debt human costs of ready credit. In the case of sary elements for “building a life” as a staff collection practices. In less than two years, the lottery winner, she wonders: how did a attorney with the Department of Justice. she became the company’s chief compli man earning $19,000 a year acquire 9 Concerned about mounting debt on top of ance officer and vice president. Her skill in credit cards and a $200,000 line of credit? school loans, she kept her spending down. digging Sears out of legal quagmires led “There are people out there digging “I was smart enough to know I had to pay her to Whitehall Jewelers, which was strug themselves into a hole who are not plan more than just the minimum, but it still gling with financial difficulties and fending ning to pay off their debt,” FitzSimon took me three full years to pay those cards off a proxy fight. As part of a small execu acknowledges. “But there are also people back down to zero,” she recalls. She has tive team, she sometimes put in 100 hours who lost their jobs, or they have illnesses never carried a balance since. in a workweek, but she enjoyed great and medical bills they can’t pay. So they FitzSimon was attracted to the law for the discounts on jewelry. put it on the credit card this month, same reason she was drawn to St. John’s: Climbing the corporate ladder and thinking that maybe next month they can the freedom to pursue a wide range of inter keeping abreast of developments in the law get a second job, that somehow they can ests. She began her legal career at the left little time for a social life. But catch up. But they never do.” Justice Department, where she started out FitzSimon’s life changed when she made There’s plenty of fault to spread around in the Office of Information and Privacy. time for a summer alumni program in for the credit crisis, she adds. No one is T {The College. St. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } �{Alumni Notes} Bart Kaplan (Class of 1965), with his wife, Betty Kaplan. Greatly missed at the graduation was Megan’s father, Raymond Drolet (SF69), who passed away September 27, 2007.” Geraldine Kline (SFGI) is returning to Cochabamba, Bolivia, this September, for the 20th anniversary of INFANTE, an organization she founded in 1988. INFANTE has as its mission the protection and education of women. Among other activities, the organization began and fosters transitional homes for abandoned babies and national adoptions for Bolivian families. 1973 Mary L. Batteen (A) has been chair of the Oceanography Department at the Naval ’ Postgraduate School for seven 37 Deep in the Mountains ews from Susan Read (SFGI85): “My son, Harry, is now 13 and able to do some of the repairs around our old Victorian house-1837, colorful history. I still teach English at Wooster School, but I also now do the yearbook, which provides a kind of tedious creativity. I built an Adirondack lean-to last week, deep in the mountains with 15 friends. All is well.” -*■ years: “I am a professor of oceanography and am about to write a book on ocean dynamics that I hope will inspire a new generation to study climate change.” In August, Batteen gave a seminar at the Ocean and Climate Sustainability Conference on “Science and the Public” and on reaching an understanding on global climate change. “I hope to visit the original St. John’s College, our college while in Oxford! ” Jan Lisa Huttner (A) writes: “Approximately five years ago, I created a movement that is now known as WITASWAN (wit-uhswan = Women in the Audience Supporting Women Artists Now). After three increasingly successful annual programs in Chicago, WITASWAN transformed this year into International SWAN Day when the Fund for Women Artists joined the cause. Over 160 groups in ii countries on 4 continents celebrated the first International SWAN Day on March 29, 2008, and we have just received a $25,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to spread the word about the next International SWAN Day on March 28, 2009. (International SWAN Day will always be on the last Saturday of every March as the wrap-up event of Women’s History Month.) For more info, see my blog www.TheHotPinkPen.com and/or www.SwanDay.org.” 1974 News from MARTHA (Mackey) Pendleton and Randal O. Pendleton (both SF): Randy has retired and the Pendletons expected to start renovating their home this year. Son WALKER (A99) is married to Rachel Vedaa (SF99). The Pendletons’ cont. on page gg Santa Fe in 1986, where she was intro duced to therapist Lee Fischler (SF68). They married in 1987. Philadelphia is Fischler’s hometown, and his love for the city is one of the reasons FitzSimon put her name in the hat when the bankruptcy court vacancy came up. As a merit appointment, not a political one, the post was within her reach, but she was still surprised to be offered the job. “Did you mean to call Jean FitzSimon?” she asked the Circuit Court judge who called her with the news. With the court room filled with friends and family, she was sworn in on Aug. 16, 2006. She and Fischler found a place close to the Philadelphia Art Museum, and she settled into her chambers in the city’s massive Robert C. Nix United States Courthouse. A year later, FitzSimon is still pinching herself. “In spite of the long hours, I have enjoyed all my jobs,” says FitzSimon. “But never in my life have I been as satisfied as this.” To an outsider, it may seem that her court is where the American dream comes to die. But FitzSimon tries to make the system work for everyone. Few individuals get the opportunity to interact with the legislative or executive branches of Amer ican government; FitzSimon wants citizens to see the judiciary at its best. “I have the opportunity to give people a magnificent experience of the court system,” she explains. “They may not agree with what I do, but they feel that they are heard and that I mean to be fair. If you’re ever going to have the sense that government can be trusted, it’s going to be with the judiciary. It’s incredibly important that we treat people with respect and listen to them.” After she’s reviewed a case, FitzSimon may point out the weaknesses and strengths she sees and give the parties a chance to come to an agreement before she makes her official ruling. “Sometimes if the borrower can come up with any kind of plan, any source of funds, the creditor may be better off. Then they can both walk away with half a loaf,” she says. It takes more time in court to do things this way, FitzSimon says, but it’s closer to her idea of justice. She explains her approach by employing the men-de construction from Ancient Greek: on the one hand this, on the other hand that. {The C o l l e g e . St. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } “I’ve never been good at seeing things in black and white,” says FitzSimon. “I think the world is largely gray.” In a bankruptcy court, helping each party see the other’s side often leads to a better solution. The creditor recoups some money; the debtor regains a measure of control in his or her life. There are days, though, “when I can’t make magic happen,” FitzSimon says. “There are the days when someone has to lose their house.” After 30 years of impossible hours FitzSimon is enjoying more free time: to spend with her husband, enjoy Philadel phia’s cultural offerings, and sample the city’s fine restaurants. A former member of the college’s Board of Visitors and Gover nors, she hopes to become more involved with the college again. But as enjoyable as her job is, it can be unpredictable: “There are days when I read the pleadings and it looks like an easy, straightforward case. Then the lawyers start talking, and it’s ‘whoa, Nelly, bar the door-we’re going to be here a while,”’ she says, “It’s not always pretty. But it’s justice. And it works.” �38 {AlumniProfile} A Sense of Place Francois Levy (SF87) BY Anna Perleberg (SFoa) orn in Paris and raised in the U.S., Francois Levy gradnated from the Santa Fe campus in r987. He’d come to St. John’s “1 thought architecture sounded at the tender age of inter i6, and esting, so didleft diplomacy foreign withoutand a clear direction. service. So I applied to a lot of different grad schools, and the architecture schools accepted me.” This Aristotelian accident led him to a career he loves. Levy moved to Austin (where he still lives with his wife and three children) to attend the University of Texas’ first profes sional degree program for students who, like him, had not studied architecture as an undergraduate. It was during a srx-month internship in Australia that he “finally fell in love with architecture-before that we were just dating.” After graduating with his master’s in 1993, he plied his new trade with several noted Austin firms, while also teaching at UT and, in 1995, working briefly in Paris on a new bne of the Metro. Architecture, says Levy, is as much science as art-perhaps more. “While you make use of your artistic faculties, in the end, you have to end up with a building that people can inhabit.” The most B gorgeously conceived structure is useless if it doesn’t stay up. But there’s certainly a creative dimension-“pure functionality leads to things like strip malls. There’s a really fine line you have to walk between self-indulgence and prac ticality, between ego and humility. You have to invest yourself in the building or it won’t be any good.” On the other hand, when an archi tect becomes too self-centered, “you get buildings neighbors love to complain about.” In May 2008, Levy received another UT graduate degree, this time in architectural engineering. He’d returned to school for a variety of reasons-for one, he says, “I’ve always been a frustrated scientist,” and the refinement of techne offered by the disci pline was “a way to scratch that itch.” But he also, in the progress of his career in mostly residential architecture, found his concerns shifting from buildings them selves to their interaction with, and impact on, the environment. “I was working on an 8,ooo-square-foot house for empty nestersit wasn’t even their primary residence. I kinda felt like a fiddlemaker for Nero.” Levy’s attraction to the trend of sustain ability comes from his concept of architec ture as beholden to place, “the intersection of climate, technology, and society.” Houses were formerly built of necessity, using materials at hand-earthen struc tures in desert New Mexico, wooden cabins in forested Wisconsin, half-underground sod houses in treeless, humid Kansas. Without climate control or artificial lighting, buildings were oriented to take advantage of sun and wind; the size of a residence depended not just on the comfort of the inhabitants, but the practi cality of heating, cooling, and maintaining the structure. Technological advances in building tech niques and materials have meant that, provided with the means, homeovraers can impose any look or style they want on their dwellings, ignoring landscape and climate. At its most innocuous, this attitude leads only to incongruous eyesores, but as Amer ican houses get bigger and families get smaller, resource and energy consumption per capita explode, negatively impacting the disregarded environment. In a worst case scenario, the sudden re-introduction of the outside world can make ill-suited Built around two relocated rooms of a German homesteader’s cabin, Francois Levy’s MoonRise Ranch was designed to EXIST IN COMPLETE HARMONY WITH ITS SITE IN THE Texas Hill Country. {The College. Sf. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } �{Alumni Notes} daughter. Laurel, is fundraising for La Clinica de la Raza in the San Francisco Bay area and attending graduate school at California State East Bay. “After 30 years of grueling trial practice, I needed a change,” writes MiKE PANTER (A). “I had taught one class in litigation at my law school, DePaul, and I asked them about a full-time job. Law professors are usually credentialed academicians, which definitely rules me out, but I proposed a new idea. A small class of law students sitting around a table would meet to debate and discuss a different issue each week. Each week, a different lawyer would pay the law school $350 to bring in an open issue on an active case for the students and lawyer to workshop together. I call it ‘Litigation Lab.’ The school agreed to give it a try. Last night we finished our 32nd session and it’s a smashing success. Some of the students call it the best class they had in law school. Lawyers come back for two and three sessions. They credit us for giving them thoughts and ideas that directly lead to better results for their clients. Everyone learns, even the seasoned lawyers; everyone teaches, even the inexperienced law students. People don’t leave-they hang around talking long after class. Whatever I do in this class, I 39 think always of what I did in my year at St. John’s with my great tutor, Eva Brann and classmates like Chester Burke and Mike Blaustein. If this program is a success, it is certainly due to the principles of learning that I learned in even one year at St. John’s, 38 years ago.” and I engage in a collaborative process of inquiry to generate and test hypotheses regarding the causes and effects of their abrasive behavior. Late this year I plan to open the Boss Whispering Institute to share this method with other executive coaches.” “I’m almost done with the treehouse,” writes JEFF ViCTOROFF (A). “Maia and Ivan are jumping up and down! Next week: our first sleepover.” 1977 1975 Laura Craws haw (SF) writes: “Following the publication of my book Taming the Abrasive Manager: How to End Unnecessary Roughness in the Workplace (Jossey-Bass, 2007), I relocated my coaching firm (The Executive Insight Development Group) to Portland, Ore. I research and coach abrasive bosses as part of my mission to reduce suffering in the workplace. Also known as The Boss Whisperer, I will be speaking at the Sixth Interna tional Conference on Workplace Bullying in Montreal this June. I’ve put my St. John’s education to good use, having incorporated a technique I’ve termed Socratic whispering into my coaching method, through which my client continued houses the cause of needless human suffering. Levy sees this as one of the lessons of Hurricane Katrina: “I saw a connection between how we choose to develop on a large scale and the inevitable effect of natural disasters. When you build responsibly to the climate, when you don’t have conveniences, it’s less of a hardship.” His master’s project was entitled “Indoor Air Quality Engineering Chal lenges in Lunar Habitats,” based in part on 1979 Kevin W. Parker (A) writes: Judy Kistler-Robinson (SF, SFGI79) is baking for the fourth summer in plain oT Texas. She is a user-experience architect (designing web applications), which is the “best career for a right-thinking person who learned to be left-aligned at SJC.” She volunteers as a literacy tutor. 1978 Lucy Tamlyn (A) just finished up a three-year tour as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in N’Djamena, Chad. “I am currently posted as Regional Coordinator for the Kurdistan Region in Erbil, Iraq. The Regional Office is an outpost of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. We represent the United States in the region and coordinate U.S. assistance in support of reconstruction efforts. Children Ben (16) and Filipa (13) are in a paper he delivered (with J. Fardal) at the 2007 Rutgers Symposium on Lunar Settle ments, exploring the impact of radon-emitting lunar soil in the hermetically sealed environments future settlers might five in. Concerns like these, though currently theoretical, are a logical extension of the idea of responsible architecture as subservient to a location’s available resources. Though Levy has been practicing in his field since 1993, with his own firm since 1997, he feels his career is just beginning. {The College . S:. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } boarding school in the U.S.; my husband is planning some motorcycle trips across Europe and possibly all the way to Central Asia. We are all hoping the next overseas posting will be easier for visiting friends and family! ” “I just received my diploma for a master’s degree in astronomy from James Cook University in Townsville, Australia. The degree program was quite an interesting experience, all done through the Internet and in some ways just the opposite of the St. John’s experience, as there was no direct human contact at all unless you count e-mail (which I don’t!). I’m still working as a software engineer at the Goddard Space Flight Center and my wife, Tina Rhea (also A79), and I celebrated our a5th wedding anniversary last year.” 1980 Gina Ironside (SF) and Ben Goldstein (SF79) report that their son, Ben, is 13 and that the family is still enjoying home schooling. He and his dad are both playing soccer intensely. “One of the really beautiful things about architecture is that you don’t really hit your stride until you’re 50. You peak when you’re 70. Hot young designers maybe the darlings of the magazines, but their work isn’t necessarily profound-the profession’s not like football, more like baseball. Or curling.” More about Levy's design philosophy andphotos ofhis work can befound at francoislevy. com. �{AlumniNotes} 40 Making a Case for Endangered Forestland Abby Weinberg (SFoo) BY Brooke McLane-Higginson (AGI09) n her work as manager of the Conservation Research Program at the Open Space Institute in New York City, Abby Weinberg (SFoo) finds the ideas of John Locke and Adam Smith helpful in under standing the challenges to conserving the nation’s endangered forest and farmland. It isn’t easy balancing private property rights and free markets with the less tangible benefit of a forest as a good in itself, but Weinberg uses research to make the case for conservation-with good results. Weinberg brought her enthusiasm for the outdoors to St. John’s, where her studies of Smith and Locke helped her better understand the formative philoso phies driving human’s interaction with the natural environment. After graduating from St. John’s, she worked as an economic analyst for the Federal Trade Commission. Four years later, Weinberg earned a master’s degree in Forestry at the Yale Progress needs to be considered not just from the standpoint of what we produce from School of Forestry and Environmental FORESTS, BUT ALSO BY WHAT WE GAIN BY LEAVING THEM AS THEY ARE, SAYS AbBY WeINBERG (SFoo). Studies. She worked as a forest technician at the City of Seattle’s 90,000-acre water shed before joining the OSI in 2004. agriculture than the market would other destroying it. However, these days, land The Institute protects scenic, natural, wise dictate. On the other hand, “Adam prices are driven more by development and historic landscapes to ensure public Smith argues that agriculture is inherently than the potential for forest products. enjoyment, conserve habitats, and sustain contrary to economic development, Development speculation has driven prices community character. Weinberg’s work because division of labor doesn’t apply to three or five times what can be justified for focuses on evaluating and developing tools forestry conservation, she says. agriculture,” Weinberg explains. “The for the conservation of actively managed same person plows, sows, and reaps, It’s part of Weinberg’s job to make a case forest and farm landscapes in the making it hard to increase production for the value of preserving forests. One of United States. without increasing labor costs.” her first research projects at OSI was to Although one-third of the country is In her work at the Institute, Weinberg complete an assessment of conservation in forestland, “people don’t necessarily see relies on economic research and land Massachusetts for the Kohlberg Founda the value of standing forestland,” Wein use analysis to recommend changes to tion. Her work led to the creation of an berg says. “Some of this goes back to Locke conservation and public policy. Up until entirely new grant program for conserving and his idea about labor and ownership. 2000, the amount of forestland in the U.S. forest and farm landscapes in the area and The labor of clearing trees and planting was actually increasing as marginal farm the dedication of another $6 million agricultural products is evidence of owner land was allowed to return to forests, towards land protection. ship, whereas people assume the forest is a explains Weinberg. With lessons from Locke and Smith, public resource that takes care of itself and The picture changed dramatically as Weinberg has found a way to address both isn’t necessarily worth paying for even suburban sprawl, fed by rampant real natural and economic issues by researching though it is the source of our clean air estate speculation, began encroaching how to conserve forests while using their and water.” more urgently on forests. “In the tradi resources sustainably. The traditional idea Such ideas have made agriculture more tional analysis of forestland prices you of progress, that is, the conversion of our prominent in our society, Weinberg don’t assume someone is going to cut the natural resources for economic goods, she explains. Agriculture receives more entire forest at once,” she says. Instead, says, “is in many ways no longer valid when government subsidies and funding than “you need to know what you can earn from we recognize the values lost when a forest forests, to the point that more land is in sustainably harvesting the land” without is cut down. I {The College. Si. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } �{AlumniNotes} Ben is coaching, too. Ben’s web engineering company. End Point Corporation, is doing beautifully (visit endpoint.com). Several Johnnies have turned up among their recruiting respondents! Gina attends the alumni seminars in New York City from time to time, and enjoys Scottish country dancing: “The balls remind me of St. John’s waltz parties, only better, with the men in full highland dress (kilts). Best wishes to all.’’ “We have enjoyed looking at colleges with our 17-year-old daughter, Michelle,” says Debra Ann Rutherford (SF). “St. John’s College is still the best!” 1982 Stanley Schiff (SF) has been practicing tai-chi and chi-gong for 35 years. “I became a certified Lifetime Practitioner who uses both modern healing techniques and the ancient energetic and spiritual techniques of China and India.” 1985 Jeffrey Wilson (A) serves as associate dean of the College of Communication and Fine Arts at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, where he has taught philosophy since 1995. “As a hobby, I participate in recitals and other events for amateur classical pianists. One of my best St. John’s memories involved Douglas Allanbrook giving me the combination to the Steinway in the Great Hall for early morning practice, where housekeeping staff would listen from the balcony. Today, I practice on a restored 1897 Steinway and take special pleasure in sharing live classical music with those who may otherwise have no access to it.” 1986 privilege of working with an Iraqi intelligence officer who was by far the best officer in the division, if not the Iraqi Army, and we put many insurgents behind bars, or in the ground, and won the hearts of the people in our area well worth the trip.” Todd W. Masilon (A) has just returned home from a year in Baghdad working as an Intelligence Operations Advisor to an Iraqi Army battalion, “ready to hang up my captain’s bars after 10 years in the Army. I’ve been away from wife, Renee, daughter Molly, and son Ian for 3 1/a of the last 3 years (training/ Afghanistan/Iraq), audit’s their turn now. I have a new job already as a contractor working with the Army Test and Evaluation Command. I’m glad to be back as the first seven months of the deployment were consumed by daily fighting in the main AlQaeda stronghold in Baghdad at the time (we fought alongside our Iraqi battalion in the one square mile of B’dad with the highest density of insurgent activity in all Iraq). It was sad, horrifying, frustrating, and terrifying on a daily basis. Fortunately, I had the Barbara A. Roberts (SFGI) made her eighth visit to the Pilgrim Center of Avatar Meher Baba in Meherabad, Ahmednagar, Maharashtra State, India. 1987 “My husband and I welcomed our second child, Samantha Danielle Lewin last July,” writes Sallie M. Fine (A). “Samantha and her now 5-year-old brother, Benjamin, made their first visit to St. John’s for Homecoming this past September, and while I’m not sure if there is a second generation of Johnnies in our future, everyone had a great time. I am head of the English department at Charles F. Brush High School in Lyndhurst, Ohio, “Absolutely Proud” lizabeth Natterman (Ara) has made Jeff Natterman (AGI93) a happy father: “I want to E 41 and I am grateful every day to have a job in which I can always find meaning.” After years of teaching, Elisabeth DuRard Keller (SF) is currently Director of Education Programs at the Santa Fe Children’s Museum. “It was great fun working with fellow alum Jason Scott until he left for graduate school at Stanford in June and much fun working with current Johnnie interns. Past development director at the college. Ginger Roherty, is also at the museum and we enjoy talking about our shared connections. I recently attended a wonderful afternoon of tea and poetry at Will (SF86) and Janette (Hradecky, SF85) Fischer’s. Love raising my family and enjoying the sky in beautiful Santa Fe.” 1989 Jennifer Lee (SF) writes: “Dimitri, I, and our daughters, Fani (14) and Maro (ri), are happy in Baltimore. I am teaching fifth grade at the Park School and loving it. I will finish the Johns Hopkins Creative Writing program this fall and plan to start guitar lessons again. I have also taken up running in my middle years (who would have thought!) and have completed a few triathlons.” share how absolutely proud I am that 15 years after I graduated from the Graduate Institute, my daughter is now a freshman on the same Earlier this year George campus. When I first was accepted into the T urner (A) acquired an electric program in the early 1990s, Elizabeth was only about ayearbike to make his nine-mile and-half old. We toured the campus, and my wife, Donna, took commute to and from work, to a picture of us in front of the Liberty Tree. For years, I boasted save on gas, and to save the of my life-altering experiences at St. John’s. And foryears Eliz planet: “So far I’ve only used it abeth listened to my stories, intrigued by the tales of my three times. So much for having taken classes in the cupola, pausing the conversation grandiose plans.” each time the bell rang. Or, my silly refutation of the asymp totic triangle as a mere intellectual play on words. Last week, we watched Elizabeth shake Chris Nelson’s hand after her name was called at the Convocation ceremony, and receive her Greek lexicon. I nearly burst with pride. I only wish the Liberty Tree was still around so I could take a new picture with her when she graduates. Now that’s priceless!” {The College. Sf. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } �4a {Alumni Notes} it up in the slam pit that formed late in the night, amongst a group of rabbis, Talmud scholars and Israeli settlers that responded to the Hassidic band’s rendition of a popular Nirvana ode. In June, Michael and Yael returned to Hollywood, Cahf., where Michael runs a law practice concentrating on trial work in the areas of criminal defense, personal injury and employment litigation. Jessica Trupin (A) is returning Blake Sitney (SF91) has been making a difference for orphans in Thailand. The Ban Mae Maeh ORPHANAGE IN THE ChIANG MaI PROVINCE HAD BECOME UNREACHABLE DURING THE MONSOON SEASON AND WAS IN DESPERATE NEED OF BOTH FOOD AND SCHOOL SUPPLIES. WiTH THE HELP OF A LOCAL RESIDENT NAMED JONG, Sitney was able to deliver rice, fruit, noodles, and other food, as well as school supplies to the ORPHANAGE. SiTNEY ALSO PROVIDED THE CHILDREN WITH ART SUPPLIES SUCH AS CRAYONS, COLORED PENCILS, AND WATERCOLORS SO THAT THEY COULD EXPRESS THEIR CREATIVITY. SiTNEY HAS CREATED A PHOTO ESSAY WEBSITE TO SHARE THEIR ARTWORK WITH THE WORLD. HTTP://cOMMUNITY.LrVEJOURNAL.COM/aRTFORORPHANS/. to the New York City area to launch a startup nonprofit called Bees Without Borders (www.beeswithoutborders.org). She expected to be in the city all summer, just bringing husband Dave and eight-year-old daughter Bridget for the first couple weeks, working on the nonprofit and at the farmer’s markets. Michael Zampella (A) and 1990 Kilian Garvey (A) was recently named to the editorial boards of The Journal ofSocial, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology and The Journal of Evolutionary Studies. He is an assistant professor of psychology at the University of New England in Biddeford, Maine. thought to who might want to place a baby for adoption. We are so very glad to be parents.” Geneva M. Fulgham (SFGI) published a book about secondary school teaching. Wit and Wisdom Needed in the Classroom (Rowman & Littlefield 2006). “I’m entering in national, state, and local poetry contests and sell the occasional opinion essay,” she writes. Lila Kerns (SF) and Kevin Depew (Ago) are delighted to Kevin (SF) and Khin Khin Guyot Brock (SF88) are delighted to announce the adoption of their son, Christopher Arden Brock, born February 18, aoo8. “Christopher is more wonderful than we imagined,” writes Khin Khin. “Christopher’s birth parents, teenage sweethearts, are kept informed of his development via e-mail, photos and, in time, visits. Thank you to all who saw our earlier appeal and gave some School (a prep school in Pebble Beach): “I am married to a woman named Andrea Price, and we have an infant daughter named Siri who was born on Nov. 7, 2007, and two spotted dogs. It is quite a full house. I am enjoying life here, balancing work and time in the ocean with the new responsibilities of fatherhood. If you are in the Monterey area, look us up.” 1991 “Retirement is enriching,” writes Ronalie a. Moss (SFGI). “I am rereading The Ramayana-a new translation.” 1992 Charlie Henrikson (SF) is living in Pacific Grove, Calif., teaching science at the Stevenson {The College -5t. announce the birth of their daughter, Lucinda Lee Kerns Depew (Class of 2029, expected), born April i, 2008, in New York, N.Y. Michael Kopple (SF) was married in Jerusalem in May 2008. His wife, Yael, is Israeliborn and hails from a family of 12 children who grew up in the West Bank settlements. Luke Warren (SF92) and his partner, Patricia, attended the wedding. Witnesses report that Luke was seen mixing John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } his wife, Caitlin, are happy to announce his commissioning as a Naval Intelligence Officer in the United States Navy Reserve. “I want to reassure my fellow alumni that this will in no way affect my support of my alma mater during the USNA/ St. John’s Croquet Match.” 1993 J. Walter Sterling (A) and Meghan Haid were married at sunset, on Father’s Day, June 15, at the Hyatt Tamaya on the Santa Ana Pueblo. In attendance were alumni Noah Kay (SF92), Elliott (A92) and Amy (Johns, A91) Callahan, Melissa Duke, (SFGI07), and Susanne Ristow (SF06), playing her cello, and tutors David Carl and (of course) WALTER Sterling (class of 1963), pere. The weekend of vigorous celebration included a long Friday night at �{AlumniNotes} the Cowgirl. Walter is a tutor in Santa Fe. Meghan is a DPT (doctor of physical therapy). would love to hear from any of my old friends via email: deslong@yahoo.com.” Stella Schindler (AGl) 1994 Colin (A) and Emiko (Ima) Ray (SF) still live in Tokyo. Their daughter, Marina, is 3. Son Thomas Michael (Tom) was born on January 8, 3007. They enjoy meeting up with any Johnnies who happen to be in town. “John and 1 are very happy to announce the birth of our second son, Gilpin Edward Turkington Ruhl,” writes IVY Turkington (A). “His big brother Henry is certain this guarantees him a sailing crew member for the rest of their lives, but I guess we’U see whether Gilpin is captain or crew material in about 8 years. Gilpin was born September 34 (8 lbs, ii oz, 30 inches) and we are aU rejoicing much though sleeping little.” announces the release of her new CD, Distant Hum. 1997 Patience Melnik (SF) writes: “John Kochendorfer (SF95), our three-year-old, Abe, and I just moved from California to Knoxville, Tenn. John has a post doc at the National Oceano graphic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Oak Ridge, and 1 will attend the graduate program for architecture at the University of Tennessee. We just tried chowchow for the first time and think we’ll be all right here. If anyone rolls this way, e-mail us at patiencemelnik@gmail.com.” 1998 1996 Jennifer (Wamser) Deslongchamps (AGl) has indefinitely postponed work on her doctoral thesis (she started a PhD program in Medieval Philosophy at Yale in 1997 and is now ABD) in order to care for her growing family: “Our son Thomas Robert was born in 3000; Elena Margaret, 3003; Camille Therese, 3003; Charles Joseph, 3005; Zachary Louis, 3006 and our 3008 edition, Stephen Benedict, was born three months ago. Needless to say I have been keeping very busy, although I am woefully behind on my reading! I remember with great fondness my days in the GI, discussing life’s deepest questions with such wonderful tutors and fellow students. 1 “I have made some big changes (professionaUy) this summer,” writes Dawn Star Borchelt (A). “I left my position at the Unitarian Universalist church where I was Director of Religious Education for 10 years. I will continue to do some consulting and contract work with UU organizations and congregations. but I also have enrolled in the Birthing From Within Mentor and Doula Certification program. I am starting a private practice as a childbirth educator and doula in the Washington, D.C., area, so if you are having a baby, especially near the nation’s capital, get in touch! I am doing exactly what I want to do, and I am working on remembering it aU of the time. My spouse and two young children, the dog, and the birds are all fine, too.” GlenScott Thomas Copper (AGl) retired from teaching last year and is finishing the novel he began writing his first summer at St. John’s in 1994. Tobin Shulman (SF99) and Julie Gronneberg (SF) report that Tobin finished his master’s in Architecture last May, and Julie is the senior designer at the MFA, Boston. “Our best design project so far has been our sonLincoln Olav-who loves guitars, the ocean, and dinosaurs,” and turned 3 in July. 1999 George Finney (SF) graduated from Southern Methodist University’s Dedman School of Law in May 3008 with a Juris Doctorate. From A to /J. Bottom 43 Kara Luna (Fenske, A) and Richard Luna (Schmidt, A96) are excited to announce the birth of their daughter, Evie Teresa Luna, on April 13, 3008. Mom, dad, and baby are all healthy and happy. Sheridan Phillips (EC) is ABD at the European Graduate School. From across the pond, Patrick Reed (AGI) reports that he and his wife, Jana, celebrated their daughters’ 3rd and ist birthdays this summer (Lucille and Anja, respectively). They are loving life in Europe and recently competed in an ultra marathon competition, in Davos, Switzerland. Check out the website at www.swissalpine.ch. Mike and Abby Soejoto (both A) are proud to announce the first birthday of their third child, Cecilia Anne (born June 3007). Mike, Abby, Lucy (41/3), John (almost 3), and Cecilia live in Los Angeles, where Mike is a tax attorney and Abby stays home with the kids. They’d love to see any Johnnies in the area (or hear from any not in Southern California) at msoejoto@pircher.com or asoejoto@sbcglobal.net. 2000 D. Read Lockhart (SF) was awarded the Shapiro Grant from the Art Students League in New York City to paint in Europe. Last spring, he was in Oslo after having been to London, Paris, and Amsterdam. He expected to conclude his studies in Italy and Vienna and return to New York in September. ow many heavy metal bands went by the name “Absurdity”? We have Dan Nelson (A95) to thank for the answer: seven. Nelson’s tome. All Known Metal Bands, is simply that: an alphabetical listing of every heavy metal band (as of 3007). Opening with a quote from For the past two years, Andre Blaise Pascal, Mr. Nelson lists about 51,000 bands, including 30 different known “Genocides.” Learn more about Rodriguez (SFGI) has been working as the staff attorney at Nelson’s book, on his MySpace page: myspace.com/ the YMCA International Services allknownmetalbands. H {The College- St. John's College • Fall 2008 } �{Alumni Notes} in Houston, Texas, representing immigrants, especially refugees and victims of human trafficking-modern day slavery. In addition, he teaches an undergraduate course at the University of Houston. Deberniere Torrey (AGI) plans to marry fellow Penn State comparative hterature graduate student, Nathan Devir, on June 27, followed by a move to Vermont in July. Nathan will teach Hebrew at Middlebury College and Deberniere will continue working on her dissertation and related projects. 2001 Colin King (SF) writes: “Anna Canning (SFoa) and I were married July 19 under an old sugar maple on my family’s farm in Clotho, Minn. An unusually heavy rainstorm dropped more than two inches before blue sky appeared and sunlight filtered through maple leaves. We were blessed by the presence of family and friends, including several Johnnies.” SUZANNAH LATANE SIMMONS (SF) has been living in Washington, D.C., for two years. “A group of us SJC alums have been working on fostering a stronger chapter. There is now a Facebook page for all interested D.C. (and surrounding area) alumni to join. Please check it out. It is called St. John’s College Alumni, Washington, D.C. ‘Social’ Chapter. As of June, we have 66 members. I am working at Whole Foods Market at Tenleytown in the District. I am an Assistant Team Leader for their Specialty Department (wine, beer, cheese and coffee). Stop by and see me if you are in the area. I make decent pairing suggestions.” 2002 Jim Crotty (SFGI), of Monk Media made his mark as the “dashboard publishing” pioneer of Monk: The Mobile Magazine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M onk_Magazine), author (www.jamescrotty.com/), multimedia auteur {Playboy, Voyager), blogger (WWW. crottyfarmreport. com), media rep (www.rumpleville.com, www.HoleintheHeadmovie.com, www.johnfrummovie.com www.boristhedog.tv), and filmmaker (www.resolved.tv). With fellow ‘Monk’ Michael Lane, Jim is the co-founder of Monk Media (www.monk.com), a global branding concern. Jim will work with anyone who takes the time to complete the Monk survey at this link: www.monkmedia.net/client/. Patrick W. Harris (EC) begins doctoral studies this fall at Western Michigan University, where he will focus on the history of medieval Iberia. The Sullivans have been busyas usual. Rachel (A) just graduated from medical school in May, and will begin her residency training for psychiatry at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., in July. At the same time she was promoted to captain in the Army, and continues to be among the ranks of active duty soldiers. Michael (SF) is nearing the end of his PhD in Philosophy at Catholic University, and hopes to finish next fall. Clare celebrated her 4th birthday in May, and Grace is looking forward to her 2nd birthday in the end of July. The girls are healthy, happy and begging for more siblings! “This May I completed my Master in Arts in Art History from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn.,” writes Laura Thayer (A). “My master’s qualifying paper was titled ‘Rebuilding Identity: The Nineteenth-Century Faqade of the Duomo of Amalfi.’ Now that I am done with school, I look forward to spending as much time as possible in Amalfi, Italy, continuing to study Italian, figuring out what happens next in my life, and maybe even getting around to finally reading Proust!” 2003 “I just finished my first year of teaching philosophy at the University of Nevada. Kathy is working on her PhD in English literature,” writes John Anders (SF). Meg Eisenhauer Barry and Thomas Barry (both SF) welcomed their second daughter on April 27. “She shares her mama’s birthday! Liesl Jane was born at home on a beautiful spring morning. She joins her elder sister, Aviva, age 3, in keeping our home a very lively place indeed. Best wishes to all!” Aaron Foster (A) is leaving behind his “beloved” New York City to move to Inman Square in Cambridge, Mass., with his girlfriend Eva: “Boston Johnnies should feel free to look me up (aaron.foster@gmaiLcom). Recently, I’ve been consulting for a major specialty food distributor, mostly about cheese. In Boston, I’ll be looking into opening a bar focused on craft beer.” Abram Trosky (AGI) is the recipient of Boston University’s highest academic scholarship, the Presidential University Graduate Fellowship. Trosky has been Presidential University Teaching Fellow for the department’s introductory courses in Political Science, aty (Christopher) Davis (SFoi) writes: “Billy American Politics and Interna (Davis, SF02) and I are living on a beautiful tional Relations, has solo taught homestead in northwestern Oregon with my Introduction to Political Theory mother and our i-year-old son, Sam. We’re busy and has guest lectured for building our own cabin and raising chickens, Modern Political Theory. A goats, sheep, and alpacas-it’s wonderful to be University Scholar in Philosophy exactly where we want to be. Though we haven’t yet reached our goal of self-sufficiency, we’re getting closer and are thoroughly at Washington and Lee enjoying ourselves. For now Billy is still commuting part time University, Abram has been into Portland, but expects to become self-employed by the end steeped in classical pohtical of the year; I am fortunate enough to be able to stay home with theory and Socratic-style our wonderful, adorable child and run the farm while helping pedagogy, but has an abiding my mother with her craft business. If anyone’s interested, we interest in international relations occasionally post on this blog: www.arcadiafarm.blogspot.com; and postmodern political and post pictures at: http;//si75.photobucket.com/albums thought. He has studied abroad at /wi37/samsilverlock/.” -tjk Raising Chickens K {The College- St. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } �{AlumniNotes} the University of Melbourne under the auspices of The Ashworth Centre for Social Theory and in the U.K. as a junior fellow of the EnglishSpeaking Union. Abram passed his qualifying examinations in February 3008 and is currently in Vienna as a visiting junior fellow of the Institute for Human Sciences where he will be researching the matrices between cosmopolitanism, cognitive development and moral philosophy for his dissertation proposal. At the termination of his fellowship he plans to attend the Institute’s intensive summer program in International Relations in Cortona, Italy, before traveling from the Balkans to Scandinavia with his girlfriend. He will return to co teach the History of American Foreign Policy, 1865-present, at BU this fall. Namir Yedid (A) was appointed “I’m serving my first tour as a diplomat in the U.S. Foreign Service in Rangoon, Burma,” writes ChELSIA WHEELER (SF). “Between political protests and a major cyclone, it has been an interesting experience so far.” graduated summa cum laude from the Dickinson School of Law; he was also valedictorian. 2004 Suzanne Vlcek (SF, EC05) is two-thirds of the way through chiropractic school and looking forward to starting her own practice in the spring of 2010 in the San Francisco Bay area: “I will begin seeing patients at the Palmer West Clinic, San Jose, Calif., in January 2009, so if anyone is in the area please stop in and let me practice my skills. This summer, I completed a 200houryoga teacher training program and have begun teaching classes on a regular basis. Life is good!” yth-grade dean at Pacific Ridge School in Carlsbad, Calif., where he teaches English and social studies. “I’ve led the design of an integrated curriculum and have gathered administrative and community support to make our school carbon-neutral.” Kelly Zeibak and Alexander Kantner (both SF) were married in the redwoods on June 21,2008, and enjoyed a wonderful honeymoon in Vietnam and Cambodia. They recently earned their teaching credentiasl, in mathematics and English respectively, and are currently teaching on the north coast of California. 2005 Gregory W. Bair II (A) Christopher DeManss (AGI) is celebrating the worldwide release of his first solo album. The act is entitled Vib and the album. The Letter K. It’s available in stores and through the Internet. A fair collection of the songs was crafted while attending St. John’s College. “In other news,” he writes, “with every day comes reflection upon the beauty of my St. John’s experience.” Paul and Anita Fairbanks (SF) are delighted to announce the birth of their daughter, Charlotte Eden, on May 20, 2008. “She has brought us so much happiness. We are living in Columbus, Ohio, where Paul is studying business in preparation for dental school. I am simply enjoying motherhood; my current ambitions are to sing lullabies and read great books aloud.” 45 Very Busy ndy and Katie (Lehner) Patton A (AGI05 and AGI04, respec tively) have welcomed William Kelly Patton (Liam) into their little family. He joins hig brother James (a), who is working on his PhD in Dump Trucks; both keep Katie very busy. Andy is interning at an investment bank in Nashville and starts the MBA program at Vanderbilt this fall. “Send money,” they write. Amy Taylor (A) writes: “I am completing my PhD coursework in clinical psychology at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. In the past year, I completed my MA in psychology and a graduate portfolio in women’s and gender studies. I’ve recently made several conference presentations and earned two awards for my writing on identity development and how individuals represent themselves to others (currently beginning research into how we ‘write ourselves into being’ on Internet communities). Next year I will continue to teach undergraduate courses and practice psychoanalyticallyoriented psychotherapy with clients from the Pittsburgh community and from a local liberal arts college. Missed you at Croquet, hope to see you at Homecoming.” Jonathan Morgan and Allison Kilgore (both SF) are enjoying their third summer in Seattle, and are slowly growing accustomed to the intervening winters. Allison is working as an investment analyst at a retirement finance company, and Jonathan currently works as a web editor at a dot-com well past its glory days. He will begin a PhD program at the University of Washington in User-Centered Design this fall. These two can often be found palling around in bars and coffee shops with Maia {The College. St. John’s College ■ Fall 3008 } Swanson (SF03) and overheard lamenting the dearth of Johnnies and good green chili in the Northwest. 2008 Shant Shahrigian (A) is off in search of la dolce vita in Milan, Italy, paying the bills by editing for a new website. He tells his fellow Johnnies: “Holla!” What’s Up? The College wants to hear from you. Call us, write us, e-mail us. Let your classmates know what you’re doing. The next issue will be published in February; deadline for the alumni notes section is January 5. In Annapolis: The College Magazine St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404; rosemary.harty@sjca.edu In Santa Fe: The College Magazine St. John’s College 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599; alumni@sjcsf.edu �{Obituaries} James W. Stone, Class of 1955 Jim Stone of Arlington, Va., a retired linguist and active St. John’s alumnus, died in a boating accident on the Chesa peake Bay on July 27 when his i6-foot catamaran sailboat capsized in a brisk wind, Jim earned a doctorate in linguistics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1971. His career as a linguist spanned more than 40 years, nearly 25 of which he spent as a supervising linguist and language training specialist at the U.S. Depart ment of State’s Foreign Service Institute in Washington, D.C. There, he oversaw training in various languages including Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Nepali, Amharic, and Persian. After retiring from the State Depart ment, Jim was Director of Translation Services at the Center for Applied Linguistics for II years. Sailing and music were life long passions. Jim began sailing at age 15 when he was a Sea Scout, and he later sailed as a member of the St. John’s Boat Club. He loved choral music and other vocal music in the clas sical tradition, and for 30 years he sang as a member of the Cathedral Choral Society in Washington. Classmate Dorothy Olim, who attended some of his choral performances, recalls “seeing the joy on his face as he sang.” Jim traveled extensively for work and pleasure in the U.S. and abroad. He and his wife of 39 years, Crawford “Corky” Feagin Stone, had been plan ning a trip to Yellowstone National Park to celebrate his 75th birthday, which would have been on August 10. Jim maintained close ties with classmates and other members of the St. John’s community. He enjoyed being part of a Wash ington area St. John’s alumni reading group and, in 2005, James Stone served as the class of 1955 reunion leader. Classmate Jane Gerber Denison remembers Jim as someone who was gracious and “the quintessential gentleman,” Others, like Sam Kutler, recall his quiet intel lect. Jim is also remembered for his unassuming ways. His great-niece, Allison Dietz (Aio), recalls the way he intro duced her to St. John’s without saying a word-when she was still in elementary school, Jim gave her a St. John’s sweatshirt. Among the St. John’s friends who attended Jim’s funeral service July 31 were Dorothy Olim (Class of 1955), Jane Gerber Denison (Class of 1955), Emily (Class of 1955) and Sam (Class of 1954) Kutler, Diana Cartier (Class of 1956), Sandy and Joe (Class of 1956) Cohen, Nancy Eagle Lindley (Class of 1958), Mark Lindley (Class of 1967), and Paula DelPlain Binder (Class of 1959). He was president of the Hunt Family Foundation, a charitable trust set up to serve nonprofit organiza tions in the El Paso region. He had recently been named chairman of REDCO, the Regional Economic Devel opment Corporation of El Paso, Las Cruces, and Ciudad Juarez. Mr. Hunt was actively involved in economic devel opment in the El Paso area, having served as a board member of the El Paso/Juarez World Trade Center and the Camino Real Angels, and as a member of the Paso del Norte Group. He was on the boards of the New Mexico Nature Conservancy, the El Paso County Historical Society, Project Arriba, the Trans-Pecos Regional Center for Innovation and Commercialization, and the Lydia Patterson Institute. After graduating from St. John’s, Mr. Hunt studied law at Golden Gate University in San Francisco. He is survived by his wife, Stacey, and their two daughters, and had been eagerly anticipating the birth of a son in August. Memorial contributions can be made to Texas Tech School of Medicine-Department for Mental Health Research, 4800 Alberta Avenue, El Paso, Texas 79905; or The Nature Conser vancy of New Mexico, 212 E. Marcy St. Suite 200, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501-2049. Marcel Fremont Marcus Hunt (SF95) (SFoi) Marcus Hunt, businessman and philanthropist from in El Paso, Texas, died on June 24, 2008, in La Jolla, Calif. A fourth generation in the Hunt family businesses, he served as the financial manager for invest ments of Hunt Companies, Inc., and affiliate companies, as well as the Managing Partner for Hunt Holdings, L.P. by Kee Zublin (SFoi) There’s a story by Gabriel Garcia Marquez entitled “The Handsomest Drowned Sailor in the World” that I never understood until the morning I Marcel Fremont {The College. St. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } read Veronica Fremont’s account of her son Marcel’s burial. Marcel David Fremont (SFoi) died on June 25, 2008, when his motorcycle collided with a truck in Montana. He was traveling around the country to visit family and friends before he was to begin his doctoral studies in neuroscience at Washington University in St. Louis. Veronica described how at Marcel’s burial the mourners gathered around the grave site to toss in a few mementos: a $2 bill, a sprouting potato. Then, as the attendants began to lower the pine box, one whis pered, “It doesn’t fit.” Atten dants and foreman cranked the coffin back to the surface, and friends and family began strip ping off pieces. The bereaved removed poles, bolts and blocks as they tried three times to consign Marcel’s mortal remains to the earth. One of those present commented, “He wasn’t ready to go.” Marcel’s father, Rick Fremont, countered that Marcel was a “connoisseur of awkward situations” and that he knew his friends and family “weren’t ready to let him go.” Although I was not in that group, as I read Veronica’s account I could picture why Marcel’s coffin wouldn’t fit: He was simply too big for any hole in the ground. Everything about �{Obituaries} Marcel was too big to go easily into the ground: his shoulders were too broad, his legs too long, his heart and brain too oversized. And suddenly, I understood Marquez’s story: A drowned man washes to the shore of a tiny island village. The man is large, so large that the children who find him at first think he’s a ship or a whale. When they lay him in one of the village homes, there is barely enough room on the floor. Even when they merely look at the man, there is “no room for him in their imagi nation.” The villagers grow to love the man, whom they name Esteban, and so they hold “the most splendid funeral they could conceive of for an abandoned drowned man.” And, as they carry him to the sea, they become “aware for the first time of the desolation of their streets, the dryness of their courtyards, the narrowness of their dreams as they face the splendor and beauty of their drowned man.” They did not need to look at one another to realize that they were no longer all present, that they never would be. But they also knew that everything would be different from then on, that their houses would have wider doors, higher ceilings, and stronger floors so that Esteban’s memory could go everywhere without bumping into beams...and they were going to break their backs digging for springs among stones and planting flowers on the cliffs... My friend Marcel’s life was too brief. But in 29 years, he knew and loved many people, and it is indeed true that where he has been we look around and realize that we are no longer all present and never will be. It is also true that we can fill the big empty space he left behind with some thing beautiful. To make room for Marcel’s memory, we can build wider doors and higher ceilings, live less confined lives, think bigger thoughts. And we can honor our friend by emulating his insa tiable curiosity and creativity, searching in unlikely places for water to bring forth flowers. Marcel could always see the hidden potential of little things. He was big that way. In Marcel’s memory, parents Veronica and Rick, and brother Nathan, have established “The Marcel Fremont Fund,” admin istered by the Oak Park, River Forest Community Foundation (www.oprf.org). The fund will make small donations for causes related to education, arts, sciences, recreation, and the environment. For more information, e-mail Veronica at marcelsmom@comcast.net, or visit Marcel’s memorial website at www.marcelfremont. com/wp. Anjali Pai (SFGI08) Last spring, the Santa Fe college community lost one of its Grad uate Institute alumnae, Anjali Pai, who died March 30 from injuries suffered in a car acci dent the previous day. Anjali completed the Liberal Arts program in December 2007, and those who knew her remember her bright person ality and love for education. Born in Ottawa, Canada, she earned a bachelor’s degree at Lake Forest College and a master’s from the University of Toronto, where she focused on the study of music. While in Santa Fe, Anjali worked as a tutor for at-risk Santa Fe teens as part of the Advancement Via Individual Determination program, tutored at Santa Fe Community College, taught as a substitute at Santa Fe Prep, and worked as a freelance editor. She described herself as “proudly Canadian, 100% (East) Indian, surrogate Scottish, and over identified with the underdog.” Anjali wrote a novel at age 13, rode horses, was an accom plished singer and musician (violin and piano), and directed musicals when she was in high school. She had read the complete works of Shakespeare long before enrolling in St. John’s, and published more than 150 short stories on her website. She had more than 1,000 Anjali Pai’s sister Tanya RECEIVES AnIALi’s DIPLOMA FROM President Michael Peters at COMMENCEMENT LAST MaY. {The College. St. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } 47 friends worldwide with whom she kept in touch. The Pai Memorial Fund has been established to provide annual funding to a graduate student who plans to become an educator and hopes to make a difference in the lives of chil dren from disadvantaged back grounds. The fund’s first recip ient will be a fall 2008 graduate student. To contribute to the Anjali Pai Memorial Fund, please contact Penelope Bielagus at 505-984-6113 or pbielagus@sjcsf.edu. ALSO NOTED Frank Bannerman (class of 1938), July 12,2008 William Barrett (class of 1956), May 17,2008 Victor Barton ( class of 1947), DATE UNKNOWN George Gerlach (class of 1953 June 23,2008 Rosemary Ingham (AGI95), July 13,2008 Ogden W. “Peter” KelloggSmith (CLASS OF 1943) May 28, 2008 Edward Lee (class of 1952), July 17,2008 Renee Ronelle Letven (SF69), July 12,2008 C. Ranlet Lincoln (class of 1950), Nov. 15,2007 Jane Mill (SFGI85), July 19,2008 Pasquale “Pat” Polillo (class OF 1956), Sept. 4,2008 Charles Powleske (class of 1953), Aug. 1,2007 Michael Slota (SFGI86), July 31,2008 John Williams (class of 1946), July 17,2008 Gerald Zentz (class of 1954), June 2,2008 �48 {Alumni} Return of the Pioneers July Reunion Brings Together Santa Fe's First Classes BY Harold Morgan (SF68) Tth the aid of a decision to move Santa Fe’s Homeborrowed MacBook, coming to the fall. During the summer Bruce Baldwin (SF68) of 2007, the idea of a summer reunion tuned a harpsichord for emerged, and a group of alumni settled Roy Stegman (SF68), on a full week-July 13-19-of activities. who was leading a tuto Phil Chandler (SF68) conceived of the rial on “Bach’s Temperament ” in the format, and Lindsay Ridgeway (SF68) Peterson Student Center. The computer pitched in as organizing committee provided the note-perfectly, of course chair and treasurer. Organizing and allowing Baldwin to tune each string to the planning took place via e-mail, the computer’s purity. college provided meeting rooms for In the tutorial, Stegman described a the gathering, and Santa Fe Alumni recently rediscovered keyboard tuning Director Michael Bales (SF06) helped system Bach used, and he demonstrated on coordinate activities at the college. the instrument: a 1968 harpsichord, an Santa Fe President Michael Peters and his appropriate choice for Santa Fe’s pioneering wife, Eleanor, hosted a reception class of 1968. The tutorial was one of a welcoming alumni and their families back number of offerings-inteUectual and social- to campus. organized by a group of alumni for a July The reunion attracted 29 alumni from reunion of the pioneers, their families, and classes through 1971, 8 tutors and 35 others members of the classes who shared the including alumni from later classes. From campus with them: the classes of 1969,1970, as far away as Gbteborg, Sweden, alumni and 1971. came to see the remarkable changes to the The self-organized reunion grew from campus, catch up with one another, and objections by some alumni to the college’s enjoy a host of options for spending their W time in Santa Fe, from seminars and lectures to an evening at the Santa Fe Opera and a morning rafting the Rio Grande. “It was a wonderful experience,” says Rick Wicks (SF68), who with 5,000 miles to travel from Sweden was a vocal proponent for a summer reunion. “Usually at a Homecoming one only knows one’s own classmates, because most of the others are younger (or older) in multiples of five years,” he explained. “But here we had members from the next three classes, not all of whom I knew before, but all of whom I very much enjoyed getting to know better. Organizing the reunion also brought me into contact with members of the class of ’68 who had dropped out before I arrived in Santa Fe for my junior year, again a very rewarding experience. By the time my family and I arrived, participants had already been there for several days, so there was an active community into which we walked. It felt very good.” The reunion week featured six seminars (including two on the Odyssey), led by tutors emeriti, alumni, or both together. In addition there were several tutorials, including a session by Beth Kuper on the Above, Joy Avery (SF68) catches up with TUTOR EMERITUS CuRTIS WiLSON (HA83), ONE OF THE FIRST FACULTY MEMBERS IN SaNTA Fe. Left, Claudia Nordstrom Larcombe (SF69) AND Antigone Phalares {The College -Sf. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } (SF68). �{Alumni} I Ching and feng shui. Tutor emeritus Curtis Wilson (HA83, one of the first faculty members on the new campus) gave an informal lecture, “Reflections on Lunar Theory,” and tutor Peter Pesic performed a concert. Outdoor activities included the rafting trip and a hike up Monte Sol. In between scheduled events, alumni enjoyed several ad hoc get-togethers, restaurant meals, and gatherings in the homes of Santa Fe alumni. The closing event was a Quaker-style meeting, led by Kuper and Phil Chandler, focusing on the theme: “What have you learned since leaving St. John’s?” Maurie Wills Scott (SF68) was very glad she made time to attend: “I realized what wonderful friendships I had,” she said. “It 49 was easy to talk with people, and our shared background laid the groundwork for recon necting.” Harold Morgan attended St. John’s in Santa Fefor three semesters. An Albuquerque resident, he is a syndicated columnist and blogger. Left, Enjoying the view from Monte Sol are Antigone Phalares (SF68), Gus Goldstein (SF68), Ellinor Garbring, Linnea Garbring-Wicks, and Rick Wicks (SF68). Right, Jeff Hockersmith (SF69), at Sunday brunch. The Pioneers On October a, 1964, the opening day of classes for the Santa Fe campus, 8a freshmen signed the college Register at Convocation. Everything was new and unsettled. After all, “colonizing a college,” in the words of then-president Richard Weigle (HA49), wasn’t easy. The campus had three buildings: a student center, one classroom building, one laboratory building, and a cluster of dormitories on the upper campus. One women’s dorm had ground-level windows facing south to the pinon trees. A year later, to discourage male visitors, a spot light was pointed toward the trees. On its second night in place, the spotlight turned a flashing red. The Rolling Stones and the Beatles were featured artists in common room parties. There was no television on campus. Ford K. Brown was a kind of genial god of the II tutors, bringing wisdom, humor and deep experience to the classroom. and Hendrik In February 1966, St. John’s drew a visit from Beat poet and anti war activist Allen Gins berg, who traveled to campus in a 1960s icon, the battered Volk swagen mini bus. For the pioneers, their years at St. John’s coincided with a time of great social upheaval. The graduation year, 1968, was marked by momentous events: the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy, a riot at the Democratic Students play a spirited volleyball game on the Santa Fe National Convention in CAMPUS IN 1964. Chicago, and Vietnam War protests. culture, but lacking older models, Looking back years later, Weigle students had to figure things out them wondered whether importing a seminar selves, with the help of their tutors. size group of juniors could have helped And in time, they did. ♦ younger students adapt to the college {The College. St. John's College ■ Fall 2008 } �5° {Alumni Association News} From the Director OE Alumni Relations Dear Alumni, It’s been a busy couple of montbs in Alumni Land, and if we’re running around, it’s because you’ve been especially activeand believe me, we’re not complaining! St. John’s alumni came out in unprece dented numbers to support the college’s capital campaign. When Jeff Bishop (HA96) told us in aoo6 that the goal was $125 million-by far the most ambitious goal the college had ever attempted-I don’t think anyone believed we would reach it without a miracle. It turned out that the miracle was you. With the inspirational challenge from Ron Fielding (A70), we alumni helped the college to not only meet that goal, but to exceed it by more than $9 million! Thank you! Alumni participation in the campaign really caused the college to sit up and take notice of you, the only permanent members of our community, and it prompted us to ask the question: how can we work with the Alumni Association to make our programs better for you? I’m very grateful that a small team of alumni, led by Ray Cave (class of 1948), has begun working together with an outside consultant to tackle this very question. The group is called the Alumni Task Force, convened by our presidents, Christopher Nelson (SF70) in Annapolis and Michael Peters in Santa Fe. Other members of the Task Force are Dave Heimann (A87, vice chair), Jason Walsh (A85), Steve Thomas (SF74) Patricia Sollars, (A81), PheloshaCollaros (SFoo), Brett Heavner (A89) Matt Calise (Aoo), Pam Carter, (SFGI08), Jo Ann Mattson (A87), and the college’s vice presidents for advancement, Barbara Goyette (A73) and Jim Osterholt. The Task Force met for the first time on October 23. If there had been an opening question it would have been, “How can the college better serve its alumni and how can our alumni better serve the college?” We barely scratched the surface in attempting to answer that question after four hours of discussion. And we all have homework due by the next meeting on November 13: to research alumni programs at other comparable colleges. We’re all really excited about the impact the committee’s work will have on the future of alumni relations at St. John’s. Another new development on the alumni front is the amazing growth of activities in alumni chapters and groups. To keep up with the expanding endeavors of our chapter leaders, the college has hired a new parttime employee in the Alumni Office. Torii Campbell joined the Annapolis team, although she will be working with alumni groups across the country, as coordinator of regional chapters and groups. You can look forward to Torii helping your chapter plan parties, seminars, and other activities, as well as work to get the word out about these events to the broader alumni community. Feel free to send her an e-mail to introduce yourself. She’d be happy to hear from you at torii.campbell@sjca.edu. Thank you to all the chapter presidents whose efforts with alumni have made this position a necessity. Finally, I need to say a word about the current alumni directory project managed by Harris Connect. First, a little history: up until eightyears ago the Alumni Association used a significant portion of the money they received from your alumni dues to pay for an alumni directory that was delivered free of charge to all alumni. Contact and employ ment information was gathered from alumni every five years, and the college used this information to update its database. About seven years ago, the Alumni Association decided to support the college’s onhne alumni community. But unless we continue to sohcityour most recent contact and career information we will not have an up-to-date database. Harris Connect is the company we’ve always used for this project; indeed, Harris is pretty much the only game in town when it comes to producing print directories. Their arrangement is that they will gather the data for us for free and offer you a directory for sale. I understand it costs as little as $80 for {The College -St. John’s College . Fall 2008 } ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION All alumni have automatic membership in the St. John’s College Alumni Association. The Alumni Association is an independent organization, with a Board of Directors elected by and from the alumni body. The board meets four times a year, twice on each campus, to plan programs and coordinate the affairs of the association. This newsletter within The College magazine is sponsored by the Alumni Association and communicates association news and events of interest. President - Jason Walsh (A85) Vice President - Steve Thomas (SF74) Secretary - Joanne Murray (A70) Treasurer - Richard Cowles (A70) Mailing address - Alumni Association, St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404, or 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599. the book and as much as $120 for the book and CD. I appreciate all of you contacting Harris and giving your time to update our records, but I’m concerned about the reports I’ve heard about some aggressive sales representatives on the Harris end. I’m sorry about this, and I’m working with Harris to resolve it. Please don’t feel an obligation to buy the book. It is expensive, although a treasure for alumni, with photos and personal stories-more fike a yearbook than a phonebook. Again, it’s very impor tant for the Admissions, Career Services, and the Advancement offices to have your most current information, so we are all very grateful for your participation. The Harris directory is not intended to replace our online Alumni community (which is still free). It’s an excellent resource for staying in touch with your classmates, sharing your news and photos, career networking, and finding Johnnies wherever you go. Find out more at: http://alumni.stjohnscollege.edu/ Thanks to all of you who attended Homecoming in Annapolis and Santa Fe! We’U talk more about that in the next issue of The College. Keep in touch, Jo Ann Mattson (A87) Director of Alumni Relations jamattson@sjca.edu �{Alumni Association News} 51 It’s Always Homecoming for the Annapolis Chapter ""There are Memories Here ” “We had 15 participants for the first ike most women, Annapolis seminar in 2002,” Gammon says. “It was a chapter president Beth great start. We typically have about 12 to 20 Martin Gammon (A94) participants, but there are certain readings, juggles career and family such as Shakespeare, that draw a specific with one or more other crowd.” passions. In Gammon’s case, Typically, it’s St. John’s College, where she has rein participants include both and graduate alumni who vigorated the Annapolis chapter undergraduate of the range in age from 20 to 80. “There is a Alumni Association. Her husband, Alex wide range of life perspectives in the mix,” (A94), is one of her biggest supporters, but says Gammon. “I find the different lenses they can’t attend chapter meetings together. “We take shifts to take care of our to be fascinating and welcome the chance to revisit Program readings now that I have two-year-old so one of us can attend the had more life experience. But we’re all still monthly chapter seminar gatherings,” she Johnnies, still approaching the readings in says. the same way.” When Gammon joined the Annapolis Last spring, the group read and chapter in 2001, the chapter had been inac discussed Thucydides over three seminars. tive. With assistance from the Alumni In September they went more modern, with office, she built a network and began The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford. sending postcard announcements about chapter seminars. Alumni are on the invita Madame Bovary was planned for October. “We do a mix of literature from the tion list; spouses and friends are usually Program and some philosophy,” says welcome. A core group of regulars attends Gammon. Gammon acknowledges that her the monthly seminars, held in the private dining room in Randall Hall. This dedicated family’s busy lifestyle helps drive the chapter’s reading list. “When I have more group includes Paula Binder (class of 1959), time we’ll do more philosophy,” she Melvin Bender (AGI05), Jerome May explains. “Right now, with a two-year-old, I (AGI92), Joan Vinson (AGI81), Valerie don’t have enough time to prepare those Garvin (A96), Charles Green (AGI02), and readings!” retired tutor George Doskow and his wife, In the future. Gammon hopes to work Minna (AGI71). L CHAPTER CONTACTS Call the alumni listed belowfor information about chapter, reading group, or other alumni activities in each area. ALBUQUERQUE Robert Morgan, SF76 505-^75-9012 rim2u@c0mcast.net ANNAPOLIS Beth Martin Gammon, A94 410332-1816 emartin@crs.org AUSTIN/SAN ANTONIO Toni Wilkinson, SGI87 512-278-1697 \vilkinson_toni @hotmail.com CHICAGO Rick Lightburn, SF76 847-922-3862 ricklightburn@alumni. stjonnscollege.edu DALLAS/FORT WORTH Paula Fulks, SF76 817-654-2986 puffjd@swbell.net DENVER/BOULDER Elizabeth Jenny, SF80 303-530-3373 epj727@comcast.net HOUSTON Norman Ewart, A85 BOSTON Dianne Cowan, A91 713-303-3025 norman.ewart@rosetta 617-666-4381 resources.com diannecowan@rcn.com Beth Martin Gammon helped to rejuve THE Annapolis chapter by organizing monthly seminars. nate with her fellow volunteers to launch an occasional social event, such as an evening gathering at the Boathouse. For now, socializing is informal, as attendees stroll over to a nearby restaurant after seminar. “We’re lucky to have the familiar turf of the campus,” Gammon says. “We don’t have the challenge of convincing people to come to an unknown place. There are memories here.” —Patricia Dempsey MADISON Consuelo Sanudo, SGIoo 608-251-6565 sanudoc@tds.net PHILADELPHIA Helen Zartarian, AGI86 2i5-482r5697 helenstevezartarian@ mac.com SANTA FE Richard Cowles, SFGI95 505-986-1814 rcowles2@comcast.net MINN./ST. PAUL Carol Freeman, AGI94 612-822-3216 Freem013@umn.edu PHOENIX Donna Kurgan, AGI96 623-444-6642 dakurgie@yahoo.com SEATTLE James Doherty, SFGI76 2o6-542r344i jdoherty@mrsc.org NEWYORKCITY Daniel Van Doren, A81 914-949-6811 dvandoren@ optonline.net PITTSBURGH Joanne Murray, A70 724-325-4151 Joanne.Murray@ basicisp.net SOUTH FLORIDA Peter Lamar, AGI95 305-666-9277 cplamar@yahoo.com NORTH CAROLINA Rick Ross, A82 919-319-1881 Rick@activated.com Elizabeth Ross, A92 Elizabeth® activated.com PORTLAND Jennifer Rychlik, SF93 503-547-0241 jlr43@coho.net NORTHERN CALIF. Reynaldo Miranda, A99 415-333-445^ reynaldo.miranda@ gmail.com {The Coll eg e SAN DIEGO Stephanie Rico, A86 619-429-1565 srico@sandi.net SALT LAKE CITY Erin Hanlon, SF03 916-967-2194 e.i.mhanlon@ gmail.com • St. John’s College • Fall 2008 } SOUTHERN CALIF. Jan Conlin, SF85 310-490-2749 conlinjani@yahoo.com Providing OPPORTUNITIES FOR MORE ALUMNI WASHINGTON, D.C. Ed Grand,! A77 301-351-8411 egrandi@aoLcom WESTERN NEW ENGLAND Peter Weis, SF84 413-367-2174 peter_weis@ nmhschool.org TO CONNECT MORE OFTEN AND MORE RICHLY �5a {St. John’s Forever} his picture from 1900 evokes lacrosse, basketball, baseball, football, and two bygone aspects of life at tennis. The college’s biggest rival-espeSt. John’s College: the days cially in lacrosse and football-was Johns when the college fielded Hopkins University. Compulsory military teams in many different training was discontinuedin 1923, the intercollegiate competitions, same year the college switched to an elec and a time when military trainingtive wassystem. President Stringfellow Barr compulsory for every student. These to intercollegiate competition put John an end nies, posed with their trophies, were part soon after the New Program began in 1937. of a strong athletic program at the college. In 1908, the college began construction In addition to track, students also on what was to become Iglehart Hall, competed in boxing, fencing, crew. named for Lieutenant Edmund Berkeley T {The College- St. John’s College • Fall 2008 } Iglehart, an 1894 graduate who was a base ball and football star and later returned to the college as a faculty member. Next year, the college will mark the looth anniversary of Iglehart Hall, where runners put in laps on the suspended running track, and fierce intramural competition takes place on the basketball court. �{Alumni Events Calendar} :a Alumni Calendar ■roquet; i St. John’s College vs. the United States Naval Academy, in the quest for the Annapolis Cup Piraeus 2009 Join us in Santa Fe or Annapolis--and this year, in Washington, D.C.-for Piraeus, the college’s continuing education program for alumni. I p.m. Sunday, April 19 Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, led by David Starr and Keri Ames January r6-18, aoog, Santa Fe Cost: $375 person, including all seminars, receptions and Sunday brunch. Registration and payment deadline is January 5, aoo8. Milton’s Paradise Lost, led by Eva Brann and David Carl June 4-7, aoog, Annapolis Cost: $400 per person, including all seminars, receptions and Sunday brunch. On-campus room and board is $200 per person for three nights. Registration and payment deadline is May 15, aoog. Stendhal’s The Red and the Black, led by Michael Rawn and Ned Walpin June 14-19, aoog, Santa Fe Lee Branner (A07) brought her grandfa ther, Frank Branner, to campus for a Piraeus weekend on the Odyssey. The week begins with a welcome dinner Sunday evening. The program will consist of seven seminars spread over the week. There will be a morning and an evening seminar on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. The final seminar will take place Friday morning followed by a closing lunch. Wednesday is a free day to enjoy Santa Fe and prepare for the final three seminars. Cost: $475 per person, including all seminars, lunches, and dinner on Sunday. On-campus room and board is $350 per person for five nights. Registration and payment deadline is May 33, 3009. {The College- St. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } Shakespeare In Performance King Lear, led by Louis Petrich and Jon Ihck Acting Instruction by Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Academy for Classical Acting June i8-ai, aoog Harman Center for the Arts, Washington, D.C. In collaboration with Washington’s Shakespeare Theatre Company, this combination seminar/performance-based workshop will feature stimulating scholarly discussion integrated with an exploration of the actor’s craft and approach to classic text. This weekend is packed with activity, beginning with a Thursday noon registration, a tour of the new Harman Center for the Arts, an afternoon seminar and Shakespeare Theatre Company’s performance of King Lear. Mr. Petrich and Mr. Tuck will participate in the performance workshops and lead two other seminars before the closing session Sunday afternoon. Cost: $990 per person, including all seminars, ticket to performance otKing Lear, instruction, breakfasts, receptions and tours. Registration and payment deadline is June 5, 3009. �STJOHN’S COLLEGE ANNAPOLIS • SANTA FE Published by the Communications Office P.O. Box 2800 Annapolis, Maryland 21404 ADDRESS service REQUESTED Non-Profit Org. U.S. Postage Paid Annapolis, MD Permit No. 120 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The College (2001-2017) Description An account of the resource The St. John's College Communications Office published The College magazine for alumni. It began publication in 2001, continuing the St. John's Reporter, and ceased with the Fall 2017 issue. Click on <a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=56">Items in The College (2001-2017) Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, Md. Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context thecollege2001 Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 52 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The College, Fall 2008 Description An account of the resource Volume 34, Issue 3 of The College Magazine. Published in Fall 2008. Misnumbered as volume 3. 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 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2008 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context The College Vol 3, Issue 3 Fall 2008 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Harty, Rosemary (editor) Hannifin, Jenny (Santa Fe editor) Behrens, Jennifer (art director) Dempsey, Patricia (managing editor) Deger, Ann Luell. Sara McLane-Higginson, Brooke Perleberg, Anna Spiegelman, Deborah Johnson, David The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/81f4b57c86fb368cd9682d26b15f5cf5.pdf 2895abe637f4f0ad68657014ffb8ac43 PDF Text Text The College St. John’s College • Annapolis • Santa Fe George Eliot and Life’s Pursuits S p r i n g 2 0 0 9 �The College On George Eliot W hat a rebel Mary Anne Evans was. Throughout her life, she struggled against the bonds of conformity and society, ﬁrst by defying her father and refusing to go to church. In a collection of Eliot’s letters and journals published by her husband, J.W. Cross, it’s clear that Eliot’s decision caused great turmoil in the family home. Cross wrote: “This was an unforgivable offence in the eyes of her father, who was churchman of the old school, and nearly led to a family rupture. He went so far as to put into an agent’s hands the lease of the house in the Foleshill Road, with the intention of going to live with his married daughter.” Mary Anne eventually relented and returned to live with her father, whom she cared for through a long decline. After Robert Evans’ death, his daughter (now Marian) devoted herself to the life of an intellectual, feeding her ravenous mind with works of theology, philosophy, literature—everything she could get her hands on. Female novelists including George Sands, the Brontés, and Jane Austen were on her reading list. She spent her evenings at concerts and soirees, attended lectures by Faraday and Dickens, and immersed herself in the political issues of her day. As the assistant editor of the Westminster Review, she fell in with like-minded people, one of whom was George Henry Lewes, a novelist, dramatist, and occasional actor. Her long and loving relationship—outside of marriage—with the already married Lewes caused great scandal and led her family and many of her friends to shun her. The scandal was one of the reasons Evans adopted the pseudonym George Eliot when she published Scenes of Clerical Life in 1857. In a biography, Rosemary Ashton explains how Evans chose the pen name: “She told John Cross that she ﬁxed on George Eliot because ‘George was Mr Lewes’s Christian name, and Eliot was a good mouth-ﬁlling, easily pronounced word.’” Her identity was well known by the time Evans published Middlemarch, which was a resounding success and made her quite wealthy. After Lewes died in 1878, Eliot was devastated. As a way to cope with her grief, she read Dante with her good friend John Cross, who was struggling with Italian. Though it shocked many in her circle, Eliot married Cross, 20 years her junior, in May 1880. He was at her side in their home in London when she died that December. This issue of The College pays tribute to George Eliot and her Middlemarch heroine, Dorothea, by exploring the paths of three women at different stages of life and careers. All have approached life hungry for new challenges and the chance to keep learning. —RH is published three times a year by St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD, and Santa Fe, NM Known ofﬁce of publication: Communications Ofﬁce St. John’s College Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404-2800 Periodicals postage paid at Annapolis, MD postmaster: Send address changes to The College Magazine, Communications Ofﬁce, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800. Rosemary Harty (AGI09), editor 443-716-4011 rosemary.harty@sjca.edu Patricia Dempsey, managing editor Jennifer Behrens, art director The College welcomes letters on issues of interest to readers. Letters can be sent via e-mail to the editor or mailed to the address above. Annapolis 410-626-2539 Santa Fe 505-984-6104 Contributors J. Matthew Grifﬁs (SF08) Jenny Hanniﬁn Sara Luell (A09) Cathi Dunn MacRae J.W. Ocker (AGI02) Jack Owens (class of 1937) Anna Perleberg (SF02) Deborah Spiegelman Magazine design by Claude Skelton Design �Spring 2009 The College The Magazine for Alumni of St. John’s College Annapolis • Santa Fe {Contents} 12 Changing Course d e p a r t m e n t s page 2 Like Middlemarch’s Dorothea, these alumnae left one path in life to follow another, more rewarding one. • • • • 20 For the Love of Books • page • • • Book lovers revel in places where “stacks of papery happiness” await. • page 12 • 26 Alumni Voices • During the Great Depression, Jack Owens (class of 1937) became a “scholar and a gentleman” thanks to the “old” program. • 30 Homecoming • page • • 11 28 from the bell towers A strategic plan for the college Weathering the “perfect storm” Twenty-ﬁve years of Touchstones The Georgian connection A sustainable table in Santa Fe A Johnnie masters a Mongolian art A Truman Scholar named in Annapolis The master of Temple Iglehart Every day a different challenge St. John’s is a “cool” college EC graduates help current students master languages Philanthropia’s new leaders A man who changed lives News and announcements letters biblioﬁle • Sallie Bingham (SFGI94) explores love and loss in “Red Car,” a collection of short stories. Alumni books in brief 32 alumni page page 20 Autumn revels in Annapolis and Santa Fe 48 Photo Essay page P RO F I L E S 32 Laura Crawshaw (SF75) makes angry bosses happier. 36 A publishing venture allows Darius Fueled by his fascination for “odd things,” J.W. Ocker (AGI02) documents the weird and wonderful on a blog and website. Himes (SFGI00) to promote art and photography. 39 Fun and games—and business—come together for Dominic Crapuchettes (A97). 46 page 30 50 52 on the cover George Eliot Illustration by David Johnson obituaries alumni association news st. john’s forever �2 {From the Bell Towers} “The Best Possible Educational Experience” dimitri fotos It takes a clear vision to guide a college, and the vision stateThe campaign raised $134 million in support of the college’s ment for the college’s 2008-2013 strategic plan is both priorities: increased funding for financial aid, improving tutor straightforward and lofty: salaries and providing more faculty develop opportunities, and Liberal education at St. John’s College involves adherence to improving student life. Both campuses have been transformed an ideal that we attempt to embody in activity. By engaging by the campaign: two new dormitories stand in Annapolis, and students in an examination of the fundamental questions that Santa Fe will begin construction soon on its new Graduate human beings need to consider and by giving students the Institute Center, the Norman and Betty Levan Hall. responsibility for their own learning, we hope to open the world Even with a sharp economic downturn to contend with, the to them in such a way that they become excellent citizens, college is better positioned to address future needs. Leadership parents, partners, colleagues, and friends. We aspire to provide on the two campuses is strong, and the Management the best possible educational experience guided by our mission Committee unites the two campuses together as one college in and supported by appropriate resources. As one college on two effective ways. A committed and talented board helps guide the campuses, including Board, faculty, staff, students and alumni, college. The Program remains under constant review, and with we strive to build a commuincreased opportunities for nity where careful listening, faculty study, new approaches respect for the contributions of to program works and studies others and thoughtful have been undertaken, to the attempts to reach a shared benefit of students and tutors. understanding extend to all Still, the challenges for the aspects of the life of the college remain clear: college. • How do we sustain what we The college’s Board of value? Keeping the college Visitors and Governors small presents continuing formally voted to adopt the financial challenges. strategic plan at its fall 2008 • How do we continue to meeting in Annapolis. The attract students and expand document was crafted by our applicant pool in today’s faculty, staff, board members, higher education climate? and alumni of both campuses • How do we shape our who met to review and discuss campuses’ physical spaces so every aspect of the college, that they are best suited to the from admissions to public pursuits of the program? safety. It identifies seven • How can we become the best primary goals: community of learning— 1. Maintain the health and and what does that mean for The Program is at the heart of St. John’s, and the new strategic plan for the college has that principle as its foundation. vitality of the program of each member of the college instruction for undergradcommunity on each of the uate and graduate students campuses? 2. Promote a student experi• How can we reach out to the ence that complements and enhances the program of world beyond in ways that will benefit those who participate instruction and supports retention in what we offer and best bring benefit to the college? 3. Provide the means to support the program of instruction “How we address and move forward with respect to these and address college priorities questions will determine important directions for the college,” 4. Ensure optimal organizational structure, practices, and says Barbara Goyette (A73) vice president for advancement in compensation that are necessary to maintain the health of Annapolis and one of the chairs of the strategic planning the program, promote effective operations, and improve committee. “We hope to continue to improve the educational sense of community experience for our students and provide the best possible envi5. Develop a physical environment for each campus that is ronments for carrying out the mission.” worthy of the program and college community The complete Strategic Plan can be found on the college 6. Engage alumni in a lifelong relationship with the college website: www.stjohnscollege.edu, click on “About.” x 7. Strengthen involvement with the greater communities within which the college exists The college’s previous strategic plan covered the years 20002008, a time of intense activity dominated by the college’s capital campaign, but also marked by a change in leadership on the Santa Fe campus with the arrival of Michael Peters in 2005. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } �{From the Bell Towers} Weathering the “Perfect Storm” In January 2008—well before the global economic crisis was apparent—members of the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors decided the college should undergo a planning exercise to prepare for difﬁcult times. St. John’s has long beneﬁted from the expertise of a particular group of board members who serve on the Finance and Investment committees, says Bronté Jones, treasurer in Annapolis. Most have extensive experience in areas such as investing and business development. They serve as a ready brain trust for Jones and Santa Fe Treasurer Bryan Valentine, who work together on strategic ﬁnancial planning for the college. “The committees asked us to participate in what we called ‘the perfect storm’ scenario, where we looked at what we would do if all these bad things converged on us at once,” says Jones. The practice scenario included a drop in enrollment, a reduction in donor support, and a stock market slump. Both treasurers worked through the numbers and presented strategies to the board members in meetings and conference calls last year. “At the time we were thinking it was just another exercise,” Jones says. “But all of the strategies we drew up in planning are what we’re drawing from now.” Endowment has dropped about 20 percent, to about $105 million as of December 31. The college draws up to 5 percent of endowment to help fund annual operations, so both campuses are trimming budgets in response to the shortfall. The Advancement ofﬁces anticipate a reduction in philanthropic giving, and both campuses are planning a 20092010 budget with less tuition revenue. The Maryland General Assembly—coping with the state’s $1.1 billion budget shortfall—has made cuts to the Sellinger Program, which supports private institutions in Maryland. And mindful of the effects of the recession on students and their families, St. John’s adopted the smallest tuition increase (2.9 percent) in two decades. The college is confronting the same issues faced by many colleges and universities. A survey conducted in December by the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU) found that 97 percent of respondents were concerned about falling endowments and 52 percent were worried about fall 2009 enrollment. As a faculty member for the Higher Education Resource Institute (HERS), Jones recently led a budget planning session for female college administrators, where she gained a picture of how other colleges are coping. St. John’s is facing tight budgets, Jones acknowledges, but many colleges are in serious crisis. Wellesley College, for example, is cutting about 85 jobs this year, in part because of a $200 million hit to its endowment. Keeping class sizes small and meeting increased demand for ﬁnancial aid are the college’s top budget priorities. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } 3 Some college budgets depend more on endowment, others on enrollment. St. John’s falls somewhere in the middle—a recent development, Jones points out, because increased giving to the college over the past ﬁve years has boosted both Annual Fund support and the endowment. “I consider us quite fortunate compared to some other institutions,” says Jones. “We are trimming budgets, but some other institutions are calling donors to help pay their utility bills.” On the plus side, Jones says, “we have a larger endowment, we have loyal donors, we’ve got access to resources—the contingency fund.” Since 2000, the college has been putting a percentage of budget surpluses into a rainy-day fund that stands at about $1 million, part of which either campus can tap to help meet shortfalls this year. For the next ﬁscal year, both treasurers have asked campus department heads to ﬁnd cost savings in every budget line. “We’re cutting everywhere we can to help us meet the needs of our students,” says Jones. “We are preserving ﬁnancial aid—in fact we are increasing what is available to students with need – and we are keeping class sizes the same.” Both Valentine and Jones are planning for a storm that will last a few years. But like emergency responders who have drilled and practiced for a major accident, both are ready to respond to rapidly changing developments. “It’s a challenge, but this is what we have prepared for,” Jones says. Valentine says the crisis makes for some long workdays, because both treasurers are constantly examining budgets and revising ﬁgures. “We can’t budget on what we hope will happen, we have to be prepared for all kinds of scenarios.” x �4 {From the Bell Towers} Touchstones at 25 After tutor Nick Maistrellis asked the opening question, there was dead silence—for 90 uncomfortable seconds. Maistrellis waited as the middle school students in Hartford, Connecticut, stared at each other, at the ﬂoor, or at their Xeroxed copies of the reading, the Cain and Abel story from the book of Genesis. In the back of the classroom, tutors Howard Zeiderman (class of 1967) and Geoff Comber were observing, along with some of the school’s teachers and administrators. “It was terrifying,” says Maistrellis, recalling the details with clarity 26 years later. Finally, one student spoke up. A seminar happened. Though there were moments of chaos as students embraced their new freedom, they responded to the text and to each other. Maistrellis realized later that if he had broken the silence and prodded the students, the experiment would have been a failure. “The students never would have taken control of the discussion,” Maistrellis says. “That was the beginning of making them responsible for the class.” From its debut in the Hartford Public Schools in 1983, the Touchstones Discussion Project—started by tutors and fueled in part over the years by St. John’s graduates, current students, and alumni volunteers—has grown into an organization with international reach. More than 100,000 students in Jordan have read Touchstones texts in their middle schools. Last year, at the invitation of the government of Tanzania, Zeiderman led seminars for business and government leaders with the goal of forming coalitions to work on long-range plans for the country’s development. Prisoners in Maryland have been reading Touchstones texts with volunteer tutors (alumni and current students among them), and Zeiderman has even led seminars for personnel of the National Security Agency and Central Intelligence Agency. In the United States, at least 7,500 schools have included Touchstones in their curricula, from elementary grades through high school. The organization has 27 Touchstones volumes in print, plus three At Touchstones’ Annapolis ofﬁce are (bottom row, l. to r.): Joan Croker volumes in Spanish, (AGI08), Jeremy Jokell, and tutor Nick Maistrellis; (back row, l. to r): a volume in Arabic Stefanie Takacs (A89), Johanna Anderson (AGI09), Ryan Phillips (AGI07), for Jordan, and a and Giuliana De Grazia ( AGI09). volume in Burmese, used in Myanmar. rural Alabama, Pittsburgh, and the same as you are. It leads you Although it takes many of its to learn something about yourChicago. The effort was approaches from St. John’s, shaped into a nonproﬁt organi- self.” Touchstones differs in what it For years, Maistrellis took hopes to achieve in participants, zation and incorporated in time away from St. John’s to 1985 as a 501(c)3. says Zeiderman. “Touchstones help run Touchstones, but by Today, Touchstones is headis a four-stage process to the early 1990s, he had to leave quartered in a building in develop in students the skills of the organization and return to historic Annapolis and has a exploring and thinking both full-time teaching. Looking staff of eight, most of them collaboratively and individually. back, he’s pleased at what Johnnies with a missionary zeal In Touchstones, all—and I mean Touchstones has accomplished for education. Adam Meyers all—students learn to particiand how it has evolved. “We (A08) began working for Touchpate. It is also a program in how thought we had the opportunity stones right after he graduated students can govern themselves to do something really big,” that last year. He runs the Touchas a seminar group and learn to would make a difference, he stones program at the Maryland lead the groups themselves.” State Correctional Institution in says. “We did.” The idea developed over Zeiderman has turned the Jessup. He coordinates volunlong mid-morning breakfasts day-to-day management over to teers and works through the that Zeiderman and Maistrellis Stefanie Takacs (A89), Touchbureaucratic red tape, but he enjoyed every day at an stones’ new educational Annapolis restaurant. Tutors at also gets to choose the readings director, but he’s still involved and lead seminars. Sitting down the college were often getting in leading Touchstones semito discuss a text in a correcrequests to share the St. John’s nars and training for a diverse tional facility “was so far from “method” by schools with group of people and organizaanything I’d ever experienced ambitious and innovative tions. His long-range plan for before,” says Meyers. “Now that programs. (Hartford, for Touchstones? “I want every I’ve done it a while, what keeps example, was a magnet school me interested is the humanity of student in the world to do it,” with aspirations to send more he says. Short of that, he’d be these men. It’s so easy when you students to college.) Comber happy if “every student in the (H95), now tutor emeritus, was go through your normal life to United States did it.” x pigeonhole them as hardened also involved from the begincriminals who have no place in ning, using contacts across the —Rosemary Harty regular society. You can’t help country to bring Touchstones but notice that they’re exactly to schools in places such as { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } �5 {From the Bell Towers} St. John’s, Georgia Style a group committed to spreading liberal education and introducing St. John’s to the people of Georgia. OLEG’s ﬁrst accomplishment was a trip to Georgia in the summer of 2008, when students immersed themselves in the culture and engaged in seminarstyle classes with Georgian people. Brockett (OLEG’s executive director), Aduasvili, her sister Miriam Aduasvili (A12), Vincent Tavani (A11), and Acacia Pappas (A11) accompanied Dwayne Lacey (then a acacia pappas Although the country of Georgia has become the focus of international news during the past year in its war with Russia and collapse of infrastructure, when Nini Aduasvili (A11) came to St. John’s, not many students had heard of her home country. It was Aduasvili’s “passion for her country and her culture” that drew fellow Johnnies to learn more about Georgia, says Noel Brockett (A09). Together, Aduasvili and Brockett founded the Organization for Liberal Education in Georgia (OLEG), tutor in Annapolis) on the trip. With a group of about 40 Georgians at New Gelati Academy, part of Gigol Robakidze University in Tblisi, OLEG held seminars on the Meno, Euclid, Heraclitus, Joseph Black, and Jacob Klein. “We were bringing St. John’s to them,” says Tavani. With help from OLEG, New Gelati Academy is developing a program based in part on the St. John’s curriculum. Because of traditions and the focus on the community, says Brockett, “there is a particular potential in Georgia for an education like St. John’s.” One tradition of the Georgian people is the supra feast, when everyone sits down together at a table and takes turns giving lengthy toasts on a variety of topics. While giving the toasts, says Tavani, “they get really philosophical because they are taking their time to appreciate and contemplate what makes life life. It was a lot like seminar sometimes. It reminded us of the Symposium.” In addition to supra, Georgians have a long oral tradition of poetry, often singing and dancing to poems. Many of these Georgian poems will be integrated into the New Gelati program. “To be a good St. John’s student, you need to really enjoy reading and have the enthusiasm,” says Brockett. “The Georgian people deﬁnitely have that passion.” What’s next for the group? Alex Lawson (A03), an alumnus who has worked in the nonproﬁt development ﬁeld, is helping Brockett make OLEG into a nonproﬁt organization, and the group is recruiting board members. Recently, OLEG was awarded the $10,000 Davis Peace Grant, which will help fund a project to send four St. John’s tutors to Georgia for three weeks. x —Sara Luell (A09) Nino Aduashvili (A11) teaches Georgian dance one night a week, one of OLEG’s cultural projects on the Annapolis campus. A Sustainable Table in Santa Fe Organic peanut butter from Portales, apples and apple cider from Dixon and Alcalde, honey from Taos, and hydroponic tomatoes are all part of the daily food service on the Santa Fe campus. Changes began in 2007 when Rex McCreary came on board with Aramark, which runs the dining operation there. Students wanted food service that was organic, fair trade, local, and healthy, and McCreary delivered. “They wanted it, and they deserved it,” says McCreary, who began the process by talking with folks at The Tree House, an organic café and bakery. First to arrive were organic fruit and vegetables purchased from La Montanita Co-op or directly from farmers. This year almost all food served, including meat and turkey, is organic and bought locally. Not many colleges in New Mexico commit to this level of sustainable food service, but McCreary says it’s pretty easy once you let vendors know what you need. Getting bread made without reﬁned sugar, for example, came about just by asking. But sustainable food service does require more people—students, staff, and tutors—to get involved in the process. Places like La Montanita create weekly pick lists that allow McCreary to steer towards seasonal (and thus less expensive) choices. McCreary participates in a panel discussion during freshmen week, and at campus “town hall” meetings, so students and parents know he is willing to hear their suggestions. Currently in the plan- { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } ning stages is a kiosk with webbased access to full descriptions of all the food products served, which will be created and supported by Aramark. Until then, students can always get a full listing of ingredients just by asking. Recycling, green cleaning supplies, and biodegradable disposables (trashbags, to-go boxes, cups, and paper plates) are all part of the efforts. Going tray-less eliminated waste and reduced water use. Food donations to Kitchen Angels (which delivers food to homebound residents of Santa Fe) or the St. Elizabeth Shelter are made when possible. x �6 {From the Bell Towers} Singing on the Steppes On the vast steppes of Mongolia the nomadic culture is in transition. “It’s not unusual to see nomads carry Russian satellite dishes with them each time they move,” says Colin Forhan (A11), who lived on the steppes last summer. “[They] set up satellite dishes next to their homes, called gers. These Mongolians call a home a ger rather than use the Russian word yurt because they prefer to use their native language.” Forhan is also learning another native Mongolian language: throat singing. There are numerous types of throat singing (sometimes called harmonic chanting or overtone chanting) practiced around the world, but Forhan has taught himself a basic Mongolian form known as khoomei. When he sings this way Forhan keeps his tongue in a ﬁxed position to produce harmonics clearly. In throat singing, the singer creates resonance and ampliﬁed sounds with constrictions and shapes; the tongue and mouth ﬁlter out certain tones and draw forth others. The effect is like a loud, vibrational human guitar string. Its history is rooted in a desire to mimic natural sounds such as wind and water. “The sounds of throat singing travel great distances,” says Forhan. “The landscape is so vast in Mongolia. This is [in part] the way this singing started. Standing at the top of a mountain you can hear your voice in every direction. Sounds are louder and more pure.” Forhan was in high school in his hometown, Takoma Park, Md., when he ﬁrst heard throat singing. “I was listening to NPR and someone was throat singing covers for popular Western songs. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard.” He became obsessed and began teaching himself throat singing by listening to CDs and surﬁng websites for demonstrations. “It took me three months to make a semblance of a sound.” By the time Forhan was a freshman at St. John’s, he decided to spend the summer in Mongolia to learn ﬁrsthand from nomads who are throat singers. To get to Mongolia, Forhan joined an archaeology program offered by the University of Pittsburgh. After a brief stay in the capital city of Ulan Bator, his group traveled 13 hours to the province of Arkhangai and pitched their tents. They were three hours from the closest town, and they lived like the Truman Scholar Annapolis junior Jamaal Barnes (A10) has been named a 2009 Truman Scholar by the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation. Barnes is one of 60 students from 55 colleges and universities in the United States who were selected for their leadership potential, intellectual ability, and desire to make a difference. Barnes is from Sanford, N.C. He serves on the Delegate Council and as a student representative to the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors. He is a co-founder of Epigenesis, a student outreach program designed to instill leadership skills in disadvantaged Jamaal Barnes has his sights set on a career in education. nomads. “I even ate boiled goats’ heads and drank some of the worst vodka I’ve ever tasted. It was a homebrew made from goats’ milk.” Forhan sang with several of the nomads and plans to return this summer to Mongolia on his own. He will stay with friends in Ulan Bator, then head back to the nomads to throat sing in the steppes. In Mongolia, throat singing is a folk music much like bluegrass is in Colin Forhan lived like a nomad in Mongolia, America, says where he feasted on boiled goats’ heads. Forhan. “It’s a special folk octave lower than the sounds music that everyone there has emitted by the vocal chords.” heard of, though not all MongoFor now Forhan is happy to learn lians can sing this way.” Some of the basics. “When I demonthe forms take a lifetime to strated my throat singing for the master, and Forhan readily nomads, they thought it was admits that he may never learn the more difﬁcult techniques. He hilarious—an American trying their singing.” x describes how in one such technique “the note coming out of —Patricia Dempsey the throat singer’s mouth is an youth; a member of Primum Mobile, a group that sings sacred music; and a resident assistant. He has long-term plans to earn a doctorate in education and work for the reform and improvement of public education. “This well-rounded and personable young man brightens up every room he enters,” Annapolis President Christopher Nelson (SF70) wrote in his recommendation letter to the Truman Foundation. “He is a natural leader whose passion for helping others inspires those around him.” Each scholarship provides up to $30,000 for graduate study. Scholars also receive priority admission and supplemental ﬁnancial aid at some premier graduate institutions, leadership training, career and graduate school counseling, and special internship opportunities within the federal government. Recipients must be U.S. citizens, have outstanding leadership potential and communication skills, be in the top quarter of their class, and be committed to careers in government or the not-for-proﬁt sector. x { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } �7 {From the Bell Towers} Leo Pickens (A78), who marks his 20th year as athletic director in Annapolis this year, believes in playing sports for fun—but give less than your best effort at crew practice or on the soccer ﬁeld, and you’ll hear from him. When he talks about thumos, he usually smacks one hand into the other for emphasis—give your heart to a game, Pickens says, and you’re a winner regardless of the outcome. In Temple Iglehart, he’s also a tutor: kunai basketball games are sometimes interrupted so he can be sure novice players have a grip on the rules. As he was inspired by his mentor, longtime athletic director Bryce Jacobsen (class of 1942), Pickens hopes to inspire Johnnies to take up sports with passion and purpose. As a student, Pickens played for the Druids: soccer, ﬂag football, basketball, and softball. In a year spent in Santa Fe, he played soccer and ran in the mountains. Although today he devotes himself to yoga (his headstand is a thing of beauty), Pickens considers running up Atalaya “one of my greatest achievements as a human.” “If memory serves, it’s about a two-mile run from campus to the top. The elevation gain over that two miles is approximately 2,000 feet. In those days there wasn’t any development behind the college, so the trail ran through nothing but that lean, austere natural setting of piñon and Ponderosa and sage. I ran alone, and remember the purity of the air, scented with the sweetness of the pine, and the ever-expanding views as you climbed higher up the mountain. The ﬁnal very steep ascent was excruciating—one of the hardest things I’ve ever done physically, and hence the pride. But once up on top you could see forever, and the effortless, screaming (ﬁguratively speaking, but sometimes literally!) run down the mountain was as close to ﬂight as I’ve ever come. Closer to a religious experience, really, than an athletic one.” x dimitri fotos Twenty Years of Thumos Leo Pickens left a career in banking to return to the college, where for 20 years he has helped Johnnies discover their inner athlete. Every day a different challenge Johnny Zamora grew up just a mile from the college in what was then a virtual village removed from downtown Santa Fe. As a boy, he and his buddies would regularly climb Monte Sol. Little could he have known that his view from the top included the future site of the St. John’s campus. Nor could he have imagined that a twoweek temporary stint would turn into a 42-year career in the college’s buildings and grounds department. Zamora’s retirement party in March was a laid-back affair; he would have preferred to leave quietly, although he was honored to receive from President Michael Peters a plaque in recognition for his service. Just as he saw his old neighborhood change as the city grew, Zamora witnessed the growth of a college that was once also quite isolated. “I started at the college on February 8, 1967,” Zamora says. “The lower dorms had just been ﬁnished.” One of his ﬁrst tasks was to help outﬁt the dorms with furniture and amenities. Over the course of his career, Zamora acquired the licenses necessary to maintain plumbing, electricity, gas, boilers, and refrigeration. “Every day,” he says, “was a different challenge,” from dealing with leaky roofs and snowstorms to refurbishing dorms on a tight schedule for summer program participants. Among his greater challenges was the 1976 “attack of the moths.” For unknown reasons, millions of moths descended on Santa Fe, possibly blown in from Arizona. “There were 500 inside our own home and tons at the college,” Zamora says. One distressed student called Zamora’s ofﬁce, and he sent a crew to deal with the problem. Later, he received another call from the student, who protested: “You sent ladies with brooms.” Students were also part of Zamora’s life in personal ways. When Zamora married in 1974, a student played the { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } organ for his wedding. This particular student seemed to consider Zamora and his wife, Sylvia, his family away from home. “He’d call my wife and ask her what was for lunch, and if he liked it, he’d come over. We didn’t mind at all. This is what you do with family.” Tutor Lynda Myers (SF72) has known Zamora since her freshman year. “His friendly smile and upbeat greetings have always been part of life at St. John’s for me,” she says. A motorcycle aﬁcionado, Zamora now has more time for his hobby. “We’ll miss him here,” Myers says, “but it is nice to picture him and Sylvia driving off on their baby blue Harley, in pursuit of adventures.” x �8 {From the Bell Towers} Sempai and Kohai The innovative method Santa Fe tutor Michael Bybee uses in the Chinese language tutorial of the Eastern Classics program demonstrates how St. John’s is a learning community. “This is nothing more than taking the St. John’s College method as seriously as we can, and applying it to the study of literary Chinese,” Bybee says. In Bybee’s method, sempai (Japanese for “senior students,” in this case Eastern Classics alumni) assist kohai (“junior students,” those currently enrolled in the program). This year’s sempai are Joyce Spray (SFGI76, EC08), Alistair Hake (EC08), Claudia Watson (EC08), and Michael Johnson (EC08). Past assistants have included Kay Duffy (SF04, EC05) and Wendy Skelley (EC05). By dividing the class up into small groups, more language drills can be completed, which has proven to be a very effective way of learning language. In the four years since Bybee began inviting EC alumni to help in the Chinese tutorial, he’s never had a problem recruiting volunteers. He ﬁrst learned this approach to language acquisition from the Japanese educational system in Hawaii and practiced it for years while at the University of Oregon. At a Graduate Institute dinner in August 2008, Spray agreed to help. Hake was already on board, and the two were joined by Watson and Johnson. The student-tutors attend each language tutorial (Mondays and Wednesday at 4:30 p.m.) and, after a general introduction by Bybee to the entire class, break up into small groups to proceed with the day’s lesson. Fall 2008 texts were chosen to establish groundwork in the language. Texts this spring focus on Confucius’ Analects, the Xiao Jing (often called “the Classic on Filial Piety”), some Tang dynasty poetry, and all of Lao Zi. In 90 minutes students and tutors go through that day’s lesson verbally, then nut through the translation at hand. Bybee is quick to point out that they are not translating but rather “reading Chinese.” The sempai-kohai approach makes language a real community effort: the identiﬁcation stops being student to tutor and becomes a richer experience of junior student to senior student. Volunteers have varied reasons for participating. For Spray, tutoring “helps use a part of my brain that hasn’t been used in a long time. Working with Chinese is a stretch—no matter how old you are, it’s a good thing to do.” Eager to retain what she learned in the program, Watson relishes her role as “This is nothing more than taking the St. John’s College method as seriously as we can, and applying it to the study of literary Chinese." Mike Bybee, tutor Joyce Spray, who completed both graduate programs, helps current students with ancient Chinese. sempai. She may pursue a PhD in Chinese history or anthropology. After years of studying the texts of traditional Chinese medicine, Johnson enjoys working on his own translations and appreciates the assistance he gets from Bybee. Johnson is interested in Chinese language, history, and philosophy, and says “teaching it only makes it better.” Hake spent four years studying Chinese medicine texts in England and, much like Johnson, ﬁnds that tutoring keeps him active and engaged with his own personal Chinese studies. He is working on an Eastern Classics master’s essay. The preparation materials are an important part of the process and must at least partially respond to a common assumption made when studying literary Chinese: to do so one needs to have completed three years of modern Chinese. Austin Volz (SF09) worked on the language materials used in the Chinese class as an Ariel intern (there are 30 literary Chinese prepa- { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } rations for each semester). Bybee is quick to note that these materials are used only for the language acquisition phase of the tutorial. The other goals of a language tutorial—learning elements of language in general, learning how to write better, and learning to read particular texts in the original language in some detail—remain the provenance of that year’s language tutor. “We’re inviting students to read literary Chinese with no background in modern Chinese,” says Bybee, and the needs of today’s Eastern Classics students require that to be a viable project. The goals of Eastern Classics students, and the prior academic experience they have coming in to the program, have changed over the years. Now it is not uncommon to have a native Chinese speaker enrolled in the EC, or a student with an undergraduate degree in the language, and their future goals might include a PhD in an Eastern Classicsrelated ﬁeld. Eastern Classics alumni are certainly making their way into the academic arena, a point illustrated by an experience of Bybee’s son, Jon Wheeler. While investigating a Philosophy of China and India class at Occidental College, Wheeler asked Professor Alan Tomhave where he had acquired his background in the subject. It turns out Dr. Tomhave took an Eastern Classics seminar at St. John’s; Bybee was the tutor. x �9 {From the Bell Towers} Energizing Alumni Giving The ﬁnancial downturn calls for creative ways of engaging alumni to support St. John’s, and Philanthropia co-chairs Matthew Calise (A00) and Michael Zinati (SF92) are up to the challenge. Philanthropia is the college’s alumni development council, established in 1997 and fueled by energetic volunteers. The group’s support is one reason St. John’s has experienced a steady increase in alumni giving. The Campaign for St. John’s College, which ended last July, raised $134 million for the college, and alumni contributed 60 percent. “Typically alumni get jazzed up by a campaign. . .then the excitement tapers off,” says Calise. “The opportunity and challenge for Philanthropia is to maintain that high level of energy. This is our charge regardless of the economy, but now more than ever we need to keep relationships going through peer-to-peer outreach and good communications.” Calise, an associate director at Georgetown University Law Center’s ofﬁce of alumni affairs, believes it is important to lay the groundwork for the future by cultivating relationships with students. St. John’s has just 9,000 alumni, he pointed out. “That’s an intimate community,” Calise says. “So we can easily reach out not only to each other, but to current students to embrace the future of philanthropic support for the college.” “St. John’s alumni really care about ensuring that today’s students have the same opportunities that they did to study at the college,” adds Zinanti. “I believe we can appeal to this concern by ﬁnding ways to directly affect the lives of the students and, where appropriate, create personal bonds. In tough economic times, it is important for our alumni to reach out to today’s students and really touch their lives.” Zinanti, an engineer at Ball Aerospace in Westminster, Colo., helped out with Annual Fund phonathons as a student in Santa Fe. A hockey fan, Zinanti also told Jeff Morgan, then campus vice president for advancement, that the college needed an ice rink. When Morgan responded by inviting Zinanti to head up a fundraising effort to build one, Zinanti gained an education in how philanthropy supports every aspect of life at St. John’s. Tuition pays just 70 percent of the cost of educating a student at St. John’s; Annual Fund gifts help make up the rest. “Most undergraduates are not aware of the fact that, whether they are on ﬁnancial aid or not, their education is subsidized by philanthropic gifts,” Zinanti says. “It was an epiphany for me. I was on ﬁnancial aid but I had taken it all for granted.” At Georgetown, Calise works with law school alumni to “build communities of engagement.” He sees a natural ﬁt for this experience with Philanthropia. “We have two powerful advantages going for us in the world of philanthropy,” he says. “We have a fantastic cause—the education, the distinctive Program that St. John’s offers. And we have the need—60 percent of undergraduates receive ﬁnancial aid.” x — Patricia Dempsey A Man Who Changed Lives The college lost a good friend when Loren Pope, former New York Times editor and author of “Colleges that Change Lives” died last fall. Many a St. John’s students learned of the college from the small book, which promoted institutions that are “outdoing the Ivies and major universities in producing winners.” Long before colleges and universities began criticizing rankings, Pope urged students and their parents to look beyond big-name schools to ﬁnd the college that was the right ﬁt. St. John’s, he wrote in the most recent edition, “is a hard-working Shangri-La for the life-of-the-mind teenager who may hate or is bored by high school or is disgusted with education’s stupid SAT system. St. John’s has the courage to reject all that stuff; it’s what you are and what you want out of college that count.” Annapolis Admissions Director John Christensen said the book is often mentioned in admissions essays. Christensen met Pope when he came to the college soon after Christensen joined the college in 1978; at the time Pope had a counseling service in Virginia and often recommended St. John’s to bright high school students. “My predecessor told me to expect calls from him from time to time,” he says. “He did call with some frequency, and those calls were somewhat intimidating at ﬁrst because I was new to the college and quickly realized he knew more about it than I did. But he was a friendly and patient man and those to whom he recommended the college always seemed a good ﬁt.” x A Very Cool College Phonathon volunteers let alumni know that every Annual Fund gift, no matter the size, is appreciated. St. John’s recently earned four pages in a college guidebook called Cool Colleges for the Hyper-Intelligent, Self-Directed, Late Blooming, and Just Plain Different. The only “downside” the guidebook pointed out is actually a point of pride for most current Johnnies: “The students at St. John’s gain mastery of an intellectual tradition that goes back several thousand years, but they may not know the latest in teenage street fashion or other aspects of contemporary culture. However, the students I spoke with didn’t care. Basically, the students who are drawn to this curriculum seem not to ﬁnd any fault with it.” x { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } �10 {From the Bell Towers} News & Announcements NEH, Hodson Grants Last fall, the National Endowment for the Humanities made a $1 million challenge grant through its “We the People” initiative to St. John’s in Annapolis to support the study of works and ideas in American history, events, and culture. In December, The Hodson Trust— established to support four private colleges in Maryland— gave St. John’s a $3 million gift, matching the NEH grant in full. “We the People” is an NEH program that aims to encourage and strengthen the teaching, study, and understanding of American history and culture through libraries, schools, colleges, universities, and cultural institutions. The funding will provide additional support in four areas that are already part of the college’s academic program and mission: faculty study groups on works related to American themes, support for preceptorials, lectures on American themes, and educational outreach to the community. The Santa Fe campus also received a challenge grant from the NEH: $300,000 for support of Tecolote, a series of Saturday programs for New Mexico’s K-12 teachers created by tutor STEVEN VAN LUCHENE. The colloquia (centered on a different theme each year) provide occasions for genuine liberal learning through the discussion of carefully selected texts, led by St. John’s faculty and other experienced leaders. The grant requires a 3-1 match over the next four years, and the college is actively seeking additional support for the program. Faculty and Staff News TUTOR MATTHEW DAVIS (A82) has been appointed director of the Graduate Institute in Santa Fe, succeeding Krishnan Venkatesh. He will begin his new duties in June. Davis has a master’s degree in Philosophy from Dalhousie University and earned his PhD in Political Science from Boston College. He has been a tutor at the college since 1998. In Annapolis, tutor SUSAN PAALMAN will succeed Anita Kronsberg as assistant dean. Paalman has a bachelor’s degree from Rice University and a PhD from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She has been a tutor at the college since 1997. Tutor Emeritus CURTIS WILSON published an article, “The Nub of the Lunar Problem: From Euler to G.W. Hill,” in the November issue of the Journal for the History of Astronomy. The paper explains how G.W. Hill (l838-1914), a mathematician working for the U.S. Nautical Almanac, found the curve—not an elipse—as the basis on which a theory of the moon could be constructed. It proved much more accurate than any earlier theory. Wilson is also the author of a review of a volume of Jean le Rond d’Alembert, published in November by the international quarterly, Historia Mathematica. MELISSA LATHAM-STEVENS, art director in the Santa Fe Ofﬁce of Communications, has won several awards for publications design from the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) District IV. Her Homecoming 2008 brochure won an award for visual design, and her Summer Classics brochure won three visual design awards. The Annapolis campus has a new library director: CATHERINE DIXON joined the college in February. She previ- ously worked for the Library of Congress. Hall of Fame Earlier this year, WARREN WINIARSKI (class of 1952, Board of Visitors and Governors member) was inducted into the Vintners Hall of Fame at the Culinary Institute of America, in Napa Valley. In 1976, two ﬂedgling California wineries made history in France by winning a tasting that changed the world’s opinion of New World wines. One of the wineries was Winiarski’s Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars. In the years that followed the now-famous Paris Tasting, Winiarski has relentlessly pursued a quest for excellence in winemaking. Praise, Prizes for Scibona SALVATORE SCIBONA (SF97) continues to win accolades for his ﬁrst novel, The End. Scibona, who was a ﬁnalist for the National Book Award, recently received the New York Public Library’s $10,000 Young Lions Fiction Award. More Singing in Santa Fe Capitalizing on Controversy Who says Johnnies are indifferent to political controversy? The students spearheading Senior Prank fundraising this year are selling t-shirts pitting Euclid against Lobachevski. The project was the brainchild of Nate Oesch (A09), who says that early returns show Euclid has the edge in the voting. Above, Clint Richardson and Molly Rothenberg (both A09) model the front of the shirts. The back of the Euclid says: “Perfection Without Defection.” The back of the Lobachevski: “Four Rights Make a Wrong.” x { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } Composer and conductor ROY M. ROGOSIN (SFGI08) has joined the college in Santa Fe to develop and lead two new extracurricular choral groups on the campus. The St. John’s Community Chorus is aimed at providing an opportunity for Johnnies, as well as select members of the Santa Fe community, to sing and perform a broad spectrum of choral music from antiquity to the present. The Chamber Singers, for which members must audition, also provides new opportunities for campus singers. Rogosin is a professional conductor with international credits ranging from the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and Royal Albert Hall in London to the sound stages of Hollywood and the stages of Broadway. x �11 {Letters} Unforgettably Kind Acts Thanks for the proﬁle in The College [Fall 2008] on Jean FitzSimon (A73). She did some unforgettably kind acts as a Johnnie, and I’d like to recognize her and the countless other Johnnies who befriend freshmen and help them out. An example of what she did for me: I was tall (in the Northeast, a six-foot female in the 1960s got only stares and “it’s the 50-foot woman” comments), and I had led a swimmer’s life and not much else, although I had books instead of Michael Phelps’ iPod. Since I wasn’t in the top 10 in the nationals, I had no Olympic dream (before Title IX). I never regretted stopping swimming or going to St. John’s. In fact, I eventually won the St. John’s men’s foulshooting contest and got to play on their basketball, volleyball, and badminton teams until they made me women’s athletic director! This would never have happened but for students at the gym, like Jean, who were willing to play with someone who’d never held a ball, just for the love of playing, occasionally skipping the usual search for someone to learn from so that they could give a little time to someone who wanted to learn. When I came to St. John’s, I had a budget of $5 ($27 today) every two weeks for books, clothes, laundry, culture, etc., which meant I worked several jobs. I still wore my warm-up jacket, a castoff from an old Holy Cross team, and my ﬁrst “grownup” ﬂats, Converse All Stars. My school uniform was completed with men’s jeans and my brother’s old leather belt, and I was often mistaken for a boy. I routinely took off my glasses to go to the dining hall, assuming that I would otherwise notice the sniggers. (Years later, I found out that my unconscious statement. But Jean didn’t just tell me to believe in myself, she just believed in me, and changed my life. She made me conﬁdent enough to become actually somewhat popular at St. John’s, although what has lasted is the love of thoughtful conversation, and the belief that it, like Jean FitzSimon’s generosity, can Now a judge in Philadelphia, Jean FitzSimon change the (A73) committed an act of kindness her world. I even got classmate will always remember. proﬁled in an early newsprint lope had earned me the nickversion of The College. A year name of “the fabulous ﬁlly” later, a younger Johnnie asked by the seniors.) me to be her friend because One day the girls on my ﬂoor “I seemed happy, like someone played let’s-dress-Jane-like-apopular, but kind.” I never told girl. The next thing I Jean that she started it all! remember is Jean FitzSimon, I have always mentored whom I didn’t even know, younger people, in and outside taking me to a clothing store in my family, and often tell them downtown Annapolis and of what someone I didn’t even buying me the ﬁrst slinky (and know did for me at St. John’s, ﬁrst full-price) dress of my life whenever I give them money or with her checkbook, telling me “too much.” In this, Jean is I could pay her back later. I inspiring the next generation even copied that dress as a and doesn’t even know it. I’m pattern when it fell apart about not the only person who eight years later. remembers and thanks Jean To say that I was a nerd even now. without social skills would I hope that the Johnnies who probably have been an undercould help freshmen will read and learn from this story just how gratifying it is to risk making a fool of yourself or annoying someone, to try to give them your time or something you think might be useful to them. I rank this lesson and the mighty power of thoughtful conversation as my most valuable gifts from Jane (D’Agnese ) Atwood (A74) St. John’s. “One day the girls on my ﬂoor played let’s-dressJane-like-a-girl.” Jane (D’Agnese ) Atwood (A74) { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } Philosophers’ Songs Thank you for publishing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic of Letters” [Fall 2008]! Annapolis transfers had told me of it, but I had never learned it. It was so much fun to learn to sing, and now I sing it (and march along) almost every day as I walk to work. Another song the Annapolis transfers used to sing had the line “Immanuel Kant was a big pissant who was very rarely stable.” Does anyone know how the rest of that song goes? Erin Hanlon (SF03) Editor’s note: Thanks to editor Cathi Dunn MacRae, The College has an answer: “The Immanuel Kant line comes from a song within a popular 1970s Monty Python comedy sketch titled ‘Bruces.’ It is usually referred to as ‘The Bruces’ Philosophers Song.’ The sketch appeared on Monty Python’s Flying Circus television show, Episode 22, featuring four professors, all named Bruce, from the philosophy department of the ﬁctional University of Walamaloo in Australia. It’s apparently available on YouTube. The College welcomes letters on issues of interest to readers. Letters may be edited for clarity and/or length. Those under 500 words have a better chance of being printed in their entirety. Please address letters to: The College Magazine, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis MD 21404. Letters can be sent via e-mail to Rosemary.Harty@sjca.edu. Correction: The photograph on the back cover of the Fall 2008 issue of The College was taken by Clarke Saylor (A08). The credit was inadvertently given to another photographer; we regret the error. �12 {Changing Course} CHANGING COURSE by Rosemary Harty and Deborah Spiegelman “Far off in the bending sky was the pearly light; and she felt the largeness of the world and the manifold wakings of men to labor and endurance. She was a part of that involuntary, palpitating life, and could neither look out on it from her luxurious shelter as a mere spectator, nor hide her eyes in selﬁsh complaining.” G eorge Eliot’s Middlemarch inspired this collection of stories about alumni who have considered—and reconsidered— their paths in life. It seems every major character in Eliot’s novel harbors some great ambition, a desire to make something of his or her life, to gain notice, to achieve greatness. Some characters are motivated simply by greed and shallow personal ambitions, while others—humble Mary Garth, for example, or the shabby Mr. Featherstone—seek lives of integrity and service. Casaubon devotes his entire being to “A Key to All Mythologies,” the manuscript that all but its author seem to realize is a hopeless boondoggle. After discovering his passion for medicine, Lydgate sets out to reform the profession and make great scientiﬁc discoveries. Things end quite badly for these two. But consider Fred, who rejects family expectations and the hypocrisy of a career as a clergyman, to settle happily into working the land as the assistant of an estate manager. Ladislaw tinkers with art and politics as he considers the best way to use his education and energy. Then, there is passionate Dorothea, who after seeing one ill-fated dream die, is willing to let it go and follow another—in spite of the condemnation of family and friends. And in changing course, she ﬁnds greater rewards—in love and in work—that will make a difference to others. For the women in these proﬁles, making a living hasn’t been the driving force in their lives; their course changes—from teacher to nurse, from engineer to lawyer, from lawyer to librarian—have always been most driven by the need to love what they do. Opposite: After 12 years as a Montessori teacher, Sarah Bittle is nearing the completion of a nursing program at Johns Hopkins University. She’ll be a labor and delivery nurse. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } �gary pierpoint {Changing Course} { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } 13 �14 {Changing Course} “I started thinking that I wanted to be part of something different.” Sarah Bittle “You Want to Love What You’re Doing” Sarah Bittle (A96) When it came to working with children, Sarah Bittle was a natural: patient, nurturing, and eager to share her zeal for learning with others. It was her success in this ﬁeld—and a crystal-clear view of its limitations—that led her to look for another way to make a difference in the lives of children. During a break from St. John’s, Bittle taught in an afterschool science program. There she discovered her innate teaching skills along with the rewards of seeing children who were excited to learn. “That led me to Montessori, which is all about kids teaching themselves,” she says. The Montessori philosophy focuses on developing each child’s unique potential as a human being. Bittle traveled to Colorado to earn her certiﬁcation from the Montessori Education Center of the Rockies. After she completed her training, she found a job in Kensington, Maryland, as an infant/toddler teacher at the Crossway Community Montessori School. The school was part of a nonproﬁt organization with a focus on outreach to low-income, at-risk families in the greater D.C. area. Bittle managed two classrooms with six infants apiece and two classrooms with nine toddlers each. Working with very young children offered the opportunity to help shape their lives in a positive way. However, her choice was one she had to explain to friends who wondered how she could change diapers and deal with temper tantrums. Where was the intellectual challenge? But Bittle could see reﬂected in the youngsters she worked with each day the concepts she read about in Kant and Aristotle—how experience and potential came together for the children in her care. She could help children acquire language, take in new experiences, and make sense of the physical world. The more they mastered, the more they grew in conﬁdence. She especially enjoyed working with the mothers of her students, many of whom struggled with serious problems such as drug addiction and homelessness, and helping them learn to be better parents. “You could have hopes that the world would be different for them,” says Bittle. “I was really proud of what we accomplished. The program was running before I got there, but I was able to help take it to another level and make it consistent. It comes with its frustrations too; you have some victories and some disappointments.” Working closely with parents, Bittle saw that good healthcare and health education were critical to improving the quality of their lives. “One of the things I could see with our mothers was that they had no idea how to build a relationship with a doctor. If anything goes wrong, they know they can be seen by going to the Emergency Room. The ER often became their primary care clinic.” Bittle explains. “When they could get regular medical care, I would go with them to pediatrician appointments, and for the most part what I saw really curled my toes. Not only did the parents not know how to ask questions, they were offered revolving-door medicine from doctors who didn’t listen. I started thinking that I wanted to be part of something different.” Bittle knew she couldn’t teach with the same dedication or energy for many more years; becoming a school administrator wasn’t appealing. When she began to see how much good prenatal care and healthcare education would help both mother and child, she settled on a new career direction Sarah Bittle worked for 12 years as a Montessori teacher before deciding to pursue a second career in nursing. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } �{Changing Course} 15 “I don’t seem to do anything the easy way.” Karen Cook rosemary harty as a labor and delivery/ neonatal care nurse and three years ago, took the ﬁrst steps to pursue it. She investigated accelerated nursing programs and settled on Johns Hopkins’ 13-month BSN program. She shifted to a part-time schedule at work and took prerequisite courses in biology, anatomy, physiology, and statistics at a community college. She applied for loans, gave up a great apartment and social life in D.C.’s Adams Morgan neighborhood, and moved to an apartment in Baltimore. “I have two roommates who are also in nursing school,” says Bittle. “We have a medical dictionary called Mosby’s, and we all sat there the ﬁrst few nights, thumbing through it and looking at these pictures of these horrible things.” While she is among the oldest students in the program, Bittle hasn’t found the curriculum to be very difﬁcult. “I put a lot of energy and emotional commitment into this, but I actually have more spare time now” than as a Montessori teacher, she says. Nursing can be stressful, physical work, and often emotionally demanding, Bittle has found. The Karen Cook enjoyed being a lawyer, but has a real passion for “amazing moments” she has with patients, just as a library science. student, have shown this career choice was the right one. For example, on a recent rotation she spent time “I Feel Like I’m Doing Something with a patient who had suffered a stroke. Although he was alert Worthwhile” and aware of everything that had happened to him, he wasn’t able to articulate his thoughts. “He was so intelligent and wellKaren Cook (SF74) educated, and literate, very Johnnie-like. He knew what he Anyone who has ever pondered Socrates’ “examined life” wanted to say, but he would get stuck on a word he couldn’t would probably understand why Karen Cook has made so remember or translate,” she says. “It was incredibly frusmany changes in her life. trating to him, but he bore it with such incredible grace, and I Over the past four decades, she has married, started a felt so privileged to have known him.” family, earned a law degree, and worked in private practice. Bittle will ﬁnish the program in July and has already begun She divorced, remarried, and put career goals aside to devote investigating the Washington job market. At a time when time to a new blended family. She traded the law for library unemployment is high—and with student loans to pay off—she’s science, left her library job for a corporate position, and glad that nurses are in high demand. “I’m really looking walked away from another good job to pursue a doctorate. She forward to having a full-time job again,” she says. is happily settled (for now) as an assistant librarian at Most Johnnies, Bittle observes, have two qualities that Louisiana State University in Monroe, where she is also a foster the openness to make dramatic changes in their lives. government documents and reference librarian. “I think it has a lot do with the college, either because of the “I don’t seem to do anything the easy way,” says Cook. type of people who are drawn to the Program, or because of Sacrifices were always involved, such as uprooting her what we read in the Program. It’s probably a combination family and selling a home to live the humble life of a doctoral of both. student. Yet new pursuits led to greater rewards. Recently, — Rosemary Harty (AGI09) Cook—a newly minted Doctor of Communication and { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } �16 {Changing Course} “I missed the books.” Karen Cook Information Science at age 55—learned that she received the University of Alabama Outstanding Dissertation Award for 2008-2009 for her thesis, “Freedom Libraries in the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer Project: A History.” It was a gratifying achievement, but ﬁnding a topic she cared about and devoting herself to it—that was even better. While she had the encouragement and support of family, Cook had to convince herself that it wasn’t too late to enter a doctoral program at 49. “I do have to say that I didn’t have the energy that some of the younger students did,” she says. “But when I got into the research projects that I really loved, I found the work energizing. It stopped being something I was doing for my career and became something important in and of itself.” Her independent spirit was one reason Cook chose St. John’s. She left St. John’s after her junior year to marry another Johnnie, Carl Huffman (SF74). She ﬁnished her bachelor’s degree, in psychology, at the University of Colorado, and they moved together to Austin, where Huffman earned his doctorate in ancient Greek philosophy. In Texas, Cook attended law school, graduating in 1979. When her husband joined the DePauw University faculty, they settled in Greencastle, Indiana, and Cook put her career on hold for four years to raise their children. After 12 years of marriage, the two divorced. Cook met her second husband, Robert Bremer, through her son David, who was best friends with Robert’s son Derek. Bremer had a law practice, and Cook went to work for him. She enjoyed the variety of a general practice, where she worked on wills, divorces, appellate work, small claims, “all kinds of stuff.” After eight months, the two were engaged. “We were best friends before we fell in love and we fairly quickly decided to get married—we had so much in common,” Cook says. Bremer also had a daughter, Shannon. Cook had two other sons, Peter and John. Together, they had a son, Arthur, who is now 20. With a big, new, blended family, Cook knew change was imminent. “It was too challenging to have the two of us in practice together and try to raise these kids,” she says. “In a law practice you’re at the mercy of a judge. You have a hearing scheduled for 1:15, a child with a dentist appointment at 3:30, and the judge comes back from lunch at 3. That kind of thing started getting very difﬁcult. It was also difﬁcult to get away from the tension of the practice. When life at work was nuts, it was really hard not to have that come home with us.” Cook took time to consider the long view of her life. What was she good at? What did she really love to do? “I kept coming up with two things: books and computers,” she says. “And I ﬁnally settled on becoming a librarian.” She began working toward her MLS part time at the Indiana University, an hour’s drive away, while working part time at the law ﬁrm. Then, in Cook’s words, “life gets really interesting.” Her husband was burnt out on the law. “We decided it was time for my career to be driving the train,” she says. “I had followed the husbands’ career paths long enough.” Cook took a job at a public library in southern Indiana, and her family followed. She was hired to head up technical services—cataloging, acquisitions and preservation. Her knowledge of computers and interest in technology found fertile ground for development. She was put in charge of selecting a new computer system and soon was named systems librarian. “I learned just about everything there was to running a library,” she says, but after three years, “it was starting to get routine.” Cook next went to work for a library software company in Huntsville, Alabama, where she was the public library product manager, traveling the country and working with libraries to ensure the systems met their need. “I almost doubled my salary,” Cook recalls. “It was nice to be able to earn a decent salary, nice to go to conferences without having to share a room with six people.” She held that job for nearly ﬁve years before she felt the familiar hunger for a new challenge. “I became increasingly interested in the Web and I was also suffering from library withdrawal,” she explains. “I missed the books, and I missed the environment where you are seeking knowledge for knowledge’s sake. For In 2008, Cook completed her doctorate; she also won awards for her dissertation. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } �{Changing Course} 17 When You’re Considering a Change Don’t be hasty! Take time to reﬂect, do some reading and research, and make contacts, say the directors of the Career Services ofﬁces in Annapolis and Santa Fe. Margaret Odell in Santa Fe recommends: Paul D. Tieger and Barbara Barron-Tieger, Do What You Are: Discover The Perfect Career for You Through the Secrets of Personality Types, Little, Brown, 2001 Shoya Zichy, Career Match: Connecting Who You Are and What You’ll Love to Do, AMACOM (a division of American Management Association), 2007 Marsha Sinetar, Do What You Love and the Money Will Follow, Dell Trade Paperback, 1987, “a bit dated but still great reading.” Bureau of Labor Standards, Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2008-2009 edition (also available online at www.bls.gov/OCO) “I would urge working with a career counselor or life coach,” says Odell. “Also, don’t forget that the Career Services ofﬁces can put career changers in touch with alumni in a wide variety of ﬁelds who are happy to share information about their careers.” librarians, part of what drives us is that need to share information with others.” A former colleague led Cook to a job with a contractor at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. She worked as an online publisher, editor, and web developer for “NASA Explores,” an online resource and curriculum guide for K-12 science teachers. “I was working in an educational environment, but I found being a government contractor a little problematic,” says Cook. “I like to speak freely, and that was the ﬁnal thing that pushed me completely out of the corporate environment. I didn’t want to compromise my integrity.” It was time, Cook decided, to go back to school. In 2002, she enrolled in the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. In searching for a dissertation topic, she discovered that some alternative libraries created by volunteers in Mississippi were instrumental in contributing to the civil rights movement through programs designed to facilitate participation in democracy, further adult literacy, and address the needs of the Advice from Shahrzad Arasteh in Annapolis: Richard Nelson Bolles, What Color Is Your Parachute? 2009 Edition, Ten Speed Press, Berkeley, 2009 Barbara Sher, Wishcraft: How to Get What You Really Want, Ballantine Books, New York, 2nd Edition, 2003. “Any Barbara Sher book would be a wonderful resource for both career changers and career seekers,” says Arasteh. “One general piece of advice I would share (in addition to working with a career development professional) is to take a little bit of time to explore and evaluate your skills, passions, values, and interests before deciding on a new career ﬁeld. It is also important to research and test out, in some way, the potential career ﬁeld or ﬁelds. Then make a commitment to one that is a good ﬁt and work on getting the experience and knowledge necessary to transition to it.” Contacts: Santa Fe Ofﬁce of Career Services: 505-984-6067, modell@sjcsf.edu Annapolis Ofﬁce of Career Services: 410-626-2501, shahrzad.arasteh@sjca.edu. poor and disadvantaged. “Only half of the counties in Mississippi had public libraries, and only eight in the whole state served African Americans,” Cook says. Activists for the Congress of Racial Equality and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee started community centers and libraries that offered wider access to books, newspapers, and magazines. By 1964, 250,000 volumes were donated to the “freedom libraries.” Cook’s dissertation topic “brought together all the things I feel most strongly about,” she says, namely, literacy, education, and democracy. She’s now at work turning her thesis into a book. “These were amazing people, forgotten by history, and they deserve to have their story told.” Cook graduated in May 2008. Her husband, who had worked in institutional advancement after leaving the law, earned a Master of Library Science degree and commutes to the Louisiana Tech library in Ruston. At LSU-Monroe, Cook is a government documents and reference librarian, a job she took knowing it would not offer the long-term challenges she { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } �18 {Changing Course} “I didn’t have a playbook the day I left St. John’s that said, ‘I’m going to change careers and make it all merge in the end.’” Liz Travis (SF84) needs. Earlier this spring she began to shop around for new opportunities, and at this point in her life, she believes many doors are still open to her. Feeling accomplished isn’t just about salary or prestige, Cook says. “People do look at me strangely, sometimes: ‘You’ve been a lawyer, and now you do this?’ It’s nice to have money, but that is not a sufﬁcient reason to do something. I like to feel good about what I do at work. I feel like I’m doing something that’s worthwhile, and I’m also in an environment where I’m encouraged to keep learning. That’s probably what you hear from most Johnnies. There’s always something new to learn.” —Rosemary Harty (AGI09) “I Need to Believe I Make a Difference” Liz Travis (SF84) For Liz Travis, the roads taken were neither preordained nor premeditated, but they have brought her full circle, back to Santa Fe and ultimately to a job that brings together a liberal arts education, an engineering background, and a law degree. Travis’ career path illustrates the importance of taking time out for reﬂection. At key stages in her life, Travis took periodic breaks to assess where she was and where she wanted to go. After her sophomore year, Travis took time off from St. John’s, working ﬁrst as a lifeguard in Florida and then traveling home to California, where she took “ﬂuffy” classes at the local community college. “My brain needed a break,” she says. After a year, she returned to St. John’s to complete her degree, imagining that she would become either a lawyer or a theoretical physicist. Her ﬁrst job was with Rockwell Space Division in California, where she worked as an analyst in the development of the space shuttle. When nearby Northrop Grumman, an aerospace and defense technology company, announced a “cattle call,” Travis applied and got the job—in part, she admits, through sheer nerve. First, she pointed out to her interviewer that the advertisement speciﬁed that applicants have strong analytical and communications skills, but not necessarily an engineering degree; second, she highlighted the math and science in the Program. Then she challenged him: “I bet you that on day 89 [of the 90-day probationary period] you’ll want to give me a raise.” While she didn’t get the raise exactly as she’d wagered, Travis attributes her success in the job to skills learned at St. John’s: the ability to listen, to respect others’ points of view, and demonstrate proofs—all of which provide “an amazing toolbox that can be applied to any career,” she says. Having thus embarked on her ﬁrst career, Travis made progressive jumps, from assistant engineer to specialist, earning a Master of Science in Systems Management from the University of Southern California along the way. “I learned everything one could possibly want to know about [then secret] ‘Stealth’ technologies, about management, and about people,” she says. Taking another leap to lead Alcoa’s research and development group in the areas of logistics and industrial engineering seemed like a natural progression. When her facility closed after two years, Travis decided to spend time traveling and reﬂecting before her next career move. She took a “sabbatical” from work to live in Mexico and Guatemala, helping nonproﬁts and small businesses with process improvements. Returning to the West Coast via New Mexico, she visited a fellow Johnnie who was in law school at the University of New Mexico. “I sat in on a ﬁrst-year torts class,” Travis recalls. “The discussion was about assault, and actually about whether butt slaps, like in a locker room, could be assault. The room was ﬁlled with people from every background and age, and the discussion was lively. On my way home to California, I had one of those ‘aha’ moments and knew I was going to law school.” Travis enrolled in the McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, where she discovered a focus for her passion. “I loved the study of the law from the start, but I really got hooked on natural resources and environmental law, along with local government and administrative law,” she explains. “I realized that I was most interested in helping at a community level after years in the corporate world. I saw and see my role as helping the decision-makers in their role as ﬁscal stewards of the public’s money and trust.” With law degree in hand at age 40, Travis was asked by McGeorge to help recruit prospective students while awaiting her bar exam results. The summer stint turned into a threeyear job as the director of admissions, during which she also worked pro bono in a legal services clinic. Finally, she decided it was time to undertake the law formally. Her return to Santa Fe constituted a converging of paths. Around the same time that she learned St. John’s was looking for a director of major gifts, she faced a “life-changing” health crisis. “It was like all the stars were pointing in the right direction,” and she fulﬁlled her desire to move back to her college town. When the position was not offered to her, Travis took and { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } �19 teri thomson randall {Changing Course} passed her second bar exam, this time in New Mexico. Afterwards, Travis used her legal skills to help friends in business start-up and development. “Suddenly, I was useful again, combining the past life of business with the business of lawyering in a place where I really wanted to live,” she explains. Travis is currently assistant general counsel for the New Mexico Department of Transportation. “It’s the most perfect job [because] I’m working on construction,” she says. “I’m talking to the engineers; I’m understanding the engineers; the whole ﬁrst half of my business life is translated into being the lawyer for the engineers.” Had she not taken the path to law school via a ﬁrst career in engineering, Travis imagines that her life would not have been nearly as interesting or fulﬁlling. Career change requires courage and conﬁdence, Travis says. “I didn’t have a playbook the day I left St. John’s that said, ‘I’m going to change careers and make it all merge in the end.’” If the work you’re doing every day doesn’t resonate with you, says Liz Travis, it’s probably time to consider a change. A guiding principle for Travis has been the need to feel that she is contributing to a greater good—something one can also gain in volunteering, such as the service she gives as a member of the college’s Alumni Association board. But when so many days are spent working, that work should resonate, she says. “I need to believe I make a difference, and I need to be challenged to continually learn and grow. Without that challenge, I begin to feel as if something is missing and that I should be doing more. . . .When you spend so much of your time at a job, that time should resonate with you so that it doesn’t feel like ‘work’ all of the time.”x { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } —Deborah Spiegelman �20 {books} For the L OV E of BOOKS Sleeker design. More storage. Longer battery life. Over 250,000 books available in under 60 seconds. And now Kindle can read to you. Our revolutionary wireless reading device just got better. —from Amazon.com This is not an anti-technology rant. Progress, often, is good. We have iPods, we read e-mail on the BlackBerry, and we post photos and notes to Facebook pages. We check out audio books from the library for long car rides. Great conveniences, all. But it’s sometimes hard to say goodbye to the good things that our gadgets replace. Sure, a scratchy vinyl record can be improved upon, but where are those hole-in-the-wall music stores full of interesting characters? Facebook is instant, but there’s nothing like ﬁnding a handwritten note from a good friend in your mailbox. Independent bookstores are not just places to read books; to a genuine book lover, they’re sacred temples. On a trip to a new city, they’re one of the ﬁrst places you investigate. Is there good coffee, and not a chain brew? A poetry reading? Comfortable chairs in hidden nooks? New paperbacks smell good. Old books have a history. Kindles may be convenient, but what about writing notes in the margins? The College asked three alumni to venture out and report back on the delights found in their favorite bookstores. For Anna Perleberg (SF02), it was easy—she works in one. Matthew Grifﬁs (SF08) found good bargains and a good story in beautiful Gig Harbor. And Jennifer Donnelly (A96) lives in Paris—enough said. Johnnies don’t need to be told to buy books, of course, but May is National Independent Bookseller’s Month. Go celebrate. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } �21 j. matthew griffis {books} No Dearth of Books, Gig Harbor, Washington J. Matthew Grifﬁs found the tiny No Dearth of Books just to his liking. By J. Matthew Grifﬁs (SF08) I had to walk nearly a mile. The gas money I saved by not driving was hardly a reason to forgive the orange-suited construction crews who with their mighty road cones forced me to leave my van and take to the streets, like an Arabian desert trekker whose camel has just died. But this is a story about books, and a store that sells them. As I trod the sidewalks of Gig Harbor, Washington, dodging couples with dogs and contemplating the tranquility of the bay, I realized that by walking about in the fresh air and plunging into the organized chaos of whatever catches the eye, I was tapping into an era that while not entirely vanished, is conﬁned to an ever-decreasing space. Approaching No Dearth of Books, I had no idea what to expect. I had no references save the phone book listing that identiﬁed it as probably the sort of independent store I wanted. Eventually my eye was caught by a window ﬁlled with stacks of the good stuff. Not a neat display of just one current bestseller, but books laid ﬂat atop one another, piles and piles that completely negated the value of the window as a means of seeing inside. The bookstore occupied half a low-slung, one-story building with a dingy “I’ve-seen-better-days” aspect. The other half contained a Mexican restaurant. Excellent. There was no front door. Sneaking around the side, I opened a door and discovered a hallway with glass along both sides. Much smaller than expected, the bookstore was about the size of a large bedroom. Overﬂowing shelves covered the walls. Occupying most of the ﬂoor was an island of stand-alone shelves and small tables, with stacks rising nearly as high as those on the walls. A walking track ran all the way around, towers of tomes looming on both sides. There was room to walk and room to turn, but only just. I felt that if I tripped and fell, I’d take the whole store with me, everything collapsing like rows of oversized dominoes. I loved it. Interlude: I do enjoy the chain bookstore—clean, roomy, and organized, where the marketability of a product decreases in proportion to its creases. Everything is perfect; nothing is surprising. Contrast this utopia with its polar opposite: small, cluttered rooms with insufﬁcient lighting, a musty smell, and a sense of magical discovery. What treasures might be hiding around the next turn or in the box shoved under a table? All bookstores are variations on these two themes, and No Dearth of Books, with its naked, tubular bulbs { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } �22 {books} anna perleberg A display at Watermark Books in Kansas City, where WAR AND PEACE was a top seller. lining the ceiling, its pleasant odor of dust, and its stacks of papery happiness, is a perfect example of the latter. In spite of the chaotic feel, the stacks weren’t really disorganized. Signs indicated groups by genre, and if the proprietor did not know exactly where and what every book was at all times, he did an excellent job of faking it. Harry Dearth, a kindly older man with a quiet wit, has owned and managed this store for 11 years. With an emphasis on nautical volumes and Northwest history, his store contains a plentiful supply of everything else, from massmarket fare to psychology texts to Program heavies such as Tolstoy, Homer, and Shakespeare. Pricing is used-book standard, with the majority of books half off list price. I’ve been spoiled by St. John’s Meem Library book sales, where paperbacks cost a dollar and hardbacks $3. I bit the bullet and committed to a copy of Anna Karenina in excellent condition ($8) and a humor piece with a promising title, Politically Correct Bedtime Stories ($4.50). As I checked out, Mr. Dearth knocked another $1.50 off the Tolstoy novel. Nice. I asked Mr. Dearth about business these days. He told me it was up and down, less than in previous years, which he blamed more on the struggling economy and gasoline woes than on decreased interest in books and reading. People from all over the world, including South Africa and China, had signed his guestbook. Was Mr. Dearth familiar with the Amazon Kindle? He was not. I explained that it’s a portable digital reader; you store books in digital form in the built-in memory and read them on its screen. I expected a rant against newfangled technology that reduced the joy of reading. Instead, he joked that such a device would “drive you blind,” and then said that he had no opinion and was sure there were several sides to the issue. I agreed, but was surprised—as a member of the technology generation, I was more concerned than he was! So I’ll supply the rant. I support technological innovation, as long as its creators keep the dangers in mind. (Don’t these people read science ﬁction?) I love the iPod. A device that lets me take the writings of Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, Chaim Potok, Will Shakespeare, and Tom Clancy with me, without having to lug around a small elephant, sounds wonderful. The Kindle can do that. Yet I’m a lover not just of books, but of the reading experience. No other medium offers the intimacy of reading. Holding the book and supporting its weight, feeling the pages and hearing the sound they make when turned—these sensations build a whole that deserves the name “experience.” However casual we may be about reading, it is a deeply personal activity that works on more senses than just sight, and more levels than just thought. Aren’t there some things that can’t be improved upon? As our society speeds toward an Internet-driven digital world, I feel some apprehension amidst my excitement. One day we might wake up and realize we’ve lost something irreplaceable, to our sorrow. Perhaps it is groundless anxiety, backlash from Fahrenheit 451. I don’t lose sleep over it. After all, when an e-book is a mouse-click away, there are people who get to their feet and visit stores such as No Dearth of Books. I asked Mr. Dearth if he was worried about the future of the usedbook trade. He said he wasn’t, that for every bookshop that closed there would always be another that opened. I hope he’s right. We shall always be treasure-hunters and bargain-grabbers; I hope we’ll be bibliophiles as well. Nowhere captures the thrill of exploration, the delight of discovery, the sheer capitalistic joy in value, and the love of the book as well as the used bookstore. O hallowed ediﬁce, may you remain an institution as long as intellect endures! Confessions of a K ansas Ninja Bookseller by Anna Perleberg (SF02) W hen you’re from Wichita, Kansas, and move out of state (as I did when I matriculated in Santa Fe in 1998), the ﬁrst thing you have to get used to saying is “but I don’t live on a farm.” Much has been written about the coastal bias against the “ﬂyover states,” and I don’t want to get into petty regionalisms here; I’d like to emphasize, though, that Wichita is a Real City, the 51st largest in the country, with ethnic grocery stores, warehouse art galleries, violent crime—we even had our own serial killer, until they caught him in February 2005. In short, anything they have a thousand of in New York City, Wichita has at least one of: you may have to look harder for it, but it’s there. So yes, Manhattan has that literary mecca, the Strand; Portland has Powell’s; San Francisco, City Lights. Wichita has my workplace and second home, Watermark Books. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } �{books} anna perleberg Johnnies are bibliophiles by nature—the kind of people who decide whether they want to get to know someone by perusing their bookshelves, head cocked to one side to read the titles—and I’m a Johnnie by nature; thus, by Euclid’s ﬁrst common notion, I’m a natural bookstore employee. Furthermore, having imbibed a healthy disrespect for authority at a school where 19-year-olds argue with Plato, I don’t do well in impersonal, bottom-lineoriented work environments. Unfortunately, that’s what a lot of bookstores are these days: little more than supermarkets pushing words in bulk, processed thought instead of processed foods, the formulaic bestseller equivalent to high-fructose corn syrup. In contrast to this gargantuan, soulless business model, Watermark can seem startlingly old-fashioned. It’s owned by two people I’ve actually met. Our inventory is computerized, sure, but it’s also internalized: 80 percent of the books in the store have actually passed through my hands, so I have the formidable ninja skill of usually being able to walk right up to the book a patron wants, even when they only remember part of the title. (Sometimes none of. Sometimes the color is enough. Or, “Oh, it’s that book about that girl who did that thing.”) The bookstore’s two main foci are contemporary ﬁction and children’s books. As the resident classicist, I’ve corrected gaps in our backlist (not a Gulliver’s Travels to be found when I started in March 2008. Ouch.) Last summer, we launched a new program, the Watermark Challenge, featuring mini-lectures and moral support to readers seeking out more strenuous fare. We started with that intimidating granddaddy of should-read-that tomes, War and Peace, in the beautifully rendered, magniﬁcently jacketed new Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky translation. Fifty people showed up at the ﬁrst meeting, and we sold about 100 copies total (making us, I suspect, the only bookstore in America whose Tolstoy sales 23 for last year rivaled their Stephenie Meyer trafﬁc). Having written my senior paper on Tolstoy’s theory of history, I got to lead a lively discussion on why he mucked up such a good story with all that dry philosophical stuff and that dratted locomotive metaphor. Subsequent challenges: The Aeneid, Moby-Dick, and next summer, Proust, which I’ll deﬁnitely have to get in on. It’s not just the bookstore itself that I love: there’s the in-house café, famous for tomato bisque with healing powers, homemade focaccia, addictive cupcakes, and sandwiches with literary names (although some of the connections are tenuous—“Moby Dick” is tuna salad, of course, but why is my favorite pesto-and-portobello “The Odyssey”?) Every month, they rotate recipes from a featured cookbook: Black Forest cookies from Baked: New Frontiers in Baking (Matt Lewis & Renato Poliaﬁto), a jasmine-essenceinfused poundcake from The Spice Merchant’s Daughter (Christina Arokiasamy). Oh, and mint chocolate chip milkshakes in December. Most of all, what Watermark has to offer that no corporate-led, cookie-cutter megastore can rival is its connection to the community, past and present. It’s in the heart of a neighborhood called College Hill, ﬁrst laid out in the 1880s, with shady, tree-lined streets (a rarity on the prairie) and the kind of brick houses that real estate agents describe as “quaint.” In the same square mile, a pedestrian (and there still are pedestrians in College Hill) can ﬁnd the Wichita Historical Museum, Wichita Community Theater, and the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Allan Lambe House. For large events, such as chirpy/laconic National Public Radio commentator Sarah Vowell’s visit last September, we partner with the Orpheum Theatre downtown, a lavish movie palace recently restored to its 1920s glory. Even Watermark’s location in the city’s oldest strip mall (dating from 1949, and currently housing nothing but locally owned businesses—a ﬂower shop, a shoe store, a diner, a barbershop), taps into Wichita’s history. On a smaller scale, Watermark is very much a local meeting place. It’s a prime lunch spot, near downtown and Wichita’s largest high school. Over the holidays, bookstore and café alike overﬂow with families and college kids home on break. Besides the store’s several “ofﬁcial” book clubs (chick-lit, classics, works in translation, French, Spanish, a group that reads Elizabethan drama out loud), many more meet in the café or one of the downstairs meeting rooms, which also host school groups, bridal showers, political discussions, and the Kansas Paranormal Researchers Guild. And we’re the only place in town that carries the daily New York Times—which does make Wichita sound terribly provincial, I’m afraid—and there are a dozen folks who pick it up every day without fail. Watermark Books, more than just being a place to buy bound paper, gathers together the things I love best about my hometown. On an ordinary day, I can call more than half of my customers by name, remember what they’ve bought—and they remember what The in-house café at Watermark Books features bisque with healing powers. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } �24 {books} I’ve sold them, what I’ve read recently, what we’ve both liked, and where we’ve differed. It’s this human factor that’s kept Watermark open since 1977 and keeps it thriving today in an Amazon.com world. Anybody can sell you the one book you want. We can ﬁnd the one you didn’t know you wanted. maps an elegy for nations that are no more than an early prototype of the world of today. There you ﬁnd a bloated version of the present-day Federal Republic of Germany called Prussie, the empires of China and Russia, a sliver of land marked Mesopotamie. A previous owner circled the names of towns up and down the Mississippi. I often wonder whether she The Haunted Bookstores of Paris reached them. Regarding new books, any given quartier has several indeby Jennifer A. Donnelly (A96) pendent bookstores, with neat copies of Roland Barthes’ mythologies and King Babar’s adventures arranged in their lthough a resident of Paris for nearly a decade, I polished windows like chocolate éclairs at the pastry shop. The still feel haunted by the achievements of the French government regulates the price of new books, so bigthinkers who, at some time or another, have called box chains and two-for-one markdowns are uncommon, but this city home. René Descartes, Blaise Pascal, when you just want to browse, a librairiste is much less likely to Molière and Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and effuse chagrin than a salesgirl at the guillotined Antoine Yves Saint Laurent. Lavoisier, are all buried here. While these French instituWhat they left behind when they tions have charm, a foreigner departed, apart from bones, Annapolis Bookstore Manager Robin Dunn has spent 19 like me also wants books in my bronze memorial plaques, and years as a bookseller (and 15 in publishing). Here’s his guide langue maternelle. Paris has a unpaid bills, were their books, to some of the best in the trade: half-dozen or so Englishmusical scores, theater pieces, language bookstores, each with and even the occasional federal Boulder Bookstore, Boulder, Colo. “They have an a distinct character. The elegant constitution. The bookseller incredibly broad selection of books and a well-trained staff.” Galignani purports to be “the helps us communicate with their The Tattered Cover, Denver (three stores) “In addition to ﬁrst English bookshop estabghosts. And these mediums are being a great bookstore, the Tattered Cover is at the forelished on the continent,” ultieverywhere. front of the intellectual freedom movement, and they give mately tracing its origins to the The ﬁrst place you notice back to the community.” 16th century. The Village Voice, them is the river that bisects the Powell’s City of Books, Portland, Ore. “So big, the founded by a solitary Frenchcity. Both banks are lined with departments are decorated in different, vivid colors so you woman, admirably wrestles know where you are.. Used books are shelved right alongside metal boxes holding used books, against English chain W.H. the newer volumes.” magazines, and prints, tended by Smith for readings from bestbouquinistes who withstand the Sam Weller’s Bookstore, Salt Lake City “Amazing, selling authors. The San Franfamily-owned bookstore stuffed full of new, used, and rare incessant drizzle in the service cisco Book Company gives intitles. They know their books here!” of literature (or at least of print store credit for used books. The media). At the numerous The Strand, New York City “Eighteen miles of books in a mere name of The Red Wheellabyrinthine building, a good place to buy new books at low broquantes—a blend of antiques barrow evokes poetry. prices.” shops and rummage sales—a few Then there is Shakespeare & Euro coins and some patience Elliott Bay Book Co., Seattle “In an elegant building in Company. Founded by AmerPioneer Square, very peaceful, but with lots of readings and might reward the bookhound ican George Whitman in 1951, other events going on all the time.” with a ﬁrst-edition, leatherit copped its name from the City Lights, San Francisco “You have to go for the lore, of bound tome from centuries past, and bookshop legendary course, but it’s the best place if you’re looking for literature pages splashed with red wine and and poetry. I always ﬁnd something I didn’t expect.” lending library run during the underscored with the pencil of heady interwar years by another Seminary Co-op Books, Chicago “It’s in a basement of some unknowable stranger. expatriate, Sylvia Beach (who, the Chicago Theological Seminary in Hyde Park, and you’ll For me, the primary pleasure have to make your way around pipes, but it’s the closest in addition to supplying reading of these eclectic spots lies in thing to St. John’s you’ll ﬁnd anywhere. Absolutely packed; material for the likes of their capacity to surprise. The you may need to weave a web like Ariadne to ﬁnd your way Gertrude Stein and F. Scott printing press has enjoyed a out. A philosopher’s heaven.” Fitzgerald, published James long, storied history in France, The Regulator Bookshop, Durham, N.C. “It has a musty Joyce’s Ulysses after traditional and you never know what you smell without being moldy.” channels judged it obscene). might ﬁnd. I once bargained Politics & Prose, Washington, D.C. “The ﬂagship store The façade of the building, adamantly for a Géographie for books on current affairs and politics.” catty-corner to the Notre Dame, moderne from 1884, its yellowed A Best Among Booksellers { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } �25 elena luoto meister {books} bows out slightly; the timbers are smoothed with age. Outside, overﬂowing bookracks announce the place’s purpose. Inside, every conceivable nook has been put to use: walls are covered ﬂoor-to-ceiling with shelves, ladders, and rickety chairs at hand for scaling them. Doorways between rooms are fashioned into bookcases, although they are nearly unnavigably narrow. A display table is formed by the top of a rickety piano, whose keys still play, although the space between pedals and keyboard is ﬁlled with threadbare paperbacks. Planks have been nailed to the bottom side of the staircase, with old books piled on them. In various corners, readers sit sprawled upon dusty mattresses. At night, transient writers curl up on them to sleep, in exchange for a brief written biography and some help around the shop. While the case of the mattresses is unique to Shakespeare & Company, it says something broader about the essence of the English-language bookshops in Paris. They become a locus for the city’s community of Anglophones, expatriates of various countries as well as non-native speakers of the language. Nearly all organize readings, usually followed by wellattended apéros; some host informal critique groups of worksin-progress. These are also the places to get your New York Jennifer Donnelly senses the lasting presence of long-dead authors in the bookstores of Paris. Review of Books or to read calls for submissions from literary journals and offers of language exchanges. Over the years, the bookshops and their activities have enabled me to meet a number of renowned authors as well as make many revered friends. Which is one of the reasons that, while in France, I rarely order from Amazon. It’s not just because La Poste is unreliable (although it is) or that fees for international shipping are exorbitant (they are). Booksellers abroad, whether of the local language or your native tongue, offer the traveler discovery, sometimes refuge, and almost always a pleasant diversion. And, like all bookstores everywhere, they form a link between the authors whose earthly remains lie in catacombs and crypts, or one day will, while their words live on in consciousness and conversation. x { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } �26 { A l u m n i Vo i c e s } A Townie Goes to College In the Midst of a Depression, Life Was Good at St. John’s by Jack Owens (Class of 1937) students, and the professors were well suited for their job. My graduating class contained 75 students. Early in freshman year, we were required to attend a lecture on mental and physical health, with emphasis on social diseases. Dr. Murphy from the Naval Academy told us about the problems encountered by young people from 16 to 24 as they adjust to becoming adults. During my years, three students died: one in his auto and two by suicide. One of them I knew well. He shot himself in his room. I think the college was struggling with the Depression, as everyone was. I believe the presidents took the job for prestige as well as a hope to help the college. One of the The front walk of the Annapolis campus in 1933, when Jack three presidents in my Owens was a freshman. four years was Amos W. W. Woodcock. He had alcohol don’t have worms.” President just left his job in Washington as head Woodcock said, “That’s right. People who of prohibition enforcement, sponsored drink die.” by the Women’s Christian Temperance President Douglas Gordon had a nice Union (WCTU), because the amendment motto that most remember: When you was abolished. He was not popular on campus. At one of graduate from St. John’s, you will be “a gentleman and a scholar.” the student assemblies in the Great Hall, My four years were an important phase he gave a lecture on the sins of drinking of my life. I became more skilled in my alcohol. He placed two glasses on the social abilities. I found that I could succeed lectern, one with water and the other with in the real world, as I had good basic alcohol. He dropped a worm in the water knowledge in many subjects and had and the worm wiggled. Then he put it in learned how to do the research you need to the alcohol and the worm died. He asked solve a puzzling problem. the assembly what this demonstration My freshman year was the last of the proved. One of the boys in my aisle said in a hazing. One day a sophomore asked if I was hushed voice, “It proves people who drink greenfield library T he Depression was full blown in 1933. I had just graduated from Annapolis High School and needed to go to college, but I did not have the $300 for tuition at St. John’s. Annapolis was relatively sheltered from the economic realities because the largest employer was the Naval Academy. But the tenor of the times was displayed to me when a friend and I hitchhiked from Annapolis to New York City. We were 15. We stayed at the YMCA and ate at a cafeteria. There I sat next to a nice-looking man of about 50, who was poorly dressed. He had ordered a coffee for about ﬁve cents. He drank a little and then he poured the whole sugar shaker’s contents into the drink for food. We had moved from Annapolis to a small house in Eastport on Spa Creek. My mother died in the inﬂuenza epidemic when I was about three years old, and my father had prostate cancer. The only way I could go to college was by scholarship. The state of Maryland offered each county a fund for tuition to St. John’s. I took the test and succeeded. I later discovered that about ﬁve percent of the Johnnies also had this scholarship from their own counties. Annapolis was called “Crab Town” because so many ﬁshermen unloaded their catch at the City Dock, to ship from there to Baltimore. The bay was a veritable protein factory because of the water’s bounty. The clear spring water of Spa Creek was full of healthy seaweed, crabs, and small ﬁsh. I often caught our dinner from my little boat, dipping for soft-shell crabs. My worldly knowledge was limited, and I was happy to go to St. John’s to knock heads with young men from all over the East Coast. To reach my earliest class at 8 a.m., I rowed across the creek for ﬁve minutes and walked about 10 minutes. St. John’s was a good, typical liberal arts college with about 350 students. I took the regular classes my ﬁrst year: math, English, history, chemistry, and physics. The classes were small, never more than 20 { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } �27 a freshman. I said yes. “Where is your strawberry box hat?” he demanded. “I don’t have one.” He said, “Get it and wear it.” I never found one. I guess I am a bit of an iconoclast. During a “shoot the cannon run” starting at the old Civil War cannon, the sophomores lined up with belts to swing at the freshmen as they ran toward the Liberty Tree. I was a fast runner, so I did play that game. The freshmen also had to learn the school songs. The best is “St. John’s Forever.” Another was for the football team, whose traditional rival was Johns Hopkins: St. Johnnies in town, Oh Hopkins, they are all around. They will run around your ends, Gaining by tens. There is no use in playing Cause old St. John’s is in town. We had about six fraternities on campus where the brothers lived and a big dorm for freshmen and other students who did not want to join a frat. A student union on the ﬁrst ﬂoor of McDowell had a bookstore and also a pool table where the daily game was nickel nine ball. There was a small library and a nice gym for basketball, and of course McDowell for classes and administration. I knew I was missing much of the social life by living in town, and the food at home was mainly from a can. So I worked hard to ﬁnd more aid to pay for room and board. I raked leaves under a federal program. I set up the lab in physics. I did a little tutoring and got paid a little money. That did the trick; I moved to the frat house. All day we dressed much like preppies, but in the dining room a jacket was the mode. I recall the ﬁrst day of the philosophy course. The professor entered the room smelling a little ﬂower, not saying a word. Then he looked at the ﬂower and said, “Little ﬂower, as I look at thee and smell thee, I wonder what the world and thee are all about.” Sitting down, he said, “That’s what this course is about.” We students looked at each other and gulped. Although it was not my favorite course, even now I can’t get these international words about life from my mind: Élan vital, ding an sich, and cogito ergo sum. In my senior year, I was the person who initiated the new frat pledges. The dictum greenfield library { A l u m n i Vo i c e s } Mr. Owens’ senior portrait from the 1937 Rat-Tat, the college yearbook. was from the Bible: “Vanitas, vanitatum, omnia vanitas,” with two long paragraphs in Latin. I told them my translation: “Don’t be vain like Narcissus, who liked his looks so much that he kept looking in a pond at himself, so Zeus turned him into a ﬂower.” College activities included the theatrical Colonial Players, a glee club, a social club, and enthusiastic intramural sports: softball, touch football, basketball, and track. The big sport teams were football, basketball, and of course lacrosse. Having played some lacrosse in town, I played four years as a Johnnie. During my junior year, the lacrosse team missed a train in New York City on our way to West Point to play Army, so we got to spend the night in the city. Coach said, “I am bed checking; be in bed by 10 o’clock.” A New Yorker on our team convinced four of us to go to the Roseland Ballroom to “brush up on our dance steps.” About ten girls were lined up for “Ten Cents a Dance.” You picked a girl, paid ten cents, and began the dance. After about three minutes, the girls said, “Okay, ten cents more.” We went for about 30 cents and then headed back to our room. While I was playing intramural basketball, the coach, Dutch Lentz, approached me to say, “Hey, Owens, how about joining the varsity? Some of my better players are ﬂunking.” So I joined the team as a sub. For a small college, we had an outstanding year in 1937. The University of Maryland had a good basketball team that year and we were the underdogs as we played them at their home. When we were six points ahead with ﬁve minutes to play, one of our men fouled out. Coach Lentz said, “Owens, go in the game. Don’t let your man score.” Well, my opponent was named King Kong Keller and he looked the part. His job was to intimidate us. He was a good athlete but I was good on defense, so I stayed with him all the way. When we won, he threw the ball at me. I walked away having learned, “Debate, but don’t argue.” It was the ﬁrst year of the national collegiate contest in basketball, and the Johnnies were selected to represent the state of Maryland. We played on a Saturday evening in Philly and got beat. Yet it was a good day anyway, because when we got home to the gym, the social club had transformed Iglehart into a dance hall for Tommy Dorsey’s Big Band. We were invited to join the dancers. In those days, the “Big Apple” was a popular college dance: four or ﬁve couples link arms in a circle and each dancer has a chance to “shine” in the center of the ring. I give kudos to the coaches. I never heard one coach raise his voice to blame a player for his game. In 1937, we were prepared to beat Hopkins in lacrosse and trained hard. We did beat them; I had a good scoring day. These four years stand out in my mind as some of the happiest days of my life, and I think I qualiﬁed for the college’s aim: “a gentleman and a scholar.” x St. John’s forever, Its fame shall never die. We’ll ﬁght for its colors And raise them to the sky. Mr. Owens in the 1970s. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } �28 {Biblioﬁle} Red Car by Sallie Bingham (SFGI93) Sarabande Books, 2008 The dozen stories in Sallie Bingham’s short story collection Red Car, set in locales from Colorado to Normandy, take a mature perspective. The narrator of “A Gift for Burning” tells an off-stage interviewer about her acclaimed novelist son who received little of his mother’s attention. In “Red Car,” the eponymous convertible is the only constant, while owners and marriages come and go. And in “The Shot Tower,” a young woman seemingly abandoned by her lover chooses to carry on without him. “The girl would always choose life,” Bingham writes in conclusion. Booklist said of her most recent work: “Bingham has been writing ﬁction for decades, and her newest short stories evince the tangy fruits of her labors in their graceful balance, reﬁned composition, telling details, and the probity of their emotions.” Born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, Bingham grew up in a complicated and powerful family, which owned The Louisville Times and The Courier-Journal. At 22, she published her ﬁrst novel, After Such Knowledge, in 1961. She has never stopped writing, even while rearing three sons and going through a divorce. Her themes include transgressions in affairs of the heart, dreams pursued and dreams unfulﬁlled, and family grievances. After her children were grown, Bingham moved to Santa Fe, where she came across a Excerpt: “Red Car” The wife rode in the car for the last time in March. She had eaten dinner with her husband in a restaurant they visited on the way back from the airport, on the way to the airport, and often in between, a lively little place with a bar overlooking the ocean. They both dreaded going back to the house. There’s a silence particular to the end of a marriage, when there are no words, not even any actions to convey the despair, the listlessness, of the approaching end; and the broad white bed in the big bedroom is no longer even a hope or a possibility but another item on an endless list of disappointments and regrets. brochure for St. John’s and realized that she had never read Plato. “For reasons that are mysterious to me, I missed reading a lot of the Western classics,” she says. As a Graduate Institute student, Bingham found “a lot of the discussions very worthwhile,” although the math and science requirements were a bit intimidating, she admits. (One of her stories, “Speaking Greek,” is based in part on an exchange in a GI seminar.) Bingham was exposed to Shakespeare at a young age and has always been fascinated by theater. Her ﬁrst play was produced in 1980, off-Broadway at the now-defunct American Place Theatre. Determined to help bring more plays written and produced by women to the stage, Bingham teamed up with the So when he said, “Shall we take a drive?” she thought it was a good idea, to put off that end. They drove out along the bay where the houseboats are snubbed up against the highway and the lights from the strip development waver in oily darkness. He pulled her in under his arm and drove with his left hand and she wondered why, once again, she was allowing him to drive her when he was drunk, and why, once again, their past seemed to have returned: the one-handed driver, the broad seat, the woman shivering in a light cotton dress under the heavy arm of a man to whom she appears, against all reason, to belong. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } theatre’s co-producer, Julia Miles. The Women’s Project and Productions, housed in a converted church, was offering in its heyday in the 1980s six or more plays a year, in addition to a variety of workshops. After she moved to Santa Fe, Bingham suggested to Martin Platt, then artistic director of New Mexico Repertoire Company, that they collaborate on a sustainable regional theatre. As founder and board member of Santa Fe Stages, Bingham helped produce original plays and brought in touring productions from across the country and abroad. Her championing of women writers also led her to establish the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture at Duke University two decades ago. Originally devoted to housing Bingham’s papers as well as those of other writers, the archives have broadened their mandate to include a variety of public and personal records. While feminism has been an ongoing theme in both Bingham’s life and work, Red Car reﬂects the clarity one can achieve with time and distance. “There’s a certain degree of wisdom as one goes on as a writer that makes it easier to pick the battles,” she notes. “Not every battle is worth ﬁghting.” — Deborah Spiegelman La Fontaine’s Complete Tales in Verse: An Illustrated and Annotated Translation by Randolph Runyon (A71) McFarland, 2009 Though Jean de La Fontaine’s Contes et nouvelles en vers were written more than 300 years ago, Randolph Runyon’s new book is the ﬁrst complete English translation. The book includes an extensive commentary and 69 illustrations including engravings by Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806) as well as others from littleknown 19th-century French editions. La Fontaine’s work is not meant for children. No tortoises, hares or foxes inhabit the poems. Instead they speak of husbands and wives, nuns and friars, lovers all ruled by the power of lust. The Tales are delicately sensual and yet, like Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, delightfully wicked. In 1675, at the request of Louis XIV, copies of the Tales were seized as it was claimed they contained indiscreet language and posed a threat to public morals. La Fontaine denounced them on his deathbed to win admittance to heaven, yet there are in �29 {Bibliofile} fact no unseemly words in the Tales. As Runyon writes in his introduction, “La Fontaine went to amusing lengths to suggest certain things without actually saying them, in verse that provides food for the mind as well as the senses.” A Great Idea at the Time: The Rise, Fall, and Curious Afterlife of the Great Books by Alex Beam Public Affairs, 2008 A number of the men central to the story of St. John’s College are major ﬁgures in Alex Beam’s book, A Great Idea at the Time: The Rise, Fall, and Curious Afterlife of the Great Books. Robert Hutchins, Mortimer Adler, Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan were all involved in an effort to bring great books to the general public beginning in 1952. Beam, a columnist for the Boston Globe, developed his idea to write about the Great Books movement after a reader of the paper asked him why a company called Liberal Arts, Inc., bought an estate in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, in 1947. The query led Beam to Barr and Buchanan’s attempt to establish a great books college in Stockbridge after leaving St. John’s. “Liberal Arts was such a strange name for an entity, so I started looking into it,” Beam says. From there, he discovered the Great Books Foundation and grew particularly interested in the development and marketing of The Great Books of the Western World, a 54-volume series featuring 443 works deemed the most important for educated people to read—or, at least have on their bookshelves. Apart from capturing a movement and describing an ambitious business venture, Beam enjoyed writing about “these largerthan-life characters.” He expresses great admiration for Robert Hutchins, but he’s hard on Mortimer Adler, whom he describes as Hutchins’ “brilliant, Hobbitlike sidekick.” “[Adler] was a complicated person, and he deserves much credit for this dramatic educational movement,” says Beam. “I admit that I had fun with him and made sport of him, but to be fair, I acknowledge his strange, egomaniacal brilliance.” “Tiny St. John’s College” earns a chapter in Beam’s book, in a section devoted to showing how the great books live on. Beam met Annapolis tutor Eva Brann (HA87) at a great books conference at Yale University and asked if he could visit her at the college. “She is the most articulate advocate of the St. John’s ideal,” Beam says. Beam claims to have written “the only unboring book written about the great books.” Widely reviewed, with stories in publications including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, the book has gained some attention for the college as a place where the classics are treasured— though it wasn’t Beam’s intention. “If I can get people thinking about and reading the great books, that’s a good thing,” he says. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } George Van Sant at Homecoming 2008 Taking on the Burden of History: Presuming to be a U. S. Marine by George Van Sant (class of 1947) Xlibris, 2008 George Van Sant, professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Mary Washington, has penned a lively memoir of his years in the United States Marine Corps. Van Sant interrupted his studies to enlist in the Marine Corps during World War II, but the war ended while he was still in boot camp. He served overseas in Pearl Harbor and North China, and after his discharge returned to St. John’s to ﬁnish his degree. Later, he went to ofﬁcer training school in Quantico and was a second lieutenant when he was sent to the Korean War, where he served from 1952 to 1953. After he ﬁnished his Korean service in 1953, he attended graduate school at University of Virginia, where he earned his master’s and doctoral degrees in philosophy. For much of his academic career, he remained active in the Marine Corps Reserve service. From the beginning of his military career, Van Sant wondered if he was cut out to be a Marine. That answer became clear: Van Sant was awarded the Meritorious Bronze Star for valor, for leading his platoon on a raid into the Chinese trench line. His military service, it turned out, “was the crowning achievement of my life,” he says. x �30 {Homecoming} AUTUMN REVEL S Games in the East, Balloons in the West Annapolis: September 26-28 Stationed at the Coffee Shop for Homecoming registration, Steve Thomas (SF74), vice president of the Alumni Association, noted that planning a fun weekend is an evolutionary process. Seminars are a must, but events for kids are becoming increasingly important. “This is a family-friendly event where the students take care of the kids,” Thomas said. “We even have junior seminars.” At a luncheon for members of the classes of the 1940s, where about 20 alumni dined with Christopher Nelson (SF70), Henry Robert (class of 1941) remembered Homecomings “when we were still having football games.” Anthony Hammond (class of 1947) traveled with his wife, Sylvia Hammond, from Dorset County, England. He attended St. John’s for just two years, Hammond noted, “but I’ve always had a certain afﬁnity for the college.” In the afternoon, Chris Denny (A93), assistant professor of theology and religious studies at St. John’s University in New York, was still talking about the morning’s seminar on the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” “I will never teach it the same way again,” he said. “In a St. John’s seminar people are committed to discovering the ways in which a text uncovers truth.” Ever the rebels, alumni from the 1960s talked politics and justice with tutors emeriti Sam Kutler (class of 1954) and Larry Berns (H00). Sharon Wallace (class of 1964) recalled how she and classmates registered voters and took part in sit-ins. After she graduated, Wallace said, she “pursued the question ‘what is justice?’ at the Justice Department.” Blakely Mechau (class of 1958) mused about the changes women brought to St. John’s. “I was in the ﬁrst class in which women were in every classroom. We went into the Ivory Tower in our plaid skirts and cashmere sweaters, ready. Today in a seminar on Locke with tutor Chester Burke (A74) we raised the question, ‘Is knowledge possible?’ It was ﬁtting.” photos by gary pierpoint Above (clockwise from top right): Temple Iglehart, transformed; Award of Merit recipient Henry Higman (class of 1948); Annapolis alumni play “Wits & Wagers.” Opposite page: Top right, Mikiko Duvoisin, daughter of Santa Fe tutor Jacques Duvoisin (A80), shows off her artwork; Honorary Alumni Howard Fisher (l.) and Kent Taylor; Khin Khin Guyot Brock (SF88) and her husband, Kevin (SF90); Award of Merit recipient Dr. Norman Levan (SFGI74) { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } �{Homecoming} Honors, Honorary Alumni Santa Fe: October 11-13 For those really early risers, Homecoming festivities in Santa Fe began before dawn on Friday, October 10, when a group of alumni boarded vans at 4:30 a.m. to attend the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta. Shifting Homecoming later in the fall allowed alumni to enjoy one of New Mexico’s most popular events. Most alumni, however, chose a more leisurely start to the weekend. They registered in the afternoon (a new computer system moved people through smoothly), attended the welcome reception in the Lower Common Room, then met up with their classmates at the various receptions hosted before the 8 p.m. lecture by Elaine Scarry of Harvard University. After the lecture, there were movies on the grassy knoll outside Weigle Hall: the very campy St. John’s Story, along with the critically acclaimed The Tao of Steve, written by Duncan North (SF87). Saturday’s seminars were lively and well attended, especially the class of 1983’s King Lear seminar (led by tutor Phil LeCuyer) and the class of 2003’s Flannery O’Connor seminar (led by tutor Matt Davis). Wild weather—including a hail storm—brought the Fiesta Picnic, scheduled to be held on the Soccer Field, into the dining hall. Saturday night provided yet more opportunities for socializing: a lecture and book signing by Sallie Bingham (SFGI93), the All-Alumni Art Show reception, and a banquet and dance. x Each year, the Alumni Association welcomes honorary alumni into the fold and recognizes the achievement of St. John’s alumni: In Santa Fe, two long-serving tutors became 2008 Honorary Alumni of the college: Kent H. Taylor served the college as a tutor for more than 30 years. He contributed to the growth of the Santa Fe campus almost since its inception. Howard Fisher was a vibrant part of the St. John’s community on both campuses for more than 45 years. He began his career at the college in 1965 in Annapolis and moved to the Western campus in 2006. Santa Fe alumni also honor the achievement of two of their own: George Forest Bingham (SF68) earned a law degree from the University of New Mexico and has since practiced law in his home state of New Mexico as well as in Washington, D.C. He has served as a member of the Board of Visitors and Governors since 1994 and as a member of the St. John’s College Alumni Association Board. Dr. Norman E. Levan (SFGI74) is professor emeritus and former chief of dermatology at his alma mater, the University of Southern California School of Medicine. He enjoyed a long and distinguished career in medicine, including establishing the Hansen’s Disease Clinic at the Los Angeles County/USC Medical Center. In 2006, he made a $5 million gift to the capital campaign to build a graduate center on the campus. Construction begins this spring on the Betty and Norman Levan Hall. In Annapolis, the association granted one Honorary Alumnus award, posthumously, to Christopher G. Colby, who joined the college’s Print Shop in 1977 and served as manager until his death on March 27, 2008. Mr. Colby will be remembered as a gentle, kind, and hard-working colleague, as well as a friend to many. His daughter, Yve, accepted the award for her father. At the Saturday banquet, two alumni were honored with the Award of Merit: Dr. Henry Higman (class of 1948), who enjoyed a long and successful career as a neurologist and medical school professor; and Peter McGhee (class of 1955), who rose to Vice President for National Programming at WGBH in Boston, where he guided the development of notable PBS programs including NOVA, American Experience, and Frontline. x { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } 31 �32 {Alumni Profile} The Boss Whisperer Laura Crawshaw (SF75) Tames Difﬁcult Supervisors by Anna Perleberg (SF02) he Boss from Hell is a cinematic staple, from goofy Michael Scott in The Ofﬁce to the ruthless chief in Glengarry Glen Ross. And there are all too many real-world analogues. How to deal? Search for “bad bosses” on Amazon and you’ll get a slew of how-to manuals (and a voodoo doll) for surviving what one author calls “dysfunctional, disrespectful, dishonest little dictators.” But Laura Crawshaw (SF75) takes issue with the labels: “The common myth is that these bosses are evil or crazy or both. Having coached them for 15 years, my experience is that that’s just not true.” Crawshaw is the world’s ﬁrst Boss Whisperer; while others have helped employees cope, Crawshaw works with the problem bosses themselves, opening their eyes to the distress their behaviors cause and gently retraining them to be more productive—often saving their jobs in the process. After graduating with her master’s in social work from Smith College in 1977, Crawshaw moved to Alaska to work with the state’s ﬁrst Employee Assistance Program (EAP). “There, I was, all sparkly-eyed,” she says, “and one day I had an emergency appointment. He was a typical Alaska roughneck—tractor cap, etc.—and looked embarrassed to be there. ‘I’m angry at my boss,’ he said. ‘He calls me names, he disrespects me.’ I asked him how angry. ‘I’m thinking about killing him.’” Crawshaw dutifully tried to determine how T serious the threat was: “‘Have you thought about how?’ I asked. ‘The gun’s in the car,’ he answered.” A stunned Crawshaw scurried down the hall to ask her supervisor what to do. “He said to ask him if we could have the gun,” she recalls. “So I did: the guy said yes, and he looked so relieved.” As the EAP collected guns in their safe, Crawshaw puzzled over how a boss could so stress a workplace that employees contemplated violence. Eventually, she was recruited as an executive in her company to direct their EAPs at the national and international level: “First, I learned the language of emotion” through her work in psychotherapy, “and then I learned and observed business.” This combined expertise led her to start her own ﬁrm in 1995: Executive Insight Development Group, headquartered in Portland, Oregon. The group has since coached leaders in more than 40 Fortune 500 companies around the world. In 2005, Crawshaw earned a PhD in organizational behavior from the Fielding Graduate Institute. Recently, she’s written a guide called Taming the Abrasive Manager: Ending Unnecessary Roughness in the Workplace (Jossey-Bass, 2007). Though Crawshaw left St. John’s for Smith College after two years, her time at the Montaigne would have made a great executive coach “His insight on the power gained through conversational humility stands the test of time,” says Crawshaw. “I’ve shared his thoughts with many of my clients, and to see one abandon dialectical bullying with the simple words ‘I am wrong’ is a powerful moment— that moment where inﬂuence is gained by relinquishing the imperative for “rightness.” Consider this passage from “On the Art of Conversation”: Contradictions of opinion, therefore, neither offend nor estrange me: they only arouse and exercise my mind. We run away from correction; we ought to court it and expose ourselves to it, especially when it comes in that shape of discussion…Each time we meet with opposition, we consider not whether it is just, but how, wrongly or rightly, we can rebut it. Instead of opening our arms to it, we greet it with our claws…I like expression to be bold, and men to say what they think…It is however, difﬁcult to induce men of my time to do this; they have not the courage to correct because they have not the courage to stand correction: and they never speak frankly in one another’s presence. x { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } As an executive coach, Laura Crawshaw combines the language of emotion with an understanding of business. college greatly inﬂuenced her work. The Boss Whispering method is inspired by three great thinkers: Socrates, Darwin, and Freud. Socratic questioning helps her coax comprehension from oblivious managers without simply telling them to “be nice.” She describes sorting through theories with a client who complained that his requests for ideas were only met with silence: at ﬁrst, asked why he thought this happened, he declared his employees must be lazy or stupid. Pressed for another option, he admitted, “I’ve been told I can be kind of critical.” Crawshaw suggested he test this notion by rewarding any response at all. At their next session, the overjoyed CEO cried, “I did what you said, and they started talking!” Darwin and Freud provide Crawshaw with a frame of reference for why abrasive bosses develop and a crucial strategy they need to change their ways. “Businesspeople understand the language of ‘survival of the ﬁttest,’” says Crawshaw, reeling off workplace idioms couched in animal terms: rat race, top dog, “it’s a jungle out there.” Freud later expanded Darwin’s ideas about natural selection to psychological survival: when faced with an emotional threat, individuals resort to defense mechanisms, less literal “ﬁght or ﬂight” reactions. The aforementioned CEO, for example fought; the employees who clammed up ﬂed. Identifying these responses in themselves and others can help a boss avoid eliciting them. Lately, Crawshaw has moved from coaching clients to training others in her method: she envisions a legacy of Boss Whisperers enlightening, soothing and taming unwittingly difﬁcult supervisors. “I’m in love with my work,” says Crawshaw. “My mission is to end suffering in the workplace.” x �33 {Alumni Notes} 1937 HAROLD BROOKS and Margie, his wife of 40 years, celebrated their 41st wedding anniversary in November at their home in sunny Sebastian, Fla. “Most of our courting days and nights were spent at St. John’s,” Harold writes. 1945 DONALD KAPLAN is still involved in ﬁnancial planning in Walnut Creek, Calif. He welcomes hearing from any classmates of the war and post-war years at dk2301@msn.com. 1949 ALLAN HOFFMAN has a message to all the members of the Class of 1949 and those who attended St. John’s in the years 1945 through 1949: “This fall in Annapolis we will be celebrating the 60th reunion of the Class of 1949. We were the last class to have both ‘Winkie’ Barr and Scott Buchanan as our president and dean. Our numbers were small then and due to the passage of time less now. This in all probability will be the last possible quinquennial reunion for those precious few of us left. Let’s all try to make this 60th a memorable occasion. I am sure Scott and Winkie would want it to be so. Mark the dates on your calendar now. I look forward to being with you in Annapolis one more time.” ALLEN JACKSON, the third generation to attend St. John’s, passed along some family lore concerning athletics at St. John’s, particularly the 1905 football game in which St. John’s beat Navy 104-0. “The game was never completed because of a brawl in the fourth quarter, including players tossing each other into College Creek, so Navy never recorded the event,” says Jackson, whose grandfather may have played for the Johnnies. In a more modern development, Jackson was recognized for his work in founding the Fuel Fund in Maryland. The Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. presented its annual Humanitarian Award to Jackson, who played a major role in establishing the Anne Arundel County Fuel Fund in November 1979. He was also acknowledged for creating the Fuel Fund Envelope Campaign in February 1980. As chairman of the Anne Arundel County Economic Committee, Jackson penned a letter asking for BG&E customers to contribute one dollar to help families with their energy bills. His appeal was included with BG&E’s utility bills and raised $13,000. BG&E matched the contributions dollar for dollar. This program swept across the country. We have a promising little St. John’s reading group here in Ashland, Ore. We have been studying women—reading Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina. We are taking this inquiry to a more abstract level now with a reading of Don Quixote. Best of all, I’m still alive! But I say this with a hasty knock on wood!” HUGH MERCER CURTLER retired from teaching philosophy and humanities (great books) at Southwest Minnesota State University in 2005 and is enjoying his retirement immensely: “I now have time to read the many books on my ‘todo’ list (mostly histories), writing when I can, and working on my golf game. I was talked into putting together a web page in an attempt to attract possible agents or publishers to my latest (of 11) books. But it hasn’t happened. Those who are curious (or bored) might check out the website (www.hughcurtler.com) where they will ﬁnd, among other things, my e-mail address. I would love to hear from old classmates and friends.” 1958 MICHAEL SANFORD has retired from his 10 years as a part-time classical DJ and news man on public radio, but he’s still doing construction work: “I’m putting ﬁnishing details on the house I built, and I’m remodeling an outbuilding into a guest house. 1959 LORNA CAHALL recently published The Actor King, “a tale born during the angst we all suffered during the late Bush reign. I wondered how we can keep our souls during such a time About the Robots AREA JENNESS (HIMELGRIN, SF78) is having fun building 15-pound combat robots with her high school pre-engineering students at Tucson High Magnet School. She lives with her husband of 22 years, Doug, and 8-yearold son, Daniel, in Catalina, Ariz. “Everything I learned in the lab classes at St. John’s gets put into our robots!” she says. x M { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } and I decided that, whereas some turned to religion, I preferred the mimetic arts—possibly an alternative religion—but very intriguing. And, how much worse to be trying to keep your souls under the Romans. So I spent those years chasing my characters Tullius, Mercurius, Lucia, Kepi and their adventurous troupe as they survived the 2nd century. Other than that, Dick and I are living peacefully in Bend, Ore., and staying out of trouble. Dick is playing the banjo, working with SMART and trying to teach 10year-olds to program Lego robots.” 1962 “If Sarah Palin can think of 2012 already, then so can the class of 1962,” declares DAVID BENFIELD. “This will be our 50th and the success of our 45th suggests that we should plan for it carefully. An election will be only a few weeks in the future and hotel and travel reservations will be scarce. In the summer of 2010 we can have an online conference session and work out details to help involve everyone in the class.” 1964 JULIE WIGGENHORN WINSLETT has discovered that “life isn’t over at 65. I never expected to have a second career this late in life, but it has happened, and I love it. I began by teaching English as a Second Language to adults for a technical college near here a few years ago. That was so much fun that I applied for, and got, a position at a local university. It’s also The Military College of Georgia, and I teach English there (my degrees are in cont. on page 34 �34 {Alumni Notes} English). The kids (about 12 percent are cadets) are really great, although very different from what I remember we were like in the sixties. They’re not very idealistic and are politically conservative for the most part. Reading is not something they pursue with gusto. They’re into their cell phones and iPods— completely plugged into an electronic world. So there are challenges that we instructors face that our tutors and professors didn’t have to face. But it’s a great job, and I hope to do it forever. My husband, who is a nature photographer, and I collaborated on a book called Wildﬂowers of Stone Mountain and I edited a second book entitled Stone Mountain: A Walk in the Park. I am currently writing a mystery set in the high desert of the Southwest (near Taos) called Murder-off-the-Grid. It’s slow going because I have to squeeze it in during those brief moments when I’m not grading papers. But writing a novel is a magical experience and another thing that I never thought I’d do.” 1966 IAN HARRIS just returned from a three-month trip to Sri Lanka, where he keynoted a conference on adult peace education, from Italy where he spoke at both the University of Florence and Pisa, and Spain where taught a master’s course in peace and development. From France, CONNIE LINDGREEN reports: “Sitting by a roaring and much-needed ﬁre (double-glazed windows not yet installed), I just ﬁnished the LORNA CAHALL (Class of 1959) novel, The Actor King, which is a funny mix of scholarship and adventure in Hadrian’s time. Then the Skype ‘phone’ rang and it was MEL KLINE (A66), so I feel quite ‘book-ended’ by St. John’s. With the wonders of webcam, I showed both Mel and later my sister, SARAH (A67), the progress on our construction. There are walls going up! Reading Masters and Commanders, about WW II’s leadership: Churchill, FDR, Brooke, Marshall, and continuing to follow the Obama (hooray!) presidency in both Le Figaro and the International Herald Tribune. Scarlatti, Chopin, and Schubert keep my ﬁngers from atrophying totally, although I’m making quite a hash of their wonderful music. Sigh. My French is improving; I was able to tell one of Elliott Zuckerman’s funny stories to my piano teacher. Tutoring a young boy in English. Baking scones and making tea. Otherwise, like everyone...waiting for spring!” SYLVIA SHAPIRO is still living in Mexico, south of Guadalajara, on Mexico’s largest lake, enjoying retirement in Paradise. “Unfortunately,” she writes, my “husband died on October 1, 2008, which has left a large hole in my life. I am busy running a large book exchange in a local restaurant (commonly described as the best in Lakeside) and maintaining the book section of a local non-proﬁt thrift shop. My dad, age 92, is still working as a lawyer and driving to work every day, so I am looking forward to a long and happy life, although I do miss Northern California.” 1967 CLARK LOBENSTINE writes: “The InterFaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington, which I have been privileged to serve as executive director for nearly 30 years, has just moved to The Gate House, 100 Alleson St., NW, Washington, D.C. 20011. My wife, Rev. Carole Crumley, continues to be senior program director of The Shalom Institute for Spiritual Formation. She has also started as the interim director of Washington National Cathedral’s Center for Prayer and Pilgrimage on a very part-time basis. She started that center while on the Cathedral staff for 15 years.” 1968 TOM KEENS (SF) was elected chair of the California Sudden Infant Death Syndrome Advisory Council. This nine-member council advises the California Department of Public Health on issues related to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) services to families, public education, and research in California. He has already embarked on an A Johnnie Abroad AMES F.X. O’GARA (A88) just returned from a year with the State Department in Iraq’s Wasit province, where he advised the governor and provincial legislature, enlarged the U.S. Government’s knowledge of and contact with Shia religious party leaders, spoke daily with his 7-year-old daughter, Nancy, via satellite phone, and otherwise carried on in a manner beﬁtting a St. Johnnie abroad. He can be reached at jfxogara@hotmail.com but notes that his Facebook contacts have expanded exponentially since connecting with ROBERT GEORGE (A86). J { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } ambitious program to try to establish uniformity in the diagnosis of babies dying suddenly, to determine the impact of different diagnoses on parent grief and recovery, to continue the fall in numbers of babies dying from SIDS through public health intervention, and to improve communication on Council actions with the California SIDS Community. He is a Professor of Pediatrics, Physiology and Biophysics at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, and member of the Division of Pediatric Pulmonology at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles. CHARLIE WATSON (A) writes with news of his children. His eldest, Ivan, is moving from NPR to CNN International as a reporter based in Istanbul. “Won’t be hearing him on the way to and from work or on All Things Considered anymore,” he says. His middle son, Misha, is living and working in Mystic, Conn. as a master carpenter and is currently participating in halfday cycling trips or ﬁve-mile swims. His daughter, Anya, is ﬁnishing a master’s degree in marine sciences with prolonged work with Dr. Roger Hanlon at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratories, studying the natural camouﬂage methods of groupers. She is also an enthusiastic cyclist and will be participating in a charity ride, the PanMassachusetts Challenge, a bike ride across Massachusetts in efforts to raise funds for cancer research. He adds, “Masha and I regret to say we haven’t been to Annapolis recently, despite close ties to the area, Baltimore and Washington. Masha has been actively working on behalf of the rehabilitation center at our city’s hospital and keeping track of everyone else in our family, including a 94-year-old mother. I’m still pretty busy in practice and trying to help administer a busy anesthesia department. A �35 {Alumni Notes} recent favorite activity (in addition to reading mind-rot ﬁction) is learning ultra-sound guided pain-relieving nerve/plexus blocks. My most unfavorite is watching my retirement monies diminish as the prospect of traveling more in the near future grows more remote.” 1969 JIM BARTRAM (A) says “hello” to all his classmates from the 1960s. “I am now disabled—Alzheimer’s at 61. I’m still able to make my beloved recorders, but probably not for long. I’m still very high functioning, and should be for some time.” BILL LANG (A) has retired from the Rare Book department of the Free Library of Philadelphia in 2006, after 30 “very happy” years at the library. Lately he has been working part time for the library’s development department; starting a small business giving swimming instruction, mostly to triathletes; working with disabled swimmers through the Pennsylvania Center for Adapted Sports; and helping to carry his wife’s harpsichord wherever she needs it to go. “I will be happy to hear from anyone from St. John’s, about swimming or anything else.” 1970 ANDREW GARRISON (A) has suspended his teaching career at Miami University to expand his psychology practice to full time. His son Jesse is making movies in New York. “I have just received page proofs (some 750 pages worth) of my new English translation of Henri de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, Volume 3: The Four Senses of Scripture. It is being published in Grand Rapids, Michigan by Wm. B. Eerdmans and in Edinburgh by T. & T. Clark. This is the third volume of four. It should appear this spring,” writes E. M. MACIEROWSKI (A). 1971 MAGGIE JACOBS (SF) writes: “My husband, Bob, is happily retired and spends a lot of time ﬁshing. Son Daniel is starting his second year at Willamette in Oregon. I am upgrading my skills and getting into web programming. I’ve also taken up knitting and am studying Hebrew. Life is good!” SARAH SARAI (GANCHER, SF) has recently published poems in The Mississippi Review, Big City Lit, Ghoti and other journals; ﬁction in Storyglossia. Check www.myspace.com/sarahsarai for links. 1973 ELLEN LEITNER (USNER) (SF) reports, “I’m still living in Chimayó, where my husband, Hans, and I raised our six children. The youngest, Rose, just left for Stanford this fall. Our next youngest, Genevieve, is doing well studying classical guitar at North Carolina School of the Arts. She sometimes performs with her older sister Cecilia, soprano, who will get her Master of Music degree from Yale this May after a performance tour in China and Korea with the Schola Cantorum. In June and July she will perform under Helmut Rilling at the Oregon Bach Festival. Our other three children live close to home. Franz, an architect, designer and photographer, works in Santa Fe. Maria, her husband Danny, and son Kiran also live in SF, and they sell their organic produce and mushrooms at the farmer’s market. Johanna lives here in Chimayó with her husband, Jesse, and three sons, Jonah, 8, Jeremy, 6, and Julian, 4. My husband, Hans, is a general contractor, an Austrian trained in carpentry (www.leitner-construction.com). I’m planning my next concerts for ‘Enchantment Chamber Music.’ Mozart’s clarinet quintet, some violin/guitar duos featuring Duo Guadalupe (our staple), and other small ensembles are on the agenda, if the funds come through. I’m also teaching a violin class at Northern New Mexico College in Española. It’s a lot of fun, and I hope the new music program will grow and attract more students for other classes I will teach, such as chamber music and jazz violin. I’ve lost touch with most of my class, and would really like to hear from any of them! Contact me through my website: www.chavezdeleitner.com.” 1974 ROBIN MCCONWAY HISCOCK (A) writes: “I started in engineering consulting, worked for Howard County, then since 1985 have worked in consulting for the federal government. I’ve been with SRA since 1991, specializing in database and application development. I play mandolin (old time and Irish) and violin (Swedish). Our daughter, Meghan, is a sophomore at Kalamazoo College, Michigan, majoring in art and art history.” JON HUNNER (SF) will publish a biography of Robert Oppenheimer this fall with the University of Oklahoma Press. He continues to teach U.S. history and direct the Public History { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } Program at New Mexico State University. His son Harley graduated from Seattle University last fall and is on his way to Mauritania for the Peace Corps. TED WOLFF (A), principal of Wolff Landscape Architecture, has been appointed adjunct professor of Landscape Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. Wolff has been practicing landscape architecture in Chicago since 1979. In 1990, he launched his own ﬁrm. 1975 TINA BELL (A) shares news, mostly about her children: “Daughter Julia, an attorney who graduated from Boston University School of Law, has been married now for two years to Mattew Andrus, also an attorney and grad of BU Law, and the best son-in-law in the world. Timothy Bell graduated from Allegheny College with a major in writing (at which he is very, very good) in May 2008 and is looking forward to graduate school—doesn’t know exactly which one yet. Emily Margaret Bell graduated summa cum laude from the Boston University Professors Program (where she aced a graduate course in Plato taught by Mr. Stanely Rosen). Joseph Bell is in graduate school at Rutgers University and is studying social work. Their mother (me) plans to get a master’s in theology from Franciscan University at Steubenville, so she can teach.” G. KAY BISHOP (A) reports: “Have been unemployed for two years, four months, and counting. Send networking/job leads ASAP. Also accepting contributions of cash, jewelry, small, pawnable electronic devices, freeze-dried foodstuffs, fair-trade cacao beans, rare outof-print comic books, copper �36 {Alumni Profile} A Direct Line to the Center Darius Himes (SFGI00) Publishes Beautiful Books by Jenny Hanniﬁn D miriam romais books on photographer Mark arius Himes Klett and Canadian painter Otto credits his childDonald Rogers. Since then, hood in smallthey’ve published the work of town Iowa and a photographers Lee Friedlander, book-centric Julie Blackmon, and Debbie family with Fleming Caffery; sculptor John kindling his lifelong connection McCracken; and Southern Calito the printed word. “A playful fornia painters Charles Arnoldi childhood in the country and Ed Moses. A particularly contributed to a deep connection engaging book is being with the sensual, tactile world, published this spring on the and that directly translated into little-known food writing of an abiding love of the tactile photo-historian Beaumont nature of books and ink on Newhall (the ﬁrst director of the paper,” says Himes. Museum of Modern Art’s Added to that love of books was department of photography). a passion for photography, The inspiration for the name nurtured at Arizona State Univer“Radius” came from Himes’ sity, where Himes earned a bachtime at St. John’s. “The idea of elor’s degree in ﬁne arts. While the radius was always appealing attending the Graduate Institute, to me,” he says. “MetaphoriHimes worked part time at photocally, it represents a direct line eye Books, which was then primafrom the center to the rily a mail order photography periphery. Likewise, it leads bookstore. He spearheaded the from the outer world to the drive to turn the company’s 20inner.” year-old mail order catalog into a Like so many before him, nationally distributed magazine, A love of books and a passion for photography came together photo-eye Booklist, which in turn Himes learned of St. John’s from for Darius Himes with Radius Books. won national recognition and Mortimer Adler’s How to Read international attention. a Book. He credits his Graduate The subscription-based quarInstitute studies with teaching making decisions about what to publish, terly fed into photo-eye’s website and came him many things, but ranks two above all. Radius Books looks for projects that are about as Himes witnessed the proliferation First is the importance of approaching arresting, vital, exquisite, and readable, as of photography books and saw the need to texts—and by extension, individuals— well as artists who work passionately and intelligently canvas that terrain. “The without preconceived judgments. “An diligently on their art. photo-eye Booklist has been the equivalent unfettered search for truth, from whatever What makes the company different from of having a dear friend with more time source it may come, and being watchful for other publishers is a commitment to than I, and a broader perspective to point it, is very much a part of the St. John’s getting art books into the hands of those out treasures while their bindings are new Program and spirit,” says Himes. who might not normally be exposed to and the ink still fresh,” says Frish Brandt, Second is the unpredictability of them. Radius Books donates more than director of the Fraenkel Gallery in San seminar. “Regardless of which text we 200 copies of every title it produces to Francisco. read, by the end of the evening our various libraries and educational institutions Himes’ latest endeavor is Radius Books, understandings of the text had morphed, around the country. Nonproﬁt status deepened, and expanded in ways that were a nonproﬁt publishing company based in affords the company the ability to raise simply impossible to predict,” he explains. Santa Fe. Himes and the company’s three funds for programs like the library initia“There are always kernels of truth and partners—David Skolkin, David Chickey, tive, as well as ﬂexibility in working with common ground in any conversation, and and Joanna Hurley, all publishing profesartists and other institutions. Distributing searching those out is a rewarding process. sionals—work together to produce exquistitles through D.A.P. (Distributed Art I’m deeply interested in approaches to itely designed and printed art books. “We Publishers), the country’s premier art unity that can arise from the multiplicity all ﬁrmly believe that the visual arts are book distributor, means that each Radius around and within us.”x vital to the life of society and can educate Books title receives a wide audience. and uplift the soul,” says Himes. When Radius Books’ ﬁrst season included { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } �{Alumni Notes} mine stock and other gilt-edged securities. Do not send out-ofdate coupons, old CRT monitors, live plants, livestock (not even chickens), circus clowns, scented candles, or spare children. Might could use 500-600 bales of clean newspaper (pre-paid shipping only) to build Thoreau-style hut in woods, once I learn how to sew thatch, build a chimney, and lay a brick hearth. Will let y’all know.” KEVIN JOHNSON (SF) has several “dog legs” in his career path, but now seems to be steadily on track for a career in organizational development, a ﬁeld which integrates a background in psychology with his experience in the business world: “I live in Boston with my ﬁancée, Sonora Rose, a therapist and bodyworker. I work at Harvard Medical School and to use my tuition assistance beneﬁt have begun a two-year certiﬁcate program in executive coaching, where I hope to learn how to become a Tiresias to today’s Oedipuses. I occasionally lead seminars for my alumni group, last time on Dubois’ Souls of Black Folk, which I heartily recommend as a backdrop to our most recent regime change.” He welcomes contact from classmates. After 12 years in Florida, ALAN MCVAY (SF) and family have moved to the D.C. area. “My brother calls me a corporate gypsy, since company breakups, bankruptcy, and takeovers have caused me to move eight times in the last 25 years. I also travel all the time for work. It is good to be back in a place with a decent used bookstore, Indian food, and the brightness of fall leaves and spring blossoms. About the winter, well, that was dimly remembered, and mornings near zero degrees were a shock. I continue to practice kojosho and tai chi, but more often indoors.” His daughter is 15 now, so he’s thinking about colleges. “She doesn’t want to go to St. John’s–too much reading. That doesn’t narrow it down very much. Let’s just say she wants to do something creative.” ERIC SCIGLIANO (SF) has a new book coming out this March: Flotsametrics and the Floating World is his ﬁrst collaboration, with the oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer, and will be published by Smithsonian Books/HarperCollins. “After ﬁve years working in early childhood education (aka teaching preschool), I have returned to high-tech and work as a programmer and manager again,” writes BILL TORCASO (SF). “The ages may change, but immaturity is ever present. I married Kate Roper in the summer of 2007.” 1976 KATE LUFKIN DAY (A) sends greetings from snowy Syracuse: “BILL (SF82) and I sent Peter off to college this fall, and the closest he would go to the Program was Columbia. But he’s happy doing literature and humanities there, and Japanese; he hopes to study in Japan for his junior year. Meanwhile, his elder sister Helen is in her last semester at Wellesley. She’s done psychology and music, but her real triumph was leading her a capella group to a coveted recording session with Ben Folds this spring. Check her out on Ben Folds’ website singing “Annie Waits” with the Wellesley College Blue Notes. Bill is still teaching philosophy at Le Moyne College, where he has labored for years to support and strengthen the core program. His book of new essays on aspect seeing in Wittgenstein (which he is co-editing, a choice he doesn’t recommend) is ﬁnally complete and should be coming out some time this year. For my part, I am about to start a new job as Managing Chaplain at Crouse Hospital and am still rector of a tiny parish in the hinterland. DONNEL O’FLYNN (SF73) and JANET CHRISTHILF O’FLYNN (SF74) are colleagues in my diocese (which is still standing, unlike some Episcopal dioceses), and JANE HUDSON (A76, hero of the Nymphs from way back) is a buddy in Syracuse. She still leaves me in the dust. Oh, and I’m in touch with ERIC VATIKIOTIS BATESON (A73) and his wife and kids, with whom Bill and I formed a friendship teaching boarding school in the ’80s. (They live in Vancouver, B.C., now.) All the best to everyone trying to stay aﬂoat in our current economic climate. Friends can reach me at kblday@gmail.com.” 1977 DANA GOODE (SF, AGI91) made her conducting debut in January 2008 with the Londontowne Symphony. Daughter Evia is a Ben Carson Scholar and ambassador for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Please donate! 1979 DAVID WALD (SF), who lives just outside NYC, reports that he is going through shock, and soon withdrawal, as his 18-year-old daughter, Esther, prepares to head off to Oakland, Calif., in the fall to attend the California College of the Arts. He is consoling himself playing the drums in an arty sort of band. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } 37 He is also still enjoying making documentaries and news stories about education and related issues at nonproﬁt Learning Matters, Inc. The stories are regularly featured on PBS’s NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. His wife, Betsy, is very happily ensconced as the branch head of their local library in Maplewood, N.J., a block from their humble abode. He sends his greetings, best wishes, and hopes for positive change to all! BEN GOLDSTEIN (SF) and GINA IRONSIDE (SF80) send this news: Ben, Gina and young Ben spent the month of December in Colombia—visiting relatives and old haunts, luxuriating in the spectacular geography, culture, and climate, and—mostly— adopting their new son, Cristian. Cristian is one year younger than Ben, who is almost 14. Ben is still unschooling, and Cris is trying out sixth grade in middle school. Everyone except Gina is still playing soccer. Ben’s open-source web engineering company, End Point Corporation, continues to thrive. They’ve received a few resumes out of the woodwork from Johnnies applying for jobs. “Greetings to our old friends far and wide from both campuses.” MARIE TOLER RANEY (A) and JON RANEY (A74) reported on a recent vacation: “Our sailing trip to Hawaii was all that we wished, except that it ended. Jon and I (and our dog) had a marvelous month sail of 2,500 miles or so to Hilo from Washington state in August, then a couple of weeks sailing up the island chain. I then had to return by airplane due to schedule limitations (somebody has to work, just not clear just when I drew the short stick!) However CHUCK HURT (A79) joined Jon for the tumultuous return trip where they were either becalmed or battling 40-knot winds and 25-foot seas. �38 {Alumni Notes} Despite a ﬁnger tip squeezed off 1,000 miles from home in the middle of the ocean and an escort into Bamﬁeld, B.C., by the Canadian Coast Guard, they did get home safely. Now we can dream of doing the rest of the Paciﬁc in a couple of years. For more information on our voyage see www.svphoenix.net. Hope to see all our classmates at our reunion this fall.” 1981 STEVE and BETSY (MILLS) ACCIANI (SF) are still in upstate New York. Their four daughters are Emma, 21, who is a junior at Wagner College, Staten Island; Maria, recently accepted at St. John’s, Annapolis; Anna, 15, a high school freshman; and Alice, who is 11 and in ﬁfth grade. “We are delighted to be in contact with the following Johnnies: SANJAY POOVADAN (SF83), LIZ WALDNER (A85) who was recently published in the New Yorker, ROBIN SLONAGER (A78), JOEL WEINGARTEN (A82), ALLISON CARPER (SF77), and BRAD WRONSKI (SF82).” JOSEPH (SF) and ANNE-MARTINE MOORE (SF84) are living in Concord, Calif., with children and a neurotic dog. Writes Joseph: “Anne-Martine is on the staff of Diablo Valley School (DiabloValleySchool.org), a Sudbury model school attended by four of our ﬁve kids. As I’m sure anyone who knows her will be shocked to learn, she’s still knitting up a storm. (I got cool ﬁngerless gloves for Christmas— nice for holding a cold steering wheel.) She is also involved in weaving, stamping and other crafty-type stuff. I am in the philosophically difﬁcult position of personally proﬁting from complex tax laws that are occasioned by equipment ﬁnancing. I sell software that does the complicated ﬁnancial analysis for large companies. So, if we ever get a simple, clear tax code, which I theoretically favor, I’d be ﬁnancially sad. On a positive note, my efforts to learn the Well Tempered Clavier have progressed to the point where, at my current rate, if I simply live another 450 years or so, I’ll have the entire thing down cold.” JOE ROACH and BJ (SISSON) ROACH (both A) write: “We are becoming more and more a Johnnie family. Our older daughter, KATE, graduated with the St. John’s (Annapolis) class of 2004. And now, in just a few months, our younger daughter MOLLY will be graduating with the class of 2009. Our youngest, Nicholas, feels a little left out, but his time may come in a few years.” DANIEL VAN DOREN (A) has been the president of the New York City chapter for ﬁve years, and this is his last year. He has worked in real estate management since 1985 and lives in suburban New York with his family. “One of my sons is an avid birder and we traipse all over the Northeast looking for bird sightings. If you’ve got any ideas for good birding spots, let me know,” he writes. 1982 “I’m still on the rocky road to tenure and would love to hear from others who have gone through it,” writes PATTI D. NOGALES (A), from the Department of Philosophy at California State Univeristy, Sacramento. “Otherwise, my kids are ﬁne (except for becoming teenagers) and I am ﬁne (except for them becoming teenagers)!” Plugging Along ICHAEL RYAN (SF86) is plugging along in Albuquerque, running a business, raising a teenager, trying to balance work and outdoor activities. He started readings on the Civil War and World War II. (“Slowly working my way back to a Great Book!”) He also taught a semester of structure for the architecture program at UNM and referenced Euclid in the very ﬁrst class. “Unfortunately, he did not make a second appearance.” M 1983 MARK and CHRISTINE (A84) GOWDY-JAEHNIG have now been living in Decorah, Iowa, for more than four years. Mark is a partner in a four-doctor veterinary clinic and drives through a lot of beautiful countryside between farm calls. Christine is nearing completion of her Montessori preschool teacher’s certiﬁcation: “Beginning graduate studies 22 years after leaving St. John’s was a challenge, but a good one. I would love to hear from any other Johnnies who are also Montessorians. Our eldest child, Alexandra, graduated from Hamline University last spring and is now one of those partially employed theatre majors who inhabit the Twin Cities. We are delighted that our middle child, PHILLIPA, found her collegial home at our alma mater (a junior, she is very involved in intramural sports, like her mom!) We still have one child in the nest, and are anticipating three more years of high school sporting events, choir concerts, and speech meets.” 1984 ANDREW HYDE HRYNIEWCZ (A) has worn numerous hats since graduating: “After completing my Watson Fellowship (which { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } pretty much ruined me for conventional employment) I spent a number of years catering and building houses while attending social work school in Baltimore. Migrating from clinical social work to community organizing to (almost) Community Planning, I started a MArch program at UM College Park, ﬁnishing up at UC Berkeley and SFIA (an experimental architecture/ecological design program in San Francisco). I practiced architecture and lived in Berkeley from 1994-1999. I had my mid-life crisis early, spending 2000-02 studying, traveling, and remodeling friends’ houses in the U.S. and Europe. I returned to Florida in 2002 to help my mother die and settled here. I worked as a ﬁnancial assets manager until 2008 when the ‘new economy’ made my job vanish. Currently I’m starting an online magazine about (either) ‘really big ideas/ questions/answers’ or ‘brain candy for smart/curious people’ and trust that it will be solvent before I’m not.” TRACY MENDHAM (A) writes: “I had a joyful summer in 2008. I started a full-time job as a learning specialist at Franklin Pierce University, after seven years of adjuncting at Franklin Pierce and other colleges. I married my partner of 17 years, Dana Chenier, in a New Hampshire civil union. Finally, we adopted an Australian Shepherd puppy named Pearl later that �{Alumni Profile} 39 Not Just Fun and Games Dominic Crapuchettes (A97) Turns a Hobby into a Business by Sara Luell (A09) C ladi dell’aira design. “A lot of the skills that we omposer, dot-com learned at St. John’s: how to learn, programmer, sea how to assimilate information, and captain, teacher— how to communicate with other Dominic Crapuchettes people” are needed for success in (A97) has ventured business, says Crapuchettes. These down several career qualities encourage honesty in paths. But none has been as rewarding entrepreneurship—what a company as his current job: running a company will live or die by. In a market domithat produces the games he designs. nated by big-name companies, No, they’re not video games, but inventhese qualities have helped tive board games that get people to sit Crapuchettes become successful down, talk, play, and laugh together. quickly, along with his strong focus Growing up in southern California, and desire to make an impact on Crapuchettes was immersed in playing others. His excitement about games. Rather than watching TV, once games, especially games that get or twice a week his family played games people talking and laughing, is such as Scrabble and Monopoly. When infectious. Crapuchettes was four, his father North Star’s most popular game, started entering him in chess tournaWits & Wagers, “embodies the ments. By the age of seven, he was fundamentals of what we were designing his own games. One game learning at St. John’s,” (which he dubbed “Kabloogi”) was so Crapuchettes says. “It’s pretty popular among his eighth-grade friends obvious when you play the game that it was banned from his middle how the college inﬂuenced my school. Students had been playing it design.” Although Wits & Wagers during class. is a trivia game, knowing the right Game designing was put on hold answers isn’t the key to winning. when Crapuchettes enrolled in St. All the answers are numbers. After John’s. His creative energies were everyone estimates an answer to directed toward classical music compothe question, players make bets as sition, which he seriously considered as to which one is the closest to a career. He soon realized, however, Dominic Crapuchettes is betting on a future in board games. correct. “One of the skills, which is that the market for such work was a Johnnie skill, is to know the limited. “If I was going to devote my met Satish Pillalamarri, a former investboundaries of your knowledge,” says whole life to excelling at something, I ment analyst and Jeopardy! contestant. Crapuchettes, allowing you to know when wanted it to be something people care Together they founded North Star Games, to go with your original intuition or when about,” he says. based in Bethesda, Maryland, and began to bet on other players’ answers. To pay his way through St. John’s, work on their ﬁrst game, Cluzzle, in which Wits & Wagers has won 20 industry Crapuchettes played in a professional players make puzzles out of clay. awards—more than any other party game in circuit for the card game Magic: The GathOriginally interested in designing history. It has been released in several ering. He won $30,000. During the strategy games, Crapuchettes discovered languages, and a version for the Xbox summers and breaks from St. John’s, he that many people viewed these games more gaming console is available. Cluzzle has captained a salmon-ﬁshing boat in Alaska, as IQ tests than as entertainment. “I said won nine industry awards. Say Anything, a job he held after graduation until the to myself, ‘I am going to design a game the newest game released within the past salmon market crashed. Crapuchettes that I don’t have to bribe people with pizza year, has already won two awards. taught for a while, and then learned in order to get them to play with me—that Crapuchettes is now developing family programming and worked for an Internet people come to me and want to play.” This versions of Say Anything and Wits & startup. When the dot-com bubble burst, goal was behind the development of Wagers, as well as a booster pack of Wits & Crapuchettes knew it was time to pursue Cluzzle and the company’s two top sellers: Wagers questions. And “I am always coming his dream of starting a game company. Wits & Wagers and Say Anything. up with new game ideas,” he says. x While working toward his master’s A St. John’s education has proven useful degree at the Smith School of Business at in both the business world and game the University of Maryland, Crapuchettes { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } �40 {Alumni Notes} month. The fall has been more somber; my mother passed away in early November. I am very much looking forward to the 25th reunion—this is one I will make sure I get to!” 1985 JAN CONLIN (SF) is awaiting the birth of her ﬁrst baby (boy). Astonished to ﬁnd herself in business school, DEMI RASMUSSEN (SF) is taking education into unexplored territory. How can we integrate social justice with appropriate proﬁt? Where does environmentalism ﬁt into a business plan? These questions are part of the curriculum at the Bainbridge Graduate Institute, where Demi received her MBA in Sustainable Business in 2007. Now working as the Initiative Manager at the institute, Demi also assists with teaching courses including ﬁnance, accounting and Systems Thinking in Action. Graduates of BGI and other sustainable business schools are becoming leaders in the new economy. (Check her out on YouTube, at the Ofﬁcial Inaugural Ball for Energy & the Environment.) As any good Johnnie would, she has maintained a stance of inquiry and scrutiny while supporting the launch of three sustainable businesses, FarmPower, Olympic BioFuels and GreenWorx. Now investigating PhD programs, Demi plans to improve and increase sustainability education. 1986 After 20 years with a large corporate law ﬁrm, PAUL O’HANLON (A) resigned last month and started a small ﬁrm with three good friends and colleagues. The work continues to be interesting, the ofﬁce is very relaxed and clients have been incredibly supportive. “I’m looking forward to seeing my classmates at our 25year reunion in 2011,” he writes. “This time I hope to avoid sleeping through my hotel alarm and missing my ﬂight home (but it was SO worth it).” 1988 ERIN MILNES (A) and Chuck Guest are the delighted, proud, and rather tired parents of Duncan Cullison, born May 22, 2008. Erin is sorry to have missed the 20th reunion but is looking forward to showing Duncan (and Chuck) off at the Thanks, from Stanford AVE WALTER (A91) is a teaching fellow in Stanford’s Introduction to the Humanities (IHUM) program. Last June, he was awarded the Walter J. Gores Award for Teaching Excellence. The award is the highest honor the university presents to its teachers at any level. “The Gores nomination pooled all the students and faculty I have worked with here at Stanford over the past three years,” he explains. “Scores of people wrote on my behalf. At the President’s award celebration, a prize committee member told me my nomination was ‘amazingly strong.’ In light of my success in this program, I think my ﬁrst thanks should go to St John’s.” x D 25th. Erin can be reached via Facebook (where you can also see pictures of the adorable Duncan). KIM PAFFENROTH (A) has a new zombie novel out, Dying to Live: Life Sentence (Permuted Press, 2007). His next, Valley of the Dead, is being shopped to publishers; it is a retelling of Inferno (with zombies). Zombie versions of other books on the List cannot be far behind. “I really enjoyed seeing friends and tutors at our recent 20th anniversary homecoming,” writes CLAUDIA PROBST STACK (A). “Since then, I have renewed my efforts to ﬁnd support for my documentary ﬁlm project ‘Under the Kudzu,’ which chronicles the history of two segregation-era black schools in Pender County, N.C. Anyone who is interested in the project can learn more by visiting my website: www.underthekuzu.org. Recently I interviewed a woman whose greatgrandfather was a slave who farmed the land where she now lives. She attended one of the schools I am researching, and then returned there as a teacher. Her son attended the same school, and now he is a wellrespected judge. My home life is rowdy and fun, thanks to Alden (age 8) and Jack (age 6). I am grateful every day for my sons and my husband, Joe. I would love to hear from any Johnnies, especially classmates!” STEVE VIRGIL (A) arrived in Winston-Salem this summer to start his work as the ﬁrst director of the Wake Forest Law School’s new Community Development Clinic. Virgil, formerly the director of a clinic with a similar mission at Creighton University School of Law in Omaha, Neb., was the overwhelming ﬁrst choice of the Wake Forest faculty after a nationwide search. Wake Forest clinic students will offer legal services to non-proﬁt organ- { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } izations and to entrepreneurs who create new businesses based in low-wealth areas in Forsyth County. The Community Development Clinic is part of a larger effort to strengthen the connections between legal education and the practice of law. 1989 LEE CARPENTER (A) recently opened his own legal practice in Baltimore, focusing on wills and estates; business is booming. STEVE DEAN (SF) is married: “Eddie Rangel and I are happy to announce that—in the 17th year of our relationship—we were legally married Monday, November 24, 2008, in Provincetown, Mass. Rachel Peters, Justice of the Peace, ofﬁciated at the marriage ceremony. My family is from Massachusetts, and we’ve been meeting on the Cape to celebrate Thanksgiving since 2000. This was the ﬁrst year that we were able to marry, as Massachusetts just repealed its residency requirement, and we could think of no place more beautiful or appropriate to have the ceremony.” BETH HEINBERG (A) is teaching performing arts to middleschoolers in Asheville, N.C., and performing jazz with her trio, Honey. SUSAN PETRONE’s (A) ﬁrst novel, A Body At Rest, is scheduled to be published by Drinian Press in early 2009. Johnnies may enjoy the fact that one of the two main characters turns into Don Quixote during the course of the book. (For the record, the other main character turns into Emma Woodhouse.) �41 {Alumni Notes} 1990 1992 Since leaving St. John’s, MICHAEL LANDIS (AGI) was married to Leslie L. Kinney in 1991 and had two children, Daphne (born in 1991) and Dorothy (born in 1996). He taught at Southern Vermont and Mount Snow Academy, and also worked at Morningside Emergency Shelter, a homeless shelter in Brattleboro, Vt. “Both daughters are outstanding students and Daphne was valedictorian of her graduating class at Guilford Central School before going on to the high school last year,” Landis writes. “I’ve been leading the local ‘Great Books’ group in Brattleboro since 1995.” After a 34-year hiatus, Landis returned to Cuba for a visit in 2004 and another visit last year (where, he adds, “I saw Fidel Castro (perhaps) for his ﬁnal May Day appearance.”) Landis returned this year, and says that his Spanish is improving and he’s made many friends throughout the island. AARON GARZA (SF) writes: “My wife, Azenett, and I had identical twin boys, Ulises and Dante, on December 22, 2008. My daughters Soﬁa (8) and Nadya (4) are both being super big sisters. I’m in my last semester of law school at the University of Utah and hoping to ﬁnd a good job in this uncertain economy. We’ve been in Utah since 2002 and I still haven’t managed to go skiing, not even once. I have shoveled a heckload of snow here, though (our house is on a corner lot).” DAVE MARQUEZ (SF) is working as a ﬁlm editor on several projects. “While I am currently based in Santa Fe,” he writes, “I am reasonably certain that as the media industry in New Mexico continues to grow the future will ﬁnd me working out of Albuquerque as well as Los Angeles. I encourage any alumni who are in the ﬁlm or television industry or are interested in it as a career to contact me via my website: www.davemarquez.info.” 1991 BLAKE SITNEY (SF) has been working to help the Mae Maeh orphanage in Chiang Mai province of Thailand, where he made another trip earlier this hirteen years ago, EMILY GILLILAND (AGI97) was accepted into AmeriCorps and spent two years in service through a program called Volunteer Maryland, which trained her to be a volunteer coordinator. “This experience changed my life,” she writes. “It gave me a job sure, but it was much more. The greatest take-aways from the experience were the knowledge that a band of community members can really get things done and that folks who are involved with AmeriCorps are some of the most special, talented people in the world: friends for life and partners in service. [On January 20], we took the world stage by participating in the Inaugural parade honoring Barack Obama. Spending the day with 150 of these passionate service leaders connected to AmeriCorps was enough inspiration to last all of 2009! Walking past the presidential viewing booth mere feet from the Obamas? I wish time could have stood still! I think I strained a muscle waving so hard. It’s not because I am conﬁdent that they can ﬁx what ails the country, but I am excited because they see the potential in all of us to band together, like AmeriCorps, and get things done.” Emily took 412 pictures: view them at www.ﬂickr.com/photos/egilliland/sets/72157612838555784/x T winter: “It gets very cold at night in the winter time in the Himalayan foothills of Northern Thailand, so we brought muchneeded mattresses for the kids. This time Jong and I delivered 120 mattresses, sacks of rice, and other food staples; I also continued the Art for Orphans project. I plan on staying in Thailand for two months working on software projects for my company (Marigold Technologies) and ﬁnding humanitarian projects in my free time.” 2004 and became the assistant editor of Inside Annapolis magazine. In December 2006, their second daughter, Devon Caroline, was born. In between, David changed careers from Java programming to enterprise architecture and is now a consultant for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. In January, Megan left Inside Annapolis to become assistant editor of Taste of the Bay magazine. They now live in Severna Park, just north of Annapolis. MEGAN SMITH (A) and DAVID DOUGHERTY (AGI92) have career and family news. Megan ﬁnally got out of the optical business in { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } ELYETTE BLOCK KIRBY (SF) has been living in Europe for a decade now, the last two years in Bucharest, Romania, with her husband and children, ages 7, 6, and 4. “The children are unschooling, and I am enjoying learning anything about my passions: biodynamic farming, yoga, and natural healing.” J. ELIZABETH HUEBERT SCHOEMAKER (SF) and husband, Jeremy Schoemaker, welcomed their second daughter, Joslyn, in July 2008. Elizabeth continues to practice as an anesthesiologist in Lincoln, Neb. 1993 JAMES CRAIG (AGI) writes that he and his wife, Nan, having spent a year on Easter Island in the Paciﬁc in 2006-7 and three months in 2008, will again be “doing our thing” on the island this year, from April to July: “I will be supplementing my B&W portfolio, Nan will be painting. Our Easter Island WebLog, followed by more people than we ever imagined, will begin getting new entries near the end of March: http://web.mac.com /craigart.” �42 CLAIRE DARLING (SF) writes: “I’m generally in love with life as a self-employed, treatmentoriented massage therapist and single mom in Portland, Ore. Still active with the Weston A. Price Foundation local chapter, (Real Food movement). Still expecting the dream of land and a cow to materialize. Aikido rocks my world in the mean time. I wish someone had told me in adolescence that life could be so incredibly wonderful. Anyone wanting to help ‘process’ my old chickens and ducks or prune fruit trees, please contact me ASAP.” ALEX (AGI) and VANESSA ELLERMANN (A) are expecting their third son in March. Alex is ﬂying for Delta and with the Navy Reserve, and Vanessa is practicing law in D.C. They live in Kensington, Md., and don’t get to Annapolis nearly enough. THOMAS HAMMERMAN (A) just completed a master’s degree in Marriage and Family Therapy at Northwestern University. He is now working as a post-graduate clinical fellow at the Family Institute in Evanston, Ill. On August 2, 2008, AMANDA KLEIN (A) married Bryan Carr at Trinity Episcopal Church in Seattle. “Bryan is an autodidact scholar, philosopher, and afterschool teacher who moonlights at a bookstore to augment his library of 4,000 books. My 10-year-old son, Gabriel, served as a groomsman and tore up the dance ﬂoor at the reception; his father, JONATHAN CRIMMINS (A95) was one of our three volunteer photographers and a huge help all around. Through the generosity of wedding guests, we were able to honeymoon for two weeks in the UK and France in October. (Gabriel stayed home with his dad.) Highlights included being driven around in the Mourne Mountains by an Ulster native, wandering amid {Alumni Notes} the ancient Druid stones of Avebury, getting a peek at the research rooms in the British Museum with the curator of the Sumerian collection, and savoring innumerable crêpes and baked goods in Paris. We had many wonderful conversations with friends, but still had ample time to gaze at each other. I am truly a lucky woman.” NANCY MARCUS (A) recently earned her second and third law degrees at the University of Wisconsin Law School in Madison, Wis., where she also worked as a judicial law clerk for the Wisconsin Court of Appeals and the Wisconsin Supreme Court. In March, she will be returning to Cleveland, where she earned her JD in 1997, as an associate with the law ﬁrm Berkman, Gordon, Murray and DeVan. Her practice will include constitutional law, civil rights, appellate, torts, and criminal cases, with an additional specialty in LGBT rights and partnership protections. 1994 ANTHONY CHIFFOLO (AGI) says his book, Cooking with the Bible: Recipes for Biblical Meals is now out in paperback; he and his coauthor are busy on their next book: Cooking with the Movies: Meals on Reels: “We deﬁnitely need a larger kitchen!” His 14 years since graduation have been “stellar,” writes LEE HOWARD MADDEN KRALL (SFGI): “My wife and I live here on the Solano Coast of California. We’ve lived in New Mexico, Europe, Japan, and now the Bay Area. I run an online Medialliance/record label from my home ofﬁce; my wife is a trainer. Our daughter just went off to college at the University of New Mexico, studying art history. I put the liberal arts training to work, learning to become over the past 14 years: a teacher, a chef, a record executive, and also now, a digital recording artist, just releasing my eighth album. I ﬁnished a ﬁlm last year, a musical documentary: Steve Roach, Live at Grace Cathedral, releasing the video to the world on my four YouTube channels, where I am a director. My music The Boys are the Teachers E MCGINTY JAMES (SF05) and her husband, Mike James, welcomed their second son, Theodore John James, on June 24, 2008. He joins his brother, August (age 2), in helping his mother forget the speciﬁcs of her education. Fortunately, the boys are teaching her volumes in their own right. x RIN { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } career is ﬂourishing; the digital realm has released us from the conﬁnes of the old ways of doing things; we can now produce music here at home and distribute it globally throughout the Internet; we played and sold more music last year than ever before. My latest solo release is out and available for download at iTunes, eMusic and rhapsody.com. We’re soon to be staging a ‘live from CyberiaRecords Studios Cybercast Sessions’ with some of our artists—CyberiaRecords, World Ambient Music.” ROBYN ANJA WASE (A) was married on May 3, 2008, to John Helmon, father of two teenagers, Alyssa (16) and Chris (14). “I’m already introducing St. John’s College to Alyssa in hopes that she will consider that option as she picks her next school. John and I both work at Microsoft and live in Kirkland, Wash., which is just outside of Seattle. We stay very busy, but would love to hear from any and all classmates via phone, e-mail, Facebook, or in person!” TIFFANY WINNE (SFGI), corporate managing director of the real estate advisory ﬁrm Studley, has been named to the prestigious Crain’s Chicago Business “40 Under 40” list. This list appeared in the Nov. 3, 2008, issue of the business journal. Winne joined Studley in 2002 after working in management consulting. She was also recently named associate branch manager for the Chicago ofﬁce. Winne is involved in the Jane Addams Hull House organization, where she serves on the property committee of the board of trustees. �43 {Alumni Notes} 1995 1996 GEORGE S. ERVING (SFGI) has been granted promotion to Associate Professor of Humanities, Honors, and English, with tenure at the University of Puget Sound, effective with the 2009-10 academic year. “I have a recently published essay on Coleridge and the Newtonian tradition (European Romantic Review 19.3 July 2008) whose genesis was in a preceptorial I had with Jack Steadman.” SARA BITTLE (A) was a Montessori teacher for 12 years after graduation and ran and taught in an Infant-Toddler Montessori program for at-risk children as part of a larger organization called Crossway Community in Kensington, Md., outside of D.C. Last spring, I left my ﬁrst career to return to school to Johns Hopkins School of Nursing in Baltimore. I am in their accelerated Bachelor’s of Science of Nursing program, which is designed for students who already have a bachelor’s degree in something other than nursing.” She graduates in late July and will begin to practice, hopefully as a labor and delivery nurse, in either the D.C. or Baltimore area. I hope to eventually get my master’s and become a nurse midwife, but for now just want to spend some time in the delivery room as an RN.” KATE FELD (A) and her husband, Richard Roe, have exciting news: “Our daughter, Molly Patricia, was born in May and is keeping us all entertained. It’s been an eventful year. I’ve also started a nonproﬁt organization focused on writing and technology. Our ﬁrst project, a writers’ map of Manchester, England, is now live at rainycitystories.com. And we’ve moved to the delightfullynamed town of Ramsbottom. Any Johnnies venturing to the northwest of England are welcome to stop in for a pint.” ZACH (A) and Michelle RASMUSON are living in the rural Anderson Valley of Northern California. They have two girls, Fay (6) and Marlowe (2). KIRA ZIELINSKI (SF) is living with her ﬁancé, Nathan, in Mobile, Ala. She continues to work hard on her transition from helicopter pilot to small business owner, having taken over ownership of a coffee house a year ago, and divides the remainder of her time between home improvement and plotting how to get back to the mountains. Kira can be contacted at k_zielinski@juno.com. MICHAEL ELIOT BARTH (AGI) married Jennifer Paige Parks in Vail, Colo., this past August. The couple resides in New York City, where Michael heads an international education development ﬁrm based at Columbia University (upublic), and Jennifer works as the director of Strategic Initiatives at the law ﬁrm White & Case. Recently Mr. Barth was appointed Special Advisor to the Royal Education Council of Bhutan, where he is developing the country’s ﬁrst graduate schools of law and education. A Beacon of Light I n early 2008, MATTHEW RAREY (AGI06) volunteered in a journalistic capacity at the Ukrainian Catholic University in order to write about “this beacon of light on the Catholic Church’s Eastern Front.” Ukraine, he writes, “is at the crossroads of Catholicism and Orthodoxy, an important center of the seemingly interminable ecumenical dialogue.” He later accepted a job as communications director for the Ukrainian Catholic Education Foundation in his native Chicago. The foundation educates Americans about the needs of the Church in Ukraine, speciﬁcally UCU, the only Catholic university in the former Soviet Union. “Her classical curriculum is a rarity in that neck of the woods—or anywhere in the West, for that matter. (Mandatory Greek and Latin, anyone?) I’ll likely be back in the former USSR this summer, visiting UCU after participating in an academic conference in Vilnius centered on Catholic social teachings: terribly necessary to revitalizing the burnt-out shell of post-Soviet civic and spiritual life.”x 1997 JESSE BERNEY (A) and JENNIE DAIR BERNEY (A98) are overjoyed to announce the birth of their daughter, Isabel Lamb Berney, in January. BENJAMIN BLOOM (A) reports: “Terry and I are expecting our ﬁrst baby in July. The bad news is Terry won’t let me call the baby Euclid if it’s a boy.” JEHANNE DUBROW (A) has left Lincoln, Neb., is back in Maryland, and has a new poetry collection out: “I’m currently living in Chestertown, Md., where I teach creative writing and literature at Washington College. Jeremy is serving on a destroyer in Norfolk, Va. So, we do a great deal of commuting and see one another on the weekends! Our dog, Argos the Wheaten Terrier, enjoys spending time in both port cities. In other news, my ﬁrst poetry collection, The Hardship Post, was published by Three Candles Press in early 2009. My second book, From the Fever-World, just won the Washington Writers’ Publishing House Award and will be published in the autumn of 2009. A third poetry collection, { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } Stateside (which addresses my experiences as a ‘Navy wife’), is forthcoming from Northwestern UP in 2010.” “All’s well,” writes REBECCA GAFFNEY (A). “Although San Diego is my home, Red Letter Days Events is growing at a rapid pace, and we’re in the process of opening an East Coast ofﬁce in Washington, D.C. I look forward to visiting Annapolis as much as possible!” MELANIE KIRBY (SF) and her partner Mark Spitzig are blessedly “buzzed” to announce the birth of their newest queenbee, their daughter Isis Rose Blossom Spitzig. Isis was born November 11, 2008, in Taos, and according to Melanie, “she is smiling and beekeeping already!” BRENDA M. JOHNSON (AGI) resides in Baltimore, in the wonderful Mount Vernon cultural center of the city. “I am enjoying being a docent at the Walters Art Museum and especially enjoy teaching school children about art and art history,” she writes. “In addition, because I can walk just about everywhere I want to go, getting to the theater, �44 {Alumni Notes} symphony, and restaurants is easy and gives me lots of choices for entertainment and enrichment.” INYA LASKOWSKI (SF) spent November 2008 at an artist’s retreat in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. In October she curated an exhibition for Japanese artist Chiyomi Taneike Longo, titled Kokoro no Tabigi at Gallery Route One, Point Reyes, Calif., which culminated with a tea ceremony. Inya had a sculpture showing at the Quicksilver Gallery, Forestville, Calif., in January. KIT (A) and SONYA SCHIFF LINTON (A00) happily announce the birth of their son, Henry Calvin Linton: “We are all doing well in Durham, N.C. Our daughter, Viola, is four years old now, Kit works as a consultant for IBM, and Sonya is an attorney. If anyone wants to get in touch with us, e-mail at kitandsonya@hotmail.com.” JILL NIENHISER (SFGI) received a diploma in acting from the National Conservatory of Dramatic Arts in December and is now auditioning for roles in Washington D.C.-area theaters. By day, she is a Mastermind at Mind & Media, in Alexandria, Va., a communication consulting and media production company. She also continues to serve as webmaster for the nonproﬁt Weston A. Price Foundation (westonaprice.org), which will launch a redesigned website this spring with online membership, social networking for members, and a blog. 1998 LEAH FISCH (SF) is entering her eighth year as a reorganizer. Her new company, Recycle the City (www.recyclethecity.com), is in NYC and in the process of becoming a 501(c) 3. “It is my revolution, and I’m so excited that it comes at the perfect time. It has also been fantastic reconnecting and meeting Johnnies in the city, even ones whom I did not personally know when in school. I look forward to many fun experiences with them.” BRENDA (BURGER) MACON (SF) writes: “My husband (TODD MACON, SFGI98) and I are living in Durango, Colo., with our beautiful baby daughter, Mia Jolie Calliope Danger Macon. We have just started selling ﬁrst edition and rare books. Our company has a more conservative name: Points West Fine Books. In our spare time, Todd teaches English and History of Religion at a private boarding school, and I teach drawing and painting classes on the weekends. We continue to be grateful to St. John’s for bringing us together, and for teaching us the art of delightful conversation ...still a valuable pursuit after 10 years of marital bliss! Our love of books continues to grow and we enjoy sharing this with others in a truly beautiful part of the country. We are having fun, and welcome all old friends to give us a jingle.” ELIZABETH TRICE (SF) is living in her hometown of Portland, Maine, working on regionalization projects for county government, and consulting on urban housing developments for people living alone. She also plays bass and sings with her tango band, Tango Mucha Labia. 1999 After graduation, TESS COBURN (A) spent two years in China teaching English. “During that time I discovered that I had a passion for clothing design. I have since started my own design company, Teresa Crowninshield. I now split my time between Massachusetts and China, designing and producing my collection and performing music with my band, Beastwith2Backs. I wish all the best to the class of 1999.” 2000 GREG BAMFORD (SFGI) is chair of the English Department at The Overlake School in Redmond, Wash. His second daughter, Annabel Greer Bamford, was born in November. ROBIN HEARN (SFGI) is happy to announce that she will be sitting for her architectural licensing exams for the State of Oregon in February 2009. 2001 CHRISTOPHER BALDWIN BARNETT (AGI) recently ﬁnished his doctorate at the University of Oxford: “I worked out of the Faculty of Theology and wrote a dissertation on Søren Kierkegaard. Also, my wife, Stacy, and I recently welcomed our third (!) son, Paul, who was born on August 22, 2008.” DAN FRAM (SF) is grinding his teeth through the second (and thankfully ﬁnal) year of the Mississippi Teacher Corps teaching English to eighthgraders near Jackson, Miss., “where public education proves to be the polar opposite of astral harmony, public politics proves to be polarized racially, and public entertainment proves an elliptical arc between twin poles of salvation and sin.” He is available on Facebook for suggestions on how to return to the life worth leading. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } 2002 PETER BOYCE (SF) is studying textiles and sculpture at Maryland Institute College of Art and lives in Baltimore. KATHERINE BROOKS (SF) is living in Scotland doing a master’s in philosophy and thinking about going on to a PhD. She has also been studying ancient Greek language and thinking about concentrating in ancient philosophy. AMANDA (KENNEDY) FINNEY (SF) will graduate from Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law in May 2009. She hopes to next announce that she’s passed the bar exam. On January 12, MIRABAI KNIGHT-LASCOUTX (née KNIGHT, SF) married Katherine Knight-Lascoutx (née Lascoutx, currently getting her degree in Greek and Latin at Hunter College) at City Hall in Boston, Mass. As soon as they arrived back in Penn Station the following evening, their marriage was ofﬁcially recognized in the State of New York. Hurray for incremental improvements! Mirabai is still working as a CART provider (academic stenographer) for deaf and hardof-hearing students studying everything from art to pharmacy, and Katherine is a tutor at the Hunter Reading/Writing Center. Also, they found a cat in the park near the Cloisters last spring and named him Alcibiades. Life is pretty great. 2003 BRENDAN NORWOOD (A) graduates as president of his class from Columbia University’s College of Physicians & Surgeons �45 {Alumni Notes} this May. Norwood plans to begin a residency in emergency medicine in July. ERIKA GINSBERG-KLEMMT (SFGI) lives in Sarasota, Fla., with her three kids and hubbie. Last year she taught writing at Ringling College of Art and Design and French at Riverview High School. She just coauthored her ﬁrst book The Complete Anchoring Handbook. She is now working on her ﬁrst solo book, based on her years of sailing. 2004 In November 2008, EMMA ELLIOTT (A) started a job as an editor with the Rabobank in Utrecht, the Netherlands. MELISSA THOMAS and MARTIN ANDERSON (both A) were married on July 18, 2008, in front of about 80 guests, including BILL MOROCCO (A94), ANDERSON TALLENT (A04), SUMMER STARR (A04), DEBORAH MANGUM (A05), G. AUGUST DEIMEL (SF04), and SARAH WAGNER (A08). Reports Melissa: “COURTNEY MAY (A04) was the perfect bridesmaid. Groomsmen MICHAEL MALONE (A04) and STUART BANNAN (A04) were truly awesome friends and wore tuxedos for us on a 90degree day. It was a beautiful ceremony and we were both thrilled to make it ofﬁcial!” KETURA KESTIN (A) is living in New York City and working at CBS News. In addition, she is currently ﬁlming in Toronto as director of development for Serendipity Productions. She has three ﬁlms in pre-production. Please feel free to send along scripts or any inquiries on investing to: kkestin@earthlink.net. 2005 MATTHEW GATES (A) is in his third year of service as a Peace Corps agroforestry volunteer in rural Senegal. NICO JENKINS (EC) is living in France while attending a PhD program at the European Graduate School in Saas Fee Switzerland: “It is a program sort of set up like the original St John’s Graduate Institute program in that it meets for only one month of the year for a very intensive series of classes (meeting 10 hours a day) with leading philosophers and artists. This summer I will be studying with Alain Badiou, Slavoj Zizek, and others.” JESSE POSNER (SF) graduated from George Washington University Law School in 2008 and is now working as an associate in New York for the law ﬁrm Dorsey & Whitney, LLP. 2006 A play by NORMAN ALLEN (AGI), The Christmas Foundling, based on stories by Bret Harte, was produced in Seattle, Wash., and Sonora, Calif., in December 2008. A new musical version of Carmen, for which he wrote the libretto, opened at the Karlin Music Theatre in Prague in October 2008. His play for young audiences, The Eve of Friday Morning, opened at The Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C., in January 2008. Norman is also chair of the English Department at Cesar Chavez Public Charter High School in D.C. DARYA PETERSON (SF) is completing instructor training at IMPACT Personal Safety this February. She became the outreach coordinator for the organization in the fall of 2008. She has been involved with the organization for one and a half years. IMPACT is a nonproﬁt organization that empowers people to live fuller lives by teaching defense against verbal, physical, and sexual assault. AMY YOUNGKIN (A) relocated to Chicago and accepted a clinical research associate position at the University of Chicago in the section of Hematology/ Oncology. “I like my work. I love my friends. I could do without the weather.” 2007 “I am currently living in Phoenix and working for the Great Books charter school, Great Hearts Academies, teaching ﬁne arts,” writes AMANDA MOON (AGI). “It is wonderful!” 2008 BILLY GRAY (AGI) writes: “My husband, Daniel, and I are living in Dallas. It is currently his turn to be the full-time student. I am writing, barista-ing and taking a literature class. Things are good!” JONATHAN LYNN LEBLANC (SFGI) is pursuing a PhD in political science at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge: “My ﬁeld is political philosophy, and I am currently studying political theology, and republicanism. I am also a graduate assistant in the LSU Public Policy Research Laboratory.” KIM (NICHOLS) LEMENTINO (SF) recently married Eli Lementino and gave birth to a son, Wesley. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } She is living in Albuquerque and will be pursuing a PhD in electrical engineering at University of New Mexico this spring. ROY ROGOSIN (SFGI), an “absolutely not-retired” professional conductor, is excited to be joining St. John’s to create a choral program to include all students, staff, and faculty. “We’ve already had our ﬁrst orientation and our goals are eminently achievable,” he writes. JESSIE SEILER (A) has joined the Peace Corps. “I’ll be departing February 27 for Senegal, where I’ll be doing preventative health education in a rural area for the next two years. Internet access will be super limited, but I’m going to try to keep a blog at http://jseiler.blogspot.com/. See you guys in April of 2011. If there are any Johnnies who are thinking of applying and have questions, please let me know! I love to talk to Johnnies about the Peace Corps, it just makes so much sense in a weird way for us to go from the philosophical to the practical like this. At least, I hope it does.” x What’s Up? The College wants to hear from you. Call us, write us, e-mail us. Let your classmates know what you’re doing. The next issue will be published in July; deadline for the alumni notes section is May 31. In Annapolis: The College Magazine St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404; rosemary.harty@sjca.edu In Santa Fe: The College Magazine St. John’s College 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599; alumni@sjcsf.edu �46 J. Burchenal Ault J. BURCHENAL AULT (H83) FORMER COLLEGE OFFICER, BVG MEMBER J. Burchenal Ault, who served as a part-time tutor, vice president, provost of both campuses, and a member of the Board of Visitors and Governors, died on October 29, 2008. He was 82. Mr. Ault’s lasting contributions to the college include working to bring teachers from inner-city schools and Middle Eastern countries to the college’s Graduate Institute. Mr. Ault was born in Glendale, Ohio, in 1926. He earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Yale University and held an honorary degree (Legis Doctor) from Long Island University. After graduating from Yale, he was commissioned an ofﬁcer in the Marine Corps Reserve in 1947 and served in the Korean War. He began his career in the fabrics industry, as a salesman with Bates Fabrics, Inc., in New York City. He later joined the Radiation Research Corp. of Westbury, New York, eventually becoming president and chairman of the executive committee. In 1970, pursuing his deep interest in education, Mr. Ault moved to Santa Fe, working ﬁrst as a part-time tutor, then as vice president of the Santa Fe {Obituaries} campus from 1970 to 1980. He was provost of both campuses between 1980 and 1985. In 1983, the Alumni Association made him an Honorary Alumnus. After leaving St. John’s, he served as consultant to Armand Hammer United World College of the American West and Vice President of Financial Affairs at the Santa Fe Institute. He also worked as an independent fundraising consultant. Mr. Ault divided his time between the undergraduate and graduate programs. In addition to attracting teachers from urban schools to the GI, he also brought teachers from Middle Eastern universities to the graduate program, with the support of grants from the U.S. Information Agency and the DeWitt Wallace Foundation. Over 10 years, 60 teachers from 11 countries took part in the graduate program. “Those who experienced St. John’s inevitably were drawn to think deeply, perhaps for the ﬁrst time, about aspects of their own culture and tradition,” Mr. Ault once said. Mr. Ault and his wife, Florence, had ﬁve children, twelve grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren. ARLAND CHRIST-JANER FORMER ST. JOHN’S VICE PRESIDENT Arland Christ-Janer, who began his career at St. John’s and went on to a distinguished career leading institutions including Boston University, died on November 9, 2008, in Sarasota, Florida. He was 86. A Nebraska native, Mr. ChristJaner attended Carleton College and then the Yale Divinity School and the University of Chicago Law School. In World War II, he was a member of the 39th Bomb Group, as bombardier on the Yankee Dollar. He joined St. John’s as assistant to the president, a post he held from 1954 to 1960. He also served as treasurer and vice president. He became president of Cornell College in Iowa and later was appointed president of Boston University in 1967. In 1970, Mr. Christ-Janer was named president of the nonproﬁt College Entrance Examination Board. He left that job in 1973 to return to college administration with the New College, a private, liberal arts college in Florida; he was credited with saving the college by persuading lawmakers to incorporate it into the state university system in 1975. BILLY LIEB (CLASS OF 1945) CINEMATOGRAPHER, ARTIST Cinematographer, nature lover, peace activist, and artist Billy Lieb died on November 26, 2008, in San Diego, California. Born in Mt. Vernon, New York, he lived in West Los Angeles for many years. Mr. Lieb studied at St. John’s for two years before World War II interrupted his studies. He fought in Europe as a tank gunner stationed in France, Belgium, and Germany, participating in the Battle of the Bulge in 1944. Following the war, he settled in Los Angeles and resumed his education at the University of California at Los Angeles. He worked for many years in the motion picture industry as a cameraman and ﬁlm editor for Arland Christ-Janer { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } Walt Disney, among others. Upon retiring he became deeply involved in the peace movement. At the age of 63, he walked in the Great Peace March of 1986 across America, followed by trips to Europe and Russia with Veterans For Peace groups. Later he returned to his love of art, taking classes at Santa Monica College. His special passion was making wood sculptures and assemblages, many with found objects such as driftwood. He also volunteered at the Getty Art Museum and was a longtime member of the Sierra Club. LOUIS KURS (H00) ANNAPOLIS TUTOR EMERITUS Annapolis tutor emeritus Louis N. Kurs died on August 22, 2008, at the age of 83. He began teaching at St. John’s College in 1964, moving from Chicago, where he taught in the geology department at the University of Illinois. Mr. Kurs attended the Colorado School of Mines from 1942-43 and again in 1946, and Columbia University from 1943-45. He received his Master of Science from the University of Chicago in 1948, and taught geology and physical science at various institutions in the Chicago area until moving to St. John’s. He particularly enjoyed teaching freshman laboratory and mathematics and worked enthusiastically to ensure that every student achieved his or her best. He was always ready to engage in conversations about the books and the Program, and his enthusiasm for St. John’s caused most of his family to follow him to the college. The St. John’s College Annapolis Alumni Association gave him an honorary membership in 2000. He retired from full-time teaching in 1992, although he continued his involvement in the community until his death. �47 {Obituaries} Mr. Kurs is survived by Alice (SFGI71), his wife of 58 years, as well as by his four daughters and their husbands: Claire Kurs (A74) and Pascal Gambardella; Jean (SF75) and Jim Blair; Eleanor (A80) and John Verdi, Annapolis tutor; and Elizabeth and Hans-Peter Soeder (A81). He is also survived by seven grandchildren: Daniel and Peter Gambardella; Antonia and Luca Verdi; and CarlGustav, Johann Friedrich, and Armin Heinrich Soeder. ANNE BERVEN (SF00) SANTA FE TUTOR Anne Berven, alumna and former tutor at the Santa Fe campus, died on January 30, 2008, at age 39. She served on the faculty for many years, and was particularly active in the music program, devoting herself to helping students and faculty develop their musical talents. At a memorial held on February 7 in Bothell, Washington, Sam Markham (SF01) recalled bonding with Miss Berven over difﬁculties with basic geometry and later being guided by her as a member of a choir under her direction. “I always found it ironic that while Anne was no genius in the math department, she excelled at music, which is supposedly undergirded by mathematics,” he said. “Proportion and balance, dynamics and ﬂow, these were things Anne understood with ease and conveyed with enthusiasm to her fellow classmates and students. That same year Anne created a choir out of nothing. We were a ragtag group of students who enjoyed singing and had been encouraged by her. After several months of practice under Anne’s guidance we performed Rachmaninoff’s Vespers. I remember being very nervous on the day of the performance, as I was singing one of the solos. Anne helped me through my anxiety. She made the point that singing for an audience is an offering of oneself and one’s voice. It is a vulnerable act that mixes fear, trust, and fearlessness. Anne lived her life in this spirit of courage and vulnerability. I’ve touched on just one part of what made Anne a superior human being. Her wicked sense of humor and heightened awareness of life were an example to us all. While many sleepwalk through life, Anne was awake and alive to life’s sadness, goodness, and beauty.” Friends, classmates, and former students shared memories of Miss Berven on a memorial website (http://anneberven. wordpress.com), remembering her warmth, generosity, sense of humor, and devotion to music. ALSO NOTED PATRICIA DAWSON BENSON (A90), OCT. 17, 2007 LORIN BLACKSTAD (SF08), NOV. 7, 2008 LEAH BOYD (CLASS OF 1959), DEC. 9, 2008 JAMES BOYLE (CLASS OF 1939), OCT. 23, 2008 MELVIN BRAUNSTEIN (CLASS OF 1949), DEC. 1, 2008 PAULETTE DOLLINGER (SFGI89) EDUCATOR Paulette Dollinger, who was an educator in New York City public schools for 20 years, died on February 2, 2009, at the age of 53. A resident of Queens, New York, Ms. Dollinger began her career as an English teacher at Sarah J. Hale, Clara Barton, and Lafayette high schools in Brooklyn. In 1991, she became a guidance counselor, eventually serving at several high schools in Manhattan. She worked at the Ofﬁce of High School Admissions in Manhattan, later served as Assistant Principal for Pupil Personnel Services at Bushwick High School in Brooklyn, and was a guidance counselor at Canarsie High School. She had begun training for drug counseling as a post-retirement career. Ms. Dollinger took a sabbatical to attend the Graduate Institute in Santa Fe. According to her husband, Gregory Zsidisin, Ms. Dollinger “considered her time at St. John’s one of the most intellectually stimulating and challenging experiences of her life, and was very proud to have graduated from the program.” As a tutor in Santa Fe, Anne Berven shared her love of music with students. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } D. MICHAEL BROWN (CLASS OF 1951), SEPT. 4, 2008 WALTER DUDLEY (SFGI70), SEPT. 18, 2008 MARTHA (MARI) BILLINGTON GALEREAVE (SF79), JULY 4, 2008 NAOMI GARWOOD (SFGI79), SEPT. 3, 2008 WILLIAM HAKIM (SF79), DEC. 12, 2008 ANDREW HILL (A98), DEC. 1, 2008 DINWIDDIE LAMPTON, JR. (CLASS OF 1938), SEPT. 22, 2008 MICHAEL J. LANDRY (SF70), NOV. 28, 2008 CLAUDIA “KIT” LARCOMBE (SF69), SEPT. 17, 2008 IAN CAMPBELL LEA (CLASS OF 1949), APRIL 18, 2007 ASBURY LEE III (CLASS OF 1937), FEB. 20, 2009 ROBERT LOHR (CLASS OF 1954), OCT. 8, 2008 HENRY MACK (CLASS OF 1945), SEPT. 28, 2008 JOHN ROBERTS (CLASS OF 1939), OCT. 14, 2008 ALLEN SCHOOLFIELD (CLASS OF 1945), DEC. 28, 2008 ARTHUR TORELLI (AGI07), OCT. 21, 2008 �48 {Photo Essay} Everyday Wonders in a Commuter Landscape by J.W. Ocker (AGI02) he world has gotten so that it proclaims its wonders pretty loudly these days. Every bit of ancient, awe-inspiring natural beauty, every dizzying example of human architectural prowess and enlightening artistic accomplishment, and every improbable creature discovered in the most improbable places has its own marketing team to ensure that as many people in the world as possible know about it. Add this to the way modern transit has shrunken the size of the globe and the media that engulfs and connects it all, and it’s evident that you don’t have to be an explorer of legendary and daring mien to see the world anymore. But there are other ways to see the world and other wonders not so loudly proclaimed. Much more humble wonders that are shoved for lack of a present use into the dusty attic corners of the world, stowed in small towns like the forgotten steamer trunks of longdead relatives, lost in the overwhelming cacophony of the city like a tiny dislodged jewel in an avalanche of rock, or hidden in plain view like a coin in the palm of a conjurer. These aren’t usually called wonders. They’re called oddities. But that doesn’t make them any less wonderful. I’ve had the opportunity to travel abroad a few times in my life, but most of my existence has orbited that interminable stretch of life that is the northern half of the Interstate 95 corridor. Even in that small bit of commuter-heavy landscape, I’ve encoun- T tered countless oddities of history, culture, and art. In Philadelphia, you can stand beneath Auguste Rodin’s towering and grim masterpiece of sculpture, The Gates of Hell, and then travel two hours west in the same state to the ghost town of Centralia to stand gingerly atop a perennially burning 400-acre underground coal ﬁre that might as well be the gates of hell. In New Hampshire, you can see both ends of the spectrum of human potential in a single afternoon—the birthplace of America’s ﬁrst serial killer, H.H. Holmes, standing forlorn and apologetic in the town of Gilmanton, and the family homesteadturned-park of America’s ﬁrst man in space, Alan B. Shepard, Jr., in Derry. You can visit homemade mummies of modern vintage tucked into the bathroom of a small museum in Philippi, West Virginia, and an ofﬁcial Egyptian mummy whose time is marked in millennia staring blindly at the ceiling of a museum in Bridgeport, Connecticut, while children work at arts and crafts at a table nearby. To me, both of these experiences were in some ways more compelling than an actual trip I took to the Great Pyramid of Egypt itself. You can see the grand but conventional National World War II Memorial in D.C. anytime you like, but I was much more { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } impressed by the surprising international War of the Worlds Memorial that holds modest court in an unassuming little park in the unrecognized-by-most-GPS-units town of Grover’s Mill, New Jersey. Most statues are erected in honor of people who have inspired awe by the heroic actions of their lives. And I’ve never been more awed by a statue than when I visited the sprawling and astounding Dr. Seuss National Memorial in Springﬁeld, Massachusetts, or the modest, but note-perfect Jim Henson statue in College Park, Maryland. Here there be monsters, as well. In addition to the already mentioned mummies, you can witch-hunt in Salem, Massachusetts, visit the still-existing grave of an 1800s-era vampire unearthed in Exeter, Rhode Island, walk in the shufﬂing footsteps of zombies in a mall in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, looked �49 {Photo Essay} over your shoulder for the devil who haunts a pine forest in New Jersey, and pay your respects to the Invisible Man buried in Moultonborough, New Hampshire. In Danvers, Massachusetts, you can move into a 130-year-old insane asylum recently converted into a swank condominium complex. A few states down in Moundsville, West Virginia, you can spent the night in a 130-year-old prison, watching practitioners of the peculiar hobby of ghost hunting. Back up in Fall River, Massachusetts, you can spend the night at a 120-year-old murder scene, in the very bedroom of suspected axe murderess Lizzie Borden. You can safari through Burlington, Vermont, to see its ﬂying monkeys, its lake monster, and its giant ground whales, but a much more terrifying adventure is a simple drive-through safari park experience located in Natural Bridge, Virginia. The literary inspirations of some of the greatest writers of the English language proliferate in this corridor, including Irving’s haunted Sleepy Hollow, New York; Thoreau’s idyllic Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts; and Hawthorne’s somber House of Seven Gables in Salem, Massachusetts. I don’t know what exactly the common denominator is with all these oddities for me. Some appeal to a personal morbid streak that runs the length and width of my entire being. Others are connected to speciﬁc joys in my life such as reading great literature or watching strange movies. Still others are just intrinsically attention-grabbing. I do know, though, that each of these oddities has a story worth listening to, a peak in the normally ﬂat line that is unfortunately often the best metaphor for everyday existence. Somehow ﬁnding and visiting these artifacts gives me a share in those stories. And then that gives me a chance to tell the stories myself. Most amazing, oddities such as these are located not in far-ﬂung exotic locations, but within driving distance. And that’s true no matter where you are. In fact, if this few states’ worth of ground is any evidence, the world will never wear out its wonders…even the odd ones. x J.W. Ocker (AGI02) chronicles his visits to oddities at his website O.T.I.S.: Odd Things I’ve Seen (www.OddThingsIveSeen.com). Opposite page, Above: An underground ﬁre continues to burn in the abandoned town of Centralia, Penn. Below (l. to r.): Dr. Seuss National Memorial, Springﬁeld, Mass.; War of the Worlds Memorial, Grovers Mill, N.J.; and Lake Monster Monument, Burlington, Vt. Above: J. Seward Johnson Jr.’s sculpture, “The Awakening,” now at National Harbor in Prince George’s County, Md. At right: detail from Rodin’s “The Gates of Hell,” Philadelphia. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } �50 {Alumni Association News} Thirty Years of D.C. Seminars read, and more the fact that we’re reading it together,” says Grandi. “It’s a community. Everyone has the experience of St. John’s, and Johnnies have a way of approaching the work.” Papier was the ﬁrst president when the reading group ofﬁcially became a chapter. Possessing a certain “anarchic spirit,” she says, the group initially resisted being a full-ﬂedged chapter; it ﬁnally signed up in the early 1980s. In addition to Grandi and Papier, Sharon Garvey (SFGI78), and Jean Dickason (AGI85) served as presidents. Two alumni who have since passed away, William Ross (class of 1938) and Sam Stiles (class of 1954), also served as presidents. Papier tapped Aickelin, a librarian for a D.C. law ﬁrm, to serve as the group’s librarian, helping with paper and electronic distribution of readings. Economist Carl Seastrum, a Summer Classics and Executive Seminar devotee who became a regular at the chapter seminars, was drafted as treasurer. At the chapter’s last election, a larger board of directors was put in place in an effort to expand the offerings to include more social events. There’s now a social committee, headed by Vice President Robert Morris (SF04), that organizes regular happy hours and other nonseminar activities, such as a recent bowling outing. But the seminar remains the core of the chapter, cherished by its long-timers and delighting newcomers. In January, Annapolis tutor David Townsend led a regular Tuesday seminar on Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. Two weeks later, the group followed up with an “imbibe while you opine” discussion of Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address, held at a Greek restaurant. The weather was nasty that night, and a couple of people couldn’t attend. Still, 22 people showed up. It was a seminar night, after all, and in D.C. they take their seminars seriously. To see what the Washington chapter has been reading for 30 years, visit its website: www.stjohnscollege.edu; click on “Alumni” to access the online community, then the Washington, D.C., chapter. x he 17 people exchanged they’ve been coming for about 17 years. handshakes, hugs, and a “It keeps us reading interesting things that little gossip as they I for one am not certain I would be reading wandered into the Cleveland without the seminar,” Carol says. Park Library meeting room “I wouldn’t say interesting, I’d say on a wintry Tuesday important,” adds Bill. “I’m really grateful evening. But when John Rees (A74) was to Ed and Deborah for having the whereready to ask the opening question, they withal and knowledge to keep a steady ﬂow were all business. “Is Socrates being fair to of readings. There’s always intelligent Ion?” asked Rees. A lively discussion conversation, and that’s hard to come by.” ensued as the group tossed around various According to Papier, who has done two interpretations of who the rhapsode was stints as president and plays a key role in and what truth Socrates wanted him to assembling the reading list, “Our readings learn. Was rhapsody an art? Was it merely have spanned 4,000 years, from the a techne? Or could it be a divine madness? Babylonian creation myth called the Enuma Elish to Barack Obama. We don’t Greek works are always a draw for the Washington, D.C., alumni chapter, but the conﬁne ourselves to the Great Books. But we still look for works that have proved reading for the February 10 seminar was their value over time. It’s very hard for a chosen for a special reason: to mark the living writer to get onto the schedule.” 30th anniversary of the reading group. A professional writer and editor, Papier Plato’s Ion was the subject of the ﬁrst seminar on January 24, 1979. Since then, is also in charge of publicizing the there have been bi-monthly seminars on seminars. Eight years ago, she brought some 600 readings, making this the oldest the group into the electronic age, with continuously active chapter of the the creation of a Yahoo group that generAlumni Association. ates weekly reminders of chapter activities. Among the participants in the Close to 300 people subscribe to the discussion were three people who had been stjohnsdc list. present at that ﬁrst conversation 30 years Except for the summer break, during ago: Edward Grandi (A77), Mark Aickelin which seminar participants tackle a long (75), and Deborah Papier (A72). Grandi work, readings are generally short, making and Aickelin were among the original it easier for members with busy careers to organizers of the group, and all three have participate. leadership roles in the chapter today. “For me what’s important is less what we “A year or so after I graduated, I was nostalgic for seminar,” says Grandi, a nonproﬁt executive who currently serves as the chapter president. “I wanted to have those conversations again. The chapter ﬁlled the void I was experiencing.” The D.C. area was also experiencing a void. There had been an alumni-led seminar group in the ﬁfties and sixties, but during the seventies there was were only occasional discussions organized by the college. So Grandi got together with two friends from school— Aickelin and Ed Kaitz (A76)— and got the conversation going. Six hundred readings later, the D.C. alumni chapter is still going Bill and Carol Tilles (both strong. class of 1959) estimate that T { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } �51 {Alumni Association News} The Silk Road Project ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION An Introduction to Eastern Classics A summer seminar offers a glimpse of Santa Fe’s Eastern Classics program. President – Jason Walsh (A85) Vice President – Steve Thomas (SF74) Secretary – Joanne Murray (A70) Treasurer – Richard Cowles (A70) Mailing address – Alumni Association, St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404, or 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599. international imperative for citizens of the world. If successful, the future seminars will feature comparisons of East and West, such as Aristotle and Zhu Xi or Aquinas and Shankara. Already half-ﬁlled, the seminar is now open to all interested Johnnies. The cost is $3,600 and a certiﬁcate of completion will be provided for use in obtaining credit toward the EC master’s degree. The deadline for enrollment is the end of April. Contact Maggie Magalnick at maggie. magalnick@sjcsf.edu or 505-984-6199 to enroll. x ANNAPOLIS Beth Martin Gammon, A94 410-332-1816 emartin@crs.org AUSTIN/SAN ANTONIO Toni Wilkinson, SGI87 512-278-1697 wilkinson_toni @hotmail.com BOSTON Dianne Cowan, A91 617-666-4381 diannecowan@rcn.com CHICAGO Rick Lightburn, SF76 847-922-3862 ricklightburn@alumni. stjohnscollege.edu PHOENIX Donna Kurgan, AGI96 623-444-6642 dakurgie@yahoo.com SEATTLE James Doherty, SFGI76 206-542-3441 jdoherty@mrsc.org NEW YORK CITY Daniel Van Doren, A81 914-949-6811 dvandoren@ optonline.net PITTSBURGH Joanne Murray, A70 724-325-4151 Joanne.Murray@ basicisp.net SOUTH FLORIDA Peter Lamar, AGI95 305-666-9277 cplamar@yahoo.com DALLAS/FORT WORTH Paula Fulks, SF76 817-654-2986 puffjd@swbell.net NORTH CAROLINA Rick Ross, A82 919-319-1881 Rick@activated.com Elizabeth Ross, A92 Elizabeth@ activated.com PORTLAND Jennifer Rychlik, SF93 503-547-0241 jlr43@coho.net DENVER/BOULDER Elizabeth Jenny, SF80 303-530-3373 epj727@comcast.net HOUSTON Norman Ewart, A85 713-303-3025 norman.ewart@rosetta resources.com NORTHERN CALIF. Reynaldo Miranda, A99 415-333-4452 reynaldo.miranda@ gmail.com SAN DIEGO Stephanie Rico, A86 619-429-1565 srico@sandi.net SALT LAKE CITY Erin Hanlon, SF03 916-967-2194 e.i.mhanlon@ gmail.com { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } SOUTHERN CALIF. Jan Conlin, SF85 310-490-2749 conlinjan1@yahoo.com WASHINGTON, D.C. Ed Grand,i A77 301-351-8411 egrandi@aol.com WESTERN NEW ENGLAND Peter Weis, SF84 413-367-2174 peter_weis@ nmhschool.org n ALBUQUERQUE Robert Morgan, SF76 505-275-9012 rim2u@comcast.net ge MINN./ST. PAUL Carol Freeman, AGI94 612-822-3216 Freem013@umn.edu in each area. ’s C ohn olle .J mn u SANTA FE Richard Cowles, SFGI95 505-986-1814 rcowles2@comcast.net Al PHILADELPHIA Helen Zartarian, AGI86 215-482-5697 helenstevezartarian@ mac.com MADISON Consuelo Sañudo, SGI00 Call the alumni listed below for information about 608-251-6565 chapter, reading group, or other alumni activities sanudoc@tds.net CHAPTER CONTACTS io amy raab The new Silk Road Project will start this summer with Confucius’ Analects, translated by Edward Singerland, and selections from A Sourcebook in Chinese Philosophy, translated by Wing-Tsit Chan. Tutor Krishnan Venkatesh will lead the threeweek seminar, which is scheduled for 1:30-3:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday, August 3 through August 20, 2009, on the Santa Fe campus. Venkatesh will introduce components of the Chinese language; a ﬁnal paper is optional. Pam Carter (SFGI08) and Jean “Puddin” Clarke (SFGI95, Board of Visitors and Governors member) brainstormed the idea as a prelude to the Eastern Classics primarily for Johnnies who do not have the time to start the EC. However, they envision the seminar to have additional beneﬁts. It will serve as a “test-drive” for those who may be overly concerned about the language requirements, for those who cannot as yet afford the yearlong program, and for those desiring a greater understanding of the Eastern mind, now an St S t. John’s College will experiment this summer with a new seminar concept bridging East and West. The seminar is designed for Johnnies—undergraduate or GI graduates— desiring to study powerful Eastern authors and texts, but unable to fully commit to the yearlong master’s degree in Eastern Classics program. All alumni have automatic membership in the St. John’s College Alumni Association. The Alumni Association is an independent organization, with a Board of Directors elected by and from the alumni body. The board meets four times a year, twice on each campus, to plan programs and coordinate the affairs of the association. i A s s o cia t Providing opportunities for more alumni to connect more often and more richly �52 greenfield library {St. John’s Forever} Elliott Carter at 100 R enowned composer Elliott Carter recently turned 100, inspiring concerts, boxed sets of retrospective CDs, and a tribute website: www.carter100.com. His time at St. John’s was brief, but memorable. According to J. Winfree Smith’s A Search for the Liberal College, Carter was one of several faculty members Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan brought in as they grappled with ﬁnding the right place for music in the New Program: “Herbert Swartz in 1938, Elliott Carter in 1940, and Nicholas Nabokov in 1941 were all added to the faculty in large part because of their music knowledge, which, it was expected, would enable them to suggest how music as a ﬁne art might ﬁt into the curriculum and also to sponsor and supervise music as an extracurricular activity.” None remained very long, Smith noted, and “little came of their efforts.” { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } Carter and Nabokov offered seminars on musical composition, but they didn’t gain much ground here, Smith posited, largely because of Buchanan, “who thought that one should study the scores without listening to and without ever having listened to the sounds represented by the staves with their whole notes, half notes, and quarter-notes, etc., and without even knowing that those marks might refer to sounds.” x �{Alumni Events Calendar} Alumni Calendar Piraeus Milton’s Paradise Lost Section 1: Led by Eva Brann and David Carl (FULL) Section 2: Led by Tom May June 4-7, 2009 Annapolis The weekend will begin with a welcome dinner on Thursday evening followed by the ﬁrst of ﬁve seminars spread out over the next three days. Over the weekend, there will be time to enjoy the treasures of the Chesapeake Bay, the museums in D.C., or reading, boating, and eating crabs. Cost: $400 per person Includes all seminars, receptions and Sunday brunch On campus room and board is $200 per person for three nights. Stendhal’s The Red and the Black Led by Michael Rawn and Ned Walpin June 14 – 19, 2009 Santa Fe The week begins with a welcome dinner Sunday evening. The program will consist of seven seminars spread over the week. There will be a morning and an evening seminar on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. The ﬁnal seminar will take place Friday morning, followed by a closing lunch. Wednesday, with no scheduled seminars, will be an opportunity to enjoy Santa Fe and prepare for the ﬁnal three seminars. Homecoming Shakespeare In Performance King Lear Led by Louis Petrich and Jon Tuck Acting Instruction by Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Academy for Classical Acting June 18-21, 2009 Harman Center for the Arts Washington, D.C. Annapolis Friday, September 25 - Sunday, September 27 (please note that Sunday’s events will be over by 2 p.m. due to the start of Yom Kippur at sundown that evening) In collaboration with the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C., this combination seminar/performancebased workshop will feature stimulating scholarly discussion integrated with an exploration of the actor’s craft and approach to classic text. Participants will engage in seminars, text analysis, stage combat, and voice and movement workshops. Whether you are a novice actor, scholar, or student, “Shakespeare in Performance” is a not-to-be missed workshop. Alumni Association President Jason Walsh Cost: $990 per person (A97) presents the Award of Merit to Includes seminars, ticket to performance of Peter McGhee (class of 1955). King Lear, instruction, breakfasts, receptions and tours. Registration and payment deadline: June 5, 2009 Santa Fe Friday, October 9 - Sunday, October 11 Cost: $475 per person Includes all seminars, lunches, and dinner on Sunday On campus room and board is $250 per person for ﬁve nights Registration and payment deadline: May 22, 2009 Jason Bielagus (SF98) enjoys the Homecoming banquet in Santa Fe. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 } �NON -P ROFIT ORG . U.S. POSTAGE PAID P UBLISHED BY THE COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE P.O. BOX 2800 A NNAPOLIS , MARYLAND 21404 ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED A NNAPOLIS , MD P ERMIT NO . 120 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The College (2001-2017) Description An account of the resource The St. John's College Communications Office published The College magazine for alumni. It began publication in 2001, continuing the St. John's Reporter, and ceased with the Fall 2017 issue. Click on <a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=56">Items in The College (2001-2017) Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, Md. Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context thecollege2001 Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 52 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Title A name given to the resource The College, Spring 2009 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf 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 Type The nature or genre of the resource text Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context The_College_Magazine_Spring_2009 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Description An account of the resource Issue of The College Magazine. Published in Spring 2009. The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/902fe7b41f9221a153b36b1c448de638.pdf 880839e891ff40dde92151e113bcfed5 PDF Text Text College The St. John’s College • Annapolis • Santa Fe Frederick Douglass Considering Freedom S u m m e r 2 0 0 9 �“It is only by the practice of the liberal arts that the human animal becomes a free man. It is only by discipline in these arts that spiritual, moral, and civil liberties can be achieved and preserved. It is in such obvious propositions as these that the founding fathers of 1784 and 1789 gave reasons for the institutions they set up.” Scott Buchanan, Bulletin of St. John’s College, 1937-38. On Freedom T he roughly chronological structure of the St. John’s Program puts readings such as Marbury v. Madison and Abraham Lincoln’s speeches in senior year. These readings allow students to think deeply about governing and being governed just as they are about to emerge from a college created, in part, to render them educated citizens, guardians of democracy. Assembled together in one spiral-bound book are the Marbury and Dred Scott readings, along with works by Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and Booker T. Washington. While the selections vary, Johnnies have been reading Douglass’ “The Constitution of the United States: Is it Pro-slavery or Anti-slavery” and “Oration in Memory of Abraham Lincoln.” Douglass’ speech on the Constitution was delivered in Glasgow in 1860. Along with his eloquent argument that the Constitution is anti-slavery, the speech includes his acknowledgement that he has examined and revised many of his opinions. He no longer seeks revolution—as he had as a follower of William Lloyd Garrison—but reform: “When I escaped from slavery, and was introduced to the Garrisonians, I adopted very many of their opinions, and defended them just as long as I deemed them true. I was young, had read but little, and naturally took some things on trust. Subsequent experience and reading have led me to examine for myself.” Douglass’ “Oration” is a moving speech, but one that acknowledges the political realities that faced Lincoln. He calls Lincoln “the white man’s President, entirely devoted to the welfare of white men.” He recounts the many decisions that “taxed and strained” the faith of those who sought emancipation. As Douglass was shaped by his youth in bondage, he points out that Lincoln was shaped by a hardscrabble youth: “He calmly and bravely heard the voice of doubt and fear all around him; but he had an oath in heaven, and there was not power enough on earth to make this honest boatman, backwoodsman, and broadhanded splitter of rails evade or violate that sacred oath. He had not been schooled in the ethics of slavery; his plain life had favored his love of truth.” When the two men came together, their respect for each other grew, writes James Oakes in The Radical and the Republican: “Both were uncommonly intelligent. Each was a brilliant orator whose greatest speeches fused razor-sharp logic to soaring idealism. . . . They respected self-made men and so they respected each other.” A few blocks away from the Annapolis campus the life and legacy of Frederick Douglass is commemorated in the Banneker-Douglass museum. On the grounds of the Maryland State House sits an imposing statue of Roger Brooke Taney, most remembered for presiding in the Dred Scott case. And Lincoln himself walked through campus in February 1865 during a brief stop on his way to the Hampton Roads Conference in February 1865. For her essay in this issue, Laurel Pappas (A09), senior seminar readings fresh in her mind, read Frederick Douglass’ autobiography and explored his life through visits to his homes in Anacostia and Anne Arundel County. She found in Douglass’ quest for freedom striking parallels to her own education. Some changes to The College in this issue: You’ll ﬁnd the alumni calendar in an expanded Alumni section, featuring Alumni Association news and what’s happening in the chapters. In its place, on the inside back cover (in the magazine trade, supposedly the way most readers enter the magazine), you’ll ﬁnd Eidos, a new section created to highlight the work of Johnnies in the ﬁne arts. —RH The College is published three times a year by St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD, and Santa Fe, NM Known ofﬁce of publication: Communications Ofﬁce St. John’s College Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404-2800 Periodicals postage paid at Annapolis, MD postmaster: Send address changes to The College Magazine, Communications Ofﬁce, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800. Rosemary Harty (AGI09), editor 443-716-4011 rosemary.harty@sjca.edu Patricia Dempsey, managing editor Jennifer Behrens, art director The College welcomes letters on issues of interest to readers. Letters can be sent via e-mail to the editor or mailed to the address above. Annapolis 410-626-2539 Santa Fe 505-984-6104 Contributors Sophia Koltavary Sara Luell (A09) Laurel Pappas (A09) Nathaniel Roe (SF08) Deborah Spiegelman Curtis Wilson (HA93) Magazine design by Claude Skelton Design �College Summer 2009 The The Magazine for Alumni of St. John’s College Annapolis • Santa Fe {Contents} 10 Commencement d e p a r t m e n t s page 2 At Commencement in Annapolis and Santa Fe, the theme was courage. • Norman Levan: a portrait of philanthropy Launching the Jeff Bishop The man in the basement St. John’s new BVG chair Celebrating 20 years of Summer Classics What Caritas means to St. John’s News and announcements New board members Still obsessed with the white whale Letters 30 biblioﬁle • • • 14 A Freedom Through Education • page A brand-new St. John’s graduate discovers why education and freedom were synonymous to Frederick Douglass. from the bell towers • • • • • page 14 16 On Freedom page • We gave three tutors free reign to talk about freedom, and they roamed far and wide with their topic. 32 J.B. Shank’s The Newton Wars details how French thinkers viewed Newton’s theories; plus, celebrating Johnnie poets. alumni P RO F I L E S 32 Michelle Vest (SF90) explores the lives of 22 Resilience in a Recession page page 16 Few American lives remain unaltered by the economic crisis. Four Johnnies detail how their lives have changed. immigrants in her one-woman play. 36 Jazz producer A.T. Michael MacDonald (SF76) seeks a balance. 41 St. John’s provides an educational model for school founder Melanie Hiner (A81). 48 46 Croquet 52 page This year, it was East vs. West as Santa Fe ﬁelded its ﬁrst croquet team, and Vikings vanquished their foes. page 22 on the cover Frederick Douglass Illustration by David Johnson alumni association news st. john’s forever �2 {From the Bell Towers} A Life Changed by Giving By Diane Hardisty Bakersﬁeld Californian His ﬁrst donation went to Bakersﬁeld College, where it is being Carmen Schaad sat quietly in a room at Bakersﬁeld’s Heart Hospital. used to develop the Norman Levan Center for the Humanities. In the bed slept her 88-year-old boss. To pass the time on that long His $5.6 million donation is the largest the college has ever night in 2004, she watched the Bakersﬁeld Beautiful Awards cerereceived and is funding the renovation of an existing building to mony on television. Dr. Norman Levan, a Bakersﬁeld dermatologist, her employer and house the center and its programs. A portion of the money also supports the Levan Institute that offers lifelong learning classes to friend for four decades, faced surgery the next morning to clear a area residents 55 years of age and older. blockage from his heart. As Carmen watched people being honored, At the University of Southern California, where he earned his she chewed on an idea. medical degree and later headed the school’s Dermatology DepartHours later, when Levan awoke from surgery, his ofﬁce manager ment, a similar donation funds the Norman Levan Institute for lectured him. “If he thought he had nine lives, he had already gone Humanities and Ethics, encourthrough seven of them,” she aging students to explore new recalls telling him. ways of thinking. Her message was clear: His At Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek time was running out. Instead of Medical Center, another nearly just doling out his money to $6 million donation opened the worthy causes in his will, as he Dr. Norman Levan Center for planned to do, he should give the Humanistic Medicine to foster millions of dollars he amassed compassionate care at the through his lifelong investing 105-year-old hospital. while he was still alive. St. John’s College in Santa “I wanted to see the smile on Fe, N.M., is using a fourth his face. I wanted him to see the $5 million gift to build the buildings that would be built Norman and Betty Levan Hall with his money and the [for] its Graduate Institute of programs that would be started. Liberal Education. . . . Levan And I wanted to nominate him says the advanced degree he for an award,” she explained. earned from St. John’s College She was convincing. Levan “changed my life.” soon began giving away his Levan’s medical career and money. He also began smiling a his passion for studying the lot. Both Carmen and his longPrompted by a friend, Dr. Norman Levan (SFGI74) began giving back to St. John’s College and other causes instead of preparing humanities are as remarkable as time friend, former Bakersﬁeld bequests. His $5 million gift to the college makes possible a new the millions of dollars he has College President John Collins, graduate center on the Santa Fe campus. given away. agree: The giving campaign Levan was born in a Clevecame at the right time. land suburb, where his father, Levan’s wife, Betty, had just Joseph, worked as a toolmaker and his mother, Rose, stayed home died. The childless couple, who met on a tennis court more than a to raise Levan, the youngest, and his three sisters. His parents half century ago, were the centers of each other’s lives. Levan profoundly missed his wife. Her death narrowed his world to his one- divorced and his mother moved with her teenage son to Detroit, where his sister, Goldie, landed a teaching job. It was during the day-a-week medical practice and reading books. Depression, when jobs were scarce. Levan and his mother later His decision to start giving away his money “changed his life,” followed Goldie to the West Coast. said Collins, who also is Levan’s patient. “He is now having a lot A good student whose education was jump-started at home by his of fun.” teacher sister, Levan skipped grades and graduated from high So far, Levan has made four massive donations—each nearly school at 16. He then entered USC as an English major. Teased by a $6 million—to three colleges and a Jerusalem hospital. With each brother-in-law that he would end up teaching like his sisters, or donation he gets accolades, invitations to events and encourageselling newspaper ads, Levan took the USC medical school ment to watch buildings and programs started in his name. entrance exam, passing it with a top score. This was remarkable, Although coy about the size of his wealth, it appears the now since Levan had shunned “boring” science classes and thought 93-year-old plans to give even more. pre-med students were “quite dull.” Each donation is structured to reinforce his lifelong belief that no He acquiesced to the school’s demand that he complete at least a matter what your career is, you must study the humanities to be truly course in organic chemistry and went on to earn a medical degree educated. He is an outspoken critic of his medical profession, which from USC. He served as a medical ofﬁcer during World War II, he considers dominated by people too focused on science and the with assignments in the Paciﬁc. commercial rewards of healing. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �3 {From the Bell Towers} Launching the Jeff Bishop years served as vice president of the college. Bishop died in July 2007 after a long battle with cancer. Athletic Director Leo Pickens (A78) gave a brief patricia dempsey College board member Ray Cave (class of 1948) was on hand April 22 to christen the racing shell he donated to the college in memory of Jeff Bishop (HA96), who for 20 Ray Cave (A48) christens the Jeff Bishop as Johnnies welcome a new eight to the ﬂeet, (l. to r.): Rachel Ulrich (A11), Brook Pendergast (A11), Margaret Ansell (A10), and Virginia Harness (A11). A teenage bout with acne exposed him to dermatology. That, combined with his wartime experience treating soldiers’ skin diseases, led to his medical specialty. He joined a private practice after the war and volunteered to teach in USC’s ﬂedgling Dermatology Department. When the department expanded, he became its ﬁrst chairman and full-time faculty member. In 1961, a group of Bakersﬁeld doctors asked Levan to travel to Bakersﬁeld once a week to treat difﬁcult cases. When he retired from USC a few years later, he and Betty, a champion bridge player, moved to Bakersﬁeld. Levan credits his fortune to luck. He said he was required to invest 8 percent of his faculty salary into a university account, which USC matched. He invested another 8 percent privately. “That was when the Dow was 400,” he recalled. By the time he began giving his fortune away, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had climbed to more than 14,000. Levan is similarly humble in explaining his decision to give away his money. With a twinkle in his eyes and a smile on his lips, he quotes 19th-century American industrialist Andrew Carnegie: “The man who dies rich dies disgraced.” Levan won’t be disgraced. x Copyright 2009, the Bakersﬁeld Californian. Reprinted with permission. speech, praising Bishop’s dedication to supporting the college and its students. Pickens noted Bishop’s willingness to tow the college’s ﬁrst eight-person shell to the campus. Bishop also helped cultivate a relationship with The Hodson Trust, which funded an extensive renovation of the college boathouse and helped support the crew program. Bishop also embodied “many of the virtues that rowers admire,” Pickens said—particularly by showing courage in the face of overwhelming challenges. “Jeff loved to compete,” Pickens said. “And perhaps even more than the competition itself, Jeff relished the training and preparation that goes into any successful performance. He was also the most mentally tough competitor I have ever known. Rowers here often refer to that dreaded no-man’s land in a 2,000-meter race, somewhere between the 1,000-meter mark and the 1,500-meter mark, as ‘the house of pain.’ Jeff showed no qualms about willingly pushing himself across that threshold into the ‘house of pain.’ And even though it seemed that in his last years he, without choosing, lived in that house of pain, he never was discouraged or lost heart. He kept his chin up and eyes always looking forward. This is the type of courage rowers admire.” As he poured champagne over the bow of the college’s newest eight, Cave remarked that the tribute was a ﬁtting one, given Bishop’s extraordinary success in raising money for the college. Bishop was the driving force behind St. John’s most recent capital campaign, which raised $134 million. “He kept the place aﬂoat,” Cave said. x Breaking Ground Construction began this summer on the Norman and Betty Levan Hall, the new home of the Graduate Institute of Liberal Education in Santa Fe. A LEED silver-certiﬁed building, Levan Hall will be located between the Fine Arts Building and Weigle Hall and will house seminar rooms, ofﬁces, and common rooms. Dr. Levan’s gift provided the means for a long-needed home for Santa Fe’s two graduate programs, Master of Arts in Liberal Arts and Master of Eastern Classics. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �4 {From the Bell Towers} You can’t go to the Internet to ﬁnd the kind of laboratory equipment required for the classic, sometimes obscure, experiments conducted at St. John’s. Try ﬁnding Hauksbee’s globe or Faraday’s rotating rectangles in a catalog. That’s why the college needs Gary Dunkelberger to make a wide variety of wood and metal apparatus for the college’s laboratory program. Before he joined the college as laboratory craftsman, Dunkelberger worked in Annapolis’ boating industry as a yacht carpenter. He built classic wooden boats from scratch and crafted the interiors of mega-yachts (100 feet or bigger) for clients including the late Walter Cronkite. Laboring in a stressful industry gradually took its toll, and after suffering a heart attack, Dunkelberger pursued a career change. He answered an ad for the lab position at St. John’s, and right from the start, impressed Laboratory Director Mark Daly and tutor Chester Burke (A74) with his craftsmanship and ingenuity. “Gary began making laboratory equipment beyond our wildest dreams,” says Burke. “He listens intently to our requests and then goes quietly into his gigantic basement to work his magic.” Dunkelberger moved into a position held for years by Al Toft (H02), John Cook, and Otto Friedrich. His special talent for woodwork has “raised the bar” for the laboratory program. “He really loves beautiful wood, so we’re going from equipment made of plywood and 2 x 4s to pieces made of cherry, oak, and walnut. If he makes something in brass or steel, he polishes it until it gleams. They’re works of art,” says Daly. Precision is essential to the instruments, Daly says, and Dunkelberger is a perfectionist. “We’re talking about scales of a thousandth of an inch range. Everything has to be precise or the experiment may not work.” A graduate of York College, Dunkelberger worked in the steel industry before moving to Annapolis, and as a self-taught carpenter and machinist, found steady work in the city’s boating industry. One of Dunkelberger’s ﬁrst tasks was to create a set of Faraday rotating rectangles. These rectangles, of varying perimeters, are wrapped with copper wire. It was Faraday who noticed that when the rectangles rotate in a magnetic ﬁeld, electric current is induced in them, the amount of which depends upon the speed of rotation and the area of the rectangles. “This is one of the most important principles which we study in the second semester of the junior laboratory and Gary has given life to the phenomena,” says Burke. Making the Faraday rectangle involved looping a length of copper wire around a wooden frame 500 times—three to four hours of work for each one. rosemary harty The Man in the Basement above, Gary Dunkelberger has taken over the job of crafting the unusual apparatus required for St. John’s laboratory program. Left, Hauksbee’s globe, just one example of Dunkelberger’s handiwork, demonstrates principles of electricity. (Dunkelberger made four.) “It was a bit tedious,” he admits. At one point in his life, Dunkelberger harbored “vague dreams” of a life in academe; now that he’s part of a college environment, he takes pleasure in talking with tutors and students about the laboratory program and making their investigations possible through wood, metal, and a lot of patience. As an Annapolitan, Dunkelberger was familiar with St. John’s, he says. “But I was rather amazed at the high quality of the students.” When students in junior laboratory take up Maxwell this { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } coming year, they’ll explore electromotive force and electromagnetic momentum using a model Maxwell devised in his Cavendish laboratory. Dunkelberger used cherry, white oak, and a brass rod to make a beautiful and functional instrument for students to see for themselves what Maxwell hoped to show. Even if—mired in Lagrangian analysis—students don’t notice the ﬁne beveled edges and polished wood, Dunkelberger can’t resist. “Why not add a bit of beauty?” he asks. x —Rosemary Harty �5 {From the Bell Towers} An Exciting Time to Lead a College transaction complete, Uremovich moved to Santa Fe with plans to retire. Early in his business career, Uremovich acquired the 55volume set of Britannica’s Great Books of the Western World, which gave him his ﬁrst introduction to St. John’s. He enrolled in the Summer Classics, where his ﬁrst seminar was on Galileo. It didn’t take long for him to become deeply connected with the college. He got to know then-president John Agresto (a fellow ﬂy ﬁsherman) and Robert Glick, then serving as vice president for advancement. Uremovich went from fan to supporter, making a pledge to support construction of the Student Activities Center. He enrolled in the Graduate Institute and joined the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors in 2003. Enrolling in the GI provided a much fuller experience than he could have found reading great books at home. “It was very enlightening for me,” he said. “I had the typical rough spots, as a business person coming out of the real world to the very isolated and insulated world of the seminar. I was more used to telling people things, rather than listening.” Uremovich took a special interest in the history segment. “I took a preceptorial that examined the Greek plays of the time and juxtaposed them against Thucydides,” he recalls. “We went through the war and being a Vietnam vet myself, I found that really insightful.” Uremovich chaired the committee that led the search to name John Balkcom’s successor after Balkcom (SFGI00) stepped down in 2003. At the time, Uremovich was back in the business world, running his own consulting ﬁrm, Manalytics. A president was named, but the search was relaunched after the appointee resigned before taking the position. The second search was immensely successful, Uremovich says, putting Michael Peters in place in Santa Fe in 2005. It’s a “pretty exciting time” to lead a college governing board, Uremovich says. “We’re facing signiﬁcant challenges at dimitri fotos Michael Uremovich (SFGI05) lives in Virginia, heads a business based in Ohio and California, and is on the road at least three days a week. But the newly named chair of the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors—who tried earnestly to retire a decade ago—isn’t too concerned about taking on the role on top of his business responsibilities. After all, his predecessor, Sharon Bishop (class of 1965), led a successful and growing company during her seven years as board chair. “There’s an old saw that says if you want something done, give it to a busy person,” says Uremovich. Uremovich is chairman of the board and CEO of Pacer International, an intermodal and logistics freight transportation services provider. According to the journal Smart Business, he’s widely recognized as a “logistics industry guru, who helped revolutionize the business.” For example, Uremovich served as part of a team that invented the doublestack train, an innovation that doubled a train’s capacity for transporting goods while reducing costs. Reared in Tucson, Uremovich earned a bachelor’s degree in logistics transportation management from the University of Arizona and an MBA from City University of New York, Baruch College. Over the years, he’s been a principal at the consulting giant Booz Allen Hamilton and held key strategic planning and marketing positions at companies including Pepsi and American President Lines. In the 1990s, he served as vice president of marketing for Southern Paciﬁc Transportation and president of TSSI (its logistics operating company), where he helped negotiate the company’s sale to Union Paciﬁc. With the { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } the college in terms of balancing the things we value about our community with the brutal realities of the outside world,” he says. Even if the economy rebounds in the coming year, some difﬁcult decisions may be in order, Uremovich says. “There’s a great saying in the business world these days that you don’t want to waste a good crisis,” he says. “This is a good time to examine the institutional infrastructure that supports the Program. We can go down this path carefully, and begin with a recognition that some compromise may be required to get the best solution.” St. John’s is in a better position to meet today’s challenges than it would have been when Uremovich ﬁrst joined the board. The college has strong, stable leadership; the Management Committee effectively guides collegewide decisions; and there’s momentum from a successful capital campaign in which alumni demonstrated a strong commitment to the college. The board itself is one of the college’s best resources. “I’ve been afﬁliated with many not-for-proﬁt boards, and I don’t think I’ve ever worked with a group of people so singularly dedicated to the idea of the institution and its underpinnings,” he says. Uremovich has another reason for his fondness for the college; he met his wife, Susan, in a seminar on Emerson at the campus. “She ran the crime labs for the State of New Mexico and was periodically intrigued by the college up on the hill,” he says. “Ours was a Coffee Shop romance.”x —Rosemary Harty Rooted in the Program, St. John’s can weather turbulent times, says BVG Chair Michael Uremovich. �6 {From the Bell Towers} Summer Classics Program Draws Devotees The Dueling Gluckmans Santa Fe’s popular Summer Classics program marked its 20th year this summer with three weeks of seminars on topics ranging from the poetry of T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound to The Godfather. The program was launched in 1990 with a single seminar on Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. The following summer, the college offered three consecutive weeks of seminars. Now including both morning and afternoon sessions, the Summer Classics has enjoyed nearly sell-out popularity. Lively, in-depth conversations—in a captivating city—inspire many Summer Classics participants to return year after year. Such is the case with Jon and Stephen Gluckman, father and son, who returned this summer for their second Summer Classics. Stephen discovered the program while exploring colleges in his junior year, and Jon has a colleague and friend who attended the Graduate Institute. For their ﬁrst summer experience (in 2008), Jon, a high school English teacher in New Jersey, and his son, about to embark on his senior year in high school, decided on two consecutive weeklong seminars: Dostoevsky’s The Idiot and the Mahabharata. They originally planned to ﬂy to New Mexico, but then Tom Waits tickets went on sale. “We’re big fans,” explains Stephen. The plane trip became a music-themed road trip that ultimately took ﬁve weeks, with the Waits concert in Birmingham, Ala., and the Santa Fe Opera’s production of Billy Budd among the highlights. Their blog (www.gluckmanvroom.blogspot.com), chronicles their cross-country adventure. At St. John’s, Jon and Stephen shared a suite with two other men, both long-time participants, who shared their seminar discussions on the Aeneid and the Iliad. “[Our] tutors were great … [asking] probing questions that brought the most out of the texts,” Jon writes on their blog, adding: “We made a bit of an impression being dueling Gluckmans in our two seminars.” “Somewhere between a monastery and mountain resort” is how Gluckman Senior describes the Santa Fe campus. “These were truly two of the most inspiring and renewing weeks of the summer.” When they returned home, both felt the lingering beneﬁts of their experience. “I’d always taught somewhat like St. John’s does, but this solidiﬁed what I do and honed the way I questioned my students,” Jon notes. “It deﬁnitely made me more conﬁdent in my classes,” Stephen says. The two hoped to renew their friendships with some of their fellow Classics participants when they returned this July, to read Thomas Mann’s Joseph and His Brothers. After their summer in Santa Fe, Stephen is off to Sarah Lawrence. And while Stephen’s unsure of his plans for next summer, his father plans to be back in Santa Fe, he says. “This will become my summer camp.” x —Deborah Spiegelman A Summer’s Journey with Suffering Souls I arrived at St. John’s on a blustery April afternoon to visit the college with my daughter during her junior year in high school. I was immediately taken with the natural beauty surrounding the college, but it was the brief stop at the bookstore that took my breath away. Plato, Aristotle, Dante and Montaigne—these were the books I had longed to read in college. I returned home with my daughter wondering how I could redo my college education. A few years later I happened upon an advertisement for Summer Classics in The Atlantic and immediately signed up for the mailing list. A Santa Fe’s Summer Classics seminar was a bonding experience for Jon The following spring (l.) and Stephen Gluckman of New Jersey. the brochure arrived in { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } the mail. After discovering my ﬁrst choices were ﬁlled, I settled instead on The Letters of Vincent van Gogh and the Brothers Karamazov. Soon my books arrived, and I happily plunged into the mysterious world of Aloysha and his brothers. On the shuttle from Albuquerque to Santa Fe, the driver noticed my Brothers K on my lap. He inquired about the book and St. John’s. As we turned onto Camino Cruz Blanca he asked, “Why are you studying about suffering souls?” Why indeed, I asked myself, as I wrestled with my book-laden suitcase up the stairs at St. John’s. I mused, “Aren’t we all suffering souls?” The lunches at St. John’s became an extension of the classroom discussions. Munching on tuna salads, we wondered about Dostoevsky’s own faith as we explored his exquisite discourse on free will and religion in the Grand Inquisitor’s speech. A doctor wondered why many of Dostoevsky’s characters suffered from “brain fever.” Classmates became friends as we delighted in the process of joint intellectual exploration. The refrain was similar: “We do not have anyone to discuss books with back home.” Last summer I had the good fortune to study Plato’s Symposium and the Phaedrus. On the last day of the class a classmate asked our tutor, Eva Brann, whether it is possible to reach transcendence other than through love. Miss Brann smiled. “Ah, you will just have to read Plato’s other dialogues to ﬁnd out.” With those words in our hearts, most of us will return for another summer of intellectual delights. x —Sophia Koltavary �{From the Bell Towers} 7 A Life-Changing Year It was the summer of 1973, and Jim Jarvis (A75) was getting ready to take a job waiting tables at a Colorado resort instead of embarking on his junior year at St. John’s. After adding up his grants, loans, and personal savings, he came up $500 short for tuition and room and board. “I know it doesn’t sound like a lot now, but it was more than anyone in my family could scrape up,” he recalls. He wrote a letter to Barbara Leonard (H55), then assistant dean, to tell her he was taking a year off. Jarvis had been visiting friends in New York City at the end of the summer, and he stopped at a phone booth in Grand Central Station to call his mother, who had an urgent message for him: “Barbara Leonard wants you to call her immediately.” He reached in his pocket for more change, but didn’t have another quarter. “So, there were my friends and I scrambling around Grand Central, panhandling for spare change.” When he reached Leonard, she was characteristically direct. “What’s this about you not coming back?” When Jarvis said he couldn’t ﬁnd the money, Leonard replied: “Just get on the train, come down here, and don’t worry about the money.” About two weeks after the semester started, Jarvis learned that the grant to keep him in school came from the Caritas Society. By way of thanks, he picked up his guitar and with Janet Hellner (SF77) on ﬂute, gave a recital for a Caritas luncheon. For more than 40 years, Caritas has been helping Johnnies with emergency ﬁnancial needs, and over the past year, their support has made a great difference in the lives of students whose families are suffering in the economic downturn. In thank-you letters to the society, students wrote of health crises in their families, foreclosures, and job losses. One student was grateful for the money that allowed her to go to the dentist—her family had no insurance and could not afford the $2,000 bill. “Caritas has always helped students who still come up short when all the ﬁnancial Dr. Jim Jarvis (A75, third from left and shown with students in his lab) aid has been doled almost missed a year at St. John’s, until Caritas stepped in. out,” says Lynn Yarbro, the organization’s president. Steps in March. What motihe decided on the course for “When we read these letters, we know their burden has been vates the group, says Yarbro, is the rest of his life: a career in a deep admiration for the medicine and research. softened somewhat.” college, its academic program, “The research I’m doing Working with the college’s and especially, the students. now is the research I predicted ﬁnancial aid ofﬁce during the “If we can make a difference I would be doing in my junior 2008-09 academic year, essay: studying biological Caritas made $34,650 in emer- for even a handful of students who might not be able to stay complexity,” he says. “It was gency grants to 13 students. at St. John’s in this economy, literally a life-changing year.” Another $2,000 from the then all our efforts are worth Today, Jarvis is a professor society’s Weigle Great Books it,” Yarbro says. of pediatrics at the University Fund helped ﬁve students buy More than 30 years later, of Oklahoma Health Sciences Program books. During the Jarvis looks back on the Center, where he specializes capital campaign, the society support he received from in pediatric rheumatology. established an endowed Caritas with enduring gratiAmong his research projects Caritas scholarship to support tude. Instead of waiting tables is a study to determine why need-based ﬁnancial aid for a at a luxury resort, he settled juvenile arthritis afﬂicts student. into a wonderful corner room Native Americans at a higher All this is supported by the in Pinkney. He had French rate than other populations, as membership of about 200 and with Brother Robert, who led well as an ongoing investigaby the group’s fundraising his advanced class through tion into the role the innate events: a November Book and Remembrance of Things Past. immune system plays in Author event (this year’s star He studied Darwin with Leon chronic arthritis in children. attraction is novelist Alice Kass and discovered scientiﬁc Who knows what might have McDermott), and a beneﬁt ideas that intrigued him. And happened if he’d gone to performance by the Capitol Colorado, Jarvis muses. But because one life touches many others, “there is a room full of medical students right next to me” conducting important research because Caritas stepped in. “It reverberates from 1973 right to the present,” he says. x In thank-you letters to the Caritas Society, Annapolis students wrote of health crises in their families, foreclosures, and job losses. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �8 {From the Bell Towers} News & Announcements BARBARA GOYETTE (A73), vice president for Advancement in Annapolis, was among 26 women selected to receive the YWCA’s Tribute to Women in Industry (TWIN) Award for 2009. The award recognizes extraordinary women who are leaders in their corporations, organizations, and communities. Goyette has been vice president since 2002, overseeing fundraising, alumni relations, and communications at the college. She joined the college in 1994 as director of public relations. Alumna Appointed to DOT Post ANNE FERRO (A80) has been nominated to lead the Department of Transportation’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, charged with reducing crashes, injuries, and fatalities involving large trucks and buses. A former Peace Corps volunteer in Cote d’Ivoire, Ferro was most recently President of the Maryland Motor Truck Association. Between 1997 and 2003, she directed Maryland’s Motor Vehicle Administration, where she established a strong record in highway safety, regulatory compliance, and agency leadership. SF Alumni Win Fulbright Awards Annapolis VP Barbara Goyette was honored by the YWCA. Two recent St. John’s graduates will be heading overseas thanks to the Fulbright Program. THADDEUS THALER (SFGI09) received a Fulbright grant to study in Russia. Thaler will examine how Russia’s image of Latin America was shaped by ﬁlm and telenovelas (soap operas) between 1959 and 2009. AUSTIN XAVIER VOLZ (SF09) received a Fulbright English new board members The Board of Visitors and Governors welcomes these new and returning members: KEITH HARRISON (SF77) is professor of law and the chair of the International Criminal Law and Justice Graduate Programs at Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, N. H. He has served on the Board of Trustees for Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord, the Planning Committee for the Emerging Leaders of Color Conference, and the American Bar Association. He previously served on the board from 2001-2007. He received his JD from the University of Chicago. MIKE MILLER is principal of The Arundel Group, as well as a ﬁnancial consultant at a Washington, D.C., area public utility. Previously, he worked for Florida Memorial College, Africare, IBM, and PepsiCo. Miller earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Yale University and an MBA in ﬁnance from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He currently serves as a Board Member of the District 30 Democratic Club in Annapolis, jennifer behrens Annapolis VP Honored Ready for a ride: The Senior Gift of the Class of 2009 in Annapolis launched a bicycle-lending program on campus. Thanks to donations from the graduating students, six high-quality Globe bikes (tested above by Carol Partonen, A12; Zach Harrington, A11; and Katie Corder, A11) were purchased to launch the program. Teaching Assistantship. He plans to pursue questions about how a second language is learned and how advanced students accomplish ﬂuency in speaking and writing another language. Allanbrook Honored WYE JAMISON ALLANBROOK, professor emeritus at the Maryland, and is a former board member of International Services Agencies, Africare, and the Sandy Spring Friends School. CATHY RANDALL (A82) ran the Philadelphia and Baltimore ofﬁces at Deutsche Bank Alex Brown for 20 years. She served on the ﬁrm’s Executive Committee, which handled such items as how to standardize procedures across the branches by comparing and contrasting effectiveness and compliance with ﬁrm and industry rules and regulations, and gathering best practices for conducting business. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } University of California, Berkeley, was named an Honorary Member of the American Musicological Society. She served on the Annapolis faculty for 25 years. She currently holds an Andrew W. Mellon Emeritus Fellowship supporting research for 2008–10. x DANIEL VAN DOREN (A81) received his law degree from Boston University School of Law in 1985, where he cofounded the Public Interest Project, a fellowship program that distributes grants to students for summer work in public interest jobs. Since 1986, he has worked in several of his family’s real estate companies and currently serves as managing director of Van Doren Management Co, LLC, in New York City. He served as president of the New York chapter of the St. John’s College Alumni Association from 2004 to 2009. x �9 {From the Bell Towers} Still Obsessed with the White Whale At the University of Pennsylvania, Mike Kelly (AGI06) was torn between a career in economics and a career teaching literature. Economics won out, and right after graduation in 1972, Kelly landed a job at NASA. One of the college books he kept was a paperback copy of Moby-Dick, a novel he fell in love with as a teenager. “It’s one of those stories you can’t get out of your mind,” he says. In the fall of 2004, Kelly brought that same copy—now patched up with duct tape to keep the pages from escaping— to the Graduate Institute, where he joined other students in a preceptorial on the novel. In a lively class in which each participant had a passionate interest in Ahab, Starbuck, and the rest of the doomed crew of the Pequod, he added to his margin notes, wrote a paper about courage, and left with even more questions about Melville’s masterwork. In part, this obsessive pursuit of the white whale can be pinned on the preceptorial tutor, David Townsend. In response to one of Kelly’s observations, Townsend wrote in the margin: “What would Aristotle say about this?” Even with his diploma in hand in the spring of 2006, Kelly was still grappling with that question, and as soon as he retired, he devoted himself to pursuing it. He applied to the GI to write a master’s essay, and on a Saturday afternoon in April, sat for his oral examination. Any GI graduate who desires to write a paper may do so within two years of graduating. Kelly is one of a handful of students who have taken this step, although there’s no tangible beneﬁt to one who has already completed the degree. GI students can substitute the master’s essay and oral for one preceptorial. “I think the fact that people want to do an essay even after graduating shows two things,” says Marilyn Higuera, director of the Graduate Institute in Annapolis. “One: the essay is really serving the purpose it was meant to serve, namely that it provide an opportunity for graduate students to engage in an extended, focused study of some question which arose for them during their time here; the fact that people want to follow up on such questions even though it doesn’t ‘count’ toward a degree drives that point home.” Also, Higuera says, many students are reluctant to give up the rich discussions of GI preceptorials in order to write the master’s essay. Kelly worked for 35 years as a business deputy at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, supporting key projects such as weather and communications satellites. But he never lost his love for literature, and he enrolled in the GI just at the time he was preparing for retirement. “I loved every minute of it,” he says of the graduate program. Soon after he retired from NASA in 2007, Kelly asked Townsend to be his adviser, and he sat in on Townsend’s undergraduate preceptorial on the novel. It was a pleasure for Townsend to take the journey through Moby-Dick with Kelly again, helping him synthesize other ideas from his graduate studies. “Mike Kelly took on Moby-Dick as a genuine lover of wisdom, confronting squarely the need for courage in facing the deepest questions of life and death,” says Townsend. Kelly doesn’t plan to be retired for long. He began looking for a teaching job last spring. x —rosemary Harty Letters The Spring 2009 edition of The College contained a list of the “best” booksellers. You failed to mention a wonderful bookstore, The Symposium, on Hayes Street in San Francisco. It’s a unique store, with great selections, and is owned and operated by two recent graduates of St. John’s. I think they merit a note of recognition. Bookselling is a very difﬁcult business, and I think they would appreciate a much-deserved comment for carrying on the tradition of the Great Books. Doug Head Editor’s note: Robin Dunn only recommended bookstores he has visited personally for “The Love of Books” in the Spring issue. He’ll be sure to visit The Symposium next time he’s in the Bay area, thanks to this tip from Mr. Head, a Johnnie parent. Also, The College heard from John R. Traffas (SFGI75), who chided us for not including Eighth Day Books in Wichita. He has high praise for the store, with a setting that “inspires cordial and wide-ranging conversation,” has free coffee, and offers a good selection of serious books, including “a shelf of Loebs.” Corrections rosemary harty A story on Karen Cook (SF74) in the Spring 2009 issue incorrectly identiﬁed the institution for which Cook works. It’s the University of Louisiana at Monroe. A preceptorial paper on Moby-Dick left Mike Kelly with more questions than ever, prompting him to write a master’s essay. In the same issue, a story on Touchstones had the wrong title for Stefanie Takas (A89). She is Touchstones’ executive director. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �10 {Commencement} CELEBRATING COURAGE Commencement Speakers Laud Graduates for Choosing a Different Path by Rosemary Harty (AGI09) I gary pierpoint t was an unlikely coincidence that rain forced Commencement ceremonies indoors in both Annapolis and Santa Fe, but both ceremonies went off without a hitch in the Francis Scott Key Auditorium and Student Activities Center, respectively. For both ceremonies, alumni were speakers, and both touched on the theme of courage in their addresses to the graduates. In Annapolis on May 17, 110 undergraduate students received their Bachelor of Arts degrees, and 39 Graduate Institute students received their Master of Arts in Liberal Arts degrees. Tutor Anita Kronsberg (class of 1980), completing her third term as assistant dean this spring, told graduates not to worry if they fail to remember in perfect detail the paradigms and proofs they studied. Kronsberg’s speech focused on courage—the courage needed to enroll in a college such as St. John’s and the courage required to pursue a lifelong habit of subjecting one’s opinions and beliefs to constant scrutiny. “What is good is difﬁcult, and questioning the opinions we cherish is among the most difﬁcult things to do,” she said. “It requires courage, and when you leave this college it will require more courage, for you will often be without communal encouragement to it. But you will carry with you a disposition to seek out this and other forms of what is good, and this is a resource.” In her address, Kronsberg likened the journey students take through the Program to that of the hero of Homer’s Odyssey—in part because Johnnies spend their four years reading the works of long-dead authors, and Odysseus travels to the Land of the Dead. But while Odysseus made his trip alone, Johnnies journey in the company of their “shipmates” as they encounter strange new things. They draw courage from each other. “The illumination and enrichment of your life through your efforts to coax the dead into a living conversation will be different for each of you,” Kronsberg told the graduates. “Some of you may have heard here what sort of life lies ahead for you, many of you are, just now, overwhelmed by the welter of possibilities. All of you have Left, Annapolis graduates Tabitha Silver (l.) and Jessica Zimmerberg-Helms toast their success. Opposite page: Top, Kevin Andrus and Erin Destito. bottom, Anita Kronsberg (A80) spoke to the value of a Johnnie’s journey “in the land of the dead.” { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �{Commencement} “You have practiced courage through the constant practice of making mistakes of various kinds, both publicly and in the presence of an ever-sharper inner witness.” the disposition to enter into the experience of another as far as possible while remaining the author of your own opinions.” On May 23 in Santa Fe, 86 seniors and 21 graduate candidates heard from Dr. Stephen J. Forman (A70), chair of the Hematology and Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation Department at the City of Hope Cancer Center in California. Forman is also the principal investigator for a $15.2 million, ﬁve-year National Cancer Institute bone marrow transplantation program project grant and principal investigator of a ﬁve-year, $11.5 million Specialized Program of Research Excellence grant by the NCI for translational research studies for Hodgkin’s and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Forman focused his remarks on the way in which the college has been a continuing presence in his life and work. He explained why he chose his specialty in medicine and why he has devoted himself to working toward a cure for cancer: “When asked about my choice, and the unusual college background that could lead me to such work, I often answered that I chose the most philosophical of the medical specialties as it forces one to confront, daily, the important questions in our life and its meaning, about how we live our life, and our relationship to each other, our family, and community, our country, our world,” Forman said. “In essence, the work has allowed me to continue to think about the same questions that you gary pierpoint teri thomson randall Anita Kronsberg (A80) { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } 11 �12 {Commencement} “You have learned to pursue truth, an often painful process, which has an inherent integrity, which is never ending and as Socrates taught us, is not always welcome. But it is the pursuit of truth that will enrich your life’s work, deepen your friendships and your love of another human being.” gary pierpoint teri thomson randall have been considering for the last four years. Graduates are not the only ones to beneﬁt from St. John’s, Forman said. Because the college cultivates lifelong habits such as “learning, listening, and the pursuit of truth,” the beneﬁts of St. John’s extend to graduates’ families, co-workers, and communities. When graduates are asked about the signiﬁcance of their liberal arts education, Forman advised: “. . . I would say that we have helped our young to become lifelong students, capable of anything, who understand listening to be a virtue, who will pursue truth in their work and in their life. Not a bad education.” He congratulated students and their parents for choosing St. John’ and the commitment this education demands. “I do hope that you will remember this day, as we celebrate your graduation, the courage that each of you has demonstrated in coming here, as this is a very daunting place, as it exposes your fears, and, rather than running away, you have remained, and, with the help of the college, you have overcome them. We celebrate the courage of your parents to trust you, and the college to guide and protect you and bring you to this day. Yes, you are ‘Johnnies,’ and so are your parents. And, of course, there is the courage of our faculty, resistant to the educational fads of the day and, like you, not here by accident or casually, who, like you, face their own challenges in learning and teaching in all parts of our community of learning. And, like all of you, I remain grateful and respectful of their role in preserving this oasis of learning.” x teri thomson randall Stephen Forman (A70) Above right, Commencement speaker Dr. Stephen Forman (l.) and Santa Fe President Michael Peters. Bottom right, Tutor David Levine and other faculty members lined up in Santa Fe’s SAC weight room for the processional. Bottom left, parents Ben and Anna Bernanke with daughter, Alyssa, at the post-graduation reception in Iglehart Hall. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �{Commencement} 13 The Last of the Brocketts Noel decided in his sophomore year of high school that he was headed to Annapolis. “There was never really a doubt in my mind that I was going to St. John’s,” he says. St. John’s brought out their children’s talents, the Brocketts say, and each participated in the life of the college in his or her individual way. Hayden was the waltz archon and editor of The Gadﬂy. Gillian was devoted to intramural sports and discovered a love for science in the lab program and by working in the college observatory. Noel proved to be passionate about the liberal arts and Georgian culture and helped found a nonproﬁt organization called OLEG (the Organization for Liberal Arts in Georgia) to support a discussion-based liberal arts program at New Gelati Academy in Tbilisi. He helped create a student club that organized Georgian feasts and a Georgian dance class. Along with other OLEG members, he applied for and won a $10,000 Davis Peace Grant to bring a two-week program, based on readings from classic works, to Georgian youth this summer. Hayden, who met his wife, Mary Townsend (A04), when he was a prospie in her freshman seminar, just graduated from George Washington University’s School of Law and now works at the Department of Justice. Gillian worked at the United States Naval Observatory for a year before accepting a position as a medical researcher at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. She’ll be studying optical instrumentation in a master’s program at the university’s department of System Design Engineering. “I would not have discovered my love for astronomy or astrophysics if not for the relationships I built while at St. John’s,” she says. She also married a Johnnie, Ian McCracken (A04). And after spending most of the summer in Georgia, Noel plans to remain in Annapolis and work on OLEG, with an eye to graduate studies in philosophy in the near future. The Brocketts say that it was a sacriﬁce to send three children to a private liberal arts college. But as Philip Brockett explains, they believe in two principles when it comes to raising children. “One, we’ve never regretted any money we’ve spent on our children’s education,” he says. “And our other mandate was to do everything we could to ensure our children are independent. College is about launching your kids into the world. And St. John’s was just the right place to launch them.” x Each of the Brocketts (l. to r. Hayden, Gillian and Noel) found a special niche at gary pierpoint Among the graduates who marched across the stage in Annapolis May 17 was Noel Brockett, the third and last member of a Connecticut family to receive a St. John’s College diploma. In the audience were his parents, Philip and Nancy; sister, Gillian (A07); and brother, Hayden (A04), who launched the family’s devotion to St. John’s when he received a college brochure in the mail and made his college decision almost instantly. It’s not unusual for a family to send several children to St. John’s. Children follow parents, brothers follow sisters, and legacies are born. Philip Brockett remembers when his eldest son came home for Thanksgiving during his ﬁrst year, brimming with excitement about the books, his tutors, and his friends at the college. “He told us St. John’s was home for him,” he says. “On the one hand I was really glad for him, on the other hand, I was a little taken aback that he felt so comfortable at the college. He was so enthusiastic about St. John’s that he became a salesman for the college to his younger siblings.” Reluctant to follow her older brother, Gillian spent a year at the University of Connecticut. By the second semester, however, “she wasn’t satisﬁed with the educational experience she was having” at the large university, Nancy Brockett says. After visiting her older brother in Annapolis, “she called us up and said she wasn’t going back to U Conn. It just wasn’t the right ﬁt for her. But she did really well at St. John’s.” St. John’s, but they and their parents (Nancy and Philip) share a deep appreciation for the college. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } —rosemary harty �14 {Frederick Douglass} FREEDOM THROUGH EDUCATION by Laurel Pappas (A09) A fter four years of St. John’s it was time to read a bestseller. I needed something accessible, mesmerizing, full of colorful events and characters to snap me out of the aftershock of graduating. I hit on something modern, from 1845: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. As a student, looking ahead usually consisted of checking the seminar list to see what we would read next. As a graduate looking ahead means wondering what I should do. Impressed by the necessity for action in my own life, I was delighted to encounter in Frederick Douglass a man whose genius was so immediately applied to improving the world. Douglass makes his childhood and the challenges of his growth central in his books, and I soon realized that anyone who has sought freedom through education can identify with his pursuit of it. I was reminded that freedom is not merely a liberated body, but a liberated intellect. No Program author is as physically present in Maryland as Douglass. He was born a slave on the Eastern Shore, worked in a shipyard in Baltimore, had a summer house in Highland Beach and made his ﬁnal home in the Anacostia neighborhood of Washington, D.C. His Anacostia home in particular revealed the breadth of Douglass’ curiosity, innovation, and learning. He taught himself the violin, made his own checkerboard, spoke and wrote in German and French, read in Greek and Latin, appreciated the arts and had one of the most modern homes of his time. However, it turns out that he shared more than his renaissance ethic with St. John’s. When our tour guide, Noelle, learned where I went to college her face lit up in a smile. Knowing that her news would delight, she exclaimed, “Douglass loved to play croquet!” As early as age 7, still ignorant of the existence of the free states, Douglass knew the concept of freedom. “I distinctly remember being, even then, most strongly impressed with the idea of being a freeman some day,” he wrote in his autobiography. He wrestled to understand the commonplace brutality of the plantation. He was told that God, who was good, made white men to be masters and black men to be slaves. He recalls, “I could not reconcile the relation of slavery with my crude notions of goodness.” In 1826 Douglass was sent to Baltimore to live with the Auld family. His new mistress, Soﬁa, began to teach the 9year-old Douglass how to read. The lessons were halted after she guilelessly told her husband that “Fred” was a ﬁne pupil. The resistance of his master awoke in Douglass a “slumbering train of vital thought.” He suddenly understood what had mystiﬁed him about the power men had to perpetrate slavery. He saw ignorance at the root. He realized that, “knowledge unﬁts a child to be a slave.” If his mistress’ help cracked the door to literacy, his master’s resistance only reinforced the importance of pressing all the way through. He reﬂected later that, “He is whipped oftenest, who is whipped easiest.” Douglass was not easily whipped, either by the obstacles keeping him from an education or by the brutality he faced later. The speeches he found in his ﬁrst book, The Columbian Orator, gave him the means to articulate his own thoughts. “The more I read them, the better I understood them. The reading of these speeches added much to my limited stock of { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �{Frederick Douglass} chad salecker language, and enabled me to give tongue to many interesting thoughts, which had frequently flashed through my soul, and died away for want of utterance.” He had discovered the power of naming. Notably, Douglass also pored over a short dialogue in The Columbian Orator between a master and his freshly captured runaway slave. The master points to the kindnesses he has shown to his slave and insists that the slave explain why he attempted escape. The arguments of the black man sway the master at every turn; in the end, the master emancipates him. Douglass’ and his lifelong devotion to speaking for social justice can be seen as a living out of the texts that ﬁrst gave voice to his own thoughts and desires. After seven years in Baltimore he was sent to St. Michael’s. When Mr. Covey, the man hired to break him, gave him a serious head wound for being too ill to work, Douglass walked the 12 miles to St. Michaels and sought help from his master. He knew he would receive no aid on the grounds of his humanity, but argued that as property, he would be irreversibly damaged. His master sent him back. Douglass returned to the farm of Mr. Covey and refused to be beaten. He recounts that he and Mr. Covey gripped each other in a cow pen for several hours and that there were no blows exchanged between the men because Douglass neither The Frederick Douglass summer home: Twin Oaks in Highland Beach, Maryland. 410-267-6960 (open by appointment) Frederick Douglass National Historic Site: Cedar Hill in Anacostia: www.nps.gov/archive/frdo/freddoug.html The Banneker-Douglass Museum in Annapolis, Maryland: www.bdmuseum.com Douglass on the Eastern Shore of Maryland: Douglass was born on the Anthony farm, near the banks of the Tuckahoe River. A historical marker on the Eastern Shore on Route 328 is six miles away from Douglass’ birthplace. 15 In Frederick Douglass, Laurel Pappas (outside the BannekerDouglass house in Annapolis) found a man devoted to education as a means of improving the world. administered nor permitted them. “This battle was…the turning point in my ‘life as a slave.’ It rekindled in my breast the smouldering embers of liberty; it brought up my Baltimore dreams, and revived a sense of my own manhood. I was a changed being after that fight. I was nothing before; I WAS A MAN NOW.” Four years later he escaped disguised as a sailor, and his free papers were purchased in 1845 by friends. However, before he was legally emancipated Douglass made himself free through his access to the written word, by gaining the power to name his own thoughts, and by conﬁrming and embracing his stature as a man. His learning was not static. He taught black men to understand and love words, and later, when he was invited by abolitionists to join their circuit, he taught white men to understand and hate slavery. When initially invited to speak he was instructed to tell his story and leave the philosophy to the white abolitionists. Douglass chafed in this role. He later wrote that repeating the same story night after night “was a task altogether too mechanical for my nature. I could not always obey, for I was now reading and thinking.” He wanted to do more than relay the horrors of slavery; he wanted to condemn them. In a nation deeply saturated in its prejudices Douglass persisted and became one of the most gifted orators America has ever known. In reading, I was enthralled by Douglass’ spiritedness. His palpable legacy in Maryland helped me to meet, not simply the force of Douglass’ sentiments, but a man. The bestselling author I encountered did not help me sort out the particulars of what I should do with myself, but his example encouraged me. Douglass is a reminder that a true education, while for its own sake, is toward practical life.* x *“Statement of Educational Policy and Program,” Spring 2006, Michael Dink (A75) { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �16 {The Program} ON FREEDOM “In any account of Freedom the great symbols are chains and fetters. There is no universal and immediately transparent symbol of Freedom as such. The torch and the Statue of Liberty, the Phyrigian cap, the gesture of open and uplifted arms—these all symbolize freedom at best indirectly, by way of some historic or sentimental connotations. But chains—that’s different. They mean, directly, always and under all circumstances, compulsion. Why is this so? I think, because, in the most concrete way, we are never free. We are inescapably bound to the necessities of life, we cannot escape death; we depend intrinsically on everything around us, in the present as well as in the past.” – Jacob Klein, “The Problem of Freedom.” I n an essay he delivered 40 years ago at what was then the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, Jacob Klein spoke of both political freedom and the freedom of human beings as “thinking beings and as beings having a will.” The concept of freedom comes up frequently in program readings, from Aristotle to Faulkner. In readings such as the Dred Scott decision, the concept of freedom is made most clear when we’re confronted with its opposite: bondage. The College asked three tutors to think about freedom and write an essay. Not surprisingly, the Program itself came to mind for tutor Jon Lenkowski. Bill Pastille questions whether each individual unknowingly sets up barriers to freedom. And Claudia Honeywell turned to a ﬁctional character, Mrs. Dalloway, to examine freedom through the difﬁcult choices of one woman’s life. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �17 jennifer behrens {The Program} The Being-at-Work of Human Freedom by Jon Lenkowski, tutor, Annapolis As much as is possible, given all of the external exigencies to which we are subject in our daily lives, St. John’s College tries to provide us with freedom from certain sorts of wants and needs, as well as freedom from care and from distraction. The ancient word for this condition is schole, from which we get our modern words “school” and “scholar.” The word schole originally means leisure, as well as the place where leisure activity takes place, therefore suggesting a deep connection between leisure and study, or that study is the proper work of leisure. The liberal arts have been traditionally conceived as the arts of freedom, not only because they depend on leisure, but also because they provide us with certain kinds of resources to help lead us out of ignorance and blindness. In this way the liberal arts can be viewed as liberating. Any liberal arts college worth its salt must subscribe to this view of the liberal arts. But here at St. John’s we go even further than this: Learning can itself be slavish. What I mean by this is that one can become enthralled by any number of great thinkers, so that one takes a fancy to a new way of thinking, or a new view of things, or a new technical vocabulary, and learns it almost by rote, letting it take possession of one’s soul without scrutinizing it carefully enough to see whether it is really worthy of such an exalted status. And then there are all the various methods and procedures and models that one comes across in this or that departmental specialty; these tend to be forced upon the learner as though they were simply the truth of things; and even without this compulsion and enforcement these also often have a tendency to insinuate themselves into our souls surreptitiously and almost automatically. These are all forms of enslavement and un-freedom. And thus it is the task of the liberal arts to be liberating in yet a further way, that is, to help us develop powers of criticism such that we don’t simply and immediately internalize unthinkingly what we read, hear or learn. Thus then the liberal arts as liberating. But all this is in a way only preparatory to another freedom, which is the most essential sort of freedom that we can achieve here. It is perhaps the quintessence of our interior freedom. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �18 {The Program} with it a new responsibility— viz. to seek out those great thinkers who can best help us to formulate questions in just the right way, and help us pursue them and think about them most proﬁtably—for without this guidance we run the risk of missing many things, as well as the risk of trusting in our own abilities alone, and just spinning our own wheels, as self-indulgently delightful as that may be. jennifer behrens This is the freedom of thought, the freedom to be able to think in whatever direction the logos seems to lead us, to follow its pointings wherever they may lead, without fear of reprisal or consequence—to question and interrogate each of these pointings as vigorously as we can at each and every step of the way, and then to be able to say openly what we have learned and what we think. But this freedom also brings Freedom: Comedy? William Pastille, tutor, Annapolis Some years ago I gave a lecture questioning the value of questioning. The Socratic project of radical questioning in the service of the Delphic injunction “Know thyself” had become unsatisfying for me. It seemed that all the questioning I was doing was merely uncovering a host of unexamined prejudices, long-standing beliefs, and inherited errors that had been planted—often without my knowledge—in a hidden part in my soul. For all I could tell, this subconscious network of thought was irreducibly complex; and if that were the case, the Socratic project would never be realized. I could spend my entire life exposing the errors and the ignorance of my subconscious “self” to the light of day, sanitizing its piles of trash, cleaning up its mistakes, patching its holes—and I would be no closer to knowing myself at death than I was at birth. Or, as Schiller once put it, I would “miss” myself for the sake of an unrealizable Socratic project. In fact, it seemed to me then that the subconscious self controls our lives far more than the conscious one. The whole attempt to probe, to question assumptions, and to correct errors is conditioned by the subconscious self, since it is the source of the difﬁculties that radical questioning seems to uncover, and it retains them until the conscious self happens to light on one of them. Hence, the Socratic project is a sort of selfdeluding servitude to the hidden self: by convincing our conscious self that something is being accomplished by our continual exposure of unexamined assumptions, we conceal or play down the impossibility of the project and the futility of our activity. The subconscious self will never let go, no matter how many errors the conscious self corrects. Seen from this perspec- tive, questioning leads to slavery rather than to freedom. In the question period, my colleague Chaninah Maschler asked, “What is the obsession with freedom? Why is freedom so important that it overrides everything else?” “It bothers me,” I replied, “to think that something else is living my life for me.” “You should be grateful!” she shot back. Everyone else in the room, including me, burst into laughter. *** Of course, I thought that Ms. Maschler had somehow misapprehended my point, but in the days that followed, her “You should be grateful!” kept running through my mind. Soon I realized that it was a signal directing my attention to the fact that I had gotten something very wrong. And it was not long before the problem made itself known. By assuming that the unconscious self was dominant, I had granted it autonomy in its relations with the conscious self. But surely this is a mistake. The unconscious self is evidently not wholly self-determining, since ideas surreptitiously enter it from the outside, and since the conscious self can modify it through Socratic inquiry. So neither the conscious self nor the subconscious self are independent, stable, fundamental beings. Was it possible that there could be a more fundamental self? If so, where was it, and how could I come to know it? It turns out that there is a candidate for this more fundamental self. It is an aspect of consciousness that is sometimes called “the watcher.” Despite the mystical overtones, there is really nothing strange or extraordinary about it, even though for the most part we do not notice its activity. In order to notice it, you need to “step aside” from your thoughts and perceptions. The process for uncovering the watcher is well known in meditative traditions, and is pretty simple: Choose a quiet place { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �19 {The Program} As paradoxical as this formulation may seem, it is— ﬁnally—this interior freedom of thought that is the great freedom that we have tried to force you to exercise. Now, having said all of this, let me add a restriction: We tutors are always under the gun. We spend the better part of our waking lives in the service of this college, preparing, and preparing and then preparing again. The things we study are so difﬁcult and so many-sided. A single page of a book may point in a dozen different directions, and we feel obligated—and it is both an intellectual and a moral obligation—to follow up each and every one of these leads. There never seems to be enough time. We always feel rushed and hardly ever feel adequate to the task. Usually we prepare right up to class-time, and almost always go to class thinking: if only we had another hour or two! But once where you can be alone, and close your eyes. In your mind’s ear, recite a line of poetry that you know well. Slow it down progressively until there are long gaps between the words. Then concentrate intently on the gaps between the words. If you do this repeatedly and with persistence, you will sooner or later notice the presence of a constantly active awareness that is always ready to take up content in the form of thoughts or perceptions, but is just as lively when no such stimuli are present. As far as I can tell, it is always the same every time I clear space for it—an empty attentiveness without distinguishing marks. Is this the independent, stable, and fundamental self that grounds the unconscious and the conscious selves? It seems unlikely. Although it appears to have stability, it is hardly self-determining: it cannot resist being ﬁlled with content. The conscious self must strive to keep thoughts and perceptions off to the side in order for the watcher to remain in the open. This shows that the watcher is yet another self that dances with the conscious self in a continual interplay of submission and dominance, servitude and freedom. Maybe there just isn’t a fundamental self. *** And yet perhaps we can learn something from the process of bringing the watcher into the open. What if the stepping aside that makes room for the watcher is the right kind of activity, but just isn’t complete enough to clear the way for the fundamental self? What if we need to step aside not only from thoughts and perceptions, but also from the body, the conscious self, the subconscious self, the watcher, our memories, our various identities, and whatever else may be in our makeup—from everything that makes us ourselves? What if only something that total could open up the clearing necessary for the funda- Our classes work because we have trusted you and you have lived up to that trust. Jon Lenkowski inside the classroom something magical happens: the conversation starts and a spirit of ﬂuency takes over where we anticipated only a sort of stuttering and hemming and hawing. And so the class goes on quite wonderfully as though it had a life and spirit of its own. And so it turns out that we were all up to the task after all. And this happens because our students have also been busy, preparing and mental self to appear? What if only something like that could reveal to us the “something else” to which we should be grateful for living our lives for us? Strictly speaking, such a total stepping aside is inconceivable. It would be a complete metastrophe, a turning of our backs to our very existence, a kind of self-naughting. And if an inconceivable experience of this kind were to open a clearing for the fundamental self, then it would also be a supreme paradox: how could we be gone and yet something be left over? It seems likely that the approach to such an experience would be terrifying, amounting, as it were, to a kind of death. And indeed, in religious and mystical traditions where something like this collapse of the self is discussed, it is often treated as a death. Hence the famous dictum attributed to Mohammed: “Die before ye die.” But I wonder what the experience would look like on the other side of the collapse. Would it be like suddenly getting the punch line to a gag that had seemed utterly nonsensical beforehand? *** There is an old Zen joke: A student approaches his master with the question “Master, how can I be liberated?” “Who binds you?” the master responds. “Why no one binds me, master.” “Then why do you want to be liberated?” the master says with just a hint of a smile. Wouldn’t it be ironic if we have been missing ourselves just because we are in our own way; if the divine comedy really is a joke—and the joke is on us; if the best way to step out of our own way is to fall out of it by slipping on the banana peel of being? Wouldn’t it be funny if learning to laugh at ourselves is the real key to ultimate freedom? x { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �20 {The Program} preparing again. Our classes work because we have trusted you and you have lived up to that trust by investing yourselves in our common enterprise. You are not our pupils, but rather our co-workers, since we learn from you, as you learn from us. This makes you full partners in this great adventure of the Spirit that is at once the quintessential being-at-work of human freedom. Adapted from a toast given in December 2008 to degree candidates of the Graduate Institute, Annapolis. The Freedom to Be Herself By Claudia Honeywell, tutor, Santa Fe jennifer behrens Thanks to the education and opportunity we have had, our most pressing concern with freedom is often with the highly individual choices that give us the freedom to be ourselves. Yet our personal choices may be difﬁcult for those who love us to understand or even accept. Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway gives an interesting example of this. Peter Walsh, who has loved Clarissa for 30 years, does not understand why she rejected him and chose instead Richard Dalloway and a marriage devoid of passion. The loss of personal freedom that Clarissa’s choice entailed is emphasized throughout the novel, beginning with the famous opening line which introduces her only by her husband’s name and limits her autonomy to a frivolous trip to the ﬂower shop. Yet in spite of being deﬁned by her husband, Clarissa has not succumbed, like Lady Bradshaw, to the “slow sinking, waterlogged, of her will into his” (100). In fact, she is more open-minded than she was 30 years ago: “She would not say of any one in the world { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �{The Program} 21 Peter realizes that there is a connection between the way now that they were this or were that… and she would not Clarissa’s “emotions [are] all on the surface” (75) and her say of Peter, she would not say of herself, I am this, I am creativity, her “extraordinary gift of making a world of her that” (8).* own wherever she happened to be” (75). Peter credits Clarissa chose to marry Richard although she knew Clarissa’s detachment with giving her this ability to express herself to have stronger feelings for Peter. As the novel life fully by her presence, to make a world of her own, progresses, her choice appears due to something unfeeling “to sum it all up in the moment as she passed” (174). Unlike in Clarissa herself. Peter would like to condemn her for Peter and Sally Seton, who are diminished in the post-war “this coldness, this woodenness”, but instead he senses world, the detached Clarissa retains her compelling that it is “something very profound” and ﬁnds himself on presence. the day of the novel “unable to get away from the thought of Peter and Sally looked for fulﬁllment in private life, but her… trying to explain her” (76). this option was never open to Clarissa, for private life Clarissa’s lack of feeling is what connects her to demands the feeling that she lacks. Clarissa can only Septimus, her parallel character in the novel. Clarissa, express herself socially, where human relathinks Peter, is “cold as an icycle” (80), tions are more abstract than intimate. She while Septimus, the narrator tells us sees her party as an occasion to get at somerepeatedly, “could not feel” (86). This thing “unreal in one way; much more real quality of detachment, explored through in another” (171) and her party is for her an these two otherwise unrelated characters, end in itself: “it was an offering to is the main theme of the novel. Septimus is combine, to create, but to whom? An driven to suicide because those around offering for the sake of offering, perhaps” him are so threatened by his detachment. (222). Clarissa’s connection is not to indiClarissa avoided Septimus’ fate by rejecting viduals, but to human life as a whole: “in Peter, with whom “everything had to be the ebb and flow of things, here, she shared; everything gone into” (8). By survived. . .she was part” (9). choosing to live “like a nun” with the Claudia Honeywell Until the ﬁnal lines of the novel, Peter emotionally undemanding Richard, Clarissa thinks of this as Clarissa’s “transcendental Dalloway has ensured that she will not be theory” (152), which, he acknowledges, harassed for her own detachment. “worked to this extent: brief, broken as their actual meetAlthough not an artist, Clarissa thus has a certain ings had been… the effect of them on his life was immeastemperamental connection to the woman of “A Room of urable” (153). But in the novel’s closing line, Peter ﬁnds One’s Own” who needs “money and a room of her own if that Clarissa’s transcendence is not just theoretical, it she is to write ﬁction” (4). In “A Room of One’s Own,” manifests in her being, in her presence in the world. Virginia Woolf suggests that detachment is a truer artistic Through Peter’s experience of Clarissa’s presence, we response than passion. Romance, she says, may have been learn that Clarissa has retained the rare and personal always an illusion: freedom of being herself. “Shall we lay the blame on the war? When the guns ﬁred Clarissa’s power to draw Peter fully into the present is a in August 1914, did the faces of men and women show so creative power, akin to the power of the author herself. In plain in each other’s eyes that romance was killed?. . . .Why, “A Room of One’s Own,” Virginia Woolf discusses the if it was an illusion, not praise the catastrophe, whatever it difﬁculties that women have faced in developing their was, that destroyed illusion and put truth in its place?” (15). creative powers. Clarissa’s strange choice to marry Richard Although Clarissa’s enigmatic detachment was out of now appears guided by her woman’s intuition of how to place during the pre-war summer of romance and protect and develop her own unique self. Mrs. Dalloway courtship that ended with her choice to marry Richard, it is gives us a woman’s insight into the source of creativity and suited to the realism of the post-war aesthetic. Peter, who encourages us to give up our romantic illusions and learn, once believed that passion was the most important thing in with Clarissa, to “wish everybody merely to be themselves” life, has since learned that it is not passion but detachment (126). that gives “the supreme ﬂavour to existence—the power of * Line numbers are from the Harcourt edition.x taking hold of experience, of turning it round, slowly, in the light.” (79). Clarissa can only express herself socially, where human relations are more abstract than intimate. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �22 {Resilience} RESILIENCE in the face of RECESSION by Patricia Dempsey U nemployment, foreclosures, bankruptcies—these are unsettling times for Americans. The experiences of these four Johnnies reﬂect the gravity of a prolonged recession, but they also inspire optimism. Policy analyst Jim Sorrentino (A80) helps people keep their homes. Small business owner Trudy Koch (AGI82) rides out the recession in a tiny Virginia town, helping others along the way. Mandy Dalton (A89) fearlessly ventures into a new career. And in California, where the economy is staggering, therapist Tom Horvath (A75) teaches clients to hang on even when they’re losing everything. “This is A bout Community” Jim Sorrentino (A80) Offers Hope for Homeowners Jim Sorrentino (A80) fondly remembers the movie It’s a Wonderful Life from the days when he ran the ﬁlm program at St. John’s. When the Depression hits, there’s a run on the bank, and George Bailey offers the cash he saved for his honeymoon trip to keep the Building & Loan and his Bedford Falls neighbors afloat. “Let’s face it,” says Sorrentino, a policy analyst at the Ofﬁce of Housing and Urban Development. “There are no George Baileys anymore. Lenders, whether they are large or small companies, aren’t interested in the homeowner. Once they originate a loan for a home mortgage, they immediately sell it and get it off their books. Once it’s sold, the homeowner’s ability to stay above water is no longer the lender’s problem. There is no sense of community anymore.” At HUD headquarters in Washington, D.C., an Orwellian concrete building that Sorrentino and his colleagues affectionately call “10 ﬂoors of basement,” the water-cooler talk includes terms like “ninja loans,” “subprime,” “trenches,” and “foreclosure contagion.” Working in a windowless ofﬁce, Sorrentino is one of many anonymous, unsung heroes of the bailout, something of a modern-day George Bailey. He doesn’t hand over his own cash, but Sorrentino was tapped by the Treasury Department in 2008 to help { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �{Resilience} “There are no George Baileys anymore.” mike gillispie Jim Sorrentino (A80) Jim Sorrentino, outside HUD headquarters in Washington, D.C., is an unsung hero of the Bailout. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } 23 �24 {Resilience} of Chicago and after class, this gentlemen craft a plan to funnel Troubled Asset Relief came up to me. He was from a mediumProgram (TARP) funds into the right large mortgage lender. He didn’t exactly hands. The funds provide lender incentives say we [HUD] were wasting our time, but for foreclosure prevention and relief. he implied it. He said, ‘Nice presentation, “My job is public service,” says but I gotta tell you the next big thing is Sorrentino. “I want to help people stay in subprime mortgages. Lenders will look at their homes. What one person pays out, your programs and say, ‘This is too complianother beneﬁts from. In this way we cated. There are so many rules, consumer are in this bailout together. This is about Jim Sorrentino protections, to get an FHA-insured mortcommunity.” gage, so we’re going to get out of the FHA In 2008 Sorrentino was tapped to work and all its veriﬁcations.’” for six months in the Treasury’s newly created HomeownAt that time lenders were beginning to eagerly extend ership Preservation Ofﬁce, assisting in the development of subprime or “ninja” (no income, no job, no assets) loans to the Making Home Affordable program, the federal governhomeowners. “The mortgage business came up with all ment’s attempt to address the housing part of the economic sorts of creative terms to aggressively market these crisis. Today Sorrentino is back at HUD, continuing to subprime loans to homeowners. They refer to subprime work on foreclosure relief through the recently revised loans as ‘nonprime’ or ‘fault A rating’—that is one of my Hope for Homeowners program, administered by the favorites. One lender, Countrywide, called their program Federal Housing Administration (FHA). As a result of this Whole Spectrum. No credit? No problem. We’re Whole program, the percentage of FHA loans is on the rise. “The Spectrum, for everyone, like a big happy family. Thus, the FHA market share dropped dramatically over the years. magic of mortgage-backed securities took flight. The Now we’re on our way to close to 20 percent. By the end of lender could sell the loan in a package very quickly and be the year 30 percent of the nation’s homebuyers will be in done with it. When the loans were off their books, it was not FHA mortgages.” That’s compared to just 2 percent of their problem.” homeowners in 2005-6, he points out. Investment banks and hedge funds bought mortgageIn 1985, Sorrentino, just out of University of Maryland’s backed securities to sell to investors. “Depending on the School of Law, was hired by HUD’s Baltimore ﬁeld ofﬁce as amount of risk involved they would package these things an attorney-advisor to assist homeowners facing foreclointo ‘trenches’—pronounced “tra-ah-h-nches.” They loved sure when Baltimore’s slumping steel industry left thouto use the fancy French terminology,” explains sands out of work. Then he went to HUD headquarters as a Sorrentino. “This was all part of the marketing hype, the policy analyst in foreclosure prevention and relief and dealt sales seduction.” with the collapse of the shale oil industry in Colorado in the The lure of easy money attracted not just unsophisticated late 1980s. “Those were regional crises,” Sorrentino borrowers, but highly educated, savvy borrowers who explains. “What we haven’t had for a long time is a collapse thought “their property would appreciate until the end of of national scale. I remember in the late 1980s going out to time,” says Sorrentino. “People were getting fairly complex our ofﬁce in Denver and driving down street after street loans, an adjustable rate tied to the London Libor rate, and seeing foreclosure signs. Those folks left—they went to terms many of us have never heard of. How is that person, another city. They had a place to go. Now there is no place even a highly educated person, supposed to really underthat is a safe haven ﬁnancially. So we are all in this stand what kind of obligation he or she has signed?” By together.” contrast, Sorrentino has kept a tight rein on his own Sorrentino ﬁrst heard the term “subprime” in Chicago ﬁnances and only reﬁnanced his home once in the last over a decade ago. “In 1998 I taught a class on a program seven years. “We only took out enough to cover the that required all FHA lenders to evaluate potential homeexpenses of adopting our children,” he says, “and just last owners. I taught this program at the Federal Reserve Bank “Now there is no place that’s a safe haven ﬁnancially. So we’re all in this together.” { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �{Resilience} month we reﬁnanced a second time, for home renovations.” For those like Sorrentino, who have managed their ﬁnances conservatively, shelling out tax dollars for TARP bailout funds is a tough pill to swallow. He understands why people who live within their means angrily wonder why their tax dollars should help those who didn’t. “My answer is this is a national crisis,” he says. “Besides, how many foreclosed homes do you want on your street lowering your property values? In places like Detroit there is something we call ‘foreclosure contagion.’ Guys pull up, kick down the door, and remove all the copper pipes from foreclosed home after home. The values deﬂate even further. We need to all care. We need to pull together to get through.” Though he primarily deals with foreclosure policy, in some cases borrowers track Sorrentino down. Sometimes, they’re referred to him after they’ve complained to their congressman, senator, or even the White House about the lenders’ terms for their restructured loans. If a case looks reasonable, it may land on his desk, and Sorrentino reviews the case with the loan servicer, sees if the lender violated policy, and gets the HUD ﬁeld ofﬁce involved to offer housing counsel to the borrower. “I try as much as possible not to be a go-between between borrower and lender –that’s not my job, but I’ve done it on many occasions. I have held onto thank-you letters from borrowers that I have helped out. I hope that as the years went on they managed to get their lives straightened out. I hope I helped them in some way with that.” Now that the percentage of FHA loans is increasing, Sorrentino is home on weekends, no longer putting in extra hours. This leaves him more time to spend with his wife, his 6-year-old daughter and 6-month-old son. It’s a 25 While the recession means slow sales at her quilt shop, Trudy Koch is devoting time to making quilts for good causes. sad irony that the Sorrentinos were able to adopt their son because the child’s mother, who lives in Maryland, could not afford to raise him. In that way, Sorrentino says, “Our baby was a gift of the recession.” Quilts Made With Love Trudy Koch (AGI85) Fosters Goodwill Times are threadbare in Tappahannock, Virginia, a sleepy colonial town along the Rappahannock River. “There are now three ‘cash-to-you’ places in town. This is a bad sign,” says quilt shop owner Trudy Koch (AGI85). “Some weeks I sell not even a yard of fabric.” While sales of fabric and notions at her downtown shop, Water & Queen, have slowed, Koch is rich in time, friends, and energy. The long tables in her brightly lit shop in a rambling colonial house are often ﬁlled with customers, neighbors, and friends, who quilt and talk while listening to the radio. Water & { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �26 {Resilience} “The director was so helpful. St. John’s changed my life,” Queen is more than a gathering spot; it’s a stage for a recesshe says. She attended during summers and cooked familysion trend Koch calls a return to service. “Some things in style dinners for fellow GIs to pay for gas for the drive to this depression, and people sense it, are important. These and from her home in Silver Spring, Maryland, where are the things that do not cost money—kindness and free she raised six children as a single mother. “Money was so energy. It’s not about turning a buck. It’s about goodwill tight that during the week when I was in Annapolis, I and service.” cooked big dinners and charged $3 a person,” she says. Koch, who settled here after retiring from teaching, “I would write the menu on a brown paper bag—things like organizes fellow quilters to create “Quilts of Valor,” handfried chicken, corn on the cob, cornbread—and post it. stitched works of art, often in red-white-and-blue and starsWe’d eat at the house where I was staying. The sense of and-stripes motifs, for injured vets of the Iraqi war. “These community was wonderful.” are soldiers who are severely mutilated, legs blown off, Koch creates a sense of community wherever she lives. limbs severed. How good it must feel to drape beautiful Even though she’s a “come-here” in Tappahannock, she’s colors over these injuries, whether in a wheelchair, or over gained acceptance in a town sometimes wary of outsiders. a bed, they can savor the bright, cheery colors.” Koch’s “When strangers walk in the shop I say, ‘Come visit. Let’s group, called the Sting Ray Quilters, is part of a larger put on a pot of tea and talk.’ You meet the most wonderful national movement and ships the quilts to vets in regional people. They tell me their life stories. Some come to quilt. hospitals as well as those across the country and overseas. I don’t charge people anything to use the space. Eventually “Every now and then we get a thank-you letter, but that they will buy some fabric.” isn’t why I make them,” says Koch. “Down in the corner of mine I embroider ‘God, bless this American soldier’ The Fears of a Clown because I feel so deeply for the tragedies of war and how it affects these strong young people. These quilts are made Mandy Dalton (A89) Shifts from Mime to New Media with love.” Koch also creates brightly colored quilts—block square, When people cut back on expenses, apparently clowns are diamond, and Baltimore album patterns, and fancy among the ﬁrst to go. That’s what Mandy Dalton (A89), appliqués—for those in need who live closer to home. She known as “Mandy the Clown,” was facing when the and fellow quilters, a cross-section from various church economy sank. Like Americans in all walks of life she has denominations in Rappahannock County, reach out to the had to reinvent herself to survive. homeless and others in county shelters and rehab centers. “Around 9-11, back in 2001, the bottom dropped out of The program is called “Project in So Much,” a reference to the event market in this area. That’s how I was making a Bible verse: “. . . for what I do unto brothers that you do most of my money,” says Dalton. “During the next six unto me in so much. . . .” “I donate fabric and we make months special events went into a tailspin. Municipal funcquilts in my shop for the homeless in shelters for battered tions, grand openings, corporate events weren’t women, lap robes for elderly in wheelhappening. People didn’t feel like celechairs at rehab centers, and even tote bags brating. Then there was the sniper scare in lined with cheery fabric for the handiWashington, D.C., and the anthrax capped.” Her group is called “The threats, schools were shutting down. Menders,” says Koch, because “we hope People had the jitters.” Even the buildup we mend hearts and lives as well as fabric.” to Iraq slashed her bookings says Dalton, Koch is no stranger to resiliency and who had numerous clients at Fort Meade, survival. About 30 years ago, then a public an army base in Maryland. “Not many school teacher in Montgomery County, people want to have a party when their Mandy Dalton Maryland, she wrote a letter to the Gradloved ones are going to war.” uate Institute asking for a scholarship. Just as things were starting to pick up “Not many people want to have a party when their loved ones are going to war.” { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �{Resilience} again, the recession “knocked my business out of the water,” says Dalton. This past February, she didn’t have a single booking. And one of her corporate clients who owed her money declared bankruptcy. “By the time I would have gone to New York and attended the bankruptcy proceedings to try and collect it, I would have gotten pennies on the dollar. Besides, can you imagine the judge in bankruptcy court, what he or she would have to say about a fee for a clown?” Dalton, who attended professional clown school for two years before attending St John’s, has spent decades cultivating what she calls her clown personae. “There is no pretense. You pull something out of yourself and reveal it. My persona is an overgrown 5-year-old. I’m a rag doll on Red Bull—with red hair.” She’s feisty and resilient, much like Pippi Longstocking, but last winter when she was laid up with a back injury, Dalton hit bottom. “I was ﬂat on my back for three days. Clowning is very physical work. I juggle, I walk on stilts, I goof around a lot and fall a lot. My knees can’t take the stilts anymore, and my back is in bad shape after falling for more than 20 years. My doctor wants me to stop.” Finally, Dalton faced the fact that she had to ﬁnd another way to make a living. Since then she has transitioned her ﬂair for performance, stunts and stilts into another precarious profession: journalism and its cutting edge of new media. Dalton’s bright red hair stands out on the United Press International (UPI) 27 website, where her footage as a news videographer conducting man-on-the-street interviews appears in the “Issue of the Day” feature. “I’ve always been a news junkie and have had a long interest in video—the production, writing, editing—since high school. I also still love the ability for analysis that I cultivated at St. John’s.” Dalton sought mentoring from a friend who is a production editor at ABC News and informally worked as his personal editing assistant. Then last fall she landed her part-time internship with UPI. “I tell people I’m transitioning right now. At 43 looking for a new line of work means I’ve been facing a lot of unspoken age discrimination. But given the recession and the fact that so many people are looking to career shift, this has been a good time to transition.” Being a news and event videographer adds another dimension to her repertoire as professional clown, drama instructor, and mentor to youth. “The best part is how When bookings for “Mandy the Clown” began dropping off, Mandy Dalton looked to her talents for a new career plan. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �28 {Resilience} clowning and news videography inform each other. They feed one another in a natural way.” For instance when Dalton conducts interviews for UPI, she poses questions that her producer has written on a subject that is breaking headline news. Dalton stops some 50-75 people a day to ask them for 30 seconds of their time to comment on these issues. Her producers may write the questions, but it’s up to Dalton to get people to open up. “Most people walk fast, avoid eye contact, talk on their cell phones, but I have this gesture from my clown training—I keep my mike pointed down and put my hand over my heart. I don’t know scientiﬁcally why it works, but it does. People stop and talk to me. From my years of clowning I’m more sensitive and I ﬁnd this gesture helps. People see my sincerity. I fear becoming robotic, too aggressive, chasing the bouncing silver ball of news.” Some days as a UPI videographer are especially compelling. “It involves writing, creating, observing, listening, storytelling—all the things I love. The Johnnie in me likes to go out and start a conversation with people about random subjects. When [Justice David] Souter was retiring from the Supreme Court, we jumped on it to ﬁnd out what qualities people would want to see in a Supreme Court Justice. A woman rushed out of Starbucks and said to me, ‘I have to talk to you about this.’” In the future Dalton wants to improvise and create her own questions for her video interviews. “Money is fascinating, especially in a recession. What is the meaning of money ultimately? Have you done any bartering to save money? I’d like to ease into a conversation about money. People want to know how I fare as a clown in the recession. What about the other side? I want to know how they are dealing with money.” She even has already found some people who want to laugh about money. “They are laughing through their tears about money, but who knows, the desire to laugh means that my clowning business might pick up again.” A Lifeline in Times of Stress Tom Horvath (A75) Knows How to Listen Therapist Tom Horvath sees the emotional toll the recession is taking on his clients who come to him for treatment at Practical Recovery in La Jolla, California. One of his clients just lost her home and is coping with Tom Horvath’s clients are struggling through California’s hard times. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �{Resilience} 29 as treatment. His clients include the anger and doubt as she’s forced to make afﬂuent, as well as those who struggle ﬁnancial decisions. She and her husband economically and attend free therapy have moved into a rental property, and sessions offered through Practical her mother is paying for the treatment to Recovery’s community program. Both help them get through their crisis. “She groups experience anger and grief related wants to come through this with some to their economic woes, though on sense of honor,” Horvath says. “The bank different scales. “We’ve had clients come keeps squeezing her and her husband. . . in who are under stress because they’ve pressuring them to sign a $50,000 note to Tom Horvath lost a lot of money,” says Horvath. “Their avoid foreclosure and ruining their credit portfolios are not what they used to be.” rating. Even though her husband is a As a psychologist, Horvath has his pulse on crisis-related construction worker and they are breaking even right now, stress. As the author of the book, Sex, Drugs, Gambling they won’t be able to keep up with those payments. She and Chocolate: A Workbook for Overcoming Addictions, he feels it is dishonest to sign the note, since she knows they understands how human beings crave comfort during hard cannot afford it.” times. “During Hurricane Katrina, a time of catastrophe Horvath can empathize with the stress of ﬁnancial loss. and crisis, there was an increase in substance problems. It Horvath, who has a doctorate from the California School of is a natural response,” says Horvath. “I have noticed statisProfessional Psychology, founded his addiction treatment tics that show that in the last year since the recession, center, Practical Recovery, in San Diego in 1985. Three alcohol sales [nationwide] are up by 10 percent, romance years ago, when San Diego’s economy took a nosedive, his novels have seen a 33 percent increase in sales. This is a business was hard hit. “It was a disaster,” says Horvath, kind of female pornography; women escape into a “Spending is more discretionary here so we felt the receswonderful relationship in these novels. Men tend to steer sion sooner than the rest of the country. Discretionary towards Internet porn in times of stress. The economy spending, which includes counseling, fell dramatically.” In dipping is a factor that is out of one’s control, so that 2006, Horvath laid off four people. “By 2007, I had to put creates a stress. And escape is a time-honored way to deal my own money into the practice to keep it aﬂoat, and I took with stress.” no salary for a year,” he says. In his work Horvath draws on the Johnnie approach to Horvath hired three new employees this spring, and his conversation and listening. As part of SMART Recovery, an business is strong, thanks to a new Internet marketing organization he helped to establish and led as president strategy. As a small provider in a big industry, Horvath had from 1995-2008, Horvath occasionally leads a SMART difﬁculty competing with larger, well-known treatment Recovery meeting, one of more than 400 recovery discuscenters such as the Betty Ford Center. In May 2008, he sion groups held weekly around the world. “There is a hired a consultant to help build an online presence, and the handbook and like a math tutorial, we work through probinvestment paid off. “Since September 2009, we typically lems,” Horvath says. “The discussion focuses on rational rank near the top in searches for addiction counseling,” analysis of thoughts, feelings, and situations. This is a way Horvath says. “While revenue was down 20 percent three to give back, especially to those who cannot afford treatyears ago, now it’s up 20 percent.” ment. When I’m leading one of these these groups, or With his business on solid ground, Horvath can focus on training the volunteer facilitators, I feel very much like what he does best: counseling clients who struggle with a Johnnie.” x addiction. He has clients from the San Diego area and from around the world who come to his center, which offers both inpatient and outpatient treatment. Horvath says Practical Recovery offers “an empowering alternative” to the traditional view of addiction as disease and the 12-step program “By 2007, I had to put my own money into the practice to keep it aﬂoat, and I took no salary for a year.” { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �30 {Biblioﬁle} The Newton Wars and the Beginning of the French Enlightenment J.B. Shank (AGI92) University of Chicago Press (2008) By Curtis Wilson (HA83) J.B. Shank’s The Newton Wars and the Beginning of the French Enlightenment is an account of changing attitudes and controversies among French thinkers, from the 1690s through the 1750s, regarding the scientiﬁc and presumptive moral and metaphysical import of Newton’s Principia. From the start, French reviewers praised Newton’s mathematical achievement in this book but complained of his failure to explain how bodies could attract one another gravitationally over distances through empty space. The Cartesian vortex theory, which assumed transmission of force by contact of solid bodies, seemed more rational. (Truth to tell, “solidity” and “contact” are as problematic as action at a distance.) Other objections, moralistic and metaphysical, were raised later. Was not the metaphysics implicit in Newton’s book, Leibniz asked Samuel Clarke in 1716, conducive to materialism, atheism, and immorality? (See The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence.) At times the controversy turned ugly. Shank follows the twists and turns of this discussion in detail. He focuses on the politics and sociology of it: the “self-fashioning” whereby individual players in the ﬁeld sought to create a persona that could survive and prosper amidst controversy and the politics of a stratiﬁed society. For 42 years, from 1697 to 1739, the ‘perpetual secretary’ of the Académie des Sciences was Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, a gentleman of the Cartesian persuasion. He was succeeded, for still a few more years, by another gentleman of the same persuasion, Dortous de Mairan. For these gentlemen, the correct posture was that of the honnête homme, fair-minded, decent, ready to compromise, ‘rational.’ The ultimate power over the Académie, to be sure, rested with the King’s minister, for the Académie was state-funded, the creature of the monarchy. Yet by 1758, according to d’Alembert, a younger member of the Académie, the Excerpt: On May 28, 1728, a little-known member of the Paris Academy of Sciences rose before the assembly to deliver a paper on celestial mechanics. The academician was Joseph Privat de Molières, and in the spring of 1728, although ﬁftytwo years old, Private de Molières was still struggling to establish his reputation as a savant. He began his career as an Oratorian priest and teacher, studying mathematics with Father Reyneau at Angers in the 1690s and then serving as a priest and professor of mathematics at the Oratorian colleges of Saumur, Juilly, and Soisson from 1699 to 1704. He had come to both the Oratory and mathematics through a devotion to the writings of Nicolas de Malebranche, and in this way his intellectual trajectory mirrored that of many others in France in the same period. J.B. Shank, The Newton Wars. Cartesian theory of vortices was a dead duck. How had it happened? Shank portrays the change as the result of the self-fashionings and shrewd interventions of two men, Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, working from within the Académie des Sciences, and the enfant terrible Voltaire, hurling his witty barbs from the safe distance of Cirey, the home of his learned Newtonian mistress, the { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } marquise du Châtelet. The important result, in Shank’s view, was the emergence of a new public persona, the philosophe, free-thinking, libertine, Newtonian, instigator and agent of Enlightenment. Unquestionably, it is a leitmotif in a highly publicized drama. Is it the whole story? Certain scientiﬁc developments, I would urge, can have had an important role in the triumph of the Newtonian program. In 1749 Clairaut showed that the motion of the Moon’s apse could be derived from Newton’s theory, contrary to earlier failed attempts, his own and those of other mathematicians. In 1749 d’Alembert published his Recherches sur la Précession des Equinoxes, showing Newton’s attempted derivation of the precession (in Prop.39 of Book III of the Principia) to be fatally ﬂawed. But d’Alembert then went on to show that both the precession and the nutation (an effect established empirically by James Bradley in 1748) were exact consequences of Newton’s theory. Newton’s failure had been due to his lack of a correct dynamics for rotational motion, which had been responsible as well for his failed disproof of the Cartesian vortex theory of planetary motion. Also in 1749 was published Euler’s Recherches sur la question des inégalités du mouvement de Saturne et de Jupiter. Here Euler introduced trigonometric series, which made it possible for the ﬁrst time to compute the mutual perturbations of planets systematically and exactly. Newton had had no way of computing these effects. A reasonably accurate table of the perturbations in the Earth’s motion due to planetary perturbation became available in 1758 in Lacaille’s Tabulae Solares. The Earth was the platform from which astronomical observations had to be made, and errors in its position were unavoidably projected into all celestial observations. In sum, by the 1750s a Newtonian program to account for planetary and lunar motions precisely was an up-and-going enterprise, and success could be reasonably hoped for, independent of disputed metaphysical questions. In this race the Cartesian vortex theory was not yet out of the starting-gate. Where to put one’s bets was a no-brainer. x �31 {Bibliofile} Beatrice Hawley Award, and the Academy of American Poets’ James Laughlin Prize. Editor’s note: see the inside back cover of The College for one of Waldner’s recent poems. Each Month I Sing L. Luis Lopez (SFGI69) Farolito Press, 2008 Celebrating Johnnie Poets Trust Liz Waldner (A83) Cleveland State Poetry Center, 2008 Our senses entrust to us the world that the heart minds, and so gives us a point of view, the “sight we hope to see through (to) / Always.” Deeply attentive to form and music, each of Liz Waldner’s poems, written between the early eighties and midnineties, serves as a trust for the mending of that sense of separateness. Ever the stranger in yet another strange place—in subway and orchard, ER and library, cemetery and classroom—they ask: “What is the shape?” of the story. “Who is mindful of me?” and sometimes answer: “Thank you, I have enjoyed / imagining all this.” Trust won the Cleveland State Poetry Center’s Open Book Competition in 2008. Born in Cleveland, Waldner grew up in rural Mississippi and worked in various factory, janitorial, botanical, and museum jobs before graduating from St. John’s. She later earned an MFA at the University of Iowa’s Writers Workshop. She wrote for 18 years before publishing the ﬁrst of her six previous books, which have won such awards as the Iowa Poetry Prize, the Longino Lopez’ Each Month I Sing is a collection of poems inspired by the months of the year, capturing the poet’s impressions, observations, and experiences of each month. The book won The American Book Award, presented by the Before Columbus Foundation at Berkeley, which honors works that represent multicultural diversity in American literature. The Colorado Independent Publishers Association also honored the work with an EVVY ﬁrst-place award for poetry. Lopez, in his 44th year of teaching, is currently at Mesa State College in Grand Junction, Colorado, where he has, until recently, served as director of the Academic Honors Program. He received two National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships, one to study lyric poetry with Helen Vendler at Harvard, and a second to study the literature of innocent suffering with Duke University’s Terrence Tilley. Lopez has published two other volumes of poetry, Musings of a Barrio Sack Boy and A Painting of Sand. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } Poet L.S. Klatt, author of Interloper. Interloper L.S. Klatt (AGI98) University of Massachusetts Press, 2008 Lewis Skillman Klatt teaches literature and creative writing at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. His poems have appeared in Columbia Poetry Review, Turnrow, the Southeast Review, Notre Dame Review, Phoebe, and Five Fingers Review. He also published a new essay on the poetry of Walt Whitman in the Southern Review. In 2008, Klatt was named the winner of the University of Massachusetts Press’ Juniper Prize, for which he was a ﬁnalist twice before. The prize included publication of his manuscript, Interloper. The poems in this volume unsettle frontiers between disparate worlds so that the imagination is given room to roam: pears become guitars, racks of ribs are presented as steamboats, and helicopters transmute into diesel seraphs. The poetry aspires acrobatically in the manner of prayers and pilots, but adventure throughout the book is viewed as precarious and the will to conquest leads to apocalypse and ruin. The interloper wanders through crime scenes and crash sites as he glosses the landscape—at home and not at home with the America of yesterday and tomorrow. In symbols that scat and ricochet, the interloper scores a new song, one that composes—and decomposes—on the page. x �32 {Alumni Profile} Listening to the Unknown Michelle Vest (SF90) by Deborah Spiegelman “They line up. First the men, then the women, then the children. My ﬁrst job? Fell in my lap. I was out driving around looking to dig a grave on the outskirts of my family’s ranch. It’s that way, you know. It’s a country unto itself out there. We own miles not just acres. Have for more than six generations. Funny, it was Mexico then . . . it’s Arizona now.” S o begins the dramatic monologue written and performed by Michelle Vest (SF90), part of her one-woman play, Sole Survivors: Journey Across Borders. The speaker is Maria, the adult daughter of an Arizona rancher who starts out with altruistic intentions toward the migrants she encounters on her land but eventually becomes a greedy, hardened “coyote.” Based on extensive interviews with documented and undocumented Southwestern migrant workers, the play is a stirring presentation of the experiences of immigrants who risk everything for a chance at a better life in the United States. “I wanted to look beneath the usual stereotypes and assumptions and explore the more enlivening truths that exist there,” Vest explains. Inspired also by Woody Guthrie’s “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos),” Vest presents four characters: the coyote Maria, and three immigrants: Rosa, Jesus, and Juan. Though their stories are contemporary, the characters are named for the four deportees killed in the 1949 New Mexico plane crash Guthrie memorialized. Rosa, who grew up in a small Mexican village, left her son behind to cross the border illegally in search of work. Juan, also undocumented, tells of how he came to accidentally kill a man who was trying to take his job. Once a professor in San Salvador, Jesus was forced to ﬂee his country during the civil war of the 1980s. He left his family behind to seek political asylum in the U.S., reuniting with them 11 years later. A mariachi band opens the play with a traditional song about immigration and remains on stage throughout as a Southwestern-inspired version of a Greek chorus. Vest moves to stage right to transition from In her play Sole Survivors, Michelle Vest went beyond stereotypes to portray the experiences of migrant works in America. one character to another, changing her shoes or shirt, or putting on a hat—all part of the drama. “A lot of people are mesmerized by this,” Vest says. The shoes symbolize the many connotations of the word sole, as an allusion to the characters’ footsteps across the border and to the notion that the ordeal of migration is a test of individual determinism. The play on words (sole, soul) also underscores Vest’s desire to draw from these stories the common threads of humanity—love for one’s family, hopes and dreams, resiliency, loss— that unite people of different backgrounds and experiences. Since debuting her show in Santa Fe in October 2007, Vest has performed in D.C., Philadelphia, and New York City. After a sold-out show last year in New York, Sole Survivors returned to New York in June for a limited run at Stage Left Studio, followed by performances in Albuquerque. Born in Annapolis and raised just two blocks from the St. John’s campus, Vest met Johnnies at her family’s downtown restaurant and in the college library, her preferred homework spot. An early enthusiast of the classics, she developed an aptitude for languages and fascination for other cultures. After a year at Florida State, { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } she enrolled at St. John’s in Santa Fe. “St. John’s just happened to be what I needed,” Vest says. “To be with a group of students who shared a similar love [for learning] changed my whole life scholastically. I never knew that education could be so well-rounded and that I could love every aspect of it.” After graduation, Vest attended the Cleveland Institute of Arts’ international program in Florence to study painting. She moved to San Francisco to pursue photography and later worked as a documentary photographer at the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History. Since returning to Santa Fe in 1997, Vest has shown her photographs in a number of galleries around town, and her paintings were included in the 2005 New Mexico Women in the Arts Juried Show at the Museum of Fine Arts. Vest found her way to performance via dance. Physical movement, she speculates, triggered talking, which led to acting. Keen on developing a one-person show, Vest plunged into a yearlong workshop taught by Tanya Taylor Rubinstein, artistic director of Project Life Stories (and now the director of her show). One assignment—to deliver a short monologue based on an interview— changed Vest’s life. Talking with her housekeeper, a native of Mexico, Vest was struck by both the differences and commonalities of their lives. Motivated by the workshop’s enthusiastic response to her monologue, Vest began collecting more stories, including that of a man she had known while working in a San Francisco café. He served as inspiration for her character Jesus. The former professor was now the cleaning person, while she, a college graduate, was “taking money and selling mufﬁns.” Her experience in the Program, with its emphasis on dialogue and careful listening, greatly inﬂuenced the spirit of Sole Survivors, says Vest. St. John’s “was a safe place to admit that you didn’t know something, and also to afﬁrm the importance of wanting to know.” If her play is part quest for knowledge, she has found a grateful audience. “They tell me that I did a great service [by telling these stories],” Vest says. “They are listening.” x �33 {Alumni Notes} 1932 1945 HENRY SHRYOCK, JR., is a member of the Cosmos Club of Washington, the Wilderness Society, the Census Alumni Association, Nature Conservancy, Population Connection, So Others May Eat (SOME), and the Union of Concerned Scientists. EDWARD MULLINIX reports: “In recent months, I have been heavily involved as a member of the American College of Trial Lawyers Task Force on Discovery, which has been working with the University of Denver’s Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal system on a project seeking reforms to reduce the out-ofcontrol cost of civil litigation in the United States. Our ﬁnal report, released to the public on March 11, 2009, puts out a series of proposed principles for nationwide discussion—built around the most signiﬁcant principle, which calls for radical reduction of the pretrial discovery procedures currently permissible. The report has been the subject of widespread publicity in the general media and in law-related media.” 1937 A retired dental surgeon, HAROLD BROOKS writes that he and his wife, Norma, will be married for 72 years on Nov. 26, 2009. They live in sunny Sebastian, Fla., and are in good health. 1942 ERNEST HEINMULLER has published a new book, A Different Focus. It’s available at the college bookstore, on Amazon.com, or in the library. The poems are from 1938-2008, including some haikus he wrote his freshman year. 1943 “How nice to see the names of so many members of the classes of 1940 through 1944 in the capital campaign report,” writes MARTIN ANDREWS. “They evoke vivid and happy memories. In recent years, the enchantment of St. John’s has even expanded for me by the good fortune of meeting and getting to know the incomparable Eva Brann.” BURTON ARMSTRONG has been living in Charlottesville, Va., since 1982. He recently became a great-grandparent to Henry Burton Alt, age 1. “For the old bod I do tai chi (after a fashion) and walk (slowly). For the rapidly disappearing gray cells, I write stuff for judges (incredibly technical and boring), play mediocre bridge, and read, most recently Crime and Punishment with great pleasure and American Pastoral with lesser pleasure. We travel lazily, mainly on cruise ships, today’s best travel deal. Am in the hands of doctors literally from head to toe, but hey, if I weren’t, I probably wouldn’t be writing this. Just the same, old age should happen to younger people,” writes GEORGE BRUNN. 1946 PETER WEISS, in his capacity as president of the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, addressed the Nonproliferation Treaty Conference at the United Nations on May 5 and gave a lecture on “The Legal Obligation for Nuclear and General Disarmament” at a Peace Through Law Conference in Berlin on June 26. “I have also decided to try my mind at topical poetry in my retirement,” says Weiss: If you’re feeling kind of blue/But not unhappy through and through/Is what you’re having a depression/Or, you hope, just a recession? 1950 THOMAS MEYERS writes: “I have become one of those old men I used to see at Homecoming when I was a St. John’s freshman. I recall meeting a very nice gentleman who had been graduated from St. John’s when I was but 6 years old. Wow! I may not be as gentlemanly as he, but I have made it to 87 years. And counting!” 1955 HAROLD BAUER has taken his life’s activities beyond the world of music, the world in which he has spent most of the past 50 years. Painting (mostly oils) has become a major area of concentration. He regularly takes classes at the Evanston Art Center in Illinois, where in addition to being a student, he also serves as president of the Board of Trustees. He also has become an involved Rotarian. He was ﬁrst attracted to the Evanston morning club by their extensive involvement in international humanitarian outreach and now will become the chair of that committee. He felt a strong need to “do something” for the severely needy of the world, and this seemed to offer a window into that possibility. He’s { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } wondering if the 55th anniversary year is going to bring classmates back to Annapolis in 2010. JOHN GORDON retired from ﬁlm and video production in 1997 and is happily engaged in designing landscapes and gardens in Maryland. Most recently back to school in the landscape architecture program at the University of Maryland, John has taught landscape design at the USDA graduate school for two years. Having previously traveled widely as a documentary ﬁlm cameraman, John and his wife, Jenny, will be in Italy this summer on a tour led by a landscape architect. “Anyone need a Renaissance parterre garden designed?” he asks. 1957 MARCIA DEL PLAIN REFF reports that she and her husband, Martin, are continuing to enjoy life in Naples, Fla. Marcia is in her third year as president of the Naples Orchestra and Chorus. She was playing the violin in the orchestra but taught herself to play the viola and made the switch last season. Marcia also enjoys teaching bridge classes at the local duplicate club. Her son, MICHAEL O’MAHONY (A77) also lives in Naples. The Reffs enjoyed a visit in May to Annapolis to visit sister PAULA DEL PLAIN BINDER (class of 1959). 1959 ROBERTO SALINAS PRICE writes with an update and some Homeric musings: “A new life begins for me with the loss of my friend, mistress, wife, of more than 50 years, but, in the meantime, before we meet yet again forever, I continue with my Homeric researches. I am �34 {Alumni Notes} currently writing ‘Homer, from Scholion to Myth,’ in which I hope to show how ‘myth’— nonsense data about this or that— developed from a lack of tutorial guidance in Homeric thinking.” 1960 JOHN LANE is doing some community work in retirement. He is the vice president of the Cascades Homeowner’s Association, with 6,500 households, the largest HOA in Northern Virginia. He is vice chairman of the Loudon County Board of Equalization, which hears taxpayer appeals on assessment. He has acquired a real estate license and is a practicing realtor in Great Falls, Va. “Retirement has turned out to be a short time,” he says. “Life is good.” PETER RUEL writes with hopes to attend the 50th reunion of his class. He also noted that the University of Chicago held a “spring weekend” devoted to Darwin: “How could we pass that up? Darwin, Freud, and Einstein: three fascinating authors for the senior year at St. John’s.” 1961 As part of a featured exchange titled “Life Without Lawyers” in its May 14, 2009 issue, The New York Review of Books published a letter by HARRISON SHEPPARD. Sheppard’s letter, criticizing the book of that name by Philip K. Howard and its review by Anthony Lewis in the publication’s April 9, 2009, argued that both the book and the review failed to identify the root cause of abuses in American legal education and practice attributable to the dominance of an adversarial “war-making” model as opposed to a “problem-solving, peace- Ahead of the Pack C HAMMEN (class of 1944) has been running in races all over the country. “There was a big runners’ weekend in Tampa, Feb. 28 to March 1, the Gasparilla distance classic, with thousands of runners from all over the U.S.,” he writes. In the 5k race, Carl won the M85-89 division, and his wife, Deborah Kazor, ﬁnished twelfth in the F55-59, which had 276 women. This summer, they were busy training for the National Senior Games this August in Palo Alto, Calif. x ARL making model” of the kind Yale Law school Dean Anthony Kronman identiﬁes as the “lawyer-statesman ideal.” Sheppard maintains his solo civil law practice in San Francisco while continuing his nonﬁction writing and editing. His last published book was Too Much for Our Own Good: The Consumeritis Epidemic. He is now editing the manuscript of a distinguished physician concerning the need to separate the teachings of dogmatic religion from reasonable moral judgments, and a second manuscript relating to the early career of Elvis Presley, written by a woman who, as a teenager, had dated Presley. 1962 JERRY BRENNIG reports: “I continue to work at the Department of State, now 12 years since I retired from the Foreign Service. The long commuting time is deﬁnitely a downside, and I would like to give more time to my garden, but I work in the bureau that covers Pakistan and Afghanistan (and India, too). There is no lack of daily stimulation and the satisfaction of being involved with central concerns of our country.” 1963 “After more than 30 years in advertising, I am now retired and enjoying as many weeks on Cape Cod as the weather will allow,” writes JED STAMPLEMAN. “I am also participating in the monthly seminars held by the New York alumni chapter. I went through a bout of cancer but I am doing ﬁne, and the doctors are happy with my recovery. Best to all at St. John’s.” WILL DAVIS, retired from his longtime work as chairman of the Board of the Berklee College of Music, continues working for Credit Suisse from his ofﬁce in Holderness, N.H., where he and JESSICA HOFFMANN DAVIS (class of 1965) now live most of the time. Jessica retired from Harvard in 2004 to do more writing and has completed three books so far. They enjoy visits from their three sons and their wives and their three sons’ three sons. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } 1965 TOM EATON is retired at age 67. He has served as class captain and an alumni interviewer for a number of years. Additionally, he set up a small library fund in his mother’s name in Santa Fe and was able to persuade three of his students to attend St. John’s. In the “better late than never” category, MICHAEL WOOLSEY writes: “Forty-four years removed from St. John’s and ﬁve years into retirement, I received this May a Master of Liberal Studies degree from the University of Minnesota. My thesis title is “The Limits of Liberalism: A Study of Liberal Disillusionment in the Twentieth Century.” The thesis relies heavily on the political thought of former tutor Leo Strauss and former deans Scott Buchanan and Jacob Klein.” 1968 “At the prompting of my children and grandchildren, I’ve entered the brave new world of Facebook,” confesses SARAH FISHER (A). “It’s fun, but I wonder if I can keep up? Time for reﬂection and consideration doesn’t seem to be part of the picture.” DEAN HANNOTTE (A) has created a new website devoted to the 20th-century philosopher Paul Rosenfels. It makes available for free all of Rosenfels’ writings as well as numerous contributions from his many students around the world. Visit the Paul Rosenfels Community at www.rosenfels.org. ANTIGONE PHALARES (SF) reports that the Sacramento-area seminar group has received a most welcome inﬂux of a number of local and not-so-local St. Johnnies: “Most meetings have been �35 {Alumni Notes} held at TOM (HA94) and Marion SLAKEY’s home and also at other members’ homes. I became a grandmother December 17, 2008. Iris Aurore Marie Wastyn Moore at three and one half months has three passports: Peruvian (she was born in Lima); has an American mom (my daughter) and a U.S. passport; and a French passport from her father (who is French). When a child is born, so is a grandparent! It’s lovely being a parent once removed. I’m still teaching middle-schoolers at a public school in south Sacramento. I have 13 more years to go to get to 30 [years]!” 1969 The Before Columbus Foundation awarded LONGINO LUIS LOPEZ (SFGI) the American Book Award 2008 for his latest book of poetry titled Each Month I Sing. The book also won ﬁrst place in poetry from the Colorado Independent Publishers Association. 1970 DAVID DEBUS (SF) ﬁnished a bachelor’s degree in English at UCLA, and after three years as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War working at a United Methodist Church with street kids, attended the Claremont School of Theology: “I never had a ‘call’ to be a pastor. Then I entered doctoral studies at the United States International University in San Diego (now called Alliant International University) and received a doctorate in clinical psychology. I stood for the test in 1980 and passed the ﬁrst time. After many years in private practice and as the clinical director of a therapeutic community for schizophrenia founded by Moira Fitzpatrick, Ph.D., I enrolled in music at University of San Diego for studies in music.” RONALD FIELDING (A) retired from OppenheimerFunds on May 20. “Three days later my wife and I took off for a three-week trip to Europe, starting in Barcelona, cruising the Mediterranean Sea with 74 other guests and three professors on a small (and 30 percent empty) cruise ship and ending in Greece. Surely the highlight for me to report to Johnnies was entering the huge so-called Treasury of Atreus, but really the Tomb of Agamemnon, just outside the walls of Mycenae. It’s quite amazing how the Greek legends and Homeric poems seamlessly merge into Greek history, from Perseus to the present. We have sold our residence in Rochester and established residency in a beach house on Kiawah Island, just outside of Charleston, S.C., though we will get a much smaller summer house in Rochester to evade the hot, humid summers here. I will be back on the Board of Visitors and Governors in July, as well as a small insurance company board, Plato Proves Useful J EFF HUME-PRATUCH (A79) writes that she and her husband, Tom Pratuch, recently completed the adoption of their daughter, Meredith, after a long foster relationship: “We are ecstatic! Currently, I am working as an editor for a publisher of scholarly journals. I’m convinced they hired me because in my ﬁrst week as a temp, I caught the author misquoting Plato, Hegel, and Descartes. Who says the Program won’t help you get a job?” x a tiny mutual fund board, and the International Museum of Photography board. Plenty of stuff to keep me busy between trips hither and yon. And I need to attend Summer Classics again, too.” MARTIN ROSENTHAL (SF) recently published a novel, The Cult Teacher, using the penname Phillip Ahtmann. There is a chapter which takes place at St. John’s Annapolis is 1966. It is available at www.amazon.com or at www.theCultTeacher.com. 1972 HAROLD ANDERSON (A) writes: “I live outside of Washington in Greenbelt. I am currently a member of the core faculty for the Master of Arts in Cultural Sustainability graduate program at Goucher College (where I teach cultural documentation). I also teach cultural anthropology at Bowie State University. But my main (pre-) occupation is as a contract ethnographer. And I have completed ethnographic studies of communities in the United States and abroad. Currently I am working a project for exhibition at the new Prince George’s County African American Museum and Cultural Center of North Brentwood. The project is titled “The Arts of Praise” and it aims to document aspects of how people celebrate and perform their faith in Prince George’s County, Maryland. Products of this project include transcriptions of oral histories, audio, still photographs, and video for exhibition at the Prince George’s County African American Museum.” EVAN (A) and Jane’s son, Matthew Dudik, will arrive as a freshman in Annapolis this fall with lexicon in one hand and French horn in the other. His { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } twin is studying bassoon and German in Vienna in a gap year before deciding about this or that college/university. Elder brother Graham appears to be in his senior year at Portland State University. Empty nests rule! Jane is thinking about post kids. Evan is running his strategy/operations management consulting ﬁrm including recent projects with Daimler and Novartis. In between saxophone, painting, art history, he is working on a book with the working title “Thinking Independently.” He’s also ﬁnishing up his second term on the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors, having raised enough hackles for six or seven years. 1973 MICHAEL AARON (SF) was named the Director of Banking and Financial Markets, Growth Markets Unit, IBM Corporation in 2009. In this role, he is responsible for the Banking and Financial Markets Industry vertical business in the growth markets, which cover AsiaPaciﬁc, Latin America, Central Europe and the former Soviet Union, as well as Africa and the Middle East. Michael considers his St. John’s education to have been an important step in his developing the capabilities to deal with this type of executive role, as it requires constant reading, analysis, informed judgment and the ability to communicate—listening and speaking. It is also useful to know how to read very long books on very long ﬂights of up to 24 hours. Michael remains married to Danuta (30 years this August) and has two sons, Daniel and David. The Aarons live in Sydney, Australia, close to Bondi Beach. MARY L. BATTEEN (A) was chair of the Oceanography Department at the Naval Postgraduate �36 {Alumni Profile} Seeking a Balance Jazz Producer A.T. Michael MacDonald (SF76) by Nathaniel Roe (SF08) M nat roe ichael MacDonald (SF76) brews another cup of coffee in AlgoRhythms, his mastering studio tucked away in Brooklyn’s DUMBO neighborhood. He recounts how his journey—from a new graduate with no career plans to a music producer who has recorded jazz legends including McCoy Tyner and Tito Puente—began on a bicycle. “My gift to myself after graduation was a cross-country bicycle trip,” MacDonald recalls. “I ended up getting injured and had to come home early. I remember sitting in an Amtrak dome car going through Montana, just looking at the stars and soul searching. I asked myself, ‘what would I really love to do?’” With time to think about his future, MacDonald decided to become a recording engineer because it combined his love of music and knack for science. Michael MacDonald records jazz legends in his “After this epiphany, I moved to brooklyn, N.Y., studio. New York to break into the recording business.” MacDonald is best known as a virtumaybe I could help you.’” osic jazz producer; numerous AlgoRhythms The record executive didn’t understand sessions have garnered Grammy nominathat the old friends meant they were happy tions. His live recordings at the Village with each other’s work. At the end of the day Vanguard are considered among the best in MacDonald got a pink slip. Hersch sorted the celebrated jazz club, a space that out the situation, and the duo ﬁnished demands masterful microphone placement recording together. “We still laugh about and sense of musical balance. In addition to that today.” Tyner and Puente, MacDonald has worked When he arrived in New York City in 1977, with legends such as Hank Jones, Roy MacDonald began at the bottom of the Haynes, and John Scoﬁeld. He has recorded ladder, as an intern at Skyline studios. Since two Grammy-winning albums with McCoy then, changes in technology have meant Tyner, who is most famous for his early work radical changes in his industry. “Because of in John Coltrane’s band. the Internet, most people today consider One of MacDonald’s most lasting music to be a free commodity. This demorelationships is with renowned pianist cratic approach can be really great, but let’s Fred Hersch. “When we work together, we say McCoy Tyner wants to record another don’t have to talk about sound anymore,” big-band project. That recording requires a says MacDonald. “We know exactly how certain minimum dollar amount. If the we want it to be.” people investing the money don’t break even During one recording session with in record sales, they are less likely to fund Hersch, a record company executive came the next record. And so Tyner will have to to sit in. “Fred and I argue to entertain scale back the big band to a trio, so the each other,” says MacDonald. “When Fred listener won’t get the full effect.” came into the control room and said ‘this The availability of inexpensive quality sounds awful, can’t you do anything right?’ recording technology has similar drawbacks. I replied, ‘If you knew how to play piano, “I’m really hard pressed to ﬁnd jazz record{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } ings recorded today that are as good sonically as the golden age, when Sinatra was recording. [Producers and engineers] had limited technology, but they had great ears and great training. There’s no technology shortcut for that.” As an adjunct engineering professor at Johns Hopkins University, MacDonald trains budding recording engineers and producers by emphasizing the basics and systematically limiting the tools they can use to complete assignments. His goal is to produce engineers who rely on knowledge and instinct. In his courses, MacDonald incorporates the St. John’s approach to questions. “A student wanted to know how and why VU [volume] meters were invented,” he says. “I scoured up the original 1933 Western Electric white paper and held a class discussion.” When no one had questions, MacDonald picked out a detail and stumped the class by saying, “I don’t understand what this means.” In the ensuing discussion, “we gained insight into a real engineering problem and how the pioneers of audio solved it.” The Program, and language tutorial in particular, has helped shape MacDonald’s outlook on recording. “What I learned in language class is what has carried me most through my recording career,” explains MacDonald. “I’m really a translator. Sound is a three-dimensional physical phenomenon that changes from moment to moment. I’ve got to carefully capture and then translate it into a series of ones and zeroes and somehow reconstruct something that resembles the original.” When translating Baudelaire, literally rendering a word will likely obscure the poetic qualities of the French. By the same token, focusing only on the lyrical qualities of words can make a translation vague. MacDonald looks at recording the same way. “When translating, something is always lost. To focus on one part, you necessarily lose something else. If I make the vocal sound a little more present, will that affect the right hand of the piano? It’s always a balance. Asking the questions of translation has always served me well in recording.” x �{Alumni Notes} School in Monterey, Calif., from 2001-2008: “I am now on a yearlong sabbatical at the Hopkins Marine Station of Stanford University. I am writing a textbook called Exploring Ocean Physics, which I hope will excite future scientists to explore the important roles of ocean physics, from helping us understand climate change to taking better care of our earth, which is really the Ocean Planet.” SUSAN MARTIN DRESSEL (SFGI) retired in June 1994 from Los Alamos National Laboratory, where she had served as Division Leader for Information Services. Six months later, Susan’s husband, Ralph W. Dressel, died. After a couple of years, Susan relocated to Albuquerque to be near her son and daughter. In July 1999, Susan bought a lot in a development on the Rio Grande and retained an architect and construction boss to build a Tuscan-style villa “on spec.” About three months before construction was to begin, Susan met Donald Myers, a retired lawyer and judge, accomplished pianist and certiﬁed ﬂight instructor. She soon realized she did not want to manage a construction project, sold the lot, and left for a winter on South Padre Island with her new friend. They are now married and living in their mountain home on wooded acreage bordering the Cibola National Forest, where they both enjoy hiking and birding. Although back surgery required her to give up skiing and white water kayaking/rafting, Susan is happy to be traveling, golﬁng, and dancing with Don, and spending snowy months in warmer climes. And she is grateful to Don for his willingness to relocate in New Mexico near her family “At our ages, a loving family support system becomes increasingly important. Retirement brings many advantages that help compensate for the aches and pains that come with advancing years.” She would be happy to hear from any GI alumni. 1974 DAPHNE KAPOLKA (nee GREENE, A76) and GERRY KAPOLKA (A) are celebrating their 35th anniversary. Gerry writes: “I am now Dean of Academics and chair of the English department at Santa Catalina School in Monterey. Daphne is senior lecturer in physics at the Naval Postgraduate School, also in Monterey. Our daughter, BASIA (A01) is in Chicago about to produce a play she has written based on The Jinx, by Teoﬁle Gautier. Our older son, Andrzej, is a computer game designer for Three Rings in San Francisco. Our younger son, Marek, will be a junior at San Jose State University.” MARGARET SANSOM (SFGI) reports: “I am enrolled in The Ultimate Game of Life, a highly effective teleconferencing coaching program led by Jim Bunch. As a result of participating in the program, I have lost 40 pounds, amped up my ﬁtness level, and completely remodeled my house, a project that I had been just contemplating for the past ﬁve years. Because traveling is my passion, I have been to Paris for ﬁve months in 2005, to Great Britain in 2006, Alaska in 2007, and Zion, Bryce, and Yellowstone in 2008. Next on my list is a Greek isle cruise in 2011. In the meantime, I am going to stay home and enjoy my home for a couple of years and concentrate on getting the funding at a functional level for the scholarship foundation that I head. Scholarships are awarded to people who have been out of high school for a few years and have ﬁnally realized that they need further training/education in order to fulﬁll their dreams.” 1975 BOB SHIMIZU (SF) has recently released a new CD of jazz for his quartet, Bob Shimizu and Signal Strength. “Cuchillero” is available online at www.signalstrengthband.com. 1977 CLIFF ADAMS (A) has been living in Germany for nearly eight years and has been married to a German woman since July 3, 2008. He worked for Amadeus, a travel services computer company as a software test engineer from 2001-2006 and is now a self-employed web programmer in Erding, just outside of Munich. Cliff has been working on various Mideast peace projects in connection with participating in Landmark Education (www.landmarkeducation.com) programs. The most recent one is www.israelpalestineproject.com. He has three grown children living in New York. 1979 LESLIE W. WESTMORELAND (SF) writes: “I’m a deputy attorney general in the Appeals, Writs, and Trials section of the Criminal Law Division of the Attorney General’s Ofﬁce of the California Department of Justice. (That’s a mouthful—I’m a trial and appellate prosecutor.) Married to Carmen Milagros Delgado (de Puerto Rico), a criminal defense attorney. Living in Fresno with too many little dogs, and near our two grandchildren. Classmate LAIRD DURLEY (SF79) surprised me recently by dropping by. It seems he lives about one mile away. I’d love to hear from anyone who’d like to say hey.” { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } 37 OWEN GOLDIN (SF) lives in Milwaukee, Wis., with his wife, Miriam Sushman, and their daughter Esther, 5. He teaches philosophy at Marquette University. His translation with notes of Philoponus’s Commentary on Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics 2 is scheduled to be published soon by Duckworth Press. BEN HAGGARD (SF) divides his time between Santa Fe and Berlin, and divides his energies between Regenesis (an ecological consultancy he helped found 12 years ago) and painting. After 27 years, he and JOEL GLANZBERG (SF84) are still working together, these days as principal designers with Regenesis and contributors to the blog: www.edgeregenerate.com. Ben shares an apartment in Berlin with his partner, Joe, who plays French horn with the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester. Photos of Ben’s paintings can be seen at www.benhaggardstudio.com. He’s planning to attend Homecoming in Santa Fe. MARILYN L. SCHAEFER (SFGI) is glad to see “growing links between St. John’s and Shimer College,” as reported in the Fall 2009 issue of The College. Her sister, Susan Schaefer, graduated from Shimer in the mid-1960s, and Susan and her friends are very enthusiastic about the college, she says. “There seems to be a natural compatibility among grads of St. John’s, Shimer, and the University of Chicago.” TONY WATERS (A) is a professor of sociology at California State University, Chico. He is married to Dagmar Waters, and they travel back and forth to her native Germany frequently. They have two children, both of whom are college students at St. Olaf College in Northﬁeld, Minn. His recent books include When Killing is a Crime (2007) and The Persistence of Subsistence �38 {Alumni Notes} Agriculture: Life Beneath the Level of the Marketplace (2007/2008). 1980 “As of January 1, 2009, I am now vice president for international programs at the Atlas Economic Research Foundation,” reports TOM G. PALMER (A). “I remain a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. At Atlas I direct ﬁeld operations to promote libertarian values worldwide, along with active programs of book publishing, websites, video production, summer schools, and more in 15 languages. Since the start of the year I have given lectures, held conferences, appeared in the media, and organized new ventures in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Malaysia, Indonesia, the UK, and Brazil and on Thursday I depart for India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. I’ll be quite busy with summer schools and site visits throughout the summer and fall, as well as with additional programs, including delivering papers at academic conferences in Germany, France, and Italy. My book Realizing Freedom: Libertarian Theory, History, and Practice, will be published later this month. I am keeping busy, and there is not one single day during which I do not draw on my education from St. John’s, which not only provided me with a good springboard to my further education, but continuously informs how I understand the world and the choices I make.” ANGEL ANN PRICE (SF) writes: “For six months, I’ve left my plum position at the US EEOC (federal sector appeals and training team) for a detail as a Special Assistant US Attorney for the District of Columbia. I’m prosecuting misdemeanor domestic violence cases and have seen more of the inside of the courthouse, tried more cases, and signed off on more witness vouchers in the past few weeks than in almost 15 years of practice. The opportunity to speak on behalf of the community comes often, but with only a moment to be heard. The theme of the season is the split-second rhetorician.” December 2008 brought some dramatic changes for JIM SORRENTINO (A): “I began an inter-agency assignment to the Department of the Treasury’s Ofﬁce of Financial Stability, in the Homeownership Preservation Ofﬁce, created as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). It’s exciting, dynamic and challenging—not words one usually associates with large government bureaucracies. Two weeks or so after I began the job at Treasury, our adoption agency contacted us. And on December 31, we brought home our new son! Vincent Sorrentino was born in mid-December, in Baltimore. He is a healthy, happy, hungry little boy, and he is a delight to us all. Although it seems a little crazy to become a father (again!) at 49, I recall something Brother Robert said to me after meeting my daughter, Sophia (who was not yet three), at Homecoming in 2005: ‘Children complete life, don’t they?’ The answer, once again, is yes.” 1982 ADRIEN HELLER (A) has been in Shijiazhuang, People’s Republic of China for the last three years, teaching English and doing art. 1983 JACK ARMSTRONG (SF) writes, “I’ll be driving from Philadelphia to Los Angeles this summer with my son, Michael. Really looking forward to it.” Arugula and Wild Turkeys J L. BUSH (SF84) and his wife, Elizabeth, are savoring summer in Blacksburg, Va. “She has her garden going with the usual garden herbs, tomatoes, peppers, pole and bush beans, basil, fresh arugula, and other greens. I am trying to do more ﬂy ﬁshing and get out to the Blue Ridge for morel and wild turkey hunting as often as possible. I am also trying to utilize the wondrous natural qualities of the area such as the New River for canoeing, rafting and small mouth bass ﬁshing, and the Appalachian Trail for hiking, camping, and trail running whenever possible. We both are beginning to think about a house design for some property we have in Ellett Valley in Montgomery County. I am reading Russell Banks and Cormac McCarthy as well as Grant’s autobiography. Our grown boys are well and prospering, and we would love to hear from or visit with old friends. We have made contact with Robert and CHARLA ALLEN (SF79) since they moved back to the Smokies near Asheville and hope to see their new house and both of them soon. I am running for local ofﬁce this summer for Town Council and so that will keep me occupied and engaged in local politics.” x OHN { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } 1984 PETER GREEN (A) is living in New York’s Washington Heights and loving New York. As a world news reporter at Bloomberg News, he was off to Prague in June to interview Vaclav Havel, the former Czech president, and then wander around the East for a few weeks. He’s looking forward to Homecoming. TRISHA (FIKE) HOWELL (SF) has been focusing recently on a healing and life coaching system she developed called Lifonics (www.Lifonics.com) She also continues to write books and screenplays and hopes to resume her acting career soon. Before a year hiatus, she was appearing in many plays and low-budget ﬁlms. Trisha welcomes hearing from classmates at Trisha@TrishaHowell.com. DENNIS ROBERTS (SFGI) retired from the Associated General Contractors of New Mexico Building Branch after 40 years of service. He is currently an adjunct professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of New Mexico. MARK POTHIER (A) writes: “ANNIE KEZAR (A) has been tireless in keeping our class engaged and happy.” 1985 L. JAGI LAMPLIGHTER WRIGHT (A) reports: “My ﬁrst novel comes out from Tor (a major publisher of science ﬁction and fantasy) this August. It is the ﬁrst of a trilogy. A fantasy story set in the present day with humor and mystery, it is a sequel of sorts to Shakespeare’s Tempest. The series is called Prospero’s Daughter. The ﬁrst novel, coming out in early August, is Prospero Lost.” �39 {Alumni Notes} 1987 PEGGY O’SHEA (A, SF05) was married to Susan Unger in Massachusetts on January 2. RAY ANDRE WAKEﬁELD (A) has published The Disordered Police State: German Cameralism as Science and Practice. Wakeﬁeld is associate professor of history at Pitzer College in Claremont, Calif. 1988 JANA GILES (A) will be starting as an assistant professor of 20thcentury British literature at the University of Louisiana at Monroe in fall 2009. Her specializations are modernism, postcolonialism, and aesthetics. She would love to have any visitors, so please let her know “in the unlikely event” that you are passing through Monroe. 1989 Having never run before in her life, SARA CATANIA (A) ran the LA Marathon on May 25 to raise money for AIDS Project Los Angeles. Details are available at www.laobserved.com/runon. GEORGE TURNER (A) is working half time to make room for “more fun and family time.” He’s training for the California International Marathon on December 6 in Sacramento, with hopes of qualifying for Boston, “the runner’s Mecca.” “Other than that,” he writes, “same house, same spouse, kids another year older. Life is good.” Dante Meets the Zombies K PAFFENROTH’s (A88) zombiﬁed version of Dante’s Inferno, is now available as a limited edition hardback from Cargo Cult Press (www.horror-mall.com). In it, the Florentine stumbles onto an infestation of the undead, and the horrors he witnesses there—people being burned alive, devoured, decapitated, etc.—are what later inspires his epic poem. x book of poems will be published by Salmon Poetry (Ireland) in April 2010. IM 1990 GRAHAM HARMAN (A) has been named Associate Vice Provost for Research at the American University in Cairo, Egypt. His fourth book, Prince of Networks, has recently been published by re.press (Melbourne). His next book, L’objet quadruple, will ﬁrst appear in French translation with Presses Universitaires de France (Paris) in 2010. 1991 JULIE RENNINGER PASS OBER (AGI) writes: “I am a humanities professor and painter, and I retrain thoroughbred racehorses. My paintings and horse tales/tails are all at my blog: www.honeysucklefaire. blogspot.com. My painting, Smoke, was juried into Pennsylvania’s Art of the State 2009. This is my third year accepted into this show. Horses, art and family consume me!” 1992 ANNE ASPEN (née BOYNTON, SF) left her senior city planner position at the City of Fort Collins in January for a project manager position at the city’s Downtown Development Authority. “It allows me to focus on what I love most: architecture and our downtown. We’re doing a lot of exciting projects here, and I’m learning some new tricks. Family life is fulﬁlling now that the kids in our life ﬁnally moved here from Santa Fe. Unfortunately, Jane and I don’t have ready excuses to visit Santa Fe anymore, though.” 1993 ALEX and VANESSA ELLERMANN (AGI, A) are expecting their third son in March. Alex is ﬂying for Delta and with the Navy Reserve, and Vanessa is practicing law in D.C. They live in Kensington, Md., and don’t get to Annapolis nearly enough. John Abraham Kelley, the ﬁrst child of Genevieve and OWEN KELLEY (A), was born with a shout on September 11, 2008. They still live in Greenbelt, Md., and Owen still works at NASA. NANCY MARCUS (A) has moved to Cleveland and joined the law ﬁrm Berhmen, Gordon, Murray and DeVan, the ﬁrm that put Mapp v. Ohio on the map, and has had a number of other historic successes. Her practice includes trial and appellate litigation in the areas of constitutional law, civil rights, torts, criminal defense, and LGBT rights. Ernest Marlowe Strautmann was born in May 2008 to Jacob Strautmann and VALERIE DUFFSTRAUTMANN (SF). Valerie’s ﬁrst { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } 1994 “My wife, ELIZABETH (RHODES) FARLEY and I (both A), are happy to report the birth of our third child, a boy. Samuel Duncan Farley was born on April 5, 2009,” writes DAN FARLEY. “Our other two children, Hannah (11) and Dylan (9), participated wonderfully in the birth of their brother and are now doting siblings. We are now measuring our lives not solely with coffee spoons, but also with diapers again! We have also recently relocated to Eugene, Ore., and invite any Johnnies in the Northwest in particular to contact us and come and visit if possible!” BEN FELDMAN (A) was married in January to Chaya Bracha Silver from Israel/ N.Y. “I have continued to work in New York as a master’s-level psychologist, providing services for developmentally disabled individuals. Now, I am getting ready to move, in August with my wife to Cleveland, Ohio, so I can pursue a PhD in Experimental Psychology, specializing in developmental disabilities research, at Case Western Reserve University. I will begin by helping to run a research study on Prader-Willi Syndrome.” 1995 HEIDI OVERBEEK (A) lives in the East Mountains outside of Albuquerque and loves it. “My partner, Cindy, and I have a 14-year-old son named Ashante who we adopted ﬁve years ago. I work as a labor and delivery nurse and am (leisurely) looking at grad schools to become a nurse �40 {Alumni Notes} the company and spending my weekends with Karen. Life is good.” Business Leader P KATZ (SF95) was the subject of a cover story in Milwaukee’s Business Journal. Katz is founder and principal of Phillip Katz Project Development, a Milwaukee-based design and management practice. An architect, Katz was among the journal’s picks for Milwaukee’s top 100 “movers and shakers.” x HILLIP practitioner. I’m a ‘master gardener’ for the county and try to live in my garden!” CRAIG SIRKIN (A) reports that he and his wife, Wendy, are happy to welcome a new addition to their family: “Sarah Isabelle was born on March 10, and due to a very short labor was born at home with me acting as midwife and her older brother, Isaac, sleeping peacefully in his room. Everybody is happy and healthy.” “Our impending exodus from Mobile, Ala., has been nudged along by the economy, thanks to which my ﬁrst small business venture—a coffee house across from the university—has come to a close,” writes KIRA ZIELINSKI (SF). “Not allowing business failure to equate with personal failure has been a tremendous emotional education for me as well. But I’m learning that although it’s quite possible that we are responsible for the entire world economic collapse, I’m learning to be OK with that. I’m looking forward to some time to catch up on life—reading, continuing our home improvement saga, getting back into music, and putting a match to the contents of no less than 15 ﬁling cabinets. Despite all the tumult, my wonderful Nathan is still my ﬁancé, and our pre-marital counselor allows us to return each week and invent new psychoses.” 1996 “I am in Vermont,” writes CHERYL HENEVELD (AGI), “sometimes leading discussion groups for the Vermont Humanities Council. Taking a mythology course from the nearby state college. Re-reading the Odyssey—keep learning the St. John’s way! Come for a visit.” JEFFREY A. PALMER (A) married MARGURITE T. PFOUTZ (SF03) in Pittsburgh, Pa., in a wellexecuted elopement. 1997 DOMINIC CRAPUCHETTES (A) was recently married to Karen Litsinger. They live in Bethesda, Md., and Dominic’s board game company, North Star Games, is going strong. “We now have six people working for North Star Games with product in Target, Barnes and Noble, Borders, and many other locations,” he says. “I’m having a lot of fun growing VAN CUNNINGHAM (SF) writes, “Mom graduated from the GI a few years ago, Stella’s 9 1/2, Rockstar is a scaredy-dog, we are 7 miles from the ocean until we ﬁgure out which mountains to head to.” JACOB CURTIS (SF) and DAYNA SIMS CURTIS (SF98) announce the birth of their second baby, Atticus Hamilton: “Big sister Clio is adjusting well, we are feeling very blessed with a boy and a girl.” BRENDA JOHNSON (AGI) has completed the docent training course at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Md. She is enjoying taking some of the 28,000 school children who visit every year through the museum. JESSICA CAMPBELL MCALLEN (SF) writes: “Lowry, Isaac, and I welcomed Patrick Oliver with so much love on February 1, 2009. He was 6 lbs. 13 oz. and 19 1/2 in.” JILL NIENHISER (SFGI) completed a two-year acting program at the National Conservatory of Dramatic Arts in Washington, D.C., in December. She appeared in The Houseguests and A Midsummer Night’s Dream in April, and will perform this summer with Kaleidoscope Theatre in a two-person production of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe for schools and libraries. NATHAN SCHLEIFER (SF) reports that his second son, Elijah, was born June 16, 2008. 1998 STEPHEN CONN (SF) reports: “On the literary front, I recently had my 10th published letter in { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } Mojo Magazine, and to top it off, I am studying for my MFA in Screenwriting at the Academy of Art in San Francisco. Any Johnnies who feel like a nice Italian dinner in North Beach, feel free to come on over!” RICK FIELD (SFGI) and his wife Jessica welcomed twin girls into their lives on August 2, 2008. The elder child, by two minutes, was named Grace Apollonia, and the younger, Alexandra Electra. Both girls love to hear books read aloud, and they enjoy various types of music. DORA JACOBS (A) and WALKER STUMP-COALE (A00) will both begin law school at the University of Baltimore in August. Their son, Mac, is now 11 months old and their daughter, Isabel, is almost 2 1/2, so things will be crazy at their house for a while—but not too crazy to catch up with old friends, particularly if there’s advice to be had about managing full-time school and a young family. Use dorajacobs@hotmail.com or walkerstumpcoale@ hotmail.com to drop a line. 1999 Having completed seven years of formation at Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary in Denton, Neb., BRIAN T. AUSTIN, FSSP (A), was ordained to the sacred priesthood on May 30 in Lincoln, Neb., and sang a Solemn High Mass of Thanksgiving on June 6 in Philadelphia. The Rev. Austin is a member of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, a clerical Society of Apostolic Life of Pontiﬁcal Rite, founded in 1988 by His Holiness John Paul II for the sake of fostering the ancient Latin Liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church. �41 {Alumni Profile} Nurturing a Love for Learning Melanie Jago Hiner (A81) by Rosemary Harty bruce weller A t nine years old, Melanie Jago Hiner (A81) was a curious bookworm attending a progressive school in Chicago. “Our social studies teacher told us we could study anything we wanted, as long as we could explain why,” she recalls. “I decided to study the Mongolian invasion of China. I made a scale model of the Great Wall and loved every minute of it.” While her social studies teacher encouraged independent thinking and creativity, her math teacher frequently gave timed tests that made Hiner so anxious she suffered from stomach aches. “I came to loathe math,” she says. “And I almost didn’t come to St. John’s because the Program included four years of math.” Hiner made the leap and discovered she loved mathematics. Her experiences at St. John’s—learning through dialogue, being a part of a community, delving into difﬁcult and unfamiliar subject matter—helped to shape her ideas of what education could be. She enrolled in a graduate program at the University of Delaware, focusing on cognition and instruction, and ﬁnished the coursework required for her doctorate. In 1995, at the prodding of her 7-year-old son, Hiner founded the New School in Newark, Delaware, using St. John’s College as her model for helping children and young adults become lifelong learners. The school’s motto: “Education for the courageous, inquisitive, and independent-minded.” “The ‘radical inquiry’ of St. John’s is very much at the heart of what we do,” says Hiner. “We’re always challenging the kids to think deeply about things.” Hiner started the school in the basement of a women’s club with $1,000 and seven students. Now housed in a historic home with an acre of land, the New School has about 40 students in kindergarten through grade 12. Students vote on the governing principles of their school and decide individually what to study and how to study it. “Children learn to listen to one another and learn from another. We’re not hierarchical. There are no experts—just like at St. John’s, the teacher is a fellow learner.” So far, three New School graduates have matriculated at St. John’s. One of Hiner’s Her own experiences in the classroom led Melanie Jago Hiner to create a school that fosters creativity and wonder, in the spirit of St. John’s College. ﬁrst students was Molly Roach (A09). “It was more like a family than a school,” Roach recalls. “I was used to being told what to do, so at ﬁrst, I had a little trouble adjusting to the self-directed aspect of the school.” At the New School, Roach enjoyed learning through conversation. Hands-on projects such as sewing gained time alongside reading and studying mathematics, and in time Roach began to thrive with her new freedom. Her senior thesis explored the concept of paradise, focusing on the Persian root of the word as enclosed garden. As part of her project, she transformed the school’s meeting room into a “paradise garden,” with plants, a bench, and a fountain. “If I had gone to a traditional high school and had all the pressures about test scores and college applications, I would have been miserable because I would have wanted to please everyone,” says Roach. “I wouldn’t have known anything about what I was actually interested in.” The New School restricts students choices in a way, because students are strongly encourage to seek out things that are difﬁcult and they’re required to explain their choices. The ultimate goal, says Hiner, is creating self-reliance and perseverance in students. “We talk to them about Plato’s discussion of the soul—if you’re just drawn along by the evil { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } horse to things you merely enjoy doing, you’re not going to get anything worth doing done,” Hiner says. On Wednesday nights, Hiner leads seminars for New School parents and community members. Readings from The Wealth of Nations, Democracy in America, and Pascal’s Pensées have been recent choices. Hiner has also developed an informal continuing educational program for adults. She mentors adults who want to structure their own program of self-education. Along with devoting herself to offering a St. John’s-inspired education, Hiner is moving into community organizing. Last year, she created a nonproﬁt called Omnia Humanitas, aimed at encouraging individuals and communities to pursue “integrated, sustainable lives” that include lifelong learning, community involvement, and environmentally responsible lifestyles. The school and nonproﬁt organization together allow Hiner to introduce the concept of “the examined life” to those who haven’t read Plato. “To be fully engaged in what you’re doing, to take time to develop neglected aspects of your life, to keep asking important questions—that’s what it means to live a productive life,” she says. x �42 {Alumni Notes} MICHAEL HOKENSON (SF) has been spending the last several years creating a fund to provide loans to microﬁnance institutions (“MFIs”). The Minlam Microﬁnance Fund lent money to 10 MFIs, which created more than 18,000 new loans during 2008 in emerging markets from Peru to Azerbaijan. These loans are intended to help small businesses grow and boost household income for poor families, which is linked to higher investment in education, nutrition and health. The institutions have loans with more than 400,000 women. He continues to live and work in New York City. 2000 Here’s some news from JASON (AGI) and SUSIE SALINAS (AGI99): “Susie and I will celebrate our ninth anniversary on June 10. I just ﬁnished three years in Annapolis, where I taught English at the Naval Academy. This week we moved back to San Diego so I could return to ﬂying helicopters for the Navy. Susie has been busy raising our two boys, Henry, 4, and Sam, 2.” 2001 After ﬁve years of living in Santa Fe and working in the art gallery scene, BRENDAN BULLOCK (SF) moved back to New England and has been in Portland, Maine, for the last two years. “I’ll be moving to Rockport, Maine, shortly to begin a summer-long position as a teaching assistant at the Maine Media Workshops, an incredible institution for photographic learning,” he says. “I’ll be working alongside some of the best photographers working today, teaching both seasoned professionals and young children getting involved with photography for the ﬁrst time. That aside, I’ve been getting in plenty of good ﬁshing with fellow Johnnie GEORGE DEANS (A02), who, incidentally, is now working as a stonemason, has just bought a house and will be getting married to his ﬁancée, Ludmila Svoboda, in September.” 2002 AMELIA ADAMS (A) begins her residency in Orthopedic Surgery at Washington University in St. Louis this June. BENJAMIN ANDERSON (AGI) has received a three-year David E. Finley Fellowship from the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art. “This will support completion of my dissertation (Bryn Mawr, History of Art) on images of the Ptolemaic cosmos in the early Middle Ages,” he says. “At present I am traveling about the near East, researching late Roman and early Islamic monuments, but will spend most of the next two years in Munich before returning to D.C. for the ﬁnal year of the fellowship, insha’Allah!” ISABEL CLARK (A) writes: “I’ve moved to Austin, Texas, and am working for Whole Foods Market on the new healthy eating team at their global HQ. Before the move, my partner, Brian Ambrose, and I went on an epic cross-country adventure for several months (detailed in the archives of brianandisabel.com). I also have a new website with recipes, articles, and materials from my previous work doing wellness counseling at forkbytes.com.” AMANDA SIMONE KENNEDY FINNEY (SF) graduated from Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law in Dallas, Texas, with a Juris Doctor on May 16, 2009. 2003 CHELSIA (WHEELER) HETRICK (SF) was married May 24, 2009, to Erik Hetrick, whom she met while doing her ﬁrst tour as a foreign service ofﬁcer in Rangoon, Burma. They are scheduled to ﬁnish their tour in Burma this September, then move to Johannesburg, South Africa, in October. SEAN MCLAIN (A) writes: “I have been living in Abu Dhabi for the past year and a half, and writing editorials for a new English-language daily here. I never expected I would end up in the media. However, in retrospect, getting paid good money to tell people what I think is pretty much the ideal career. Called to Virginia J USTI SCHUNIOR (A99) recently graduated from Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta and in June was ordained to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church at the Cathedral of St. Philip. “I’ve accepted a call to Christ Church in Old Town Alexandria and will be moving up to Virginia to begin work in July. I hope to make the reunion this fall and catch up with class of ‘99. x { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } The UAE is a fascinating young country. In 37 years it has gone from a collection of desert emirates under British mandate to a thriving hub of commerce. There are innumerable growing pains from such rapid growth, and one of the most rewarding aspects of my job is to try to make sense of the country to the world and vice versa. I don’t know if I could do this forever, but it is certainly a rewarding pit stop on the way to whatever future lies ahead.” MARGURITE T. PFOUTZ (SF) married JEFFREY A. PALMER (A96) in Pittsburgh, Pa. They then ran away together to Portland, Ore., with their cat and some books. MICHAEL WALDOCK (SFGI) and JOHANNA OMELIA (SFGI02) have launched Ailemo Books in Oregon and just released their ﬁrst title, Voyage 185: A British Gentleman’s Extraordinary Adventures Abroad by Thomas Hughes Jackson. 2004 ENJOLI COOKE (A) will begin optometry school at Pennsylvania College of Optometry at Salus University in the fall. “It is a four-year program without a required residency, so I will (hopefully) be a practicing optometrist in four years and two months!” ANNIE ROLLINS (née BAILY) and DUSTIN ROLLINS (both SF) are currently living and working in the Boston area. Dustin recently ﬁnished his MA in Philosophy at Boston College and works as adjunct faculty at several New England colleges. Annie ﬁnished a master’s in teaching at BU and just wrapped up her ﬁrst year teaching senior English in a regional high school. They have purchased an old colonial house �43 {Alumni Notes} north of Boston in the Bradford area and are looking forward to beginning a family. “Best wishes to our classmates, and give us a holler if you are in the area,” they write. 2005 SAMANTHA BUKER (A) plans on hosting musical après-midi in her Baltimore garden all summer long. First on the performer’s list, JAMES PEARSON, cellist (A05) was well received for his Bach Suite #3 in C. All nearby musical alums are invited to showcase their talents. When not inviting musicians to drink her wine and gorge on rich, buttery desserts and decadent fruits, she praises or pans them in writing for the Baltimore City Paper’s rated Best Local Music Blog: Auralstates. Read her posts right here: http://auralstates.com/ author/sbuker. While this music critic stint takes her round to the nation’s top orchestras, it doesn’t pay the rent. So she rounds out her day by delving deep into Federal Reserve mayhem and all sundry things sociopolitical and economic for Agora Financial— particularly enjoying her status as roving reporter for their Libertarian-leaning rag Whiskey and Gunpowder. After two years of post-bac coursework, JAMES HARRISON (A) will be starting medical school at the University of Philadelphia this fall. “To old friends and classmates, all are welcome if you’re passing through Philly.” CARLY ROSE JACKSON (SF) began a master’s program in journalism in September 2008. She lives in Boston, goes to school, interns at a local weekly, and like everyone else in the universe has a blog. Cross your ﬁngers that newspapers will still exist in 2010 when she graduates. ALEXIS SEGEL (SF) is happy to be through the ﬁrst year of her Master of Fine Arts program at Mills College in Oakland, Calif. She will continue her studies in Italian at Middlebury this summer, and hopes to see some Johnnies at her master’s recital in spring 2010. 2006 DANIEL GRIMM (SF) writes: “I own and operate Fishbar on the Lake, a seasonal seafood restaurant in Montauk, N.Y., the last town in the Hamptons. My partner, Jennifer Meadows, is the executive chef. The restaurant overlooks Montauk Harbor and serves seafood right off local boats, many of which dock right in front of the restaurant. Pictures of the view are available on our website: www.freshlocalﬁsh.com. Everyone is invited to come!” MADELINE MAHOWALD (SF) will begin a post-baccalaureate premedical program at Bryn Mawr College in May. CARRY ROSE (A) and her ﬁancé, Jacob Brown, will be having a baby in November, their ﬁrst child. KELLY KEENAN TRUMPBOUR (AGI) was recently named senior director of Running Start, a nonproﬁt dedicated to inspiring high school and college women to pursue political ofﬁce. 2007 BRENDAN GREELEY (SFGI) has completed primary ﬂight training at NAS Corpus Christi, Texas. He will ﬂy the T-45 (Navy Planning and serving in the Volunteer State W ILLIAM GREGORICUS (SFGI00) is a senior policy advisor in Tennessee Governor Bredesen’s Ofﬁce of Planning and Policy. His main charge is the coordination of the efforts of the Governor’s Criminal Justice Coordinating Council, a 15-member group, appointed by the Governor to examine ways to reduce juvenile and adult recidivism and improve public safety and serving as the deputy to the director of the Governor’s Tennessee Recovery Act Management Ofﬁce. Prior to joining the Bredesen administration, he served under Governor Bill Richardson with the deputy cabinet secretary for Children, Youth and Families, with responsibilities for the Juvenile Justice Division. You can ﬁnd him on Facebook. x Strike Jet Trainer) at NAS Kingsville, Texas, where he will earn his “Wings of Gold.” CHELSEA STIEGMAN (A, now Chelsea Ihnacik) has been married for more than a year to Ryan Ihnacik, her boyfriend since high school. She’s managing a Starbucks at the Annapolis Mall and planning to go to law school in the fall of 2010. In good weather, she may be spotted traveling through town on her new scooter. 2008 and helping a student-initiated fundraiser to help save the Javan rhino.” 2009 DALTON LOBO DIAS (A) is working this summer as an e mergency medical technician and will be starting his premedical post-baccalaureate program at Bryn Mawr College in the fall. x What’s Up? Last May, DON BRIGGS (AGI) was a panelist for the National Association of Homebuilders Green Building Conference on “Valuing Green Buildings” in Dallas, Texas. The College wants to hear from you. Call us, write us, e-mail us. Let your classmates know what you’re doing. The next issue will be published in November; deadline for the alumni notes section is October 10. ALEXANDRA SCHWAB (A) has been teaching sixth-grade math for the past year at The Pingry School in New Jersey, where she will be next year, too: “My non-math-related adventures this year included vocal coaching for our high school production of Les Misérables, backup singing for the middle school’s Godspell, Alumni will also be sent a call for classnotes via e-mail in September. To see the last mystery picture identiﬁed, visit the online community at www.stjohnscollege.edu, click on Alumni. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } The College Magazine St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404; rosemary.harty@sjca.edu �44 WILLIAM DARKEY, CLASS OF 1942 William Darkey, tutor emeritus, died in Santa Fe on June 22, 2009, at the age of 88. He will be remembered by friends and colleagues for contributions that made a tremendous difference in the life of the college. He was among the ﬁrst students of Barr and Buchanan’s New Program, and he spent a year as a tutor right after graduating. As a founding faculty member and dean in Santa Fe, he helped create and foster a new St. John’s College community in the high desert. As a lifelong learner and encouraging teacher, he inspired others with his passion for ideas. Mr. Darkey was active on campus when Victoria Mora, Santa Fe dean, arrived as a tutor in Santa Fe. “He had such a lovely, understated way of drawing our attention to the important things in faculty meetings,” she recalls. “He had a quiet, Mark Twain-like wit. He loved the college and he loved the Santa Fe campus. He had a fascinating view of how the landscape and light on this campus added to the student experience of the program, their starkness confronting the students with themselves as profoundly as the books do.” Mr. Darkey’s lecture on translation remains fresh and relevant to the work of the college today, Dean Mora said. “It is used widely in language classes to help students see what a powerful and rewarding experience a simple translation can be. Bill saw meaning in the everyday and familiar; what better wisdom does a lifelong dedication to this program have to offer?” {Obituaries} He was also appreciated for his quiet humor. “He loved music, poetry, and literature,” says tutor emeritus Sam Kutler (class of 1954), who was a student of Mr. Darkey’s. “He was one of the founders of the Key School here in Annapolis because he cared about education at all levels.” Mr. Darkey was preceded in death by his wife, Constance (SFGI85). He is survived by his stepson, Peter Nabokov; his daughter, Catherine Darcy; and a grandson, Aaron Darcy. BRIAN WALKER (SF90) by David Marquez (SF90) William Darkey will be remembered for his quiet, Mark Twainlike wit, says Santa Fe Dean Victoria Mora. Raised in Western Maryland, Mr. Darkey attended St. John’s on a scholarship and, before graduating in 1942, was offered a faculty position. He enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1946 and then, upon his honorable discharge, pursued a graduate degree in English literature at Columbia University. Noted poet and professor Mark Van Doren was both a mentor and good friend. Returning to St. John’s in 1949, Mr. Darkey joined a cadre of tutors who helped build the college’s reputation, including intellectuals and refugees from Europe such as Eva Brann and gifted composers such as Elliot Carter. At the new campus in Santa Fe, Mr. Darkey served as dean from 1968 to 1972 with “imagination, diligence, and perceptiveness,” former president Richard Weigle wrote in one of his memoirs. A dedicated teacher and proponent of the St. John’s Program, Mr. Darkey was known for his intellect, his gentle manner in the seminar room, and his ability to bring out different points of view. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } As his classmates, much of our appreciation of Brian is framed in our shared experience of St. John’s College. To us, Brian’s life is not a series of accomplishments and milestones, especially given that he, like us, chose to attend a college without the usual yardsticks of letter grades, midterms, multiple choice tests or ﬁnal exams. His decision to follow an ancient method of learning based on the simple and complex tasks of reading and conversing and also to lead a life full of complexity, beauty and creativity is proof of his deep inspiration and feeling for the world. Our Brian Walker was, without a doubt, the exemplary “Johnnie.” To list Brian’s accomplishments is a little like trying to trace the course of a stream from its mountain origins as it grows to a river and onward to its ultimate union with the greater sea, and in that course, name all of the ways that gift of water affects the places and creatures it touches as it passes. It is better then to say at least some of the things Brian was to those of us who knew �45 {Obituaries} him. Above all else he was our friend: a whirl of life, joy, sarcasm, wit, hilarity, sorrow, vanity, appreciation, generosity, empathy, deep understanding, profound imagination, grammatical knowledge and a boundless well of love for life and all that was a part of it. He was a poet and a creator: the very highest honors one could take from the college Brian chose. It was his ability to use wit and sarcasm that kept his feet ﬁrmly planted on the ground. His cock-eyed view of pretentiousness when he encountered it and the way he could cut to the quick of any situation to reveal its true form told all of us that here was someone who could see through the most carefully crafted constructs. This was a power to be reckoned with and respected. For many of us, it was Brian who would give voice to what we were all thinking, but could not diplomatically express. He was a master of creating the world as he saw it and in such completeness that those of us around him could not imagine it not being so. In this way a big green Ford pick-up became both chariot and limousine, and a student ﬂat with bad plumbing could become a banquet hall ﬁt for tasting the world’s ﬁnest champagnes. Those of us around him happily engaged in his world view not out of dissatisfaction with the world as it was, but because what Brian brought out in each of us was the hope and the belief that the world would be just as we all imagined it could be: full of poetry and low humor, music and guffawing, crassness and beauty, and throughout all, love. It is no coincidence that all who met Brian in those years at St. John’s, and I am certain in those years before and after, are unable to forget him. This is because he is one of those rare individuals who those of us fortunate enough to have as a friend know that because of him our view of the world and of our own lives will never be the same. As he departs it is undeniable that any honors and accolades that Brian may have collected during his time here are only dim reﬂections of the light he shared with us. IRA MILLER (AGI07) Ira Miller, a retired general surgeon whose passion for the classics brought him to St. John’s, died in March at his home in Bethesda, Md. He was 78 and had prostate cancer. Dr. Miller was on the staff of several hospitals, including Suburban Hospital, where he chaired the surgery department from 1991 to 1993 and served as chairman of the medical staff from 1993 to 1995. A native of New York, he received a bachelor’s degree in English from Columbia University in 1951 and a medical degree from the University of Buffalo in 1956. During retirement he came to St. John’s to continue his education. “Ira’s years at St. John’s were a very rewarding time after his retirement from surgery,” says his wife, Barbara. “He was very grateful for the opportunity to study the works of many of the thinkers whose writings he had glossed over as an undergraduate. His studies at St. John’s enhanced his abilities as a discussion leader in the Great Books program, and led to his developing courses on the Iliad and the histories of Herodotus and Thucydides.” PATRICK PATRONE (SF78) Patrick M. Patrone, M.D., died suddenly at his home in Hopkins, Minn., on April 16, 2009. He was 51. Born in Izmir, Turkey, Dr. Patrone spent most of his early years in Fairfax, Va. After graduating from St. John’s, he earned an MS in physiology from Georgetown University, and his medical degree from the University of Virginia. He completed his residency in pathology at the Cleveland Clinic and did a fellowship in pediatric pathology at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. He practiced pathology at Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia before moving to Lancaster County, where he worked as a pathologist at Lancaster General Hospital for nine years. He also worked at Reading Hospital and most recently at Lower Bucks Hospital in Bristol, Pa. He was a fellow of the College of American Pathologists. JOHN M. ROSS (A69) John Maxwell Ross died April 6, 2009, of natural causes at his home in Seattle. After graduating from brian walker { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } St. John’s he served for four years in the U.S. Coast Guard, where he was stationed in St. Louis, Mo. He eventually settled in Seattle, where he spent the next few decades pursuing personal and professional interests. An accomplished author of technical books, Mr. Ross also pursued other writing projects, including a planned study of the writings of E.B. White. He combined his Coast Guard radio engineering experience and his love for music and folklore to serve many local organizations, including KRAB Radio, Northwest Folklife, and the Seattle Folklore Society. A dedicated archivist, Mr. Ross was deeply committed to preserving the musical heritage of the past in new and different media. He also enjoyed collecting local Paciﬁc Northwest wines and making homemade apple cider with members of the Northwest Cider Society. He served on the Wallingford Community Council. ALSO NOTED: RICHARD FRANK (CLASS OF 1949), MAY 5, 2009 CHARLES WYMAN GROVER (CLASS OF 1948), MARCH 19, 2009 STEVEN KEY (A74), MAY 26, 2009 ALVIN LEVY (CLASS OF 1938), JAN. 22, 2009 WILLIAM SPRANKLE (CLASS OF 1951), FEB. 7, 2009 KEVIN STACEY (A75), MARCH 23, 2009 BOWEN WEISHEIT (CLASS OF 1940), APRIL 29, 2009 JOHN WINSLOW (CLASS OF 1933), DEC. 28, 2008 �46 {Croquet} Johnnie vs. Johnnie: Showdown with Santa Fe F aced with another Sunday croquet match this spring (Navy had a scheduling conﬂict), Alumni Director Jo Ann Mattson (A87) hit on an idea: why not ﬁll the empty Saturday with a Johnnie vs. Johnnie, East vs. West match? When enough Santa Fe students took the challenge, Mattson made it an ofﬁcial part of the weekend. Since Sunday drew the largest crowd ever— about 3,000 people—the informal and intimate Santa Fe vs. Annapolis match was the highlight of the weekend for many. “This is what croquet was like in its early days,” said Mattson, her picnic set up on the edge of the playing court. “Look at all the students here.” Students who made the trip from Santa Fe, along with transfers to Annapolis, gathered under a tent where they proudly displayed the New Mexico ﬂag. Other students lounged on blankets in the sun and did homework or read as the games went on around them. “I’m not really following the game,” confessed Gina Russom (A09), who spent her ﬁrst two years in Santa Fe. “But it’s nice to have a little bit of Santa Fe here in Annapolis.” Even though Santa Fe’s team included six former Annapolis students who transferred to Santa Fe, Annapolis prevailed 3-0. And though the Santa Fe players practiced a couple of times a week, it can’t be said that either team took things too seriously on Saturday. Santa Fe’s team was led not by an Imperial Wicket but by a “Grand Marnier.” Another player donned a clown’s outﬁt for part of his match. Along with their nicknames (“Drunken Alex” and “Fried Smokra” among them), the Santa Fe competitors printed a quote from the Roman poet Claudian on their red shirts: “It is no victory unless the vanquished admits your mastery.” But on Sunday, it was all business. Perhaps it was the spring warmth after a dreary, bad-news winter that brought such a large, enthusiastic crowd to campus for Sunday’s match. Dressed as Vikings (costumes chosen to hint at domination of the seas), the Johnnies triumphed 4-1 over Navy. Imperial Wicket Micah Beck was well pleased with the victory, although he and his partner lost their match. Perhaps the large crowd had something to do with it, he ventured. “There were alumni lining the sidelines watching,” he says. “We had some nervous jitters to work out.” The following weekend the Johnnies closed out their croquet season by bringing { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } home another trophy, as winners of the National Intercollegiate Championships held April 25-26 at the Merion Cricket Club in Haverford, Pennsylvania. The Johnnies were among the top seeds going into Sunday’s play, and they won all of their six-wicket matches. Teams were ﬁelded by institutions including the Naval Academy, Bard, Haverford, Davidson, and SUNY-New Paltz. x �{Croquet} Opposite page: Top right, Santa Fe players consider their choices; Bottom right, a quote from Claudian on a Santa Fe t-shirt; left, Gina Russom (A09) watches the action. Above: clockwise from top, ﬁerce Vikings face off against the nattily dressed midshipmen; the Annapolis cup awaits the victor in the alumni tent; the Santa Fe-Annapolis match was like the “old days” of croquet; Elsabe Dixon (A11) and Joao Fernandes (A09) join the swing dancers. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } 47 �48 {Alumni Association News} CALENDAR Alumni, it’s time to come home to Annapolis and Santa Fe this fall! ANNAPOLIS Friday, September 25 4-8 p.m. Registration 4:30-6 p.m. Alumni/student networking and welcome reception, FSK Lobby 5:30 p.m. Class reunion dinners/receptions 8:15 p.m. Homecoming Lecture: “Don Quixote and the Law,” by Pedro Martinez-Fraga (A84) Saturday, September 26 8:30-noon Registration continues 10:30 a.m. Seminars, children’s story hour and seminars noon Family barbeque/ class reunion luncheons 2 p.m. Freshman chorus, revisited 3 p.m. The Mitchell Gallery’s “Tools in Motion” exhibit; Soccer Classic 4 p.m. All-Alumni Meeting/awards assembly; book signing 5-7 p.m. Cocktail party/birthday celebration 7:30 p.m. Alumni banquet 9:30 p.m. Alumni ball; rock party SANTA FE Friday, October 9 4-8 p.m. Registration 4:30-5:30 p.m. Alumni/student reception 5:30 p.m. Class reunion receptions 6 p.m. GI welcome reception 8 p.m. Homecoming lecture 10 p.m. Movie Sunday, September 27 11 a.m. Presidents’ Brunch CROQUET St. John’s vs. the U.S. Naval Academy Saturday, April 17, 2010 Raindate: Sunday, April 18, 2010 PIRAEUS, Alumni Continuing Education Thursday, June 3, to Sunday, June 6, 2010. Saturday, October 10 8:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Registration 9:30 a.m.-10:15 a.m. State of the college 10:30 a.m.-noon Seminars and children’s story hours 12:30 p.m. Picnic 2 p.m. Hike to Atalaya 2-4 p.m. Bocce tournament and Italian lawn party 5 p.m. Speaking Volumes lecture 6 p.m. Collegewide Art Show 7 p.m. Homecoming dinner 9 p.m. Homecoming dance Sunday, October 11 11 a.m. President’s Brunch Seniors and alumni came together for a reception at the Paca Gardens before Commencement. L. to r.: Jessica ZimmergbergHelms, Carol Freeman (AGI94), and Alexandra Munters. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �{Alumni Association News} A Day in the Country E ach May Sharon Bishop (class of 1965) welcomes Washington-area alumni to her home in Winchester, Va., for an annual “Day in the Country,” featuring a picnic, tutor-led seminar, and an opportunity for Johnnies to frolic in the sunshine. This year, the popular event had one of its best turnouts since Bishop began hosting about six years ago. About 50 participants attended the event, held on Memorial Day weekend. Tutors Eva Brann (H89) and Peter Kalkavage led the seminar, on Book 10 of Augustine’s Confessions. Each group talked for an hour, then Brann and Kalkavage switched groups. Kalkavage’s opening question was: how does Augustine lay out the difference between the inner man and the outer man? The discussion focused on memory as the medium for inner man. Brann concentrated on the chapter as “ﬁrst phenomenology.” Bishop provided a catered lunch (salad, grilled chicken, salmon, lemon squares, chocolate mousse) paired with wines from alumni winemakers: Hawk’s Crest, from Warren Winiarski (class of 1952); Frog’s Leap, from Larry Turley (SF69); and Sanglier Volant, from the vineyard of the late Jeff Bishop (H96), the college’s longtime vice president for advancement. After the seminars, some alumni played croquet, bocce, and badminton; others lounged under shady trees and talked. Bishop’s bearded collies, Brie and Sunshine, participated in every activity. Ymelda Martinez-Allison (A74) and her husband, David (A73), were among those who made the trek. “The Day in the Country was fabulous,” Martinez-Allison said. “We had lovely weather and a great time of socializing. The luncheon was absolutely delicious, and the seminar discussions were lively and fruitful.” “Thanks to Sharon, it was an absolutely perfect day,” says Jo Ann Mattson (A87), director of Alumni Relations. “It was such a generous gift to her fellow alumni.” “I enjoy hosting the event,” says Bishop. “I love having the house in the country, and I enjoy sharing it. And, we had great weather.” x Scenes from a day in the country: Seminars, Augustine on Kindle, friends, and badminton. Photos by David Allison. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } 49 �50 {Alumni Association News} A Special Correspondence Alumni Association Honors WWII Hero H “. . .He modestly disowns any praise for his personal courage.” tutor Eva Brann, on Martin Andrews lives, and his family and friends joined in congratulating him. In her remarks at the brief ceremony, Miss Brann noted that Mr. Andrews is “the alumnus of alumni.” He left St. John’s in 1941 to enlist as an aviation cadet in the Army Air Force. After he completed his ﬂight training in 1942, Mr. Andrews was promoted to 1st Lieutenant and ﬂew the B-17—the Flying Fortress—out of England. On his 13th mission, his plane was ﬁred on by Luftwaffe ﬁghters, and Mr. Andrews was forced to set his damaged bomber down in neutral Switzerland. He spent seven months in internment camps there before being released through a prisoner exchange with Germany. (Along the way, he carried out a spy mission for Allen Dulles, who headed up the OSS in Europe.) After the war Mr. Andrews settled in New York, where he became a documentary ﬁlmmaker. Although he didn’t ﬁnish the Program, Mr. Andrews carried the ideals of the joe sledge, va medical center is health wouldn’t allow World War II veteran Martin Andrews (class of 1943) to come to Annapolis to receive the Alumni Award of Merit, the highest honor given by the Alumni Association. So Alumni Director Jo Ann Mattson (A87) and Steve Thomas (SF75), vice president of the association, traveled to the Northport Veteran’s Administration Medical Center on Long Island, New York, to present the award to him on March 17. They brought with them a special guest: tutor Eva Brann (H89), who through a dedicated correspondence with Mr. Andrews developed a friendship that has lasted more than two decades. When they arrived at the center Mr. Andrews introduced his wife, Jean, to the group and quipped to Miss Brann, “she knows I love you.” The Award of Merit was presented by Mr. Thomas, in recognition of Mr. Andrews’ outstanding service to the country, his affection and dedication for St. John’s and the ideals it represents, Mr. Andrews has been deemed a most worthy recipient of the Award of Merit,” he said. The ceremony was held in a common room of the VA Center, where Mr. Andrews college to war with him, Miss Brann said: “Under the pilot’s window of the Flying Fortress he piloted, he preempted the display of the customary buxom blonde by a stenciled quotation from our old seal: Nulla via invia virtutis—No way is impassable to courage,” she said. “From his aircraft he released catalogues of the New Program attached to little parachutes. It still makes my heart leap to think of these plans for a liberal education ﬂoating down from the heavens into totalitarian Germany.” Miss Brann recalled meeting Mr. Andrews at Homecoming in 1998, and shortly afterward, she received the ﬁrst of his letters, an account of his war experiences. “ How young they all were, Lieutenant Andrews himself only 23? And what the world owes them. He won’t, I hope, mind this way of putting it, although he modestly disowns any praise for his personal courage.” She expressed her gratitude for the friendship that has developed through letters: “When I see his beautiful handwriting on an envelope, I’m happy.” She noted that they have occupied the same places but at different times or under different circumstances during their lives. For example, in 1943 Mr. Andrews passed under escort through San Sebastian in Spain after his release from internment in Switzerland. “As it happens, I too passed under escort through San Sebastian, but in 1941, when a last refugee transport was mounted leaving Berlin for Lisbon.” Miss Brann and her family settled in Brooklyn, and after earning a doctorate at Yale, she became a tutor at St. John’s in 1957. “So now, once more, space and time have happily made connection for us,” Miss Brann concluded. “It is indeed purely wonderful to me, for I’ve grown to love Martin.” Still dapper at age 89, Mr. Andrews was visibly moved by the presentation. He expressed gratitude for both the honor from St. John’s and the visit from Miss Brann. “This is a thrilling moment for me, because Eva Brann is an extraordinary woman,” he told the guests. “She is the dearest correspondent I have, and I love her dearly.” x Penpals Eva Brann and Martin Andrews have developed a deep friendship, rooted in mutual admiration. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �{Alumni Association News} Spotlight: The Harrisburg Reading Group W hen Hannah Eagleson (AGI04) moved back home to Hershey, Pennsylvania, to work on her doctoral dissertation on lyric poets, she found herself missing seminar. She missed the conversations she had at the St. John’s Graduate Institute and as a graduate student at the University of Delaware. It might have been easy to ﬁnd a book group or a reading club in the area, but that wasn’t what she was looking for. “I wanted to meet more people who enjoyed reading and wrestling with texts in the way that Johnnies tend to,” she says. “Many of my friends in this area are thoughtful readers, but they might not have time for a St. John’s style reading group.” In February, Eagleson started a St. John’s alumni reading group in nearby Harrisburg. Meeting once a month at a local coffee house, participants get together to discuss works. Leadership of the discussion rotates between members, who can ask an opening question if they choose. Participants in the group include alumni from both campuses, and from both the undergraduate and graduate programs. Regular participants include 51 ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION All alumni have automatic membership in the St. John’s College Alumni Association. The Alumni Association is an independent organization, with a Board of Directors elected by and from the alumni body. The board meets four times a year, twice on each campus, to plan programs and coordinate the affairs of the association. “I love reading with Johnnies because they tend to be interested in approaching the text on its own terms. . .” President – Jason Walsh (A85) Vice President – Steve Thomas (SF74) Secretary – Joanne Murray (A70) Treasurer – Richard Cowles (A70) Mailing address – Alumni Association, St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404, or 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599. Hannah Eagleson Randy St. John (AGI87), Aaron and Sarah Frederickson (SF95), Kristen Litsinger (A93), Marvin Israel (SFGI73), Rebecca Stevenson (AGI95), Mike Jerominski (SF97), and Kristin Lockhart (SF97). Readings have included selected poetry of John Donne and King Lear, which Randy St. John has been leading the group through act-by-act. Group members are eager to move beyond the seminar to arrange social and cultural outings; they’re planning to attend a local Shakespeare in the Park production of Cymbeline, as well as organize a group hike. “We’re still ﬁguring out a lot of things, but it’s been very exciting so far,” Eagleson says. “[I]t has been a great pleasure to give careful attention to texts together, and to hear what everyone else has to say. I love reading with Johnnies because they tend to be interested in approaching the text on its own terms, but also interested in how texts interact with life experience.” The group typically meets on the fourth Friday of each month at Cornerstone Coffeehouse, 2133 Market St., Camp Hill, Pennsylvania. Contact Hannah Eagleson (hannaheag@comcast.net) for more information. — Sara Luell (A09) Introducing Nancie Wingo I n June, Nancie Wingo joined the Santa Fe staff as director of Alumni Activities. Prior to joining the college, Wingo worked in Richmond, Va., for the YMCA of Greater Richmond Association. She held numerous roles in her seven years with the association, most recently directing member services. A native of Merced, Calif., Wingo is a 1981 graduate of Baylor University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in communications. She has also held jobs in public relations and marketing. She has two sons: Harrison, 23, and Andrew, 19. An avid traveler, Wingo enjoys tennis, hiking, reading, ﬁlms and trying new recipes. Wingo is pleased to join “this gem of a college” and eager for the opportunity to reach out to Santa Fe alumni. “I have a deep and growing respect for the College, the Program, a stimulating community, and the opportunities that the future holds,” she says. x { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �52 greenfield library {St. John’s Forever} A century ago this past February—just as the college was preparing to celebrate the 125th anniversary of its charter— McDowell Hall was gutted by a blaze most likely caused by defective wiring. President Thomas Fell had been working in his McDowell ofﬁce that Saturday morning, February 20. He later told the Baltimore Sun that he and his secretary had smelled smoke, but they both thought someone was burning trash nearby. Fell went home to lunch at 1 p.m., but within minutes, his secretary was at the door, reporting that McDowell was on ﬁre. Students formed a bucket brigade, but they soon realized they could not reach the source of the ﬂames. Instead, led by faculty members, they concentrated on saving the building’s contents, including college records (including some from King William’s School), class shields and portraits of the college’s presidents. Led by Lt. E. Berkely Iglehart (class of 1894), a squad of students was dispatched to carry out the 30,000 rounds of ammunition for the college’s military program stored in the basement. Firemen and midshipmen from the Naval Academy also helped ﬁght the blaze, which could be seen for miles around and attracted hundreds of spectators to the campus. When it was all over, the upper two ﬂoors of McDowell were gone. Falling debris and water left the building’s ﬁrst ﬂoor in ruins. Though badly damaged, the masonry walls were intact, and this helped Fell and the board decide that McDowell would rise again. Contributions from alumni started pouring in immediately. With their ﬁnancial support, the college rebuilt McDowell according to its original design, { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } with the largely intact rear rooms serving as models. By June 1910, the reconstruction was complete. In 1989, the college undertook an extensive restoration of McDowell, moving administrative ofﬁces to a new wing in Mellon Hall and reﬁguring them as classrooms, installing heating and air conditioning, and shoring up the ﬂoors and galleries. It’s hard to imagine the Annapolis campus without McDowell. Its iconic bell tower was carried over to the design of another building 2000 miles away, what would become Weigle Hall in Santa Fe. x For more on McDowell’s history and a full account of the 1909 ﬁre, consult McDowell Hall at St. John’s College in Annapolis: 1742-1989, by John Christensen with Charles Bohl. �{Eidos} On Moving Again This evening, walking along the long ﬁeld My eye was drawn to a living shimmer in the sky: Three aspens alone alive in a world of almost motionless Cottonwood and willow and Chinese elm trees. The breeze that barely stirred the others Sprang it free, spangling leaves like light on water, An electric ﬂutter, the secret energy In the heart of the world revealed. Free. An aspen leaf might believe itself inordinately busy (especially comparatively) and certain therefore It will expire prematurely, useless, stupid, failed. From where I stood, it was the most beautiful thing to see. My life could be similarly pleasing to God. I guess this could be service enough for me. Liz Waldner About the artist and poet Karina Hean’s Nebulous (36" x 24" charcoal, conté, and graphite on cotton rag paper, 2007) was created for an exhibit at the University of Colorado. After teaching at Fort Lewis College and completing several national and international fellowships and residencies, Hean (A00) will be a visiting professor at the University of Montana this fall. Upcoming solo exhibitions include the Contemporary Center for the Arts in December 2009, Fort Lewis College in January 2010, and ArtHaus 66 in summer 2010. Liz Waldner (A83) is the author of Saving the Appearances; Dark Would (the missing person),winner of the 2002 Contemporary Poetry Series; Etym(bi)ology; Self and Simulacra (2001), winner of the Alice James Books Beatrice Hawley Prize; A Point Is That Which Has No Part, winner of the 2000 James Laughlin Award and the 1999 Iowa Poetry Prize; and Homing Devices (1998). Her poetry has appeared in the New Yorker, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Ploughshares, VOLT, and many other publications. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �NON -P ROFIT ORG . U.S. P OSTAGE PAID P UBLISHED BY THE COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE P.O. BOX 2800 A NNAPOLIS , M ARYLAND 21404 ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED A NNAPOLIS , MD P ERMIT NO . 120 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The College (2001-2017) Description An account of the resource The St. John's College Communications Office published The College magazine for alumni. It began publication in 2001, continuing the St. John's Reporter, and ceased with the Fall 2017 issue. Click on <a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=56">Items in The College (2001-2017) Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, Md. Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context thecollege2001 Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 52 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Title A name given to the resource The College, Summer 2009 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Description An account of the resource Issue of The College Magazine. Published in Summer 2009. 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 Type The nature or genre of the resource text Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context The_College_Magazine_Summer_2009 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/68ed0bc77b7be0724a5790f863a54c05.pdf e40f0d855498311cea5457fa915b9258 PDF Text Text The College W i n t e r 2 0 1 0 ST. JOHN’S C OLLEGE • ANN APOLIS • SANTA FE Wittgenstein and The Limits of Language �On Wittgenstein S ometimes an apocryphal story is too good to resist repeating. It’s said that when Ludwig Wittgenstein presented the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus as his doctoral thesis at Cambridge, Betrand Russell, his supervisor, declared: “Mr. Wittgenstein has written a work of great learning and originality. Nevertheless it still satisﬁes the criteria laid down by the University of Cambridge for the award of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.” Apocrypha aside, William Day (SF82), associate professor of philosophy at Le Moyne College, considers Wittgenstein the most interesting 20th-century philosopher. “Wittgenstein’s life and his concern with the way that he lived it, his concern with his moral being and for his immortal soul, were unique among important thinkers of the last century,” says Day, who in December was putting the ﬁnishing touches on a volume of essays about Wittgenstein, co-edited with Victor J. Krebs of Pontiﬁcia Universidad Católica del Perú. Titled Seeing Wittgenstein Anew, the book is due out in March from Cambridge University Press. Day, also a jazz pianist, developed a deeper interest in Wittgenstein’s later writings, particularly his discussion of “seeing (and hearing) aspects,” after coming across something Wittgenstein told his friend Maurice Drury: “It is impossible for me to say in my book one word about all that music has meant in my life. How then can I hope to be understood?” Day suggests that Wittgenstein found in the puzzle of musical meaning an emblem for the demands that his later writings make on his reader. As Wittgenstein explains, sometimes understanding a sentence means sorting out your experience of it, seeing how it cannot be replaced by any other sentence, just as understanding a musical theme means hearing how it cannot be replaced by any other musical theme. Wittgenstein turned away from a life of wealth and privilege to pursue profoundly difﬁcult things on an untraditional path. As a young man he was drawn to philosophy by way of engineering. His fascination with the foundations of mathematics led him to Bertrand Russell’s Principles of Mathematics and, in 1911, to study with Russell at Cambridge. After he wrote the Tractatus (1921), the only work published in his lifetime, Wittgenstein decided he had solved all of philosophy’s problems and moved on. But he returned to Cambridge in 1929, and until his death in 1951, Wittgenstein set aside the systematic philosophy with which he concerned himself in the Tractatus to focus instead on how philosophy creates its own problems when it considers words (such as “knowledge,” “being,” “object,” and “name”) apart from their original, everyday use. He dedicated himself to doing away with philosophical problems by showing that puzzlements arise when language “goes on holiday.” Wittgenstein wasn’t on the Program when Day was an undergraduate. He ﬁrst encountered him in grad school at Columbia, and as an exchange scholar at Harvard, where he attended some of Stanley Cavell’s seminars. (Cavell’s The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy, was published in 1979.) When Day was studying philosophy, the ethical side of Wittgenstein’s concern with the workings of language was largely ignored by professional philosophers other than Cavell. That began to change in 1990, when Ray Monk published his Wittgenstein biography, The Duty of Genius. The work drew attention to the religious or ethical dimension of Wittgenstein’s thought. In this issue of The College, Annapolis tutor John Verdi examines how Wittgenstein reexamined the very work that made him famous and repudiated nearly all of his earlier conclusions. Verdi’s book on Wittgenstein, Fat Wednesday (Paul Dry) is due out this spring. We also proﬁle three Johnnies with careers in publishing, from the writer whose imagination begins the process to the publisher who brings it to fruition. Also, Santa Fe senior Jacob Dink explores how learning Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is like learning a new language. —RH The College is published three times a year by St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD, and Santa Fe, NM Known ofﬁce of publication: Communications Ofﬁce St. John’s College Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404-2800 Periodicals postage paid at Annapolis, MD postmaster: Send address changes to The College Magazine, Communications Ofﬁce, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800. Rosemary Harty (AGI09), editor 443-716-4011 rosemary.harty@sjca.edu Patricia Dempsey, managing editor Jennifer Behrens, art director The College welcomes letters on issues of interest to readers. Letters can be sent via e-mail to the editor or mailed to the address above. Annapolis 410-626-2539 Santa Fe 505-984-6104 Contributors Cathi Dunn MacRae Kelley O’Donnell (A04) Keileigh Rhodes (A13) Nathaniel Roe (SF08) Deborah Spiegelman John Verdi Babak Zarin (A11) Magazine design by Claude Skelton Design �Winter 2010 Vo l u m e 3 5 , I s s u e 1 The College The Magazine for Alumni of St. John’s College Annapolis • Santa Fe {Contents} 10 Doing Things with Words d e p a r t m e n t s page 2 • Santa Fe sails through reaccreditation A Q & A on the college and the economy Matt Davis leads the Santa Fe GI Levan Hall update Cookies, milk, and stories A meeting of the minds A model Johnnie How did you hear about St. John’s? News and announcements Letters 28 biblioﬁle • • Tutor John Verdi suggests there are two philosophers to consider when approaching Ludwig Wittgenstein. • • • • 16 The Book: a Story in Three Parts page • • • page 10 The publishing world is going through revolutionary change, but these Johnnies wouldn’t do anything else. Eva Brann (HA89) on Feeling Our Feelings; Michael Waldock (SFGI03) issues a Main Street Manifesto; Katherine Wolff (AGI93) delves into the Culture Club. 22 Something Deeper page What’s behind all that rolling and hugging of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu? Jacob Dink (SF10) explains why this gripping martial art is like studying language. 290 alumni P RO F I L E S page 16 29 Kelly Trumpbour (AGI06) helps young women discover politics. 31 Candles captivate Martin Marklin (A85). 33 California winemaker Zach Rasmuson (A95) 37 Mark Sanﬁlippo (SFGI00) and the secrets of salami 40 Q & A: Lisa Rosenblum (A81) 42 Designer Nadia Nour (SF00) values sustainability and ethics. 24 A Way of Looking at the World page He arrived at St. John’s uninspired and indifferent; he left full of passion and purpose. Hugh Curtler (class of 1959) explains how St. John’s shaped a career. page from the bell towers 46 alumni association news 52 48 st. john’s forever page 48 Homecoming The Class of 1959 reﬂects on ways St. John’s never left them. on the cover Ludwig Wittgenstein Illustration by David Johnson �2 {From the Bell Towers} Santa Fe Campus Receives Highest Endorsement from Accrediting Agency by Deborah Spiegelman doug plummer conﬁned to the Program; they embraced academic support strucAchieving reaccreditation is a signiﬁcant accomplishment of which tures and the administration of the college as well. any college may be proud, but equally noteworthy is the successful “We wanted to make a thorough and searching review of the completion of the process leading to achievement of this distinccollege and have the self-study come out in one voice,” Pesic tion. This past June, St. John’s Santa Fe campus received a 10-year explains. “We wanted to explain ourselves to the outside world. re-accreditation from The Higher Learning Commission of the It was a grass-roots process. In the end, the report had to balance North Central Association of Colleges and Schools. The 10-year re-accreditation is the accrediting body’s most positive endorsement. many perspectives.” The ﬁnal product, ﬁrst drafted in December 2007 by Pesic with Colleges and universities seek accreditation because it adds to assistance from fellow tutors Bartok and Honeywell, went through the credibility of the institution and also enables it to qualify for numerous revisions, taking into account suggestions from a diverse U.S. Department of Education Pell Grants (to support students group, including an active BVG committee. It also needed to be based on ﬁnancial need) as well as for work-study subsidized loans, responsive to recommendations made by evaluators at the concluexplains Susan Kaplan, director of Corporate and Foundation sion of the previous evaluation cycle. The organization of the selfRelations. Once an institution is accredited, it must be reaccredited study is a departure from the presentations made by most colleges, every 10 years. Pesic suggests. For St. John’s in Santa Fe, this process got underway at the end of For example, the report devotes a number of chapters to 2006, with the establishment of a steering committee appointed by providing an overview of St. John’s and a discussion of Program President Michael Peters. Chaired by tutor and musician-in-resiaspects—how they have changed and how they might be improved— dence Peter Pesic, the committee included Victoria Mora, dean; before addressing the HLC’s ﬁve core criteria. (These criteria cover Judith Adam, tutor and then assistant dean; Krishnan Venkatesh, an institution’s mission; resources to respond to future challenges; then director of the Graduate Institute; Bryan Valentine, treasurer; student learning and effective teaching; acquisition, discovery, and Jim Osterholt, vice president for Advancement; and Claudia Honeyapplication of knowledge; and engagement and service.) well and Philip Bartok, tutors. “Our self-assessment,” the report’s summary concludes, “is that Charged with organizing the self-study—the centerpiece of the St. John’s College in Santa Fe is strong; its Program is alive and vital evaluation process–the committee referred to the commission’s to those who dedicate themselves to it; we are reaping the beneﬁts 192-page Handbook of Accreditation to structure the college’s and the challenges of being a more mature campus; and. . . we are response to the evaluation criteria. The commission “doesn’t want you to assess yourself against other universities in the North Central poised to meet the challenges that face us going forward.” Peters had decided not to wait until the region. They encourage you to do a self end of the 2008-2009 evaluation period to assessment, to take the criteria and have the HLC’s peer-review team come to measure how well you are doing what you campus, but to have the self-study say you’re doing,” Kaplan says. completed early so that the evaluators “The process mirrored our fundawould be in Santa Fe by November 2008. mental commitment to self-knowledge,” He wanted the bulk of the self-study Mora adds. Because the Program is based completed before Pesic, its chief author, on conversation among tutors and went on sabbatical. “I also thought we’d students, both were key participants in the have a richer pool of potential reviewers self-study. The process was both reﬂective [for the evaluation team],” he explains. and prospective; that is, the goals were to The self-study was completed in assess how the college meets the HLC’s September 2008, which gave the evaluacriteria, to analyze the college’s present tors time to read it thoroughly before their situation, to identify strengths and chalthree-day visit. Besides reviewing a mass lenges, and to suggest future directions. of required documentation in its tempoBy the summer of 2007, the data-gathrary “resource room”—from ﬁve years’ ering process was in full swing, propelled worth of publications to audits, from BVG by a series of small-group, open conversameeting minutes to treasurer’s reports— tions designed to be as inclusive as the team conducted interviews with possible. These discussions included selected ofﬁcers, staff, and tutors; held tutors, staff, alumni, members of the open meetings; and attended classes. college’s Board of Visitors and Governors, “This is the best way to understand and ofﬁcers of the college. In addition, St. John’s,” Peters notes of the classroom undergraduate and graduate students In Santa Fe, the Program is “alive and vital to visits. “It helped us convey what we’re were encouraged to conduct their own those who dedicate themselves to it,” the campus’ self-study report stated. trying to do. They found it helpful and self-studies. The discussions were not { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } �{From the Bell Towers} 3 doug plummer that came across in their already emerged in our own report.” conversations,” Pesic notes. The four peer reviewers “We need to project ourselves served as both evaluators and out into the world. We need to counselors. “The team was a continue to work to improve the terriﬁc group of people and fairProgram and help students move minded,” Peters adds. The out into the world with as much team’s leader met with Peters at support as possible.” the beginning and at the concluReﬂecting on the process, sion of the visit. “They offered Mora says that it is clear that the suggestions and took away some college is in the middle of an very positive lessons about the institutional transition, process,” Peters notes. becoming a college with more In particular, the team singled fully rationalized structures to out for praise student involvesupport the Program. “We need The Higher Learning Commission encouraged St. John’s to do ment in the self-study. “They to prepare the college for the more to share its discussion-based approach to learning beyond thought that it was amazing” to future,” Pesic agrees. The evaluits campus. have this level of student input, ators’ report also occasions Kaplan says, and suggested that reﬂection about possible this is a model for other instituchanges in two areas: commutions. “The students gave a nity outreach and aggregate thoughtful response to their own assessment of students. education,” Mora observes. The commission considers The evaluators also underhow an institution is doing not stood, Peters says, “the distinconly within its own community, tive nature of what we are but also within the larger doing.” A preliminary draft of community in which it is the team’s ﬁndings was located. “So, we want to look at ---Higher Learning Commission presented to Peters in January what [our community outreach] 2009, and in June word came is and what its purpose is,” from the HLC’s board that Mora explains. St. John’s had earned its reaccreditation. “The process for us was Meanwhile, the Instruction Committee is examining the notion about as smooth as it could be,” Kaplan reﬂects. “We got the best of aggregate assessment; that is, gauging the academic progress outcome you can get: a 10-year accreditation with no required made by groups of students. “We got praise for our one-on-one interim visits and no required interim reports.” assessments of students,” Mora notes, but there is pressure to “It is testament to the integrity of our liberal arts program and to demonstrate that St. John’s, as an institution, “is doing what we say the dedication and hard work of the faculty, staff, students, and we’re doing.” Since the college doesn’t test incoming students and board members over many years,” Peters emphasizes. The college then re-test them to gauge their academic progress, the challenge is also was encouraged to share its approach to learning with the to determine whether there is a method of aggregate assessment higher education community. “They told us, you’re being too that is a natural extension of the Program. “That remains an open modest; don’t hide your light under a basket.” question,” Mora says. “Everything the evaluators mentioned [in their report] had The self-study process also highlighted the extent to which the college needs to supplement oral tradition with written documents, Mora points out, adding that now an institutional The Annapolis campus learned in November that the Middle States Commission on Higher infrastructure is in place to Education accepted the college’s periodic report and has reafﬁrmed the college’s accreditation. respond to questions that may This was the campus’ ﬁve-year midterm review. The next formal full-scale accreditation review be posed during the next will be scheduled for 2013-14, with a self-study review beginning in 2012. Tutor Joseph Macfarland evaluation period, such as how (A87) was the principal author of the periodic report; Dean Michael Dink (A75) and tutors Nathan the college is making its now Dugan and Eric Salem also took part in the process. Among indicators of progress concerning the more informal practices more Program, the report notes the development of a new manual for fall semester junior mathematics; rationalized. substantial changes to the music tutorial, including study groups that prepare more tutors to “We received stellar teach in this part of the Program; and preliminary steps underway to revise the spring semester of comments from the evaluators senior laboratory, in order to make room for the “deep and interesting questions” at work in postduring the exit interviews,” DNA biology. The report also noted substantial improvement to the college’s buildings and Mora says. “To them, we are on grounds: two new dormitories, a renovated and expanded Mellon Hall, and a new, energy-efﬁcient the cutting edge of pedagogy—a heating plant. The report also noted that a new campus Master Plan has been completed, and the testament to the rarity of the college will begin assigning priorities for campus improvements. x conversation, I suppose!” x “The St. John’s Program offers unique and effective pedagogical tools which the college has an obligation to share with educators beyond the campus.” Annapolis Accreditation Reafﬁrmed { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } �4 {From the Bell Towers} St. John’s College and the Economy Questions and answers St. John’s College is responding to the economic downturn by taking the same measures enacted by nearly every college and university across the United States: cutting expenses whenever possible, slowing down hiring or freezing staff positions, and freezing faculty and staff salaries. No personnel cuts or furloughs have been necessary, although some tutors have voluntarily taken a cut in teaching stations for this ﬁscal year. The result is that this year, like the prior 17 years, St. John’s has a balanced budget. These steps, along with tapping reserve funds, have helped the college preserve what is most important: the quality of the academic experience for students. To avoid operating budget deﬁcits in the future if the nation’s economy does not improve, the college is scrutinizing its operations to see where more savings can be found, and devoting more resources to strengthening student recruitment efforts. Here are answers to common questions posed by alumni, parents, students, and friends of the college. What is the state of the college’s ﬁnancial health now? The successful completion of the college’s capital campaign, which raised $134 million, provided money for ongoing ﬁnancial aid, enabled the college to build several needed buildings, and strengthened the endowment signiﬁcantly. The endowment continues to be an important source of revenue for the college. Although the endowment lost value as the recession deepened in 2008, it has rebounded somewhat (from $100 million to $117 million) by the end of October. The college draws between 4.5 and 5.5 percent from the endowment for operating expenses—faculty salaries, ﬁnancial aid, student services, and administrative ofﬁce expenses. While the draw amount is down for 2009-2010, a measure of overall progresss is that in 2005, prior to the campaign, the college’s endowment was $100,000 per student; it is currently $113,000 per student. However, the recession has affected every area that brings revenue to the college. A drop in freshman enrollment on both campuses, while not as steep as at some other colleges and not as steep as predicted, will affect St. John’s for the next few years. Grant support from the Sellinger Program in Maryland is down, and the college expects The Fund for St. John’s (which raises money for annual expenses) to be ﬂat, or to bring in about the same as in the 2008-2009 ﬁscal year— approximately $3 million. area have been climbing steadily. The average St. John’s grant is $22,000. Nevertheless, in terms of college priorities funding need-based aid is— and will continue to be—second only to preserving the quality of the academic program. Did the college raise tuition to help increase revenue? The college enacted the smallest tuition increase in 20 years, raising tuition just 2.9 percent for this academic year. This decision reﬂected both an awareness of how the economic crisis is affecting current students and their families as well as a desire to keep St. John’s competitive with peer colleges. How did changes in enrollment affect the college budget this year? The college budget reﬂects a 7 percent drop in enrollment in the 2009-2010 academic year, primarily due to the recruitment of smaller freshman classes. That meant the college brought in less tuition revenue, and since tuition makes up about 65 percent of the college budget, this loss in revenue is noteworthy. Having encountered swings in enrollment in the past, the college does not expect this downturn to continue. However, to ensure a stronger applicant pool the college has made signiﬁcant changes in its recruiting efforts. Last year, St. John’s engaged a consultant, George Dehne and Associates, to evaluate every aspect of its admissions practices. The college has hired more admissions counselors and has changed its practices to extend the reach to prospective students. New marketing materials are being prepared this year by North Charles Street Design, a top ﬁrm that also represented the University of Chicago. Is the college still providing ﬁnancial aid? The college signiﬁcantly increased the amount of ﬁnancial aid to meet the needs of students this year. Across both campuses, 62 percent of St. John’s students receive ﬁnancial aid, and costs in this What is the college leadership doing to plan for the future? The St. John’s Board of Visitors and Governors, in concert with the Management Committee (the college presidents and deans, working with the treasurers and vice presidents), has named a task force { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } to study the college’s ﬁnancial model and make recommendations to ensure the long-term ﬁnancial health of St. John’s. The Sustainability Task Force brings together board members with extensive, high-level experience in the ﬁnance and business sector with representatives from the college. Board members are Greg Curtis, Steve Bohlin (SF82), Perry Lerner, and Stephen Feinberg. Faculty members include Annapolis Dean Michael Dink and tutor Joseph MacFarland and Santa Fe Dean Victoria Mora and tutor Stephen Van Luchene. The group will meet regularly and report on its recommendations at future board meetings, beginning in January. Responsible ﬁnancial planning requires the college to take into account all scenarios, including the “worst-case” model which shows a deﬁcit in the operating budget by 2013. This model would become a reality only if the nation’s economic state worsens, hurting endowment and philanthropic support, and if enrollment fails to rebound. Ensuring that the college avoids this scenario is the reason the task force was assembled. Overall, the college remains strong ﬁnancially; the endowment is highly diversiﬁed and well-managed, and ﬁscal responsibility is a priority on the campuses. What can alumni and friends do to help St. John’s? Alumni and friends have always been an important source of assistance for the college. They support St. John’s by making gifts, acting as volunteers, and advocating for the college. Continuing these support activities is crucial to St. John’s. x �{From the Bell Towers} GI director Matt Davis Every day that Matthew Davis (A82) goes to his ofﬁce in Weigle Hall, he observes the progress being made next door on the Norman and Betty Levan Hall. Since beginning his duties as Graduate Institute director last June, Davis has witnessed the construction site evolve from a gaping hole to a concrete, masonry, and steel-beamed preamble to the future home of the GI’s two programs, Master of Arts in Liberal Arts and Eastern Classics. Planning the transition to Levan Hall next August, Davis already is acquiring books for a library dedicated to the graduate program. Dr. Levan (SFGI74) will be donating a large collection of his own books, but Davis is hoping to augment that generous contribution with additional books. The library project is just one of many on Davis’s to-do list. His top priority is boosting enrollment in the two graduate programs. “I’d like to be back to more than 100 students, possibly more,” he says. (This fall, the GI opened with 86 students.) To that end, the college has been tapping technology; for example, putting the admissions application online and increasing the GI’s Facebook presence. Davis is also turning his attention to ideas for improvement to the graduate programs. One of those ideas is revising policies concerning the optional master’s essay. In an effort to improve the completion rate, Davis and the members of his mini-Instruction Committee are examining ways to support students to do this work successfully. “Students feel like they get a kind of depth with [the master’s essay] unlike anything else,” Davis observes. Students work closely with an advisor, applying careful thought to a particular text, and produce a major piece of writing. In response to student requests, Davis and his committee also are exploring how to incorporate Greek instruction and reading into the curriculum of the liberal arts program. “We’re looking at a preceptorial sequence, without prerequisites, that would give students an introduction to the language and to using it to read Levan Hall Update Bordered by Weigle Hall and the Fine Arts Building, Levan Hall is beginning to suggest its ﬁnal form, asserting a modern interpretation of the campus’ Territorial style of architecture. Alumni who want to watch this longawaited graduate center emerge on the Santa Fe campus can visit the college’s webcam: www.stjohnscollege.edu; click on Outreach. Levan Hall has been designed as an energy-efﬁcient building, says Peter Brill, president of Peter Brill, Inc., the owner’s representative for the project. Designed to earn LEED Silver certiﬁcation, Levan Hall might be able to achieve Gold certiﬁcation, Brill says. The building will be heavily insulated, and rooftop photovoltaic arrays will convert solar energy into electricity that can be returned to the grid. Large windows, including a three-ﬂoor array of glass on the back side of the building, take full advantage of passive solar heat and light. The ﬁrst building on campus to signiﬁcantly harvest rainwater, Levan Hall will direct roof water to catchment tanks—an ample reservoir for irrigating nearby trees and plantings. In 5 texts,” Davis says. He envisions a summer preceptorial that might evolve into a more extensive program, similar to the Greek Institute at the University of Chicago, only with the St. John’s way of “learning the language through extensive translation of the original texts.” An Annapolis graduate, Davis earned a Getting to know GI students is one of master’s degree in the best parts of being GI director, says Matt Davis (A82). philosophy in 1984 from Dalhousie University, was a students, and met a man who doctoral candidate in philosophy had been a ﬁreﬁghter in New and classics at the University of York City during the 9/11 Pittsburgh, and earned a attacks. The student had left doctorate in political science in ﬁreﬁghting to become a teacher 1995 from Boston College. and enrolled in the Graduate He has held academic positions Institute to learn more from the at the University of Toronto, great books. “He had experiCarthage College, and Boston enced something profound College. In 1998, he joined the [through 9/11] and he found St. John’s faculty. something truly signiﬁcant In his new role at the college, here,” Davis says. x Davis enjoys meeting and teaching GI students, who bring diverse experiences and viewpoints to the college. As one of his ﬁrst duties as director, he interviewed graduating construction and function, the new building suggests an environmentally responsible way to live in the high desert. The 9,200 square-foot building will span two and threefourths ﬂoors. The front entrance will open onto the second ﬂoor, with a hallway leading all the way to the back of the building, also with its own entrance. At this point, the building is three stories high, with a balcony overlooking hills ﬁlled with piñons. A third entrance will face Weigle Hall. A Zen garden is planned for one side of the building. Contrasting masses are a thematic element: for example, the front entrance presents a { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } light, portal-like side next to a heavy masonry structure. Levan Hall’s design also has inspired changes in the surrounding architecture and terrain. For instance, new second-ﬂoor balconies on the Fine Arts Building and the Peterson Student Center will echo the balconies of Levan Hall. The Meem Library Placita will become part of a more open central core, distinguished by an expanded landscape of connected walkways and sitting areas. On schedule for completion by next summer, Levan Hall will be ready for its occupants by August 2010. x �6 {From the Bell Towers} favorite poem—it’s all about sharing something you like with others.” The focus isn’t on creative writing, Trop explains. Instead, it’s about the spoken word, the shared experience of hearing and reacting to a story. Some students deliberately choose stories that allow them to dramatize the tale. Others are eager to share a favorite genre, such as science ﬁction, or a favorite modern writer. Daniel Dusman (A11), co-archon of the club with Trop, has brought Polish science ﬁction stories from Stanislav Lem’s Cyberiad series, as well as medieval tales such as the legends of the Rhineland. There are generally just two criteria for a work brought to Storytellers: “It has to be good,” Dusman says, “and it has to be brief.” Participants always consider the audience when selecting material for Wednesday nights. “It has to be enjoyable for the listener all the way through,” Babak Zarin (A11) reads from Patricia Wrede’s Dealing with Dragons. science ﬁction, medieval tales, even children’s stories have been read aloud. and lend itself to dramatization. For example, Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener” may be a brilliant short story, but it’s a snoozer when read aloud, notes Eric Honour (A10). Mark Twain and the Brothers Grimm are more entertaining for audiences. A few years ago, the acacia pappas A small but enthusiastic group of Johnnies makes time every Wednesday for an old-fashioned pursuit. They put aside their Program readings, lab manuals, and Greek lexicons to gather in the “Chasement,” the cozy basement of Chase-Stone House in Annapolis. On chilly nights, they’ll lay a ﬁre in the ﬁreplace. Someone brings the milk and cookies. And someone brings a story: often a favorite from a children’s book or a short story collection; sometimes a yarn spun from their own imagination. The Storytellers Club is in its fourth year on the campus, and it attracts a loyal following of students (10-15) who ﬁnd it a perfect midweek break, an alternative to dorm parties and trips to downtown bars. “People want to entertain others and be entertained,” says Kelly Trop (A12), who brought a favorite children’s book, The Squishiness of Things, to Storytellers one night. “You might make up a story, read a story, recite a acacia pappas The Storytellers On Wednesday nights, students in the Storyteller’s Club gather in the cozy basement of ChaseStone House for a bedtime story, complete with milk and cookies. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } group found an Internet story that combined the Republic with Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs, which was a real hit. At a college where one must be conscious of not doing all the talking, “storytelling lets you practice skills of speech we don’t really get to use at St. John’s. And with all the reading we do, just listening is really fun,” Honour says. A couple of times a year, the club puts aside printed material and hosts a special “Tall Tales and Liars” event, inviting Johnnies to bring their best made-up stories. The group votes on the best yarn, and a tacky prize is awarded to the winner. Halloween each year brings ghost stories. Last year, one Johnnie read several stories with a marriage theme, then proposed to his girlfriend right in the middle of Storytellers. (She said “yes.”) It’s always fun to see what Johnnies will bring when they go out of their way to entertain their friends in these freewheeling sessions, says Honour. But there’s just one hard and fast rule: “No Program readings,” he says. x �{From the Bell Towers} 7 A Meeting of the Minds Alumni invite Johnnies to neuroscience conference by Kelley O’Donnell (A04) Like J.P. Snyder (A10), who told me he believes “that neuroscience is the next logical step for philosophy,” I was led to neuroscience out of a love not of biology, but of wisdom. While at St. John’s, I could not imagine being as happy anywhere else; I had a nebulous desire to “help people,” but I believed that no altruism, however expansive, would be meaningful outside the context of the examined life. Shortly after graduation I began a post-baccalaureate premedical program, but soon experienced a profound crisis of faith in that path. Homesick for my alma mater, I considered leaving behind the multiplechoice tests and the problem sets that characterized my new, albeit temporary, life, but in doing so was forced to consider what questions I would rather be asking. Time and again, I found myself considering the nature of the mind, of the self, of the means by which we perceive ourselves and the world, of personality and habit, of mental fortitude and mental illness. I wanted to ask questions that mattered, as I had done for four years at the college. Thinking back to my summer as a Hodson intern in the pathology laboratory of Dori Borjesson (sister of tutor Gary Borjesson), I recalled the sense of both humility and empowerment that characterized my time at the bench. It occurred to me that through neuroscience I could experience that same exhilaration, taking questions that interested me on a philosophical level, and asking them in a way that would allow me to apply the fruits of my inquiries to the mentally ill, in whom such questions acquired a heightened urgency. I had the privilege of meeting Mr. Snyder, along with his fellow seniors Elizabeth Fleming (A10) and Jacob Dink (SF10), in October in Chicago, at Eager to help Johnnies interested in her ﬁeld, neuroscientist Patricia the annual meeting of Sollars (A80) invited students to the annual meeting of the Society of the Society for Neuroscience. There we were Neuroscientists in Chicago last fall. Back row, from left: Jacob Dink (SF10), Pamela Bergson (A99), Taffeta Elliott (SF97), Kelley O’Donnell joined by over 30,000 (A04); seated, from left: Elizabeth Fleming (A10), J.P. Snyder (A10), neuroscientists, Sollars, and Leslie Kay (SF83). among whom were my fellow alumnae Leslie indeed unprepared to “do” title of which (“Origins of Kay (SF83, Director of the anything. Abstract Knowledge: Number Institute for Mind & Biology at Certainly in the sciences, and Geometry”) would have the University of Chicago), and I suspect in any ﬁeld, such appealed to any student of Taffeta Elliott (SF97, a posta fear is unfounded, but the Euclid and Kant, and was a doctoral fellow at the Univerunique gift of a St. John’s marvelous afﬁrmation of why sity of California, Berkeley), education can seem more the path from St. John’s to Pamela Bergson (A99, a postdistant to seniors faced with neuroscience sometimes seems doctoral fellow at the Univerthe task of moving outside the so obvious. sity of Chicago), and Patricia brick or adobe fortress, into a From the current students’ Sollars (A80, Associate world that seems interested perspective, the most valuable Professor at the University of only in more traditional and aspect of the trip was that Nebraska, Lincoln). In a heroic quantiﬁable measures of skill effort of advocacy and organiza- dinner, in which we discussed and success. at length the paths that led us tion, Ms. Sollars had arranged Mercifully, the college is in out of Annapolis and Santa Fe. for the three seniors, who had no danger of becoming a place Ms. Fleming said, “We often expressed an interest in neuroin which one acquires profeshear that it’s hard to ‘get a real science, to attend the meeting, sional “training”; however, job’ after St. John’s, or that thanks, in part, to the jumping into an academic ﬁeld, measures must be taken to generosity of Chicago-area ensure that graduates do not especially science, is a alumni Elisabeth Long (A86), feel hampered by or apologetic daunting task, so it was very Rick Lightburn (SF76), and about their background when encouraging to see alumni who Barbara Schmittel (A76) who faced with the task of moving were doing just that . . . and opened their homes to provide on. Though this meeting, offering to help us make that places for the students to stay. Ms. Sollars has set a precedent leap ourselves.” Every Ms. Sollars had also that I hope can be followed in St. John’s student or alumnus contacted the other alumnae the years to come, for students has been asked to justify the attending the meeting and had interested in any number of “practical” beneﬁt of his organized a dinner for all of us education, as though the exam- ﬁelds. x one evening. There our talk of ined life was of no intrinsic neuroscience ranged from the merit. The cumulative effect of crystal structure of certain that pressure is often a sense of proteins to a lecture we had anxiety, a fear that we are heard earlier that evening, the { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } �8 {From the Bell Towers} From Fashion to Faraday Why a Ford model came to St. John’s Amid the paintings, photographs, pottery, and other works submitted for the annual Community Art Show at the Mitchell Gallery last spring, two stunning dresses stood out. They were the creations of Shannon Vaughn (A12), a former Ford model and designer who found her way to St. John’s a decade after leaving Maryland’s Eastern Shore for a modeling career. One dress was a recent design, a formal gown made of ostrich feathers and satin, created for a client who needed something spectacular for a gala. The other was Vaughn’s own wedding gown, a recreation of a nearly century-old silk Victorian gown that Vaughn discovered in a museum collection. About 90 percent of the ﬁnished dress was of new material, silk stained with lukewarm tea to match the original fabric. As a model based in New York, Vaughn traveled the world. She met an architect from Saudia Arabia, got married, and for a while lived in her husband’s country. In her studio there, she ran her own design business, Gervois. “I’m entirely self-taught,” says Vaughn, who learned a great deal about ﬁne couture by wearing it. “I paid attention when I was a model.” After she divorced, Vaughn returned to Maryland in 2008 and continued her design business, until she decided it was time to pursue some of the things she missed out on during her career. Her father, Merritt Vaughn, a builder and a painter, was a fan of St. John’s and the Mitchell Gallery. He introduced her to the college. While she ﬁrst considered going to business school, Vaughn decided she wanted the kind of education that would enhance her life no matter what future path she follows. “I felt that I wasn’t educated in those things I couldn’t get out of my life experiences,” such as philosophy, the sciences, and Ancient Greek, Vaughn says. “I wanted to reevaluate my own way of thinking, to ﬁnd out what would happen to my brain.” What happened, she says, was that she has begun to develop an ability to see things— such as a Euclid proof—“in very different ways.” It was difﬁcult at ﬁrst for Vaughn to stop trying to apply ideas from the books and classroom discussions to real-world experiences. “St. John’s is a very contemplative place,” she says. “To study A fashion model and designer, Shannon Vaughn (A12) found at St. John’s “the ability to see things in different ways.” ideas for their own sake, you don’t need a lot of exterior elements in your head. It’s totally apart from the realworld, the world of commerce.” Vaughn has found mathematics and Ancient Greek challenging. She enjoyed seminar discussions and writing papers. But the best part of her How Did You Hear About St. John’s? Aaron Bisberg (class of 1949) remembers only some of the details: “It was 1944. I was on a landing ship-tank that was being used as a troop transport for my Air Force repair outﬁt being transferred from the Philippines to Ie Shima. We were laying off Okinawa waiting for the convoy to assemble. “I remember I managed a boat ride to land, and at the airport I hopped a helicopter ride to a merchant ship in the bay which my cousin Simon was on—all this to spend a little time with him. “Simon and I stood on the bow of his ship talking and he tells me about this very small college he read about and thought I would be interested in it. He described what he knew about the great books program. I was hooked. I wrote a letter to [then Dean] Scott Buchanan. He responded with “come along,” and described the protracted { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } experience has been the personal attention and encouragement of her tutors. “I really enjoyed the personal assessment that tutors are able to provide of me as a student. I don’t think that there are many colleges where faculty are this involved with students.” x ﬁrst year starting a little late for the returning vets. I joined the class of 1949.” At Mr. Bisberg’s suggestion, The College asks alumni to share how they ﬁrst heard about St. John’s. Some responses will be published in the Spring 2010 issue of the magazine. Send your story to: rosemary.harty@sjca.edu.x �9 {From the Bell Towers} News & Announcements Novelist Johnnie Receives Whiting Award SALVATORE SCIBONA (SF97) received the 2009 Whiting Writers’ Award in October. This prestigious $50,000 award recognizes 10 young writers for their extraordinary talent and promise and is one of the most coveted prizes for new writers. Scibona’s ﬁrst book, The End, was the winner of the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award and a ﬁnalist for the National Book Award. Honors for Winiarski Earlier this year, the college awarded WARREN WINIARSKI (class of 1955) the distinction of Honorary Fellow, a rare honor bestowed on individuals who have been outstanding supporters of the college. The faculty of St. John’s College awarded the distinction in appreciation of his achievements as a vintner, his distinguished service on the Board of which exhibited a risk to personal life or safety in the course of his or her duties or who performed a life-saving action requiring the highest of professional conduct.” In December 2008, Ofﬁcer Hudson took action to prevent a possibly serious injury to a student. Visitors and Governors, his generosity and leadership in capital campaigns, and his selﬂess work leading to the eventual sale of California property intended originally for a St. John’s campus. Tutor News In Annapolis, tutor STUART UMPHREY retired at the end of the academic year, 2009. Umphrey had been a member of the St. John’s faculty since 1984. Felicia Martinez has joined the Annapolis faculty. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English literature and studio art at the University of Notre Dame, then went to Stanford University, where she earned her master’s and doctoral degrees in English literature. Her doctoral dissertation was on: “What We Are: Interpreting Personhood in the Experimental Novels of Conrad, Faulkner, and Naipul.” BVG Member Serves on Presidential Committee Warren Winiarski (class of 1952) has been named an Honorary Fellow Public Safety Ofﬁcer Honored The Northeast Colleges and Universities Security Association has recognized an Annapolis Public Safety ofﬁcer for meritorious conduct. PFC BRANDON HUDSON received an honorable mention for the association’s Outstanding Performance Award in recognition of “an act JILL COOPER UDALL, a member of the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors, has been named to the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities. The committee works with federal cultural agencies on programs that recognize excellence in the arts and humanities. A lawyer, longtime arts advocate, and former head of New Mexico’s Ofﬁce of Cultural Affairs, Udall works with the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian. x {Letters} Inspiring Resilience I read “Resilience in a Recession” (Summer 2009) on a night when I was trying to ﬁgure out where the money was going to come from to pay this month’s bills. The article was exactly what I needed to place my particular circumstances in perspective and to remind me of the needs of others. Thank you for publishing such an inspirational piece. Heather Elizabeth Peterson (A86) Still a Great Idea Concerning A Great Idea at the Time: The Rise, Fall, and Curious Afterlife of the Great Books, reviewed in The College (Spring 2009): The subject prompted a request to the college bookstore for a copy. The quality of a good storytelling newspaper columnist is well represented. The human interest aspect that the subject has on the public is told movingly. My father looked for the “romance” attendant to [St. John’s]. Here are found such accounts in which the founders of this educational endeavor would be satisﬁed, and which would alleviate the despondency they felt as failures. H. A. Hammond (class of 1947) Free Thinking The three essays on freedom (Summer 2009) speak to the diversity of free thinking that goes on at St. John’s. I especially like Mr. Pastille’s essay because his notion [of] watcher conscience paraphrases my own question, “What is happening here?”, when I begin a poem. For example, there is a tradition in Oxford, Maryland, that winter sunsets must be watched. Men, women, and children come around 4:30 p.m., bringing a glass of wine or coffee, and they line the banks of the Tred Avon River, where it enters the broad Choptank River, to sit or stand, { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } sometimes arm in arm. It is not odd that there is little or no talking. To the casual observer, what is going on is people watching a sunset. But I want to write a poem about Oxford Park and the people and the sunset. Here is my “watcher” conscience kicking in, and there is more than the physical sunset. There is the freedom to see its effect on three age groups—and on me in my thought to write about it. Mr. Pastille, thanks for tweaking an old man’s brain with something new to think about, and of course question. Ernest J. Heinmuller (class of 1942) �10 {The Program} DOING THINGS WITH WORDS by John Verdi L udwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) was two of the most inﬂuential philosophers of the 20th century. His early work, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921), the only book he published during his life, conceives of philosophy as the critical analysis of language. It initiated the “linguistic turn” in philosophy, which proposes that philosophical problems may be solved or dissolved by paying attention to language, either by reforming it or simply clarifying how the language we use actually works In this book, Wittgenstein addresses two major questions: What is the nature of logic? and How is language related to the world? The answers to these questions turn out to be related in a fundamental way. He believes that language and the world must hold something in common that allows us to talk meaningfully. This common feature is the “logical structure” of both. “Logic is. . . .a mirror-image of the world” (TLP, 6.13). Speech is meaningful when its structure reﬂects the structure of the world. Just as a picture is a model of a real scene, language is a picture in words. The meaning of a name is the object to which it refers. An experience that helped Wittgenstein develop this view was reading a report on a court case in which an attorney used small toys to reconstruct a trafﬁc accident. These toys could stand for real objects, and the way that they related to each other (while being moved around a table, for instance) was just the way the real objects were said to have related. Language works like this. (4.01: “A proposition is a model of reality as we imagine it.”) Truth is the correspondence of the language-model to reality, while falsehood is the correspondence of the model to something that is not real. Wittgenstein suggests that in order for propositions to be meaningful, they must consist of elements, “atomic facts,” put together to be isomorphic with the world. The truth of a proposition is determined entirely by the truth of these components. These atomic facts cannot be analyzed, and Wittgenstein never gives an example of one. Still he considers them necessary to explain how language works. Nonsense arises when we attempt to represent what cannot be represented. Just as Kant draws limits to thought by establishing the limits of the mind’s powers, Wittgenstein reveals (5.6: “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”) For Kant, synthetic a priori truths, such as Newton’s laws, apply only to appearances, while the “things-in-themselves” can never be known. For Wittgenstein, thought and language are not separable, and so an investigation into language is an investigation into thought, and hence into “my world.” The propositions of logic demarcate the limits of what can be said, much like rules in a game make clear how a game is to be played. Language has meaning within the limits of logic, just as a game is played according to rules. At the limits of language lie logical truths, such as “Nothing can both be and not be at the same time in the same manner,” or “Red is a color.” They are not a part of meaningful speech, as for instance are, “Red would go well in this room,” or, (said in exasperation), “I can’t be in two places at once, can I!?” Meaningful speech can be true or false, depending on whether it mirrors the structure of reality. But tautologies can be only true, and contradictions only false. According to Wittgenstein, they thereby show that they say nothing. They are senseless. Beyond the limits of language established by the tautologies of logic (that is, by the world) lies the mystical. It cannot be said, but only indicated by what can be said. Attempts to say the mystical lead to nonsense, in particular to metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, and theology, which all try to say what cannot be said. Philosophical propositions are not true or false, but rather nonsensical. They sound like ordinary propositions because, after all, they are grammatically constructed and consist of parts we understand. Wittgenstein holds these nonsensical propositions in great respect. They attempt to express what is of most importance, but which cannot be expressed. “My whole tendency and I believe the tendency of all men who ever tried to write or talk about Ethics or Religion was to run against the boundaries of language. This running against the walls { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } �11 jen behrens {The Program} of our cage is perfectly, absolutely hopeless. Ethics so far as it springs from the desire to say something about the ultimate meaning of life, the absolute good, the absolute value, can be no science. . . . But it is a document of a tendency in the human mind which I personally cannot help respecting deeply and I would not for my life ridicule it” (LA). Philosophy’s new job is to allow the mystical to make itself manifest by saying only what can be said--by getting out of its way. (“What can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence” TLP, Preface). Philosophical, ethical, aesthetic, and religious problems are like knots which we must untie, and since they are knots of language, it is through analysis of language that we must loosen them. After Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus was published, Wittgenstein left Cambridge and academia because he believed that he had found the deﬁnitive solution to the problems of philosophy. He thought that one major value of his book was that “it shows how little is achieved when these problems are solved.” He left England and returned to Austria, his birthplace, where he became a schoolteacher. He also designed and helped to build a house in Vienna for his sister. But he began to have serious doubts about the correctness of the view he espoused in the Tractatus. His work with young children was no doubt one stimulus to this reconsideration. How do I discover if a child knows the meaning of a word except by how he or she uses the word? A teacher doesn’t look into a child’s mind, but observes what he or she says and does. Several visits by Frank Ramsey, a young philosopher of mathematics, also seem to have inﬂuenced Wittgenstein to go back to Cambridge. After Wittgenstein returned he held many discussions with the Italian Marxist economist Piero Sraffa. One day while talking about the Tractatus’s claim that meaning arises through the correspondence of the form of expression with the form of the fact to be expressed, Sraffa made a familiar Neapolitan gesture of contempt, by ﬂicking his chin with the back of his ﬁngers. “What is the logical form of that?” he asked Wittgenstein. Sraffa’s point was clear: this gesture has meaning, but it does not derive its meaning from any isomorphism between it and the world. Instead, its meaning arises from its use in human life. Wittgenstein’s intellectual honesty and passion for truth and clarity compelled him to challenge the very position that had made him famous, prompting him to question the idea that there are foundations to thought at all. Eventually, he repudiated the Tractatus view of meaning. The question that had motivated that book, namely, How can sentences mean anything?, evolves into, How can we do things with words? He comes to believe that philosophers had spent too much time determining what we mean without examining the nature of meaning itself. His shift from the correspondence view of meaning to a new, use-related view, is decidedly pragmatist. Concepts now are not correct or incorrect, but more or less useful. Logical analysis is not the way to achieve clarity about philosophical problems; description of our linguistic practices will lead to their dissolution. Wittgenstein’s new view has its roots in the American pragmatic tradition of C. S. Peirce and William James. Wittgenstein much admired James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience, { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } �12 {The Program} jen behrens wherein James says something about attempts to establish the “essence of religion” that sounds much like what Wittgenstein will come to say in Philosophical Investigations: “Let us not fall immediately into a one-sided view of our subject, but let us rather admit freely at the outset that we may very likely ﬁnd no one essence, but many characters which may alternately be equally important to religion.” Wittgenstein is working towards a fundamentally new conception of language, and of the proper procedures for philosophy. The “second Wittgenstein” rejects analytic philosophy because he no longer thinks that analysis can reveal the truth about how language connects with the world. Philosophy cannot be analysis because philosophical propositions and ideas are not constructed. They emerge from ordinary language, in which propositions are vague, inexact, and indeterminate, but work. Not only is there no need to correct or idealize ordinary speech, but how would we begin to do so? “When I talk about language (words, sentences, etc.) I must speak the language of every day. Is this language somehow too coarse and material for what we want to say? Then how is another one to be constructed?—And how strange that we should be able to do anything at all with the one we have!” (PI, 120) Wittgenstein’s reformed position begins to emerge in The Blue Book, the transcription of lecture classes he conducted in his room to a small group of students at Cambridge. One of the most important inﬂuences on Wittgenstein’s thinking came from the people with whom he could discuss ideas, and so he conducted his lectures in a kind of dialectical style. He never used notes, but would appear to be thinking out loud. These thoughts usually formed themselves into a question, for which someone from the class was to provide a response--a starting point for new thoughts leading to new questions. The Blue Book begins: “What is the meaning of a word? Let us attack this question by asking, ﬁrst, what is an explanation of the meaning of a word; what does the explanation of a word look like?. . .The questions ‘What is length?’, ‘What is meaning?’, “What is the number one?’ etc., produce in us a mental cramp. We feel that we can’t point to anything in reply to them and yet ought to point to something. (We are up against one of the great sources of philosophical bewilderment: a substantive makes us look for a thing that corresponds to it.)” In philosophical discussions, in place of asking a “What is?” question, we ask instead something like “How would you explain the meaning of this word to someone?” This question reminds us that we learned how to use words when we were children. We are not born speaking our language, and it does not develop in us automatically, as does walking. We learn language from our parents, our teachers, and friends. We’re corrected when we make mistakes because there are right and wrong ways of speaking. These corrections depend on what we say and do, on what others see of us. No one teaches a child how to speak by looking into its mind and determining that now she has the right idea. Learning how to talk is to learn a technique for doing something, for doing many things. In a sense we train children to use words as tools, and just as the uses of tools can be manifold, so can the uses of words. “Am I doing child psychology?—I am making a connection between the concept of teaching and the concept of meaning” (Z, 412). Rather than think of what a word means, think of how it is used. Wittgenstein thinks this will help us avoid philosophical problems that arise because we tend to think of a word’s meaning as something the word has, rather than what we do with it. We then { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } �{The Program} 13 The contexts in which words are get caught up in questions such as learned and used, and what is accom“What is knowledge?” or “What does plished by using them, Wittgenstein calls the word ‘knowledge’ mean?” when “language-games.” He did not think that we ought to be asking “How is the language was a game; our linguistic word ‘knowledge’ used and for what activities are less trivial than games purposes?” “You say: the point isn’t because of the way they are interwoven the word, but its meaning, and you —John Verdi with our lives. He hopes that the image of think of the meaning as a thing of the the game will help us obtain a perspicsame kind as the word, though also uous view of at least parts of language, by emphasizing some of different from the word. Here the word, there the meaning. The those features of language whose importance he believes is money, and the cow that you can buy with it. (But contrast: money, frequently overlooked. He means to “bring into prominence the and its use)” (PI, 120). fact that the speaking of a language is part of an activity, or form of Wittgenstein challenges the belief that in searching for an life” (PI, 23) The rules of chess, for example, determine what answer to the question of, say, what is language, we ought to seek moves are permitted. They tell us how to play the game, although what is common to all languages and uses of language. Instead, he not how to play it well. No examination of the shapes of the indisuggests that “these phenomena have no one thing in common vidual pieces on a chess board could accomplish this, just like no which makes us use the same word for all,—but that they are related to one another in many different ways. And it is because of examination of a word, however carefully done, will tell us how the this relationship, or these relationships, that we call them all word is actually used. Words, like chess pieces, are deﬁned by how ‘language’.” (PI, 65) Socrates’s challenge to Meno to say what all they are used in common with other people. The functions—and instances of arête have in common may be misguided, for if there hence the meanings—of individual words, phrases, and sentences is nothing common, then the search for it is for a chimera. His can be determined only by observing how they are in fact used in requirement that there be something common may be a ﬁrst step the various neighborhoods of our language, and in what circumstances and for what ends we use them. This makes language in the wrong direction. Now in fact there may be something that all essentially public, even when we use it to talk about our inner life. instances of virtue have in common, but would knowing that be For any description of what goes on inside me must be given in enough to allow us to say what virtue is? Meno’s initial answer to words whose use I learned from other people, and did not invent Socrates, the “swarm” answer, while perhaps not entirely disinfor myself. A private language, according to Wittgenstein, makes genuous, might be on the right track. If we lay out how a word is no more sense than a private game or a private rule. None of these used in its wide variety of contexts (no easy task!), then we will makes sense because in every such case, there would be no critehave obtained a perspicuous view of it. It is this perspicuity that is rion for what is correct, except what I say is correct. And if I am the often lacking in philosophy, wherein we attempt to transfer words only one who can judge correctness, then the concept of correctfrom the contexts in which we learned them and in which they ness degenerates into simply what I am inclined to say is correct. have perfectly good uses, to contextless situations, thinking that A question that ought to concern us as members of the St. John’s their meaning will follow them. But if meaning is use, which community, and simply as thinking beings, is what becomes of requires a context, then such a move empties the word of its power. philosophy in the light of Wittgenstein’s proposed reorientation In an image reminiscent of Kant’s dove, which seeks an airless of our concept of meaning. Wittgenstein believes that “a main environment because it feels constrained in its ﬂight by the atmossource of our failure to understand is that we do not command a phere, Wittgenstein writes: “We have got on to slippery ice where there is no friction and so in a certain sense the conditions are clear view of the use of our words: (PI, 122) Because philosophical ideal, but also, just because of that, we are unable to walk. We want problems have the form “I don’t know my way about” (PI, 123), it to walk: so we need friction. Back to the rough ground!” (PI, 107) is precisely the perspicuous representation of how we do things with words—that is, how we use them—that is of fundamental The attempt of philosophers to talk universally is something like signiﬁcance to any effort to answer philosophical questions and to that of Kant’s bird and Wittgenstein’s ice-walker. The temptation dissolve philosophical problems. We are led to philosophical probis not to be belittled, Wittgenstein thinks. It points to something lems when we confuse the forms of our expressions with their noble in human nature. But succumbing to it can be deadly to our uses. “Words like ‘thinking’ and ‘thought’ alongside words search for truth. denoting (bodily) activities, such as writing and speaking, make us A private language, according to Wittgenstein, makes no more sense than a private game or a private rule. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } �14 {The Program} look for an activity…corresponding to thinking” and to a product of thinking analogous to the products of writing and speaking. “When words in our ordinary language have prima facie analogous grammars, we are inclined to try to interpret them analogously” (BB, p. 7). Similarly, for each substantive we tend to seek a substance and so are led to ask, for example, “What is length? What is meaning? What is number?” instead of “How are lengths measured? What is an explanation of meaning? How are numerical expressions used?” Related to this source of confusion is our tendency to mix up language-games. We might imagine, for example, that certainty, be it about the weather, a geometrical proof, or my own pain is the selfsame concept, and differs only in degree in these cases. Instead, we ought to consider it to be more like the concept of winning, as we ﬁnd it in football or chess. We also easily succumb to the temptation to project grammar onto reality, and to think of words as names and sentences as descriptions. It is a short step to the conceptual confusions of psychology, where “I” becomes the name of a person who has privileged access to her own mental objects, states, and events, and which she then describes when she says “I have a pain,” “I am anxious,” and “I am thinking.” What Wittgenstein offers to help solve these problems is “not a philosophical method,” but “methods, like different therapies” (PI, 133). For “the philosopher’s treatment of a question is like the treatment of an illness” (PI, 255). If we are willing to admit that Wittgenstein, too, philosophizes, then we’ll see that the Wittgensteinian philosopher’s task differs in important ways from that of many of his predecessors. His job is “to show the ﬂy the way out of the ﬂy-bottle” (PI, 309). The clear glass ﬂy-bottle sits slightly raised on a table. It has a cork in the top and a hole in the bottom. The ﬂy is initially drawn into the ﬂy-bottle through this hole, attracted by a trough ﬁlled with beer that rims the inside of the bottle. (I’ve heard that sugar-water can be used, but I prefer the beer version.) Once inside, the insect does not escape, because its phototropism keeps it from returning the same way it entered. It bangs its head repeatedly on the sides of the bottle, until it eventually falls into the beer, dead. Just so, “a person caught in a philosophical confusion is like a man in a room who wants to get out but doesn’t know how. He tries the window but it is too high. He tries the chimney but it is too narrow. And if he would only turn around, he would see that the door has been open all the time!” (Malcolm, 51) How does the new philosopher liberate those of us who have become trapped by the intoxication of philosophy, and who don’t even realize we are trapped? Wittgenstein’s approach is like that of Socrates in that both attempt to bring people to remember what they have forgotten, which is still somehow alive within them. Both try to elicit from others the consequences of their own words, and both frequently do this by asking questions. (Philosophical Investigations contains 784 questions, of which only 110 are answered—and 70 of those answers are meant to be wrong!) Wittgenstein’s philosopher treats this illness of chronic forgetfulness by assembling reminders of how we actually use words and what we have learned to do with them in everyday contexts. He says: “When someone uses a word—‘knowledge,’ ‘being,’ ‘object,’ ‘I’—. . . .and tries to grasp the essence of the thing, one must always ask oneself: is the word ever actually used this way in the language-game which is its original home?”(PI, 116). We might say that according to Wittgenstein, “it is the whole of philosophy to realize that there is no more difﬁculty about time than about a chair” (L, p. 119). This image of philosophical problems as a kind of forgetfulness that must be treated with aids to remembering reminds me of the Meno. Meno poses a famous paradox about coming to know anything: if I don’t know what I am looking for, how can I recognize it when I have found it? And if I do know, why do I need to look for it? Socrates suggests as a solution that in a previous life we learned all things, and that in our present life, what appears to be learning is really recollection of what we knew but have forgotten. Wittgenstein is saying something similar. Birth may be a protracted process: We are perhaps not fully born until we have mastered our native language. The time before our birth, that is, the time before this mastery is achieved, is the time during which we were learning how to talk, when we were learning how to do things with words. Later, especially when we philosophize, we tend to forget what we know and need to be reminded of it. Once we are, the problems which trouble us dissolve. We once again can operate with words according to their true grammar, which expresses the essence of things. The consequence of this Wittgensteinian dialectic is to lead us out of the ﬂy-bottle of philosophical problems and questions and restore us to our ordinary ways of speaking. Imagine that you are trying to describe in words how to do a dance. At a certain point in the description, you get stuck—you just can’t remember if the left foot or right foot takes the next step. The answer to the question will come as soon as you grab a partner and dance. Wittgenstein might say that philosophical problems can come on the scene whenever we stop dancing and try to talk about dancing, whenever we take ordinary words out of their usual contexts and stop using them in their ordinary ways. This, however, shouldn’t lead us to think that philosophical problems are avoidable. Most of us cannot spend all our time dancing; we ﬁnd other activities enjoyable, too. And sometimes using words in extraordinary ways, as in poetry, is just what we { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } �{The Program} jen behrens want to do. But to someone enmeshed in a philosophical problem, it is never useful to say simply: we don’t talk that way. Wittgenstein puts it like this: “You must not try to avoid a philosophical problem by appealing to common sense; instead, present it as it arises with most power. . . .Philosophy can be said to consist of three activities: to see the commonsense answer, to get so deeply into the problem that the commonsense answer is unbearable, and to get from that situation back to the commonsense answer” (BB, pp. 108-109). In a sense, Wittgenstein’s work is aesthetic: he draws our attention to certain features of language and places things side by side to exhibit these features. The hoped-for result is a change in the way we view things. Wittgenstein also said that, while he was not a religious man, he could not help seeing every problem from “a religious point of view.” Three of Wittgenstein’s favorite authors were Augustine, Kierkegaard, and Dostoevsky. All three share a conviction in the importance of what cannot be said, a conviction Wittgenstein expressed in the Tractatus, and which remained with him until his death. He agreed with Kierkegaard that the most important things are best shown, not said. “If only you do not try to utter the unutterable, then nothing gets lost. But the unutterable will be—unutterably— contained in what has been uttered.” (Engelmann, 9) Even of his own late work, he writes in Philosophical Investigations: “Where does our investigation get its importance from, since it seems only to destroy everything interesting, that is, all that is great and important? (As it were all the buildings, leaving behind only bits of stone and rubble.) What we are destroying is nothing but houses of cards and we are clearing up the ground of language on which they stand” (118). Wittgenstein does not provide arguments for a new truth about things, but instead lets us see anew, in a changed way. As Socrates ﬁrst taught us, there is no prescribed set of rules 15 for bringing someone to see differently. For Wittgenstein, the religious point of view is the one that approaches a philosophical problem with the belief that its solution lies in radical recollecting and re-visioning. The new vision is not a truth to be proved, any more than faith is taking someone’s word for it, even God’s. Our new eyes cannot be given to us by another, and certainly not by any book. There is a long tradition of philosophers who have griped about the quarrels of their predecessors. They offer their own solutions, new methods they believe can put an end to these disagreements. Descartes gives us clear and distinct ideas, Hegel gives us the dialectic of Spirit, Husserl “bracketing.” Wittgenstein One thought he’d solved the problems of philosophy by revealing the logical form of language, while Wittgenstein Two believed that if only we could see how philosophical problems arise through language, we would also see their solutions. But the later Wittgenstein might be right. The challenge he poses to philosophy cannot be simply rejected. We can’t simply say that all he’s talking about is words, because we can’t be really sure what all the others have been talking about until we understand how language and thought tie up together. If it turns out that eternal questions are eternal errors, then we shall have learned something important. Maybe we’ll ﬁnd a way out of the ﬂy-bottle, or discover that it’s not such a bad place to be after all. x j6 { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } �16 {The Book} THE BOOK A Story in Three Parts T 0 those who love to read books, the prospect of being a part of bringing them to life—from idea to printed volume—must be Nirvana. The College explores the careers of three alumni who have been successful in the publishing industry: an independent publisher whose personal passions led him to success, an editor with an eye for winning titles, and an author whose ﬁrst book was 20 years in the making. The Publisher Jeremy Tarcher (class of 1953) Founder, Tarcher Publishing by Rosemary Harty (AGI09) True love led Jeremy Tarcher to a career in publishing. Real passion for his subject matter propelled him to success. Tarcher was a writer and producer working in the television industry when he met his ﬁrst wife, Shari Lewis, who was on her way to becoming one of the most beloved children’s entertainers in television history. They both knew a long and happy marriage was more likely if one of them got out of television. Tarcher decided to try publishing, because, as he explains, “it was employment.” To learn the business, Tarcher went to work as an assis- tant to Ben Rayburn, founder of Horizon Press. “I worked with him for two years. In that time, I thought I had seen every mistake that could be made in the publishing business. I discovered that there were plenty more to make.” By the early 1960s, Tarcher was ready to venture out on his own. At ﬁrst, he teamed noted celebrities with authors to produce best sellers including Johnny Carson’s Happiness is a Dry Martini and Phyllis Diller’s Housekeeping Hints. A desire to follow his own personal interests—rather than industry trends—led him to success as a niche publisher. He developed a specialty in books about health, philosophy, psychology, and human potential. Tarcher Publishing led the way in offering titles that coincided with California-born trends that would sweep the nation beginning in the 1970s and ‘80s. His biggest success came in 1980, when he published The Aquarian Conspiracy by Marilyn Ferguson. Establishing a personal relationship with the author—primarily by persuading her how much the book captured the desires for his own life—led Ferguson to choose Tarcher instead of a large New York trade house. “There was no book with which I felt more closely associated, and for which I felt a greater participation in the development of the text,” Tarcher explains. “The book made a big different in my life.” The Aquarian Conspiracy, Tarcher explains, “caught the spirit of the times. People were open to new spiritual perspectives, new ways of thinking about things.” Ferguson’s book “brought together a lot of different perspectives at the leading edge and made them into a path along which many people wished to stride. It called for the better parts of humanity when no one was really calling for that.” By today’s standards, the book wasn’t a blockbuster; it sold about a million copies in hardcover and paperback. Yet Tarcher considers the book a resounding success because { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } �17 {The Book} Success came to Jeremy Tarcher (class of 1953) when he began publishing books on topics he truly cared about. its enduring message that each individual can make a difference was carried worldwide. “The greatest fun in publishing is that for a very small amount of money and a few seconds of TV time, one can get an idea out to a general public, distribute a book, send it to the opinion makers and really get a bang for your book-publishing buck,” he says. “It’s possible to be an active citizen and affect a lot of things that go on in the country and the world.” Independent publishing is a tough business, he concedes. When interest rates soared in the late 1980s, money got tight. “Capitalization is a big problem,” he says. “The more successful you are, the larger inventory you need to carry. Higher advances are expected for the authors, by their agents and by themselves. The more books you have out, the greater the debt to you, further diminishing your cash. Twice I had to sell because I became too successful and no longer had cash. I could not maintain the company without pulling in very strongly, and I chose not to do that; I thought being with a large company was the answer.” Tarcher sold his company ﬁrst to Houghton Mifﬂin, but when that didn’t work out, he bought it back a few years later. He sold it again, to Universal Studios, which had Putnam as part of its corporate empire; thus Tarcher became part of Putnam. When Viking/Penguin took over the company, it began publishing books under a Tarcher/Penguin imprint. “For the most part,” Tarcher says, his name is still carried on good books. If he were just starting out today, Tarcher doubts that he could succeed. “I could not possibly duplicate what I did now with the amount of money I started with, which was really very little,” he says. He wouldn’t have been able to acquire signiﬁcant authors without paying huge advances. “Nobody really knows what’s going to happen next,” he muses, “with the Kindle, the blogosphere. The world is changing with [such] rapidity that a one-year plan is impossible to make. Who the hell knows what ﬁve years ahead is going to look like?” And today’s business world, he observes, is dominated by e-mail and text messages, computers and Blackberrys. When Tarcher started out, he didn’t even have a fax machine or a Xerox. Much of his time was devoted to talking with authors and agents. “It was a much more human world then,” he says. Always grateful to St. John’s for putting him on the path to success, Tarcher is frank about what led him to Annapolis: desperation. He had yet to prove himself as a student when he began applying to college. “I couldn’t get into any other college in America at the time,” he recalls. His family knew the Pinskers, whose son, Adam (class of 1952), had attended St. John’s. “My parents applied to St. John’s for me while I was away in Colorado,” he recalls. “I came onto the campus, and I knew that I had found my home. High school was memorization; at St. John’s, I was able to open up, discover new ideas. The whole feeling of St. John’s was to open the mind and open the spirit, which I guess in some ways I have carried on in a different perspective in my publishing life.” He wrote his senior essay on Nietzsche and Goethe and the will to power. “Every day I’m grateful to St. John’s for the inspiration, for the love of books, for the love of learning, perhaps most of all, I’m grateful for the sense of— if not the perfectibility of man—the improvement.” After St. John’s, Tarcher joined the army and was assigned to an education center in Verdun, France. After { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } �18 {The Book} his discharge, he traveled the world and returned to New York to ﬁnd a job in the burgeoning television industry. He started out as a cartoon timer, eventually becoming a producer and writer. Tarcher accompanied a friend to a radio show audition one night, and in the studio he spotted a “lovely girl who captured my heart.” He and Shari Lewis, known for her puppet Lamb Chop and her long-running PBS television show, spent 40 “very good years together” before she died of cancer in 1998 at age 65. Their daughter, Mallory, became a producer, writer, and entertainer. It was also love at ﬁrst sight when Tarcher met his second wife, Judith Paige Mitchell, a television writer and novelist. They were making marriage plans by their second date and have been married 10 years. Although the industry will continue to go through tumultuous change, Tarcher says Johnnies who pursue publishing careers may succeed “if they ﬁnd something they really care about and become expert in it.” “All of my success came about because I had the friendship of and tutelage of many people who knew a great deal about spiritual development and were able to teach me its ways,” Tarcher says. “I don’t care if you’re interested in model railroads or transcendent spirituality, you should know something about the ﬁeld into which you’re going. You’re going not just as a publisher, but as a person.” The Editor Colin Fox (SF97) Senior Editor, Simon and Schuster By Nat Roe (SF08) Every day, Colin Fox walks through labyrinthine hallways to an ofﬁce tucked in a corner. Stacks of books line every wall along the way. These halls—publishing giant Simon and Schuster’s portion of Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan— don’t look much different than a Johnnie’s dream. Fox’s own corner ofﬁce is crammed with books, many of which he has helped to publish. Sitting behind his desk with a Beach Boys haircut, a striped dress shirt and a broad smile, Fox appears professionally savvy, but beams with youthful energy. His job as a senior editor is to acquire and develop new books for publication. With a list of authors including political heavy-hitters like James Carville and Tucker Carlson, entertainment legends like David Cross and Billy Crystal, and respected ﬁction writers like Donald Westlake and Stephen Hunter, Fox has worked hand-inhand with some of today’s most notable minds. A book ﬁrst reaches Fox through a literary agent’s pitch, one of the social perks of Fox’s work. “It’s a very personal transaction often,” he explains. “Many of them [literary agents] are personal friends of mine.” Fox evaluates the viability of a book based on the scope of the subject matter, the size of the target market, and the past work of the author. If the book seems to merit publication, Fox buys the book and then begins a lengthy period of discussion and revision with the author. This conversation can last for close to a year. An editor for Simon and Schuster, Colin Fox (SF97) says his job is more about marketing and less about being “a philosopher-king.” { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } �{The Book} Once the manuscript is complete, months of in-house selling of the project to marketing staff takes place before the book is ready for the public. “A lot of my job is selling. You learn very quickly in this business that this has nothing to do with being a philosopher-king. Simon and Schuster is dedicated to quality, which is wonderful, but we have to make money.” Still, Fox maintains that the publishing industry isn’t excessively money driven. Instead, the industry attracts those impassioned with the written word. “I think the people are what drives it most,” he says. “Everyone comes in early [in their careers] wanting to ﬁnd the great American novel. We were all book people in college,” he says. From close contact with authors to spending his days with similarly minded coworkers, Fox enjoys a society of letters similar to St. John’s. Moreover, Fox ﬁnds his work fulﬁlling for its social impact. “S & S has done a lot of very important books in terms of driving the national debate and being involved in major news events.” Former Vice President Dick Cheney, for example, recently signed a book deal with Threshold, a politically conservative wing of the publishing house. Fox himself tends toward the liberal side with his own acquisitions, but uses this example to point out an interesting quirk of book sales: the opposition party often sells more books than the party in power. Insights like this one drive publishing, but Fox discusses these issues with an air of opportunity rather than of shrewd greed. It seems he has struck a happy middle ground in his ﬁeld. Fox’s task is a “nebulous” balance of cultural curation and business sensibility, with one foot in the ivory tower and the other foot behind the cash register. Fox’s experience also vouches for the practicality of the St. John’s experience. “Publishing is a kind of bizarro professional continuation of St. John’s. It’s the same act, too. You just read all the time, then talk about your reading and then you write about it.” As Fox describes it, the smooth continuity from college to career came as a pleasant surprise. “When I was at St. John’s, I willfully avoided the thought of what I would do next. Even senior year, I said to myself, ‘I’m focusing on this.’” Having a connection at the Warner Books publishing house, now known as Grand Central Publishing, Fox found himself in publishing a few years after graduation. One 19 might even say that this is the path he was born for. His father, William Price Fox, was a novelist (best know for Ruby Red), and his mother worked as an editorial assistant. This is a difﬁcult time for his chosen industry, but Fox is hopeful about its future. “This is the worst environment retail-wise for books ever,” he says. “Even huge, bestselling authors have seen diminished numbers.” But Fox sees lagging numbers as indicative of the economy in general and predicts that the publishing industry will recover with the rest of the world. E-books, including the Kindle and iPhone applications, will help the industry become more efﬁcient, he believes. “The book, whatever its Platonic form is, will be ﬁne,” Fox says. “You have to be an optimist to be in book publishing, whether you’re an agent or an author. You have to be able to have faith in the face of most people being disappointed at the end of the day with the results.” A great book, Fox admits, is a career goal rather than a daily reality. It’s this goal, however, that drives Fox. “It’s so rare for something to catch on and get the attention it deserves and be commercially successful that when it does, it’s just a real treat. That’s what keeps you going.” The Author Victoria Hanley (SF76) Novelist by Cathi Dunn MacRae Since 2000, four young adult novels by Victoria Hanley (SF76) have captivated readers in more than 20 countries, winning literary awards and critical acclaim. And although Hanley didn’t divine her writer’s future at St. John’s College, she “often marvels at how three semesters in Santa Fe had a much larger inﬂuence upon the workings of my mind than expected. That education continues to shape my mental life in profoundly beneﬁcial ways.” Having graduated a year early from high school, Hanley was 18 when she left St. John’s at the end of 1973, in the middle of sophomore year. As she explained to then-dean Robert Neidorf, “I feel like I’ve been in school forever. I want to live my life instead of discussing it.” Career plans took a back seat to “stocking up on experiences.” During nearly 20 years before she began to write, Hanley worked at 19 occupations in at least 27 jobs { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } �20 {The Book} rose hayden including house painter, Montessori teacher, dishwasher, folksinger, corporate ﬁnancial manager, massage practitioner, and anatomy instructor. Other than the corporate job’s “dreadful managers,” Hanley savored her experiences. Her long succession of jobs occurred in four states (New Mexico, California, Oregon, and Colorado) and 12 towns and cities, where she lived in 35 dwellings, including a yurt. In 1977, Hanley bicycled from Eugene, Oregon, across the Rocky Mountains to Boulder, Colorado, to attend Naropa Institute. She spent a “life-changing” summer at the Buddhist institute, taking classes in writing, aikido, voice, and meditation. She attended open lectures by Allen Ginsberg and poetry readings by Anne Waldman and Peter Orlovsky. Hanley and her soon-to-be husband then moved into the Nyingma Institute, also in Boulder, where Hanley became the retreat center cook while beginning “serious studies of Buddhism.” The following summer, their son Emrys was born, and Hanley became a busy working mom. A move to Denver, a divorce and remarriage, the birth of her daughter Rose, and demanding jobs consumed her. When did she make the transition to writing? “Like many people,” says Hanley, “I’d always planned to write a book someday. I started a couple novels but never ﬁnished them, telling myself I didn’t have time. Then I went through my second divorce, quit my job, and moved away from Denver. I was miserable and afraid, and thought: I’ve had this dream of writing a novel for long enough. So I began and kept going (with numerous necessary interruptions) until the book was ﬁnished.” It took ﬁve years. Living a life rich in experiences—from working in 27 distinct jobs to engaging in a serious study of Buddhism—led Victoria Hanley (SF76) to success as an award-winning author. When Hanley married again in 1997, still laboring on her novel, her husband Tim joined her teenaged children Emrys and Rose as “ardent supporters” of her writing. Now having weathered the publication of six books, Hanley realizes that “their love and interest and perspicacious comments have made all the difference.” After persevering through many drafts, Hanley submitted her ﬁrst novel to an agent. Two rejections later, she tried a literary agency in London, which has represented her work ever since. Her ﬁrst novel, The Seer and the Sword, was published in the U.K. in 2000, and in the U.S. later that year. An exciting heroic fantasy for young adults aged 12 and up, The Seer and the Sword takes place in a palpable, original otherworld with Arthurian echoes. According to Hanley’s tag line, “Prince Landen loses his father, his kingdom, his sword, and his freedom.” This multi-layered tale of treachery and intrigue is ultimately about the transforming power of peace. Hanley’s ﬁrst novel earned enthusiastic praise. Seer won the 2000 Colorado Book Award, the 2003 Kallbacher Klapperschlange Award in Germany, a nomination for the U.K.’s 2001 Carnegie Medal, and placement on several state lists of teen favorites. But she identiﬁed herself as a writer only when she sold a companion novel, The Healer’s Keep (2002), which explores her otherworld characters’ abilities to perform spiritual healing or harm. Her third { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } �{The Book} book, The Light of the Oracle (2005), examines this otherworld’s compelling mystical religion with a pantheon of seven gods, animal helpers, and a hierarchy of ambitious priests and prophets young and old, locked in harrowing power struggles. Hanley’s study of Buddhism informs the spiritual concerns in The Healer’s Keep and The Light of the Oracle, where she navigates her characters’ “inner landscapes,” which the Oracle’s Master Priest refers to as “the abanya, the vast etheric lands that existed, unseen by most, alongside the physical realms.” Hanley explains, “From my early twenties to mid-thirties, I carried on an in-depth study and practice of Buddhist meditation, which gradually deepened my awareness of various states of consciousness. I still practice meditation daily. The examination of psychic landscapes is a personal interest.” But it was the St. John’s program that introduced her to spiritual themes. “I was raised in an atheistic household where intuition and emotion were discouraged and even disparaged, and where terms like soul and spirit were considered suspect. So I really enjoyed Socrates as written by Plato: the pristine ﬂow of his ideas could be said to be reasonable and yet seemed to have intuition at its core. It became apparent that great thinkers did not necessarily dismiss spirit out of hand. Emotional truths kept showing up as viable, too.” In Hanley’s writing, “Intuition brings forth the story, and once the story is written, logic carefully examines the whole in a very Johnnian way—looking for whether the structure, as built upon the premise—is sound,” she says. “I was surprised by how much I liked Euclid and his theorems. Along with Plato’s dialogues, they taught me how much a premise inﬂuences the integrity of what follows. This understanding is crucial for writing ﬁction.” A different type of fantasy for “tweens” (ages 10 to 14), Hanley’s Violet Wings (August 2009) ventures “behind the inner looking glass to reﬂect upon the possible fey view of humanity.” In this page-turner, young fairy Zaria Tourmaline learns to use her magical powers while searching for her missing family in “the fabled land of humans.” Hanley has ﬁnished the ﬁrst draft of the sequel, Indigo Bottle, to be published next year. Why write fantasy? In her youth, Hanley read Howard Pyle’s King Arthur books, Andrew Lang’s fairy books, Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, Tolkien’s Lord of 21 the Rings and several books by Ray Bradbury. Although she now reads little fantasy, it is “well suited to examining universal themes; when fantasy books explore the human psyche, they help us deal with this world rather than escape it. For instance, in The Seer and the Sword, when the hero Landen loses everything, he must draw deeply on his inner strength to lift himself up. The story of his challenges and heartaches is the story of anyone ﬁnding a way through grief and loss.” Also, she concludes, “fantasy is so enjoyable to a certain type of kid, it can serve as an entry point to other kinds of literature.” Aspiring writers ask her so many questions that Hanley wrote Seize the Story: A Handbook for Teens Who Like to Write—the book she wishes could have jumpstarted her own writing journey. Published last year, it offers exercises in using each tool of the writer’s craft, from freeing the imagination to creating characters. Sixteen authors share their best advice, and Hanley answers young writers’ questions. She will soon launch an interactive site for teen writers at www.seizethestory.com. Hanley’s Wild Ink: How to Write Fiction for Young Adults, also published in 2008, is another book that she wishes she’d had as a beginner. Coaching adult writers entering the thriving arena of young adult literature, it describes YA genres, advises how to address the teen audience, and demystiﬁes the process of getting published. Interviews with agents, editors, self-publishers, and 19 YA authors demonstrate how tenacious a writer must be. Having birthed ﬁve novels, Hanley trusts the process that began at St. John’s: “Seminar discussions of the Iliad and the Odyssey opened my eyes to the layers and levels of symbolism and emotional truth in a work of ﬁction. And although I didn’t stay long enough to participate in seminars on Jane Austen’s books, I have read and re-read all her works, and appreciate her extraordinary ability to blend a good story with witty commentary on human nature.” Surrounded by mountains in her home in Loveland, Colorado, Vicky Hanley recently sang harmony on her son’s debut album, “Emrys.” Her song is about Santa Fe. x { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } �22 { S t u d e n t Vo i c e s } THE L ANGUAGE OF BRAZILIAN JIU-JITSU by Jacob Dink (SF10) B razilian Jiu-Jitsu baits us with a misleading ﬁrst impression. We hear the name, so evocative of oriental antiquity. And we imagine some caricature of a choreographed and arcane martial art—perhaps respectable, but abstruse and impractical to all but bearded, meditative masters on forlorn mountainsides. St. John’s campus in Santa Fe certainly resembles such a setting, and scraggy beards abound. But the college’s Brazilian JiuJitsu classes, taught by Santa Fe alumnus and Jiu-Jitsu purple belt Quinn Mulhern (SF08), defy such a caricature. The classes certainly strike a traditional chord, with bowing, lessened emphasis on strenuous muscular workouts, and retention of the traditional uniform (the “gi”). Nevertheless, this martial art cannot be characterized as some quaint Tai-Chi simulacrum. “People realize that Jiu-Jitsu is very different from traditional martial arts,” says Mulhern. Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is a no-striking, ground-ﬁghting art that focuses on positions, leverage, and submissions. Its territory is the ground, because the ground is where real ﬁghts inevitably end up. Jiu-Jitsu’s emphasis on practicality is an essential characteristic that a cursory glance would miss. Such misconceptions—and their subsequent disabusal—permeate Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and its origins. One example is the United States’ most notable introduction into the art. Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu was founded by brothers Carlos and Hélio Gracie, after Carlos learned it from Mitsuyo Maeda, an innovative Japanese judoka. Hélio adapted it to his smaller frame. After years of trial and evolution in Rio de Janeiro, in 1993 Hélio sent his son Royce to compete in the very ﬁrst “Ultimate Fighting Championship” in the U.S. The pay-per-view tournament featured a bevy of ﬁghters from various disciplines: boxing, kung-fu, muay-thai kickboxing, tae kwon do, sumo, and many other combat sports. The idea was to determine superiority. Which martial art would win in a real ﬁght situation? Some competitors were as large as 260, 430, or (at a later tournament, an unbelievable) 770 pounds. American audiences expected strikers to down their opponents with a kung-fu “death punch,” or some muay-thai knees. Small ground-ﬁghters, we thought, would not stand a chance against the big strikers. Royce won all of his matches in a total ﬁght time of less than ﬁve minutes. Real ﬁghts go to the ground. The motivation here was purely competitive: Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is obsessed with proving itself. It’s tied up in the very genesis of the sport. The Gracies wanted to change the way people thought about ﬁghting—and they did. The effect on martial artists was dramatic; everyone started training in ground-ﬁghting. The sport of ﬁghting evolved into modern day Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), a sanctioned, mainstream competition in which well-rounded athletes test their striking, wrestling, and submissions. Here Jiu-Jitsu branches off, and here a second misconception looms. Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu’s inﬂuence on MMA becomes somewhat orthogonal, overemphasizing the ﬁghting element of the art. The self-testing character of Jiu-Jitsu’s genesis should not be misconstrued as egotistical machismo—Jiu-Jitsu’s concern with self-testing is not a fundamental concern with ﬁghting. Rickson Gracie, Royce’s half-brother, describes his take on Jiu-Jitsu: “I’m not a ﬁghter. But I believe in Jiu-Jitsu. I believe it’s a self-defense art. So to keep believing in what I teach, what I share with my students—to trust in my own words—I must make myself available for any kind of competition. But the most interesting aspect of JiuJitsu . . . is the sensibility of opponents: the sense of touch, and weight, and momentum, to the transition from one movement to another. That’s the amazing thing about it.” Sparring (called “rolling”) is the central activity of a typical class. Students use their skills against each other, “tapping out” if caught in a submission (choke or joint-lock). The lack of striking and the relative safety of most submissions mean that students are free to practice at high levels of intensity with little risk of injury. Such considerations are a large part of the emphasis. But something deeper is going on in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu’s most crucial activity: Students are learning a language. The “rolling” part of Jiu-Jitsu—in which students test their control over opponents’ frames and their own—creates and plumbs an ever-growing well of knowledge: possibilities for movement, techniques, counters, counters to those counters, and so on. The well deepens into labyrinthine caverns to be unconsciously explored. The process must, of course, be unconscious—a chasmal echo in the back of an adrenaline-fueled cortex—because the majority of learning in any language is implicit. In language, the resulting stream of unconsciousness is called ﬂuency. One develops a sort of ﬂow, an ineffable spontaneity of knowledge. One cannot identify “where” the stream comes from. Words just pop into our head. We can’t identify the fount from which the well springs. Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu shares this curious characteristic. In “rolling,” the ﬂow through movements similarly inhabits the penumbra of conscious calculation. This description of Jiu-Jitsu as a language is not an analogy; it is a deﬁnitive testament to Jiu-Jitsu’s depth and legitimacy as not just a hobby, but a lasting venture. One sees this characteristic in any worthwhile endeavor, because the potential for ﬂuency—a horizon { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } �{ S t u d e n t Vo i c e s } 23 persists, as does the limitless poential and eagerness for improvement. Pedro Sauer, a seventh-degree black belt, recently invited Eduardo Telles (who is in his 20s) to teach part of seminar. Asked why he was so eager to meet the less seasoned Telles, Sauer replied, “because I want to know what that guy is about.” Known for his ability to use an unconventional “turtle guard” in competition, Telles has valuable insight for a veteran who has owned his black belt for about as long as Telles had been alive. Another prime example of the pinnacle of the elite is Marcelo Garcia, who typiﬁes several important aspects of the art. Garcia is a multiple-time champion in AbuDhabi Combat Club, the most prestigious and wellknown grappling tournament in the world. Alhough Garcia epitomizes Jiu-Jitsu’s ability to dominate much larger opponents—he is a silver and bronze medalist in the absolute division (no weight limit), despite his 5-foot-8-inch frame—it’s more interesting to observe how he beats these opponents: by being creative. Garcia is extremely innovative; his strategy largely consists of techniques, or combinations of techniques that he has originated. Garcia’s success exempliﬁes another characteristic of language: the possibility for and rewards of creativity. This characteristic, like the others, pervades Jiu-Jitsu’s origins: adopted from judo, innovated by Maeda, reinvented by Hélio, evolved in Rio de Janeiro, and still evolving today. Says Mulhern, who has trained with Garcia, “Jiu-Jitsu is an open art form. . . . It’s possible for anyone with great insight into the sport to add to it. That’s something Marcelo has done. But it’s not just Marcelo—it’s something about Jiu-Jitsu. It’s organic. It’s always changing.” Fluency engenders creativity. There is a downside, however, to the potential for ﬂuency: some people aren’t ﬂuent. It is undeniably hard to appreciate a language we’re not ﬂuent in, or haven’t even dabbled with. In some languages, we’re all ﬂuent. Learning Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu takes more creativity than strength, says Jacob We jump, run, balance, and exert ourselves, so we Dink (SF10), one of many Johnnies captivated by this martial art. appreciate obvious feats of speed, strength, or balance. But it’s difﬁcult to appreciate a language in which we’re not all ﬂuent. With Jiu-Jitsu, “there’s a subtlety that people don’t understand,” says Mulhern. “It’s not that can be approached but never actually reached—signiﬁes a near about punching and kicking, there’s something else going on. inﬁnite depth. It’s about an inside space, about balance.” A layman watching The effect of this endlessness is an astounding profusion of, and an elite display of Jiu-Jitsu can’t appreciate what looks like exponential disparity between, the skill levels in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. “advanced hugging.” A student of several months can soundly handle an athletic This third, more lingering obstacle to understanding Jiu-Jitsu, is newcomer. A student of one year can easily best this verdant that general under-appreciation that accompanies the novelty of a monther. A student of three years (like the author) can often beat a foreign language. Such a frustration is unfortunate, yet inevitable, one-year student without much effort. (I know, because I have and little improved through my fumbling articulations. I’m writing terrible endurance.) Quinn Mulhern can beat me without any in the wrong language. I can only hope to convince the reader that threat of submission to himself. And we haven’t even mentioned it is difﬁcult, or has depth, or is worth a try.To learn how, one has black belts. to try the language. “My ﬁrst impression was with sparring,” says Not that the ascent would stop there. Without seeing their ranks, Mulhern. “It was some secret I had to learn, something I had to be it might be difﬁcult to distinguish the effortless domination of a a part of. It inspires humility: every day you’re made to feel like you white belt by a black belt, from the effortless domination of that know nothing.” x same black belt by a more elite black belt. Within the black-belt class, the tiered system of skill levels and exponential disparity { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } �24 { A l u m n i Vo i c e s } A WAY O F L O O K I NG AT T H E WO R L D A philosophy professor reﬂects on a “debt” owed to St. John’s Many Johnnies ﬁnd their way into higher education. Hugh Mercer Curtler (class of 1959), a recently retired professor of philosophy at Southwest Minnesota State University, describes his persistence in bringing great books into the curriculum wherever he taught. I attended Polytechnic Institute in Baltimore, a city I hated after growing up in a small town in Connecticut. But I memorized and regurgitated and passed the tests well enough to be handed a diploma. I suppose you could say I had learned to play the great American game called “school.” I aspired to be a priest in the Episcopal Church, and I needed to get a bachelor’s degree, so the curate of my church recommended that I take a look at nearby St. John’s College. I did so and was astonished to ﬁnd myself meeting with Dick Weigle (HA49), then president of the college. Imagine: a college prospect meeting with the president! I was impressed. In addition, I loved to read, and at that point all I knew about St. John’s was that they read a lot. So I decided to enroll. After all, college was a means to an end, and with a state scholarship, I had to go somewhere in Maryland. That was the long and short of it in my mind at the time. I was told I had to read ﬁve books of the Iliad before entering as a freshman, and I thought “what on earth have I gotten myself into?” In my mind I was being asked to read ﬁve entire books before I ever set foot on campus! I was that naive and just a little bit stupid. I dallied for the ﬁrst two years, playing intramural sports and organizing a basketball team in the local YMCA league, playing poker with my friends, and doing enough to get by with stern looks from my tutors. Needless to say, I did poorly on my sophomore enabling exams. I met with Dean Jacob Klein (HA76) and assured him I was going to turn things around, only to be told that, “the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” I was placed on academic probation, given a semester to turn things around. I made the most of it. I never shone at St. John’s, though I became a much more serious student and began to enjoy the discussions more and more. The curriculum was having a profound effect on my way of looking at the world, though I don’t think I knew it at the time. I graduated with 19 other people in the spring of 1959 and decided after four years (well, at least two years) of intense study I needed a year to let the dust settle before attending seminary. I took a job teaching at a private boys’ school in New York and found that I loved to teach. But I wanted to teach something I couldn’t fully master, something that would keep my mind alive for the rest of my life. I had decided that the priesthood was not for me and that I would pursue philosophy instead. Now there was a moving target that would be hard to hit! I was lucky enough to be accepted into graduate school at Northwestern University. I did well. In fact, after { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } All he knew about St. John’s when he enrolled, Hugh Mercer Curtler (class of 1959) recalls, “was that they read a lot.” Only later could he grasp how St. John’s shaped the way in which he views the world. �{ A l u m n i Vo i c e s } 25 those in higher education, St. John’s I found graduate I was beginning to discover, school to be fairly easy. I tended to sell the students earned the MA and the PhD (Florida Academic Press, 2009) short. and looked for a teaching job. Eventually, sad to say, that What else was there to do with In Provoking Thought, Hugh Mercer Curtler explores issues course died a slow and painful degrees in philosophy? I found of contemporary life in the context of “a number of impordeath as specialized faculty myself at the University of tant books and what their authors had to say to us.” Like a resisted being forced to teach Rhode Island, where I taught stimulating coffee-shop conversation, the book ranges over outside their ﬁeld. So I simply for two years. diverse topics—Plato, the Iraqi War, George Eliot, Brett taught philosophy for a There I realized that I was Favre, Tocqueville, Boston Legal, even Rod Blagojevitch. number of years, feeling more being squeezed into a niche in Central to Curtler’s thesis is how a liberal education, in and more constricted. I also a department of seven people, producing citizens who are able to question and reconsider realized how much those each with a specialty within their opinions, advances democracy and improves society: students could beneﬁt by being philosophy. I read that a new “Given that a liberal education should. . . put young people introduced to great writing, college in Iowa wanted in possession of their own minds, the question is how best to including, but not restricted someone to head up a departachieve this goal. How is it to be done without merely to, philosophy. By this time I ment of philosophy and teach exchanging one set of chains for another? Clearly the answer had tenure and had been “humanities.” Now that to this question is of central importance not only to profesaround long enough that I was sounded great! And they paid sional educators, but also to all who are concerned about the able to convince the faculty to well. I was awfully young and survival of this Republic. A democracy cannot function institute a pair of courses in inexperienced, but I applied unless its citizens are educated, that is, capable of informed “humanities” in the general and was hired as the chair of a choice, unless they are in possession of their own minds. This education requirement. department of two. My job was is possible only if the students become well-informed and are Several people were hired to to initiate basic courses in able to process this information—in a word, if they can think. teach the courses, and while philosophy while teaching two Thinking, in turn, is a function of the ability to manipulate they started out being great required courses in what I the symbols of language and mathematics, to analyze and to books courses, each of those knew were great books by synthesize. Content is less important than process, but both teaching them turned them in another name. I am sure my matter if the goal of an educated person is to be achieved.” x their own direction. background at St. John’s was I remained loyal to the books the key to my being hired. and continued to require that I enjoyed teaching those my students read the classics, including a number of Greek plays, courses, as my love for the books allowed me to read them several Platonic dialogues, portions of Thucydides, Shakespeare, again—this time more carefully—and talk about them to classand even some Dostoevsky. Assignments nearly always focused rooms full of eager students. on selections, but one must begin somewhere! I also started up The college had a remarkable curriculum with a two-year an honors program and required each graduating honors student general education requirement that included a year of reading to take a seminar in the great books before graduating and the great books of Western civilization. But the college also had the incoming honors students read selections from foundered ﬁnancially, and I moved on to a public college just Tocqueville, among others. Those were some of the best classes opening in Minnesota where I would, again, start a philosophy I taught in my 41 years of college teaching. program and also head up what they called “Ideas in Flux.” A few years before my retirement I wrote a book, Recalling Once again, the breadth of my preparation helped me land the job. I wanted to turn that course into one that focused on the Education, in which I attempted in my small way to restore great books, but it was a required course taught by the entire some semblance of sanity to the higher educational system I was faculty and as most of them had not read the books (as was the becoming increasingly familiar with. I argued for a solid core case with the dean of the college), it was not to be. requirement built around the great books, which are increasIn those days experimentation was all the rage, and “tradiingly ignored in the academy but which are nonetheless the tion” was a bad word. The books were considered irrelevant and cornerstone of any attempt to free young minds from narrowtoo difﬁcult for students to read. Being young and powerless, ness, prejudice, and stupidity. The book sold fairly well, and one I played the role handed to me and assigned the weaker works reviewer on Amazon likened it to the writings of Mortimer that were approved by the dean for several years, sneaking a Adler—hyperbole, but a high compliment in my mind. really important piece of writing into the curriculum when I Throughout, I have retained my love for the books. In my could. I always thought it was a mistake to withhold the great retirement, I reread many of them and added others to my list. books from these students and spent much of my time Eventually I worked up a book of meditations on sundry topics, attempting to place before even the most reluctant of readers drawing on the books I have read over the years. I called the some of the great works of the human mind. And every now and book Provoking Thought, and it reﬂects the enormous debt I again, I knew it was paying off, as student comments showed. owe St. John’s and the love for the books that has remained with These are books that are approachable on so many levels, and me throughout my adult life. x Excerpt: Provoking Thought { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } �26 {Iglehart Hall} HAIL, TEMPLE IGLEHART Celebrating a Century A stark contrast to today’s typical university gym— with rock-climbing walls, aerobic studios, and ﬁtness rooms packed with shiny equipment— Temple Iglehart speaks to digniﬁed simplicity. A basketball court. A weight room. Locker rooms that could best be described as Spartan. But this is a building steeped in history. Slip out of your street shoes in the foyer to protect the polished gym ﬂoor. Climb the steps to the banked wooden running track, where the brick walls are lined with plaques celebrating century-old athletic feats. Below on the basketball court the Maenads and the Amazons are ﬁghting it out with three minutes left in the half. Some of these athletes will be awarded a coveted prize: the blue blazer. Others are making some of the best memories they’ll carry forward into their lives as alumni. Happy birthday, Temple Iglehart. You don’t look a day over 90. Ellen Alers (A82): “Once I was asked, ‘If your house was burning and you could save one thing, what would it be?’ Without hesitation, I said, ‘My St. John’s athletic blazer.’ I won it my sophomore year and treasure it. It reminds me of my best times at St. John’s and keeps me from cringing, too badly, when I think of my dismal academic performance. No matter how bad the day, every game was an opportunity to make a fresh start, encourage my teammates, and have fun. Although I never shone in the classroom, the St. John’s sports program gave me the opportunity to lead, follow, learn, teach, encourage and support my fellow athletes, and they reciprocated. Without it and them, I would have never survived.” dimitri fotos Talley Scroggs (A01): “I always prized the 30 minutes or so before the Kunai basketball games. As the women started gathering around the benches, various groups would head out to the court to practice jump shots or free throws. There was no real organization, and we would mingle with the opposing team all during the warm-up. Those pre-game moments really captured the spirit of Basketball and a balance: the simplicity of Iglehart Hall reﬂects the simplicity of the Program. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } �{Iglehart} 27 The banked running track beckons only the adventurous. conviviality and fun that I’ll always associate with SJC sports.” dimitri fotos Paula Swann (AGI97): “My husband, John Swann (AGI97), and I met in the Temple at St. John’s. We were playing on opposing teams (I was a Greenwave, he was a Hustler) during the winter tournament. I was guarding John under the basket. Unfortunately, he is 6’4’, and I am 5’6.’ So John would just reach over my back and grab every rebound despite my best efforts to box him out. I wasn’t getting an over-the-back call from the refs, so the next time he came over my back, I nudged him a little and he fell on the ﬂoor! The next semester we had all three classes together and soon started dating. Seven years later, we got married in the Great Hall. That’s 13 years total that we’ve been together since that ﬁrst game in the Temple. Now we have a son, Maxwell, 2 1/2 years old.” dimitri fotos Steven Reynolds (A83): “My memories of Iglehart Hall are suffused with camaraderie and a sense of justice not seen in other sporting venues. . . . I was assigned to the Hustlers my freshman year, and played basketball with a senior full of passion for the game and an unrelenting drive to win. Another senior, a Greenwave, made a drive to the hoop and was fouled by our player- Bronze plaques on the brick walls of the gym’s upper level celebrate victories of the past. coach, who had the skill to stop a drive with his body with impunity. But our man’s feet were in motion at the moment of impact, and 10 players on the court knew it was a foul. As impartial as [then Athletic Director Bryce] Jacobsen was, his eye was not always the most discerning, and play continued. The missed call provoked Greenwave Tom (A80) to quote Kant: ‘Mr. J., you’re disrupting the synthetic unity of my apperception!’ Only at Iglehart Hall.” x Up to a Challenge? Join the Team. If you have fond memories of athletics and Temple Iglehart, here’s a chance to say thanks. If you were a fencer, a Greenwave, a weight-room denizen, a coxswain, a badminton player—the college needs you to join the Mind-Body Challenge. To commemorate the temple’s 100th birthday, the Annapolis campus seeks to raise $500,000 to establish an endowment fund for the repair and replacement of athletic equipment. Fifty percent of St. John’s students participate in athletics on a regular basis; 27 percent of staff and faculty use the gym regularly. A thriving intramural program complements the college’s academic program by adding to the sense of community, camaraderie, and common purpose. This campaign will establish an endowment fund for the repair and replacement of athletic equipment by providing a dedicated stream of $25,000 to the gym each year. Even this modest amount will help enhance the athletic program by keeping the balls bouncing high, the ﬁelds in good shape, the crew boats primed for regattas, and the scoreboard bright. Learn more about the challenge on the college’s website: click on “Giving” and follow the Mind-Body Challenge link. Or, visit Temple Iglehart’s very own Facebook or YouTube pages. x { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } �28 Feeling Our Feelings: What Philosophers Think and People Know By Eva Brann (HA89) Paul Dry Books 2008 In Feeling Our Feelings, Eva Brann considers what the great philosophers on the passions and feelings have thought and written about them. She examines the relevant work of Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Aquinas, Descartes, Spinoza, Adam Smith, Hume, Kierkegaard, and Heidegger, and also includes a chapter on contemporary studies on the brain. Feeling Our Feelings provides a comprehensive look at this pervasive and elusive topic. “‘Feeling our feelings’ comes from the words a little boy called Zeke said to me some thirty years ago when he was four,” Brann writes in her preface. “I was swinging him in a park in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and not doing it right. ‘Swing me higher,’ he said, ‘I want to feel my feelings.’ The phrase stuck with me; you might say it festered in my mind; it agitated questions: Why do we all want to feel our feelings, so generally that people ‘not in touch’ with them are thought to be in need of therapy? What feeling was swinging high inducing? Was it an exultation of the body or an exhilaration of the soul? When he wanted to be feeling his feelings, was there a difference between the general feeling, the mere consciousness of being affected, and his particular feelings, the distinguishable affects?—as, when you sing a song, there is a difference between the singing done and the song sung—or is there?” The Main Street Manifesto By Michael Waldock (SFGI03) Ailemo Books (2009) Michael Waldock’s The Main Street Manifesto is a call to ordinary citizens to rise up to the challenge of getting the country back on track by making a series of “bite-sized” ﬁxes. Waldock calls for “good old-fashioned American fairness and practicality,” as well as a need to re- {Biblioﬁle} examine “how we live, what we manufacture, what we buy, and what we can do to rebuild our failing economy from the bottom up.” With more than 70 percent of our GDP composed of consumer spending, the United States faces permanent trade imbalances and a national debt that will continue to grow. At the same time, only 10 percent of Americans are working in manufacturing, compared to one-third of Americans 50 years ago. Waldock sees other threats in the growing gap between the rich and the poor, as well as failures in education, from grade school through college. As a former CEO and president of the U.S. subsidiary of The Body Shop, a retail cosmetics company known as the original “company with a conscience,” Waldock is familiar with activism. During his tenure at The Body Shop, he initiated a program to employ the home-bound disabled and gave staff paid leave time to work with community programs of their choice. “I know we can ﬁx our economic and social problems,” Waldock said, “and it is the Main Street activists who will rebuild and relocalize our economy.” In this slim volume, Waldock passionately addresses several major issues: the moral imperative for a free press, the need for universal health care, the role of lobbyists, the outsourcing of jobs, rebuilding the country’s manufacturing base, and the danger the United States faces of becoming a plutocracy, among others. Each chapter addresses a particular issue, often giving a brief background history and citing several studies to supplement Waldock’s view, before going on to end with a set of recommended action items. Among them: send a copy of the Constitution to a friend and post parts of it online, watch a video on emerging democracy in China, write your legislators to express support for healthcare reform, and read The Economist. — Babak Zarin (A11) Culture Club By Katherine Wolff (AGI93) University of Massachusetts Press, 2009 Founded in 1807, the successor to a literary club called the Anthology Society, the Boston Athenaeum occupies an important place in the early history of American intellectual life. At ﬁrst a repository for books, to which works of art were later added, the Athenaeum attracted over time a following that included such literary luminaries as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry James. Yet from the outset, Katherine Wolff shows, the Boston Athenaeum was more than a library; it was also a breeding ground for evolving notions of cultural authority and American identity. Though governed by the Boston elite, who promoted it as a way of strengthening their own clout in the city, the early Athenaeum reﬂected conﬂicting and at times contradictory aims and motives on the part of its membership. On the one hand, by drawing on European aesthetic models to reinforce an exalted sense of mission, Athenaeum leaders sought to establish themselves as guardians of a nascent American culture. On the other, they struggled to balance their goals with their concerns about an increasingly democratic urban populace. As the Boston Athenaeum opened its doors to women as well as men outside its inner circle, it eventually began to deﬁne itself against a more accessible literary institution, the Boston Public Library. An independent scholar and researcher, Wolff holds a PhD in American literature and history from Boston University. x { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } �29 {Alumni Profile} Giving Women a Running Start Kelly Keenan Trumpbour (AGI06) ﬁnds her niche in advocacy. by Rosemary Harty hy hasn’t there been a female president of the United States yet? For the women who founded the nonproﬁt organization Running Start, there’s a simple answer: women are still not running for elected ofﬁce—whether the town council or the U.S. Senate—in numbers anywhere close to men. That means fewer women gain the credentials they need to win national ofﬁces. As senior director of Running Start, Kelly Keenan Trumpbour (AGI06) is working to change that. She helps guide a nonpartisan organization that works to plant the seeds for a political career in the minds of young women. “This is not about bashing men,” says Trumpbour. “It’s a pipeline issue.” Trumpbour always wanted to do “meaningful, change-the-world work.” After ﬁnishing her degree at the University of Detroit Mercy’s College of Liberal Arts, she worked with Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer on urban revitalization projects throughout Michigan. She moved to Maryland to attend the University of Maryland Law School, knowing she was interested in advocacy rather than “typical ﬁrm work.” After graduation, she worked on a senate subcommittee on Capitol Hill and lobbied on behalf of female business owners as Public Policy Chair for the Maryland chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners. Her public affairs experience led her to write a book, Working at Interest Groups and Nonproﬁts, to introduce others to a satisfying line of work. “A lot of young people say ‘I want to go out and make a difference in the world,’ ” Trumpbour says. “They often get stumped trying to envision what a job like that looks like.” Working on the book brought her into contact with Susannah Wellford Shakow, the former president and co-founder of Women Under Forty Political Action Committee (WUFPAC), created to funnel ﬁnancial support to women running for ofﬁce. What Shakow and many others learned as they help women gain ofﬁce was that “the biggest thing that was holding women back was really themselves.” It was W Kelly Keenan Trumpbour (AGI06) helps lead an initiative to introduce young women to careers in politics. more difﬁcult for women to see that committing to a career in politics didn’t rule out other choices, such as starting a family. Trumpbour was invited to sit on WUFPAC’s board, and that led her to join with Shakow and others to create Running Start. “What we decided was that it was much more important go back and talk to girls in high school and in college to get women thinking about running for ofﬁce in their 20s.” The group’s ﬁrst step was to create, in 2007, a ﬁve-day summer leadership program for high school girls. They managed to draw 25 girls to their inaugural session at American University, a ﬁve-day program in which elected ofﬁcials, speechwriters, campaign managers, even unsuccessful candidates, offered a view of life in politics. The next year, the program expanded to 50 students, and 300 women applied. “That seemed really impressive to us,” recalls Trumpbour. “Then we had a presidential election.” Having a woman and an African-American man vie for the Democratic nomination in the 2008 presidential race changed everything, Trumpbour says. For the 2009 class, Running Start received 30,000 applications for the 50 slots in the program. “It was mind-blowing,” Trumpbour says. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } Whether any of the young women who come to Running Start’s Washington program will be a congresswoman, or even a local school board president, is hard to say. But Trumpbour is impressed with the ambition, skills, and experience these women have developed at such a young age. One woman, a Native American, aspires to be a leader in her tribe. Another participant launched a bicoastal conference on interfaith relations. While law school prepared her well for a career in advocacy, St. John’s gave her something else, Trumpbour says. There was a moment in law school when Trumpbour realized, “this is not fun, this is boring, and hard.” Then she ran across St. John’s and its dual degree program with Maryland, which allows students to obtain simultaneously the Master of Arts in Liberal Arts and Juris Doctor degrees. “I couldn’t believe it—you sit on this beautiful campus and talk about books.” With three GI segments to complete, Trumpbour enrolled in her ﬁrst semester at St. John’s after her ﬁrst year of law school, her second after she passed the bar exam, and her third after she completed an MBA at Johns Hopkins University. Whenever she felt overcome by drudgery, her husband, Jason, would suggest, “you need a semester at St. John’s.” Philosophy and literature, great discussions, and her tutors always restored her. At 31, Trumpbour hasn’t ruled out running for ofﬁce. For now, though, she’s happy to be a mentor and a teacher to others. Although she ﬁnds it frustrating to see women lead other countries when a woman has not yet achieved the highest ofﬁce in the United States, she believes it won’t be long before a woman stands on the steps of the Capitol to take the oath of ofﬁce. “It is still an uphill battle for women,” Trumpbour says. “But I hope what we’ve shown is that it doesn’t have to be scary.” x �30 {Alumni Notes} 1937 JACK OWENS sends regards from Naples, Florida, where he and his wife, Peg, recently celebrated 65 years of marriage. He writes: “I am still trying to comprehend the philosophy course I took with Dr. Bernhard in 1936.” 1943 was a 36-year age difference between us, but he was always younger than his years. (P.S. He also tried hang-gliding.)” 1950 T YLDEN WESTCOTT STREETT received a Medal of Honor from Maryland Institute College of Art. He continues to teach young sculptors interested in human anatomy and ﬁgurative sculpture. BURTON ARMSTRONG notes that he met his wife, Peggy, while at St. John’s. “We are now both 88, have been married for 66 years, and have lived in Charlottesville, Va., since 1982.” 1946 PETER WEISS gave a talk on June 26 at Humboldt University, Berlin, on “The International Law Obligation for Nuclear and General Disarmament.” 1960 This note from KATHERINE HAAS was too much fun as is to edit: “Am still teaching full time, also teaching six classes per week of private classes in Chinese, studying Arabic (sixth year), brain tanned buffalo hide on rez this summer. Bird researcher for 23 years summers, presented at AOL in PA in August, loving life…Running out of breath.” JOHN LANE is enjoying retirement 1949 Charlotte Anderson passed along this news to the college: “My husband, CLARENCE ANDERSON, philosopher, accountant, business manager and dean of ﬁnancial services and administration at Patrick Henry Community College in Marinsville, Va., scuba-diver, swimming teacher at the YMCA, little league baseball coach, boxing instructor, teacher of philosophy, runner, past member of a rescue squad, graduate of an automechanics program, owner of a patent, registered nurse, and airplane pilot, died peacefully of pneumonia at the age of 87 on July 1, 2009. He always spoke proudly of his education at St. John’s and was a true St. Johnnie. He loved to argue and discuss. The Great Books program enriched his life and, indirectly, mine as well. There and staying involved in the community. He is the vice president of the Cascades HOA, which with 6,000 households, is the largest HOA in Northern Virginia. He is also vice chairman of the Loudoun County Board of Equalization, which hears appeals from taxpayers protesting their real estate tax assessments— 2,700 appeals this year. “As I’m writing this item, anticipating the arrival today of stepson Jim, with six of his Naval Academy classmates and their spouses, staying with us for a couple of days on their way to their 25th class reunion at the Academy. I spent 23 years in the Air Force and am a St. Johnnie. Who would have thought Marie and I would be hosting a Naval Academy reunion bunch!” 1961 As part of a featured exchange titled “Life Without Lawyers” in its May 14, 2009 issue, The New York Review of Books published a lengthy letter by HARRISON SHEPPARD. His letter, criticizing the book of that name by Philip K. Howard and its review by Anthony Lewis in the April 9, 2009 issue of the NYRB, argued that both the book and the review failed to identify the root cause of abuses in American legal education and practice as attributable to the dominance of an adversarial “warmaking” model as opposed to a “problem-solving, peacemaking model” of the kind Yale Law School Dean Anthony Kronman identiﬁes as the “lawyer-statesman ideal.” Sheppard maintains his solo civil law practice in San Francisco while continuing his nonﬁction writing and editing. His last published book was Too Much for Our Own Good: The Consumeritis Epidemic. He is at work editing the manuscript of a distinguished physician concerning the need to separate the teachings of dogmatic religion from reasonable moral judgments, and a second manuscript relating to the early career of Elvis Presley. 1962 MARIA FLASCHBERGER BROOKS writes: “My husband, James O. Brooks, died September 12. He was my second husband. We had a wonderful marriage and I miss him terribly. He had a lengthy illness with Parkinson’s, but was able to deal with it very well. He taught at Villanova University in mathematics and computer science. I taught at Valley Forge Military College, computer science. I retired early so we could spend more time together, and we traveled quite a bit as well. We have two children, our son is in Manhattan, also in computer science working in industry, our daughter is married in northern New Jersey.” 1963 DAVID MICHAEL TRUSTY has been traveling all across the country on Amtrak. He lives 10 minutes away from the Santa Fe station at Lang, N.M. He is enjoying train travel. After more than 30 years in advertising, JED STAMPLEMAN is now retired and enjoying as many weeks on Cape Cod as the weather will allow. He is also participating in monthly seminars held by the New York alumni chapter. He went through a bout of cancer but is doing ﬁne, and the doctors are happy with his recovery. Best to all at St. John’s. 1964 Earlier this fall JEREMY LEVEN was in Royaumont Abbey outside Paris for six weeks as a guest of the French government with three other Hollywood screenwriters, including Frank Pierson (Dog Day Afternoon, Cool Hand Luke, etc.). “I’m writing Girl On A Bicycle to be shot in Paris, produced by Max Weideman and Quirin Berg (Oscar and César for The Lives Of Others). My Sister’s Keeper came out in June, did well in U.S., considering it’s a story of a girl dying of cancer, and very, well, foreign; also Time Traveler’s Wife (uncredited, but worked on for two years) did well. In the works: novel for Knopf, The Savior and the Singing Machine, will be done by end of year with any luck; play on Francois Premier for Comedie de Theatre Champs Elysees in Paris is in works, but lots of work, so who knows when; ﬁlm of true story of theft of Mona Lisa in 1911 (Lovers, Liars and Thieves) now casting, hoping for Paris shoot 2010 or 2011. Wife and ﬁve kids continued on page 32 { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } �31 {Alumni Profile} How Aristotle Would Make Candles Martin Marklin (A85) creates symbols of hope and peace. by Patricia Dempsey W photos courtesy of m.g. marklin hen Pope Benedict XVI was preparing for a visit to the United States in April 2008, Martin Marklin (A85) got a telephone call from a monsignor in New York. “The Pope needs a candle,” he told Marklin, an artisan who specializes in candles for religious services. Marklin was given two weeks to craft the 5-foot, 65pound candle, inlaid with the Pontiff’s coat of arms. Pope Benedict lit the candle during a ceremony at Ground Zero to honor the victims of the September 11th attacks. “It is very rare that the Pope lights his own candle—this is usually done for him,” Marklin says. “So this was an honor.” There were numerous technical requirements for the custom candle, including the inlay, a “secret process” Marklin has perfected over the years. Also, the candle needed to burn well for at least 20 minutes and be draft resistant. “I am Aristotelian in my approach—if a candle looks beautiful but doesn’t burn well, it won’t make it,” he says. Marklin added a personal touch to the candle: “I put the initials of my four children on the bottom of the Pope’s candle, as a silent prayer for peace.” Captivated by the craft of inlay since childhood, Marklin experimented in the basement of his parents’ home in St. Louis and began making candles while attending St. John’s. After he made a candle for St. Mary’s Church in Annapolis, one of the priests, Vincent Dwyer, encouraged him to start a business. He told Marklin that no Detailed handwork is the hallmark of Marklin Candle Designs, which supplies half of of the nation’s cathedrals with hand-dipped beeswax candles. one was producing artistic candles, gave him the seed money to start his business, and put him in touch with contacts. While at St. John’s, Marklin learned another trade that helped him become a candle maker. During his junior and senior years, Marklin worked in the college print shop under the tutelage of Chris Colby (HA08). That gave Marklin the skills to work in his brother’s print shop in New Hamphsire while he launched his candle business. Today Marklin Candle Designs is based in rural Contoocook, New Hampshire, and Marklin shares the 50,000-square-foot manufacturing center with his wife, four children, and about two dozen employees. The company supplies more than half of the nation’s cathedrals with custom, handdipped beeswax candles. “Our designs struck a chord [because] they are more inventive,” explains Marklin. “We are liturgical artisans trying to make a busi- Martin Marklin (A85) started his candle business as a student in Annapolis. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } ness, so we are in touch with how we worship.” Marklin also recently opened a small retail shop in the old barn that is part of Marklin Candle Design. The shop includes accessories designed by noted children’s book illustrator Tomie de Paola as well as a new line, MarkMoments, of custom, handdipped candles for lay people. “There is something evocative and life giving about a candle. When a ceremony is over, you take the registry book, the Mass card, put them in a drawer, but a candle you keep as a symbol.” Last year, Marklin got another telephone call from a church leader, this time, a bishop who wanted to congratulate him. He had spotted one of Marklin’s large paschal candles in the Clint Eastwood ﬁlm Gran Torino. It’s standing next to the casket in the opening funeral scene, ﬁlmed on location at a church in Grosse Point, Michigan. Whether on a movie set, at Ground Zero, or in a private home, Marklin hopes all his candles “are tapping into what we do best—creating this light, these symbols of hope, spiritual life.” x �32 {Alumni Notes} continued from page 30 and their spouses all well, employed, healthy, happy, and that’s what counts.” 1965 JAN H. BLITS recently published New Heaven, New Earth: Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra (Lexington Books). It’s his sixth book. He is also the recipient of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education’s ﬁrst Prometheus Award for his work protecting the rights of students at the University of Delaware, where he teaches. 1966 This past January, IAN HARRIS traveled to Sri Lanka to give a keynote speech at a peace education conference. “On the way home I lectured on the growth of peace studies at the University of Pisa and Florence in Italy.” 1968 BRUCE (SF) and Ina BALDWIN happily announce the birth of ﬁrst grandchild Gavin on July 18 to daughter-in-law Ashlea and son Ian. CARL BOSTEK (SF) is ﬁnishing a work assignment in Kona, Hawaii, and returning home to Anchorage for three weeks before returning to New Zealand, where he hopes to get his schooner back in the water after a major reﬁt. Next summer, he’ll be back in Alaska working. In between, who knows? “Pretty interesting year,” writes JOHN FARMER (A). “Where to start? Enjoyed going back to St. John’s for the Piraeus program. Went to D.C. as a member of a Food and Drug Administration committee I was on. I pushed the envelope and took up golf! Trying to keep up my practice while getting older is a challenge. The best way to travel is to visit friends, I found. The chance that I will climb Mt. Everest or swim the English Channel is getting smaller. Now can get senior citizen coffee at McDonald’s.” CHARLES WATSON (A) reports that his eldest son, Ivan, is now a CNN international reporter based in Istanbul. Charles was also the recipient of a minor award at the most recent American Society of Anesthesiologists Meeting, when the Malignant Hyperthermia Association of the U.S. presented him with the Malignant Hyperthermia Hotline Partnership Award for working together with/assisting another physician (an anesthesiologist in California) manage a patient with malignant hyperthermia crisis during anesthesia. “A longstanding (more than 20-year) project of mine is voluntary service as a phone consultant for both the malignant hyperthermia (MH) and the neurolept/malignant syndrome information service (NMSIS) Hotlines,” writes Watson. “A pleasure to help others treat patients with special problems. It has brought me together with physicians and nurses from various special areas of practice (anesthesia, surgery, critical care, internal medicine, psychiatry, dental surgery, etc.) from around the world.” 1970 MAUREEN BARDEN (A) has been the Department of Justice’s prisoner reentry coordinator in Philadelphia since October 2006, working primarily with a federal reentry court program. After many years as a prosecutor, she is happy to be using her skills to help people stay out of prison. BENJAMIN BARNEY (SF) writes: “I am living at my house in Lukachukai in the middle of the Navajo Nation. If you should heading through Arizona get in touch and stay over. I am in Northeast Arizona in the Chinle Valley (Canyon del Chelly area). I am no longer working at the Dine College. Right now I am reading, writing, and hosting relatives and friends. The winter ceremonial calendar started the ﬁrst week of October; the yeibicheii and ﬁre dances are taking place each week until end of December. I try to get to most of them as well as other Native festivals and major events. Where are all those people who graduated in 1970 from Santa Fe campus with me?” LES MARGULIS (A) has been in Mumbai now for almost six months running an ad agency. “Loving Indian food and the colorful dress.” He wore a “spiffy-looking” outﬁt to celebrate Diwali. He says, “ It really is a ‘Marriage Suit’ and it must have worked as I had four proposals before noon.” 1971 TRAVIS PRICE (SF) was just awarded Alumnus of the Year at University of New Mexico School of Architecture and Planning. 1972 DAVID S. CAREY (A), emeritus professor of philosophy at Whitman College, received the George Ball Award for Excellence in Advising at the end of the 20082009 academic year. Carey, who joined the Whitman faculty in 1989, recently retired. 1973 After writing a how-to management book in 2006 called Management by Baseball, JEFF ANGUS (SF) spent the next couple of years doing workshops, seminars, and speaking to groups while gearing back his management consulting practice. Now he’s back to { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } consulting work full time, currently away from his home in Seattle, working mostly in San Francisco. “I’m reading a ton, he says. “Last year I re-read Lucretius and all of Herodotus—not just the seminar bits, alternating ﬁction and nonﬁction, particularly enjoying Thomas Pynchon, William T. Vollmann & George Soros. I practice guitar and I’m somewhat active in Society For American Baseball Research. My granddaughter just turned four, so she’s old enough to be entertained by my humor and the fact that I can run faster than anyone else she knows, and concurrently too young to have decided I’m full of crap—the perfect age.” JAN LISA HUTTNER (A) is the founder of WITASWAN: (Women in the Audience Supporting Women Artists Now!) 1974 JON HUNNER (SF) just published a biography, J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Cold War, and the Atomic West, through University of Oklahoma Press. He is now on a semester sabbatical from New Mexico State University, traveling, writing, and reading. Jon and Mary Ellen’s son Harley is now a Peace Corps volunteer in Cameroon. DEBORAH ROSS (A) has published an historical novel, Konrad and Albertina. It’s based on the true story of one of Puget Sound’s pioneer families. Deborah lives in Olympia, Wash., and summers in Fox Harbour, Nova Scotia, with husband Brian Hovis and their teenaged son, Jamie. 1975 “Since we are now empty nesters my wife, Patti, and I moved from the Westchester County (N.Y.) suburbs back into Manhattan, continued on page 34 �{Alumni Notes} 33 Passionate About Pinot Zach Rasmuson (A95) ﬁnds clarity in wine. by Deborah Spiegelman T he chronicle of how Zach that the area offered the right growing Rasmuson (A95) came to conditions for ﬁrst-class pinot noir. take up residence in In August 2003, Rasmuson became Philo, California, poputhe winemaker at Goldeneye Winery, lation 1,098, could easily where he now is also vice president and be called The Tale of the general manager. The process of Serendipitous Work-Study Job. producing pinot noir is one “of Rasmuson grew up in rural Massaminimal intervention, of ﬁnesse not chusetts, in a bedroom community of muscle,” he explains on the winery’s Worcester. He left high school early to Web site. “Pinot noir reﬂects its terroir attend the Armand Hammer United with remarkable clarity,” he adds. This World College of the American West, understanding of place manifested in in Las Vegas, New Mexico. Before the the wine he attributes to Schoener’s year was out, however, Rasmuson realtutelage. ized that this was not the right ﬁt. Rasmuson also credits his St. John’s Succumbing to his father’s repeated education with keeping him patient and entreaties, he applied for admission to humble in the face of the challenges St. John’s. and rewards of winemaking. “I learned “I had no idea of what I was getting to focus on the key principles,” he says. into,” Rasmuson admits. Ultimately, Now recognized as one of the top attending St. John’s turned out to be pinot noir regions in North America, “the most important thing I did.” the Anderson Valley is “a hot spot,” Rasmuson landed a coveted worksays Rasmuson. While the movie Sideways helped propel pinot noir into the study job. On Friday afternoons, public consciousness, Rasmuson works he worked for John Agresto, then assiduously to maintain superior president of the Santa Fe campus, quality. He keeps vine yields low and who hosted gatherings for board selects only the ﬁnest fruit for the members and other distinguished estate wines. visitors. Rasmuson found himself Having traded rural Massachusetts, pouring a glass of Stag’s Leap for the via small-town Annapolis, for a still winery’s founder, Warren Winiarski, Meeting a tutor who loved wine and a board member remote and rugged Anderson Valley, a pioneer in the American wine who made some of the world’s best wine set Zach Rasmuson says: “I wouldn’t live industry. Rasmuson (A95) on the path to viticulture. anywhere else.” His young children Rasmuson, who regularly particiattend a one-room schoolhouse, and he pated in a wine study group hosted by and his wife appreciate the peace and Abe Schoener (then a tutor, now determined in the vineyard, not the winery. quiet of life close to the land. himself a winemaker) began to lobby Grounded in the production of Bordeaux In a tidy switch of roles, Rasmuson Winiarski for a job. Persistence paid off, varieties, Rasmuson found himself natuhelped his former wine study host pursue and, after graduation, Rasmuson drove rally gravitating to pinot noir. Pursuing his his own passion. He got Schoener a job at straight from campus to Winiarski’s Napa growing passion for the variety, he left Stag’s Leap, when the tutor was on sabbatValley-based operations. “I guess Stag’s Leap in 1988 to become assistant ical. Schoener became quickly hooked, [Winiarski] ﬁgured that if I didn’t make it winemaker at Robert Sinskey Vineyards. decided to stay in California, and now has as a winemaker, I could be a carpenter and Two years later, he came to the Anderson his own label, Scholium Project. build sheds,” says Rasmuson. Valley as winemaker for Husch Vineyards. The irony in this business, Rasmuson Working at Stag’s Leap, however, proved “It was an adventure, taking oneself out explains, “is that we work hard—blue jeans to be Rasmuson’s apprenticeship. “I of Napa,” Rasmuson recalls. At the time, and boots—and then there’s this other studied what I could, focusing on the vitithe Anderson Valley, which cuts across the lifestyle, where we get to meet lots of people culture side,” he explains. Rasmuson took coastal region of Mendocino County, was and have great conversations.” And, he an extension course at the University of known principally for its timber and marimight add, drink some ﬁne wine. x California-Davis—recognized as the center juana production. “It was evolutionary for for oenological studies in the United me to start at Stag’s Leap and end up in the States—and he learned from Stag’s Leap Anderson Valley,” he adds. “I believed in winemaker Michael Salacci that quality is the region.” In particular, he was certain { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } �34 continued from page 32 where my daily morning commute is now an 18-minute walk past Matt, Meredith, Ann and Al doing the Today Show on Rockefeller Plaza,” writes GERSHON EKMAN (A). “My oldest daughter graduated from Michigan and is teaching English in Nanjing, China, while she decides whether or not to go to law school, which is what college graduates do when they can’t decide what to do after college. The twin girls are sophomores at Lehigh and Tulane. The Great Wall Street Meltdown has made for an interesting and busy year and a half, career-wise; so far I’ve managed to hang on to my job. ISAIAH LADERMAN (A75) and I frequently have lunch together to discuss the state of the world. See you at the 35th reunion!” On June 6, CYNTHIA KIRSCHNER SWISS (A) graduated from the Dietetic Technician Program at Baltimore City Community College. “On October 19 I started my new job at Medifast Weight Loss center as a member of the Nutrition Support Team. I answer e-mails and phone calls from all over the country. I give advice on weight loss, daily nutritional requirements, and food composition. I am enjoying my new job.” K.C. VICTOR (A) has been in Los Angeles for 12 years now. She is still recruiting lawyers, as she has done for 25 years. “Still liking what I do. Still married to my ﬁrst husband (the wonderful Irv Hepner who some of you know), now 31 years. Still a mom (of Kate) 24 years and a grandmother of Bailey (5 years). Kate and Bailey live about three hours away by car so we see them often. The only current dog (one of life’s sad facts is that dogs live shorter lives than we do) is a black Standard Poodle puppy born last Thanksgiving. We named her Laska after Levin’s great dog in Anna Karenina. I am in regular contact with SETH GINSBERG (A75), G. KAY BISHOP (A75), MARION YOUNG CONDON HUISTIS (A75), JOHN HUSTIS (A76) and FELIX LESLIE (A98). I {Alumni Notes} met Felix after college through the law biz. I encourage each of my friends to write their own notes here soon. My husband, who wanted to go to St. John’s but did not have what he calls ‘enough courage’ is basically an unofﬁcial alum,” she notes. “Irv attends alumni seminars and others think of him as a St. Johnnie. In other words, he knows how to read and how to listen. Most recently we put together a group of some Johnnies and some others to tackle Ulysses, slowly. Irv and I and almost all the others are reading this great work for the ﬁrst time. If you are in Los Angeles and want to join us, it is not too late!” Books in Baltimore J (class of 1953) and Trudy KAUFFMAN have formed a foundation to supply Baltimore’s inner-city elementary schools with library books. “This is charity at its best,” writes Joe. “Children who have books and have read them donate these books to schools where decent libraries do not exist. Kids are involved with the true meaning of charity: to give something that you have cherished. We started in May 2007, and to date we have delivered more than 12,000 books. All of this is being accomplished without money. What little operating costs are, Trudy and I cover. This can be done everywhere; if you are in the Baltimore area, please join us in obtaining books. Visit our website: trudyjoe.org.” x OE government e-mail, friends and others can contact me at annibuggirl@gmail.com.” 1976 CAROL DOCKHAM (SF) is a doctoral student at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. Her special interest is the Russian Orthodox Church during the Soviet era. CLIFF ADAMS (A) is now married to a German woman who he met in Erding, Germany (just outside Munich) where he has been living for the past eight years. He was working for a major airline computer services company, now he works at home, developing websites, Web 2.0 technology, and creating technology learning materials. On the hobby side, he is involved in a number or projects that came out of his association with Landmark Education. (e.g. www.israelpalestineproject.com). The St. John’s program is still very present in everything he does. 1978 ANN T. SCHWARTZ (A) writes: “After almost 12 years, Andre and I are contemplating a move from Maryland. With my kids grown, the world is our oyster. Hoping for something that involves sand, surf and at least for now, no weapons training. Since I will be losing my 1979 In accordance with the Annapolis class pact made at Homecoming (30 years!), KATHY BUCK (A) is submitting some of the highlights for those who weren’t there. They were honored by the presence of Dr. Stevens, Dr. Silverman, the Dr.’s Howard, and Dr. Fine. Nathan and Bruce celebrated four years together in Chicago (mazel tov!) Marge A. revealed the real reason for taking a year off. Despite legal battles over royalties, M., R., and Kathy continue to rake in proﬁts from their invention and will be able to retire to the Caribbean as planned. You can see her house search in the spring on House Hunters International (don’t pretend you aren’t watching). It is her hope that Raoul will be released in time to join her before it is too late. From MARIE RANEY (A): “JON (RANEY, A74) and I sailed to Hawaii last summer on our 40year-old sailboat and CHUCK HURT (A79) helped Jon bring her back to Bellingham from Hawaii that fall. That was a fabulous trip and you can read about it at our website http://svphoenix.net . While we repair and regroup from that trip we continue to work in { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } Bellingham, Wash., and prepare our off-the-grid home on Lasqueti Island, B.C. As soon as the Bellingham house is sold and gainful employment sloughed off, we plan to replicate the Odyssey including the side trip to Hades. Please send any thoughts you have on this intended voyage to Jon, the cunning, and Marie at phoenix@svphoenix.net.” 1980 GERALDINE GLOVER (SF) has taken a faculty position with New Mexico Highlands University for fall 2009. Emily has another year of pre-school before heading on to “Big School.” Santa Fe is still treating them well, and they are happy to be there. LISA GINSBERG ROSENBLUM (A) recently accepted a position as director of the Sunnyvale (Calif.) Public Library. Earlier this year Lisa was named one of the American Library Association’s “2009 Movers and Shakers” for her innovative work modernizing the Hayward Public Library and jointly managing the Library and Neighborhood Services departments. �35 {Alumni Notes} 1981 ALINE BRANDAUER (SF) is living in Santa Fe with her husband, Charles, daughter Sarah (10) and two cats. She is doing a variety of communication and arts projects through her company, Vani Productions. She also is part of STEVE WARSHAWER’s (SF78) Beneﬁcial Farms CSA and wants to sing his praises for helping to develop local food systems. nately, I crashed on the bike leg and sustained a hurt shoulder, broken ribs, and a deep laceration on my hip. The injuries made it somewhat unpleasant to ﬁnish the bike leg and then run the marathon up Mount Gaustad. I also had to replace my beautiful bike as the frame was cracked in two places. Kirsten agreed to let me apply for a place in next year’s race, this time without a crash.” 1984 1982 With daughter Alyssa graduating from the University of Chicago and son Sam attending MICA in the fall, LESLIE SMITH ROSEN (A) is an empty-nester. Glad to hear from so many SJC friends on Facebook and happy to see more! 1983 Last August, DAVID CARNES (A) completed the Norseman—the world’s hardest ironman triathlon— in just over 17 hours. “Unfortu- PETER GREEN (A) is living in New York’s Washington Heights and loving New York. He’s a world news reporter at Bloomberg News and was heading off to Prague last summer to interview Vaclav Havel, the former Czech president, and then wander around the East for a few weeks. He is looking forward to the next reunion! HAROLD HUGHES (A) just returned from a year in London running Europe and the UK: “Since no one was covering Moscow and Morocco, I was able to go there as well. Working in New York. Kids are 20 and 16 now. She is a sophomore at Penn State Biking for Bishop: Cyclists Wanted F RED ELLIS (A) is looking for other Johnnies interested in riding in the Paris-Brest-Paris randonnée with him in honor of Jeff Bishop (HA96), former vice president for Advancement at St. John’s, who completed the cycling event in 1995. The ride is 1200 kilometers in 90 hours or less. Anyone who is interested should contact gfe409@yahoo.com. The next randonnée is in August 2011. x playing Division 1 lacrosse, and he is a sophomore in high school. We are very sophomoric this year. Living in Annapolis (can’t beat life on the Severn anywhere in the world). I average three nights a week in NYC in an apartment at the Essex House, so if you are in NYC look me up—especially you, Pie, if you ever get out of Atlanta!” From BETH (LOHR) KOOLBECK (A): “We are expecting that our oldest child, SPC Daniel Koolbeck, will be returning from 11 months of duty in Baghdad this December. My husband, Greg, and I continue to teach our six children-yet-athome. I loved seeing everyone at the SJC Annapolis ’84 reunion.” JOHN C. WRIGHT (A) and L. JAGI LAMPLIGHTER WRIGHT (A85) are now the proud parents of a daughter. This October, they adopted a 13-year-old girl from China. Ping-Ping Evelyn Wright joins their three sons, Orville, Roland, and Juss, making the Wright family a family of six in all. about to begin translation work on a book about the no-name brand, MUJI, to be published by Rizzoli. I also recently ﬁnished writing two dozen entries for The Phaidon Archive of Graphic Design, due out next year. My family now includes myself, my husband, one kindergartener, three teenagers (one a legal adult), a dog, two cats and a goldﬁsh (if it’s still alive). Anyone visiting the Bay area, be sure to look us up!” PAUL SCHATZBERG (AGI) is retired, but also teaching at Anne Arundel Community College. JEFFREY L. WILSON (A) serves as Associate Dean for Faculty Development of the Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, where he has been teaching philosophy since 1995. He recently returned from a visit to El Salvador to learn more about how the Jesuit mission is enacted in Central America. 1986 1985 JAN CONLIN (SF) writes: “I have been promoted to fulltime mom to my 8 1/2 month old son, Patrick, while I wait out the recession.” “We’ve settled well into life in Northern California,” writes MAGGIE (KINSER) HOLE (A), “and following my mom’s sudden death due to lung cancer, I’ve ﬁnally begun to regroup. I’ve been writing nonﬁction, mostly about design and architecture, for almost 25 years now, but for the past 10 years, I have also been working with a partner in Japan translating design-related text and the spoken word from Japanese to English. We’re about to launch our website to offer our services far and wide. We’ll be helpful to Englishspeaking researchers, editors and creative professionals who want to ﬁnd out more about Japanese designers, etc., and to Japanese creative professionals who want to reach a wider audience. We are { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } “My family and I still love living in North Bend, Wash., at the foot of Mt. Si,” writes LINDA GREZ (A). “We’re launching a new business, Propele Electric Boat Motors this winter. Propele specializes in quiet, lightweight electric motors for small craft such as canoes, dinghies, rowboats and ﬁshing boats. We hope to see them in the Chesapeake soon.” MICHAEL SILITCH (SF) is happily living and working as a mountain and ski guide in Chamonix, France, with his wife, Nina, and their two boys, Anders 3.5, and Birken 5.5. “Come ski with me this winter,” he writes. Visit www.highalpine.com 1987 CELESTE DINUCCI (A) is pleased to announce the end of a long and often pointless ordeal that has �36 {Alumni Notes} resulted in the completion of her PhD in English from the University of Pennsylvania. This was made possible, in part, by her winnings from Jeopardy!, though she is still often on the fence about whether this was the best option for their use. Celeste is residing in Philadelphia, trying to decide what she wants to be when she grows up. MICHAEL VITAKIS (A) is spending a year in Dunedin, New Zealand, while his wife, Chiara, completes a master’s in International Studies at the University of Otago. His most recent book, She and I: A Fugue (under his birth name Michael R. Brown), was published by Petrarca Press earlier this year. He is working on several other projects and welcomes e-mail from all Johnnies via his website: www.fuguewriter.com. 1988 Magellan. I am now working on an article about Kent’s work in the region, as well as laying the groundwork for an exhibition sometime in 2013 or 2014. I’ll be returning to Tierra del Fuego to complete my research next month.” JAMES F.X. O’GARA (A) is working for the Department of State in Kandahar, Afghanistan, at an intelligence fusion cell targeting corruption related to the insurgency. He writes: “The privations of life in southern Afghanistan have been softened by his discovery that a colleague at the fusion cell studied political philosophy and has mild Straussian leanings, i.e., he reads books carefully, but does not number the sentences. For reasons of national security, the mildly Straussian analyst’s identity cannot be disclosed, other than to say that he is a former student of [University of Texas professor] Tom Pangle.” BARBARA HAHN (A) received her “I’m taking a break from my corporate career to do research on the Tierra del Fuego work of the American painter, Rockwell Kent (1882-1971),” writes FIELDING DUPUY (A). “After Kent’s return from South America in 1923, he was among the most famous artists in the U.S., becoming an all-around cultural phenomenon, known equally for his paintings as for his writings, illustrations (Moby-Dick, Candide, Leaves of Grass, etc.), and his adventures to cold climates. His leftist social activism in the post-war years, however, led to a McCarthy Commission subpoena, revocation of his passport, and a swift decline in his popularity. The Tierra del Fuego travels came at an inﬂection period in the artist’s career and yet they have never been fully studied, perhaps because the region itself is so forbidding. Last winter, I spent two arduous months in Tierra del Fuego, retracing Kent’s route and locating the scenes he depicted in his canvases and in the book he wrote about his travels, Voyaging: Southward from the Strait of PhD in business history and the history of technology from UNCChapel Hill in May 2006, and has since been on the tenure track at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. Her current manuscript examines the interactions between the tobacco industry and tobacco agriculture over three centuries— but, perhaps ironically, she no longer smokes. She would love to hear from old friends at b.hahn@alumni.unc.edu. KIM PAFFENROTH (A) has a new anthology of zombie stories available: The World Is Dead. Unlike most all zombie tales, stories in this collection are set signiﬁcantly after the dead have risen and devoured all of humanity. Put it on your list of zombie reading alongside Kim’s other works, as well as the enormously popular Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, by Seth Grahame-Smith. 1989 MANDY DALTON (A) has moved to Cheverly, Md. “I am still a clown. Business is improving. Too many video projects to keep up with.” DIXIE DAVIS (A) is back in Texas, probably 30 years sooner than she thought she’d be, currently dealing with an aging, disabled mother with diabetes issues and various other “fun” issues that we get to deal with as we get older. After working in the nonproﬁt ﬁeld for many years, she is currently helping a friend rescue his failing small business. She also rescues Nothing Continues to Happen H OWARD MEISTER (A75) was pleased that his chair (Nothing Continues to Happen 1980) was part of the exhibit, “Highlights from the Modern Design Collection: 1900 to the Present” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The chair is part of the museum’s permanent collection. x dogs (nominally Welsh Corgis and Great Danes, but in reality, lots of other stuff that comes along as well). She was very much looking forward to the 20-year anniversary of her Annapolis class this fall. Even though she did not graduate SJC, her years at St. John’s have shaped her tremendously and she treasures the experience. “It’s late 2009, 20 years and a few months after leaving St. John’s. . . and I’m still writing batch code and administering computers,” writes GEORGE ERHARD (SF). “This time, it’s for AT&T U-verse, and I’m responsible for approximately 7,000 servers in 64 cities. Stress? What stress? This is fun. My wife, Claire, and I are living happily ever after in Irving, Texas, and at some point, I hope to get to Santa Fe again, possibly showing up to a seminar in riding leathers.” 1990 N. TATIANA MASTERs (SF) ﬁnished her doctorate in Social Justice and is starting a one-year post-doc position at the University of Washington. Husband JASON SPAINHOWER (also SF90) is still consulting. As always they are in Seattle and like to hear from people. 1991 After three nonﬁction books, J. CHRISTOPH AMBERGER (AGI) is looking forward to the publication of his ﬁrst novel. The Lazarus Smile will be published by Secret Archives Press as an e-book on November 10, and as a paperback by December 15. “I got the idea for the plot back in Annapolis, and it took almost 18 years to put it all down on paper,” he explains. He hints that a tutor will meet with a bad end in his book. continued on page 38 { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } �{Alumni Notes} 37 Slow-Food Salumiere Mark Sanﬁlippo (SFGI00) makes sausage the old-world way. by Patricia Dempsey W hen he was a screenwriter in Los Angeles in the 1990s, Mark Sanﬁlippo converted the empty closets in his apartment into cool, dark places where he could hang homemade salami. “When my friends came to visit they would ask, ‘Why does it smell like the back of a deli in this apartment?’ ” Sanﬁlippo hung the salami as the ﬁnal step in a patient process, in which penicillin mold slowly hardens the fat, readying the salami for slicing. “Americans don’t want mold, but for centuries it’s been done this way, so I make my salami in the old way.” Self-taught as a salumiere, Sanﬁlippo took a chemistry class and “picked the brain” of Armandino Batali, one of the top salami makers in the country. Sanﬁlippo also jumped at the chance to introduce his handmade salami to patrons in a Los Angeles restaurant where the chefs were curing their own meats. “They were tuned into slow food, which basically means using traditional techniques and local products, using foods that are handcrafted and artisan. There is a recipe I created myself called super sutta Sicilian that we served. It’s a nod to my Sicilian roots.” For Sanﬁlippo, who grew up in a secondgeneration Sicilian family, salami and sausage were always more than just food. “On Christmas Eve the Italians celebrate the Feast of the Seven Fishes. They prepare ﬁsh in seven ways: anchovies, salt cod, linguine with clams, things like that. We didn’t do that. Instead, we had homemade sausage. After Mass we would come back and have sausage, bread, and wine. So sausage was always very mysterious and magical to me.” Today, Sanﬁlippo is back to his roots. He now lives in his hometown of St. Louis, where his Sicilian grandfather sold vegetables in the city market. In 2008, he launched his company, Salume Beddu, in St. Louis, where he still pursues the oldworld way, albeit now in a commercial kitchen. Sanﬁlippo creates fresh artisan salume–Italian for all salted and cured pork products—and fresh salsiccia (sausages) and sells them at local farmers markets. He also makes Roman guaniale and pancetta, as well as gan and lardo, “which is a bad name for a very good product,” explains Sanﬁlippo. “It’s delicious—big, thick slabs of fat cured for six months.” His coppa rossa, cured pork shoulder, is ﬂavored with Spanish paprika and New Mexico Chimayó chiles—a nod to his GI days, when he lived in Santa Fe and worked at a bakery. Sanﬁlippo pairs his traditional old-world techniques with local ingredients. Much like farmers who use heirloom plants to preserve certain older varietals and ﬂavors, Sanﬁlippo uses heritage pigs. “I buy from more than one farmer. It’s more trouble but it makes for higher quality. Oscar Meyer will just have one kind of pig that they Only the very best pigs make it into salume made the old-fashwill breed to the max to ioned way by Mark Sanﬁlippo (SFGI00). be as lean as possible, with less ﬂavor, but for pH test to cure the meat. Basically you are maximum proﬁt at the slaughter—and they cooking salami without using heat. And slaughter them weekly. The smaller there is the mold—you have to inoculate it farmers I buy from in Illinois, Iowa, and with penicillin mold and keep it out of the Missouri might have say, 20 pigs, and they light or the fat will not harden. So there’s a breed them to be ﬂavorful and only whole delicate process.” slaughter them when necessary. Instead of As for eating them, he says, “It’s a little dirty pens, my farmers give the pigs space like antipasto. You don’t want to cover up and land to graze on. This is the Italian the ﬂavor. Do what the Sicilians do, serve it model. It makes a difference in the taste.” with crusty bread and a smear of butter, The old-world way can take several and some red wine.” x months, but Sanﬁlippo savors every step. “I love the work itself. It’s very meditative. I ﬁnd a beauty in the product, its deep red color. There are many complicated factors that make it a puzzle: the fermentation, a { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } �38 continued from page 36 {Alumni Notes} Orchids in Scotland JOAN CRIST (A) is serving as assistant professor of Religious Studies at Calumet College of St. Joseph in Northwest Indiana, and coordinator of ecumenism and interreligious affairs for the Catholic Diocese of Gary. Several faculty at Calumet know and admire the St. John’s Program, writes Joan. “ Six of us junior faculty have been tasked with proposing revisions to the general education curriculum, and we’re looking at a renewed emphasis—sort of a back-to-basics— on reading classic texts, possibly including a ‘minimalist canon,’ for the college,” she writes. ON DENNIS (SF82) got married for the second D time last March and lives with his wife on a small island of 150 inhabitants in the Inner Hebrides in Scotland, where they run a large (12bedroom) B&B (www.achamorehouse.com), a small sea-tour operation, and a ﬂower essence business now in its 14th year. “Amongst other things, I grow orchids in a greenhouse here, and we use some of them to produce ﬂower essences which we sell worldwide. Latest project is a set of eight large greeting cards using photos I have taken of the orchids in our greenhouse: www.healingorchirds.com. And I still ﬁnd time to think over the thesis I wrote (when I was at Marlboro in Vermont) on the Odyssey, and the meaning of the verb mnaomai, and the pun on Odysseus’ name I discovered in Book 20. Happy to elaborate if anyone wishes to write.”x JON ARNO LAWSON (A) has a new book of poetry forthcoming, this time for older children. The book is called Think Again, a tortured philosophical love story told in four-line rhymes. It will be published by Kids Can Press in March 2010. STEVEN MCNAMARA and ANGE MLINKO (both A) are moving to Beirut this fall where he will be teaching law and ethics courses in the Olayan School of Business at the American University of Beirut. Ange’s third book of poetry Shoulder Season, is forthcoming from Coffeehouse Press in 2010. Any Johnnies passing through Lebanon are encouraged to get in touch at: sm99@aub.edu.lb. BLAKE SITNEY (SF) recently married. “My wife is Thai and her name was Naraporn Kaichayaphoom, now it is Naraporn Sitney. We live together in Khon Kaen, Thailand. When I am not working on software projects, and she is not working in her beauty salon, we tend to our fruit tree orchard and organic garden. We enjoy traveling when we have free time and we are looking forward to starting a family together.” 1992 ALEC BERLIN (SF) wrapped up three months in the Bay Area performing in Green Day’s American Idiot at the Berkeley Repertory Theater. With a little luck, East Coast performances will follow shortly. He’s also ﬁnishing up a new record. Watch www.alecberlin.com for details. ERIK FISHER (A) is involved in a project that studies the practical possibilities and potential outcomes of ongoing interactions between humanities scholars and laboratory practitioners researching new and emerging science and technologies. The project places liberal artists and social scientists in over 20 laboratories around the world to explore the role of interdisciplinary dialogue in shaping research decisions. Erik would love to hear from fellow alums who have been involved in similar kinds of collaborations, who know of similar programs, and/or who can suggest relevant theoretical or empirical work in this area. Erik’s e-mail is eﬁsher1@asu.edu. After almost a dozen years as a corporate training manager and consultant, MARTHA (MARTI) ACOSTA HOLMES (A) embarked on a new path: “For my midlife crisis I eschewed cosmetic surgery and extramarital affairs and choose to pursue a doctorate in Human and Organizational Learning at George Washington University. I ﬂy to D.C. from Santa Fe every month for classes and have enjoyed catching up with Johnnies in the area. I would love to catch up with more classmates and anyone who is thinking about complex adaptive systems and organizational failures.” “I am full of joy from the birth of my ﬁrstborn,” writes MICHAEL KOPPLE (SF). “Levi Simcha Kopple was born on September 15, 2009, and is now the ‘little man’ of the house. All is well in Los Angeles, and I continue to practice as a trial lawyer.” 1993 JOANNA CORWIN (SF) married David Hassell in the middle of Shenandoah National Park this past summer. She’s still working in the U.S. Copyright Ofﬁce and is newly enjoying the joys of home ownership in Bowie, Md. ELLEN DORNAN (SF) is proud to announce the launch of the Centennial Atlas of Historic New Mexico Maps, at atlas.nmhum.org. This unique resource, developed for the New Mexico Humanities Council to commemorate the centennial of statehood, features 20 historic maps from over four { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } centuries, each annotated with the stories of the people who witnessed the events and places that deﬁned New Mexico during that time, as well as historic photos and illustrations, Native American oral histories, and audio from New Mexico historians and scholars. Lesson plans support use of the Atlas in the classroom, and instruct students in creating their own rich media maps of their community histories and cultural resources, and sharing them as part of the Atlas. KEVIN JOHNSON (A) plans to get married next July, to Sonora Thomas, a body-oriented psychotherapist. “I’m completing a certiﬁcate program in executive coaching. I work at Harvard Medical School in HR, working on programs that are meant to create a more engaging and productive workplace culture. I’m savoring Galsworthy’s Forsyte Saga after seeing the brilliant BBC miniseries based on these novels. And I’m putting my own blend of chai spices in everything I bake—try them in wafﬂes, yum!” PENNY SINONE (SFGI), actor and writer, recently performed, “Leftovers: Taking Turns.” for the Monologue Festival at the Filling Station Theatre in Albuquerque. This monologue is part of a large body of work, “Leftovers: Dirty Panties, Bones and Fish Sauce,” performed in Santa Fe in February. WALTER STERLING (A) and wife Meghan welcomed their son, William Galloway, to the world on April 12, Easter Sunday. All are doing very well. ERIKA SUSKI (A) has been in Dumfries, Va., for the past decade, commuting to work and working on a College of Science master’s degree from George Mason University. She is living with her family, they’re all having fun. She hopes everyone is good. Her mail address is P.O. Box 1133, Dumfries, VA 22026 ASHLEY WARING VIETOR (A) reports that she and her husband, Oliver, and their ﬁve children (Eliz- �39 {Alumni Notes} abeth, Lucy, Alexander, Mary Virginia, and Caroline) moved to Phoenix from Virginia four years ago. “We left the Episcopal Church (my husband was a clergyman for six years) and converted to the Catholic Church in Advent 2007,” she writes. “Oliver is currently awaiting ordination as a Catholic priest through the Pastoral Provision. In the meantime I am putting my St. John’s education to work by homeschooling our son and rediscovering some of the classic children’s literature I read when I was young. We love exploring Arizona and welcome any visitors!” 1995 THEA AGNEW BEMBEN (SF) is currently commuting between Pittsburgh where her husband, Will, is a third-year medical student, and Anchorage, where she is still running a community planning and development ﬁrm. Their 3-year-old son, Noah, is doing great and is excited about baseball and long-boarding. 1996 This summer, PAULA GILLIS (SF) marked 10 years at The Press of Atlantic City, and, she writes; “I still can’t believe I get to read for a living. In August, my boyfriend, Krishna Mathias, marked our 10th anniversary by proposing; we plan to wed in September 2010. We’re shopping for horse- and artistfriendly properties in South Jersey. He’s an illustrator (we met when I was hired at the paper, where he’s an editorial artist) and I teach riding part time. We’re excited to ﬁnd a place with room to play in the dirt!” RYAN MCBRIDE (SFGI) is excited to have started a service-learning project called “Aristotle in New Orleans,” which has his Tulane University students studying ancient rhetoric while starting debate teams in local public middle schools. “Besides attending St. John’s, this is the most Johnnieesque thing I’ve ever attempted.” Here is a link to the project wiki: http://aristotleinneworleans.wikispaces.com/ RONALIE A. MOSS (SFGI) is enjoying reading, hiking, biking and visiting family members now that she is in retirement from teaching high school English in Los Angeles. BRIAN MCGUIRE (A) made the switch from speechwriting to newspaper reporting. “I have spent most of that time working for the Republican Minority Leader of the Love on the Appalachian Trail OAN HENRIKSON (A05) is currently living in Brewer, Maine, J and working as a ridge-runner for the Maine Appalachian Trail Club. More importantly, she is eloping with her ﬁancée, Dan Silsby, on October 22, so by the time this notice gets to press, they will be wed. She has been making up for all the studying at St. John’s by spending the last four years outside. She has spent time with the Student Conservation Association in Hawaii, and traveled to Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia. In the spring of 2007, she began a hike of the Appalachian Trail, where she met Dan. After the hike, she and Dan moved to Utah, where she spent 15 months as a ﬁeld guide at a wilderness therapy camp call Red Cliff Ascent. Now she is back in Maine, and waiting until next spring, when she and Dan will be making a trek of the Paciﬁc Crest Trail. Anyone is free to contact her at joan.hendrikson@gmail.com. She would love to help anyone interested in long-distance hiking, or outdoor jobs. x U.S. Senate,” he says. “ It’s a rewarding line of work, and I’m more than happy to talk with anyone (of any political persuasion) who is interested in D.C. politics in general, or speechwriting in particular. “ KELLY NASH and MATTHEW SCHERTZ (both SF) are now living in Missoula, Montana. After working at Colgate and Penn State, Matthew ﬁnally got his dream job as a philosopher of education at the University of Montana. “We have a beautiful toddler named William who is keeping us both on our toes and another wee one on the way. Western Montana is simply beautiful. We can see elk from our back porch and a mama bear periodically comes by to eat berries and apples from our fruit trees. If you are into wild things drop us a line and/or come visit!” MAT STRICKLAND (SF) just moved out to the Navajo Reservation in Chinle, Ariz. “Finally done with medical training and working as a full-time pediatrician for the Indian Health Services. Loving it out here and glad to be back near Santa Fe, the desert and the Southwest. If anyone is interested in visiting (we have a beautiful canyon, Canyon de Chelly) or saying hello, e-mail me at matstrickland@yahoo.com 1997 BENJAMIN BLOOM (A) is happy to announce the birth of Emily Rose Bloom on July 8, 2009. Mother and daughter are both doing wonderfully. This July, LINDA MAY (SF), married her partner of ﬁve years, Nate Calkins, in a small gathering of family and friends on a farm just outside Portland, Ore. In August, they ofﬁcially became homeowners and moved into their new home. Nate works as an art installer in Portland and has a small business making banjos. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } Last May, Linda earned her master’s degree in education from Lewis and Clark Graduate School of Education and Counseling. She is working as a counselor with seventh graders at St. Helen’s Middle School. The work is hard, the hours are long, the pay is little, and she is absolutely loving it. She ﬁnally ﬁgured out what she wants to be when she grows up. “Getting settled in Galway, Ireland, where I’ll spend the next three years studying for my PhD in Web Science,” writes JODI SCHNEIDER (A). “Visiting Johnnies are welcome to get in touch: jschneider@pobox.com or http://jodischneider.com.” 1998 “Tooting my own and other Johnnie actors’ horns in the hopes that more Johnnies in the DC region will come out to see some excellent theater,” writes SARA BARKER (A). “As a founding member of Factory 449, a theater collective, over the summer I led an ensemble in Psychosis 4.48, by the late British playwright Sarah Kane, at the Capital Fringe Festival in Washington, D.C. The production won Best Drama and Best Overall in the festival and was highly praised by theatre critics in the press. We remounted the production this October for an additional 16 performance. Also, as a company member with the Washington Shakespeare Company (WSC), from November 12 through December 13, I will be playing the title role in Lulu by Frank Wedekind. Also with WSC, I will be in Moliere’s The Miser from January 28 through February 28. Visit www.sarabarker.com/acting for more information! Sara’s not the only Johnnie doing theater in the Capital. KIMBERLY SCHRAF (A79), was nominated for a 2009 Helen Hayes Award, Outstanding Lead Actress in a Resident Play, JILL NIENHISER (SFGI97) recently continued on page 41 �40 {Alumni Notes} A “Big-Picture” Thinker in the Library World by Rosemary Harty S been a director, I have had to cut the budget. In fact, I think I am getting quite good at stretching a dime. ure, those MacArthur “genius” grants are impressive. Nobel Prizes, too. But what could be more gratifying to Johnnies than to have one of their own honored by the American Library Association? LISA GINSBERG ROSENBLUM (A80) was recently named one of the ALA’s 51 “movers and shakers.” ALA’s Library Journal noted her accomplishments modernizing the Hayward Public Library and jointly managing the city’s Library and Neighborhood Services departments. Rosenblum directed the construction of a new main library, renovated interior design and services at the city’s library facilities, launched an Early Learning with Families program, and assembled a teen advisory group. Now the library director in Sunnyvale, Calif., Rosenblum describes her career path. What does it mean to be a “mover and shaker” to the American Library Association? Are you seeing the role of libraries shifting in your community? What do you think the libraries of the near future—say, in 10 years— will be like? Today’s public libraries have to be more than places to check out books, says Lisa Ginsberg Rosenblum (A80). Movers and Shakers represent innovators in the library world. I earned the award for my work as a “Big-Picture” thinker. I wasn’t just a library director who was focused on library service; instead, I tried to connect the dots in my city so the library would become more relevant and important to the community. Did you come to St. John’s knowing you would like to be a librarian? Not at all. It was a bad economy when I got out of school, and I happened to get a job with a government contractor on the Beltway who provided library books to Army libraries. I was terribly underpaid— earning minimum wage and frankly annoyed that this was the best I could do with a degree from St John’s. This, however, got me my next job in Houston in the library at Rice University, cataloguing. I didn’t like that either. Finally I started working in a public library and really enjoyed it. I liked being with the public and enjoyed the variety of the work, especially answering difﬁcult questions. I went on and got my master’s in library science from San Jose State [in 1994], and the rest, as they say, is history. I would describe myself as a fairly mediocre student at St John’s. Certainly not an intellectual. In fact, my favorite memory of SJC is being on the Maenads, my ﬁrst experience with team sports. I earned a blazer my sophomore year! Growing up in the 1960s, girls were excluded from such things. I think I learned as much from that as I did from Kant, which admittedly I learned very little from. So I want to make a plug for those of us who were not SJC stars. We still can do well! How is your library affected by California’s economic difﬁculties? (We’ve had some cuts in Maryland.) Whatever is happening in Maryland, it is far worse here and has been so since Proposition 13. Every year since I have { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } We are becoming less a place to get information with the advent of the Internet. In fact, data shows that role is really fading. We are more places people want to go for other pursuits: Teens hang out and social network and create online, young children and their parents get together and network during storytimes while learning early literacy skills, new immigrants take ESL classes or participate in conversation clubs. Older adults learn new skills (also called lifelong learning). Just last week we offered a class on Craig’s List and Facebook geared to seniors. We are not just a free book and DVD store anymore. Because many Johnnies think that being a librarian is even better than being a rock star, tell us something about your job that’s not so glamorous. I have dealt with some rather unglamorous behavior from our patrons, some that I cannot share. Sufﬁce it to say it concerns bodily ﬂuids. The library is a place that everyone can go and everyone is not always on his or her best behavior. And what’s the very best part of your job? I love doing and talking about library redesign. I think we have a long way to go on this, and I am proud that the libraries where I have been director all look much better because I insist they look more like retail stores. I also like seeing teens—our most at-risk group at our libraries— engaged and off the streets. And of course I like seeing little children toddling home with stacks of library picture books. x �41 {Alumni Notes} continued from page 39 graduated from D.C.’s National Conservatory of Dramatic Arts and Colin Smith (A01, also a NCDA graduate) was recently Gogol’s Inspector General with Journeyman Theatre. GLENSCOTT COPPER (AGI) is still working on the novel he began at St. John’s 11 years ago. He is almost done. “I’ve lived in Fairbanks since 2002 and am one of the general counsel for the University of Alaska,” reports MICHAEL O’BRIEN (SFGI). “My wife and I have a son who is almost four. Showing kids the world and the wilderness has got to be one of life’s greatest pleasures. Anyone venturing north of the Alaska Range is welcome in our home.” reunion! Her eldest son, Douglas, is a Lt. Commander in the Navy and is an FA18/A Hornet pilot on the carrier Nimitz. He is also the dad of her (to date) only grandchild, 2 1/2-year-old Maeve. Her twin daughters are Lisa, also a Lt. Commander in the Navy, who recently completed her pediatric residency and is stationed in Sicily, Italy, and Amy, who is completing doctoral studies at the School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University. They are her real achievements. HEATHER (RICHARDSON) WILDE (A) and her husband are busy running (way) offshore technical support for a software ﬁrm in Mountain View, Calif., from their yacht in the Sea of Cortez, Mexico. At the time they sent in their alumni note they were likely somewhere south of Latitude 22, working furiously. 1999 ANNA L. BOOZER (A) has just begun a new position teaching Roman Mediterranean Archaeology at University of Reading just outside of London. She would love to be in touch with any Johnnies in the area and can be reached at AnnaBoozer@gmail.com. MICHAEL OLSEN (A) writes: “I taught history in grades 6-12 in Chicago for seven years. I’m now a graduate student and a graduate teaching fellow in the Department of History at the University of Oregon. My research is focused on the history of the American West during the 19th century. Any Johnnies who will be passing through central Oregon are invited to contact me. I’m also interested in hearing from anyone who is studying or teaching history, or is thinking about doing so.” CLAIRE SULLIVAN PETERSON (SFGI) is celebrating three personal achievements this year: her (class of 1959) 50th high school reunion, 25th undergraduate (Hood, class of 1984) college reunion, and 10th (St. John’s) GI 2000 CHRISTINE CURRAN (A) moved to Chicago last year and is currently working as director of Mission and Volunteers at Franciscan Outreach Association, a homeless-services organization in the city. This December, she will receive a master’s in religion from Yale Divinity School, and she has been taking classes part time at Catholic Theological Union. “It would be great to meet up with other Johnnies in the Chicago area!” she writes. Contact her at: christinejcurran@gmail.com KARINA HEAN (A) has moved to Missoula, Montana, for the 2009/10 academic year to work as a visiting professor of art at the University of Montana and is preparing for an exhibition at the Center for Contemporary Art in Santa Fe, among group and solo exhibitions. Next summer it’s back to Santa Fe. Visitors welcome. (karinahean@gmail.com) FLAME SCHOEDER (SF) and her husband had their second baby (a boy this time!) in August 2007. “Now that the family is complete,” she writes, “I am dividing my time between supporting them and growing my three-year-old personal coaching business in Omaha, Nebraska. I spend a lot of time debunking the myths that coaches are therapists, which they are not, and that they are pompous Harvest Time in Nebraska A particularly poetic note from MARA GILES (SF95): “I am still in Nebraska, and the beautiful fall weather is now come upon us. The harvesters in the ﬁelds work late into the night as they try to reap what they have sown before the rains and snows come. Every day as I go to work I pass their ﬁelds, now brown with the season. I am a professor at a small college here, Peru State College, where I teach anthropology and sociology. It is a challenging but immensely rewarding career. (I have a fellow Johnnie as a colleague and another colleague who always wanted to be a Johnnie. So that’s nice.) My husband also teaches biology here, and we get to have lunch together almost every day. Our daughter started high school this year after ﬁnishing junior high as her class valedictorian. Thus, as the forthcoming holiday season approaches rather quickly, we recognize that we have wonderful things in our lives to be ever thankful for. You are welcome to e-mail me at yehkatah@yahoo.com, but be warned I am an unreliable correspondent.” x know-it-alls, which some are and some are not, quite frankly. Using an ontological model, it’s amazing to watch people grow and fulﬁll their potential right before my eyes. I’m sure my kids get some side-beneﬁts, too.” 2001 NATHAN CRADDOCK (AGI) is teaching ESOL at Stonewall Jackson High School in Manassas, Va., his third year. MARSHALL HEVRON (A) graduated from Tulane Law School last May and was admitted to the Louisiana Bar in October. He’s now working at a large regional law ﬁrm in New Orleans. In August, TALLEY KOVACS (A) started a one-year fellowship as a law and policy analyst at the Center for Health and Homeland Security in Baltimore. Earlier in the summer, LOU (A02) began his ﬁrst year as a family medicine resident at the University of Maryland Medical Center. “We’ve moved into new digs in South Baltimore near a beautiful park and can be found most evenings on our roof deck watching ships and tugs come and go on the Patapsco River,” writes Talley. “We’re also expecting a little Kovacs at the end of January 2010. Tout va bien.” ANDREW RANSON (AGI) was ﬁnally able to travel to Italy last summer and was thrilled to see so many Johnnies: “I visited a former classmate, DUSTY RITTER (AGI 00), and unexpectedly ran into EVA BRANN in Rome, and LAURA THAYER (A02) in Amalﬁ. I am continually elated by how such a small school can have members of the polity everywhere.” After discovering a passion for African djembe drumming six months ago, GIOVANNA VECCHITTO (SF) will be moving to Trinidad indeﬁnitely to continue continued on page 43 { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } �42 {Alumni Notes} An Ethical Approach to Design Nadia Nour (SF00) Balances Couture with Sustainability By Nathaniel Roe (SF08) N adia Nour’s showroom in Manhattan’s Garment District was crowded with her fellow designers and prospective buyers; Nour herself was working feverishly to prepare her spring 2010 collection for a runway show during Fashion Week last September. Dresses, skirts, and blouses bound for boutiques, specialty stores, and the upscale chain Anthropologie were arranged on two racks. Flipping through the dresses, Nour described her creative vision. In her holiday collection, she experiments with the idea of transparency: sheer overlays sewn above opaque textures, and transparent patterns combined with each other to form new patterns. While these techniques are Nour’s trademarks, she is better known for ethical methods of production. Since launching her collection in 2007, Nour has been committed to economic and environmental sustainability. She is on a mission to produce organic fashion with a couture-inspired, urban design sensibility. Most associate organic clothes with dull earth tones and scratchy fabrics. Nour’s introduction of vibrantly dyed, delicately textured organic silks to the United State market was an industry breakthrough. By commissioning fair-trade organic silks and cottons hand-loomed in a village in India, and using organic dyes derived from sources such as pomegranate rind and turmeric, Nour supports businesses that provide the foundation for self-sufﬁcient communities. Workers who dye her fabrics use the runoff to fertilize an organic vegetable garden outside of the factory that provides food for the entire village. A far cry from conventional fabrics requiring pesticides and toxic dyes, Nour’s fabrics help to feed families. While many designers outsource production to foreign countries, Nour’s collection is produced by a team of industry veterans in a factory a few blocks from Nour’s showroom. With a close eye on production, she is dedicated to responsibly managing every aspect of her collection. Her apparel is also made to last—a basic, often overlooked model of sustainability. High-quality fabrics and construction are combined with a timeless design aesthetic to produce garments ﬁt to be modernday heirlooms. “Fashion has become really disposable,” Nour says. “For me, the heirloom aspect [of design] is really about breaking that cycle and just Designing beautiful fashion is satisfying for Nadia Nour (SF00), giving somebody but sustainability and ethics matter more. something that they’ll be able to Lee Angel before going to work for Elizapass down to their daughter ideally.” beth Gillett, designing and managing the With quality and endurance in mind, development of woven, knit, and crocheted Nour’s garments are highly detailed for apparel and accessories. As the production their price range. “I really want the wearer manager for couturier Robert Danes, Nour to feel the energy of the person who put it learned every detail involved in producing together. A lot of my garments are very labor intensive, so when people wear them, a $10,000 evening gown. Today, Nour’s distinctive approach to they can almost feel the spirit of the person fashion reﬂects the time she spent at who constructed them.” St. John’s. How, one might ask, is the quiet Even as a child, Nour had a natural consideration of timeless questions related afﬁnity for manipulating fabrics. “When I to the ever-changing fashion world? was a kid I used to customize my clothes “Fashion combines a lot of the aspects and cut up curtains and blankets and sew of what we studied at St. John’s, which are them into things, so I’ve always been basically the ideas of communication and attracted to working with fabric. When I identity,” Nour explains. “Verbal commuwould ﬁnish one of my homemade nication is very conscious,” she says. creations I would think to myself, no one “We can monitor it. But with body else in the world has this. This is somelanguage, gestures, and clothing—they thing truly unique in this vast world. It really get at the unconscious. It’s a really sounds like a cliché, but I feel like fashion personal form of communication, and chose me.” that’s what I’m interested in.” Despite a few doubts about the practiWhile her St. John’s education prepared cality of pursuing a career in fashion, Nour her to think creatively, Nour also credits felt compelled to follow her heart. After the college with developing those traits graduating from St. John’s, she earned a that were essential to succeed—on her BFA with a concentration in Fashion terms—in a world of cutthroat competition. Design from Columbia College of the Arts “The ability to consider ideas from in 2003, blasting through the four-year multiple angles and to independently evalprogram in two years. Determined from uate multiple factors gave my company a the start to launch her own clothing line, deﬁnite competitive advantage, and ultiNour sought out experience in all aspects mately put me in a better position to of the fashion business. She started out as succeed.” x technical design manager for jewelry line { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } �43 {Alumni Notes} continued from page 41 her studies, focusing on AfroCaribbean hand and steel pan drumming. 2002 GINA MARIE CORSO (SF) and WILL WEISKOPF (SF03) were married October 18, 2009, in Baltimore before family, friends, and nature. Gina is a licensed acupuncturist and herbalist with a thriving private practice in Baltimore, just recently returned from a 12-week gardening and herbalist apprenticeship at Avena Botanicals herb farm in Rockport, Maine. Will is chair of the math and science departments at the Jemicy School, which serves high-functioning students who experience difﬁculty with the mechanics of language. Two magazine articles by CHARLES GREEN (AGI) won honorable mention in the 78th Annual Writer’s Digest writing competition. LORI RUBELING (AGI) is on sabbatical from Stevenson University until January 2010. Go west, young family: CRYSTAL SOKOLOV (Sanders, SF) and her family are relocating from New York to the San Francisco Bay area in December. MEGAN SIELKEN (SF) and her husband, not-a-Johnnie Benjamin Ransford, celebrated the ﬁrst birthday of their son, Linus Foster, this past October with both shock and awe. Megan lives in Northampton, Mass., and is enjoying not taking advantage of her master’s in social work as she attempts to raise her son and enjoy life married to a graduate student. DAVID WILSON (A) is writing about the role compensation consultants play in setting CEO pay in the U.S., U.K., Australia, and Canada. 2003 MEREDITH ENA BARTON BOHANNON (A) is working on a PhD at the University of Maryland, College Park, in the Marine Estuarine Environmental Sciences Program. She and her husband, DAVID BOHANNON (A99), are expecting their ﬁrst child in January. ERIN M HANLON (SF) has been living in Sacramento again since December 2007 and working for the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers since March 2008. If anyone is passing through Sacramento and wants to visit let her know: E.I.M.Hanlon@gmail.com JONATHAN (SF) and TATIANA LINDSAY (SF04, nee FISCHl) ZECHER celebrated the ﬁrst birthday of their little girl, Zoe, born October 7, 2008. They are currently living in Durham, England, while Jonathan works on his PhD in theology at Durham University, and Tatiana works as the only female at an IT company in Newcastle, which may or may not be considered odd for a technophobe. They hope to be back in the U.S. by the beginning of 2011. 2004 NOAH J. AUGARTEN (A) is currently working on ﬁnishing his BA with Prescott College in Arizona. He will be moving to Germany to work in youth guidance at an international community called the Heydnmuhle. After spending a rollercoaster three years in Hawaii, Mackenzie (2 years) and MARYIRENE CORRIGAN (A), will be following Devin (USNA03) to the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. After spending 18 months along the beautiful central California coast while he works toward his master’s, they will head to Naval Station Patuxent River, Maryland, to complete the TPS program. In addition to wrangling a toddler and trying to plan a move from the most remote island in the world, she is currently working on a master’s in Elementary Education, a bachelor’s in psychology, and looking for another job to add to her random resume. She is also trying to ﬁgure out how to adjust to seasons, Daylight Savings Time, and a cold ocean. Ultimately, she hopes their slow move east will bring her in sight of the Annapolis campus, so that she can teach Mackenzie the ﬁner points of croquet. After graduating with a master’s from Harvard, MICHAEL LOOFT (AGI) has been working in Sierra Leone as VP of Operations for Village of Hope International, which focuses on education, health, and economic security in rural areas. When he is not in Sierra Leone, he lives in Toronto with his lovely wife, Adrienne. They are expecting their ﬁrst child in December. On August 1, BENJAMIN REIKE (SF04) and ANN KEATING (A07) were married in Santa Fe. The Reikes live in Chicago. Ben works as a consumer counselor for a nonproﬁt, and Annie is a graduate student in education. They are both writers. THEODORE C. ROGERS (AGI) was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in November. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs. 2005 Happy news from CHRISTIAN and MARIE ACEMAH (both SF). “Our son arrived on Oct. 30, 2009, at 2:28 a.m. He weighed 8 pounds on { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } the nose and was 20.75 inches long. We have named him Tchabo Njagala Acemah.” After two years of “post-bac” coursework, JAMES HARRISON (A) will be starting med school at Penn this fall. “To old friends and classmates,” he writes. “All are welcome if you’re passing through Philly.” MIRANDA (FOSTER) MERKLEIN (SFGI) will graduate this year from the University of Southern Mississippi with a PhD in English/Creative Writing—Poetry, with a research emphasis in music, and Spanish as a second language. She just ﬁnished her ﬁrst book of poetry, “Demonian,” and is currently looking for a publisher (and a job after graduation). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Oxford American, Iron Horse Literary Review, South Carolina Review, and others. She does miss Santa Fe. JACOB THOMAS (A) is, perhaps surprisingly, living happy and, relatively, healthy in Berkeley, Calif. This past July, he married his longtime partner, Phoebe, at the Alameda County Clerk’s Ofﬁce in beautiful downtown Oakland. He wore a “Repeal Proposition 8” shirt under his Dario Di Napoli suit coat. He continues to work full time in the special education department of the Berkeley Uniﬁed School District, while waking up at 5:15 every morning to write. His poetry appears, with some regularity, in unknown small press magazines across the country. It’s an interesting enough life. ABRAM TROSKY (SFGI) is in his ﬁnal year as a Presidential Teaching Fellow in Boston University’s Department of Political Science. He hopes to defend a dissertation prospectus before his hire as senior teaching fellow/lecturer for Modern Political Theory this spring in the department comes into effect. Continuing the service in student government he began at St. John’s, Abram is acting vice president of the BU Graduate Student Organi- �44 {Alumni Notes} zation. When not engrossed in teaching, writing, and extracurriculars, Abram keeps it academic by hanging with Johnnie alums JESSICA DIAMOND (A03), PIERCE HARMON (SFGI95), and PAUL DENBY (SF06). 2006 Johnnie Progeny S ROAHEN (SF94) sent in this picture of a passel of Johnnie kids: They are (from l. to r.) Louise Olivier (parents Sarah Todd Olivier and DAVID OLIVIER, A94); Emmett Caswell (parents CAMERON HALL CASWELL, A94, and MATT CASWELL, A96); June Olivier, Agnes Caswell, Tibo de Schutter (parents Sara Roahen and MATHIEU DE SCHUTTER, SF94); and Rose Mae Sothern (parents NIKKI PAGE and BILLY SOTHERN, both A98). No ID on the dog, however. x 2007 ARA BRENDAN E GREELEY (SFGI) has completed primary ﬂight training in Corpus Christi, Texas, and is now in advanced jet training, ﬂying the T-45 Goshawk, in Kingsville, Texas, for the Navy. He was scheduled for promotion last August to Lieutenant Junior Grade. MEGAN CALLOW and ADAM MORSE (both SFGI) were married 2008 on the 4th of July, 2009, nearly ﬁve years after meeting in Ms. Knight’s preceptorial on Gustave Flaubert. Morse works as a technician on a wind farm, and Callow will soon be teaching writing at the local community college. They live in Hood River, Ore., a small town in the Columbia River Gorge. JOHN NEWTON (A) is a JD candi- DANIEL GRIMM (SF) writes: “Jennifer and I closed up Fishbar for the season, and are traveling to Thailand for seven weeks. Jennifer has been invited to compete on the Food Network show ‘Chopped,’ which should ﬁlm in January. We’ll keep you posted at freshlocalﬁsh.com.” JIM KENTCH (SFGI, EC06) has recently opened his law ofﬁce in Santa Fe specializing in immigration and consumer protection matters. After teaching language arts in a Santa Fe private school, JUSTIN NADIR (EC) started a business called Luna Moruna Productions, producing world-class ﬂamenco performances for the Juan Siddi Flamenco Theatre Company. The company presents traditional and contemporary ﬂamenco music, song and dance nationally and internationally and with their summer seasons in Santa Fe. Find out more at: www.juansiddiﬂamenco.com ALLISON OWENS, now Bastian (AGI), married Zach on November 7, 2008. Now she’s in medical school at the University of North Dakota and lives in Fargo. She wonders: Any other Johnnies in Fargo? DENNY MAISON (SF) graduated from Willamette University College of Law in Salem, Ore., was admitted to the state bar, and is now practicing criminal defense in Salem with the law ofﬁces of Jeffrey M. Jones, P.C. SARAH and DANIEL RERA (both A) celebrated the birth of their ﬁrst baby, a girl, Elliot Martha Rera. They cannot wait to introduce her to the St. John’s community. Sarah is an associate attorney at Barth Sullivan Behr in Buffalo, and Dan is a data analyst for Kaleida Health and working toward his MBA. If you live in Santa Fe, RUSSELL SIMON (SFGI) wants your vote. He’s running for Santa Fe City Council in District 1; the election is March 10, and has a website: www.russellforsantafe.com. Continuing her international adventures, SUSAN SWIER (AGI) is at St. Andrew’s University and is excited to be embarking on her PhD. “I’m living on campus, less than a ﬁve minutes’ walk from the library. The dorm itself is quite small and run-down, especially considering how much it costs, but I guess it’s worth it for the location. The English department is also very close and that’s right beside the ruins of a castle.This semester, I have just one required class, once a week, and nothing but the dissertation after that. I’m thinking that I might stay here for just a year and get a good start on my dissertation, then move somewhere else to ﬁnish writing it. The last year I spent in Taiwan was good overall, and I might even go back and settle there.” KELLY KEENAN TRUMPBOUR (AGI) was recently named senior director of Running Start, a nonproﬁt dedicated to inspiring women in high school and college to pursue political careers. MICHAEL ZITO (AGI) is teaching history and English at the Pennington School. Zito served in the Navy on active duty and then became an instructor in English at the US Naval Academy. He comes to Pennington from Christ School in Arden, N.C., where he taught English, directed plays, and was a house parent. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } date at the Maurer School of Law, Indiana University at Bloomington, class of 2012. “I’m engaged to my dear old friend from pre-St. John’s days. I’m having a blast with law school, and I’m looking forward to being a lawyer back in California when I’m done. Anybody have ideas for a law student’s summer work in the San Francisco Bay area?” On October 3, 2009, SCHUYLER STURM (A) and JULIA PATTERSON (A09) were married in Glover, Vt. A bunch of former and current Johnnies (and one tutor) were in attendance. x What’s Up? The College wants to hear from you. Call us, write us, e-mail us. Let your classmates know what you’re doing. The next issue will be published in April; deadline for the alumni notes section is Feb. 15. Alumni will also be sent a call for classnotes via e-mail in March. To see the last mystery picture identiﬁed, visit the online community at www.stjohnscollege.edu, click on Alumni. The College Magazine St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404; rosemary.harty@sjca.edu �45 {Obituaries} FRANCIS MASON Class of 1943 getty images Francis Mason, a cultural diplomat, author, dance critic, and ardent supporter of the arts, died on September 24, 2009, at the age of 88. He was well known and admired as a cultural critic and supporter of dance, having close friendships with dance greats George Balanchine and Martha Graham. After graduating, Mr. Mason joined the Navy. A lieutenant, he served on a supply shift and participated in the D-Day invasion. He returned to the college to serve as a tutor from 194647. In 1948, he joined the State Department’s international broadcasting division and the Voice of America as an information specialist. From 1954 through 1965 he was the press attaché in the U.S. Embassies in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, and cultural affairs attaché in London. Mason was successful in persuading the American government to sponsor appearances by American dance companies, gaining international recognition of American choreographers, and ultimately helping to boost the popularity of American dance troupes both in Europe and the United States. He was the chief of EastWest Exhibitions for the USIA (1965-66) and served as the Policy Ofﬁcer, Ofﬁce Assistant Director, Europe, Foreign Service Institute (1966-67). In 1968, Mr. Mason became the assistant to the President of Steuben Glass, where in 1972 he took on responsibilities in marketing and special projects. He later became the assistant director of the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City in 1975. Mr. Mason’s lifelong devotion to dance began in 1948, when a friend brought him to the world the Distinguished Flying Air Cross and the Air Medal with 11 clusters, among others. Upon retiring from the Air Force, Mr. Brown spent the next 20 years teaching in Riverside, California. As a student at St. John’s, Mr. Mason was photographed for a feature about the college in Life magazine. As an ardent supporter of the arts, he was a champion for American dance. premiere of Orpheus, with music by Igor Stravinsky and choreography by Balanchine. From 1969 to 1982, he was the Vice President and President of the Dance Research Foundation. In 1974, he became the president of the Martha Graham Center for Contemporary Dance. He served as the center’s chairman from 19751976, and its chairman emeritus in 1979. He was chairman again from 2000 through 2007. For many years, he was the weekly radio commentator for the “World of Dance” on WQXR in New York. In 1980 he became the third editor of Ballet Review, and was credited for improving the quality of the publication. He wrote three books: Balanchine’s Complete Stories of the Great Ballets, 101 Stories of the Great Ballets, and Balanchine’s Festival of Ballet. In his Vanity Fair blog, author James Alcott wrote of Mason: “A man of qualities (elegant taste, impeccable tact, unfailing cheer), Francis Mason might have stepped out of a Louis Auchincloss novel, only without the stiff rectitude and plaster dust.” Mr. Mason was a longtime supporter of the college, active in the Alumni Association and a gracious host of receptions for prospective students. He also served on the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors for six years (1974-80). In 1984 the Alumni Association of St. John’s College honored him with the Award of Merit. JOHN HARRINGTON BROWN Class of 1937 John Harrington Brown, class of 1937, died August 1, 2009, in Glendale, Arizona. He was 92. A Maryland native, he received his bachelor’s degree at St. John’s and his master’s from Redlands University in California. Mr. Brown was a B26 pilot during World War II and ﬂew 68 combat missions while in Europe. He received { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } AMANDA LAKE (SFGI95) Amanda Ridgely Lake died on August 19, 2009, at her home in Fairhaven, Mass, at the age of 44. A graduate of Hamilton College, Ms. Lake was a devoted and accomplished sailor. She began her career on the water at an early age, skippering tourists and residents between Edgartown and Chappaquiddick on Martha’s Vineyard. She later joined the crew of the Regina Maris, a wooden barkentine, studying Humpback whales in the Caribbean and North Atlantic. She became one of only a handful of women to earn a 100-ton Near Coast Master’s License, allowing her to pilot large vessels in and out of commercial ports. At the time of her death, she taught classes on advanced ship-handling and maritime safety at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. Ms. Lake worked for the Audubon Society as their Internship Program Coordinator, and for PBS, helping them to design an awardwinning educational website. Her unfailing and sometimes mischievous sense of humor and her constant volunteer work inspired her friends and family. ALSO NOTED LAWRENCE SANDEK, CLASS OF 1954, SEPT. 4, 2009 PAUL WHITTENBURG, CLASS OF 1956, AUG. 20, 2009 RODNEY WITT (SF85), SEPT. 13, 2009 �46 {Alumni Association News} CALENDAR January 15-17, 2010 Piraeus, Santa Fe In January, tutors Susan Stickney and J. Walter Sterling, Jr. (A93) will lead seminars on Aeschylus’s Oresteia. The weekend begins with a welcome reception on campus Friday night at 6 p.m. Seminar continues Saturday at 10 a.m., followed by a catered lunch on campus. Afternoon seminar will begin at 3 p.m., followed by a cocktail hour. Sunday seminar begins at 10 a.m., and a closing luncheon on campus completes the weekend. Continental breakfast before morning seminars will be available. Cost: $250. A $50 nonrefundable deposit is required to reserve participation. Alumni can register by calling the alumni ofﬁce in Santa Fe at 505-984-6121 or e-mailing Alumni Activities Director Nancie Wingo: anwingo@sjcsf.edu. January 19: 6:45 to 8:30 p.m. Washington, D. C., chapter seminar: John Locke’s “Letter Concerning Toleration” March 22: 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. New York City chapter seminar on The Fall, by Albert Camus, led by Santa Fe tutor Grant Franks (SF77). June 3-6, 2010 Piraeus in Annapolis Choose from two selections offered this summer in Annapolis. Tutors Debbie Renaut and David Townsend will lead seminars on William Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses. Eva Brann (HA89) and David Carl will lead seminars that bring together two intriguing novels: Jane Austen’s Mansﬁeld Park and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. For more information, contact the Alumni ofﬁce in Annapolis at 410-295-6926 or visit the college website: www.stjohnscollege.edu. September 24-26, 2010 Homecoming, Annapolis A Toast to Jason Walsh T he Alumni Association extends sincere thanks to Jason Walsh (A85) for his contributions in leading the association, ﬁrst as vice president, and as president from 2006-2009. The college’s presidents, Michael P. Peters in Santa Fe and Christopher B. Nelson (SF70) in Annapolis, thanked Walsh for performing a “remarkable job” for the college and the association. “With a clear sense of purpose, the respect of your peers, and your natural gift for consensus-building, you led the Alumni Association through some turbulent times,” the presidents wrote in a letter of thanks. “As the leader of our most important constituency, you challenged us to better serve our alumni while encouraging the members of the association to renew their commitment to St. John’s College. We are indebted to your service and anticipate that the next era of collaboration { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } between the college and the Alumni Association will bear witness to the vision, inspiration, and cooperative spirit you provided. It is a worthy legacy.” Leading the association involves attending Homecomings, board meetings, and working closely with chapter leadership, notes Jo Ann Mattson (HA87), director of Alumni Relations. “Serving as the president of the Alumni Association entails a tremendous sacriﬁce of time and genuine dedication to the college,” Mattson says. “We’re very grateful for Jason’s energy, his enthusiasm, and his willingness to serve St. John’s.” x �47 {Alumni Association News} Alumni Volunteer Proﬁle services manager in the Annapolis alumni ofﬁce) with three sons: Jake, 8; Noah, 6; and Matthew, 4 Name: Dave Heimann (A87) Pursuits (hobbies, etc.): With three boys, I don’t have a lot of time for hobbies, but I do enjoy working in the garden, cooking, and drinking wine. Profession: Information Technology/Management Volunteer Service: Longtime volunteer for the Alumni Association; served on Alumni Task Force setting a new direction for alumni involvement. Favorite college memory: Mr. (Jon) Lenkowski’s sophomore language tutorial Last books read: I’ve ﬁnished two recently: A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. Why volunteer for the college? St. John’s is an important part of my life. Being active as an alumnus is a way to stay involved with the college and lets me give something back. Family details: Married to Jeannie (daughter of Dolores Strissel, alumni Beantown Chapter Born from a “Bribe” avid Schiller (class of 1962) and Leland Giovanelli (A78) were walking from one of the dorms during a summer alumni seminar program in 1981 when former president Richard Weigle buttonholed them. Famous for his persuasive powers, Weigle informed them that they were to start up an alumni chapter in Boston, and, by the way, he had two tickets to the Santa Fe Opera. It wasn’t a bribe, though. “At least that’s what he said,” says Schiller. Schiller and Giovanelli thoroughly enjoyed Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress. On their return to Boston, they carried out Weigle’s wishes. Schiller made up a threeyear list of monthly readings, and Giovanelli supplied a meeting place. The ﬁrst seminar of the ﬂedgling Boston chapter was on Hegel’s Phenomenology, concerning the master/slave relationship. Says Schiller, “I ﬁgured that if people would attend seminars for that, they would attend seminars for anything I proposed!” When Schiller ran out of ideas for readings, other chapter members came through with suggestions. One of these was Layla and Majnun, a classical Arabian tale of star-crossed lovers. “It took nearly the entire seminar for us to ﬁnally realize that the story is actually a religious treatise about a believer’s love for God,” recalls Schiller. Since then, the Boston chapter has been among the most active in the nation. Current members are carrying on their founders’ predilection for reading a wide variety of texts in their seminars. Recently, D they read Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu, in full. The seven-volume work consumed an entire year, and it was a small group of extremely dedicated readers who ﬁnished. Last October, members took on something shorter: Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. Members come to seminars not only from metro Boston, but also from Vermont, Rhode Island, and Maine. This makes logistics somewhat challenging for current president Dianne Cowan (A92), because, in addition to the length of the commute, ﬁnding parking in the Boston area is always a daunting prospect. Cowan has been attending seminars in Boston for the last 13 years and has seen many faces come and go. Aside from a core group of about a half-dozen people who attend every meeting, many alumni attending graduate school in Boston cycle through regularly. Members are welcome to bring friends, partners, or spouses to the meetings. The constant inﬂux of fresh opinions strengthens the conversations. “Occasionally though, someone new shows up once and then we never see them again,” says Cowan. “I always think that’s sad.” Cowan tries to organize a few meetings outside of seminars every year. During the summer, when the library where they meet closes on Sundays, the group gets together for a dinner cruise on the Concord and Sudbury rivers. There are also potlucks at members’ homes and an occasional game of Team Trivia at a local bar. Cowan most enjoys spending time with other alumni. “I like talking to other Johnnies,” she says. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } “And I like giving other Johnnies the opportunity to talk to each other.” Alumni in the greater Boston area are invited to get involved. For more information, contact Cowan at diannecowan@ alumni.stjohnscollege.edu or 617-714-4343. The group meets on various Sundays at the Watertown Free Library; check the online alumni community (www.stjohnscollege.edu; click on Alumni for a schedule. x —Keileigh Rhodes (A13) ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION All alumni have automatic membership in the St. John’s College Alumni Association. The Alumni Association is an independent organization, with a Board of Directors elected by and from the alumni body. The board meets four times a year, twice on each campus, to plan programs and coordinate the affairs of the association. President – Steve Thomas (SF74) Vice President – Patty Sollars (SF80) Secretary – Liz Travis (SF83) Treasurer – Richard Cowles (SFGI95) Mailing address – Alumni Association, St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404, or 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599. �48 {Homecoming} COMING HOME, THE JOHNNIE WAY Y ou can always witness creativity at work when you venture back to Santa Fe or Annapolis for Homecoming each fall. In Santa Fe, Johnnies from the class of 1969 relived what it was like to be a Johnnie—on the new campus of an old college— during the summer of Woodstock and Apollo 11. They enjoyed Homecoming with an Italian twist, venturing onto the soccer ﬁelds to play bocce, a game that dates back to 5000 BC. In Annapolis, the class of 1959 spent all day together Saturday, reveling in a seminar on art, then talking with each other about the lasting inﬂuences of the college on their lives, and ﬁnally toasting the college and their class at the annual banquet. There was an art show in Santa Fe, and a big celebration in Annapolis marking the 100th anniversary of beloved Temple Iglehart. The gym was decorated as it was 100 years ago when Johnnies of another era ﬁrst engaged in competition there. There were awards and honors, and lectures and seminars. Perhaps there were even rekindled romances, but it’s certain many a friendship was renewed. For photo galleries of both events, visit the college website: www.stjohnscollege.edu and click on “Alumni.” x At right, Sunday Brunch in Santa Fe; Below, right: in Annapolis, Mark Gowdy-Jaehnig (A83, right) shares a yearbook with classmates; Below, Left: Annapolis Freshman Chorus revisited { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } �{Homecoming} 49 Children of Western Civilization he Class of 1959 had two seminars at Homecoming in Annapolis. The ﬁrst, before lunch, was on essays by two members of the class: Mary Bittner Wiseman’s “Vermeer and the Art of Silence” and Hugh Curtler’s “Requiredness in Art.” Their second seminar, over lunch, was on how St. John’s inﬂuenced the course of their lives. Patience Schenck posed the opening question: “What was a seminal or life-changing experience you had at the college?” Like any good seminar question, it opened the door wider, back to memories of Annapolis and forward to careers, marriages, and life changes. A theme emerged after just a few of the participants spoke. They are lifelong learners, voracious readers, and avid pursuers of diverse hobbies and interests. Dick Cahall described them all as “children of Western civilization.” Patience Schenck was never afraid to read any book, on any topic, after attending St. John’s. Today she harbors a passion for social justice that was born at St. John’s. “In every meeting, I’m always the one asking the questions,” said Charlotte King, retired now after a long career in social work. “That has continued for 50 years.” Realtor Barbara Tower remembers that once—and only once—she attended seminar without ﬁnishing the reading. The uncomfortable feeling it gave her sparked a lifelong compulsion: “To this day, I’ll never attend a meeting without being fully prepared.” Buddy Nadler recalls traveling down from the Bronx to sit in on a seminar at St. John’s, where his brother, Hank, was enrolled. “The conversations sounded like symphonic music to me,” he said. Though he stayed for just a year, ‘the college transformed my life,” said Nadler, who worked in the ﬁlm industry in Hollywood. Friendships and romance had their genesis at the college. “We found our best friends here,” Carol Tilles said of herself and her husband, Bill. “We were family right from the very beginning.” “I never stopped thanking my lucky stars that I went to St. John’s,” said Dick Cahall. For one thing, he met his wife, Lorna, here. “She keeps me straight and even jumps ahead of me.” T Added Lorna: “I have a Johnnie husband who doesn’t care that I have too many books.” Many of the classmates shared memories of the tutors. Carol Tilles smiled remembering Victor Zuckercandl, the charismatic force behind music at the college. “What a total joy that man was,” she recalled. “He had us learning to see things and hear things, and that was a very special memory.” Marshall Lasky came to St. John’s with the idea that he wanted to be a chemist, but when he described his plan to Jacob Klein, he was told, “Well, Mr. Lasky, we’ll cure you of that notion of industrial cookery.” Lasky graduated from St. John’s, went on to earn a master’s degree, worked in hypersonic propulsion research, and later developed software and computer systems. Peter Rice remembers working diligently in Simon Kaplan’s German tutorial, only to get a C-. Since then he’s lived in Germany, acquired ﬂuency in the language, and learned that “I had the power within myself” to excel. x Honors for “Mr. P.” T he St. John’s Alumni Association gave its highest honor, the Award of Merit, to Athletic Director Leo Pickens (A78). “Leo is the most articulate athletic director in the United States,” said President Christopher Nelson (SF70). “No individual quite possibly has had more inﬂuence on the lives of students.” Pickens characteristically turned the spotlight to others, speciﬁcally “three fellow stewards”: Joseph Novaks, who ran the athletic program in the 1920s; Ned Lathrop, who steered athletics after Barr and Buchanan dropped intercollegiate sports in 1939; and Bryce Jacobsen (class of 1942). “Mr. J. was one of my mentors,” Pickens said, “ and I am deeply indebted to him for his humor and gentle humanity, his creativity, and the way he put into daily practice his deep concern for egalitarian fair play.” Finally, Pickens thanked “the generations of students. . .who took to heart and nurtured and embodied this ideal of athletics for all that had been seeded in these ﬁelds years before. Because of their enthusiastic energy, ideas, and leadership, my job has always been, and will continue to be, to simply get out of the way.” x The Class of 1959 enjoyed sharing memories at Homecoming. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } �50 {Homecoming} Ciao, Johnnies! J ohnnies on the Santa Fe campus for Homecoming October 9-11 enjoyed a near-perfect fall weekend, reconnecting with old friends and making new ones while dipping into Italian culture with opera, cannelloni, and bocce ball. The weekend began with a reception for classes marking a reunion year, paying particular homage to the class of 1969 with music, décor, and cuisine from the 1960s. Photographs displayed on easels took alumni on a nostalgic journey back through the decades, providing a visual tour of how both the campus and its students have changed over the years. Tutor Sam Kutler (class of 1954) delivered the Homecoming lecture on poetry and mathematics. Saturday began with the State of the College address from President Michael Peters and Dean Victoria Mora. Mora conveyed the news that the college has received a 10-year re-accreditation from the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools. Peters addressed the continuing effects of the economic downturn on St. John’s and spelled out how the college is addressing these concerns. The slate of new ofﬁcers for the Alumni Association Board was presented and voted into effect: President: Steve Thomas (SF74); vice president: Patty Sollars (A80); treasurer: Dick Cowles (SFGI95); and secretary: Liz Travis (SF83). Ymelda MartinezAllison (A74) presented the slate of ofﬁcers, who begin their threeyear terms in January. Seminars followed that meeting, many with an Italian text or theme, and afterwards an Italian lawn party took place on the soccer ﬁeld. Alumni and their families feasted on panni, cannelloni, opera tunes, and bocce ball. It was a beautiful afternoon of play and reminiscing. This year, the All Alumni Art Show was expanded to include work by students as well as by alumni. Friends from the Santa Fe community joined alumni, students, faculty, and staff for the opening of the art show and were entertained with music performed by tutor Bill Donohue and student Ari Winneck. The Great Hall was the setting for the Homecoming banquet, where toasts from the classes of 1969-2004 were made. Alumni recalled fond memories of shared experiences and continued gratitude for all the signiﬁcant ways their St. John’s education continues to affect their lives. Steve Thomas presented Mike Peters with a check for $25,000 completing the gift pledge made from the Alumni Association. Following the banquet, alumni and students alike provided an impressive display of dancing skills to the worldbeat music of Wagogo. The weekend concluded with the traditional brunch at Hunt House. x Above, Santa Fe President Michael Peters welcomes an alumnus to brunch at Hunt House; At right, Santa Fe tutor Cary Stickney lets the bocce ball ﬂy. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } �{Homecoming} 51 Two campuses, two homecomings. the settings are different, but the spirit is the same. Clockwise, from top left: In Santa Fe, Allen Schwartzberg (l.) and Dan Cleavinger (both SF69), enjoying the president’s brunch; Tiemar Teclemariam (A11) leads a seminar on a children’s book for johnnies-to-be in Annapolis; Ruth McCoy Miles, daughter of Jack Miles (A89) becomes a ﬂower girl; In Santa Fe, alumni take in the Homecoming Art Show; in Annapolis, a confectionary replica of Iglehart Hall. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } �52 {St. John’s Forever} Shall We Dance? B efore the Student Activities Center opened in Santa Fe, the Great Hall in Peterson Student Center served, among other things, as a dance studio for Johnnies. This photograph from the college archives in the Greenﬁeld Library was probably among those taken for college promotional material produced in the 1970s.Today, the Santa Fe campus has a popular dance program, based in the Student Activities Center, where Johnnies can learn ballroom dancing, swing, and the tango—plenty of fancy moves to show off at waltz parties. x { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } �{Eidos} A Day at the Carnival Photos and text by Brendan Bullock (A01) Brendan Bullock has spent the past eight years pursuing photography in Santa Fe, Washington, D.C., and Portland, Maine. Self-taught, he’s reﬁned his skills by assisting photographers, working in ﬁne art galleries, and studying the work of historic and contemporary photographers. He spent four months in 2009 working as a teaching assistant at the Maine Media Workshops. In working with documentary classes, he captured these images of a traveling carnival in Maine. T he images are dark; there is a recurring ominous undertone. I didn’t set out to make photographs depicting the subject in this way, but consistently, my images contained this feeling. Photography remains a magical medium because it uses a cold, unfeeling machine to capture a scene, and yet time and time again, the emotional perspective of the photographer comes through. This is due to many factors: where one chooses to go make photographs in the ﬁrst place, what one ﬁnds interesting within that location, where the camera is placed, how the camera is operated technically, and ultimately, which moment is chosen to make a photograph. Personal psychology, emotion, and past experience seep in subtly to all of these decisions, and result in a subjective image that often reveals as much about the photographer as his or her subject. Carnivals and fairs are meant to be diversions that are strictly happy places, but in actuality, there is a lot of heaviness and depression emanating from the scene. There is poverty and strife evident in the lives of those attending and those traveling and working the fairs. It was incredibly interesting to view all of this without the rose-colored glasses of youth, when everything is shiny and exciting. Through the camera, I saw outdated rides with rusty edges, junkie and alcoholic ride attendants, and meaningless plastic prizes that would ﬁnd their way into attics, basements, and dumpsters. Most of all, I saw many parents spending hard-earned cash that they seemed scarcely able to afford in order for their children to have this experience. Essentially, all of the subtexts that you might imagine woven into a small-town carnival in a recession. x See more images at www.brendanbullock.com. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Winter 2010 } �NON -P ROFIT ORG . U.S. POSTAGE PAID P UBLISHED BY THE COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE P.O. BOX 2800 A NNAPOLIS , MARYLAND 21404 ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED A NNAPOLIS , MD P ERMIT NO . 120 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The College (2001-2017) Description An account of the resource The St. John's College Communications Office published The College magazine for alumni. It began publication in 2001, continuing the St. John's Reporter, and ceased with the Fall 2017 issue. 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Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Title A name given to the resource The College, Winter 2010 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf 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 Type The nature or genre of the resource text Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context The_College_Magazine_Winter_2010 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Description An account of the resource Volume 35, Issue 1 of the The College Magazine. Published in Winter 2010. The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/7751b59701619237e8d3b5ffbe0e1b2f.pdf 075be78e5710e2e3b7b1714b561c2fb9 PDF Text Text The College St. John’s College • Annapolis • Santa Fe Virginia Woolf And the Novel at St. John’s S p r i n g 2 0 1 0 �O n Vi rg i n i a Wo o l f T he ﬁrst time I came across her, I really disliked Virginia Woolf. I was a reluctant member of a seminar on Woolf in my senior year at a large university. (A class on Shakespeare’s tragedies was full. Everything else was full.) The graduate student who led the course was dismayed by those of us who couldn’t summon compassion for Mrs. Dalloway, thought Mrs. Ramsay was a loser, and were hopelessly bafﬂed by The Waves. Ten years later, I was ready to read Woolf, starting with “A Society,” a biting satire of men and women and books. In the story, as a group of women are having tea one day, Poll begins reading to them from a collection of books from the London Library. Declaring each book to be awful, the women decide they left far too much to men while they were busy raising children: So we made ourselves into a society for asking questions. One of us was to visit a man-of-war; another was to hide herself in a scholar’s study; another was to attend a meeting of business men; while all were to read books, look at pictures, go to concerts, keep our eyes open in the streets, and ask questions perpetually. We were very young. You can judge of our simplicity when I tell you that before parting that night we agreed that the objects of life were to produce good people and good books. Our questions were to be directed to ﬁnding out how far these objects were now attained by men. We vowed solemnly that we would not bear a single child until we were satisﬁed. By the time they conclude their investigations, at least one of the women regrets being taught to read at all. It’s an interesting story from a woman who educated herself by reading books. The boys in her family were sent to school, but Virginia and her sister, Vanessa, were educated at home. She roamed her father’s library, reading and translating Homer and Sophocles. Surrounded by books, she determined at a young age to be a writer. “She scarcely needed formal education,” wrote Nigel Nicolson in Virginia Woolf. “She was her own guide through history and literature. She was learning all through her life.” This issue of The College explores the place of the novel at St. John’s. It’s hard to imagine not reading Dostoevsky or Jane Austen in seminar, but it’s interesting to imagine what novels could occupy that special place on the seminar list in the future. (Cormac McCarthy? Toni Morrison?) Moby-Dick lives in preceptorials, where authors such as Borges, E.M. Forster, and García Márquez turn up. We polled alumni to ask what books they enjoyed reading the most and what they’d like to see added to the reading list. And we talked to a few tutors and alumni in academe about what they think makes a novel truly great. Susan Stickney made me think of Woolf when she talked about seeing novels in a whole new light when we read them again after many years, discovering something new in them (or in ourselves). Woolf turns up in language tutorial, where students in some classes read A Room of One’s Own. Mrs. Dalloway is sometimes read in precept and tutorial as well. Santa Fe seniors complete their St. John’s career with two seminars on To the Lighthouse. I’d love to know what they think of the book if they re-read it 10 years from now. Also in this issue, we look at an entirely modern phenomenon, Facebook, and how Johnnies feel about social media. We look back over the last ﬁve decades of St. John’s with two long-serving tutors who are still very much a part of life at the college and we proﬁle four alumni who are bringing the ideals of St. John’s into special projects in their professional and volunteer work. —RH The College is published three times a year by St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD, and Santa Fe, NM Known ofﬁce of publication: Communications Ofﬁce St. John’s College Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404-2800 Periodicals postage paid at Annapolis, MD postmaster: Send address changes to The College Magazine, Communications Ofﬁce, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800. Rosemary Harty (AGI09), editor 410-972-4511 rosemary.harty@sjca.edu Patricia Dempsey Managing Editor Jennifer Behrens Art Director The College welcomes letters on issues of interest to readers. Letters can be sent via e-mail to the editor or mailed to the address above. Annapolis 410-626-2539 Santa Fe 505-984-6104 Contributors Anna Perleberg (SF02) Keileigh Rhodes (A13) Deborah Spiegelman Babak Zarin (A11) Magazine design by Claude Skelton Design �Spring 2010 Vo l u m e 3 5 , I s s u e 2 The College The Magazine for Alumni of St. John’s College Annapolis • Santa Fe {Contents} 12 What Makes a Novel Great? d e p a r t m e n t s page 2 • 28 18 Friendship and Facebook biblioﬁle • • Tolstoy and Austen, Dostoevsky and Twain–with few exceptions, the seminar reading list hasn’t changed much when it comes to novels. Should it? Alumni and tutors consider the possibilities. page • • • • • • page 12 What would Aristotle say about social media? Alumni ﬁnd both perils and pleasures in the world of Web 2.0. • 22 Sam and Curtis page Two long-serving tutors look back over six decades of St. John’s College, from Barr and Buchanan and Jasha Klein to the state of the college today. 30 A new book by Jon Hunner (SF74) explores J. Robert Oppenheimer’s impact on the West; Jehanne Dubrow (A97) pays tribute to the Odyssey in a new book of poetry that explores life as a military wife. alumni P RO F I L E S page 22 30 From pre-K to MIT, four alumni bring classical education to schools and communities. 35 Pediatrician Mat Strickland (SF96) ﬁnds purpose in the heart of the Navajo Nation. 38 Philosophy Professor Steve Werlin (A85) takes on microﬁnance in Haiti as the country rebuilds. 40 Reformed hoarder Leah Fisch (SF98) gives order to chaos. 26 Croquet page It all began in Freshman chorus: the story behind a new St. John’s anthem. 44 Special Report: Alumni Relations from the bell towers New admissions initiatives How did you hear about St. John’s? President as paper adviser A global view in Santa Fe A new dean in Annapolis Reﬂections on being dean ARIEL and Hodson interns Kindles on campus News and announcements Letters • page 41 obituaries 48 st. john’s forever page 26 There’s a bold new effort underway to strengthen the ties between St. John’s and its alumni. on the cover Virginia Woolf Illustration by David Johnson �2 {From the Bell Towers} The Light-Bulb Factor in the YouTube Era St. John’s adopts new approaches to recruit students jennifer behrens focus most of their commuOn a cool morning in early nication and travel activities April, Gabe Luzier (A10) on top-tier prospects. led two sets of mothers and Admissions staff on the their teenagers on a tour of two campuses work closely the Annapolis campus. He together in this effort. Each answered questions about counselor in Annapolis has mathematics, what the a partner in Santa Fe. Each dorm rooms were like, and shares information about of course, what St. John’s students they’ve contacted graduates do. Luzier, a who may be interested in the seasoned tour guide for other’s campus. Together, Admissions, took all the staff plan receptions, travel, questions in stride, but he and conduct on-the-road really lit up when one of the interviews. Making parents asked what brought everything easer is a new him to St. John’s. collegewide database that “All of the material I was grants easy access to getting from colleges information about indilooked the same to me,” vidual prospectives and said Luzier, who is from ensures that staff aren’t Brandywine, Md. “When I duplicating efforts. read the booklet from Finally, the college will St. John’s, I knew it was Tour guide Gabe Luzier (A10, center) knew St. John’s was right for him as start reaching out to high exactly what I was looking soon as he learned of the college. A new admissions initiative—including school students in their for. I applied to Johns new publications—will cast a wider net for students who are right for St. John’s. sophomore year and will Hopkins as a safety school, keep up the stream of but my heart was already at communications to willing St. John’s.” To recruit students, the college has always counted on the “light- students through the fall of their senior year. Prospectives will be getting viewbooks and other brochures, but they’ll also be getting bulb” factor: a student learns about St. John’s and is drawn to the links to videos about academic and student life at the college. college’s academic program immediately. No other college will do. For the last 10 years, St. John’s has been using a suite of awardTo make sure St. John’s is reaching the high school students who winning publications with an understated style that stood out are awaiting that ﬂash of insight, the college has tapped one of the dramatically among the glossy color pamphlets that ﬂooded nation’s top admissions consulting ﬁrms, is revising admissions student mailboxes. The college will continue to integrate its material, and has begun incorporating new media and video into favorite tagline, “The Following Teachers Will Return to St. John’s electronic communication with prospective students. Next Year,” into its publications and electronic media, but it will In 2008 the college hired George Dehne and Associates to introduce new print publications including a new four-color evaluate recruitment efforts on both campuses and identify ways to viewbook. There will be a multimedia virtual tour of the college increase the college’s applicant pool. The ﬁrm’s recommendations on the web and increased use of e-communications. led to a new college-wide model for student recruitment. The college isn’t moving away from a serious presentation of the John Christensen, admissions director in Annapolis, explains academic program; it’s simply placing it in the context of the whole that the college shifted to a “prospect management” approach. college experience, says Larry Clendenin, Santa Fe’s admissions “Fundamentally, prospect management is an effort to identify and director. “We have always managed to distinguish the college from cultivate early in their high school careers those prospective other institutions through our presentation of the Program, but we students most likely to apply, be accepted, and ultimately enroll in have never managed to capture fully what it is like to study and live St. John’s,” he says. The college employs a point system based on in the communities of learning on our two campuses,” says the contact prospective students have with the college, and staff Clendenin. “We hope that our new publications continue to attract cultivate those students through personalized communications. the core following we have always had among college-bound Under the new model, counselors are assigned geographic students, but we are extending our reach to prospective students territories (usually states) selected by a market analysis of the we may have missed in the past.” x College Board’s Enrollment Planning Service. St. John’s tracks applications to the college over the last 10 years and then sends —Rosemary Harty counselors to the most fertile ground. The counselors group the prospective students in their states into three tiers by points and { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } �3 {From the Bell Towers} How did you hear about St. John’s? We asked readers of The College to tell us how they learned about St. John’s—was it the catalog, a teacher, a happy accident? Mortimer Adler I was reading Mortimer Adler’s book How to Read a Book, in which he mentions St. John’s and the great books. It took me another year (with encouragement from others) to apply. Richard Weigle came to San Francisco on business and invited me to meet him at the Sheraton Palace, where he was staying. I was accepted and offered some modest scholarships and a job at the library. St. John’s was a form of “salvation” for me, as I was then in my mid-20s. –Jerry Milhollan (Class of 1958) Discovery in the Stacks I “heard” about St. John’s while a student at the University of Illinois. At some point I read Mortimer Adler’s How to Read a Book, where he says that SJC is the only place to obtain a liberal education. Some time later, while working as a page in the library, I was shelving books towards the end of the day when I realized that the last book in my hands was the SJC catalog. Since I had a little time before the end of my shift, I sat down on the ﬂoor of the stacks in front of where I was supposed to shelve the catalog, and I read it from beginning to end. When I ﬁnished reading, I noticed a tear-out card to send for more information. I sent in the card, I went to St. John’s, and I graduated. – Mike Anthony (A69) alumnus, Ben Moskowitz (class of 1950), as one of my ﬁrst professors. He called us “Mr.” and “Ms.” He gave us three options for demonstrating what we learned in his World History class: take a test, write a paper, or have a conversation with him. He reminisced about a small liberal arts college in Annapolis where there were no desks, no majors, and no written exams. Everyone studied the “great books.” His father had asked him what he intended to be with a “liberal arts” degree, and he answered, “An educated man.” Decades later, I had the opportunity to visit the Graduate Institute in Annapolis, and I was hooked. Now, with my Master of Arts in Liberal Arts, I teach at a small college in Pittsburgh. Thanks, Ben. –Carol Brinjak (SFGI96) A Positive Model Like many others, I received the famous 1962 Saturday Review article about St. John’s College in the mail during my senior year in high school. I remember reading the article during English class and thinking immediately: this is where I want to go to school. Although getting excellent grades, I had been very angry at how most of our education was handled. But once I heard about St. John’s, I knew that education could be better. That’s not to say that St. John’s was easy for me. In fact the adjustment was very difﬁcult, and I almost left after the ﬁrst semester. But I struggled through and, in retrospect, wouldn’t trade it for anything. –Rick Wicks (SF68) An Educated Man I was a nontraditional student, having begun my undergraduate studies at age 35 in a small college in Pittsburgh. I was fortunate to have an SJC A “Wacko” College I was registered at Rutger’s University in my senior year of high school and had received my eight-digit student number. Caroline Sharkey Something about those eight digits left a bad taste in my mouth. At the same time, I received a phone call from a good friend—also a senior—who was laughing hysterically. He had scored a perfect 1600 on his SATs, so he received mail from virtually every college and university, and that day he had received an application from St. John’s. He was calling to tell me about “this wacko college where everyone takes the same courses and they have this Great Books program, and there are only a few hundred students, and you have to complete this ridiculous 10-page application!” I was too embarrassed to tell him it sounded pretty cool to me, so I called St. John’s as soon as we hung up. When I worked up enough courage, I called my friend to tell him I was accepted at St. John’s and was planning to attend. It took a while to convince him I wasn’t joking. — Caroline Mandy Sharkey (A78) Adler, Redux I had joined the Marine Corps after a disappointing year at a liberal arts college in Los Angeles. One day while wandering through a post library at Camp Pendleton, I came across Mortimer Adler’s How to Read a Book. Adler writes, “There is one college that I know of in this country which is trying to turn out { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } liberal artists in the true sense. That is St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland.” I wrote to Adler asking, since the book was written in 1941, had not other colleges, maybe closer to California, seen the light and reintroduced the classics and the sciences in place of the elective system? Adler kindly wrote back that, no, there was still only St. John’s. So I wrote to the college for a catalog and after discharge from active duty was admitted. —Joseph P. Baratta (A69) A Classical Education I was in my ﬁrst year at a prep school and hating pretty much everything about it. Every so often, a representative of some college would stop by, trolling for recruits. Such worries were years ahead of me, so I didn’t pay much attention to them. Until a man from a small college in Maryland spun tales of a classical education, in an atmosphere that seemed much more cordial to me than the one I was enduring. I even remember, more than 50 years later, that the recruiter was Admissions director Jim Tolbert (HA86), a wonderful man. When it came to applying for college, I remembered St. John’s and Mr. Tolbert. But I didn’t have the courage to apply. So I stumbled around. They call Tulane “the Harvard of the South,” but I never hear Harvard advertised as “the Tulane of the North.” In any case, the humidity got to me. I regrouped at a junior college. Finally, deciding that I had nothing to lose, I applied to St. John’s and was accepted. I jumped at the chance [to participate] in the founding Santa Fe class. Though I only lasted two years—I failed enabling, but the Army wanted me—I don’t regret a minute of the time spent. I learned a lot and grew enough to know that I’d spend the rest of my life growing. —Todd Everett (SF68) �4 {From the Bell Towers} Presidential Advice Being a paper advisor is a treat for a busy president guards in citizens who can ask questions and make choices for the good of society. Educated citizens, he posited, were less likely to “lose touch with the pate in the life of the mind.” Nelson’s busy schedule meant arranging paper conferences weeks in advance, so the two started meeting early in the fall. Yet Mr. Stephens doesn’t consider himself shorted in any way. “Anyone who has spent more than ﬁve or ten minutes with Mr. Nelson knows that he’s someone who is genuinely jennifer behrens When Josiah Stephens (A10) settled on a question for his senior essay (“What is the beneﬁt of a liberal education to a free-market system?”), his choice for a paper advisor seemed a natural one. Annapolis President Christopher Nelson (SF70) has been writing and speaking about the liberal arts for more than two decades. Stephens ﬁrst came to know the president away from the campus because he docked his 28-foot sloop Doris at Nelson’s house on the Severn River for more than a year while he slowly worked to make the boat seaworthy. The two would talk while Stephens worked. While Doris still isn’t ready for a long voyage, both Stephens and Nelson—along with the allimportant essay committee— thought the paper turned out well. Stephens read Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations and Theory of Moral Sentiments for his essay. He ﬁrst became interested in his topic at the start of the greatest economic downturn in the United States since the Great Depression. He closely followed news about proposed legislation to curb abuses on Wall Street and decided to explore how a liberal education creates natural safe- Though Nelson has served on several committees for senior orals, this was only the second essay he has advised in his 19 years as president. (The ﬁrst was by Arthur Allen, A06, who wrote on the ﬁlm Andrei Rublev). Advising Stephens gave him the opportunity to revisit the two Smith works. He found in The Wealth of Advising Josiah Stephens (A10) on his senior essay gave Annapolis President Christopher Nelson a chance to reconnect with the intellectual life of the college. foundations upon which their society was founded.” Ultimately, less government is needed in a society with people equipped to ask questions about virtue, morality, and justice, he wrote. Changes for the St. John’s Review Annapolis tutor William Pastille is the new editor of the St. John’s Review, the college’s scholarly journal. Pastille takes on the role from Pamela Kraus, who has edited the publication for more than 10 years. Kraus begins her term as Annapolis dean July 1. In addition, the publication is increasing its online presence and expects to make back issues available online. Find out more by visiting the college website: www.stjohnscollege.edu; click on Publications and St. John’s Review. Nations, as Stephens did, a parallel between Smith’s division of labor and a modern higher education system that funnels graduates into narrow specializations. Though early in his presidency Nelson was able to colead undergraduate seminars, the demands of the job have limited him to leading Executive Seminars and occasional parents’ or community seminars. Being a paper advisor helped him reconnect with the Program: “Spending a sustained amount of time with a student, thinking through an interesting problem and reading Adam Smith—it was a great opportunity to partici- { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } interested in the students and their experiences here. It was great to talk about issues that exist outside the books and to gain insight from his experiences. It made writing this essay so much more enriching.” Nelson, too, will count the experience among the highlights of his year. “For one thing, it reinforces for me how much the tutors do here to help guide the students in their work,” he says. “And secondly, it was fun.” x — Rosemary Harty �{From the Bell Towers} The World and St. John’s Santa Fe President Mike Peters offers students a global picture Combine a president whose career took him all over the globe with a group of students keenly interested in the most critical issues affecting the world today, and you have the Foreign Policy Study Group on the Santa Fe campus. One late winter’s afternoon, the students came to the seminar table with their text (a Foreign Affairs article on how to ﬁnance and manage a more secure global energy system), ready for President Michael Peters’ opening question: “What is the problem the authors are talking about?” For the next hour or so, the discussion embraces global politics and historic precedent while hovering close to the text: “The New Energy Order,” by David G. Victor and Linda Yueh. One student teases out the economic theory underpinning the article’s argument, while another focuses on ethical concerns. A third student questions the feasibility of the mechanism the authors propose to solve the challenge of global, environmentally responsible investment in energy resources. As they ﬂip through the article, the students advance their way through the authors’ arguments and point out perceived gaps in the reasoning. While the discussion stays close to the text, Peters also encourages a slightly broader exploration of global political reality. The issue, Peters offers, is the shift in global power, which, as one student suggests, has historically led to conﬂict. Thus, the discussion, which took off from the point of energy insecurity, returns the idea that political instability in resource-rich parts of the world remains a serious international threat. “The study group was some- thing I had in mind when I came to the college, but actually some students came to me and asked if I’d be willing to do something like this, and of course, I said ‘yes,’” Peters recalls. Before he joined the college in 2005, Peters served as executive vice president of the Council on Foreign Relations, where during his 10-year tenure he helped develop CFR’s National Program, which sponsors seminars across the country to encourage a broader debate on international affairs and U.S. foreign policy. Peters’ prior military career—he is a graduate of the United States Military Academy and retired as a colonel—took him to Vietnam, Panama, Saudi Arabia, and Russia. Peters also taught economics to cadets at West Point, where he later was chief of staff. In addition to the study group, about 10 to 15 students join Peters in his ofﬁce every couple of weeks to gather around his speakerphone for the CFR’s Academic Conference Call series. Students at colleges across the country 5 have the opportunity to ask questions of a CFR Fellow or Foreign Affairs author. While Peters solicits ideas for discussion topics and invites students to suggest speciﬁc readings, he usually selects the articles, as Johnnies are typically pressed for time. Many who attend regularly are interested in careers in international relations; some simply want to understand issues that affect citizens of the world. The group has several regulars, and others join in when time allows or when they ﬁnd the topic particularly appealing. Some students are notably tenacious about the enterprise, says Peters: “This year we have several juniors who joined the group as freshmen.” In addition, some students have drawn a direct line between their study-group participation and their postSt. John’s endeavors. One student who graduated a couple of years ago is now a Foreign Service Ofﬁcer, Peters says. Several other participants have gone on to pursue law degrees with a focus in international relations. All beneﬁt from the perspectives of the two dozen or so international students on the Santa Fe campus, some of whom take part in the study group. “One of the things that is different this year and reﬂects what’s happening in the college is that we have a growing number of international students in the group,” says Peters. “That adds a completely different perspective.” —Deborah Spiegelman chris quinn Santa Fe President Michael Peters shares his international experience with students through his Foreign Policy Study Group. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } �6 {From the Bell Towers} A New Dean in Annapolis Kraus’ deep dedication to the college has its roots in her early career and was partly due to the inﬂuence of her late husband, Richard Kennington. While teaching philosophy at Catholic University in the 1980s (where Kennington was a professor) she occasionally attended Friday night lectures at St. John’s. Her husband’s support helped her decide to join the St. John’s faculty in 1985. “Giving up a traditional academic career is a big decision,” she says. “I could have continued on a certain path to research and publish, but I was attracted to the breadth and depth at St. John’s. You can easily get into a narrow world in traditional academia and talk with colleagues only in the ﬁeld that they are in. Here at St. John’s we talk about ideas across the spectrum. There is a serious interest in all kinds of books and ideas.” Her own wideranging interests have been nurtured at St. John’s. “I have a deep, long interest in poetry. Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, and Robert Lowell are a few of the poets whose work I admire. I love literature, including Henry James and of course, Shakespeare. And there is history, philosophy, theater, and ﬁne art. I always come home with a painting by a student from the community art show at St. John’s.” When she was looking at colleges, Kraus didn’t know Tutor Pamela Kraus is only the second woman to serve as dean on the about St. John’s, and Annapolis campus; Eva Brann (HA89) was the ﬁrst. as the daughter of a patricia dempsey Tutor Pamela Kraus will face some tough challenges when she becomes Annapolis dean July 1, among them, new admissions initiatives, tight budgets, and the pressing need to make sound choices for the long-term future of the college. Since her appointment was approved earlier this year, Kraus has been on a crash course to learn everything about one of the most complex and important roles at the college. As dean she will chair the Instruction Committee, which oversees the college’s academic program. Hiring tutors, dismissing students, ensuring new tutors are supported, inviting lecturers, and dealing with parents are just a few of her roles. As dean she will also oversee Admis- sions, the Registrar, Career Services, and Greenﬁeld Library—all central to the academic life of the college. She’ll serve as a member of the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors. In the long run, she has a bigger challenge: making sure the college and its academic program continue to thrive. “We need to bring the importance of liberal arts education to public attention,” says Kraus. “It’s hard to make people see the intangibles, hard to convey the living, working and learning that takes place in the classroom. The active learning here at St. John’s is distinctive. It’s not the books themselves so much as the way we read them. It can be life changing. ” { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } coppersmith, she wonders if she could have afforded the tuition. Now, as dean, her job will be to promote the college and ensure accessibility through ﬁnancial aid. “I want young people to know the college exists, that St. John’s is a seedbed for your thinking,” she says. “There is a cumulative effect from this education. This is an education that will carry you through the rest of your life and serve you well in facing many challenges.” As she prepares for her new position, Kraus is meeting with as many members of the community as she can, including staff, board members, and alumni. Learning to be dean isn’t unlike the learning that happens in the classroom at St. John’s. “My door is always open and I hope my mind is too,” she says. “At St. John’s you learn to try not to love your own opinions so much that you are stuck in them. The student and tutor have to expose themselves to other ways of learning. Would you normally say, ‘I want to take a course on electricity and magnetism?’ No. But here you are exposed to it—and to so many other perspectives.” Tutor Nick Maistrellis, who served on the dean selection committee, says colleagues recognize Kraus’ commitment to the Program as well as her administrative know-how (she was editor of the St. John’s Review for more than 15 years). “She has intelligence, good judgment, graciousness, and style,” says Maistrellis. These qualities will make her a good leader of the college, and an effective advocate for its program of study. She will always have the good of the community in mind.” x –Patricia Dempsey �7 {From the Bell Towers} On Being Dean The role of dean at St. John’s is unlike that at any other higher education institution: chief academic ofﬁcer and guardian of the Program, but also the overseer of important functions such as admissions, athletics, the registrar, library, and ﬁnancial aid. The College asked two questions of several former deans: What was most the most difﬁcult part of the job? And what most surprised them during their term as dean? CURTIS WILSON (HA83), ANNAPOLIS, 1958-1962 AND 1973-1979 “The most difﬁcult thing about being dean? I think it is the responsibility that you have (and are frequently reminded that you have!) to every member of the community, for their welfare, for their having a worthwhile experience of learning at the college, and generally just for getting things to go well. I would hope the curtain of charity might fall on those incidents in which I didn’t manage very well. The most surprising thing about being dean: Certainly the most gratifying thing that happens at the college is a student waking up to the possibility of thinking freshly and insightfully about one of the questions arising in our studies.” EVA BRANN (HA89), ANNAPOLIS, 1990-1997 “What was most difﬁcult? Keeping the balance between the college as an efﬁcient institution and as a humane place of learning. What was most surprising? That when people asked me whether I was happy being dean, I found myself saying: ‘I wouldn’t know, I’m too deep in.’” HARVEY FLAUMENHAFT, ANNAPOLIS, 1997-2005 “The most difﬁcult thing was having so little time for study. The most surprising thing was how very many good things must be foregone or neglected in order to be able to minister to at least some matters of longterm importance—not because money is lacking but because urgencies are multitudinous while resources of time, effort, and attention are limited.” DAVID LEVINE (A67), SANTA FE, 2001-2006 “While there’s a lot of work to do in the dean’s ofﬁce—20 different things at the same time—that is not the difﬁcult thing. The most difﬁcult thing is, in and amidst all the various demands, to keep a clear sense of who we are as a college. At the end of my term a colleague, Phil Le Cuyer, asked me what I had learned as dean. My response was even surprising to me: ‘How much work it takes to keep us who we are.’ We went through a number of crises—presidential, student life, admissions, etc.—and what was wonderfully surprising was that the unique structure of the college proved strong: the Program provided stability through change, and with the support of the faculty, we were able to make signiﬁcant headway in addressing the pressing issues standing in the way of the college being a genuine community of learning.” VICTORIA MORA, SANTA FE, 2006-PRESENT “I’d rather talk in terms of challenges rather than difﬁculties, as I’ve experienced the former more than the latter. One signiﬁcant challenge has to do with the nature of the dean’s position itself. It is quite intentionally conﬁgured so that the dean is involved at every level of the college; the dean works with the board, the management committee, the campus ofﬁcers, the faculty, the staff, the students, the Being dean involves making sure the Program is at the heart of every decision made at the college, says Santa Fe Dean Victoria Mora. parents, and the alumni. This conﬁguration ensures that the Program remains at the center of every decision we make at the college, which is to the good. But it does mean that the dean is challenged to work at every level, often in the same day, making recommendations and decisions that affect the college as a whole, constituencies within the college, and of course individuals. The challenge is to be fully present at each of these levels, bearing in mind how the decisions at each level affect the others. It is, as Husserl would say, an ‘inﬁnite task.’ I’ve been surprised at how satisfying it is to be able to serve the college in this way. This doesn’t mean that I’m not looking forward to being back in the classroom, but it does mean that I have not experienced my service primarily as a { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } burden! Maybe my greatest surprise is how indebted I have become to my husband and children for making my work possible!” MICHAEL DINK (A75), ANNAPOLIS, 2005-2010 “It’s easy to say what the hardest thing is: making the decision that it is time for someone to leave the college: student, tutor, or staff member, and communicating that decision. I was surprised by the amount of supervisory work involved and by the variety of crises that are possible. I most enjoyed the opportunity to get to know and to work with the whole range of the college community, and I was most disappointed that I didn’t ﬁnd ways to spend more time with students.” x �8 {From the Bell Towers} Evolutionary Genetics and Emergency Medicine Internships give Johnnies a glimpse of potential careers Esme Gaisford: Fruitﬂies and DNA Last summer, Esme Gaisford (SF10) worked in the University of Chicago Evolutionary Ecology Laboratories’ Krietman Lab, thanks to Santa Fe’s ARIEL (Award for Relating Intense Education to Life) internship program. Gaisford had previously won an ARIEL in 2008 to work at the City of Hope cancer center in Los Angeles in laboratories headed by Dr. Stephen J. Forman (A70). Her work in Chicago took her into the realm of evolutionary genetics. “It was a huge thing to be in this kind of research lab as an undergraduate,” said Gaisford. An inspiring high school science teacher piqued Gaisford’s interest in cellular biology. Gaisford remembers him telling students, “I want you to know what you are doing and to understand why.” Surrounded by brilliant researchers and dedicated college interns in the university laboratory, Gaisford found her St. John’s background to be an asset. She soon picked up the specialized terminology and was even helping her peers with the lab work. The work that occupied Gaisford and her fellow interns involved repeated procedures to unzip and copy DNA, a technique called PCR. “You have to be clean, you have to be careful, you have to know what you’re doing at the right temperature,” she explains. The ultimate goal of all the experiments is a greater understanding of the evolution of the fruit ﬂy. For instance, one researcher was manipulating the size of ﬂies’ eggs to understand how specialization occurs and discovered interesting results about the signaling differentiation in embryo development, Gaisford explained. “[The researchers] want to understand evolutionarily how the on-off geneswitching mechanism works,” she says. “These guys were very into what they were doing,” Gaisford said of the researchers in the University of Chicago labs. “I think that when you get that far into academia, that’s what you do.” However, she suggests, at the top labs there are people like her mentor who can make connections and take the research to the next step. In addition, she observed that the researchers were constantly talking and helping each other. “It’s all about conversation,” she says. —Deborah Spiegelman Scott Weber: Up Close in the ER Esme Gaisford spent her summer with fruitﬂies last year. As a medical scribe in the Emergency Department at Anne Arundel Medical Center, Scott Weber (A09) has been by the side of physicians, nurse practitioners and physician assistants as they set broken legs, stitched up wounds, resuscitated some patients, and lost others. Weber’s internship, which he Scott Weber’s experience as a medical scribe began with the deepened his desire to be a doctor. support of a Hodson Internlaboratory or imaging studies. ship in February of his senior Scribes soon learn what studies year, involved creating the are necessary to evaluate a medical and legal record of a condition based on a patient’s patient’s treatment. He history, symptoms and observed and documented complaints. “I ﬁnd that learning procedures, test results, inforto take a good history is much mation provided by patients and like making a good argument in their families, and other imporseminar,” says Weber. tant aspects of patient treatSeeing patients die, Weber ment. says, is perhaps the more trying “It is the best experience I part of the job: “I can still can imagine for any student remember the name of the ﬁrst considering a career in clinical patient I saw die. I was more medicine,” says Weber, an than a little shocked to see the aspiring doctor. “And I’m strangely ashen color of his skin grateful to The Hodson Trust for and the limp way his body moved making it possible.” as the nurses prepared him for Weber completed the internhis family to see. Since then I ship last year, but he continues have seen more people die than I to work as a scribe, one day a care to remember; it is a sad but week in the emergency room ordinary occurrence. As a scribe and four days a week for an you will also confront some of oncologist. Weber’s job is to the nastier aspects of humanity. accompany the physician to the You will also see some patients patient’s bedside, where he ﬁlled with grateful relief and records the exact nature of an moments I can best describe as illness or injury and documents quiet dignity.” the physical exam. He uses a More than ever, Weber knows handheld tablet computer that a medical career is right for him. allows him to record notes “There is an infectious exciteefﬁciently. ment to working on a good A scribe also keeps an eye on case—it’s an intellectual chalall the doctor’s patients and is lenge with the supreme reward often the ﬁrst to alert the physiof being able to help someone cian to important and sometruly in need.” x times life-threatening results of { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } �{From the Bell Towers} Kant on a Kindle? The college considers the impact of digital readers Kindles have been sighted at the home of the great books: in the coffee shop, in the dorms and—gasp!—even in the library in Annapolis. Their owners love them, but the devices have their detractors as well, and the guardians of the college’s academic program are wondering what will happen if students start toting them to seminar. For those who haven’t investigated, electronic readers such as the Kindle are usually about a quarter-of-an-inch thick and come in a variety of sizes. The screen is called “electronic paper,” and because it uses no backlight, it isn’t hard on the eyes in the way a computer screen is. They can come with nice leather cases that make them appear more book-like. But of course, there are no pages to turn, no corners to fold over, no smell of paper, no margins to write in, no dust jacket—all those things that charm book lovers. Charles Cargal and Sarah Pearlman (both A12) received their Kindles as gifts. Since getting his Kindle last summer, Cargal says he’s reading more than ever. Having an entire stack of books with him everywhere he goes means that he can read a page or two whenever he has a free minute. The best thing about their devices, say Cargal and Pearlman, is that even though the readers can cost up to $500, e-books are much cheaper (about $10 for a bestseller), and texts including Shakespeare plays can be acquired for free.“The Kindle is not for people who don’t love books,” says Pearlman. “It is for people who love books more than anyone else.” Naturally, some book-loving Johnnies are horriﬁed by the idea of e-books. “A book can be shared,” notes Galen certainly less fragile,” he notes. “A book doesn’t lose all the words if I drop it.” For Pearlman, however, the physical aspect of reading is not as important as having access to more books. “A lot of people object to owning one in general, or speciﬁcally object to Johnnies owning them because 9 (A75). The committee agreed that the college can’t discourage students from using them. “To my mind, the only concern is the availability of texts and the availability of ways of locating where in a text you are (page or line numbers).” Santa Fe Dean Victoria Mora has yet to spot a Kindle on her Sarah Pearlman and Charles Kargal (both A12) are delighted with their digital readers, but they don’t use them in seminar. Cook-Thomas (A12). “If I have a book, once I’ve read it, I can give it to someone else to read. With an e-book, the other person has to have one too in order to read the book.” CookThomas prefers to hold a real book in his hands, not something that turns on and off. “Books are prettier and they worship the form of the book. I don’t think that’s fair because the good part of reading is the way the book transports you somewhere else.” The collegewide Management Committee has considered the issue of e-books, notes Annapolis Dean Michael Dink “I think we certainly prefer that students take books to class.” Santa Fe Dean Victoria Mora { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } campus. “I think we certainly prefer that students take books to class, but we have no policy against [e-books] and probably shouldn’t,” she says. “I think we would not allow computers where faces would be blocked if a student were reading a text in that way. The faculty has not, however, talked this through.” Pearlman can’t envision e-books fully replacing paper books. Cargal disagrees and points to the example of the phonograph and the iPod. It won’t happen soon, says Cargal, “but give it a hundred years and books will be gone.” —Keileigh Rhodes �{From the Bell Towers} News and Announcements Santa Fe Students Headed to Nepal Harvard Fellowship Jamaal Barnes (A10) has received a Reynolds Fellowship to study in the Harvard Graduate School of Education. The Catherine B. Reynolds patricia dempsey A group of Santa Fe students has received $10,000 in funding from the Davis Foundation to help combat water-borne diseases in Nepal. The project is one of 100 selected from submissions by college students across the country. St. John’s students have submitted winning proposals four years in a row. David McGee and Chris Pataki (both SF10); Shishav Parajuli, Prakash Pathak, and Brain Woodbury (all SF11); and Manish Thapa (SF12) will spend this summer in Nepal working to raise the public health standard in rural areas of a country recently ravaged by civil war and highly vulnerable to annual monsoons that damage rudimentary sanitation facilities. Nearly a third of the population lacks access to sanitation and potable water. The students will build a temporary clinic to provide basic medical care and also to provide education about hygiene and prevention of water and sanitation-related illnesses. In addition, the team plans to construct low-impact, efﬁcient sanitation and water-treatment facilities that are both inexpensive and sustainable. For more information about the project, “Founding Peace – Building Peace and Health Through Sanitation and Education,” visit the students website, http://foundations4peace.word press.com. Johnnie-Mid Seminar More than 60 midshipmen and four Naval Academy professors strolled across the street to join about 30 St. John’s students and ﬁve tutors for the annual Johnnie-Mid seminar, held this year on March 23 in McDowell Hall. Ethan Brooks (A10) organized the seminar and reception afterward, and chose the reading, “Gooseberries,” a short story by Anton Chekov. At the reception held in the Great Hall after the seminar, Johnnies, tutors, professors, and midshipmen mingled, discussing everything from weekend plans and waltz parties to life at the two schools, and questions raised in their seminars—until curfew at the Naval Academy. x Foundation Fellowships in Social Entrepreneurship are designed to equip individuals for national leadership positions that bring the realworld insights of management and entrepreneurship to bear on social problems. Language Scholarship jennifer behrens 10 AnnMarie Saunders (A12) has been selected for a U.S. Department of State Critical Language Scholarjamaal Barnes (A10) is headed to Harvard. ship to study Korean in South Korea this athletic programs on the summer. She will spend 10 Annapolis campus. weeks in an intensive language In addition to supporting the institute and take part in effort, alumni continue to share immersion activities. The schol- Iglehart memories: arship program is part of a Mike Van Beuren (A75): wider effort to dramatically “I remember the ﬁtness test expand the number of Amerithat Bryce Jacobsen used to cans studying and mastering administer annually. One critical-need languages. Saunelement was a quarter-mile run ders hopes to pursue a career as that was timed for individual a professor of Korean Studies or runners on the suspended Korean Literature. wooden track high in the rafters. There were ﬁve laps to a Tutor Honored quarter mile. Two things were In recognition of “outstanding daunting: the optical illusion professional accomplishments,” that the overhead girders would Annapolis tutor Peter Kalkavage hit you and the banked curves. has been named an Alumni Newtonian physics were out in Fellow of Penn State University. full force. It felt as though I’d ﬂy Kalkavage earned his bachoff the curve as I leaned away elor’s, master’s, and doctoral from the banked ﬂoor. Bryce degrees from the university. stood there impassively with the Among other accomplishments, stop watch. Time froze.” the citation noted Kalkavage’s Matt Carter (A95): “My most recent book: The Logic of senior year, we put together a Desire: An Introduction to club volleyball team and played Hegel’s Phenomenology of a few other Maryland teams, Spirit. including Hopkins, Washington College and UMBC. It was the Mind-Body Challenge game against UMBC I Fans of Iglehart Hall have remember. They were big and contributed $64,000 to date seemed much more talented. toward a $500,000 endowment We were the basketball school, to support the treasured gymna- not the volleyball school. In fact, sium in Annapolis, as well as the reason we had this team was { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } �{From the Bell Towers} a lack of interest in volleyball at the time. It was a best-of-5 match. We held a 2-1 lead before taking a thumping in game 4. They had the momentum. We seemed headed for defeat. During game 5, the Temple really came into play. We were used to the lowhanging beams and could serve over, under and through them with relative ease (an advantage we ﬁnally exploited). The UMBC team was frustrated by multiple balls hitting those beams and bouncing back to them. We prevailed in what I still consider one of the greatest upsets in the history of American sports.” Ray Cave (class of 1948): “As was obvious to Eva Brann and anybody else who bothered to review my academic course 11 The banked track at Iglehart Hall intimidated some runners. through St. John’s, the classroom that received the bulk of my attention was Temple Iglehart. I learned how to turn on the lights late at night and studied jump shots by the hour. The bleakest day in my St. John’s career came when the nurse had me banned from the gym for three months out of concern for the considerable damage I was doing to my knees. (It was during this bleak period of my junior year that I discovered some of the books were actually interesting.) In the end I earned eight blazers and have the octagonedged college seal to prove it. Alas, you could only be awarded two actual blazers. I had no other coats. Two years after graduation, I was still wearing the blazer, now covering three Baltimore police districts for the Evening Sun. Not a trench coat, but you go with what you got.” x {Letters} Poignant Pose Thanks for the ﬁne job you and your staff do with our excellent magazine. Someone deserves extra credit for the “word” photos! (Winter 2010). I believe I recognize myself in mid-back row of the aspiring dancers in the archival photo. I’m surer that my classmate Augusta Goldstein (SF68) is right in front of the teacher, displaying her beautiful posture! And the good-looking guy to her right was . . . it will come to me—another classmate. No way could I even approximate such a pose now, so I found it poignant to be reminded of a time when I could take a stab at it! Mind you, I do a version of railroad ballet everyday in work boots, without a pointed toe. But my knees rebel loudly at getting down, and then up again, from any ﬂoor. Dancers on the Santa Fe campus strike a pose. I’m guessing we were sophomores, so that would have been 1965-66. Elsa Blum (SF68) Editor’s note: The photos were the work of Jen Behrens, art director for The College. One College, Two Campuses I must confess at the outset that I am not a regular reader of The College; being a current student, I have picked it up only in passing once or twice. Anyway, I am writing to point out that the atmosphere of the Winter 2010 issue indicates an immense tilt towards the Annapolis campus of the college. I realize that Annapolis is the original campus, that it has far more alumni, and that most contributors to the magazine are also based there. Nevertheless, it is discouraging to see the disproportionate efforts in this regard. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } Speciﬁcally, I was very pleased to read about the Storytellers group in Annapolis (p. 6). We happen to have one here too, and they also meet Wednesday evenings. Wouldn’t it have been a wonderful, more comprehensive article to include both? It would have attested to the “one college, two campuses” slogan of St. John’s, apart from reafﬁrming the likemindedness of the students on both locations. In general, there seem to be too many articles about the Annapolis campus and too little from Santa Fe. I understand that there may be budgeting or space issues involved. And, again, I am not a terribly regular reader of the magazine, so my perceptions might be off. Whatever the case may be, I would simply like to draw your attention to this fact. Thank you very much. Keep up the good work, –Nareg Seferian (SF11) �12 {The Program} WHAT MAKES A G R E AT NOV E L ? And which ones deserve a place on the Program? by Rosemary Harty (AGI09) F or Santa Fe tutor Susan Stickney, there’s a scene in Pride and Prejudice that provides a ﬁtting analogy for the deeper value of reading ﬁction. It’s the morning after Elizabeth Bennet has just rejected Darcy’s offer of marriage, and she receives a long letter from him. His words initially conﬁrm Elizabeth’s great dislike for Darcy—until she has a chance to read the letter carefully and think about it for a while. “The ﬁrst time she reads it, she’s infuriated,” says Stickney, a member of the college’s Instruction Committee. “She’s so insulted that she can’t bear it. Then, when she reads it again later and gains distance and perspective, she uses the letter as a chance to reﬂect on herself and her family. She’s able to re-envision things and reorient herself.” To some, Austen’s novel may not have the weight of a work by Plato or Aristotle, Kant or Hegel. Yet ﬁction cannot be seen as mere entertainment, Stickney says, and the Program would be far poorer without it. “What I get from reading literature, particularly novels, is the chance to look at the whole human being in all its complexity. When I read a novel, I have a chance to ask: can I see myself in this? And what does that reﬂection look like?” In a college devoted to cultivating skills in language, novels turn our attention to the power of expression, she says. “We work so hard to follow Kant’s argument, or Aristotle’s, that we barely have time to look at the words the argument uses. The hope is that in literature, this aspect comes more to the foreground and can increase our sensitivity to the expressive possibilities of language.” Because of the roughly chronological design of the Program, novels turn up on the reading list in junior year, and—with some small deviations—a handful of novels have pretty much been the mainstay for many years: Don Quixote, Gulliver’s Travels, Pride and Prejudice, Middlemarch, The Brothers Karamazov, Huckleberry Finn, Heart of Darkness, War and Peace, and various works by Faulkner and Woolf in senior year. Talking about ﬁction in seminar can be uncomfortable for some students who would rather confront a political treatise, a mathematical formula, or a scientiﬁc concept. According to Annapolis tutor Judy Seeger, an Instruction Committee member, that’s not a rare sentiment. “For one thing, the novel is not laying out an argument for you. And an author such as Austen may be particularly difﬁcult because she is so very subtle.” That’s not to say that novels fail to offer truths for serious H. Christian Blood (SF02) brought an “intense and ﬁery connection” to literature with him to St. John’s. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } �{The Program} “I have no desire to reform St. John’s. But if I started a great books college, it would have a lot more ﬁction on the reading list.” H. Christian Blood (SF02) { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } 13 �14 {The Program} consideration and discussion, Seeger explains, “but clearly we can’t read a novel the way we read a philosophical argument.” Instead, we examine human nature in the context of situations—from the ravages of war in Russia to the drawingroom life of an Austen heroine. Students are sometimes quiet in seminar because it isn’t easy to engage the novel on a level deeper than plot. (Elizabeth hates Darcy. Elizabeth loves Darcy. All ends well.) “If it doesn’t speak to you in a way that’s genuine, it’s difﬁcult to get beyond a surface level of understanding,” says Seeger. In those cases, the tutors can be helpful in guiding the discussion. In her Austen seminar, co-led by tutor Amanda Printz, the opening question—“what is the difference between pride and vanity?”—led students into conversations about Jane’s virtue, the importance of social standing, and the unthinkable concept of a loveless marriage. Ruth Ann Brown (A11) loves reading novels, but she ﬁnds philosophy and politics much easier to talk about in seminar. She had already read Pride and Prejudice 11 times by the night her junior seminar met this year to discuss the work. To her, the topics in the George Eliot’s Middlemarch seemed deeper, more universal than the conﬂicts in the Austen novel. “Austen’s style of writing is such a pleasure to read. There’s a way in which you feel like you’re sitting in the room with her. But Pride and Prejudice just doesn’t have the depth of Middlemarch.” Several St. John’s alumni who came to the college loving literature and who now read novels with their own students suggest that, just as the laboratory must accommodate modern science, the college may want to consider adding to the seminar reading list works by modern American writers, more contemporary international ﬁction, works that reﬂect ethnic and racial diversity, and a few more works by women. H. Christian Blood (SF02), just completing his doctorate in comparative literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz, offers this suggestion: “I have no desire to reform St. John’s. But if I started a great books college, it would have a lot more ﬁction on the reading list.” Defining greatness jenny ellerbe Since 1937, the criteria for whether a book makes the seminar list have centered on the work’s power to raise persisting questions, be open to rich and varied interpretation, be timeless, yet timely. For Jana Giles (A88), when it comes to ﬁction, there has to be more. Giles, assistant professor at the University of Louisiana-Monroe, believes a truly great novel will have a puzzle of some kind: “There are interpretations that are stable that you can go through and prove that this is how you come to a certain conclusion. But at Jana Giles (A88) would like to see more works on the Program that reflect ethnic and cultural diversity. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } �{The Program} 15 “A good novel is a masterpiece of language.” Tutor Judy Seeger the center is a fundamental uncertainty. That’s probably true of a lot of great novels.” To illustrate her point, Giles points to Heart of Darkness and a passage that she read many times before seeing its importance: “It’s the passage where Marlow and his crew have almost reached Kurtz. They’re on the river with the so-called cannibal crew, though we don’t know if they are actually cannibals. And Marlow has this realization: why have they not eaten me? He sees that they’re hungry. He realizes that these men are exercising, at least in his mind, some kind of ethical restraint, but he doesn’t understand what it is. They have restraint and Kurtz doesn’t, and that’s the pivotal issue in the whole novel. Marlow is always talking about how everything in Africa is indescribable; the truth is he doesn’t need to actually understand the truth in a discursive way for meaning to come home to him.” Great novels have the power to move us through the thoughts and actions of unforgettable characters, but they also move us in relationship to themes and historical events, says Giles. “Great novels mark their time,” she adds. “They are commentaries emblematic of historical processes.” For example, Giles included a lesser-known novel by Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton, in one of her courses because she wanted her students to read about the lives of mill workers during the Industrial Revolution and understand the precedents for labor laws. “Everyone knows that people don’t like being preached at,” she notes, but a novel can help illuminate buried and unexamined opinions just as effectively as a work of philosophy. Carol Colatrella (A79), professor of literature and cultural studies at Georgia Tech University, ﬁnds plot secondary to character and setting. In a novel, she’s seeking “a lot of intimate detail about character and setting” and the opportunity to gain a glimpse of another time and another place. Reading The Brothers Karamazov and Emma at St. John’s were life-changing experiences for her and helped set her on her path to academe. Similarly, Stickney most values a novel that creates a world with complicated people. Take the rich universe of a novel such as The Brothers Karamazov. In books of this scale, “people do surprising things, or they’re pained, or they’re angered. It’s a place where I get to watch human beings respond, and I have to make sense of it.” For Christian Blood, a great novel is something that you never leave behind no matter how many times you move, because no matter how many times you read it, there is something else to uncover. “You can spend your life reading, studying, ruminating, turning it over in your soul and your mind over and over, and then one day you reread a passage and all of a sudden you catch a small detail that’s never stood out before, and it’s as if you’ve never seen that narrative before in your life even though you could recite lengthy passages of it from memory.” The Reading List It’s always the same dilemma at St. John’s: Time marches on. New works are written. But adding a novel to the reading list means taking something off. And there’s also the problem of epic proportions: seminars on long novels have to be scheduled at the beginning of a semester or after spring break. Preceptorials allow a tutor to offer any interesting novel students are willing to read. Although it’s not on the reading list, Moby-Dick is frequently read in preceptorial. Joyce’s Ulysses and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s A Hundred Years of Solitude have been recent choices. Adding contemporary ﬁction to the seminar reading list would be trickier, because of the question: what goes? Santa Fe’s Stickney can’t imagine not reading Dostoevsky (“he’s so good at the human soul”), though the choice could be Demons, or The Idiot. As the juniors read Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, they must be reading Jane Austen, but Emma and Persuasion are good choices, too. “We’re reading philosophers who are talking about human society and how to organize a government, and there’s Jane Austen portraying society in the drawing room.” A great lover of ﬁction before he entered St. John’s, Christian Blood left a little frustrated when it came to the novel. “I knew I wasn’t getting the whole story,” he says. “So I went to graduate school in comparative literature to work on the question of the history of the novel.” In many ways, Blood was more widely read than his peers in grad school; no one else had read Ptolemy, for example. But he was amazed at how much he didn’t know. “What was immediately amazing to me upon arriving in grad school is how much prose ﬁction there is from antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance,” Blood says. “At St. John’s, students sometimes get the impression that Greco-Roman literature is history, epic and tragedy; that the Middle Ages { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } �16 {The Program} is Chaucer; the early-modern period is Cervantes; and that novels are something autochthonous to modernity. I was in for such a shock when I realized what a small slice of literary history the canon [at St. John’s] really is.” Intending to write on Rabelais for his dissertation, he instead honed in on Greco-Roman literature. Blood knows that the Program can’t be all things to all people, yet he thinks the college should take a look at Apuleius, Chariton, Longus, Petronius, and others “whose narratives explicitly engage with Homer, Plato and Virgil and uncannily anticipate the novel as we know it.” In addition to what novels are read, Blood often thinks about how novels are read. “I think that in some ways, St. John’s presents literature as didactic; you read about a character and you learn how to be like him and not to be like him. Those are the kinds of questions we asked about Billy Budd at St. John’s.” Reading more American novels would give Johnnies a better sense of their own It was hard for Blood to adapt to classes in culture and history, says Georgia Tech Professor Carol Colatrella (A79). graduate school with colleagues who brought Marxist and post-feminist interpretations to too many “dead white men” on the Program. Having the works they read, and the very idea of research took grown up in New Mexico and studied in Santa Fe, Giles some getting used to. “Any time I looked up something suggests Native American novelist Leslie Marmon-Silko’s about a work, I felt like I was cheating,” he says. Ceremony, if not for seminar, then at least for precepts and But sometimes he thinks knowing a little bit more about tutorials. “It’s an emotionally and powerfully engaging Virginia Woolf might add to an undergraduate’s grasp of a novel.” novel like The Waves, whose author stretched well beyond Unless they read them in preceptorials or on their own, the boundaries of the conventional narrative. “I underSt. John’s students can miss out on some great American stood nothing of that book,” says Blood. “Maybe I was a novels, Colatrella says. “When I’m teaching my own distracted senior, but maybe I would have grasped more if classes, I think about what kinds of experiences I want someone had given me some inkling of what she was up to.” students to be exposed to: novels where there are different If Blood would add works from antiquity, Jana Giles values and where there’s an immersive world with lots of would like to see modern works that explore gender issues details where students are learning about a different and ethnic and cultural diversity. She focused on Heart of culture, even if it’s America,” says Colatrella. Darkness, Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea, and Forster’s Huckleberry Finn addresses this in some respect, but Passage to India for her dissertation, and considers the there are also powerful novels about and by American novels worthy of St. John’s. In ﬁction, there’s room for the women. For example, Colatrella’s students read Edith college to address the oft-heard criticism that that there are Wharton’s House of Mirth. While they initially saw the { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } �{The Program} protagonist, Lily, as selﬁsh and shallow, they viewed her differently as they thought more about the narrow choices for a woman with limited means during the Gilded Age. Iola Leroy, by African-American writer Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, explores slavery and racial identity, and Their Eyes Were Watching God portrays the continuing struggles of African-Americans in the Deep South. St. John’s should consider more modern novels for the Program, but at the same time, Colatrella laments that Moby-Dick remains off the seminar list. “People who get to read Moby-Dick with others are so lucky, because it really is a book that needs to be talked about,” she says. Although she has some suggestions for the reading list, Colatrella appreciates the Program for what it is and should always be. She wouldn’t have traded her laboratory classes, math, music, philosophy—the full breadth of the Program— 17 for a different beginning to her career. “I came to college with the feeling I shouldn’t cut off any pathways. I kept all of my books from St. John’s, and I open them now for different reasons.” In future years, novels may come and go from the Program, says tutor Judy Seeger, but whatever is read will enrich the lives of students. “A good novel is a masterpiece of language,” she says. “When we read a novel we really have to take into account what is said as well as how it is said. That isn’t always easy to do in seminar. But if you can really learn that, then you really understand what it is to read.” “For the most part,” adds Susan Stickney, “I think the novels we read at St. John’s teach us how to read novels. Then, Johnnies can go out and eat up the whole rest of the world of literature.” x What was your favorite novel read in Seminar? 25 20 Eliot, Middlemarch 15 10 Thanks to the alumni who responded to our short poll through Survey Monkey last winter, we have a slice of Johnnie opinions about the novels read in the undergraduate program. We received 671 responses. As far as the most popular novels read, The Brothers Karamazov edged Tolstoy’s War and Peace by a slim margin, but overall the Russians emerged far ahead of third-place Don Quixote. One Johnnie chided us: “Don’t you dare make me choose between Dostoevsky and Austen.” Other write-in responses include Mrs. Dalloway, The Tale of Genji, and The Magic Mountain. What novels should be read in seminar that are not on the list now? (Several on our list have been read in precepts, language tutorial, and in the GI. “Most on the list are dreadful or high school,” one Johnnie commented.) Melville’s Moby-Dick came out ahead. We included Thackeray’s Vanity Fair because it was among one of the ﬁrst novels read on the New Program, but apparently Johnnies are not keen to see it back. Write-ins for this question included Wharton’s Age of Innocence, Hardy’s Jude the Obscure, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Ford’s The Good Soldier, and Iris Murdoch’s The Black Prince. We like to think the alumni who suggested Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins, The Little Engine that Could, and Kujo were joking. x 5 0 The Russians Win 6.9% Tolstoy, War and Peace 21.4% Cervantes, Don Quixote 13.3% Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov 23.1% Twain, Huckleberry Finn 7.0% Austen, Pride and Prejudice 8.5% Conrad, Heart of Darkness 3.3% Swift, Gulliver’s Travels 3.9% Woolf, To the Lighthouse 3.1% Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter 1.2% Other 8.1% What novel should be added to the reading list? 0 5 10 15 20 Melville, Moby-Dick 27.4% Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury 12.2% Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath 12.2% Flaubert, Madame Bovary Forster, A Passage to India Dickens, David Copperfield Thackeray, Vanity Fair Proust, In Search of Lost Time Other { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } 25 8.7% 4.0% 3.0% 1.8% 8.6% 22.1% 30 �18 { J o h n n i e s a n d Fa c e b o o k } The Virtual Table JOHNNIES SIGN O N T O FAC E B O O K by Anna Perleberg (SF02) “[T]hose who are . . . locally separated are not performing, but are disposed to perform, the activities of friendship; distance does not break off the friendship absolutely, but only the activity of it.” (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics) his morning, Aristotle signed into Facebook: he updated his status to “Lazy day—think my rational soul is still asleep”; wished Alexander the Great a happy 33rd birthday (“Many happy returns!”); tagged himself hoisting an amphora in Theophrastus’ photo album “WineDark Shindig”; added the Prime Mover application (he can move you, but you can’t move him); and for the nth time, ignored a friend request from Thomas Aquinas. Activities of friendship, indeed. T The social networking site Facebook, created in 2004 by a group of Harvard students, takes its name from the oncecommon (now, one suspects, obsolete) practice by college administrators of distributing Xeroxed, stapled sheaves of student ID pictures as a handy means of linking names with faces. The social utility quickly expanded from Harvard to other universities; in late 2005 it launched a high school version, and since September 2006, it’s been available to anyone over the age of 13 with a valid e-mail address. This is, of course, a good chunk of the world, and indeed, were Facebook a sovereign nation, its population of 350 million unique users would make it the third largest in the world. Seventy percent of these users live outside the United States. And while media continues to regard social networking in general, and Facebook in particular, with a wry, “these kids today” attitude, as of October 2009 one-ﬁfth of folks on FB were over 45. So what is Facebook? Is it a means or an end? Is it an inane waste of time or a revolution in communication? Does it destroy or facilitate discussion, bolster or ruin relationships? Is it a real solution, in a world where our friends are ever more far-ﬂung, to Aristotle’s requirement of proximity for perfect friendship? { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } �{ Fa c e b o o k } 19 Profiles, Friending, and The Wall The ﬁrst thing one does after signing up for Facebook is create a proﬁle: an online identity, consisting mostly of lists and afﬁrmations. (My Neighbor Totoro is my favorite movie. I was born October 1. I graduated from St. John’s College, Santa Fe, in 2002. Here’s a picture of my cats!) But as Facebook’s interface has evolved, argues Anne Page McClard (SF83), this static, self-promoting element has faded from prominence, in favor of many different forms of interaction. In an article she co-authored for Anthropology News in March 2008, she attributes the popularity of Facebook to its ability to “[shift] identity-making on the Web away from the individual to the collective in a new way, enabling low-maintenance, automatically generated, interactionbased content creation.” For Johnnies in particular, she says, who “gain satisfaction through conversation, a collective activity,” the constant stream of connection is intuitive and comfortable. These connections take a wide variety of forms.Through Facebook one can invite people to a party or a concert, join groups with common interests, declare fandom for TV shows and philosophers, even play games ranging from old standbys such as Scrabble to complex role-playing games where one pretends to be a vampire or a farmer. The most basic tie, of course, has led to the neologism “to friend” (and its opposite, “to unfriend,” the Oxford English Dictionary’s 2009 Word of the Year). Here, with a single mouse click, one Facebook user gains access to another’s entire proﬁle: personal information (the aforementioned lists and afﬁrmations), register of other friends, and the all-important Wall. The Wall is where most one-on-one Facebook contact takes place; it’s a way to promulgate photos, videos, links, and status updates (musings quotidian or epic, posted by a user; e.g., “Anna Perleberg is not on Facebook right now, because this article is due tomorrow”). Depending on privacy settings, whatever gets posted on a person’s wall, whether by that person or one of their friends, can be read by any friend of the user. Wondering what I’ve been up to lately? Head for my Wall and peruse reams of fascinating trivialities, from what I had for dinner one Tuesday (black currant vodka and duck pelmeni in Cointreau sauce) to what people you’ve perhaps never met and perhaps never will meet think of the meal. But the genius (and arguably, the danger) of Facebook isn’t its ability to link one friend to another; e-mail, telephone, letter-writing, and actually speaking to one another get the job done just as well. Facebook’s innovation over previous means of communication lies in its distillation of Wall content from potentially hundreds of friends (the average is around 130, but a proﬁle can have up to 5,000) into one ﬂow of content called the News Feed, a kind of online agora where Wall activities galore appear on one page. Whereas keeping up with dozens of acquaintances of various ages on various continents via face-to-face interaction, or even a phone call, would require vast funds and an exhausting travel schedule— not to mention the social awkwardness of showing up on the doorstep of someone not seen since high school—the Facebook News Feed does it all automatically. Interaction and friendship become effortless, much to Aristotle’s delight. Or maybe they don’t. Community and Counterargument The genesis of this article was, naturally, a Facebook group I created. “Johnnies on Facebook” currently stands at 265 members; in comparison, the Johnnie Chair, which has its own proﬁle page, has close to 2,200 friends. (The ofﬁcial St. John’s College page has about 2,400 and gets about 800 visits a week.) Most members who commented see no contradiction between the examined life and the jovial cacophony of the Wall and the News Feed. Many feel that Facebook facilitates connection: Lauren Yannerella (SF03) thinks that part of the reason she uses Facebook is because she went to St. John’s. “Our alumni tend to cover the globe, and it can be { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } �20 { Fa c e b o o k } very difﬁcult to keep in touch and stay in the loop. I don’t want to lose touch with the general student population, and Facebook means I really don’t have to.” For Ruth Johnston (A85), who is an invalid and “pretty severely isolated,” Facebook has proved a boon. “I post lots of history trivia. I always read with one eye open for what I can use to amuse the Johnnies. Book illustrators mixed ear wax into egg white to make book paint! The Black Death started as an illness native to Asian groundhogs, known as tarabagans!” She’s also enjoyed forming online friendships with Johnnies previously unfamiliar: “I’ve picked up a range of Johnnies I don’t know, as a reward for being interesting. When I went to Homecoming last fall, a few people I wasn’t sure I recognized told me, ‘Oh, I follow you on FB!’” And while Santa Fe tutor Jacques Duvoisin doesn’t usually accept friend requests from current students, he uses the site to “hear from the few alums who really matter to me, as well as all the others who may turn out to be interesting as time passes.” Facebook’s not a threat to conversation, he says, “since it primarily connects people who otherwise would not be likely to converse at all because of time or space (how Kantian!).” Not all correspondents painted such a rosy picture. Alexis Brown (SF00, EC03) uses Facebook primarily to chat with non-Johnnie friends. “A few folks from SJC who graduated around the same time as I did utilize a chat room to keep in touch with one another on a regular basis (daily). It is very intimate. Facebook is a networking site, and makes it easier to stay in touch with people on a fairly impersonal level. But Facebook is way too impersonal for real conversation.” Where Anne Page McClard casts Facebook’s communal nature as well-suited to seminar-trained thinkers, Brown feels that “the individual, for me, was a key element in what made a good or bad seminar. The individual is very much a part of a discussion.” Another alumna, Leila Khaleghi (SF05), highlights the peculiar knots of etiquette a Facebooker can ﬁnd herself in. “People try to contact me on Facebook, we become friends, yada yada. I assume that it’s just the ‘we went to the same college’ thing and think nothing of it. Then they write me messages like we know/knew each other and I literally have no recollection of ever speaking a word to them. What do you do in a situation such as this? Do I play along? I feel like Facebook is always getting me into strange and uncomfortable scenarios.” Brown’s assertion that “even if a discussion starts to happen on FB, it falls apart quickly due to limited space, time, format of the site, etc.” is indeed borne out by the “Johnnies on Facebook” group itself. An attempt by this intrepid reporter to start a seminar-style discussion on the Aristotle quote above garnered a whopping two responses (although several people had helpful suggestions as to other Program texts that deal with the concept of friendship). And while a cursory search reveals a plethora of Johnnierelated groups—Johnnies Abroad, Johnnies in Medicine, Johnnies in Chicago, Johnnies in Public Policy, Johnnies Do It With Arete— average membership is about 35. Compared with the 400,000 members of the group “I Will Go Slightly Out of My Way To Step On That Crunchy-Looking Leaf,” that’s negligible, to say the least. Some Johnnies avoid the site altogether. Jamie Bowman (SF99) confesses he has no logically rigorous reason for his opposition, “besides a gut reaction to anything that many people are so excited about.” He’s not anti-Internet. “Since 2002, I’ve run a message board for Santa Fe Johnnies from the mid-to-late ’90s. . . . It’s a really cool board. It’s very active. I think Facebook is slowly killing it. The board (sfjohn- { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } �{ Fa c e b o o k } nies3.yuku.com) is the local Mom & Pop coffee shop and Facebook is Starbucks.” Besides its ubiquity, he dislikes how Facebook can dredge up tenuous associations. “I don’t need to reconnect with the kid who sat next to me in 10th-grade English. I’ve heard many stories of annoying people wanting to be your Facebook friend and you have to make up some excuse why you don’t want to meet them for lunch and ‘catch up.’” Michael Sullivan (A02) takes a moderate approach. He absented himself from the site for more than six months because he thought it “debases relationships by reducing them all to the lowest common denominator.” “All of the interactions, with friends I’d been in constant contact with for 10 years or more and those I’d had no knowledge of since ﬁnding them on Facebook, seemed equally intimate and superﬁcial,” he said. Recently, though, he resumed posting, admitting that while Facebook is “no substitute for conversation, it’s deﬁnitely a substitute for nothing. The fact is that we no longer live in a polis, and if the technology which has broken all familial and social ties by driving us to the four winds doesn’t also bring us back together, then nothing will. If the shallowness of the relationship-preservation that FB offers bothers me, so does the oblivion which is the alternative.” Facebook isn’t the only way Johnnies are reaching out in cyberspace. Many alumni are ﬁnding a voice in the blogosphere. Here are just a few we’ve heard about: Lisa Simeone (A79), a writer for Baltimore’s Style magazine as well as a National Public Radio host, writes a lively blog called “Glamour Girl.” Want to gain some tips on Jackie O’s simple, but elegant style? Check out Glamour Girl at: www.baltimorestyle.com/index.php/style/glamour_girl. Alana Chernila (SF02) blogs about food and life and raising kids. Every post includes a new recipe, as well as some spectacular photos of raspberries, rhubarb, and her campaign signs (read the blog for more on that). The blog has a friendly, 21 Utopia or dystopia, Facebook is inhabited by millions. And while a Google search of the phrase “Facebook is destroying” generates 54,000 hits—crediting the social network with damaging the sanctity of marriage, academic performance, the economy, memory, America—it seems prudent to reserve judgment about something that entered the public consciousness less than four years ago. Perhaps Facebook is the new Gutenberg press, part of a paradigm shift in the way human beings communicate. Perhaps it’s just a diversion. Would that be so bad? Even Aristotle, a thinker not given to frivolity, recognizes that friendship comes in many forms, that “[o]ne cannot be a friend to many people in the sense of having friendship of the perfect type with them. . . . But with a view to utility or pleasure it is possible that many people should please one; for many people are useful or pleasant, and these services take little time.” x Anna Perleberg (SF02) is a Brooklyn bookseller who checks her Facebook two dozen times a day, but remains skeptical of Twitter. Illustrator Caitlin Cass (SF09) recently paid tribute to St. John’s in her collection of illustrations, Great Moments in Western Civilization. Read more about Caitlin on her website: www.greatmomentsinwesternciv.com personable approach. Check out her recipe for herb dumplings at www.eatingfromthegroundup.com. Nate Downey (SF91), author of Harvest the Rain, writes a blog on sustainability at www.backyarddigest.com. Downey is an advocate for “gradual greening,” which starts with devoting 10 minutes a day to sustainable living. Read about his visits to the farmer’s market, composting, and just getting outside. Baltimore bloggers Lou Kovacs (A02) and Talley Scroggs Kovacs (A01) borrowed the name of a famous book about the Chesapeake Bay (Beautiful Swimmers) for a blog about “kitchen exploits, urban adventures, country forays, and little one's milestones.” (http://thebeautifulswimmers.blogspot.com) { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } �22 {History} SAM AND CURTIS Look Back on a Life Spent at St. John’s by Rosemary Harty (AGI09) ew people know the college as well as Curtis Wilson (HA83), tutor emeritus and former dean, and Samuel Kutler (class of 1954), tutor emeritus and former dean. Wilson came to the college in 1948 as a young tutor, just after Barr and Buchanan departed. Kutler was headed to the University of Chicago until he learned of a college with about 200 students where he could study math and read philosophy. What’s most remarkable about these two individuals is the way they live the life of the mind. Both remain active and involved in the college, and intensely, intellectually curious. Until recently, Kutler was still leading seminars in the Graduate Institute, delivering lectures, and working on a book about poetry and mathematics. Wilson was awaiting the publication of his new book, The Hill-Brown Theory of the Moon’s Motion: Its Coming-tobe and Short-lived Ascendancy (1877-1984). They sat down together in Annapolis this winter to share their memories from six decades at St. John’s. F On choosing St. John’s Curtis: I was in the history department at Columbia and was having trouble with my dissertation. I was assigned to study a 15th-century Italian and do something like a previous student of my advisor had done with another 15th-century Italian. This was all on the premise that Galileo was only following things that were already proposed and done in the Middle Ages—the thesis of continuity. My gut feeling was that there had been a revolution sometime around there, and it was not continuity. A friend suggested I attend lectures by Leo Strauss at the New School for Social Research, so I went and listened to his lectures on Plato’s Republic. These were wonderful to me because you studied the text very carefully and then thought out possible interpretations. You didn’t try to ﬁt the text into some historical theme proposed by scholars. Then my friend suggested I should go down to St. John’s and talk with Jacob Klein, and he added, “by the way, when you’re there, ask for a job.” I’d had disappointing interviews; people willing to hire me, but it meant imposing some context on me. St. John’s was just—fresh air! We would actually read the books you need to read in order to have opinions about history or to know that your opinions were not worthwhile. Sam: I had wanted to go to the University of Chicago, but when I read the St. John’s catalog, I said, “that’s what I want to do.” That we studied the ancients was unbelievably important to me. That we studied ancient mathematics before ending up in the senior year with the calculus—that was priceless. You could see the change Descartes and company brought about. Most people think mathematics is one thing, but it isn’t one river like that. On laboratory and language Curtis: I was asked by [then dean] Raymond Wilburn to teach a class in organic chemistry when I got here—to the whole senior class, about 40 students. Scott Buchanan and Stringfellow Barr’s departure was a towering fact, and the seniors effected a pervasive melancholy. These were the after days; the glory days { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } �23 jennifer behrens {History} were gone. A second fact of some import to me was that these students knew no chemistry whatsoever. Teaching them organic chemistry was a problem because of that, and it was made sort of a crisis because the textbook was a cookbook, nothing more. We started out by making cleaning solution that was potentially lethal, and not used in college laboratories nowadays. The students were totally skeptical of this enterprise and with good reason. Somehow, in mid-course, I took them through an elementary history of chemistry, to seek why and how the atomic theory got established. I asked them to write papers about that, and they did a good job. What had happened was that the lab program had proved a difﬁculty for the college, and at some point before I arrived, a decision was made to use ordinary textbooks. This was not at all in accordance with anything related to the Program, and with others I spent the next 10 years working primarily in the laboratory to try to ﬁnd ways of doing things that might be more helpful to students. Sam: Curtis was on sabbatical when I got here in 1950. We were still making scary things in the laboratory. We called one the universal solution, and the theory we had was that it would eat through anything there is on earth if it got through glass. We thought it could eat through us and right down to the center of the earth! There were also some really good discussions in the laboratory, so I found it a good experience. But then, and over the Sam Kutler (left, class of 1954) knew Curtis Wilson (HA83) as one of his tutors; later they served together as tutors. Both men have served as dean, and both have stayed very involved in the life of the college even after retiring. years, it was tough for the poor students to ﬁt laboratory into the schedule. All the other classes were ﬁve days a week, and laboratories were only twice. You were preparing crazily to get your language, mathematics, and laboratory done. I studied calculus with Curtis, and it was really rigorous. We sure went through the theory of everything. There were a group of young tutors here, Robert Bart, Hugh McGrath, Curtis—they were a splendid group. Curtis: Hugh and Bob were especially concerned with language. Latin had been taken out of the program and we got two years of Greek. Then there was a thought that we could have some time for English poetry, something a little different at the end of the second year. Sam: I didn’t beneﬁt from that. We had two solid years of Greek, and we translated every word of the Hippolytus of Euripedes. When I came back as a tutor, then we worked English poetry in the second terms of tutorials. But it still seems a shame to have just a year and a half with the Greek language. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } �24 {History} The community was very small. Not everything about that was good, but you knew everybody and when there was a play performed, you expected every single faculty member to be there and say that you were very good, whether you were or not. I was in The Winter’s Tale, and that’s where I met my wife (Emily, class of 1955). Tutor Emeritus Curtis Wilson served two terms as dean and was one of the ﬁrst faculty members in Santa Fe. On President Richard Weigle Curtis: He brought the necessary attempts to raise funds. But there was always a tension between him and Jacob Klein; Jasha watched him like a hawk, thinking something dreadful was likely to happen. For instance, Dick Weigle wanted to institute having Phi Beta Kappa here. It was derailed. Then there were a lot of discussions before the dedication of the new Mellon building; certain people were to be named honorary fellows of St. John’s. Some people wanted strongly to have Barr and Buchanan so named—but not Adler! On Dean Jacob Klein Curtis: I visited the college initially in April 1948, in the spring, to talk with Jacob Klein about my dissertation. I met him ﬁrst in what was then the Senior Common Room. He was seated on a red leather sofa, which I think is still possessed somewhere at the college. He smoked cigarettes and his cigarette ash fell on his vest so he would be perpetually wiping away ash. I told him about the subject I was assigned and he said, “nonsense, all nonsense.” I was at a stage where that seemed a very gratifying statement. He really felt the responsibility of being dean, and he took it very seriously. He talked to the whole college and said, “The Golden Age of Athens is succeeded by the Alexandrian period. We (St. John’s) are in the Alexandrian period.” He was trying to address this pervasive melancholy [post Barr and Buchanan], and what he was saying was, “we have to get down to work.” I admired him tremendously. Sam: He would appear in the Coffee Shop at lunchtime and everybody would gather around him and he would start a discussion, even though he had work to do as dean. I remember once when students tried to grab him and ask about Picasso. And he said, “I’ll tell you about Picasso; he was always thinking.” And whish! He was gone. As a student, I thought that he always had been dean and he always would be dean. The main thing about St. John’s was that we read old books, and we took them with complete seriousness, and he helped enormously with that because they were so important in his life, Plato and Aristotle. And the college became settled around that. Sam: As a student, I didn’t appreciate Dick Weigle. It was only after he spent 32 years as president that I realized how lucky we were to have him. He really cared about the good of the college and he sure kept us alive. The college was concerned about growing too big, and we thought 300 students was the perfect number. One day, students burned Weigle in efﬁgy because they thought he wanted to make the college bigger. He did so by creating the Santa Fe campus—it was very, very important to him. And he brought us the women: the women saved us! On Mortimer A dler Curtis: He’s not enormously interesting in my opinion. He inﬂuenced some people in his book How to Read a Book, and many people learned of St. John’s because of it. He had the opinion that he’d come every year to lecture, but that wasn’t true. It was a picture he built up and believed. Sam: It was true to me! When I was dean he would call me up and tell me when he was free to come to lecture. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } �25 {History} Sam Kutler left a job as a mathematician at Johns Hopkins’ Applied Physics Laboratory to join the college faculty. Curtis: On one of the Adler occasions, the prank was to release from the back of the auditorium some thousands of marbles, which then rolled downhill and gave a most unnatural sound. Mr. Weigle stood up at the time and apologized for it. A year or two later, Adler had dinner in our dining room, and I told him what that sound had been. He said, “If I’d only known, I could have said I think I’ve lost my marbles!” up, worried that the “special thing” that his class had would vanish from the earth since they’d left St. John’s. Some like to talk about a “Golden Age.” I don’t know about the Golden Age because when I came it had just vanished. But I look back on my times with members of Sam’s class as a very special time. We were having good conversations. The students were learning, and I was learning. On being dean Curtis: My ﬁrst deanship was 195862. I found it difﬁcult, and I was discouraged sometimes, but we did do a few things. We eliminated German, got two years of French, and instituted the preceptorials. You can’t believe how much discouragement and depression was rampant in the upper levels of the student body at that time. They’d been doing the same thing in so many ways. We needed to stimulate intellectual excitement and interest. It seemed a good idea to some of us that tutors should choose topics that they themselves had some interest in pursuing and that allowed for variety. The Program is not a complete education for anybody. The idea is—and always has been at St. John’s—that you’d better go on learning after leaving the college, for 60 or so years, whatever is available to you. I think the dean’s opening lecture is enormously important. Somehow or other, by example or engagement, the dean should open up questions, inspire his or her audience with the ideal of a life of inquiry. It needs to be fresh and unexpected. No, I didn’t and don’t know how to do it! And I drove my family crazy in the summers when I was trying to concoct my efforts in that genre. On change and the college Curtis: It’s natural for change to happen at St. John’s, and it’s not something to be bemoaned. I remember I spent a semester at the University of Toronto in the ’90s and met one of the students I’d had the previous year. And he immediately spoke Sam: What can’t change? Imagine if we read only modern books? Or even worse, only ancient books? That interplay between the two is one of the most important things that we do. What St. John’s meant in your life Curtis: It’s like asking a ﬁsh to explain how it is to be in the water. I think my habit of questioning is potentially very good. Not always! There are hostile circumstances in which questioning is not welcomed and as a consequence, not immediately helpful. Then one must work quietly towards improving the atmosphere. But we need potential whistleblowers in our society. We need people to say: “We don’t get it—why are we here?” It’s those people who are going to make the difference. Sam: My student years at St. John’s—they were magic years for me. I think I would have had greater tunnel vision had I not come here, and the factors were my fellow students. And the faculty. There are plenty of works I probably wouldn’t have read if I hadn’t come to St. John’s: Platonic dialogues, Aristotle. And I’ve read a lot of Shakespeare since coming to St. John’s. Could you imagine not reading Shakespeare? x { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } �26 {Croquet} “ W E A R E T H E DA N A A N S T O YO U R T ROY ” “St. John’s Fight Song” O Johnnie, as you play croquet, Defend our honor on this day. Your battle cry: Let Middies kneel To the form of Good reveal. O hear us when we boldly say, Defeat the Middies at croquet. O ye who books do seldom read, Your unexamined lives concede. Beware each Middie girl and boy, We are the Danaans to your Troy! Defeat the Middies at croquet! Amen. doug plummer O hear us when we boldly say, Ben Hutchins (A10) greets Midshipman n the fall of 2001, tutor Tom May Amanda Howard before the start of the noticed his students needed more practice singing in four-part harmony annual match. and that fewer students seemed to have experience in singing hymns. “Ms. (Tanya) Hadlock-Piltz (A05) came to Casting about for something to sing, me with the words, and after a few changes, May came up with the Navy Hymn. “I we printed them below the more familiar couldn’t think of anything more appropriate, lyrics to sing at croquet,” May recalls. “The and I thought we should sing it at Croquet.” ﬁrst year, there was no announcement. We The Navy Hymn sung at the Academy is sang ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ then the adopted from Britain’s Royal Navy. The orig- Navy Hymn, and then we just vamped right inal words were written as a poem in 1860 by into singing the St. John’s song. It was interWilliam Whiting, and the melody was by the esting to watch the change of expression. By Rev. John Bacchus Dykes, who originally the time we got to the lyrics ‘beat the composed the tune as a song called “Melita.” Middies at croquet,’ it was perfectly clear As the students practiced the hymn for the that we weren’t singing the Navy Hymn croquet match, May wondered what else they anymore.” could perform in honor of St. John’s. This year, May was surprised by the While the college has a ﬁght song, May has number of students and alumni singing never been a fan: “It’s very dated, it’s all about along. He’d like to see even more Johnnies the ‘men of St. John’s,’ and it sounds like a join in, so clip out the words and be ready to Franz Liszt reject.” Instead, he suggested to sing next April! x his students that they develop new lyrics for a Johnnie version of the Navy Hymn. I { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } Navy Hymn Eternal Father, strong to save, Whose arm hath bound the restless wave, Who bidd’st the mighty ocean deep Its own appointed limits keep; Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee, For those in peril on the sea! Most Holy Spirit! Who didst brood Upon the chaos dark and rude, And bid its angry tumult cease, And give, for wild confusion, peace; Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee, For those in peril on the sea! �27 doug plummer judy mcbride The 28th annual croquet match against the Naval Academy took place Saturday, April 18. More than 2,000 spectators turned out for the match, with the Johnnies prevailing, 5-zip. That makes 23 St. John’s victories since the match began. Fully embracing the misnomer of St. John’s as “that basketball school,” Johnnies suited up in basketball uniforms and headbands for their sound defeat of the cardigan-clad Mids. x doug plummer sarah culver judy mcbride judy mcbride {Croquet} Clockwise from top left: Citali and Patrick McDowell (A01); Luke Russell (A09); Fashionista and family; Spectacular hats were on display; Picnics; Swing dancing. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } �28 J. Robert Oppenheimer, The Cold War, and the Atomic West by Jon Hunner (SF74) Oklahoma University Press, 2009 In November 1942, a professor of physics from Berkeley and an Army colonel on a secret government mission drove through New Mexico’s Jemez Mountains to an isolated boys’ boarding school. J. Robert Oppenheimer and Col. Leslie Groves were evaluating sites for a top-secret laboratory. As Jon Hunner (SF74) recounts in his book, J. Robert Oppenheimer, The Cold War, and the Atomic West, the Los Alamos Ranch School was not an ideal site to build an atomic bomb. But Oppenheimer, the improbable civilian director of the Manhattan Project, loved New Mexico: “Even though Los Alamos did not ﬁt the selection criteria for the lab’s location, Oppie wanted the site. He had lamented in the 1930s that it was a pity he could not combine two of the loves of his life—physics and New Mexico. Los Alamos fulﬁlled his dream,” Hunner writes. Oppenheimer initially thought he would need about half a dozen scientists to help him develop the atomic bomb. “By the fall of 1945,” Hunner writes, “approximately 5,000 men, women and children lived on the Hill.” The work of these individuals, who raised families and lived “normal” lives while they worked to build a devastating weapon, contributed to a new era in human history. The West was transformed as a burgeoning atomic industry took root. Hunner, professor of history at New Mexico State University, has long been fascinated with Los Alamos. His dissertation at the University of New Mexico, a social and cultural history of Los Alamos, developed into his ﬁrst book, Inventing Los Alamos: The Growth of an Atomic Community. He spent 14 years researching and writing that book, yet still felt “I had really just scratched the surface” concerning Oppenheimer. Hunner was eager to return to the subject. Oppenheimer was an enigmatic character whose life was ﬁlled with great triumphs and staggering personal tragedies. He grew up in a wealthy Jewish family in New York City; his brilliance was {Biblioﬁle} recognized at a young age. When he became ill as a young man, he was sent west to recover and fell in love with New Mexico. He later bought a cabin in the mountains that would become a lifelong refuge for him and his family. “I deﬁnitely try to understand the impact of Los Alamos on New Mexico, but also the impact of New Mexico on Los Alamos,” Hunner explains. “A lot of people came from Ivy League colleges, and they started wearing cowboy boots. Oppenheimer was right there with them.” Oppenheimer earned his bachelor’s in chemistry in Harvard in three years. He spent a disastrous year in experimental physics at Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge before moving to theoretical physics at the University of Göttingen. After he ﬁnished his doctorate, he had many positions to choose from, and in part because of his attraction to the West, headed to Berkeley. As a professor, Oppenheimer was a great theoretical physicist, but most of his students couldn’t understand his lectures. When word came that two German scientists had split the atom, Oppenheimer joined others in seeking to unlock the secrets to developing atomic weapons. His scientiﬁc acumen— but perhaps more so his naked ambition— helped him stand out among other candidates for the job as civilian director of the Manhattan Project. Although he had never even managed a physics department, Oppenheimer turned out to be a successful manager of the project. Hunner describes the city that grew from the { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } laboratory, as workers and scientists brought their families, built schools and hospitals and went about their lives, mostly in ignorance of the laboratory’s work. He describes the Trinity test, on July 16, 1945, as well as Oppenheimer’s reaction: “Around 6:30 a.m., he commented: ‘My faith in the human mind has been somewhat restored.’” Hunner admires Oppenheimer in part for his intelligence and charisma, but also for “his attempt, after he opened up the Pandora’s box of atomic weapons, to try to ﬁgure out ethically what he could do” to prevent the world from destroying itself. The scientist joined others in a movement called One World or None, which advocated the creation of an international agency to control atomic weapons. While Oppenheimer’s downfall occurred during the McCarthy era, he was more a victim of J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, of former colleagues who were eager to discredit him, and of his own bad decisions. The hearing on Oppenheimer’s security clearance ( which allowed him to play a key role as an advisor on U.S. atomic policy) was supposed to be secret. “But as soon as the hearing was over, the head of the atomic energy commission released a 1,000-page transcript to newspapers,” Hunner points out. “It was a well-orchestrated campaign to discredit Oppenheimer because he was starting to publicly question the ofﬁcial policy. It was partly political, partly personal vindictiveness, and it was also a fork in the road for our atomic policy.” Oppenheimer wanted a public, open dialogue about atomic weapons. Those like Teller, who would eventually prevail, advocated secrecy. Oppenheimer was also growing increasingly concerned about the potential consequences of the military-industrial complex in the United States. After he joined Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Studies, Oppenheimer continued to try to inﬂuence public policy. He was a sought-after lecturer and appeared on television programs. During the Kennedy years, his reputation “was kind of rehabilitated by the government,” says Hunner. Oppen- Jon Hunner �heimer died of cancer in 1967. The interest in Los Alamos and Oppenheimer has roots in Hunner’s personal history. He grew up in the 1950s and ‘60s in Albuquerque, and his father administered atomic weapons programs for the Air Force. “We had photographs of atomic bomb mushroom clouds hanging on our walls,” Hunner recalls. “Then when I went to St. John’s and started talking to my classmates, I realized that not everybody grew up with photographs of atomic bombs, and no one else’s parents worked with atomic weapons. It was kind of a shock.” His family history is one reason Hunner considers Los Alamos and Oppenheimer from a viewpoint other historians may not share. His book details the devastation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but he also tallies the millions of lives lost in conventional warfare in World War II. “I think when we look at the morality of this weapon of mass destruction, it’s easy to be pro or con, but because my own father was involved with administering nuclear weapons, it’s not so black and white for me,” he explains. “I don’t want to think of my father as someone who was ready to blow up the world. I like to argue that this is a horrendous weapon, and it has horrendous implications for humanity. But it also helped end the most horrendous war in history.” —Rosemary Harty Stateside by Jehanne Dubrow (A97) Northwest University Press, 2010 Jehanne Dubrow’s latest volume of poetry, Stateside, explores a timely theme: the everyday lives of partners, spouses, and families left behind when a loved one in military service ships out to a war zone. Dubrow wrote the poems before her husband, Navy Lt. Jeremy Schaub (A97), left last winter for an eight-month tour of duty. Yet the poems are written from an authentic viewpoint of uncertainty, fear, loneliness—and at times, anger. Inspired by the Odyssey, the volume is divided into three sections: before, during, and after a deployment. Military terminology is mingled with domestic images, a civilian life contrasted with a life of military service. In “O’ Dark Hundred” the writer imagines her husband’s pre-dawn shift: “My words are just reﬂections from the shore, / and the page, imperfect mirror of jennifer behrens {Bibliofile} Jehanne Dubrow his ship, / where white lights blink above each metal door.” “Love in the Time of Coalition” combines images of a lover’s attention to a woman with sinister words such as “toxin,” sarin,” and “plutonium.” “At the Mall with Telemachus” portrays a harried military wife dealing with a child’s temper tantrum in the food court. And “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, ” coyly profane, describes the moment when a wife ﬁrst hears the news that her husband is headed to a war zone. When Dubrow and Schaub dated as students in Annapolis, she couldn’t have imagined she would one day be a Navy wife, separated for months at a time without deﬁnitive word on her husband’s whereabouts. After graduating, Dubrow stayed in Annapolis, managed a coffee shop, read Proust, and became serious about poetry. The couple broke up, and Dubrow went on to earn an MFA at the University of Maryland and a PhD at the University of Nebraska. Although they had a “tragic, dramatic breakup,” Dubrow knew that Schaub had joined the Navy, and after 9/11, she got in touch. They started e-mailing, got back together, managed a long-distance relationship while she ﬁnished her doctorate, and were married in 2005. Schaub is about ﬁve months into an eight-month deployment “on a ship somewhere”; Dubrow is an assistant professor at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland. When her husband ﬁrst raised the idea of { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } 29 volunteering for deployment more than a year ago, “the danger of his work became very real to me,” Dubrow explains. That’s when she began writing poems about families and the military, and she conducted research on the military wife in literature. “What I quickly discovered was that she’s almost an entirely silent ﬁgure,” Dubrow says. “Basically, the only model we have is Penelope, who is a highly impractical model for a woman in the 21st century. She’s patient, she’s devout, she’s chaste—basically, unimpeachable. The standards she sets are impossible.” While the book doesn’t mirror her own experiences, Dubrow says the poems allowed her to express her views and frustrations: “I distrust this pressure from the military for women to be silent about their misgivings and to not express when things are difﬁcult because that looks like weakness or it looks unpatriotic.” Her poems in Stateside seek to show that a woman’s patriotic sacriﬁces are no less heroic because they take place on the home front. Dubrow has always drawn from her own life and her sense of identity for her poems. Her ﬁrst volume of poetry, The Hardship Post (2009), explores her Jewish identity through the experience of being a diplomat’s daughter. Dubrow conducted research for her second collection, From the Fever-World, during a fellowship at the United States Holocaust Museum. The work is a collection of fragments written in the voice of a Yiddish poet, the product of Dubrow’s imagination. Not quite ﬁnished with the themes she explored in Stateside, Dubrow is now writing a book of lyrical essays on being married to the military. In addition, she’s editing an anthology of modern Jewish poetry and ﬁnishing up a volume of poems exploring her adolescence in Eastern Europe before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The poems use “the oppressive tyrannical language of Communism to speak about the oppressiveness of the adolescent body. Adolescence is a morbid, embarrassing, naked time—it makes for great poems.” x — Rosemary Harty �30 {Alumni} Aristotle in New Orleans, Meditations in Maine Like evangelists, alumni bring St. John’s ways to the world by Rosemary Harty B efore they even had children, Aaron Lewis (A95) and his wife, Elizabeth, worked to get their small parish school to adopt a classical/traditional curriculum. Kirsten Jacobson (SF96) started a series of philosophy seminars at a local high school, with her undergraduate students serving as seminar leaders. At Tulane University, Ryan McBride (SFGI96) created a program that seeks to make debate champions of middleschoolers, and Lee Perlman (A73) is part of a new freshman program at MIT that brings together humanities and the sciences. Much like Scott Buchanan, who brought great books to working adults in New York City before he helped bring them to St. John’s, these Johnnies believe classics are for everyone. Ryan McBride, Aristotle in New Orleans What is virtue? The students in Ryan McBride’s undergraduate philosophy classes at Tulane University are reading about the concept in Aristotle and Plato, but they’re also trying to be more virtuous by working as volunteer debate coaches for middle-school students in New Orleans public schools. McBride, a postdoctoral fellow at Tulane, created “Aristotle in New Orleans” as a Tulane project that combines academics with service learning. In St. John’s terms, McBride explains, his class is like a preceptorial on the Nicomachean Ethics, “with a lab mixed in where we go out and take part in our community.” His idea was simple: “Rather than just talking about what virtue is, why don’t we go out into the world and practice generosity and courage and see how they are components of the good life?” McBride himself was never a debater. But his interest in Aristotle led him to Book VIII of the Topics, where Aristotle describes gymnastic dialect, a type of competitive exercise. He decided to create a course based around these dialectical battles. McBride’s students revived this style of debate and used their experiences as a basis for thinking about method in Aristotle’s Ethics and Platonic dialogues. Inspired by Aristotle and Quintilian, Ryan McBride (SFGI96), ﬁfth from left, back row, created a course that pairs philosophy with teaching middle school students how to debate. Before moving to New Orleans, McBride was a visiting assistant professor at St. Norbert University. After graduating from the GI, he taught English at the University of Oregon, then earned his doctorate at Marquette University. As a grad student, McBride spent summers in New Orleans, and he applied for the postdoc fellowship because he loves the city. None of the three middle schools had a debate team before McBride launched his project last fall. With his department’s approval, he required a mandatory 40 hours of service from every student who signed up for his course. His undergraduates adjusted quickly to the younger students, “although some of my students are a little overwhelmed to be in a middle school,” especially where students are from economically disadvantaged families. Studying the way words work for Aristotle and Plato gives the Tulane students an interesting way to understand a debate. Quintilian helps by giving classical, yet practical, advice. “Quintilian makes the pursuit of becoming the ideal orator into a game, something that should be fun,” he says. In their ﬁrst three debates, the middleschoolers have done quite well. “You can’t believe how these kids—who were terriﬁed to speak in front of ﬁve or six kids—develop { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } the composure to be articulate and on the ball in front of hundreds of people. They’re fearless,” he says. McBride plans to try to expand Aristotle in New Orleans to reach more schools. He can count on his undergraduates: of his 40 coaches who took his class last semester, 12 came back to continue as volunteers. Lee Perlman, Concourse Lee Perlman has been teaching in MIT’s freshman alternative program, the Experimental Studies Program, for many years. Now he’s pleased to be a part of a renewed emphasis on integrating the sciences and the humanities through a freshman program called Concourse. The project’s roots go back four years, when Perlman began teaching a class with MIT Professor Bernhard Trout on “The Philosophical History of Energy,” which began with Aristotle and ended up with modern science. “We got the idea of trying to start another one of these freshman alternative programs, a great-books-oriented program. We went to the dean in charge and talked to him, and it turned out a program already existed, called Concourse.” Several decades ago, the university created the program to address concerns raised over the division of the sciences and �31 {Alumni} humanities, as articulated by C.P. Snow in his famous essay, “The Two Cultures.” Over the years, says Perlman, “that mission faded, and it became a teaching community, with classes, a lounge, a kitchen, but no real distinct character.” This year, Trout and Perlman began working to revive the original mission of Concourse. Trout will be the new director, and Perlman will teach yearlong courses in the humanities. The program is starting out slowly, with 60 freshman enrolled in yearlong courses each year, but he hopes to see it grow to look more like a core texts curriculum, open to more students. Perlman earned a PhD at MIT and taught at Swarthmore and Brown before returning to MIT’s Experimental Study Group in 1994. Over the years, he’s taught courses including a seminar on ancient Greek mathematics and a class on the Philosophy of Love. What is missing in this program, however, is giving students the opportunity to make connections across the disciplines. “What I found after I started teaching ancient Greek philosophy was that in the end, it was really an ethics course. But put that together with a course on how the Greeks thought about mathematics and our place in the universe and that gives you surprising conclusions.” Perlman is excited about the possibilities for Concourse. “My goal is to re-create St. John’s to the extent that it’s possible and appropriate in a place like MIT,” explains Perlman. Kirsten Jacobson, Philosophy across the Ages For Kirsten Jacobson, teaching philosophy is just one part of her job—getting students to really talk about philosophical ideas and their real-world applications is more important. With that in mind, Jacobson recently launched a program called “Philosophy across the Ages,” connecting University of Maine undergraduates with Orono High School students through seminarstyle discussions of key texts of philosophy. The undergraduates lead sessions by asking a wellcrafted opening question. This semester, the students started by reading Plato’s Apology and Crito. Later in the year, they took on readings Descartes’ Meditations and de Beauvoir’s Ethics of Ambiguity. Jacobson thrived in the seminar setting at St. John’s, having transferred from Middlebury. She earned her PhD at Penn State, and specializes in 19th- and 20th-century continental philosophy. Her teaching style is very much inﬂuenced by St. John’s. “A lot of my students say, ‘your courses are so different because you’re so committed to getting us to talk,’” Jacobson says. Currently about 10 high school students are signed up; about three or four University of Maine students take part in each seminar. Jacobson and her students meet in advance to discuss the major themes of a text and choose an opening question. “I really emphasize that I want them to think about not instructing the students, but trying to engage the text, lead the conversation, and encourage discussion.” Jacobson ﬁnds it amazing and signiﬁcant that teenagers want to read Plato and Descartes, and she’s consistently surprised by the depth of their thinking. For example, in a seminar on the Apology, the students talked about how important it is to question authority, that there is a danger to society if everyone blindly follows the rules. On the other hand, another student pointed out that anarchy would result if no one followed the laws. With the belief that “philosophy really is for everyone,” Jacobson titled her program “Philosophy across the Ages” with a double-entendre in mind: “I hope we’ll be having seminars with folks in local retirement communities soon. These conversations should be happening at all stages of our lives.” Aaron Lewis: Immanuel Lutheran School For many years, Aaron Lewis worked on Capitol Hill; now he’s a marketing executive in D.C. But for the last decade, he’s had a side pursuit: working with his parish, Immanuel Lutheran, to bring the trivium and quadrivium to the parish’s school in Alexandria, Virginia. Now that it’s ﬁrmly in place, he’s been “gobsmacked” at how successful the model has been. Lewis and his wife, Elizabeth, worked to get the curriculum accepted by the parish before they started their own family. (They now have three daughters.) Yet Lewis was so convinced that a classical education was right for the school that he worked to overcome the initial skepticism that some parishioners felt about the enterprise. Lewis served on the search committee for the new principal, and his wife was on the school board. “About six years ago, we hired a principal who was strictly classical,” says Lewis. “He slowly converted the curriculum from progressive to classical, hiring teachers that had experience teaching a classical curriculum and training Immanuel’s rostered teachers in the ways of classical education.” Lewis has enough political and marketing experience to know how to gain support for the idea. In an area where private schools are sought after, and property values closely monitored, the Lewises promoted the idea that school’s academic program would be equally attractive to parents and parishioners without children. And ﬁnally, “since it’s a Lutheran school, we sold it to the parish with the idea that Martin Luther would have studied under a similar curriculum.” The Lewises couldn’t be more pleased with the way the school is thriving. Their oldest daughter will start pre-school there in the fall. “Once a liberal education is in your bones, you really have to pass it on,” Lewis says. x Kirsten Jacobson (SF96, right) hopes her high school project “Philosophy Across the Ages” is the beginning of a series of philosophy seminars in Orono. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } �32 {Alumni Notes} 1946 In March, PETER WEISS spoke on “The Goldstone Report: Does International Law Really Matter?” at the Church Center for the United Nations. His answer: “Yes, and the vicious attacks on Justice Goldstone prove it.” 1956 JOHN CHASE is a maverick who doesn’t believe in “careers,” but in following his heart. Following his military service, he attended acting school in England and was a professional actor, teacher, playwright and director for several years. He later lived on a farm in Maine and had a house-painting business in North Carolina. He returned to Maine and ran a charter sailing business out of Friendship, a small lobstering community. Now back in N.C., he devotes his time to reciting poetry, writing, and observing nature. He is currently employed by the U.S. Census Bureau. 1958 JOHN BREMER has retired from his endowed chair at Cambridge College and is living peaceably in Ludlow, Vt., with his marmalade cat, Molly. Last year he gave the commencement address at the College of St. Joseph in Rutland, Vt., and was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Humanities. He has just ﬁnished a new version of the Iliad and continues to write on Plato. He is on the board of Black River Academy Museum in Ludlow and is writing a history of early Ludlow for the museum; he has also devised a celebration for Shakespeare’s birthday for the museum. His book Plato’s Ion was nominated for the Steven Runciman Award. “’Tis to Another Sea” R ICHARD MOREHOUSE (A83) “was sailing along ﬁne as an art dealer in 20th-century photographs (morehousegallery.com) when the recession came along and decimated my clients.” Morehouse is grateful to the college for preparing him for inevitable change. “I am now working in sales for a company that makes the world’s most scalable software for time series data and events (osisoft.com). It used to be easier to describe my work! But the new job is fascinating. I am lucky to be a re-trainable member of the workforce at a time when jobs are disappearing, never to return. I credit St. John’s for distinguishing tethered knowledge from untethered true opinion. We never got any of the latter kind (none at least from the 21st century). Therefore, by rejection of the absurd, we must have gotten the former kind—the kind that gets one through recessions and other turbulent times.” x 1962 DAVID W. BENFIELD reports that Jim Forrester (class of 1962) and his wife stopped by on their way to and from Florida. “It is always such a pleasure to reminisce about our good old days with DEAN WILSON (HA83) and MR. OSSORGIN (HSF86) and MR. SPARROW (HA93), among other favorites! Remember folks, 2012 will bring an important election in November and our 50th reunion in September! Soon it will be time to book rooms and make a seminar book choice.” “It looks like my ﬁlm of Anthony Burgess’ novel A Dead Man in Deptford, about Christopher Marlowe, is ﬁnally going ahead,” reports Michael Elias. “Shooting is planned to begin in September in England. I also adapted Robert Silverberg’s classic sci-ﬁ novel The Man in the Maze. It is based on Sophocles’ Philoctetes. In Silverberg’s version the hero is abandoned on a deserted planet (Lemnos) in a city that is ﬁlled with killing mazes and traps. When Earth needs him, he refuses to come out. Also ﬁnishing a novel about the Incas and working to get my play The Catskill Sonata to New York. Paul Mazursky directed it in Los Angeles, where it ran for four months. 1963 Since retiring from teaching philosophy and literature, DAN SHERMAN spends roughly half the year at his house on Brittany’s north coast, along with Sophie the goat, the chickens, LuLu and Chick, the two cats, Coca and Cola, the miniature goat, Moumoute, and the three Haﬂinger ponies (with strange Breton names). The rest of the year he lives in Toronto. DAVID MICHAEL TRUSTY, nicely recovered from smashed ribs and exploded collarbone, is ready to saddle up and start riding again. locate Tin City Hotel construction site on Jalan Sultan Idris Shah.” News from BART LEE: “My son Christoffer Lee (and two partners) just won the world championship Negotiation Prize in Leipzig. He is a second-year law student at Hastings College of the Law, San Francisco, and interning for his second federal judge. There does come a time when one is more forthcoming about the accomplishments of progeny than one’s own! Nonetheless, I am pleased to have hornswoggled the AWA Review into publishing yet another radio intelligence-at-work article, this one about the CIA operations on Swan Island. The fall included a week or so in Greece (fortunately between riots), with visits to the Mycenae of Agamemnon, the Corinth of St. Paul, and then off to Delphi for an Oracle. As good as the Oracle’s intelligence service was, and that is very good indeed, it got the Persian War wrong. Last spring, Australia beckoned—my, what a big country! I came to appreciate the powers of mind required of Aborigines to survive and thrive in the Outback. The practice of law continues to pay the rent, barely.” 1969 LEE MCKUSICK (SF) is employed as a para-educator, where she works with severely disabled youth. “Every day I get to work with the fascinating puzzle of what is learning, how does it work, and how do I facilitate learning with my kids.” 1968 DONALD BOOTH will be spending a year and a half working on a new, small hotel in Ipoh, Malaysia, about two hours northeast of Kuala Lumpur, on the road to Penang. “It’s near the mountains,” he reports. “Any Johnnies who stop by Ipoh will be welcome. Call me at (6) 017-569-9588 or e-mail or { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } 1970 “All is well in Paris,” writes JOHN DEAN (A). “Never thought this was where SJC would lead me, but as Fats Waller used to say, ‘One never knows, do one?’ Otherwise I’m professor of Cultural History at the University of Versailles, do �33 {Alumni Notes} a fair amount of public diplomacy work across Europe; write (on a rich variety of topics, most recently articles on: ‘The Businessman as Artist’; ‘The Power of Cool in U.S. Youth Culture’; ‘Adapting U.S. History to U.S. Movies’; edit; teach; run conferences—most recently this last fall 2009 in a joint-venture with American University in Paris on the subject of ‘European Readings of Abraham Lincoln.’ Can’t complain. Keepin’ busy.” YEHUDITH “HUDI” PODOLSKY (SF) lost her beloved husband, Joe, of cancer in July 2007. “But life is full of miracles, and I’ve married a wonderful man who had also lost a beloved partner. We’re creating a wonderful new family together, full of children and grandchildren. My work is with high schools and high school districts in low-income communities, mostly in California. These schools are trying to restructure in a way that will support richer relationships between students and teachers and within teacher teams. The state of education in these schools is pretty shocking, but they’re all on paths that should make some improvements.” 1971 1974 In November 2009, JOHN STARK BELLAMY II (A) published his eighth book, Cleveland’s Greatest Disasters: 16 Tragic True Tales of Death and Destruction, with Gray & Co. Meanwhile, sporadic excerpts from his lurid memoirin-progress entitled “Wasted on the Young” have been recently posted at the CoolCleveland.com website. SALLY BELL (SF) “ﬁnally decided to write, ﬁrst with some wonderful/joyful news, in that our daughter graduated this year with her DVM from Tufts University Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, after graduating from Boston University with a degree in biology summa cum laude in 2005, then getting married! She has worked toward [being a veterinarian] since she was six years old, unlike her mom and dad who never ﬁgured out what they wanted to do. Helping Kath learn to care for her sheep, rabbits, and chickens along the way was the most like being at St. John’s of anything I did. I never thought I’d be raising sheep, but after St. John’s, I wasn’t afraid to try anything. “Second, some unhappy news, in that I have been diagnosed with pulmonary arterial hypertension plus auto-immune hepatitis. I have been disabled and not working since 2005, and this brings my chronic illnesses up to 10. Life is terminal anyhow, so I hope to be in touch with old friends if I can, and I am grateful for this warning and the time I still have. Although Kath didn’t go to St. John’s, I hope I passed on to her the self-examination and the precision of thought that I learned to reach for. Maybe someday she will go to SGI. I am an indifferent correspondent—not much energy—but anyone can write at srbell@localnet.com.” 1972 HAROLD ANDERSON (A) is working on ethnographic research projects as an independent contractor and teaching cultural and urban anthropology at Bowie State University. “Most interestingly, I am teaching Cultural Documentation as a member of the core faculty for the new Master of Arts in Cultural Sustainability Program at Goucher College in Towson, Md. Have a look at our program www.goucher.edu/x33261.xml. It’s really quite wonderful! Also you can comment on our cultural sustainability blog at: http://blogs.goucher.edu/ culturalsustainability.” Tell Jokes, Be Smarter J CAPPS (A91) has a serious day job as associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Yet his new book, You’ve Got to Be Kidding: How Jokes Can Help You Think (Wiley 2009), explores the lighter side of his discipline. Capps wrote the book with his father, Donald Capps, a psychologist of religion and professor emeritus at Princeton Theological Seminary. “The basic idea behind the book is that there’s a connection between jokes and thinking critically,” John Capps explains. “Jokes make us laugh because jokes are about people saying or doing something irrational. Figuring out why we laugh is ﬁguring out why something is irrational—and that helps us avoid the same mistakes. We came to write this book, ﬁrst, because we like to share jokes and, second, because it really did seem to us that jokes are especially good at revealing what is rational and what is not (an idea going back to Freud).” More on the book can be found on the publisher’s website: wiley.com. x OHN ELLEN CHAVEZ DE LEITNER (SF) and her husband, Hans, are no longer empty-nesters: their two daughters, with families, have returned to live with them: “So we have a 2-year-old grandson and a 4-month-old granddaughter to cheer our days. I now teach violin at Northern New Mexico Community College in Espanola and play in the San Juan Symphony in Durango, Colo., and Farmington, N.M. With daughter Cecilia (MM Vocal Performance, Yale), I opened Santa Cecilia Music Studio for { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } teaching and rehearsing in Santa Fe. Also, I’m still painting retablos, participating in the SJC Alumni Art Show in Santa Fe, as well as the February Auction and Spanish Art Market. Any SJC alumni are welcome to visit me at my home studio, SF music studio, or the traditional Spanish Market this summer. Violin and voice students would be welcome, too, as we still have openings. Please contact me through my website: www.chavezdeleitner.com.” 1975 “Still relaxing in relaxing Ohio,” writes TINA BELL (A). “I have started training to become a volunteer for a local hospice organization. I have always been drawn to that kind of work. A lot of it involves just listening to people, being there for them, and you can help the whole family with respite care, counseling, bereavement counseling. I am looking forward to it. Since my own parents died I feel I have enough experience to start to help others down the same road. Emily Bell is a struggling young writer in NYC, Tim going to counseling school, ditto Joe, and Julia has really begun to run marathons a lot. A lot. But she also has a new cat, Toby.” 1976 ISABEL CZECH (NEE WERTHEIMER, A) is now the executive director of ALPSP North America. ALPSP is the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers. She can be reached at: isabel.czech@alpsp.org. She continues to live in Philadelphia, where she roots for the home team: “Go Phillies!” �34 {Alumni Notes} A Mission to Mars 1985 MARSLETT (SF96) has been directing movies since he graduated. To date, he has made 14 short ﬁlms of his own, plus collaborative work. In March, his ﬁrst feature-length ﬁlm premiered at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas. “Mars,” done in an animation style invented by Marslett speciﬁcally for the ﬁlm, tells the story of three astronauts on the ﬁrst manned mission to the red planet. An upbeat romantic comedy, “Mars” moves focus off of slapstick humor and cataclysmic events. Says Marslett, “Hopefully, the laughs come from [the characters’] very human responses to remarkable events.” x G EOFF 1979 RICK KEMPA (SF) lives in Rock Springs, Wyo., where he directs the honors program at Western Wyoming College. A book of his poems, Keeping the Quiet, was recently published by Bellowing Ark Press (www.bellowingark.org/). This August, he will be the artist-inresidence at the South Rim, while he works on a collection of essays about the Grand Canyon from a backpacker’s perspective. 1982 It’s been a busy year for DON DENNIS (SF): “Was married in March 2009 to a lovely dairy farmer here in the Inner Hebrides. We run an old baronial mansion as a 12-bedroom B&B, and I also give boat tours around the region in a small commercial RIB I skipper. But my main business involves both selling and making our own ﬂower essences (in the tradition of the Bach Remedies). Ours are made with tropical orchids I grow in our greenhouse here on the Isle of Gigha. Have just sent a book off to the printers about them: “Orchid Essence Healing” should be in my hands by the end of April. Johnnies are very welcome here; we have, as you may guess, a pretty good library, beautiful walks, and a snooker room. Oh, and a 52-acre garden surrounds the house as well. www.achamorehouse.com and www.healingorchids.com.” 1983 News from JIM BAILEY (A): “Sharon and I are still in Memphis,” he writes. “My focus is health system research and teaching internal medicine resident physicians. We are organizing our ﬁfth Search for the Healthy City seminar and study tour in Italy. Johnnies are more than welcome!” PETER MCCLARD (SF) writes: “Very much enjoying raising a couple of pre-teens (such a sweet age), making art (tracymac.biz) and music, selling our software business (gluon.com) and staying in touch with folks on Facebook. Best to all!” 1984 FATHER BRUCE WREN (SF) continues his life as a priest in a small seminary about one hour east of Paris. He would like to know the whereabouts of THEODORE BENSON III and JEFFREY POPE, to keep in touch. “I wasn’t at St. John’s long, but my time there was memorable,” writes MARY ANN FLYNN CUSHMAN (A). “I moved on to science, where I worked as a laboratory researcher and manager for many years. Being involved in research piqued an interest in intellectual property, so I studied to become a paralegal, then worked primarily in commercial transactional law. I am pleased to say that I am again working with scientists as an editor for researchers residing in Japan.” MAGGIE HOHLE (A) is busy. “After a tough year following my mom’s sudden diagnosis and death (stage IV lung cancer, last parent, so sad), I’m swamped with work again, notably translations of a book about the Japanese ‘no-brand’ brand MUJI for Rizzoli, and of a monograph of the work of designer Chie Morimoto. In addition, a project begun years ago has been published by University of Texas Press (a surprise to me!). It’s called Spiritual Passports: The Unseen Images of an Artist Who Never Lived to See Them. Let it be known that I wasn’t consulted on the subtitle. We are looking forward to the high school graduation of the ﬁrst of the four Hohle kids and her departure to postsecondary education at some small liberal arts school, unfortunately not SJC. Anyone out in the SF Bay Area, please look us up! maggietext@comcast.net. See you at the 25th reunion!” In 2008 MARGO HOBBS THOMPSON (A) relocated to Allentown to take a job teaching art history at Muhlenberg College, a small liberal arts institution. “It’s a wonderful place, and Allentown is delightfully urban and diverse compared to the wilds of Vermont, my former home,” she writes. “My husband, Court, is starting a clock repair business; he’ll ﬁx mechanical toys and instruments as well, and you can reach him through me: mht712@yahoo.com. And I am { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } pleased to announce that my book on grafﬁti art, American Grafﬁti, was published by Parkstone Press late last year.” 1986 KRISTEN CAVEN (SF86) writes of her career: “At last the truth can be told: after St. John’s it was either the funny farm or the funny papers. (Thank ye ol’ gods for the mightiness of a pencil.) In this unusual memoir I discuss my dedication to the ‘liberal’ arts and the upside of ‘hysteria,’ of which there was a lot at the women’s college where I landed. Jack Lincoln, wherever you are, I owe you a free copy. Perfectly Revolting: My ‘Glamorous’ Cartooning Career is available on Amazon and www.kristencaven.com this spring.” 1988 KIM PAFFENROTH’s (A) version of Dante’s Inferno, Valley of the Dead, is now available as a regular trade paperback from Permuted Press. His ﬁrst novel, Dying to Live, is now available in German from Festa Verlag, with the title Vom Überleben unter Zombies. 1989 RAYMOND GIFFORD (A) has switched law ﬁrms, becoming the managing partner of the new Denver ofﬁce of Wilkinson Barker Knauer LLP, a Washington DC-based regulatory ﬁrm. “Still in the scintillating world of the law and economics of network industry regulation—broadband, electricity and smart grid,” he writes. “That and going to a lot of kids’ hockey games for Thomas, 14; William, 10; and Michael, 4.” �35 {Alumni Profile} Doctor in the Desert Mat Strickland (SF96) pursues an alternative path by Anna Perleberg (SF02) M at Strickland (SF96) doesn’t think of himself as interesting. He’s wrong, of course, but the feeling’s understandable: there’s nothing ﬂashy or dramatic about his life as a pediatrician with the Indian Health Service in Chinle, Arizona, the heart of the Navajo Nation. It’s the very lack of spectacle, though, that’s extraordinary. During Strickland’s freshman year at St. John’s, his mother, who was a licensed vocational nurse, died of hepatitis C. Struggling to understand his loss, and, along with his classmates, searching for the good and just life, he was led to the path of medicine as a possible answer. Thanks to a scholarship, he was able to take science classes at the University of California at Berkeley during the summers, and while working as a paralegal after St. John’s, he volunteered at Oakland Children’s Hospital, working with HIV/AIDS patients. In 2006 he earned his M.D. and an Master of Public Health degree from New Orleans’s Tulane University. “You make a decision,” he says, “and you have no idea what medical school is going to be like, how consuming.” He completed his residency at Emory University in Atlanta. Throughout his medical studies and training, however, Strickland missed the sense of “discovery, adventure, and newness” he had found at St. John’s. “There’s lot of rigor in medical training,” he says. “You study the sciences, memorize the body parts, memorize the drugs—it’s very structured. I rebelled against that.” Strickland wanted to recapture the feeling of being part of a close-knit, supportive community such as St. John’s. He also missed the big skies and open space of the high desert. “That sense of vastness is inspiring,” he says. Luckily, just as the codiﬁed reading lists of the Program provide different students with different questions, the Pediatrician Mat Strickland (SF96) practices medicine off the beaten path, in the heart of the Navajo nation. seemingly inﬂexible ﬁeld of medicine is wide enough to provide for the unconventional. Strickland found an outlet for his resistance to structure near Canyon de Chelly, in the most remote of the health centers on the 26,000-squaremile Navajo reservation. The hospital and clinic where he works serves 13,000 children, the majority of whom live in extreme poverty. Though the area does have one trafﬁc light and a grocery store, many inhabitants don’t have running water or electricity, making access to health care that much more vital. Paradoxically, Strickland found fellowship in the middle of nowhere, living on the hospital compound with the other physicians, similarly unorthodox souls who may have worked with Doctors Without Borders or the Pediatric AIDS Corps in Africa. Like him, they wanted to take medicine off the beaten path to where it was most needed. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } Strickland’s patients, as well, form a valuable community. Their interdependence makes him a better doctor, he says. “The thing I like most about medicine is the relationships. Talking to your patients and their families, trying to help them in the truest way—I think I’m really good at that, talking to people and empathizing. So much of medicine is not about, ‘Oh here’s a prescription.’ That’s easy. It’s spending time with the family, unraveling the real truth to the matter. So why does Strickland think he’s not interesting? Perhaps because he doesn’t think of himself much at all. “One of the things you learn at St. John’s is that the best part of life is relating to others, to live outside yourself,” he says. “We’re trapped in our own little world.” In the blankness of the desert, instead of isolation, Strickland has found a world in others. x �36 {Alumni Notes} 1990 Beyond Redistribution: White Supremacy and Racial Justice, by KEVIN GRAHAM (A), was published by Lexington Books in January 2010. It is the ﬁrst book published by Kevin, who teaches philosophy at Creighton University in Omaha, Neb. KEN TURNBULL (A) has changed law ﬁrms and is now a partner in the Washington, D.C. ofﬁce of King & Spalding LLP. 1991 NATE DOWNEY (SF) is pleased to report that his philosophical-treatise-cum-ecological-how-to, Harvest the Rain, will be published in 2010 by Sunstone Press. Please visit www.harvesttherain.com for book info or comment on his sustainabilityblog at www.backyarddigest.com. 1992 ANNE ASPEN (SF) is working for the Fort Collins Downtown Development Authority. She’s doing many of the same things that she handled as a city planner, but has a lot more room for creativity. “I’m focused entirely on the downtown now and use a lot more of my architecture degree and art background. It was a good move! On the home front, life is good, too. Jane and I celebrate 15 years together this year, and we’ve convinced Jane’s daughter Michelle and the three grandkids (16, 14, and 8 years old) to move here, so we have a lots of great family time now and use a lot more of my architecture degree and art background. It was a good move! Hello to everyone who’s not on Facebook.” Shaping Foreign Policy A fter taking a break from teaching overseas and then several years working on research, design, and management of conservation and development programs in both the United States and West Africa, Shelley Saxen (SFGI02, SFEC) and her husband, Doug Saxen (SFGI03, EC) are now happily living in Mexico. Shelley shapes and implements U.S. foreign policy as a diplomat with the U.S. Department of State, and Doug splits his time between teaching, writing, and multimedia art projects. When not at work, they are swiftly becoming tequila connoisseurs who enjoy cumbia and lively discussions of whatever recent Johnnie-ish text they have recently read. x 1993 OMAR MANEJWALA (A) writes: “After a wonderful four years as associate medical director of The Farley Center in Williamsburg, Va., I have accepted a position as the Medical Director of Hazelden Foundation in Center City, which is the nation’s oldest and largest addiction treatment center. I’m also ﬁnishing up (in May) an MBA from the University of Virginia‘s Darden School of Business. My wife, Cecily, and I have moved to the Twin Cities and welcome the opportunity to connect with Johnnies in the area.” 1994 PEGGY JONES (SF) and her husband, Bill ‘Bones’ Jones, will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary in July, opting for a gala family reunion of four children, their spouses, and 10 lively grandchildren, and a long weekend of family activities in New Mexico. “Our children grew up in Santa Fe, and Bill and I still occupy the house where they grew up, but alas, they all live in other states now,” she writes. “Since the 10 grandkids will range in age from 12 years to 1 month, we’re all expecting to have a wild and wonderful time together! And we hope there’ll be some future Johnnies among those grandchildren of ours!” JAMES PASSIN (A) is pleased to announce the birth of his daughter, Anya. He lives in New York City with his wife, Sydney; his four-year-old son, Oscar; and little Anya. He has just successfully launched Firebird Mongolia Fund, a fund focused on Mongolian securities. He also founded and manages two global hedge funds and serves on the boards of a number of public and private Canadian and Mongolian companies. 1997 KIRA MOCK (A) started a new position on December 7, 2009, at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She is a senior program manager for the Energy, Environment and Agriculture S&T fellowship in the Executive Branch. HOWARD R. SAUERTIEG (A) recently became Litigation Support Specialist with the law ﬁrm of McCarthy Weisberg Cummings, P.C., Harrisburg, Pa. 1999 “My husband, Jesse, and I are delighted to announce the birth of our ﬁrst child, our beautiful daughter Iona Jean, on August 4, 2009,” writes COREY A. CHRISTY (A99). 2000 MARILYN ROPER (AGI) writes that her daughter Allison, a 2005 graduate of Kenyon College, ﬁnished work on her Master of Arts in Liberal Arts from St. John’s in Santa Fe in December and received her diploma in May. Marilyn and her husband, Dan, moved to Hilton Head, S.C., in 2004. ZACH and ERIKA (FORMERLY CARLSON) WARZEL (both SF) celebrated the birth of their daughter Corrina Lu on February 15, 2010, in Denver, Colo. Like her mom, Corrina has a very full head of hair! 1995 GEOFF (SF), CARISA (SF99) and Renee Galilea Petrie (big sister, age 4) welcomed Francesca Calliope Petrie on February 4, 2010. She weighed 7 pounds, 3 ounces. “Her ﬁrst name is a play on Frances, her great-grandfather and father’s name. We chose Calliope because she was Homer’s muse and what Johnnie doesn’t have the ﬁrst few lines of the Iliad embedded in her brain? Francesca is a calm, communicative baby and we are enjoying her every day.” DARIEN LARGE (SF) is living in Austin and happily married the man of his dreams, Justin Nevill, on March 27, 2010. Drop Darien a line at dlarge@daliverse.com. COREY A. CHRISTY (SEBASTIAN, A) writes: “My husband, Jesse, and I are delighted to announce the birth of our ﬁrst child, our beautiful daughter Iona Jean on August 4, 2009.” { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } 2001 �37 {Alumni Notes} KATY (CHRISTOPHER) DAVIS (SF) has news: “On October 31, 2009, Lucy Katharine Davis was born at the Andaluz Birth Center in Portland, Ore. She’s a sweet, happy, and mellow baby who loves everyone, and we are all delighted to have a little girl in the family. Three-year-old Sam is getting used to being a big brother and grows smarter and more fun every day; among his many interests are singing the Greek alphabet and playing with his stuffed tigers Hegel and Heidegger. On the farm, we’re looking forward to lots of baby goats and an expanded garden and orchard this summer.” 2002 JONATHAN COOPER (A) is in Vermont: “After receiving our MAs in sustainable landscape planning and design from the Conway School of Landscape Design, my girlfriend Katharine and I moved to Waterbury, Vt., to begin our careers. The town is lovely, the people are friendly, and the spring thaw has brought our kittens out to the backyard. It all seems like a Graham Nash song, but I can’t think of which one. Maybe I’m just having déjà vu…” JUSTIN (A) and DILLON (WRIGHT-FITZGERALD, A05) NAYLOR celebrated the birth of their second boy, James Matthew, on November 12, 2009. Big brother Peter will be 3 in July. 2003 ANN (CARRUTHERS) ORSINGER (SF) and STEPHEN ORSINGER (SF) welcomed Odysseus Remington Orsinger into the world on January 1. Weighing 10 lbs. 8 oz., he would be able to live up to the name, they decided. The family is currently living in Dallas, Texas, where Stephen is practicing civil appellate and family law. Ann is staying home with Ody and working on her dissertation in political philosophy (on the role of art in civic education), freelance writing, and training to be a life coach. 2004 STUART BANNAN (A) and DEBORAH (MANGUM) BANNAN (A06) were joined in Holy Matrimony on January 2, 2010, at Hill Country Bible Church in Pﬂugerville, Texas. In attendance were several Johnnies including groomsmen MARTIN ANDERSON A Novel in Three Days E NAONE (A05) won an honorable mention for her novel draft “Needle and Fang” in the 32nd Annual International 3-Day Novel contest. “This takes place every year over Labor Day weekend, and the goal is to produce the best novel you can in three days,” she explains. “Producing any novel at all in that period of time is quite a feat. This year, 650 people entered the contest and 460 submitted drafts.” Just 15 honorable mentions were named. This was Naone’s second year in the competition. “Needle and Fang” is a dark urban fantasy about a vampire hunter who befriends a vampire because they’re both struggling with intravenous drug addiction. Naone penned her novel immediately after a two-week stint on jury duty for a ﬁrstdegree murder case, “and the nightmarish details of the trial deﬁnitely made their way into the book.” She’s busy revising the novel to get it in publishable form. Check it out on the web at: www.3daynovel.com.x RICA (A04) and MICHAEL MALONE (A04), and bridesmaids LAURA (MANGUM) MOORE (A04) and EMILY DEBUSK (A06). KERRY MORSE (A06), SARAJEAN WRIGHT (A08) and DWIGHT KNOLL (A05) also offered their support and lent a hand with the festivities. The couple now resides in Anchorage, Alaska, where Stuart is an associate in a law ﬁrm and Deborah a graduate student in counseling psychology. ERIKA GINSBERG-KLEMMT (SFGI) lives in Sarasota Florida and aside from being mother of two and doing marketing for an immigration law ﬁrm is acting as advocate and activist for investors who have been burned in the Florida foreclosure market... www.pangaea.to/realforeclose. ERIC SCHAEFER (SF) and TIFFANY SIMONS (SF06) are excited to share that they will be celebrating a relationship that began at St. John’s College seven years ago, with a marriage ceremony and reception on May 22, 2010, in San Francisco. Since leaving St. John’s College, Eric has become interested in studying food systems with the desire to create an urban agricultural system that may one day revolutionize the way America gets its food. Tiffany has been pursuing a BA in psychology at Mills College in Oakland, with a focus on cognitive research, and will graduate this spring. They are both excited about what the coming years will bring and hope to see everyone at the next West Coast Croquet! MALCOLM SMITH-CARLILE and LAURA PERLEBERG (both SF) were happily married in front of family and friends in the beautiful Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe on March 19. The Smiths continue to reside in Santa Fe, where Laura is a librarian at the College of Santa Fe and Malcolm works with disadvantaged and challenged youth. NEAL HATFIELD TURNQUIST (SF) proposed to BROOKE ANN NUTINI (SF05) on June 17 of { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } 2009, and they will be married on July 31st of 2010 in New Hampshire. 2005 ISAAC (A) and KATHRYN (A06) Weiner welcomed Caroline Esther into their family early in the morning last November 23. Caroline was born at home weighing 10 lbs. 6 oz. She continues to be healthy and thriving, though she’s not enjoying teething very much. Isaac and Kathryn are pleased as punch with their beautiful baby girl. JARED (AGI) and RHONDA (FRANKLIN) ORTIZ (A04) have been busy in recent months: “Jared recently passed his PhD comprehensive exams in Historical Theology at the Catholic University of America; he’s planning to write his dissertation on Augustine. We are both assisting our parish’s school, St. Jerome’s in Hyattsville, Md., in implementing a classical/great books curriculum (dropping hints about the Graduate Institute among the faculty all the while). But the best news of all is the expectation of a Baby Ortiz at the end of August or early September. We’ll be sure to keep everyone posted.” 2006 GEOFFREY (AGI) and JENNY (KAWA) BAGWELL (AGI05) recently celebrated the ﬁrst birthday of their daughter Lucia Marie, who spent much of the day studying her new books and toys. Geoffrey is presently a visiting professor of ancient philosophy at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio, and looks forward to the end of graduate school with his dissertation defense on Plato’s Cratylus April 6. Jenny spends her days with Lucy, exploring new recipes, and reading Agatha Christie. They hope to start an alumni reading group in Cincinnati. Any takers? �38 {Alumni Profile} An Accidental Banker Steve Werlin (A85) lends hope to Haitian women by Rosemary Harty S himer College Professor Steve Werlin (A85) ﬁrst went to Haiti as volunteer in 1997, spending months in the country teaching in literacy programs, introducing St. John’s-inspired seminars to other educators in the country, and eventually working full-time as a teacher and community organizer. Now, as the people of Haiti struggle to recover from January’s devastating earthquake, he ﬁnds himself in an entirely new and unexpected role: managing a branch of Haiti’s largest microﬁnance bank. “It is the last thing I ever, ever would have imagined could happen,” Werlin says. He can trace this new path back to the lasting inﬂuence of the late Brother Robert Smith (HA90), St. John’s tutor and his longtime friend. In his role as an educational consultant for the bank, Werlin worked with bank staff on educational outreach. “One of the things Brother Robert taught me is that you’ll ﬁnd whenever you get people to talk about what matters to them, it really is interesting,” Werlin says. “I started to hear about the serious issues involved in operating a bank, and saw that the good operation of a branch has a real chance of making a difference in the lives of the people who depend on it.” When he learned that the bank needed a new branch manager, “the opportunity was too good to pass up.” Werlin lives in the tiny harbor town of Marigot; he walks just a few blocks from his two-room home to his job at the local branch of Fonkoze. The microﬁnance bank’s name is an abbreviation of Fundacion Kole Zepole, Creole for “Shoulder to Shoulder Foundation.” The operation is housed in a one-story building, half of which is now uninhabitable. “We have some pretty good-sized cracks,” says Werlin. Werlin’s commitment to Haiti had its genesis at St. John’s. After St. John’s, he earned master’s and doctoral degrees in philosophy from Loyola University in Chicago. As a visiting tutor in the GI, Werlin met a student, David Diggs (AGI91), who had been a literacy volunteer in Haiti. Werlin had been working with Touchstones, a program created by St. John’s tutors to bring adapted great books conversations into different educational environments, from middle After the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti in January, Steve Werlin (A85) shifted his efforts from education to banking, making loans to market women through Haiti’s largest microﬁnance bank. schools to prisons. He went to Haiti with the original goal of adapting Touchstones for Haiti. From the beginning Werlin has been awed by the hunger for education among the Haitian people. One day, he accompanied Diggs to a literacy center in an elementary school. “I saw these fully grown women cramming themselves uncomfortably into benches created for nine-year-olds, for two hours a day, four days a week, just so they could learn to read and write a little,” Werlin recalls. “It seemed extraordinary to me what people will go through for the chance at an education,” Werlin says. Werlin worked on literacy education projects with volunteer organizations, ﬁrst with a network of community activists in La Ganub, then with a group of Baptist ministers who had developed academic programs for older children. In 1999, Werlin began { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } working with the social sciences section of the National Public University, a project that gave him the opportunity to get Touchstones texts printed in Creole and distributed to educational centers throughout the country. His work has extended beyond education to community organizing. For two years, Werlin met each week with a network of rape victims who organized themselves to provide counseling and other services for victims of rape. Initially, it seemed impossible to get the women—hardened by experience and divided by conﬂicting approaches—to work together. “Today, they’re a real model of what collaboration can be when people are offered the give-and-take of the dialogue to guide them.” His work in microﬁnance naturally involves ﬁnancial responsibilities—such as counting the bank’s money in the morning and at closing time—but education remains a �39 {Alumni Profile} MICHAEL BALES (SF) is representing St. John’s as the only Johnnie in this year’s Fannie Mae analyst training program in D.C. ELEANOR CLARK (A) says: “I am happily working on completing my ﬁnal year of a graduate degree in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) at Brigham Young University-Provo. I love teaching and exploring new cultures (which are part of where I am at right now). The plans so far are to live and work in London and at some point go to India.” TONOPAH GREENLEE (SF) is currently living in Waltham, Mass., attending school at Brandeis University. “I am hoping to become a mama around May of next year, or rather a M.A./M.A. in Sustainable International Development and Coexistence and Conﬂict Management. This coming fall I hope to be working on sustainable agriculture/water rights in Latin America (hopefully Brazil).” ALLISON HENNIGAN (A) and Dylan Martin met while teaching English in Prague. “We were married Jan 4, 2010, in a small family-only ceremony in Decatur, Ala. We are now living on Jeju Island, South Korea, and teaching English in the Korean public school system. The kids (elementary and middle school) are adorable little demons. We’ll be here until March 2011, maybe longer. If there are other Johnnies in the area or passing through, it’d be nice to meet up. My e-mail is still allisonhennigan@gmail.com.” JACQUELINE KENNEDY (AGI) is in Naples, Fla., trudging through her second year at Ave Maria School of Law. It’s going quickly, she says. “Not sure if I will stay in Naples after law school, but I’m deﬁnitely considering Florida as a permanent (at least for the next ﬁve years) home. I’m also a member of the South Florida St. John’s Alumni Chapter, which has provided me with a much-needed Johnnie connection. I would enjoy hearing from other Johnnies, especially any 2004-2006 Annapolis GI alums, especially if you're in the Florida-Georgia region, and can be reached via e-mail at kennedy. jacqueline@gmail.com.” HOLLIS THOMS (AGI) recently had the world premiere of his third opera, “The Rime of the major part of his work. Fonkoze lends to “credit centers,” networks of 30-40 women who borrow together as a community. These hard-working, determined women represent the backbone of the Haitian economy. For example, Werlin’s clients buy fresh ﬁsh in Marigot and sell it in Port-au-Prince. They use those proﬁts to buy something else, say, shampoo or clothing—and return to sell these products in the rural areas. “All of them make money the same way,” he explains. “Buy something here, sell it there.” One difference between a microﬁnance bank and a conventional bank is the support the bank provides to credit centers and the support women provide to each other. Fonkoze reaches out to women in very rural communities and helps them develop as “independent centers of mutual solidarity and support,” Werlin explains. Even before the earthquake, Werlin observes, Haitians struggled just for subsistence: 53 percent of the nation’s citizens live below $1 a day; 75 percent below $2 a day. Ancient Mariner,” based on Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s famous poem, at St. Johns College in Annapolis on February 14, 2010. Two hundred people attended the premiere. The 60-minute work is scored for three singers, 12 winds and two percussion, and includes the projection of 40 prints by Gustave Dore. JERICHA PHILLIPS (SF) and PAUL FRANZ (SF) were married on March 21, 2010, in Kaneohe, Hawaii. After Paul receives his Master’s in Education from Stanford University in August, he and Jericha plan to move to Hawaii, where Paul will work with Nalu Studies, a marine education program for high-risk teens. Jericha will ﬁnd a job when she ﬁnds one. 2007 HOLLY TORGERSON (SF) is currently working on an MS in Herbal Medicine at Tai Sophia Institute in Laurel, Md. In May she begins the clinical portion of her studies, where she will begin to see clients in the faculty-supervised clinic. “I am very excited, and I invite anyone who wants to know more to visit my website: longeviteawellness.com.” JOHN HOFFMANN (SF) will be cheerfully attending the University of Chicago Masters of Arts Program in the Humanities. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } The College wants to hear from you. Call us, write us, e-mail us. Let your classmates know what you’re doing. The next issue will be published in October; deadline for the alumni notes section is September 1. Alumni will also be sent a call via e-mail. 2008 Loans from Fonkoze are a lifeline for these market women—and Werlin is quick to point out that the bank lends only to women. “The social reality in Haiti is that the woman is the person who takes personal responsibility for the family,” explains Werlin. “A lot of the worst poverty in Haiti results from women not having that independent source of income. We make loans to women to support the family as a whole.” Overcoming adversity is a way of life in Haiti; when Werlin began working with the bank as an educational consultant, the women were just recovering their businesses after four tropical storms in 2008. The earthquake was felt in Marigot; a lot of buildings cracked, but none collapsed. At least 20 percent of the bank’s borrowers lost their homes, and 70 percent of the homes are damaged. Those who sell their goods in Portau-Prince have been hit hard. “I know of one woman who had 250 pounds of fresh ﬁsh in Thermos trunks the day of the earthquake and it sat for a week—you can imagine what What’s Up? The College Magazine St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404 rosemary.harty@sjca.edu that ﬁsh was good for,” Werlin says. Living in Haiti has forever changed how Werlin views everyday life. “People (outside Haiti) use words like intolerable, unendurable” to describe what they see in television images and what they read in newspapers, Werlin says. “Those words seem strange to me now because I’ve seen what people can endure when they have to. They have no choice. They ﬁnd ways. They’re smart, and they’re very, very tough.” The international outpouring of support for the devastating country is helping, says Werlin. “Right now, Haiti needs an infusion of resources,” he says. In the long run, Haiti needs a committed neighbor in America and supporters willing to help Haiti recover, thrive, and educate its people. Werlin is grateful that Shimer supports his work in Haiti, allowing him to continue to educate, to ﬁnance, to serve the people who have so inspired him: “I work with remarkable, remarkable people who teach me a lot. I think that about covers it.” x �40 {Alumni Profile} Clues Behind the Clutter Leah Fisch (SF98) brings order to hoarders by Rosemary Harty beat-up copy of the Beatle’s Yellow Submarine. A basket full of stuffed animals, including a Snoopy acquired in ﬁrst grade. A closet brimming with keepsakes, ill-ﬁtting clothes, misﬁt shoes, and exercise equipment that will never emerge from under a heap of mismatched socks. Attached to things you think you really should pitch? Leah Fisch (SF98) can help. After St. John’s, Fisch worked and traveled, learned new languages, and cast about for the best way to apply her skills and education. Just back from travels in Costa Rica, she was crashing at her sister’s house in 2002 when her mother called to announce that she’d discovered Leah’s true path in life. “She was listening to a radio interview with someone from the National Association of Professional Organizers, and she heard her say, ‘clutter is a decision delayed.’ My mother said, ‘that is so Leah!’ and she called me right away. Two weeks later, she had gotten me my ﬁrst job.” It turned out Mrs. Fisch knew her daughter well: organizing (she prefers the term “reorganizing”) is a perfect ﬁt for Fisch, who was featured earlier this spring on The Learning Channel (TLC) show Hoarders: Buried Alive. As a “recovering clutterer,” she understands the problem ﬁrsthand. “I grew up in a house of sentimental Jewish packrats,” says Fisch. “People found a way to make do with what they had, and that’s still in us. We’ve become very confused as a society because we’re always pressured to buy, buy, buy. And people hate to throw things away.” A As she built her business, Fisch grew more interested in the social patterns she noticed among her clients. She observed that many people devote themselves to acquiring material possessions because they lack satisfying social relationships. She enrolled in the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, where she earned a master’s degree in demography, and gained certiﬁcation as a narrative therapist at the Evanston Family Therapy Center in Illinois. “People are overwhelmed,” Fisch explains. “It’s my job to help them identify and honor their values. All of it is about helping people clarify what they want.” Being attached to stuff is usually not about the stuff, says Fisch. “We hold onto things that make us feel bad about ourselves, we rent a dumpster, put these things in a dumpster, and it’s more traumatizing than ever to throw these things away.” When a TLC producer ﬁrst called, Fisch declined to be involved because similar cable shows seemed mean-spirited. “It’s all about people crying as someone throws their things away.” If she could take a more compassionate approach, Fisch said, she might do it. That led to her TV debut in May. Just 22 minutes long, the show took up hours of her time, but it was a good experience, “a chance to show people that there is another way.” Listening carefully and looking for what lies beneath the clutter have been the keys to Fisch’s success. “A lot of what I do is just sit with people. When I do the initial tour, I count the number of times they say ‘should.’ They should get rid of something but they don’t want to. They should sort through their books and get them organized, but they can’t. That’s when they cry.” One client, an insurance executive, consulted her about reorganizing her ofﬁce. In her initial session with “Jean,” Fisch observed that the ofﬁce seemed fairly neat, but as the two talked, Fisch uncovered a basket wedged between a ﬁling cabinet and some boxes. It was a craft project the woman hoped to make, but was now determined to throw away. As Fisch talked with her client, she discovered the woman was frustrated and unhappy about being unable to pursue hobbies because of her demanding job. They worked together to organize not just the physical layout of Jean’s ofﬁce, but also her work routines and her communication style. “The ﬁrst thing I had her do was make that Halloween basket,” she says. “Then we put together a training manual for her assistant, so she could assign her more tasks and trust them to be done efﬁciently. She has more time for herself, and I think she’s happier now.” x Leah Fisch (SF98) guides clients in reorganizing their lives. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } �{Obituaries} ROBERT A. GOLDWIN CLASS OF 1950 Robert A. Goldwin, class of 1950, died on January 12, 2010, at the age of 88. A brilliant Constitutional scholar, Mr. Goldwin took Socratic dialogues from the classrooms of St. John’s to the Ford White House, believing that only a thorough and balanced study of an issue could yield the understanding needed for sound public policy. In the words of his friend Donald Rumsfeld, Mr. Goldwin “was a man of sweeping, ambitious ideas, but personal modesty and quiet competence. He had the rare talent of asking the right questions at the right time, and gently nudging discussions toward the ‘eureka moment.’” A native of New York City, Mr. Goldwin was among the wave of veterans who came to St. John’s after serving in World War II. He attended the University of Arizona before enlisting in the U.S. Cavalry for four years, taking part in the liberation of the Philippines. While stationed at Fort Meade in Maryland, Mr. Goldwin and his wife, Daisy, visited the campus and chanced upon several references to the college. As Mr. Goldberg later recounted, one magazine “had an article by Mortimer Adler about liberal education [that was] full of praise for St John’s. And the New Yorker that same week had a proﬁle of a worldfamous authority on the philosophy of Hegel who turned down appointment to the faculty of St. John’s, saying that he wasn’t qualiﬁed to teach at such a ﬁne school, but he would like to be a student there. These led us to get the college catalog, and reading it led us to the decision that I Robert A. Goldwin, alumnus, former dean, and BVG member, was a distinguished Constitutional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. should go to St. John’s when I left the army.” After graduating from St. John’s, Mr. Goldwin continued his studies at the University of Chicago, where he earned his master’s and doctoral degrees in political science. He also taught political science at Chicago, was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1966, and taught at Kenyon College. He help create a summer program of study in Santa Fe, which would eventually develop into the Graduate Institute. Mr. Goldwin returned to St. John’s as dean, serving from 1969-1973. He was lured away to a new career in public service when Rumsfeld, then serving as U.S. Ambassador to NATO in Brussels, asked Mr. Goldwin to become his adviser. Mr. Goldwin next served concurrently as a special consultant to President Gerald Ford and in the Pentagon as an advisor to Rumsfeld, who was then in his ﬁrst tour as Secretary of Defense. In the Ford administration, Mr. Goldwin was considered a one-man think In the Ford administration, Mr. Goldwin was considered a one-man think tank. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } 41 tank, and described by the press, to his chagrin, as “Ford’s intellectual-in-residence.” He arranged a series of small seminars between the President, government ofﬁcials, and academic experts on topics such as crime, welfare, higher education, ethnicity, and unemployment. After leaving the White House, Mr. Goldwin joined the American Enterprise Institute as a resident scholar of Constitutional Studies, a post he held for more than 20 years. He led the institute’s decade-long study of the Constitution, which produced a 10-volume collection of essays. He was the author of From Parchment to Power: How James Madison Used the Bill of Rights to Save the Constitution. In addition, he edited some 30 books on American politics. Mr. Goldwin served as a member of the Board of Visitors and Governors from 1980 to 1988; he became a visitor emeritus in 1999. In 1977, the Alumni Association honored him with an Award of Merit. He is survived by four children: Nancy Goldwin Harvey (A69), Jane Goldwin Bandler (A71), Elizabeth Goldwin (SF73), and Seth Goldwin. WILLIAM M. GOLDSMITH CLASS OF 1945 William Michael Goldsmith of Vineyard Haven, Mass., an author, presidential scholar, political activist and retired professor, died March 23, 2010, at the age of 90. Mr. Goldsmith had a long and varied career that included work in the labor movement, civil rights activism and teaching at Brandeis University. Born in New York City, Mr. Goldsmith attended Catholic University, but left �42 after his ﬁrst year to support his family, which had suffered ﬁnancial setbacks in the stock market crash. In the summer of 1940, after reading Mortimer Adler’s How to Read a Book, Mr. Goldsmith hitchhiked to Chicago, determined to meet with University of Chicago President Robert Maynard Hutchins to convince him to admit him to the university’s liberal arts program. Hutchins told Mr. Goldsmith that Chicago was not for him. Rather, he belonged at St. John’s. Hutchins made a few calls and Mr. Goldsmith was in. The next few years, he would later recall, were some of the best of his life: reading and discussing ideas deep into the night while waiting tables and working odd jobs, sending extra cash home throughout. Mr. Goldsmith’s college career was interrupted again, this time by World War II. He enlisted in the Air Force and shipped out to Guam with a Signal Corps outﬁt. He returned to St. John’s, graduated in 1948, and took a job with the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, doing educational work in the South. He later became the Southern Educational Director for the Textile Workers Union. In 1954, he returned to New York, where he worked for the Ford Foundation and later earned a doctorate at Columbia University. At Brandeis, Mr. Goldsmith taught in the Politics Department and became a founding member of a new, interdisciplinary department, American Studies. His three-volume study, The Growth of Presidential Power, was published in 1974 and is still considered by many to be the deﬁnitive work in its ﬁeld. He also created the { Obituaries} Brandeis Papers Commission at Brandeis University, a permanent repository for the papers of Justice Brandeis. He was instrumental in bringing to Brandeis the groundbreaking Upward Bound program, a summer program for talented high school students from underserved neighborhoods. Mr. Goldsmith retired in 1984. He is survived by his wife of 50 years, Dr. Marianne Goldsmith; two daughters, Suzanne Goldsmith-Hirsch and Alexandra Forbes; a son, Michael; and ﬁve grandchildren. DAVID DOBREER CLASS OF 1948 David Dobreer, who united alumni in a strong and active Alumni Association, died in San Gabriel, Calif., on January 17, 2010, at the age of 90. He was a decorated veteran of World War II, a dedicated and accomplished physician, and an active and loyal alumnus of St. John’s College. His leadership of the Alumni Association during a critical time contributed signiﬁcantly to strengthened ties between the college and alumni. He served as a member of the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors from 1974 to 1980, and from 1986 to 1992. He became an emeritus member in 2002. A native of Washington, D.C., Dr. Dobreer started with the class of 1944, but World War II interrupted his studies. He served as a lieutenant in the Army, as a navigator on a B-24 bomber. He ﬂew 34 missions over Europe and won the Air Medal with Oak Leaf Clusters for meritorious service. After graduating from St. John’s in 1948, he earned a Doctor of Osteopathic Medi- Jack Ladd Carr was involved in the Mitchell Gallery and the Alumni Association. cine degree from the College of Osteopathic Physicians and Surgeons of Los Angeles. He later earned an MD degree from the California College of Medicine. He led “great books” seminars at Hollywood High School, in his home, and various other locations in the Los Angeles area for more than 40 years, and later through the Plato Society at UCLA. The long-time president of the Southern California alumni group, Dr. Dobreer was an active and involved alumnus with a genuine love for the Program. He served for six years as the ﬁrst president of the Alumni Association after its reorganization as a national body. The association ﬂourished and grew under his leadership. In recognition of his service to the college, and in acknowledgement of his distinguished medical career, the association selected him for its highest honor, the Award of Merit, in 1977. Dr. Dobreer is survived by four daughters: Leslee Rigter, Peggy Dobreer, Sallie Raspa (A75), and Janice Yaruss. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } JACK LADD CARR CLASS OF 1950 Jack Ladd Carr, class of 1950, died January 10, 2010, at the age of 84. Mr. Carr was an avid supporter of his alma mater. He served as a board member of the college’s Mitchell Gallery, where he was a docent. An active member of the Alumni Association, he was awarded the Alumni Association Award of Merit in 1990 in recognition of his service to the college. Mr. Carr served in the U.S. Army during World War II and participated in the liberation of the Philippines. After graduating from St. John’s, he earned a master’s degree in urban planning at Temple University. He worked in planning in Charleston, S.C., then returned to Annapolis, where he served as the ﬁrst planning director for the city. He later joined the Maryland State Department of Economic and Community Planning. His long-time friend, tutor Curtis Wilson (HA83) remembered Mr. Carr as “publicspirited person” who enjoyed good-natured arguments, who �43 {Obituaries} seriously explored cultural pursuits, and who cared about the quality of life in his community.” John Moore (HA01), who brought Mr. Carr into state planning, says, “Jack handled everything with diplomacy and patience. He reﬂected his St. John’s background very well.” Mr. Carr is survived by his wife, Lois, and stepson, Andrew. for beer and conversation.” The British newspaper The Guardian noted in a tribute article that de Sela “created three extraordinary albums over the course of 12 years. She achieved fame more by word of mouth than through the media, but won various awards, including the Québécois Félix in 1997, a Canadian Juno in 1998, and a BBC award for world music in 2005.” LHASA DE SELA (SF94) Lhasa de Sela (SF94), a trilingual singer and songwriter, died on January 1, 2010, of breast cancer. Born in Big Indian, N.Y., in the Catskill Mountains, de Sela spent her childhood traveling through the U.S. and Mexico in a converted school bus that served as her family’s home. From the early 1990s onward, she lived in Montreal, where she sang in bars and learned, as she told a reporter in 2004, “how to reach people, even people who were only there ELIZABETH BLETTNER TUTOR Elizabeth Blettner, a tutor at St. John’s since 1982, died April 19, 2010, in Annapolis, after a short illness. Miss Blettner earned her bachelor’s degree from Stanford University, and master’s and doctoral degrees in philosophy from Penn State University. Originally drawn to literature, Miss Blettner fell in love with philosophy and Ancient Greek as a graduate student, and was particularly drawn to the work of Kant. Miss Blettner was responsible for the current shape of the college’s sophomore music tutorial, said tutor Peter Kalkavage, her longtime friend. “Our current sophomore music program is due to the tremendous care and work Elizabeth put in,” he says “The college is very much in her debt.” A gifted singer who loved music, Miss Blettner was also a faithful and supportive member of the audience whenever the freshman chorus performed. In recent years, she taught frequently in the Graduate Institute, where she led a preceptorial on Ancient Greek. “By all accounts, she was a superb tutor of Greek,” Mr. Kalkavage notes. “Her students were quite devoted to her.” Miss Blettner was drawn to St. John’s by the serious pursuit of academics, he adds, and she enhanced the college through her dedication. “She LAWRENCE SANDEK CLASS OF 1954 by Lydia Sandek Leizman (A84) had a deep relation to whatever she would take up: the study of Plato, the study of music. Like many of us here, she was very much shaped by Jacob Klein. She was a very dear friend to me.” In Miss Blettner’s honor, the St. John’s Chorus dedicated its spring performance of Faure’s Requiem to her. x ALSO NOTED RALPH BALTZEL (CLASS OF 1943), DEC. 8, 2009 REAR ADMIRAL ALLEN BERGER (CLASS OF 1939), MARCH 22, 2010 DAVID DICKEY (A67), NOV. 24, 2009 STEFANIE PRIGGE (A86), DEC. 31, 2009 JOHN RITNER (A84), JAN. 28, 2009 LOUIS SAULT (CLASS OF 1956), JAN. 10. 2010 KATHRYN STOLZENBACH (A95), JAN. 20, 2010 all his other tutorials. He won the senior essay prize for his year, writing on Don Quixote. He My father, Lawrence Sandek, class of worked in the bindery, 1954, died September 4, 2009, in Palo where he developed his Alto, Calif. He was born December 23, own ﬂat-spine binding. 1923, in the Bronx, N.Y. A veteran of Some of these books are WW II, he attended St. John’s on the still on his bookshelf GI Bill. The two most frequent today. comments that he made in reference to After St. John’s, my St. John’s College were: 1: It was the father settled into family only college worth attending; and 2: It life, making his living as was the ﬁrst place that felt like his a freelance writer in the home. New York City area. He At least two alumni are as much due Larry Sandek (class of 1954, right), shown here with later spent many years to his inﬂuence: myself (1984), and my classmate Sam Kutler, thought St. John’s College “the traveling ﬁrst in Mexico, mother’s sister, Arlene Banks Andrew only college worth attending.” then India, ﬁnally again (class of 1964). Additionally, his ﬁrst settling near family in child, India Sandek, was born at Anne Big Bear, Calif. He is survived by three daughters, India Arundel Hospital while he was a student. Sandek, Jessica Sandek, and Lydia Sandek Leizman; one He spoke often of [tutors] Jacob Klein and Simon Kaplan. son-in-law, Jon Leizman; and six grandchildren x My understanding is that my father was something of a force in seminar and the Coffee Shop, but not always as attendant in { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } �44 {Special Report: Alumni Relations} E NG AG I NG A LU M N I Tapping a wellspring of Johnnie pride About this Report Can virtue be taught? Can Aristotle explain a butterﬂy’s metamorphosis? What drove Ophelia mad? Does a steel marble really fall at the same rate as a feather? Johnnies have considered these questions and many more, from their ﬁrst seminar on the Iliad or their ﬁrst days in the Graduate Institute. The habit of questioning stays with them long after they leave the college. Over the past year, the college’s Alumni Association, a task force of alumni leaders, and staff at the college have applied their Johnnie habit of questioning, considering, and discussing things to the state of alumni relations at St. John’s College. Among the questions they posed to each other—and to you, alumni, are: How can the college better nurture the bond with alumni? How can the close relationship formed through a common academic program be maintained after alumni are scattered to every corner of the globe? How can the college better inform its alumni about what’s happening on the campuses? And what’s the best way for alumni to support a college they care about? This special section of The College explains the work completed by a Presidents’ Task Force, changes to the Alumni Association, and a new leadership forum that serves as the starting point for widening the circle of alumni involvement. Looking to get involved? Follow up on the contact info here, and look for periodic updates to this effort in the magazine, your alumni e-newsletter, and the online community. by Patricia Dempsey ow many institutions can boast an alumnus like Steve Thomas (SF74) who cares so deeply about the curriculum that he’s closely following the development of a new math manual for junior lab? More than three decades after graduating, Thomas, an attorney and president of the Alumni Association, remains passionate about the Program and stays involved to ensure that undergraduates today have the same or even a better educational experience than he did. “When I talk to alumni, this is one thing they deeply care about—the Program,” says Thomas. “Is it still the Program? Will it survive? I hear this over and over again.” The Program has always been the super glue, that instant bond among Johnnie alumni. ”We are deﬁned in part by having H gone through the Program,” says Patty Sollars (A80), a neuroscientist and vice president of the Alumni Association. “It is something we carry with us forever.” Yet if most Johnnies care deeply about the Program—as indicated by a recent (2008) survey—then why aren’t they involved with local and national alumni programs in higher numbers? In 2008 the 12-member Presidents’ Task Force on Alumni Relations wrestled with this question and embraced recommendations that Presidents Michael Peters and Christopher Nelson (SF70) accepted late last year. One recommendation was to encourage the St. John’s Alumni Association to serve as an umbrella organization for a greater variety of alumni activities. A new, streamlined 18-member Alumni Association Board will consist of 4 ofﬁcers, the collegewide Alumni Director, the immediate { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } Through the Program, Alumni share a common bond that keeps them close to the college--no matter where they go. past-president of the association, and 12 atlarge members. Shorter terms and term limits for board members will mean more alumni voices will be heard. And the annual Alumni Leadership Forum—the ﬁrst was scheduled for Annapolis June 11-13, 2010— will bring alumni leaders together to create opportunities for alumni involvement in educational and social activities and work on assisting the college with fundraising, admissions, career and graduate school mentoring, and networking. Ray Cave (class of 1948), who chaired the task force, says the changes arose from a need to actively recognize alumni as valuable members of the college community. “In the past not as much attention has been given to the alumni as to the Program and students,” says Cave. “Yet it is the alumni who can help the Program continue.” The more alumni are involved with St. John’s, the more they care about its future, says Cave, a former Time magazine editor and member of the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors. “In the ﬁrst 30 years after I graduated I gave no evidence that I was interested in St. John’s,” he says. “But more important, St. John’s gave no evidence that it was interested in me. When St. John’s got interested, so did I—which is what we hope to see happen with hundreds, or even �{Alumni Relations} thousands, of our alumni today. The survival of St. John’s may well depend on it.” Expanding the touch points of alumni involvement is the driving force behind this new era in alumni relations, explains Matt Calise (A00), a task force member who also chairs the Alumni Giving Council (formerly called Philanthropia) and who directs alumni relations at Georgetown Law. “We are steeped in and proud of our history, but we have a tendency to look back, to dissect,” says Calise. “We are distinctive pedagogically, but in some ways we are not up with the times.” The alumni survey showed that “our alumni are thirsting for more ways to be connected to the college. So let’s ignite this passion.” College-alumni relations in the 21st century demand innovation, even a cultural shift says Sanjay Poovadan (SF83), a member of the Board of Visitors and Governors who chairs the board’s Alumni Relations Committee. “The new changes mean a deeper, richer, widespread alumni engagement. There was a time, in the 1960s, when our way of education was under siege. We 45 had a circle of wagons around us, and we looked inward. “But today we are no longer under siege culturally, ﬁnancially or philosophically. We are strong enough to introduce the ‘new,’ to branch out our involvement of alumni to career services, Piraeus, communications, diversity, fundraising—there are many potential areas for alumni to get involved.” A major step forward is the Alumni Leadership Forum, an event already generating buzz. “It’s very American, very Tocquevillesque, with new communities being created and a bubbling up of ideas,” says Barbara Goyette (A73), vice president for advancement in Annapolis. The inaugural forum this June in Annapolis brought together chapter and reading group leaders, Reunion Class Leaders, the Alumni Giving Council, and young alumni leaders. Says Calise, “If there’s a cracker-Jack alum out there who wants to get involved, we want to hear from him or her.” The forum included an update with college presidents and ofﬁcers followed by roundtables among volunteer leaders on issues affecting the college and alumni. Expanding alumni involvement also opens the door to a new generation of volunteer leaders. Many are tech-savvy and adept at creating virtual and in-person communities. Like all Johnnies they are passionate about the Program and have fresh ideas, including networking events that go beyond the seminar to assist with job hunting, dating, housing and health. Poovadan is eager to learn from younger alumni, especially those from the 1980s on. “I want to help change the culture of the college so we involve all the alumni voices,” he says. Among the next generation of leaders is New York City chapter president Charlotte Lucy Latham (SF02). Latham is enthusiastic about the changes that include a smaller board and shorter term limits for board members. Juggling work, yoga teacher training, and graduate studies, Latham will trade four board meetings a year for the once-a-year Leadership Forum. “Now I’ll have time to invest my energies in the activities that mean the most to me— those here at my chapter,” says Latham. Another young alumnus, Robert Morris (SF04), welcomes the changes. An active leader among D.C. alumni, Morris says alumni gain the chance to shape “a bigpicture view.” “I want to establish a common vision of what alumni should be and do. What is really needed is the answer to the question: ‘Who are we?’ This is a network of smart, successful people I really like and respect, a caring community with whom I share a common bond. But when I encounter alumni who say they attended a quirky, weird college I want to change how we view ourselves. I’d rather say, ‘I received the best liberal arts undergraduate education there is.” Coalescing a common vision among the college’s 9,500 living alumni poses a challenge, but at the heart of it all is the shared experience—unique and enduring— of being a Johnnie. As Cave puts it, “Alumni engagement is emotional and intellectual. Other schools have football games. We have the Program.” x During Homecoming 2009 in Santa Fe, Steve Thomas (SF74) presented Santa Fe President Michael Peters with a symbolic check from the Alumni Association, representing the ﬁnal installment of the association’s contributions to the college’s capital campaign. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } �46 {Alumni Relations} What’s Next? by Linda Stabler-Talty (SFGI76) “YES, you are a member of the Alumni Association.” Sound familiar? This appeared on the Alumni Association dues mailer for years, and now that our association no longer collects dues, the current board members would like to boldly conﬁrm that “YES, you are a member of the Alumni Association”—if you have a degree from the college, have completed at least one semester of undergraduate study or one segment of Graduate Institute Study, or if you have been welcomed as an honorary member. The college presidents wrote to alumni recently and declared their hope “to build a more vibrant and mutually sustaining relationship” with us, the alumni. Likewise, the association board members have been hard at work to increase the opportunities to participate in the diverse activities of the association and college. To this end, you can look forward to mailings and electronic postings that will explain the changes and help you explore the possibilities to become more involved. Here is what will arrive soon: • Draft of the new Alumni Association bylaws • Narrative in plain language of these by-laws and changes from prior ones • Explanation of all the structural changes within the Alumni Association • Notiﬁcation of the Annual Meeting date/time, including the Association Slate of Ofﬁcers and Board Representatives Responses to the St. John’s College Alumni Survey (October 2008), conducted by an independent consultant, reveal that St. John’s “has the basic DNA upon which strong, ongoing alumni relationships have been built. . . .” Alumni have strong feelings for their alma mater, yet alumni involvement is not correspondingly as high. Here are some highlights from undergraduate respondents: • 73 percent of St. John’s alumni are very satisﬁed with their student Alumni can help plan and organize increased educational opportunities such as Piraeus, shown above. • Notice that directors and ofﬁcers may be elected by petition • Transition resolution that will allow all of the above to move ahead Also included will be an offer to let alumni “opt out” of electronic notiﬁcations, with hard copies mailed from the Alumni Ofﬁce. The highlight of these changes is the ﬁrst annual Alumni Leadership Forum, June 11-13 in Annapolis. This inaugural event engages alumni on many different levels, with results continuing well into the future. And, you are encouraged to ask questions, discuss your ideas, and to get in experience (compared to 47 percent -83 percent at other institutions surveyed). • 70 percent report that overall they have very positive feelings about the college today (compared to 34-73 percent at other institutions surveyed). • 9 out of 10 alumni take pride in their St. John’s afﬁliation and feel that St. John’s is a part of who they are. • 6 out of 10 feel they are part of the { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } touch with the association as well as your fellow alumni. Welcome to this energized era of alumni activity! Contact: Jo Ann Mattson at joann.mattson@sjca.edu, phone 410-295-6926; or Nancie Wingo at nwingo@sjcsf.edu, phone 505-984-6121; or johnniealumni@gmail.com. St. John’s community and have a stake in the college’s achievements and success. • 28 percent report that they only hear from the college when it’s asking for ﬁnancial support. • 55 percent said the Program was the most meaningful aspect of their St. John’s experience. �47 {Alumni Relations} What is the Alumni Leadership Forum? The Alumni Leadership Forum is a major step in the reorganization of alumni relations taking place at St. John’s. This annual gathering of volunteer alumni leaders, held during the summer on alternating campuses, recognizes the contributions of dedicated alumni, trains them in their areas of volunteer interest, and offers an opportunity to engage with fellow alumni as well as college ofﬁcers and staff. What is the goal of the ﬁrst forum in Annapolis? The ﬁrst Alumni Leadership Forum was held in Annapolis on June 11-13, 2010. Attendees, including alumni leaders, college staff and ofﬁcers, gathered to learn from each other and plan for the college’s future. Questions for the forum included: How can the college enhance communication and engagement with its alumni? How can alumni get involved to help the college? In this way, the college will be able to better serve the evolving needs of its alumni. Look for a report on the meeting in e-newsletters as well as the fall issue of The College. Who was invited? How can I get involved? The ﬁrst Alumni Leadership Forum brought together a smaller group of leaders than will attend future forums. These include Chapter and Reading Group leadership, Reunion Class Leaders, the Alumni Giving Council, and Young Alumni leaders. However, all interested alumni are encouraged to contact the Alumni Ofﬁce on either campus for more information: in Annapolis, 410-2956926; in Santa Fe, 505-984-6121. For questions about the changes to the Alumni Association or how to get involved, please contact the Alumni Association at this email: johnniealumni@gmail.com. How else is the Alumni Association changing? The St. John’s College Alumni Association remains a separate 501(c)3 organization, but it will work in partnership with the college to increase alumni involvement. The Alumni Association Board will manage the partnership of the association with the college and ensure that the alumni working groups are focused on key priorities. The volunteer group Philanthropia has been Alumni Calendar Make plans now to join your friends for Homecoming 2010! This year, the event takes place on the same weekend on both campuses: September 24-26. SANTA FE Friday Registration, 4-8 p.m. Alumni/students networking reception, 4-5:30 p.m. Welcome Home reception, 5:307:30 p.m. Lecture, 8 p.m. Question Period, 9 p.m. Saturday Registration. 8:30 a.m.-noon Seminars, 10:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Luncheon and State of the College address, 12:30-2 p.m. Levan Hall dedication, 2 p.m. Alumni Association meeting, 3 p.m. Bocce and other lawn games, 3:30 p.m. Art Show reception and Waltz Party, 5-7 p.m. Dance, 9-12 p.m. Sunday Alumni Association Board meeting, 9 a.m.-10 a.m. Brunch, complete with reunionyear toasts, 10:30 a.m. -12:30 p.m. renamed the Alumni Giving Council and will continue its work under the umbrella of the Alumni Association, as will all alumni volunteer groups, such as Reunion Class Leaders and Chapter Presidents. There will be more opportunities for alumni: service projects and career mentoring, for example. What will this change mean for me? It means more involvement and communication with alumni and college staff. The new, streamlined 18-member board consists of four ofﬁcers, the college-wide Alumni Director, the immediate Past President of the Association, and 12 at-large members. Each atlarge member of the board will be familiar with one or more of the working groups. These working groups will take the lead on many alumni activities –and offer opportunities for those who want to get involved. Ideas for working groups are welcome; how and when these groups form will vary with needs. This opportunity for increased connection and involvement will beneﬁt of all members of the college community. Join the 6,000 Johnnies already participating in the Alumni Online Community. Go to: stjohnscollege.edu and click on “Alumni.” Call for Artists: All-college Alumni and Santa Fe Faculty, Staff and Student Art Show Artists from both campuses are invited to participate in the annual fall art show, which will be on display September 25 through October 17, 2010, on the second ﬂoor of the Peterson Student Center. The opening of the show will coincide with Homecoming on the Santa Fe campus. Plan to attend the opening reception Saturday, September 25, 5-7 p.m. Alumni who wish to enter their artwork should contact the college by August 1 to declare their intent to participate. Entries need to be received no later than September 10. For more details, contact Maggie Magalnick at 505-984-6199 or e-mail maggie@sjcsf.edu. ANNAPOLIS Friday Registration, 4-8 p.m. Reunion Class/Graduate Institute receptions, 5:45-7 p.m. Fiftieth Reunion Dinner for the Class of 1960, 5:45 p.m. Lecture, 8:15 p.m. Question Period, after Lecture Rock Party, 10:30 p.m. Saturday Registration, 8:30 a.m. to noon All-alumni Meeting/Awards Assembly, 9:30 a.m. Seminars, 10:30 a.m. Family Lunch; Classes of the 1940s and Friends Luncheon, noon { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } Children’s Activities, 1:30-3:30 p.m. Mitchell Gallery tour, 3 p.m. Cocktail reception, 5-7 p.m. Alumni Banquet, 7:30-9:30 p.m. Homecoming Ball, Great Hall, 9:30 p.m. Rock Party, Coffee Shop, 10 p.m. Sunday President’s Brunch, 11 a.m. Around the Chapters �{St. John’s Forever} greenfield library 48 Field of Dreams B efore St. John’s gained fame for several lacrosse championships in the 1930s, there was just one sport at St. John’s: baseball. These serious young men in their striped jerseys, posed in front of the Liberty Tree, were members of the team sometime between 1901 and 1905, according to Greenﬁeld Library records. Football came along in the 1880s and St. John’s ﬁelded powerhouse teams in football as well as lacrosse. (Johnnies once defeated Washington College on the gridiron by a score of 116-0.) Today, Johnnies are much more likely to be playing basketball or soccer, with Ultimate Frisbee fast becoming a favorite sport for both Santa Fe and Annapolis Johnnies. Santa Fe students are also playing hockey competitively; they recently captured a city championship. x { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } �{Eidos} Historically Inaccurate Richard Saja (SF93) O ver the last 10 years, textile artist Richard Saja (SF93) has made quite a name for himself in the design community. He had his ﬁrst solo show, “The Bright and Shining Light of Irreverence: Richard Saja and the Historically Inaccurate School,” last year at the Shelburne Museum in Vermont. The New York Times has brought attention to his work, which has also been praised in Antiques magazine, ReadyMade, and O. He also won a Searchlight Fellowship from the American Crafts Council and was an exhibitor at the council’s 2009 show. Through his company, Historically Inaccurate Decorative Arts (historically-inaccurate.blogspot.com), Saja pursues a unique niche in the decorative arts. He takes classic toile prints and embellishes their designs with hand-embroidered additions drawn from his own imagination and sense of humor. Saja describes it as “a cheeky, irreverent take on a pattern of Western civilization.” He began his studies at the Philadelphia College of Art, spending a year there before deciding he needed a fresh perspective. He headed to Santa Fe, where he crashed on a Johnnie’s ﬂoor, went to class on a lark, and was “blown away” by St. John’s. He joined the January Freshman class in 1990 and remains grateful for the challenging education he found at the college. “While I was terrible in math, junior math with John Cornell was pure magic.” After graduating from St. John’s, Saja taught himself graphics programs such as Photoshop and Illustrator and landed a job in advertising. After a layoff in 2000, he teamed up with Johnnie Martha Alexander (SF95). The two discovered a mutual love for textiles, so they joined together to create a company, Marisaal, dedicated to creating hand-embroidered pillows that “made people think.” After Alexander moved on, Saja has continued the work through Historically Inaccurate. While the pillows were popular, Above and left: prints from Richard Saja’s series “The Lost Girls.” Each measures 24" x 36" and is an archival giclée print on heavy-weight canvas, embroidered with rayon ﬂoss, stretched and mounted. The custom toile design of “The Lost Girls” was inspired by J.M. Barrie’s characters from Peter Pan. Right: One of Saja’s “fauxnasetti” bar towels: electronic clip art manipulating the face of a woman used in hundreds of different iterations by Saja’s favorite 20th-century designer, Piero Fornasetti. Saja began to wonder: “Why am I just doing cushions? I decided to concentrate on larger-scale pieces,” says Saja. The Shelburne show in 2009 was a great opportunity to showcase his talents. He created an original work of embroidery called JUST THIS ONCE, which was paired with the { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 } Erastus Salisbury Field oil painting The Garden of Eden. Saja hopes his work is provocative. “A lot of time, art is passive. I want to work around themes, to use humor, to force people to ask why. A lot of that, I got at St. John’s.” x �NON -P ROFIT O RG . U.S. P OSTAGE PAID P UBLISHED BY THE COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE P.O. BOX 2800 A NNAPOLIS , MARYLAND 21404 ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED C RAFTSMAN PRINTERS , INC . � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The College (2001-2017) Description An account of the resource The St. John's College Communications Office published The College magazine for alumni. It began publication in 2001, continuing the St. John's Reporter, and ceased with the Fall 2017 issue. Click on <a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=56">Items in The College (2001-2017) Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, Md. Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context thecollege2001 Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 48 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Title A name given to the resource The College, Spring 2010 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf 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 Type The nature or genre of the resource text Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context The_College_Magazine_Spring_2010 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Description An account of the resource Volume 35, Issue 2 of the The College Magazine. Published in Spring 2010. The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/d53c28bfa1ce3da90dcdbe9d555616b6.pdf 76a16c739caa608a369b5e325a6b98fa PDF Text Text College The St. John’s College • Annapolis • Santa Fe Thucydides and the Price of War F a l l 2 0 1 0 �On Thucydides “For the last year we have been doing our lessons, reading our books, and trying to listen to peaceful, reasonable discourse about human affairs, while special newspapers have been let loose outside the window telling us of the latest crack and ruin in the affairs which human reason should control.” – Scott Buchanan, 1941 T here’s a deep tone of concern in Scott Buchanan’s essay, “The War and the College,” published in 1941 in the original version of The College magazine. Writing of a “lost generation drifting to another war,” Buchanan examined the place of a “great books” college at a time when Hitler was marching through Europe, and U.S. involvement in another world war seemed imminent. The dean of a college fortunate to survive the Civil War and a veteran of World War I, Buchanan was thinking about the young men who had come to read classic works, many of whom he expected to be called to ﬁght another war. Buchanan and Stringfellow Barr, architects of the New Program, conceived of St. John’s not just as an alternative to the electives-driven system of higher education, but also as a response to their grave concerns about the world. They were alarmed by the rise of fascism in Europe and concerned about the future of the United States if people unquestioningly accepted the ideology of their leaders. The Program “came out of an early recognition that the world was drifting and that something must be done, something fundamental and perhaps drastic, to discover our position and direction,” Buchanan wrote. In every generation, the works read at St. John’s become a part of the students who read them, Buchanan said. Whatever was coming, these books would go with them. “War destroys roads and landmarks as well as cities and dwellings. It destroys familiar and reassuring things inside you. . . . It is often said that the great books have stood the test of time. They have done more than that; they have gone on through the ﬁre and destruction of many wars and told men what to do afterwards. It is somewhat comforting to know that the St. John’s books have this deep, practical use in the present crisis.” According to the records of the college, Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War has been read by St. John’s students since 1830, when the Rev. Hector Humphreys was president. Johnnies read it when they were military cadets, marching and training in their gray wool uniforms. And Barr and Buchanan included it on their reading list. Today’s students read it toward the end of their ﬁrst semester and discuss it over four seminars. To one senior, “Thucydides is like CNN—he just tells you the facts.” Pericles’ funeral provides young men and women with the opportunity to reﬂect on how democracy is defended and how honor is earned: “. . . you must yourselves realize the power of Athens, and feed your eyes upon her from day to day, till love of her ﬁlls your hearts; and then, when all her greatness shall break upon you, you must reﬂect that it was by courage, sense of duty, and a keen feeling of honour in action that men were enabled to win all this. . .” This issue of The College magazine presents proﬁles of alumni who experienced warfare beyond the pages of their books. We begin with a veteran of World War II and end with a ﬁrst-person account from a Johnnie who watched children die in the sectarian violence of Iraq. Also in this issue, the daughter of a tutor recalls how her life was shaped by growing up with St. John’s at the center of her family’s life. She writes of people who have been gone for a long time, but nevertheless, were instrumental in making St. John’s what it is today. —RH The College is published three times a year by St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD, and Santa Fe, NM Known ofﬁce of publication: Communications Ofﬁce St. John’s College Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404-2800 Periodicals postage paid at Annapolis, MD postmaster: Send address changes to The College Magazine, Communications Ofﬁce, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800. Rosemary Harty (AGI09), editor 410-972-4511 rosemary.harty@sjca.edu Patricia Dempsey Managing Editor Jennifer Behrens Art Director The College welcomes letters on issues of interest to readers. Letters can be sent via e-mail to the editor or mailed to the address above. Annapolis 410-626-2539 Santa Fe 505-984-6104 Contributors Sara Luell (A09) Anna Perleberg (SF02) Deborah Spiegelman Michael Waller Magazine design by Claude Skelton Design �College The Fa l l 2 0 1 0 Vo l u m e 3 5 , I s s u e 3 The Magazine for Alumni of St. John’s College Annapolis • Santa Fe {Contents} 12 Parting Words? d e p a r t m e n t s page 2 A noted vintner and the director of a human rights and literary center tells new graduates just how lucky they are. • Santa Fe celebrates the opening of Levan Hall The liberal arts in Iraq Johnnies learn the art of bookmaking The enduring rewards of planned giving In Santa Fe, a nook in the woods In Annapolis, a better look at the skies Linking college and community News and announcements Letters 32 biblioﬁle • • • 14 In Defense of Liberty • page Johnnies who have served in the armed forces talk about their experiences, from surviving Kamakaze air raids in the Paciﬁc to healing the hidden scars of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. • • • page 12 • • Eva Brann (HA87) reports on a conference on Jacob Klein’s inﬂuential “math book.” Charles Nelson (class of 1945) explores how Jefferson and others in a young country viewed America’s “race problem.” 34 alumni • 26 Knitting Lesson page Kathryn Kramer was sent to Dodo Klein to learn to knit. Only later did she realize how much more she learned. 30 When Ancients Speak page from the bell towers page 14 P RO F I L E S 34 Phillip Katz (SF94) steers his design company through a challenging economy. 38 Harold Anderson (A72) promotes cultural sustainability. 43 Britta Riley (SF02) makes farmers out of city dwellers. 46 His brother’s disappearance gave Jeff Dunsavage (A84) a reason to work for change. At a public charter school in Oregon, Jenny Lowe Cook (A06) enchants bored sixth graders with Homer. 49 page 52 52 54 on the cover Thucydides Illustration by David Johnson 56 obituaries homecoming association news st. john’s forever �2 {From the Bell Towers} Levan Hall Opens in Santa Fe by Deborah Spiegelman The Betty and Norman Levan Hall, the new home of the Graduate Institute in Santa Fe, opened in August, just in time for the start of the fall semester. Made possible by a $5 million gift from Dr. Norman Levan (SFGI74), the building houses the Liberal Arts and Eastern Classics programs as well as faculty ofﬁces, seminar and conference rooms, an exhibition space, and a common space for students to study. At the same time simple and majestic in its design, Levan Hall was dedicated September 25 during Homecoming Weekend, with Dr. Levan joining alumni, tutors, and friends for the celebration. “We are grateful for Dr. Levan’s generosity and excited to be able to have a dedicated home for the Graduate Institute,” says Santa Fe President Michael P. Peters. “Levan Hall Levan Hall, the new home of the Graduate Institute in Santa was planned as a LEED Silverdemonstrates St. John’s College’s certiﬁed building, but may achieve Gold-level certiﬁcation. commitment to and investment in higher education in New Mexico.” The new building also accomAsserting a modern interpretation of the Territorial style popuplished another need on campus. The building links an expanded larized by John Gaw Meem, one of New Mexico’s most inﬂuential lower placita, with brickwork paths and a sloping handicap-accesarchitects, Levan Hall suggests a kinship with the architectural sible ramp, with the upper placita. The campus now has an features of the college’s other buildings and dormitories and offers efﬁcient, pedestrian-friendly center. a fresh outlook for the campus. Perhaps the most dramatic aspect “The Graduate Institute has long been an integral part of of the contemporary aesthetic is the imposing front entrance, St. John’s in Santa Fe,” notes GI Director Matt Davis. “This presenting a glazed two-story portal next to a stucco mass. The beautiful new building underlines the college’s continuing roof, supported by steel trusses, appears to be ﬂoating in air. commitment to the Graduate Institute and its programs.” Just as the graduate programs in Santa Fe span the classics of Western and Eastern civilizations, Levan Hall synthesizes Western or perhaps more accurately, Southwestern and Eastern perspectives. The tall, stuccoed building is nearly two and three-fourths ﬂoors bottom to top, yet it is impressive without being imposing. Inside, plastered walls soar to meet wood-slat ceilings that simultaneously suggest traditional vigas and the simplicity of Japanese styling. An open and inviting quality—evident with the benches, sofas, and chairs on landings, in the graduate commons room, and in ofﬁces—welcomes students and faculty alike. Openness is further enhanced by the strategic placement of windows—including glass transoms above ofﬁce doors and glassenclosed conference and work rooms—which promote shared light. At the same time, acoustic ceiling tiles create a sense of calm Dr. Norman Levan (SFGI74, shown with Santa Fe President Michael Peters) made a generous gift to the college to build the Betty and Norman Levan Hall. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } �{From the Bell Towers} At dedication ceremonies for Levan Hall, President Michael Peters expressed gratitude for Dr. Levan’s generosity. quiet, even when conversations are happening in seminar rooms or in ofﬁces or on balconies. The seminar rooms themselves include wall-length writing surfaces, and the upstairs commons room is similarly outﬁtted with handy writing surfaces as well as with a bank of wooden lockers, workstations, and comfortable seating. Levan Hall also has inspired changes in the surrounding architecture and terrain. For instance, new second-ﬂoor balconies on the adjacent Fine Arts Building and the Peterson Student Center echo the balconies of the new GI building. Meem Library, once isolated from the rest of campus, is part of the more centralized core, too. Designed with the goal of earning LEED Gold Certiﬁcation, the highest designation in the internationally recognized U.S. Green Building Council’s rating system, Levan Hall incorporates a The dedication ceremony for Levan Hall, the new home of the Graduate Institute, was marked by gratitude— gratitude to Norman Levan, whose gift to the college made the building possible, and gratitude on the part of New Mexico leaders who appreciate what St. John’s brings to the city and the state. Governor Bill Richardson and Santa Fe Mayor David Coss both noted the contributions of St. John’s. Similarly, the college’s commitment to the community embraces culture as well as education, as evidenced in the exhibit spaces of Levan Hall, which display the work of Santa Fe artist Janet Lippincott. Lippincott, who died in 2007, was a pioneer of modern art in the Southwest. She explored multiple genres over the course of her long career, from representational works and minimalist drawings to abstract expressionist paintings based on structural forms rendered in striking colors. The approximately 10 works displayed in Levan Hall, from the Karan Ruhlen Gallery, reﬂect her broad 3 number of important green features. Its thick masonry walls resist heat gain in summer, and natural ventilation (instead of refrigerated air) coupled with nighttime air temperatures keep the building comfortable. In addition, windows are designed to minimize heat build up and to maximize the beneﬁt of passive solar heat and natural light, in lieu of artiﬁcial lighting. A multi-zoned radiant heating system assures comfort during colder months. Levan Hall also is the ﬁrst building on campus to signiﬁcantly harvest rainwater. Storm runoff from the ﬂat roof will be directed into a 6,000-gallon underground cistern capable of supplying much of the water for irrigating the surrounding xeriscape (drought-tolerant) plantings. In addition, a rooftop photovoltaic array is designed to produce renewable energy, thereby reducing the building’s carbon footprint and greenhouse gas emissions. To promote walking or cycling to campus, the building also has several bathroom facilities with showers. At the start of the project, a 15-percent reduction in overall building size from original speciﬁcations was achieved by designing rooms to serve multiple functions, leading to a savings on materials further reducing operating costs in the future. Since the groundbreaking in late May 2009, the project used many local businesses. Santa Fe-based Sarcon Construction Corp. led a team of 30 ﬁrms, 80 percent of which are based in Northern New Mexico. Local crews were involved in every aspect of construction, from excavation to interior detailing. David Perrigo, a local architect who has been involved in a number of campus projects, provided consulting services throughout the construction of the 10,340-square-foot building, designed by Lake-Flato Architects, based in San Antonio, Texas. “It is fairly unusual for a major and complicated and architecturally challenging project to ﬁnish on schedule and on budget with all the parties—owner, architect, and contractor—still smiling and enjoying each other,” observes Peter Brill, president of Peter Brill, Inc., the college’s owner’s representative. “It is a testament to St. John’s collaborative and trusting approach. The college set a tone which we were able to maintain throughout the process. And the ﬁnal result speaks to the quality of these relationships.” x range of artistic expression. Lippincott’s choice of materials was likewise varied, from India-ink, watercolor, oil, and acrylic to linocut, monoprint, and sculpture. Born in New York, Lippincott was trained at the Art Students League, lived for a while in Paris as a young girl, and served in the U.S. Army Corps in London during World War II. She moved to New Mexico in the late 1940s, subsequently studying at the San Francisco Institute of Art and the Colorado Fine Arts Center before settling in Santa Fe. She resided and { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } worked in a studio on Canyon Road. Lippincott explored a number of themes in her art, including war (she suffered lasting injuries during the Blitz in London), and many of her bold abstracts evoke New Mexico’s earth tones. Her work has been exhibited in numerous galleries and museums. In 2002, she was honored with the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, the most distinguished award for artists in the state of New Mexico. x —Deborah Spiegelman �4 {From the Bell Towers} The Liberal Arts in Iraq St. John’s ties to Kurdistan The American University of Iraq in Sulaimani has attracted some political controversy, as some see it as an attempt to impose Western ideology on the Iraqi people. But Tim Mewmaw (A07) can’t concern himself with politics. His mind is on his students, who want to learn English so that they can pursue opportunities too long denied them by war, hardship, and repression. Two weeks after his third child was born in Annapolis in September, Mewmaw was 6,000 miles away, back in his classroom at the university in Kurdistan. His wife, Tanya, and three small children will rejoin him in January. When Mewmaw applied to teach at the American University, he had no idea that former Santa Fe president John Agresto is the university’s provost. Working in the policy ﬁeld in Washington, Mewmaw was drawn to Iraq by a desire to help the nation rebuild. He and his family settled into faculty quarters on the temporary campus of the university and he began teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) classes. “Nothing we anticipated is worse than we imagined, and most things are better than we hoped for,” Mewmaw says of their experience. “Everything is rock and dust. When it rains, which it does a lot in the winter, everything turns to mud. In the summer, the average daily temperature is 118, and AC and electricity are spotty. Good healthcare is hard to come by.” The best part of the experience is joining a dedicated teaching community in building up a university from scratch. Among the faculty, there is camaraderie and support. Far from just a job, Mewmaw feels his work in Iraq is helping to build something. Mewmaw is one of several members of the St. John’s community who are involved in the university. Annapolis tutor Louis Petrich and his wife and two young children are spending a year in Iraq. Petrich is teaching mathematics and natural science. Annapolis President Christopher Nelson headed up a site visit team for the American Academy of Liberal Education. Already juggling too many commitments, Nelson initially turned down the invitation. But his wife, Joyce Olin, persuaded him to change his mind, and “They were encouraged to ask questions of the teacher and of each other.” Christopher Nelson they ﬂew to Iraq at the end of April. “I really thought it was an opportunity he’d never have again,” says Olin, a lawyer for the EPA who became part of the accreditation team, tapped for her environmental and scientiﬁc acumen. “And it was a fascinating experience. What I really liked was the enthusiasm and the commitment of all these young people. Their passion for learning was inspiring.” Over four days, the accreditation team visited classes, interviewed students and faculty, and observed a student debate. They visited the permanent campus, which is under construction about 30 minutes away from the temporary campus, and talked informally with students in the cafeteria. Nelson was impressed by the American University’s leadership, but more impressed by the students. “In each class I visited, every one of the 14 students spoke,” he said. “They were encouraged to ask questions of the teacher and of each other. Outside of class they were passionate in their desire to learn more, saying that they had never had such an experience, being given the Tim Mewmaw, shown here his wife, Tanya, and sons Sterling, (r.) and Thorin, (l.), has been gratiﬁed by the dedication of his students. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } �{From the Bell Towers} 5 joyce olin St. John’s President Christopher Nelson and his wife, Joyce Olin, see great promise in the American University of Iraq; its permanent campus is under construction in Kurdistan. freedom to make their education their own.” On leave from St. John’s while he teaches in Iraq, Petrich has been “pleased and amazed” by his hard-working students. “My students, mostly Kurdish with some Arabs, are endeavoring to learn things in a foreign language that many have never before considered even at an elementary level in their own language,” Petrich says. Petrich asks them the same questions he has posed of freshmen at St. John’s: “How do we know that lines exist? If the ‘common notions’ of Euclid are in fact common, why are we ﬁnding it necessary to talk about them so much? What makes a living thing alive?” In return, the students have their own questions, Petrich says: “Why not just use the ruler or compass you made us buy to draw a line of a certain length? Why take all these steps and say many difﬁcult words to do simple geometry? What would a Muslim scientist say (about the statement in our textbook) that life may have originated from non-life four billion years ago as a chemical process of evolution? Do you believe that is how it happened, Mr. Petrich?” In spite of the hardships of life in Iraq, Mewmaw stays motivated by the determination of his students. More than half of them want to study IT; most say they hope to leave Iraq to ﬁnd good jobs in the West. “I don’t know what the future holds for Iraq, or even for this university and its students,” he says. “I do think I’ve found a way to contribute and to ‘do some good,’ in some way.” x –Rosemary Harty OLEG: Bringing the Liberal Arts to Eurasia In 2008, a group of students at St. John’s College in Annapolis launched a small campus group called the Organization for Liberal Education in Georgia. Led by Nini Aduashvili (A11), a native of Georgia, and Noel Brockett (A09), the group raised enough funds to send four students and a tutor to visit New Gelati Academy, where a ﬂedgling liberal arts enterprise—based on the great books program at St. John’s—is underway. This past summer, the partnership between St. John’s and the academy moved to a new level when two tutors and four students went to Georgia to lead a week of St. John’s-style classes for New Gelati students and faculty. They stayed in the mountain lodge, Hotel Eureka, where they read Pascal’s Treatise on Fluids and used the hotel bar to carry out a simple experiment demonstrating Pascal’s theories. The 26-hour trip was a little grueling for Annapolis tutor Patricia Locke, but otherwise the trip was exhilarating, she says. Sharing some of the material and approaches of the college with an audience eager to learn about liberal arts education was rewarding. “They really have modeled their program on the St. John’s curriculum, and this week gave them a sustained opportunity to see it in practice,” Locke says. About eight faculty members and a dozen students took part in a seminar on the Symposium, tutorials on Shakespeare’s sonnets and on the ﬁrst book of Euclid, and Locke’s improvised lab on Pascal. “We also wanted to show the faculty members that they could teach outside their ﬁelds and that the classroom can be a collaboration between teachers and students,” Locke adds. “They are so hungry for a democratic way of doing things.” Also on the trip were Aduashvili’s sister, Mariam (A12), Nareg Sefarian (SF11), and tutor Louis Petrich. Private donors, especially several generous alumni, helped fund the trip, says Brockett. The visitors toured New Gelati facilities, on the campus of Gigol Robakidze University in Tbilisi, and visited many of the local sights. They saw the lingering effects of the political strife that has raked the region: refugee camps and a strong military presence, as well as poor living conditions. They also encountered a rich and fascinating Georgian culture, and warm welcomes everywhere they went. “It won’t be easy for this academy to survive and grow,” { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } Locke notes, “but the people at the heart of New Gelati are very dedicated.” Previous visits to New Gelati provided some introduction to the Program, but did not illustrate the ways in which the components of the college’s academic program are integrated with community life, says Brockett. “There’s a value in having people study together, but also being together—eating meals together, talking about the books and the ideas,” he says. “The students and the professors were really pleased with the program.” They’re already planning a return trip next summer; tutor Eva Brann (HA87) is on board, and Brockett would like to get at least a dozen Johnnies to make the trip. x –Rosemary Harty �{From the Bell Towers} 6 Keeping Good Books in Good Order perspective and bolster their connection to the book as a physical object. Last year, Rachel Bartgis (A09) worked with the library to introduce a series of book arts workshops. A few posters appeared and the word traveled. Given that all 40 seats were ﬁlled in six different workshops, it’s clear that Bartgis sparked an interest in book arts in more than a few students. Various workshops covered the basics of how to make a clothbound hardcover book with a kettle-stitched text block; the complete recasing of a book with more detailed ﬁnishing methods; ﬁne paper and book repair; and making leatherbound, long-stitch journals. Bartgis unintentionally and modestly points toward the breadth of the skills she shared by stating, “I’ve taught only the most basic techniques: replacing spines, mending torn pages, resewing a book, and recasing a worn-out volume.” Well-used volumes await repair at the Greenﬁeld Library Her rapport with the students fostered an effective, hands-on learning environment. Bartgis gained much of her bookbinding experience as a book and paper conservator at the Maryland State Archives. When asked what inspired her to offer workshops at St. John’s, she replied, “Johnnies andrea brewer A few days before St. John’s fall semester begins, many of us notice the copies of Don Quixote or War and Peace on the tables of downtown Annapolis coffee shops or apartment stoops. While this sight fosters a peculiar sense of community, seeing these great books held open with a heavy cup or a pack of cigarettes brings to mind the damage that Johnnies can inﬂict on their books. A few stray ashes drift into the crevices of War and Peace. The weight of the cup combined with the summer heat is quickly breaking Don Quixote’s spine. As a librarian, one challenge I face is the preservation of the materials under the library’s care. It’s a challenge that I love. Addressing the signs of a book’s steady deterioration often reminds me of the strong connection between Johnnies and their books. Recently St. John’s students have had the chance to share this particular andrea brewer by Michael Waller, Catalogue Librarian, Greenfield Library love their books, and a good book is worth keeping in good order.” Workshop participants achieved varying skill levels, but seemed to leave with an increased appreciation of the physical book and the craft itself. After attending one of the book repair workshops, Thea Chimento (A10) commented, “St. John’s can be so cerebral and ‘thinky’ sometimes–I was really glad that I had the chance to do something practical, with tangible results.” Fortunately for students interested in book arts, Bartgis is offering more workshops this year. She is currently working full time for the Maryland State Archives as a conservation technician and will continue to pass along her passion for book arts in evening sessions at the Greenﬁeld Library. x Rachel Bartgis (A09, right) demonstrates a bookbinding technique for Catherine Fields (A12) { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } �{From the Bell Towers} Planning to Make a Difference Jim and Jana Carey of Annapolis have ties to several educational institutions, among them, the university where Jim earned his medical degree and the law school where Jana earned her JD. Yet it was not a difﬁcult decision for them, when planning their estate, to make generous provisions for St. John’s. “Once we became involved with the college’s Executive Seminars and learned more about St. John’s and its academic program, we felt that St. John’s is every bit as important to our intellectual growth and stimulation, if not more so, than our alma maters have been,” says Jana Carey, a member of the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors. “Even more importantly,” Jim adds, “We became convinced that it is essential for the good of society and government to maintain an institution that provides the unique and challenging educational experience that St. John’s provides, and that produces graduates who are so well-armed to be responsible and creative members of our society.” The Careys also wanted to support an institution in their hometown where their gift could make a measurable difference. “Our gratitude for St. John’s led us to put the college at the top of our list for planned giving.” When they sat down to prepare their wills, Leslie JumpWalker (A84) and her husband, Ned, also thought about St. John’s. Although her husband is not an alumnus, “We both have a passion for the college,” she says, “and not just the institution, but the ideals St. John’s stands for. There’s this wonderful and audacious A Primer on Planned Giving Within the larger umbrella of planned giving, donors have a number of options from which to choose: A bequest in a will is the easiest and most straightforward way to include St. John’s. A bequest may include a speciﬁc amount of money, personal property, or share of an estate. It is also possible to make St. John’s the beneﬁciary of a life insurance policy or a retirement account. Gifts may be unrestricted, meaning that they are applied to the college’s greatest priorities, such as ﬁnancial aid. Donors may also choose to designate their bequest for a speciﬁc purpose that is especially meaningful to them, such as endowing a scholarship to honor a favorite tutor. With a bequest for an endowment, the college holds and invests the funds permanently, using only the income generated by a gift. Much of the college’s $128 million endowment is comprised of such gifts. A full account of planned giving possibilities is on the college website: www.stjohnscollege.edu, click on “Giving” and then on “Planned Giving.” For more information, contact Barbara Goyette (410-295-5554, barbara.goyette@sjca.edu) or Jim Osterholt (505-984-6109 or josterholt@sjcsf.edu). 7 goal of creating free men and women of children.” Jump-Walker, a partner in a venture capital ﬁrm supporting global entrepreneurship, is committed to annual giving, serves on the college’s board, and has been an active volunteer for many years. Yet she and her husband wanted to do more. “We like being a part of this dynamic Leslie Jump-Walker and her husband, Ned, community, and have included St. John’s in their estate in a small way, planning. being able to help out with it,” plans become members of the she explains. “So when it came Tocqueville Society. Retired to planning for the future, now from the University of we took a sizeable percentage of Maryland School of Law, our whole estate and allocated Tocqueville Society member the largest percentage of it to Alan Hornstein (AGI86) made St. John’s.” Gifts to St. John’s nurture and provisions for St. John’s because the college is important to him. sustain the college, and every He’s remained closely involved year St. John’s students beneﬁt with both St. John’s and Maryfrom the generosity of alumni, land, where he taught for parents, and friends who 32 years, served as associate included the college in their dean and acting dean and in a estate plans. In 2009-2010, number of other capacities. for example, these gifts added “I think it’s especially imporup to $3 million. tant for lawyers, legal scholars, “These gifts are really wonderful for so many reasons,” and law students, many of whom will be the leaders of our society, says Barbara Goyette (A73), to appreciate the Western Annapolis vice president for cultural tradition and to cultiAdvancement. “The thoughtful vate the wisdom that ‘the best recognition of the college is an that has been thought and afﬁrmation that St. John’s has inﬂuenced lives. Sometimes, the written’ can provide,” he says. Hornstein also notes that he estate gifts come as a complete decided “a gift to St. John’s is surprise because the donors likely to have a much greater have not informed the college. I regret it when we cannot thank impact than a similar gift to an institution with greater people in advance for their resources, where it would be generosity, but we understand just another drop in a very large that often estate planning is a bucket.” x private matter.” Those alumni and friends who tell the college about their { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } �8 {From the Bell Towers} The Nook in the Woods Perched on a rocky slope just behind the upper dorms on the Santa Fe campus is an elegant but sturdy new structure. Originally intended to be a greenhouse, now described as a “nook,” a sun shelter, and a work of art, this campus addition was built by members of the class of 2010—with their own hands—as their gift to the college. The project had its genesis three years ago, when the campus greenhouse was dismantled to build an access road for Levan Hall construction, explains Kenny DeLapp (SF10), one of the students intimately involved in the effort. The brick and adobe walls, plus sculptures that shared the site, were retained for future rebuilding. Preparation for a greenhouse on a new site had begun when students of a previous class started digging a foundation, using shovels and picks, not hydraulic hammers or backhoes. Then the effort languished until it was chosen by ballot as the class gift project. While the class of 2010 considered several options, “the greenhouse/senior shelter was something that we could actually see to the end, put our own work into, and know that it would be put to good use by future Johnnies,” says Stefanie Wessel (SF10). David Perrigo, the consulting architect on Levan Hall, who also designed and constructed the original greenhouse (pro bono), donated his time to the design of the new structure. Before proceeding, a group of students met with Perrigo to talk about design and budget. Students contributed $5,300 to the construction, mainly via donations of remaining funds from their caution accounts. Polity came up with $600 to pay for mate- rials while funds were being raised. One week after Spring Break 2010, work resumed in earnest. Buildings and Grounds staff trucked adobe blocks from the original greenhouse to a dropoff area between Meem Library and the lower dorms; then students used wheelbarrows to cart the blocks down the footpath. Stuccoing, employing the time-honored recipe of mud, straw, and water, was completed before summer. About a third of the senior class worked on the site, guided by a core group of students who had building experience. Mia Carbone completed much of the ﬂagstone work; Asa Gorman brought his masonry experience to the project; and DeLapp applied the knowledge that comes from being a part of a family of engineers. In early August, students tackled the ﬁnal phase. “We cut the mortise and tenon joints with chisels and a chainsaw, ﬁt and bolted the beams together, raised the frame, and cut and raised the vigas all within a week,” DeLapp says with a mixture of pride and amazement. During that same week, Simon Tajiri (SF10) organized the completion of the bricklaying. Tin panels were fastened over the vigas for the roof, and the low back and side adobe walls were topped with additional bricks to provide protection against wear and tear. Assisted by college staff, students brought diverse skills to the project. “Stef learned how to feed crowds from helping with meals on college rafting trips, and Kenny and I both had resources and skills we picked up in our lab jobs,” says Alysia Johnson (SF10). “B&G employees were key sources of information about New Mexican landscaping and places to ﬁnd sledgehammers. We used geometric aesthetics we picked up freshman year, combined with a design I saw used for aikido mats at the gym, to plan the bricks for the ﬂoor. The entire greenhouse was built in discussion with each other, in a truly Johnnie way.” Calling the structure a “greenhouse” is a misnomer, at least for now. After the project was chosen for the senior gift, the design was altered, in part because of cost, says DeLapp. An enclosed structure with specialized greenhouse glass would run about $10,000. “It became a shade structure,” Perrigo says. “You could even call it a sculpture.” Perrigo’s design—as implemented by the students—allows for glass to be added later. With its open side facing south toward Monte Sol and a roof pitched to provide maximum shade in summer and maximum sun in winter, the structure “now is an outdoor classroom area,” DeLapp says. “It’s a nook in the woods where you can go and read and hang out.” While he shared building skills, Perrigo says, students provided “the labor and imagination.” “It was fun,” adds Wessel. “Working with our hands, when we’d just spent four years in our heads, hanging out with people we’d gone through four years with, listening to music and cooking good food in the sun: what could be better?” x –Deborah Spiegelman The Santa Fe class of 2010 invested labor and love in the sun shelter they built on campus. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } �{From the Bell Towers} 9 Eyes on the Skies For nearly half a century, freshmen in Annapolis ﬁled into the McKeldin Planetarium to see how Ptolemy’s “motion of the same” and “motion of the other” play out in the night sky. The planetarium shows were projected onto the 24-foot diameter dome of the planetarium by a Spitz A-2, a mechanical projector that was state-of-the art when the planetarium opened in 1961. Anne Frazier (A10) has fond memories of Ptolemy and the planetarium. “I do remember that someone would have to hit the machine at times to get the sun to come back—it would just disappear.” Both elegant and imposing in form, the old projector was limited to providing a picture of the daily motion of the sky about the polar axis and the path of Sun, explains tutor James Beall, who oversees the planetarium and observatory in Annapolis. That’s why Beall was delighted that the Class of 2010 chose, as a parting gift to St. John’s, to underwrite a better solution for the planetarium. Beall had investigated the possibility of buying a digital projector, but the cost turned out to be prohibitive. After researching options, he realized that a home theater projector outﬁtted with a ﬁsh-eye lens— combined with free software— could provide high-resolution images equal in clarity to that of the mechanical projector. The senior class donated enough from their caution fees to cover the purchase, installation and assembly of the projector, the lenses and some auxiliary equipment. Gillian Brockett (A07) and Ian McCracken (A04) donated a laptop computer to the project. Alison Whaley (A12), who worked as Beall’s assistant last summer, helped install and adjust the system. Anna Flies and Chelsea Adams (both A12) helped program the software that runs the digital planetarium program. The new projector and software go beyond freshman year to give tutors the opportunity to illustrate concepts studied throughout the undergraduate Program—one of the best selling points of the Linking College and Community On the ﬁrst day of September, there was a hint of fall in the air in Santa Fe–and the unmistakable aroma of fresh popcorn and cookies. Students devoured the treats, examined materials, pocketed freebies, and learned about the services and opportunities available in the greater Santa Fe community, the central focus of the ﬁrst St. John’s College Community Day. Representatives from 17 arts and service organizations and businesses turned out for this event. “It’s about introducing communities to each other, ” says Susan Berk of the Diva Group, who spearheaded the event. Karen Ralston, from the Center for Contemporary Arts (CCA), described the event as “a fabulous two-way street.” Students contribute to the Santa Fe community by volunteering, and nonproﬁt organizations such as CCA provide internships. In fact, volunteering and internships were prominent themes for the day, as organizations including the local public radio station and Habitat for Humanity set up tables to attract potential recruits and supporters. At KSFR, the public station which supports the college’s Music on the HillTM summer concert series, students can answer the phones during fundraising drives or contribute as journalists to the the station’s newscasts, says Linda Highhill. Johnnies seeking to get outdoors and work with their hands had the chance to talk with Habitat for Humanity representatives. A computer and home theater projector have replaced the old projector in McKeldin Planetarium; showing off the new equipment are (l. to r.) Amanda Lu (A12), tutor Jim Beall, Anna Flies (A12), and Noah Litvin (A12). gift for seniors, Frazier noted. Sophomores studying Ptolemy in the ﬁrst semester will be able to see the motions of Venus and Mercury with respect to the Sun, motions which Ptolemy illustrates in the Almagest. The projector can also show the independent motion of the moons of Jupiter, which Newton in his Principia describes as being like a miniature solar system. The relation of Jupiter’s moons is an example of Newton’s inverse square law. “We can show the junior mathematics tutorial what Newton meant, and it doesn’t take weeks or months as it would in the observatory,” Beall says. The projector will even be useful for senior math, as it can show how the appearance of the stars is changed near the velocity of light. The mechanical projector will eventually be housed in a display case in Mellon Hall, along with other beautiful instruments from past decades. x “We make it easy to volunteer,” explains Nancy Phillips, development director. Students can sign up online to work on a project locally, and during the spring, Habitat participates in the national organization’s Collegiate Challenge, which draws volunteers from around the country for an alternative-break program. Inducements to students included ticket giveaways (courtesy of the Lensic Perfoming Arts Center) and coupons from local stores. Representatives from the banks and local newspaper touted their services; artistic and entertainment venues speciﬁcally for young people (Site Santa Fe and Warehouse 21) were on hand; and the Santa Fe Council on International Relations invited students to join them for dialogue and activities. Whether attracted by giveaways or community-service work, students steadily stopped by tables and talked with the participants’ representatives. At the same time, Berk observes, these organizations and businesses made connections that she hoped would lead to expanded relationships with the college. Participants attended a luncheon and then toured the campus before the event began. “St. John’s hospitality is incredible,” Berk adds. Santa Fe President Michael Peters was delighted by the turnout. “It is evidence of everyone’s interest in making connections.” x { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } —Deborah Spiegelman �10 {From the Bell Towers} News and Announcements Questions and Paradoxes For 10 years, St. John’s sent the same “viewbook”—marketing lingo for the key admissions publication—to prospective students. The award-winning booklet, distinguished by its plain brown cover, classic type style, and black-and-white photography, served the college well, says Annapolis Admissions Director John Christensen. Yet it was decided last fall that a different presentation is needed for today’s college-bound teenagers. Focusing on “paradoxes” and “questions,” the new viewbook describes how questions are at the heart of the Program and explores the college’s apparent contradictions. For example: “St. John’s students have little freedom to choose their classes, but nearly unlimited freedom to pursue their questions and ideas.” Vibrant color photography of each campus makes up half the book; the other half provides a comprehensive overview of the Program and reading list, student life on each campus, and proﬁles of students, tutors, and alumni. North Charles Street Design Organization interviewed dozens of people in the college community, and sat in on classes before creating the viewbook and other publications sent to students and their parents. A collegewide committee comprising faculty and staff guided the process. Tutor Judy Seeger, who served on the committee, had some initial concerns about how well an admissions marketing ﬁrm could capture the distinctive nature of the college. In the end, Seeger says, “They did a remarkable job seeing and saying who we are.” To see the new publications, visit stjohnscollege.edu/admissions/publications.shtml. Mellon Grant Supports Laboratory Review A $250,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation is supporting a comprehensive review of freshmen and senior laboratory, with the goal of having new experiments and manuals in place by the fall of 2012. The foundation, whose mission is to strengthen and sustain institutions and their core capacities, awarded the college the grant last March. The laboratory review comes in response to concern that the latter half of the senior year doesn’t raise as many thoughtprovoking questions as the ﬁrst-semester readings on the foundations of quantum mechanics. The goal of the project is to shift the focus of the curriculum from a “modern synthesis” view to the emerging view of evolutionary developmental biology. Last summer, ﬁve faculty members familiarized themselves with ﬁelds of biology that might be pertinent to the second semester of the senior laboratory. This coming spring, three faculty members will devote time to working on A new college viewbook presents the paradoxes of the Program. the curriculum, and in the summer, a faculty member will ﬁnalize a report with recommendations. The project will lead to the creation of new lab manuals and experiments for both the freshmen and senior years. Johnnie Wins Fellowship to Visit Saudia Arabia Thanks to a cultural immersion fellowship from the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations, GALEN MANCINO (SF12) went to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, last June on a trip designed to foster stronger Arab-U.S. understanding. With eight other students from across the nation, Mancino, of Silver Spring, Md., spent 10 days touring the nation. The visit included meetings with Saudi Arabian educators, businessmen, and civil society leaders in addition to American diplomats and visits to sites of historical and cultural interest. x A New Career Services Director in Annapolis Jaime Dunn, the new director of Career Services in Annapolis, believes in the value of building relationships. Even in this age of online applications and social media networking, making a personal contact can open doors. “Now more Career Services Director than ever, networking is so Jaime Dunn important. You can spend hours applying for jobs, but unless you are making human contact and having informational interviews, you won’t make the connections that may help you in your career,” says Dunn. For Dunn, an informational lunch meeting led to an internship in judicial affairs at Ohio State University, where she earned a doctorate in higher education administration. At Ohio State, Dunn also gained valuable research experience by volunteering in the Financial Aid and First Year Experience ofﬁces for special projects. Prior to joining St. John’s, Dunn worked as a program assistant at the College of William & Mary’s Washington, D.C., ofﬁce. She managed programs for alumni relations, students, and young alumni career and graduate school advising. In her new role in Annapolis, she advises both current students and alumni on career searches, and she’s optimistic about opportunities in spite of the dismal job market. “Liberal arts continue to be valued by employers,” says Dunn. “Oral and written communications skills are huge: the ability to read, write, and analyze. How you represent yourself is so important.” Dunn plans to offer more networking events that connect alumni with current students who want to learn about career options, graduate school, and where the jobs are. “St. John’s alumni are a close-knit community and undergraduates need to use these resources and the mentoring they offer,” says Dunn. x { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } —By Patricia Dempsey �{From the Bell Towers} Great Texts I read “Kant on a Kindle” (Spring 2010) with great interest. Ever since e-readers appeared (I bought a RocketBook in 1999), I have thought how marvelous it would be to have the entire Program reading list in one place—a 0.5 inch-, not a 5-foot-shelf. As Mr. Dink notes, the presence of line numbers is important to the classroom viability of electronic versions of the texts, and more important still is the availability of good translations. A quick check of Amazon.com returns downloadable translations of Fagles and Fitzgerald for Homer, Ciardi for Dante, Lombardo for Virgil, and more. The prices seem competitive with the paper editions, and may in some cases be lower. Accessing electronic versions of the texts may in fact have many advantages, as students could have a better feel for the way the text was originally presented to its audience. The digitization projects of academic libraries mean anyone can read, from page images, early editions of the Program’s English language texts—Shakespeare, Milton, Hobbes, Austen, etc. We bring different editions of the same reading to the seminar table. Beyond discussions of translation, I do not recall any discussion of publishing history, typography, binding, or bibliography—descriptive, textual or analytical. And from a “hardware” standpoint, a student who brings a folio edition of the Bible to the seminar table could be as potentially distracting as one with an iPad. . . . I recently found the copy of Paradise Lost that I read for my 1985 junior essay. This paperback edition—awful paper, lousy printing, undecipherable notes (one of the very few times I ever wrote in the margins)—argues better than I can for the poem as a great text, not a great book. (I also have it on my iPad, Kindle, and in a six-volume complete works of Milton, bound in black morocco leather and published in London, 1801.) A new discussion of what we mean when we say “great book” seems due. Melissa S. Mead (A86) Back on the Shelf Regarding the “What Makes A Novel Great?” poll (Spring 2010): Isn’t the moral clear? Put Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter and Woolf’s To the Lighthouse back on the shelf, and replace them in class with that sublime greatest book, Melville’s MobyDick, and/or Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. I vote for biblical Steinbeck far and away over prolix, pumped-up Billy Faulkner. But hey, who’s to say whose proper words in proper places is totally best? John Dean (A70) Dancing Ideas I have always felt bad about not being more interested in The College and would always sort through it, but rarely read more than the captions and/or a few paragraphs of any article. I was riveted by the Spring 2010 edition. I knew immediately the editor was a woman. The articles were interesting on many different levels. The relationships between people were brought out. The publication stepped out of black and white and dullness into color and vivid, almost dancing ideas. Thank you for renewing my interest in my alma mater by your insightful topics and breadth of subject matter. I cannot wait for the next edition. I can only hope that you will be behind many more. Janet Farr (SF76) “St. John’s Forever” With all due respect to [tutor] Tom May (“We are the Danaans to your Troy,” Spring 2010), I couldn’t disagree more with him about his proposal for a new hymn in place of St. John’s Forever (ofﬁcially “St. John’s College March”). The reasons are many. First, at the most basic level, “St. John’s Forever” has a different melody than the Navy Hymn, which is very helpful in distinguishing it from the latter song when the listeners are not close enough to hear the words. Mr. May’s proposal is the musical equivalent of having the St. John’s team dress in Yachting Dress Baker, but substituting the seal of the New Program in place of that of the Naval Academy on the sweater— you’d have to get really close to tell the difference. In addition, as Annapolitans unfortunate enough to have lived on Prince George Street when I lived off campus in 1983 and 1984 can attest, far from being a Franz Liszt reject “St. John’s Forever” is a simple tune that is very singable either before, during or after a few too many beers. Far from being dated, “St. John’s Forever” expresses classic sentiments about St. John’s college—both campuses. Mr. May’s doggerel, on the other hand, is croquetfocused and more about the Naval Academy than about St. John’s. Also, contrary to Mr. May’s assertion, there is no mention of “Men of St. John’s” in the song. It is instead a uniting song—bringing Johnnies together in support of their alma mater. Since “St. John’s Forever” was written during the period when the college was a military academy, it does mention “son” and “brothers,” but it can be easily brought into this century. The third line can be modiﬁed to “Her loyal children pledge her their hearts and hands,” and “siblings” can be substituted for “brothers” in the fourth line for suitable gender-neutrality.... { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } 11 And ﬁnally, while the words are by a Johnnie—R. Graham Moss (class of 1911)—the music is by the then assistant leader of the USNA band, Adolph Torovsky. The song, like the croquet match, is something that the schools have created together. So please, rather than relegating “St. John’s Forever” to the title of the end photo of The College, teach it to the students. That way my reactionary old classmates and I won’t have to celebrate the school in song by ourselves. St. John’s Forever; her fame can never die Fight for her colors, we’ll raise them to the sky Each loyal son pledges his heart and hand For her united we as brothers stand Adrian Trevisan (A84) Editor’s note: Mr. May has not proposed replacing “St. John’s Forever” as the ofﬁcial St. John’s song; rather, he chose to introduce an alternative to be sung at croquet. The College welcomes your letters. Those under 500 words have a better chance of being printed in full; letters may be edited for length/and or clarity. Please address letters to: The College Magazine, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404, or e-mail rosemary.harty@sjca.edu. �{Commencement} 12 PARTING WORDS The Way of St. John’s A world-renowned vintner and the executive director of a literary and human rights organization had parting words for graduates in Annapolis and Santa Fe last May, with each commenting on the ways in which the Program has readied students for their next adventures in life. In Annapolis on May 16, 99 seniors and 26 Graduate Institute students joined the ranks of alumni; on May 22 in Santa Fe, 89 seniors and 20 GIs received their diplomas. Warren Winiarski (class of 1952), founder of Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars and a longtime member of the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors, shared how the classics shaped his view of the world, and ultimately, his business. Winiarski was a graduate student and lecturer at the University of Chicago when he packed up his young family and moved to California to pursue winemaking. He won lasting fame when in the Paris Tasting of 1976 Stag’s Leap wine triumphed over France’s best—bringing international attention to the quality of California wines. In describing his journey, Winiarski rooted his quest to make a truly excellent wine in some of the lessons he took away from the college: “So what was it like learning the skills of a body and soul to become a wine maker and a grape grower? It was, in many ways, of the ‘way’ of the St. John’s curriculum—by means of books and balances, getting down to the bottom of each step in a complex sequence of things that can be described by means of some of the methods you all have used in your curriculum inquiries: ‘what is it,’ ‘how is it,’ ‘where,’ ‘how much or little,’ and similar modes of pinning things down.” gary pierpoint by Rosemary Harty (AGI09) Warren Winiarski (class of 1952) told graduates how St. John’s led him to success as a vintner. The commencement speaker in Santa Fe was Steven L. Isenberg, executive director of the PEN American Center, the largest chapter of International PEN, the world’s oldest international literary and human rights organization. A former professor and media executive, Isenberg commended the graduates for choosing an education that will serve them for a lifetime: “You have made your way through unfamiliar subjects, overcoming unease through careful reading, listening and absorbing, then fashioning understandings in your writing until you felt conﬁdence and skill growing in you, making you ready for the next adventure,” Isenberg said. “Your experience here has given you skills and sensibilities which, as they might have said in New Mexico in the long ago, will be in your saddle bags forever. That cast of mind, a readiness to learn and an alert curiosity ever alive, needs constant care throughout your life.” Both speeches can be found on the college’s website: www.stjohnscollege.edu x PEN American Center Executive Director Steven Isenberg advised Santa Fe graduates to keep their curiosity alive. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } �{Commencement} Clockwise from top: Annapolis tutor Henry Higuera with 2010 Annapolis graduate Christopher Hearse and Hearse’s girlfriend Pallas Snider and mother Susan Hearse; Josiah Stephens awaits the process; Eleanor Peters was among the commencement guests; Santa Fe graduates; Santa Fe president Michael Peters; and Annapolis graduates Macall Moran, Ben Hutchins, Michael Mowery, Paul Morrill, Everett Roberts, and Miranda Helck. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } 13 �{Liberty} 14 IN DEFENSE OF LIBERT Y Johnnies Serve in War and Peace by Patricia Dempsey “War isn’t courtesy, it’s the vilest thing in the world, and we must understand that and not play at war. We must take this terrible necessity sternly and seriously. That’s the whole point: to cast out the lie, and if it’s war it’s war, and not a game.” F Tolstoy, War and Peace rom the battles of Troy to Prince Andrei’s sleepless night on the eve of his last battle, many of the works read at St. John’s speak of war. These books deal with honor and courage, and with fear and death. They show the terrible losses, as when Patroclus rides off in Achilles’ armor to his brutal death, and the victories, as when Kutuzov weeps and thanks God that “Russia is saved.” Generations of Johnnies have left their books to go to war, beginning in the Civil War, when students left to ﬁght and the campus in Annapolis became a parole camp, then a hospital. Military training was compulsory at the college for a good part of its history. The Alumni Memorial Table on the front campus, next to a replica of the Liberty Bell, honors the 24 alumni who lost their lives during World War I; 452 fought in that war. Again in World War II, many Johnnies left their studies for war, and older veterans returned to take up the great books. Johnnies who have served in the military in both war and peacetime share their stories. One alumnus talks of his struggles with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder; another speaks to her work trying to help soldiers recover from the trauma of war. Whatever drew them to military service, their goal was to serve with honor—and stay alive. Aaron Bisberg, class of 1944, experienced sleepless nights while serving in the Paciﬁc with the U.S. Army Air Force. He kept a diary, and wrote of missing his home, spending long, hot days working and waiting, and taking cover during bombing raids. His diary recounts fear and terror. “Those few seconds hearing the bomb—the cold afterward. It’s not like ﬁghting—it isn’t ﬁghting—it’s only praying.” Bisberg’s story is not that different from the account of a military intelligence ofﬁcer, a captain, who brought home images from his tour of duty in Iraq that will stay with him forever. In his reﬂections about his experience, he quotes Thucydides: “And when people are entering upon a war they do things the wrong way around. Action comes ﬁrst, and it is only when they have already suffered that they begin to think.” { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } �{Liberty} “Those few seconds hearing the bomb—the cold afterward. It’s not like ﬁghting—it isn’t ﬁghting—it’s only praying.” --Aaron Bisberg, class of 1944. Ethan Brooks (A10) began his service with the Marines right after his graduation in May. “This was a different kind of war; you were surrounded by the tension of potential conﬂict, the zinging bullets of ambush raids.” -- David Nau (A81) { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } 15 �16 {Liberty} One Day at a Time Aaron Bisberg (class of 1944) Aaron Bisberg (class of 1944) volunteered to serve in the U.S. Army Air Force during World War II. On June 21, 1943, he embarked as a sergeant on the USS Mount Vernon; he worked as an airplane mechanic for the Paciﬁc Fighter Fleet (5th Air Force) island hopping on a variety of vessels for two and a half years. Bisberg kept a journal that chronicled military life in Australia, New Guinea, the Philippines, and Japan. These excerpts capture the realities of life at war: Japs may make a last desperate effort to stop us by sending a couple of thousand planes against the Okinawa base. . . . What if I should wake up tomorrow and ﬁnd that the war is ended?” August 11, 1945 “It was 10:10 p.m. I was tossing in bed, just about asleep. The boat speaker sputtered and I heard, ‘Wake up, boys, wake up and hear the good news.’ I said to myself, this must be it. It was. Japan accepts. . . . The skipper allowed no more news out—the war for us was still on.” November 3, 1945 “Set foot on American soil at 5:30 p.m.” September 10, 1944 Japan “[A]t 0330 hours on Saturday we had a ten-plane raid and were it not for the fact that I was scared stiff, I might have enjoyed the show. When the alert came, we headed for the ditch. . . . [T]he hum of airplane engines reached our ears . . . . The guns opened up. Jones said, ‘Now listen for the bombs.’ Their hum lasted maybe ﬁve seconds. How I sweat. Down, down, awfully close and using a big ditch instead of a decent foxhole. They hit down the road and we were safe. . . . After that run I became cold—so cold I was shivering and couldn’t control it. . . . Again an airplane. . . . He was ﬂying high—about 20,000 feet, I guessed—but with all the lights on him, he radiated. He was over our ditch, every gun ﬁring at him. . . . All we could do is curse the lousy shooting and curse the strategists for not sending up night ﬁghters. . . . Unreasonable thoughts, but being cold on a hot equatorial island is unreasonable, too. . . . Everyone has the same thought, ‘He’s aiming for me.’ ” August 10, 1945 Off coast of Japan “Last two days have been ﬁlled with thoughts of quick end to the war and living until it does end. Okinawa is hot and we know it. Jap suicides are working over it continuously. We have to pull in, beach and unload; a long job during which we’re always open to ﬁre. There is a list of 80 names that are to stay at the boat and unload. . . . One of the 80 names is Bisberg. Rumors have it that we are going to . . . a little island off the northwest coast called Ie Jima. . . . The Bisberg returned home to Mount Vernon, New York. Today he lives in Florida and attends a monthly St. John’s seminar in Miami. During his retirement from “many careers,” Bisberg lived for eight years on a 40-foot diesel cruiser, piloting it from Connecticut to Florida and then to the Bahamas. Submerged Hunter Dana Netherton (A72) “Left full rudder. Steady on course three one ﬁve.” As the ofﬁcer on deck of a nuclear-powered submarine in the 1970s, Dana Netherton (A72) gave rudder orders and compass bearings to the helmsman, in search of a Soviet sub deep in the Mediterranean. It sounds like a scene out of Tom Clancy’s novel, Hunt for Red October, in which American and Soviet submarine captains engage in a pulse-pounding, cat-and-mouse pursuit. A self-described “Red-October-era sub ofﬁcer,” Netherton points out the novel’s few inaccuracies. One “dramatic effect”—the explosion of the Soviet sub’s nuclear reactor “like an atomic bomb,” says Netherton, “wouldn’t happen. A nuclear reactor is a heat source, not an explosive; it doesn’t just explode any more than a log burning in a ﬁreplace would behave like a ﬁrecracker.” Netherton served as an ofﬁcer on two nuclear-powered submarines, USS Nathan Hale and USS Lapon. Now decommissioned, they had cutting-edge missle-aiming technologies in their day. The Nathan Hale had Poseidon { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } �{Liberty} 17 At the Submarine Training Center at Naval Base Charleston, S.C., in 1977, ofﬁcers of the USS Nathan Hale’s Gold Crew wear gold dolphin insignia to celebrate their qualification in submarines. Dana Netherton (A72), 26, stands second from the right in the back row. missiles that could strike stationary Cold War targets 4,000 miles away. Both subs used evolving “sound” technology, such as passive sonar—accurately portrayed in Hunt for Red October—to track submerged submarines. Sophisticated electronics detected the quiet tones emitted by Soviet nuclear submarines. “If you are close enough,” says Netherton, “you can hear the distinctive sound of the drain pump, bilge, and propeller of a Soviet-class sub, but the trick is to detect them far away.” Nuclear engineering was far from Netherton’s mind in 1969, the height of the Vietnam-era draft, when as a sophomore in Santa Fe, he learned of his draft number—27. “You checked the newspaper daily to see if your number had been chosen,” he recalls. During the fall of his junior year in Annapolis, where he had transferred, Netherton toured a diesel boat at the Naval Academy. He was intrigued. “The Air Force didn’t want someone with glasses and I’m not athletic enough to be a Marine. Army draftees don’t get commissions as ofﬁcers,” he says. “I didn’t want to drop in a rice paddy with a riﬂe.” After Navy ofﬁcer candidate school in Newport, R.I. and intense nuclear-sub training, Netherton deployed on the Nathan Hale at 23. His mission, perhaps less publicized than the Vietnam War, was to prevent global thermo-nuclear war: “We searched for Soviet subs that might threaten American carrier ships in the event the Cold War became a hot one.” Netherton volunteered and was accepted without an engineering degree, he says, because the Navy “was desperate for young ofﬁcers to man the nuclearpowered surface ships as well as the submarines they were building.” He shed St. John’s inquiry method to focus on quantitative answers to questions. There was no margin for error on a sub. “You had to be in the right frame of mind on board. You had to have a ﬁrm grasp of the sub’s engineering and design—and respect for the limits it placed on us,” he says. Given the potential radioactive hazards, “nuclear engineering is not something you can fudge or have a gut feel for.” These potential hazards added to already stressful conditions: the claustrophobia of 120 men crammed in close quarters and the disorienting lack of natural light, which jostled the men’s circadian rhythms and made many feel groggy. “We weren’t impaired, but were not as mentally ﬂexible as if rested,” says Netherton. To this day, as a suburban dad and retired Navy Reservist in his hometown of St. Louis, Netherton carries a small ﬂashlight. “There is nothing like the darkness in a submerged submarine.” Deep in the Mediterranean on the USS Lapon, searching for Soviet subs during the summer of 1978, Netherton was conﬁdent in its sophisticated missle-aiming technologies. Yet moving enemy targets could be difﬁcult to ﬁnd, even with the advances in passive sonar and cryptology. “Tucked away in the radio compartment, cryptologic technicians had hushed talks with the captain,” says Netherton. They were probably decoding Soviet-radio naval trafﬁc, he says, but such intelligence wasn’t widely shared. “In the Med we heard a Soviet nuclear-powered submarine,” says Netherton. Among many maneuvers the Lapon was steering wide S-curves or ﬁgure-eights, with technicians watching how the bearings or directions to the contact changed in sets of patterns. “If you could hold the contact { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } �{Liberty} 18 “There is a real sense of common purpose in the Marines.” David Nau (A81) on sonar long enough, you would ﬁgure out how far away it was, and roughly how fast it was going and in what direction,” he says. Yet they could never “get a real sniff.” Much like the clever Soviet captain in The Hunt for Red October, the Soviet sub in the Med proved elusive. “We heard it,” says Netherton. “But we never found it.” K eeping the Peace David Nau (A81) On a remote mountaintop in South Korea, David Nau (A81) discovered something that he would carry with him for the rest of his life. As a Marine Corps ofﬁcer with a battalion based out of Okinawa, Nau spent two winters in South Korea, where his regiment supplied artillery support for tanks, helicopters, and hundreds of infantry that were “keeping the peace” between the country’s divided north and south. Amid dangers of ambush, Nau and his forward observation team of two Marines routinely marched several miles from base camp—a desert area rimmed by mountains—to a mountaintop observation point to bury their trash. “A few food rations no one could stand to eat got buried along with the trash,” he says. On one such trek, the Marines discovered that starving villagers were digging up their trash pit: “They had taken the wrappers, the half-eaten tin of peanut butter, even the tiniest bit of powder in a hot chocolate packet.” On their return march, Nau and his team stopped at the ﬁrst hut they saw to donate their unused food. “The woman at the door spoke no English, her children hid behind her skirt, and she was crying in joy. Our trash was her treasure,” says Nau. Back home, he notes, “there were ﬁstﬁghts over Cabbage Patch dolls. Here we were in South Korea, feeding the human spirit. I never lost that sense of perspective. I knew I had to carry that home with me.” In the left breast pocket of his camouﬂage shirt, Nau also carried a well-thumbed copy of the New Testament. Some soldiers become cynical, but Nau deepened his spiritual convictions and discovered an “esprit de corps,” he says, that “I’ve never experienced anywhere else. There is a real sense of common purpose in the Marines. Our conversations were often about virtue and honor.” Coming from a family of career military ofﬁcers, Nau volunteered to be a Marine when he was a sophomore at St. John’s: “I read about honor and thought about enlisting. It was something challenging I could do.” At commencement, he was formally commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps; after he received his diploma, Nau took off his cap and gown and stepped back onstage in uniform. That summer he headed to ofﬁcer candidate school in Quantico, Virginia. It was 1979; the Vietnam War had ended in 1975, when “people were spitting on soldiers who served overseas. It was not a popular time to join the military,” says Nau. Nau believed in his Cold War mission: “In different ways around the world, Americans had a presence; just having a presence can prevent invasion and attack.” Nau and his fellow artillery Marines were in South Korea in the mid1980s through a “loophole” in the 1953 truce that ended the war between North and South Korea. Although the truce forbade permanent Marine presence, the Marines “visited” South Korea on temporary rotations from October to March for many years. If North Koreans were to invade, they would probably choose the less rainy winter, without “boggy rice paddies that make it difﬁcult to move armor and trucks,” says Nau. On his ﬁrst rotation in South Korea, Nau was attached to an infantry company as a forward observer, who “calls for military indirect or artillery ﬁre; in this case the shooter cannot see the target,” says Nau. With his battalion, he marched for miles through dangerous countryside. With his two-man team, he found observation points on remote mountaintops. “Before leaving base camp, we had to check with Korean intelligence,” says Nau. “This was a different kind of war; you were surrounded David Nau (A81) carried this New Testament with him. From his favorite passage, Hebrews 13: 5-6: “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?” { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } �{Liberty} 19 David Nau (A81) and his forward operations team in South Korea. by the tension of potential conﬂict, the zinging bullets of ambush raids.” There were also civilian spies. The South Koreans and their allies discovered long tunnels dug from North Korea under the demilitarized zone along the 38th parallel, the 1950s battle line. “The North Korean people look and dress the same, speak the same language—so it was very easy for them to inﬁltrate,” explains Nau. Several years after his overseas service, Nau was promoted to captain in the Reserves. He taught at The Basic School in Quantico before attending Lutheran Theological Seminary in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Now an administrator at St. John’s United Church of Christ in Catonsville, Md., Nau ﬁnds that his work is not that different from the Marines. “We have a common purpose. You do whatever has to be done.” He still has his pocket-size New Testament, with pages “crinkly from dampness, but quite readable.” “War is getting harder all the time. We engage in total warfare that includes civilians,” with youths “who blow up themselves and others,” says Nau. “We are asking our young soldiers to give up part of themselves.” Learning How to Be a Soldier Robert Morris (SF04) Wading thigh-high in the murky swamps of south Florida, Robert Morris (SF04), then an infantry ofﬁcer candidate in the Army’s Ranger School, faced facts: “At St. John’s, I learned why to be soldier, but not how.” After ﬁve months of training, which should have taken only 63 days, Morris was kicked out of Ranger School. Ironically, Morris’s failure was due to his strength—thoughtful decision making. “I knew how to lead, but I believed in consulting subordinates for consensus,” says Morris. “In real war, there is a danger in not listening to your men; they will stop telling you what they think. But in Ranger School, my thoughtful consideration was misinterpreted as indecisiveness.” The brigade commander tapped Morris for a different kind of leadership in high-tech surveillance warfare. From 2006 to 2007, he led a technical-intelligence platoon of 20 soldiers in Afghanistan, introducing unmanned aircraft technology to determine enemy positions in hostile territories. “The cameras on the aircraft provided day-and-night video, these images were sent to laptops and televisions in our camps,” says Morris. “It was safer and cushier than being in the infantry, but we had a big impact on the war effort.” He’s proud of his platoon’s “ﬁnds”: Near the Pakistani border, “we found a company of about 100 enemy soldiers carrying weapons, not wearing uniforms.” Another discovery saved children’s lives: “We saw trucks gathering at a home,” he says. Later “it was clear there were about a dozen children and at least one woman there. We reversed the battalion’s decision to take action against the house.” Morris and his platoon deployed to small cities like Ghazni and Khost, valleys rimmed by mountains 6,000 to 20,000 feet high, and farmland along the trade route from Kabul through the Khyber Pass. Among many targets for collecting data was the remote Korangal Valley, dubbed “the deadliest place on earth” by a soldier in the documentary Restrepo. Amid rugged terrain and extremes of heat, wind-driven dust, and snow, they searched for enemy encampments, reconnaissance, and hidden guerilla targets. Since the Taliban and their allies usually do not use aircraft, { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } �20 {Liberty} “This cigar is the last nicotine I ever consumed,” says Robert Morris (SF04) (far right), celebrating “our ﬁrst big success after a month of high-tempo operations in Afghanistan.” mission. But Morris “discovered that war doesn’t get me any closer to deﬁning virtue.” Healing War’s Hidden Wounds Rachel Sullivan (A02) the Americans had a technical advantage, but “we were on their terrain,” says Morris. “This was guerrilla warfare.” The enemy offered useful intelligence when they drove civilian “jingle trucks” with metallic fringe. “We could see their trucks’ positions. The locals are very skillful drivers, so if the road was impassable to them, it would be blocked to us,” explains Morris. Truck-spotting also enabled him to keep a National Guard battalion from getting stuck “in a snowy, miserable, and dangerous position.” Although he did not engage in direct combat, Morris watched his fellow soldiers nearby, a gut-wrenching experience that has made him pragmatic in his view of warfare. “I was as close to the action as you could be without being in it,” he says. “I felt sorry for the guys being heroes, but I’m glad I didn’t have the opportunity to be one.” Heroes should not be glamorized, Morris believes. Their actions may be “noble” and “necessary,” but “sometimes those actions border on irresponsibility. I’d rather say, ‘How can we avoid getting in those situations in the ﬁrst place?’” Today Morris is an unmanned systems consultant for Deloitte Touche in Washington, D.C. Afghanistan “changed how I see things,” he says. “War is not the noblest endeavor. War can be engaging, challenging, even compelling.” Morris recalls thinking about the Meno and Plato in Afghanistan. “I remembered the virtues of a man which guided me in choosing the right soldiers for a In the bustling cafeteria at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C., civilians and soldiers—many of whom are missing limbs— line up for coffee-shop fare beneath banners that celebrate “Our Wounded Warriors.” According to Dr. Rachel Sullivan (A02), who is in the third year of her psychiatric residency at Walter Reed, few amputees cover up their prosthetic limbs. These soldiers are proud of their badges of courage. “There’s a bigger support network because their injuries are obvious,” says Sullivan. “Patients who are here for psychological reasons have it a bit rougher. There is shame involved because they deal with questions: ‘Why are you here? You don’t look like you’re wounded.’ The Army is doing the best it can to dispel that stigma, but it’s a huge part of the culture.” Sullivan joined the U.S. Army in 2004 to defray the expense of her medical education and to take advantage of the resources at Walter Reed, a teaching hospital that serves active-duty military. All hospitalized soldiers automatically receive the psychiatric consultation services that Sullivan and her colleagues provide. She treats hidden, psychological wounds of war that often fall under the diagnostic umbrella of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Patients with signiﬁcant physical injuries are not more or less likely to experience PTSD; they “can have the same range of difﬁculties as anyone else: irritability, trouble sleeping, depression, anxiety,” says Sullivan. PTSD does { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } �{Liberty} patricia dempsey not discriminate; it affects soldiers of all ranks, genders, ages, injuries, and wars. Women have more sexualassault-related PTSD, but Sullivan’s mostly male patients reﬂect the army’s male majority. “It’s not where a soldier has an experience—Iraq or Afghanistan—but rather what is the experience,” says Sullivan. She lists wartime horrors: “seeing dead bodies, picking up body parts, seeing children killed, seeing civilians killed, having to kill someone yourself, watching a friend die, and the chronic sense of danger.” As such experiences add up, for some soldiers the risk of developing PTSD increases. Sullivan describes the trauma of one of her PTSD patients, an infantry soldier who guarded a military checkpoint in Iraq. A car kept coming, ignoring all the signs and shouted warnings to stop. “The soldier ﬁnally did what he had to do, which was shoot. When he discovered it was a mom, two little kids, and a dad, he couldn’t forgive himself. His mind kept getting stuck on that experience,” says Sullivan. “At one point, he couldn’t walk from one building at Walter Reed to another without wondering if there was a sniper on the roof.” While each soldier’s struggle with PTSD is unique, common symptoms range from extreme anxiety to detachment. Many PTSD patients have trouble driving, she explains, due to “visual memories” of driving when a nearby vehicle blew up. “It gets worse and worse if it’s not 21 addressed.” Other patients seem detached, says Sullivan, “just going through the motions. Spouses will say, ‘He doesn’t seem to be part of the family anymore.’” Because the most effective PTSD treatments take place in the ﬁeld immediately after a traumatic event, Sullivan plans to deploy to Afghanistan in 2012 or 2013, after completing her residency. She and her husband, Michael Sullivan (A02), a professor of philosophy at George Washington University, will juggle the raising of their two girls, ages 4 and 6. “We’re not sure why,” says Sullivan, “but the further removed you are in time and space from the event, the bigger it grows in your mind. It takes on this nightmarish proportion. I can prevent a lot of stress if I’m there to treat soldiers before PTSD takes hold.” For soldiers at Walter Reed, medication and traditional therapy combined with holistic therapies, from biofeedback to canine companionship, offer healing and hope. “We have this idea in Western medicine of the mind and body being separate,” says Sullivan. But because PTSD creates chemical and physical changes, she treats it “by making the body do what it would in a relaxed state,” she explains. “Breathing is a great example. You breathe very differently when you’re anxious compared to when you’re relaxed.” When Sullivan helps a patient to breathe as if he were relaxed, he physically changes to a relaxed state. “Then the patient can take control of this process” of progressing to a normal state. Such therapies reﬂect the army’s commitment to healing the wounded—and show that the stigma of psychological wounds is slowly diminishing. In the past, a ﬁrst sergeant in charge might have viewed PTSD as a sign of weakness. “Because of the length of this war,” observes Sullivan, “a lot of ﬁrst sergeants have PTSD.” Several of her patients didn’t think they needed help she explains until their ﬁrst sergeants pulled them aside to say, “You look like I did three years ago. You need to get mental health.” After several months of intensive therapy at Walter Reed, some are ready to return overseas At Walter Reed Army Hospital, Rachel Sullivan (A02) listens to soldiers talk about their experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } �22 {Liberty} and some need longer care. Some push to deploy before they are ready. “Every patient is different,” says Sullivan. “We have to decide who goes back and who doesn’t and when.” Sullivan is not surprised by her patients’ resiliency. “Those who choose to be in the military are an unusual segment of the population,” she says. “Like St. John’s, it’s very self-selecting. Soldiers are willing to put on hold major milestones of life while they serve. The army owns you 24/7. Some people love that. I love that.” But Sullivan is surprised at how rewarding her work is. “A lot of people burn out in a job like this,” she says. “It’s a very intense environment, which makes it that much more meaningful. While listening to horrible stories and handing out tissues, in the back of my mind I’m saying, ‘It’s okay, I can help this person.’” One Square Mile “Thucydides was dead on. I don’t care if it’s Athenians and Spartans, Sunni and Shii’a, or the Bosnians and the Serbs and the Croats. People get riled up and go to war—this is the way it’s always been and probably the way it will always be as long as we’re human beings. It’s only afterward that they start to think, what have we done?” On August 31, 2010, Charles sat in a café in Washington, D.C., recounting his journey from Latin teacher to military ofﬁcer, from California to Bosnia, from Afghanistan to Baghdad. (A member of a class from the mid-1990s, he asked that his real name not be used to protect his family.) Later that day, President Obama would make an address from The Oval Ofﬁce marking the ofﬁcial end of a sevenand-a-half year combat mission in Iraq. Charles had served in Iraq during the height of sectarian warfare in 20062007. He was part of the surge of American troops— 160,000 in all—designed to crush the insurgency. He took little note of the day’s news. Charles has a talent for learning new languages and a master’s degree in linguistics. He was teaching high school when he met an Army recruiter. Attracted to the beneﬁts and opportunities, he enlisted. The Army sent him to the Defense Language Institute, where he studied Arabic, and then to intelligence analyst school. Upon completion, he was sent to a unit, only to be deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina. While deployed, he was accepted to the Army’s Ofﬁcer Candidate School and was commissioned as a lieutenant. Nothing in his training, nothing he read, prepared him for a year in Afghanistan. “Nothing will prepare you for the reality of what you see on the ground. Upon reﬂection, the Army didn’t teach me to ﬁght a counterinsurgency very well. When I enlisted, they taught me how to ﬁght the Soviet war machine. Nothing can prepare you for the up close, personal nature of the counterinsurgency ﬁght, especially, when you can’t tell the good guys from the bad guys—sort of like trying to ﬁnd a needle in a bunch of needles.” After nearly a decade in the service, Charles, now a captain, and his wife had already decided it was time for him to leave the military, but he still owed the Army an additional year of obligatory service for his recent training. The mission he was to be assigned in Iraq was the only year obligation available—everything else was a threeyear commitment. After four months of intensive training, he was sent to Baghdad. Here in his own words is an account of his time in the city. I had been assigned to a Military Training Team (MiTT). I was the intelligence operations advisor to an Iraqi Army Battalion that had been sent to Baghdad as part of the Iraqi military’s support for The Surge. Our MiTT—a dozen strong—was made up of ofﬁcers and non-commissioned ofﬁcers sent to assist our Iraqi Army counterparts in reﬁning their warﬁghting, administrative, and logistics skills that the U.S. military had so effectively dismantled during the invasion, so the U.S. could transition responsibility to the Iraqis, and we could all go home. At the same time, we had to liaison with the U.S. Battalion responsible for the same battlespace. That U.S. commander rated us. However, we had to constantly remind our U.S. counterparts that we worked for our Iraqi commander and had a slightly different mission. We had to get these U.S. ofﬁcers to turn over operations to the Iraqis, but they were typically reluctant because nobody had done a good job of explaining the MiTT mission from the get-go. On our good days, we had company-level commanders on the ground who got it. On our bad days, we were one big dysfunctional family. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } �{Liberty} 23 “The decision to ﬁre on civilians is not made lightly. If you lose the people, you lose the war.” Our area of responsibility (AOR) was just one square mile. It was a Sunni insurgent enclave composed of three muhallas (neighborhoods or subdivisions) and what used to be an economically viable marketplace surrounded by a predominantly hostile Shi’a population. It was also that one square mile with the highest density of enemy activity in all of Iraq at that time. Our objectives were manifold. However, at the end of the day, we had to get the Iraqis operationally viable so they could defeat the Sunni insurgency, and win over the people in the muhallas by reintroducing a degree of normalcy to their lives. Easier said than done. It was 120 degrees in the shade for the ﬁrst six months. The main sewer line was broken, so in many places you would end up walking in a couple of inches of shit water. The main water line was broken. All the transformers were broken, so there was little to no electricity. The Sunni insurgents had a stranglehold in the muhallas and wouldn’t let contractors in to ﬁx the problems or the garbage collectors in to collect the trash. Since the main marketplace had been shut down, and most of the local merchants were afraid to ply their wares, getting out to procure the necessities of life was almost impossible. Schools couldn’t open, not that any children could get to them. I had never really appreciated Hobbes’s statement that life was nasty, brutish, and short in such a state of nature until I experienced this. The very ﬁrst order of business was to get our Iraqi Army counterparts off the periphery and move into the muhallas to disrupt insurgent operations. The Sunni insurgents had dug in and, by the time we had arrived in theater, you still couldn’t get 50 meters down the street without hitting one of the many pre-positioned improvised explosive devices, getting shot by a sniper, or having those nasty Russian-made RKG-3 armor-piercing grenades lobbed at your vehicles. The Shi’a insurgents were also an issue. Just to get to our AOR, we had to pass through territory pretty much owned by the Jaysh Al-Mahdi—the Shi’a militia loyal to Muqtada AlSadr. One of the routes we had to use was called “EFP Alley.” EFPs, or explosively formed projectiles, were armorpiercing technology borrowed from the Iranian military that, when triggered, sent molten copper ﬂying through the armor of your vehicle, shearing off body parts, and creating a heat so intense, you would die as your lungs burned. We worked with our Iraqi battalion, pushing into the interior of the muhallas, and creating patrol bases from which to operate and disrupt their lines of communication. To do this, however, we had to lead combat operations initially to prove to our counterparts that we could actually ﬁght. Those were some of the scariest moments of my life; I was intel—we didn’t kick in doors! Yet there I was, lead man one night bursting through the door of a suspected insurgent safehouse. Thankfully, I had had a team leader who had conducted combat operations, and pushed us harder than most teams to internalize those tactical skills that would keep us alive. It took eight months, but by that time, our Iraqi Army comrades took over the operational lead and, in the end, quieted the muhallas down. Our Iraqi counterparts worked with the local contractors to bring essential services back into the muhallas. Kids went back to school. The marketplace opened. It was quite a transformation. I wonder now though, as I watch the current news, whether the insurgents were just hunkering down to wait us out. Time will tell. Ahmad When I ﬁrst met Captain Ahmad, my Iraqi Army intelligence ofﬁcer counterpart, we were amazed at how much we had in common—our families, our ways of operating, our sense of humor—even the way we raised our right eyebrows when something just didn’t seem right. We were the same guy from two different cultures wearing two different uniforms. He was not just zamiilii (my comrade), he was akhuuya (my brother). He was an amazing intelligence ofﬁcer, but more importantly, a good man who only wanted a peaceful Iraq. Ahmad was the glue that held our Iraqi Battalion together. Despite the fact that there were other senior ofﬁcers who were supposed to be close to the commander, everybody knew that Ahmad was the Battalion Commander’s right hand. He’d get a report of an IED emplacement, and then go and dig it up with a shovel and his bare hands. “Ahmad,” I would say, “You’re the glue that holds this unit together. If you go, this place is gonna fall apart.” He’d look at me and smile and just say, “Insha’allah. I guess it just wasn’t my day to go.” { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } �24 {Liberty} Even though he was a Shi’a, the Sunni in our area loved him. He won their hearts and minds, to such a degree that he ran more 40 human sources by himself. Ahmad called me at about midnight one night to let me know that four IEDs had been placed at four different intersections in one of the muhallas. When I asked how he knew, he stated, “Because the guy that put them there called and told me.” The most difﬁcult thing about In Iraq the lines of warfare blurred as soldiers engaged with civilians. our Iraqi battalion’s deployment to Baghdad was that they were made subordinate not to an Iraqi Army all of our aid kits and stretchers. unit, but to an Iraqi National Police (NP) brigade. The NP When the Iraqis returned, it was a mess. The majority of were corrupt, sectarian, and inﬂitrated by and loyal to those civilians whom they returned with had died en route. Jaysh Al-Mahdi. This made it very difﬁcult for our There was a twelve-year-old girl who had taken a piece of battalion in general, and Ahmad in particular to operate, shrapnel to her jugular. She bled out. I was helping Doc, since even though they were Shi’a, they were not Jaysh Alour medic, when they brought a 3-4-year-old boy to our Mahdi, and had to contend with illegal orders furthering stretcher. He had no clothes on, and had a makeshift the NP’s corrupt enterprises. Our difﬁculties were bandage around his head which did little to conceal the compounded even more as one of my interpreters was grey matter and blood oozing out. They laid him on a Jaysh Al-Mahdi, and was passing sensitive intelligence on stretcher. I was shaking so badly, I couldn’t get my gloves our targets to our NP higher headquarters. It drove Ahmad on. Again, it was too late. He died there, looking blankly and me crazy that all of our targets were being picked up by into the evening sky. The remainder of the dead bodies had the NP, and ransomed back to the Sunni insurgents. Somebeen tossed out of the ambulances, and lay in a pile just body ﬁnally ﬁgured out that our interpreter was on the inside the perimeter. We used all 12 of our body bags that take and he was arrested. night. I had been re-reading Somerset Maugham’s “The Al-’unf: The Violence Razor’s Edge” around the time this occurred. At one The level of ethnically/religiously motivated violence was point, the character Larry, who had been a pilot in WWI, insane in and around our AOR. Two events still stand out reﬂects on his war experiences saying, “The dead look so to me. terribly dead when they’re dead.” Now I knew what he We had met up with our Iraqi counterparts at their meant. battalion headquarters to prep for a night mission. We Ahmad called me at about 1 a.m. one morning during hadn’t been there for 10 minutes when Shi’a insurgents Ashura, when Shi’a Muslims make a pilgrimage to the city launched a mortar attack at a Sunni mosque two blocks of Karbala to commemorate the martyrdom of Husayn ibn away. Our Iraqi counterparts dispatched their three ambuAli, the grandson of the Islamic prophet Muhammed at the lances and drove to the site while we stayed back to assist Battle of Karbala. One of his sources had told him that one in setting up a triage and treatment area. We had laid out { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } �{Liberty} of our targeted insurgent leaders was going to use four women wearing suicide vests to conduct attacks on the Shi’a making the pilgrimage using the highway that was the southern border of our AOR. We hastily put together an operation to stop them. This was toward the end of our tour, so the Iraqi soldiers were in the lead. I was in overwatch with Ahmad on the inner cordon. The Iraqis burst into the house, shot the insurgent leader and came out with three women. I looked at Ahmad. He shrugged and gave me the eyebrow when I asked him where the fourth one was. She emerged from a small space between two houses and started walking towards Ahmad and me. She was dressed in a black, loose-ﬁtting abayah and hijab, which made it difﬁcult to see if see was concealing a suicide vest. She was wailing with her hands and arms outstretched. We didn’t see anything in her hands. I was shouting in Arabic at the woman approached. “Qif! Qif! Tera larmee!” Ahmad was about 10 feet away from me. He too was shouting at her to stop. He raised his Kalishnikov; I raised my M-4. When you are ﬁghting a counterinsurgency, it’s all about “hearts and minds.” The decision to ﬁre on civilians is not made lightly. If you lose the people, you lose the war. The real problem, however, was that the U.S. military was still struggling with how to ﬁght a counterinsurgency. Consequently, the Rules of Engagement (ROE) and rules for Escalation of Force (EOF) changed pretty much on a weekly basis. I was at the point of having to decide whether to shoot the woman or not. “Shit, shit, shit,” I was thinking to myself. “If I shoot her, she won’t have anything on her. If I don’t, she’ll have a vest, get too close, and blow us up.” I was also thinking to myself, “I’m not going to go out this way.” “Stop! Or I’m gonna fuckin’ shoot!” It came out in English this time. It started to get fuzzy at that point. My heart was racing. Everything was slowing down. I was getting tunnel vision. I tried to slow down my breathing. It wasn’t working. Ahmad ﬁred a warning shot. We shouted some more. I started to squeeze the trigger. . . . That’s when someone, somewhere, probably a rooftop 25 overlooking the scene, remote-detonated her. When I came to, I was on my back, covered in blood and gobbets of ﬂesh. And I had peed my pants. I looked over at Ahmad, who was also coming to. “I guess it just wasn’t our day.” We laughed. I started to cry uncontrollably. We were lucky. The insurgents must have been in a rush or lacked materials, because there were no metal bearings or nails to create a shrapnel effect. I don’t think I’d be sitting here writing this if there had. Get on with it Baghdad was different. I was “boots on ground” and I was scared shitless. I asked one of my teammates who had seen his share of combat, and had been a victim in one particularly bad IED attack during a prior deployment, “How do you deal with it?” At some point, he said, you have to tell yourself that you’re already a dead man, that, yes, today is your day. Then you can get on with it. I didn’t think I had PTSD, but I do. When I ﬁrst came home, it was awful. We’d go to a restaurant and the door would slam, and I’d jump two feet in the air. Just this past Fourth of July, some kids had tied together a bunch of ﬁreworks and blew them up on a neighborhood basketball court. It sounded and felt just like an IED had exploded, or a rocket had landed nearby. I still think on that woman. I would have killed her. Doubletap—a shot to chest and the head in quick succession, just like in training. I still have trouble reconciling that part of me. I’m glad to be home with my family. I regret losing so much time with them over the years. But I wouldn’t trade any of my experiences, especially the friendship I have with Ahmad, for the world. The ﬁrst thing we read about at St. John’s is war. War ﬁgures prominently throughout the rest of our time there. I confess, a lot was lost on me when I went through St. John’s. After I came home, I re-read some Homer, Thucydides, and Hobbes with new eyes. I even read Sophocles’s Ajax, and was amazed that Sophocles was portaying a man suffering from PTSD. You can read all you want about war at St. John’s, along with things like the good and the just. You won’t know what it is until you experience it. And why would anyone want to experience the way it really is? x { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } �26 {History} LEARNING TO KNIT by Kathryn Kramer Editor’s Note: This is part of the ﬁrst chapter of a forthcoming memoir, Missing History: The Covert Education of a Child of the Great Books. Kathryn Kramer (“Katie”) is the daughter of Clarence “Corky” Kramer (class of 1946),who was a tutor in Annapolis from 1954-1964 and served as the associate dean and dean in Santa Fe from 1964-1970. She is the author of several novels, most recently Sweet Water, and teaches at Middlebury College. T he best teachers, I grew up thinking, had accents. Pipesmoking men in corduroys and tweeds, speaking in the rich consonants of Germany and Russia, carried with them an atmosphere of learning that I did not know then was not native to our shores. The coffee-house life of Berlin and Vienna—where the profound questions of existence were debated in an aroma of rich coffee and pipe smoke—this now resided in Annapolis, Maryland, just across the street from the Naval Academy with its high brick wall, behind which we sometimes ventured to witness midshipmen in their white dress uniforms marching in formation and the Blue Angels performing breathtaking loops overhead. But these things were peripheral, a showy attempt by the Navy to compete with the sober, hallowed, essential investigations across King George Street. In the late 1940s, my father, Corky Kramer, ﬁnished at St. John’s the education he’d begun before the Second World War at Albion College in Michigan. Soon after, he joined the faculty. It was there, in the brick and ivy embrace of St. John’s 200-year-old campus, that I and my fellow faculty children ﬁrst saw the educational light of day. There has never been a time in my life when I didn’t know the term “Great Books,” yet I had no awareness of how their “Program” would program my own thinking, without my having ever been an ofﬁcial student of it. In childhood it was the freedom and safety afforded by the campus that ﬁrst deﬁned “college” to me. I never tired of trying to understand, through the method of walking up and down them, the herringboned paths that radiate down from the central hub of MacDowell Hall, atop its gentle rise so like the nearby Maryland statehouse atop its hill that I confounded the two. If you had the best ideas, the buildings’ similarities told me, then you held a position of power; and if you held a position of power, then you must have the best ideas. My father and my friends’ fathers—Bill Darkey, Tom Simpson—with their crew cuts and rosy complexions and cigarettes that they often smoked in place of pipes, seemed to us children to be the older tutors’ scrappy disciples. Although no ranks are observed at St. John’s, this professed egalitarianism disguised a hidden hierarchy in which I discerned that accented English had smarter things to say than un-, that words of wisdom arrived wreathed in sweet-smelling smoke rings. Americans, however they strove, could never quite measure up to this redolent sagacity. These men, exiles from a vanished world, were as irrevocably a part of “college” to me as the { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } �{History} 27 sweeping expanses of lawns shaded by great elms or the replica of the Liberty Bell at the edge of campus, the coffee shop at which I was sometimes treated to a Coke by my father, or the basement bookstore managed by my mother, where a strangely titled book with an unusual-looking cover, The Hobbit, arrived one day from Blackwell’s in Oxford, England, a year or two before the rest of the country got hold of it. Throughout grade school I regularly worried about choosing a subject for my senior thesis: a forbidding exercise that, along with the “don rags,” I had heard drove some students to a nervous breakdown. I was Clarence “Corky” Kramer (class of 1946) was part of a generation of young tutors with “crew cuts and rosy complexions” who were the “disciples” of men such as Jacob Klein and Simon Kaplan. already afraid of how I would survive this. Would Tolkien do? I asked my commemorating the history of St. John’s)—her power was father. He thought he probably wouldn’t. Not serious complex and its source mysterious, but all too apparent. enough, I understood. Not mighty and grave, like the I would never have considered not doing what she told me. writers on his study shelves. Even if I knew that there were Desperately I fought to keep the slippery yarn and the other colleges, it was clear that they didn’t measure up. impossibly long needles from sliding off my lap. If I Certainly it never occurred to me that I might go to them. dropped a stitch, I felt stricken. At home, I sometimes When I was ﬁve and my best friend Cathy Darkey was six, cried, exhausted by the sheer terror of the afternoon. Yet we were sent to be taught knitting by Mrs. Klein, wife of somehow out of the shapeless mass, a giant red mitten Jacob, one of the men with accents. We sat in the living formed. My knitting was too loose, my mitten the size of a room, Cathy propped against the back of the high couch, baseball glove, and Cathy’s was too tight, as if her goal was her legs out militarily straight, I angled on the very edge so to make a texture so dense, no light could pass through. that my feet could touch the ground. “Knit, purl; knit, Only when I was a good deal older would I discern the purl . . . .” In my memory these words were delivered stacmischief that underlay Dodó’s pretense of sternness. Then cato as Mrs. Klein beat time with an oversized knitting I knew only that she was strict and kind by turns, as if in needle. her view the friction produced by the two was what drove A German hausfrau, called “Dodó” by our parents, the engine of obedience, without which no learning could Mrs. Klein wore her white hair in a bun and dressed in take place. After we’d struggled for a while to marshal our white blouses and dark skirts. It was clear that, unlike our recalcitrant squadrons of stitches, she would take us to the American mothers, she would never be caught wearing kitchen and give us something to eat. She was a renowned “slacks.” She spoke an English somehow both clipped and baker, and the whole downstairs was often rich with the melliﬂuous, the words taking on extra dimension and comforting yeasty smell that intensiﬁed in her welcoming making a stronger claim on our attention than other and orderly kitchen, a plain table in the middle of the room adults’ did. A faculty wife—a role now large vanished where she rolled out pastry. from academia (in later years she wove a tapestry { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } �28 {History} Kathyrn Kramer with her family in Annapolis, young sister Mary, mother Zan, and father Clarence (Corky). If the kitchen was Mrs. Klein’s domain, the upstairs was her husband’s. Oh, those studies—the realm of the pipesmoking men who knew everything—I knew the sound, touch, and smell of it. The pipes themselves held an iconic fascination for me: in my father’s third-ﬂoor study I liked to take them out of their rack and handle them: the silky smooth dark wood of some of the bowls and the tantalizing rough topography of others; the narrowing darker stem, colder to the touch; the light-colored corncob we’d bought my father one Christmas. An ironic pipe, even then I understood. And how deeply I coveted the pipe cleaners!— which I used to beg for and then appropriate when they weren’t dispensed. Sneaking upstairs when my father was at the college, I tried to gauge how many I could safely take without his noticing, to bend into animals and other ﬁgures. In the study I never really looked consciously at the books, but it seemed to me that I’d always known them and their titles, so that it came as a surprise to realize one day that I’d never actually read them. Books everywhere, lining the walls and in stacks on tables, no jackets: the pale brown of the Harvard classics, the darker brown of the Cambridge edition of Shakespeare, the green of the Loeb editions, the lighter green of Everyman’s Library—the Plato and Aristotle and Sophocles whose names there was never a time I didn’t know. They lived in the house with us, these arbiters of Western thought, these bearers of my philosophical and literary heritage. My father always spoke about them as if he knew them personally. At some point on the Kleins’ stairs, the odor of baking rose from the kitchen and met aromatic pipe tobacco descending. Halfway down the second-story hallway, Mr. Klein— Jascha—lurked in his study, dark with the same heavy wood furniture and unjacketed books and even thicker with pipe smoke than my own father’s was. This was all as it should be—a man upstairs gazing down at a book, a pipe stem held between his teeth as he contemplated the important ideas of the Western world. Sometime during our knitting lesson, Mr. Klein would wander downstairs and as if by accident shufﬂe into the room in his slippers and thin gray cardigan and make some humorous remark about our progress. We amused him, or our knitting amused him, or the very fact of our presence in his house amused him, but we didn’t mind; we were used to men pufﬁng on fragrant tobacco and making opaque remarks. He was kindly, and seemed to understand something about us that we didn’t notice ourselves. So did Mrs. Klein, for that matter, if whatever she knew might not be quite as salutary. Courtly, affable, and wry, asking children questions in a gently humorous way, what did they think of us, these emigrants from another world? They must have known how unaware of their history we were, children basking in the postwar self-satisfaction of the American Fifties. It wasn’t a witting conspiracy of silence, but it was a silence. War? What war? Nazis? Jews? Who were they? I knew more about the American Revolution than I did about the Second World War. Since a visit to Mount Vernon, whose serene and beautifully simple rooms had made a profound if inaccurate impression on me about the Revolutionary War era, I’d been mourning my exclusion from the past and trying to ﬁgure out how to insinuate myself into history. And here it was all around me, and no one had said a thing. It wasn’t until after I was out of high school that I registered the fact that these older tutors had not left Europe for their career advancement. The Kleins and the { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } �{History} 29 All those unjacketed, dull-colored volumes with no pictures had been up to something. Zuckerkandls had emigrated from Germany, the Kaplans from Russia. Mrs. Klein had been married before, to Husserl’s son, and after I learned this I spent some time reading about Husserl, sometimes called the “father of phenomenology,” to see if his philosophy might have leaked through his daughter-in-law and dripped onto me. Mrs. Kaplan, Fanny, lived to be 105, and her obituary stated that friends considered the Kaplans’ home to be the “most civilized place in America.” This is what I grew up thinking about the Kleins’, although I didn’t know that I did, nor that it was a model against which I would unwittingly measure my own life. The Kleins, the Kaplans, the Zuckerkandls—they came from a world that they carried with them, invisible, as the houses on the sloping half of Market Street always seemed to do, left alone when their neighbors had disappeared. Eventually the knitting lessons came to an end. A decade later, after my family had moved to Santa Fe for the opening of the new campus, I spent a couple of nights with the Kleins. During my visit, Mrs. Klein took me shopping. She drove me to a mall outside of Baltimore—the ﬁrst mall I’d ever been to (this was the late ’60s)—and bought me a ﬂoor-length dress, something like a nightgown with decorations, in those days called a “granny gown.” I felt peculiar accepting her gift of a dress. I was still a little afraid of her, and couldn’t understand why she would take such trouble over me. It was still too soon—I was still too young—to realize that she might simply have been fond of me. The next day we sat down to a hot meal at midday, an exotic experience in itself. Eva Brann and a student or two were there. After lunch, Dodó offered us a choice of desserts. There was chocolate cake, she said, and fresh strawberries with cream. She paused and looked at us meaningfully. She knew, she remarked, which dessert the superior person would choose. I knew, too, and I knew it wasn’t the chocolate cake I wanted. I asked for the strawberries, and was rewarded by her approval. Jascha lit his pipe and smiled his sphinx-like smile. He, I was sure, knew quite well the cowardly choice I had just made. No doubt he also knew the permanent schism that this choice and others like it would effect in my sensibility: between an initial, uncensored appetite striving with the wish to be judged discriminating, and how over time the two would commingle until one day I would hardly be able to distinguish between what I wanted and what I wanted to be thought to want. That there was a right choice, and that it was up to me to discover it, was an article of faith I never knew to be one. In the religion of knowing what was what, all the more potent because it was not organized, I had made my vows without having known I was a postulant. Now I was merely afﬁrming my pledge at this ceremony disguised as a luncheon in this sweet-smelling house atop its ominous ﬂight of steps, whose warnings I had ignored because I was expected at the top of them—expected so that I could be taught knitting. Not just any knitting, but German knitting, stronger and more intricate than plain, postwar American knitting, involving as it does an extra twist of the yarn—and not just by any German knitting teacher, but by Edmund Husserl’s former daughter-in-law. Ideas. The Great Books. They were not there, somewhere along the line I had begun to expect, to bring coziness (we faculty children learned that it was called gemutlichkeit) to their readers’ studies: All those unjacketed, dull-colored volumes with no pictures had been up to something. Without our knowing it, they’d been up to something with us. I had been part of a weightier world than most people: the world my father evoked when, with a faraway look in his eye, he reminisced about “Winky” and “Scott,” architects of the St. John’s New Program—a hallowed phrase recalling “New Testament.” A pre-Lapsarian world had existed of which these tutors were the sole guardians. If I sought admittance to it, I would have to apply to them. Only they could grant it. But then they were gone. x { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } Writer Kathyrn Kramer learned much more thank knitting in her time spent with the Kleins. �{ A l u m n i Vo i c e s } 30 W H E N T H E A NC I E N T S S P E A K , CHILDREN LISTEN Jenny Lowe Cook (A92) H ere is what some would call a gamble: teaching preparing to perform their play about the legend of the golden ancient Greek epic to modern-day kindergarteners apple. I could ﬁnd only one hour a week in my schedule to share my and ﬁrst graders. Homer’s Odyssey is so ancient, knowledge of ancient Greek mythology with the children. I decided to tell them the story of The Odyssey over my eight oneso thoroughly foreign; with its warriors, monsters, deities, and hard-to-pronounce names, what on hour sessions. An excellent picture-book retelling by Geraldine earth is the use of telling it to such young children? McCaughrean and Victor Ambrus served as my guide to remind me of the stops that Odysseus made along the way. To keep the Won’t they be confused and bored by it all? I had grown up hearing stories of the Greek gods and goddesses 36 Primaries engaged and interested for an hour of storytelling, and the retelling of the Trojan War from both the Greek and Trojan inspiration struck: I would dress up as Homer and tell the story as a perspectives. I had read Homer and Virgil in high school and liked bard. As I discovered, a few props go a long way. I assembled a small them. When I reread them at St. John’s, I loved them. I did a senior bag of shawls and fabric scraps, found a zither-like instrument in preceptorial with Mr. Miller on The Aeneid and wrote my senior the storage attic, and fashioned a chiton of sorts from an old red essay about it, too. Little did I know that I would be sharing these bedsheet. In the palm of my hand, I kept a post-it note of plot highlights in case the Muse of good memory left me stranded. wonderful stories with young children. I remember sitting there on a little stool shivering in a red Through a series of small-world events (have you ever noticed how much St. John’s is a player in “wow, it’s a small world” bedsheet and strumming an outrageously out-of-tune toy zither stories?), I found out about a two-year apprenticeship program at while the Primaries ﬁled in slowly and sat wonderingly before me in Arbor School of Arts and Sciences, a small, independent K-8 school the cavernous, chilly Arena (formerly a horse-riding arena). No near Portland, Oregon. It was my senior year and I was not sure longer Jenny the apprentice, I was Homer the bard. How would the children react? Even with my props and my what I wanted to do next. The apprenticeship program seemed to be pretense, would they just get bored with an interesting chance to learn about it all? In those few moments of waiting for teaching in a hands-on way. The school’s everyone to settle down, I experienced a director, Kit Abel Hawkins, is the mother wave of stage fright. Perhaps I had found of Will Hawkins (AGI04). Like her son, these stories fascinating as a child Kit shares a deep respect and love for because my father is a classicist and I history, literature, and times gone by. Her went to St. John’s, where such epic tales school is forward thinking enough to are revered by all! What if these stories delve into the past with its students. Even went over their heads? at the kindergarten level, students are Looking at their eager and expectant exposed to great ideas, great thinkers, and faces, I realized that once upon a time, great stories. there were little children who had sat at I got the job as one of two apprentices to Homer’s feet listening to his stories, too. the “primary” classrooms. Primaries are When I launched into my invocation of mixed classes of kindergartners and ﬁrst Jenny Lowe Cook (A92) the Muse, she must have heard my cry. graders, the youngest students at Arbor. The children sat spellbound and listened Ever since I had heard that Arbor to the ﬁrst part of the story for the rest of Primaries devoted part of their year to the hour. studying the Greeks, I was excited to teach Occasionally I chose some of the children to be actors and particthat part of the curriculum. In the summer planning session, the master teachers rearranged the schedule so that the unit on ipants in my story, perhaps giving them a prop or draping them in a the Greeks would coincide with my eight-week solo teaching shawl so they could get into their role. Sometimes I whispered in their ear the “lines” they were supposed to say; other times I just experience. But the Fates, it seems, had different plans. In order to fulﬁll stood behind them and said it for them, guiding them around the requirements for the Masters in Teaching program in which I was “stage.” I marveled at their cooperation and eagerness to be part of dually enrolled, I ended up teaching oceanography to the fourth the story, even though they quickly saw that it was not their chance and ﬁfth graders while the Primaries were studying the Greeks and to reinvent it. They were content and excited to become living “...I realized that once upon a time, there were little children who had sat at Homer’s feet listening to his stories.” { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } �{ A l u m n i Vo i c e s } 31 Jenny Lowe Cook (A06) was surprised and delighted when her “cool” sixth graders were captivated by the Iliad. props. Sometimes I would hear them bragging to each other as they returned to their classroom, “I was Odysseus today!” When I began by asking for someone to sum up what had happened in the previous week’s storytelling session, I was amazed at how many hands ﬂew up into the air. Their recollection of the story’s details was impressive. I was sorry to bring the story to the end on our last Friday morning together, but felt glad that I had introduced a new world of magic, myth, and heroism to the children. Fast-forward to the fall of 2009: No longer at Arbor, I was teaching a new age group, sixth grade, at a public charter school in rural Oregon, about an hour south of Portland. The ﬁrst few weeks of school are always challenging as students and teachers get acquainted and try to settle into a rhythm that works. In a classroom of my own, I had always envisioned that reading stories aloud would be a regular part of our classroom culture. Surely sixth graders would not be too old to appreciate a good story. But the ﬁrst story I began with them, an older fantasy tale by Lloyd Alexander, fell upon deaf ears. Most of the students rolled their eyes, passed notes, and otherwise made their contempt known. Frustrated with my class for not appreciating a good story, and blaming myself for not ﬁnding one that captured them, I soon discarded the book. Then I desperately tried to think of something that would engage these “too cool for school” sixth graders. One hot afternoon a few weeks into the school year, I found myself with an extra half hour on my hands. The lights were off to ﬁght the heat, which was making everyone sleepy and irritable. The Muse once again hit me with a bolt of inspiration: I began telling them—by now from memory—the story of how the Trojan War began at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis. Perhaps it would at least keep them occupied for the half hour. To my astonishment and delight, everyone sat up a bit straighter in their seats. For once, I had all 25 pairs of eyes glued to me. Even the most jaded eye-roller in the bunch was paying attention. The most impulsive interrupter kept interrupting, but now he was asking questions about the story. Everyone was shocked that Helen, married to Menelaus, would actually run off with Paris, and then they were shocked that Menelaus would go to the trouble to launch the fabled thousand ships to get her back. The half hour went by in a ﬂash, and I promised to pick up where I left off the next day. For the next few months, I spent some time every day telling the story of the Iliad and then moving on to the Odyssey. (We started the Aeneid but never got a chance to ﬁnish it.) I couldn’t believe how enraptured my students were by the stories. If I forgot to plan the story into the daily schedule, someone was sure to remind me; I would squeeze in a 10-minute installment before the end of the day. The stories tied in well with the humanities curriculum I had created. We were studying ﬁve ancient cultures: Sumerians, Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. It was wonderful to see the connections that the students made between real history and the epic stories that they heard me tell. One day, a shy girl showed me a picture she had found in a National Geographic magazine that we were using for collages. It was a picture of a golden chariot piece. “It’s like what Achilles might have used,” she said. These stories are not irrelevant to our lives today; they contain lessons in virtue, justice, compassion (or the lack thereof), resourcefulness, faith, courage, and a host of other qualities that mattered then and matter now. And they are just plain fun stories with lots of adventure and plenty of soap-opera drama. What sixth grader doesn’t love drama? The Iliad became so popular that the students helped write and act in a play, “The Trojan War in 15 Minutes” (well, okay, it was more like 25 minutes). We spent many a happy afternoon creating shields, spears, armor, a Trojan horse, some simple set pieces, and costumes. Everyone had a part, large or small, and everyone actually managed to memorize their lines by the time the show went on in December. We performed our small show for the school in the afternoon; a few parents were able to attend. The process of putting on the play was a trying experience for me as a teacher; marshalling 25 sixth graders at a dress rehearsal is similar to herding feral cats. But watching their pride and excitement in the performance was awesome. Better yet was overhearing the comments of the younger students in the audience. Many, especially the kindergarteners, were enthralled with the story and wanted to hear more. My sixth graders came back from the performance riding high on their success. One asked, “Mrs. Cook, when can we do a play of the Odyssey? And can I be the Cyclops?” If that doesn’t speak to the power of Homer and Virgil, I don’t know what does. x { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } �32 {Biblioﬁle} “The Math Book” Remembering Klein’s Seminal Work A By Eva Brann (HA87) Hopkins’ second notion was that Klein’s book was the most far-reaching working-out of one of Husserl’s guiding ideas: “sedimentation.” This term describes the silting-in by which once freshly immediate ideas have become accepted thoughtpackages and handy intellectual tools whose original meaning lies buried in old discarded or misread texts. Alumni will recognize that the Program under which they studied can be interpreted as a resurrection of those origins, a re-animation of the signiﬁcances behind the current terms of our life. Klein’s book is, then, the most extended and signiﬁcant case of a task set by Phenomenology (the philosophical school Husserl founded), that of “de-sedimentation,” the recovery by means of a careful, receptive reading of earlier books, of the insights that went into the advances and attendant losses which make us who we are. Klein’s work is an extended digging up of the roots of our current concept of number, a concept at the center of our sciences. I want to say a word about the publication history of “the math book.” It was ﬁrst published as two fascicules of a German journal. The time was that of the Nazi takeover. (That may, incidentally, account for certain—well-controlled—intimations of the decline and fall of the West that can be sensed in the work.) When I came to St. John’s in 1957 it was unavailable and untranslated. Seth Bernadete, a tutor of the mid-1950s whose name is known to many older alumni and who introduced me to Jascha, had told me to read it if I wanted to understand the design of the college’s Program. I undertook to translate it—in secret. For Jascha scorned publication; he thought that much of scholarly writing was piddling and that tutors should, in any case, be teaching rather than scribbling. Once I’d ﬁnished I had to ’fess up, because I had many questions. Jascha capitulated. The MIT Press took the book and eventually handed it to Dover. That conﬁrmed it as a classic. marion warren lumni who knew Jacob Klein and those who’ve heard tell of him might like to hear about a ﬁrst-ever event that took place June 26-29, 2010, at Seattle University: a conference devoted to Jascha Klein (forgive the informality; it was near-universal—a mark of the students’ sense that he was theirs) and to his increasingly inﬂuential book Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra. (Here’s another informal usage: I’m told the book is now known among its devotees as “the math book.”) The intense and deeply engaging series of 15 lectures and seminars was convened by Burt Hopkins, Professor of Philosophy at Seattle (and a frequent visitor to St. John’s), whose major book, called The Origin of the Logic of Symbolic Mathematics: Edmund Husserl and Jacob Klein, is to appear in 2011. The work, besides giving an acute account of Klein’s book, aims to bring out the comparative stature of his achievement by highlighting two notions. One, the narrower, is that he had a truer understanding than did Husserl of the lifechanging rupture that at once tethered our modernity to, and radically divided it from, Greek antiquity, a revolution expressed paradigmatically in the changing concept of number. Husserl thought that the term “abstraction” covered this turn. Klein showed that this was too vague. What had happened was a novel and all-pervasive alteration in conceptuality, which he called “symbol-generating abstraction.” Klein showed that among the Greeks, arithmos, “number,” always meant a concrete heap or assemblage of real things, while in the algebra adopted at the dawn of modernity, letter-symbols, such as a, b, x, y, began to be understood as objects, but objects twice removed from the real world, once because they intended a sort of number-in-general, and again because passing even beyond that abstraction, the algebraic operations were performed on the letters themselves as if they had a sort of reality, albeit an empty one. Klein intimated that this life with virtual objects, twice removed from the sensory world, characterized both modern science and our mental mode as moderns. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } Burt’s conference, convened threequarters of a century after the German publication (a true case of much better late than never) was thus largely based on this translation. Therefore I was invited to make the keynote remarks. I concentrated on two wonderfully prescient interpretations of Platonic dialogues. One was set out in the math book and the other in Klein’s Commentary on Plato’s Meno. The ﬁrst foreshadowed one of the most unsettling ideas in contemporary thinking about cognition: “emergence.” Emergence is the term for the case of a whole whose qualities are altogether different from those of its elements; the great, problematic case is that of brain and mind: The logical structures of spatially extended brains and non-spatial thoughts are totally different; how does one “supervene” on the other? Klein’s understanding of the mathematician’s number as a collection of unit-elements—none of which have the number-attribute that the whole has—“each is one, both together are two,” says Socrates—offers a deep discussion of an early and stark case of that current preoccupation. The second case of prescience, acutely relevant to our lives in so far as they are, decade by decade, more imagery-devoted and virtuality-involved, is Klein’s analysis of �{Bibliofile} 33 Plato’s understanding that an image is an almost-being, one that both is and isn’t the original. “That’s him,” we say of a photo— but it isn’t the original. What does it do to us to spend a lot of time with these semi-nonbeings? The members of the conference, without actually having had Burt’s whole manuscript in hand, readily focused on the very issues that are there brought out. Although the meetings were open, Burt had wanted them to be workshop-like. There were only a few auditors, one of whom was a Johnnie graduate student and another a Johnnie waiter (who happened to serve us in a restaurant), waiting on his life-plan to reveal itself. He had been in one of my classes; it was lovely to come upon him and invite him to the conference. The participants were wonderful. Claudio Majolino from the University of Lille, France, gave an incisive, deep critique of the math book, pointing out two of its unargued assumptions: that modern science is in fact in said “ruptured” relation to Greek philosophy, that is, that its terms are sedimented Greek terms, and that the Greek relation to the world was indeed more innocently direct than ours. Two physicists, Richard Hassing of the Catholic University of America and Joseph Cosgrove of Providence University, engaged one and the same question: “Can post-classical physics be ‘desedimented,’ meaning can we recover the world of ordinary experience from the symbols?” Quantum and relativity physics were considered with concrete reference to actual formulas. The answer was “yes, for some notions” and “no, not in practice.” The most gripping case to me was Joe’s demonstration that Minkowski’s space-time is an artifact produced by the trick of writing c, the speed of light, as a mere number, and that in Einstein’s own treatment space and time are not particularly unintuitive. There was a lucid display by Dick and his student (and our alumnus) Andrew Romiti of the actual workings of the Greek protoalgebra devised by Diophantus, a Greek mathematician, that showed how essentially his analytic method differs from modern algebra. Ed Halper of the University of Georgia spoke on Aristotelian, classical, and quantum physics with reference to Klein’s book, and Burt himself gave an overview of Klein’s philosophical achievement. Our dean at the time, Michael Dink (A75), was in attendance as moderator. I don’t know when I’ve attended so gratifyingly exhausting an event, and so welcome— and overdue—an evocation of Jascha’s stature. Resistant though he was to academic functions, I think he might that weekend have given in to a sense of satisfaction. x Back to Africa? The Solution to America’s Race Problem as Viewed by Jefferson, Madison, Clay, and Lincoln of freed blacks who might inﬂuence their slaves to rebel or seek freedom. Thoughtful, intelligent statesmen such as Jefferson and Lincoln spent much time and energy determining the expense of purchasing the freedom of slaves and transporting them overseas, as well as the best location to send them. But what did the colonists themselves think about this idea? Gathering the few ﬁrsthand accounts, Nelson reveals the often contradictory opinions that blacks held about Liberia. Some writings seemed designed to sway the minds of potential travelers: Daniel H. Peterson praised the place as a paradise, while William Nesbit found it “hell on earth.” Others judged the situation more objectively, recognizing difﬁculties and obstacles, but offering suggestions for thriving. Samuel Williams, for instance, advised families to spend money before the journey on items for trade with the natives, and recommended the immigration of more Northern blacks, who were accustomed to the habits of business and freedom. The colonists were divided as to whether Liberia was a success or a failure. Although many American politicians such as Senator Henry Clay, the president of the American Colonization Society, supported the immigration of blacks to Africa, Liberia was never ofﬁcially funded or organized by the U.S. government because of constitutional questions regarding the formation of a colony. Thus the Society depended on religious institutions for support and recruitment, which gave the movement an evangelical bent. The colonists were bringing Christianity and culture to heathen Africa, which did not bode well for the natives. As Nelson shows, most blacks remained unconvinced of returning to Africa, even in the face of white hostility and prejudice in the United States. Among the most prominent opponents of the movement was Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist leader. He criticized supporters for trying to remove blacks from a country where they had lived in bondage for more than two hundred years, just as slavery was beginning to be justly recognized as evil. “Our minds are made up to live here if we can,” wrote Douglass, “or die here if we must.” Such clear rejection makes it unsurprising that so few blacks signed up for the journey. Back to Africa? concludes with a chapter on Barack Obama’s presidential victory and the state of race relations in America today. To win the election, Obama “reached over” the racial barrier with the assistance of other African Americans across the generations, Nelson suggests. Yet while the treatment and standing of black minorities has improved considerably since the dissolution of the American Colonization Society, inequality is still an issue. The legacy of slavery continues to haunt us. x Charles A. Nelson (class of 1945) Xlibris, 2009 Back to Africa? examines a little-known 19th-century proposal to solve America’s “race problem” by sending free blacks to the newly-established colony of Liberia. Charles Nelson explores this scheme from the perspectives of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Henry Clay, and Abraham Lincoln, who all generally approved of it, as well as others who had mixed feelings or opposed it. Documents show that the colonization of Liberia was not the success for which its planners hoped. From 1817 until 1899, only a few more than 15,000 people immigrated into Liberia, out of a population of nearly 5 million blacks in the United States. Nelson asks, “Why did prominent white leaders persist for so long in the colonization effort in the face of the evident unwillingness of almost all blacks to resettle in Africa?” For many whites, colonization appeared to be the only logical solution to the apparently unsolvable problem of what to do with the blacks. Because of the complex history between the races, Northern abolitionists could see no possible way for freed blacks to co-exist with whites, while Southern slaveholders were eager to get rid { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } —Charles Green (AGI02) �{Alumni} 34 Transforming Spaces Architect Phillip Katz (SF94) joins the human and devine J by Anna Perleberg (SF02) ewish tradition teaches that every 28 years, the sun returns to the position in the sky at which it was created, an event commemorated with a blessing called birkat hachama. The last time this celestial anniversary was celebrated was April 8, 2009; for the Congregation Emanu-El B’ne Jeshurun in Milwaukee, Wis., the recitation also marked the ﬁrst service held in their breathtaking new sanctuary—designed and built by Phillip Katz Project Development, founded by Phillip Katz (SF94). Katz’s traditional Jewish upbringing made him a natural for St. John’s: “Discussion was familiar to me from the dinner table, and I went to a Jewish seminary for freshman year of high school, where we used the same Socratic method as in seminar,” he says. “St. John’s was an outstanding experience, and a formative part of who I am”—a claim borne out by the fact that, although he eventually migrated to the College of Santa Fe to graduate from their landscape design program, his ofﬁcial bio and interviews still proudly mention his time with the great books. Following college, Katz attended graduate school at the University of WisconsinMilwaukee, receiving his master’s in architecture in 1999. He still teaches at the school. He began work in corporate architecture in 1995, and was part of the design team for world-renowned Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava’s 2001 addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum, the sculptural white concrete Quadracci Pavilion. Katz is deﬁnitely a Calatrava fan: “He’s not only an architect, he’s an engineer, a mathematician, a composer— his work is very anthropomorphic.” Katz was able to found his design company, Phillip Katz Project Development, thanks to what he describes as “some large commissions that gave me the security to leave the corporate ﬁrm.” Unfortunately, the ﬂedgling business opened its doors on September 4, 2001. A week later, as Katz says, “The world imploded, and the projects I had got shelved.” Designing projects for nonproﬁts, including a synagogue for a Milwaukee congregation, is one of the best rewards of architect Phillip Katz’s work. “St. John’s taught me to bite off a little more than I can chew—to take risks.” Philip Katz (SF94) Throughout post-9/11 uncertainty and the current struggling economy—in which many clients are choosing to stay put and renovate existing properties rather than design and build anew—the ﬁrm has tenaciously held its own, he believes, by offering “the highest quality service. Training, constant innovation, and listening to our clients—that’s most important.” The recession’s deleterious effect on new architectural projects, however, has allowed Katz to pursue less tangible rewards by doing pro bono work. While these projects do sometimes result in paying work, “when approached by a { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } nonproﬁt, I don’t have my hand out immediately—I feel a great responsibility to make the world a better place,” he says. Katz goes on to reference the Jewish concept of tikkun olam, the “repair and completion of the world,” a ﬁtting dictum for an architect who often recreates new buildings within a formerly broken-down shell. He’s particularly pleased with the reclamation of a long-abandoned industrial building, designed in 1930 by prominent Milwaukee architect Herbert Tullgren. It has become a new school facility for Lad Lake, an agency that works with young men who have been expelled from Milwaukee Public Schools. The school has �{Alumni} an astonishing 83 percent graduation rate. The building, which had once been a silverplating shop, was not only dilapidated in the extreme—holes in the roof, windows broken, asbestos in the more than 70-yearold heating system—it was an environmental disaster. Contaminants had to be cleaned up before the gutting of the structure could even begin. After a six-month renovation process, the center reopened with classrooms, ofﬁces, a library, computer lab, kitchen, cafeteria, art and music rooms, and a full-sized gym–the only outright addition to the building. “This project was really like a grand slam home run in the World Series,” Katz says with obvious pride. “We saved a blighted building that was architecturally signiﬁcant, contributed to the community, and cleaned up environmental devastation.” Phillip Katz Project Development’s achievements have been publicly recognized. The Lad Lake project won an award from The Business Journal of Milwaukee in April 2008 for “Best New Development or Renovation: Education.” The Business Journal also honored Katz’s ﬁrm earlier this year for outstanding industrial renovation in a whimsical design for Trafﬁc & Parking Control Company that incorporated its own products, including trafﬁc lights and reﬂective yellow road tape. A 2009 award noted the environmentally friendly design in the massive new headquarters of A.B. Data, a direct marketing ﬁrm, where a cubicle farm was reenvisioned as an “interior streetscape” with sustainable features such as cork and bamboo wall panels, stained concrete ﬂoors, and skylights. Two 2008 City of Milwaukee Urban Design Awards also went to the Lad Lake project and the Brochach Irish Pub, which opened in a restored restaurant space on the city’s lower east side, built over a century ago with “Cream City bricks” of local clay. While industrial, corporate, and residential projects consume a great deal of his time, Katz reserves his greatest enthusiasm for liturgical architecture. This passion was born in graduate school, when his thesis analyzed the use of daylight in modern and ancient structures across Europe. Katz sees the creation of sacred space that bridges the gap between the human and the divine as “one of the most important ways architecture can affect people’s lives. It can unlock some chemistry, create a transformative experience.” The questions that guide him in his designs are no different, Katz says, than those asked thousands of years ago: “How will the space connect us with each other? How will the space raise our consciousness of the divine? How will the space connect the congregation to our traditions?” 35 Several aspects of his recent Congregation Emanu-El B’ne Jeshurun project reﬂect these concerns: the Golden Mean proportions carried throughout the building itself and its design details and furnishings, and the sustainable nature of the temple that honors God’s creation. Even “the wood columns and beams that form the structure reference the trees in the Garden of Eden, the Bible’s ﬁrst sacred space,” he says. Whether one is religious or not, it’s hard not to feel awestruck by the sanctuary’s simplicity and openness. Despite the daily challenges of smallbusiness reality, Katz remains optimistic and passionate about his work. “St. John’s taught me to bite off a little more than I can chew— to take risks,” he says. “Not every idealistic bone has been beaten out of me yet.” x Above, the exterior, and at left, the sanctuary of Phillip Katz’s design for a synagogue in Milwaukee. His goal was to connect congregants with each other and with the divine. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } �{Alumni} 36 1954 BERNARD E. JACOB became a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Hofstra Law School in 2008. He continues to live in New York City, where he has been since 1969. His wife, Phyllis Gangel-Jacob, is a retired Justice of the New York Supreme Court. They have two children and four grandchildren. Jacob intends to brush up on his Greek by joining a reading of Medea at Hunter College. 1955 HAROLD BAUER pursues, in “retirement,” an active pace in his second life, this one as a painter, after 50 years as a symphony/opera conductor and stage director. He continues his studies at the Evanston Art Center, both in ﬁgure and still life, where he also serves as President of the Board of Trustees. He has become very involved in Rotary, and is chair of the International Service Committee of the Evanston Lighthouse Rotary Club. “This has opened to me a ﬁrsthand involvement in humanitarian needs and projects around the world, both an awful and an immensely rewarding experience.” CAROLYN LEEUWENBURGH would have liked to have attended Homecoming but wasn’t able to, as she was caretaking for her husband, Helge. “We are ﬁghting T-cell lymphoma, which occurred on his spine. The cancer is in remission at this time, but he has neurological damage. He is learning to walk and I’m sure he’ll make it. Our three kids are great, coming to visit on alternate weekends with the grandchildren. The care and love hastens the recovery.” She hopes to see everyone at next year’s Homecoming. Meeting in Montana S FINEBERG (class of 1964) encountered another Johnnie on an organic farm in Montana: “Last month, on a visit to Bozeman, I met LOGAN JOHNS (SF09). Logan (with my youngest daughter, Jane) helps maintain the vegetable crop on the Gallatin Valley Botanical Farm, a local, organic vegetable producer in Bozeman. Returning to Bozeman is a return home for Logan (she grew up in there), but she reports that she keenly misses St. John’s and that, to sustain the spirit, she has rounded up a group of kindred souls for a local reading group. My own life goes on much as ever, teaching Greek at a wonderful, small liberal arts college in the Midwest (Knox College, Galesburg, Ill). Like Logan, I deeply miss my student days at St. John’s and try to keep the memory alive. Next term I will be team-teaching a course with a Classics colleague: “Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem,” a thinly disguised great books seminar on Greek, Roman, and Biblical texts. Team teaching is not a deployment of resources popular with college deans; it’s an expensive model, particularly when the enrollment is kept to seminar-discussion size. But even deans cannot deny how well it works. That gets one through recessions and other turbulent times.” x TEVE 1959 1960 BARBARA STOWE TOWER is very excited to be enrolled in this year’s Executive Seminars, led by Annapolis tutor MICHAEL DINK (A75), at the Cosmos Club in D.C. She also has a weekly study of the Book of Matthew with the rector of St. Anne’s Church in Annapolis, diversions which offer a welcome departure from her ongoing 42 years in real estate with her partner and husband, Fred, and their daughter, Alex Tower Sears. Beyond this her eight grandchildren are nearby, keeping things lively, with 18-year-old Isabel in the International Baccalaureate program and looking at Swarthmore, Kenyon, St. Mary’s, and St. John’s. The Santa Fe campus is out, but she’s pulling for “St. J’s on-the-Bay!” Teaching fourth-graders full time at the Key School is not enough to keep KATHERINE HAAS occupied. “Saturdays I teach Chinese all morning, to people aged 4 to 60 in 4 classes. Sundays I continue to struggle with learning Arabic (eighth year, not making fast progress).” Haas has also spent summers in North Dakota conducting ornithological research as a master bird bander, and with her daughter has conducted the longest continuous study of loggerhead shrikes in the continental United States. She still climbs the occasional tree to band nestlings, and last summer brain-tanned a buffalo hide the traditional way. She also had fun at the 50th reunion. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } 1961 MIKE GOLD has moved to Israel, along with his children, grandchildren, and Rene. His e-mail address is goldmw@gmail.com. 1963 CHARLEN [HELEN CHARLOTTE] FOSBERG KYLE is going into her 10th year as Commissioner on the Fairfax County Redevelopment and Housing Authority in Virginia. “I am in a power chair, but it has not clipped my wings. I live in a wonderful gated community, Little River Glen apartments, for moderateincome, independent seniors. A senior recreation center is part of our complex of national prizewinning architecture and landscaping. The people who work here love us. It shines through everything they do.” 1964 JEREMY LEVEN has just completed directing the Paris shoot of his next ﬁlm for Warner Brothers based on a script he wrote entitled, “A Girl on a Bicycle,” and has begun shooting the second part of the ﬁlm in Munich. “The studio has placed me in an apartment at the intersection of Keplerstrasse and Copernicusstrasse,” says Leven. “They meet at last (again?). Is St. John’s ever far away from my life?” 1965 ALLENNA LEONARD recently completed a one-year term as president of the International Society for Systems Science, which involved organizing the annual conference on the topic “Governance for a Resilient Planet” in Waterloo, Ontario. Leonard also enjoyed a long �{Alumni} Labor Day weekend visit from daughter TAMBRA (SF) with her husband, John, and son James, age ﬁve. 1966 JULIA (BUSSER) DU PREY is still performing music: singing, ﬂute and recorders, as well as writing poetry, impassioned letters to the editor of her newspaper, and memoir material that may someday turn up in book form. She is part of a philosophy study group, gardens, and still loves swimming, hiking, biking and other similar sports that get her out into the countryside. “My big news is that both my children, Nicolas and Beatrice, are now married, and we are expecting our ﬁrst grandchild in late November.” 1968 REBECCA (BECKY) TENDLER (A) is a psychologist in private practice in Philadelphia. She works with children and adults and has special interests in psychoanalytic psychotherapy and the treatment of trauma and attachment issues. Her son, Seth Munoz, and his wife, Kate Delany, are both teachers and they have a daughter, Samara, who is almost two. 1970 LES MARGULIS (A) has returned to Sydney, where he currently lives with his Australian bride of 13 years. For the last eight years he has been moving around the world on a regular basis, running ad agencies in trouble (before he arrived and hopefully not after). He just ﬁnished up 18 months in Mumbai. Prior to that assignment, he was running or consulting to agencies in Sydney, Bucharest, Kiev, Moscow, Tel Aviv, USA, Johannesburg, and Dubai. On the way he had a teaching fellowship at the University of Florida to teach advanced branding and strategy. He doesn’t know what’s next, but Otters and Porcupines M ARY GEOGHEGAN JOLLES (SF74) is beginning her 14th year as principal of Colebrook Elementary School, a rural K-8 school of about 300 students in the northernmost part of New Hampshire. Her husband, JOHN (SF75), is a small contractor who currently serves as president of the local chapter of Habitat for Humanity, the Two Rivers Habitat. They are building a house for a family just across the Connecticut River in Vermont. “Our sons Philip (33) and Karl (29) live in Carbondale, Colorado. Phil is an electrician, and Karl is foreman of a construction crew. Our daughter, Diana, is working on her doctorate in biology/plant systematics at Claremont Graduate University in California. We have one grandson, Owen, who lives with dad Phil in Colorado.” About ﬁve years ago, Jolles took up a new hobby—downhill skiing—and now enjoy the winters much more! This joins hiking, of which there is plenty to do in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. “We see lots of wildlife where we live, most recently an otter who came to our pond to dine on crayﬁsh, as well as a porcupine that has been making daily visits to a large apple tree in our yard to chow down on the apples.” x 37 plans to enjoy the ﬁne weather down under, as well as the affordable and high quality wines. MARTIN ROSENTHAL (A) has recently published The English Teacher and The Golden Avatar under the pen name Phillip Ahtmann. The work, which is available on Amazon.com, can also be found at www.TeacherAndAvatar.com, where it can be purchased with a 50 percent discount (code: YM8H7XEM). Rosenthal describes the work, which has a chapter based on his experience at St. John’s College, Annapolis, thusly: “A middleaged Hare Krishna disciple, obsessed with his vision of Lord Chaitanya, the Golden Avatar of Vishnu, struggles with his own bipolar personality while teaching English in an unsympathetic New Orleans public high school. Though he is a gifted creative writer and educator, he must deal with many disrespectful and hyperactive students who go unchecked by administrators, while he endeavors to teach those sincere and gifted students who appreciate him.” SUSAN SWARTZBERG (SF) will spend October in Europe, ﬁrst to France to visit friends, and then to Spain to be with her son Josh and his extended family, with a side trip to Bilbao to see Gehry’s Guggenheim. 1971 October 2010 will bring the publication of a ninth book by JOHN STARK BELLAMY (A), The Last Days of Cleveland (Gray & Co.), which includes a hairraising account of his very ﬁrst disaster. LYNNE BUNDESEN (SFGI) moved to Cape Town, South Africa, from Santa Fe, and would be interested in any alum who would want to have a seminar now and then. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } Recall, Inc., a private detective agency started by MICHAEL VICTOROFF (A), has mostly shifted from forensic toxicology to medical information systems. He is Chief Medical Ofﬁcer for Lynxcare (health record summaries and personalized research for patients with complex conditions), and is also Chief Medical Ofﬁcer for Parity Computing (unstructured data management, natural language processing and knowledge discovery)—trying to teach computers how to read medical records. He continues to work on the classiﬁcation and epidemiology of medical errors for various patient safety organizations. Victoroff is also a member of the Steering Committee on Serious Reportable Events (“never events”) of the National Quality Forum, and has just developed a website for the Federal Drug Administration to collect reports of adverse events related to electronic health records. He teaches off and on at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, having put teaching bioethics into hibernation as “nobody is interested in ethics during a recession,” and has abandoned writing his toxicologic terrorism thriller because folks at Homeland Security pointed out that it outlined a usable blueprint for a new class of WMD. He still teaches Aikido and competes in shooting sports because violence is never boring. His wife, Hilary, is a nurse practitioner in the Colorado Department of Corrections, working with people whose complexity of medical illnesses are only exceeded by the complexity of their lives, while his son Tristan (29) ﬁnished his MPH at the University of Washington and is on the way to Atlanta for a threeyear fellowship at the CDC. Daughter Ariel (26) teaches math in Breckenridge, Colo., where she and her husband fully exploit the recreational opportunities of the high country. �{Alumni} 38 Urgent Anthropology Through “a lens and mirror,” Harold Anderson (A72) captures endangered cultures H By Sara Luell (A09) Anderson currently lives in Greenbelt, Maryland, where he pursues cultural research as an independent contractor and teaches cultural and urban anthropology at Bowie State University. Most recently, he helped to establish a new program at Goucher College: a Master of Arts in Cultural Sustainability. The degree program was created by a group of professionals, including Anderson, with diverse experiences in cultural sustainability for both the public and private sectors. The program founders incorporated into the program the information they wish they had known before entering the ﬁeld, including good business practices and the effective use of social media. Many Johnnies, he suggests, would be a good ﬁt for the program. “People coming out of St. John’s already have that core ability to think for themselves and to think deeply,” Anderson says. “Cultural sustainability requires you to have a big picture. You have to be able to think of things on a larger scale, which St. John’s students generally learn how to do.” Of all the works on the Program, Anderson’s favorite remains War and Peace. “I always read the second part—the part that nobody reads,” he says. “Tolstoy harold anderson arold Anderson (A72) describes himself as a “content provider.” This “content” is, in a word, culture. Anderson studies and documents diverse cultures, from New Zealand Maori to a small, historically African-American community in Virginia. The research Anderson assembles, including articles, documentaries, recordings and photographs, is used by institutions such as the Smithsonian and by those small, historic communities, many struggling to hold onto their distinctive culture. Anderson works to promote the “cultural sustainability” of communities in danger of being overwhelmed, destroyed, or absorbed into larger cultures (a ﬁeld also known as “urgent anthropology”). Documenting the history, language, music and traditions of endangered cultures has value for those within the jeopardized community as well as for the larger world, where language and culture loss pose an analogous threat to the loss of species. “I try to expose the positive or beautiful, the affective aspects of culture,” says Anderson. “I try to render those into a form so that people both within and outside a culture can see these aspects.” Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, Anderson has spent much of his life in Maryland, pursuing his diverse interests. He has a great love for the Chesapeake Bay and has documented the lives of local watermen. He earned a doctorate in ethnomusicology at the University of Maryland. He is also an accomplished photographer and jazz bassist, and spent nearly 20 years living in New Zealand, where he was a Mozart Fellow (a prestigious residency for composers) at Otago University in Dunedin. talks about what I would describe as a calculus of history, and I really like his views on the relationship between the masses, between democratic forces.” Tolstoy’s discussion of democratic forces is reminiscent of Anderson’s work: it is similar to the struggle between a dominant culture or force and a smaller culture in danger of being overwhelmed. One of Anderson’s projects, a documentary called “Community Voices: The Nauck Community Heritage Project,” illustrates his work as a content provider. In the documentary, he pieces together photographs, videos, recordings and blueprints of the community to create a rich view of the people in Nauck, a historically AfricanAmerican neighborhood in Arlington County, Virginia. Developers are buying up land in the area, displacing locals. But the owner of a small-town barbershop refuses to sell, saying, “I don’t want that little money—this place means something to me.” It’s a testament to Anderson’s skill that he is able to let the words and pictures of the community speak for themselves. He doesn’t narrate. “I call what I do ‘documentary as (mediated) cultural autobiography,’—I act as a lens and a mirror. The skill in what I do has to do with whether what I put out there is actually representative of the community and its people. It’s not in whether I actually make them survive—I have no control over that. I just try to do justice to people’s feelings and who they are. From that point of view, [the Nauck documentary] was a rousing success, as the community loved the whole piece. And that’ll have to do.” x Harold Anderson documents endangered communities. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } �{Alumni} TRAVIS PRICE (SF) has completed his 15th international Spirit of Place installation as the launch event for Helsinki Design Week; his next will be grander as the key event for 2012 World Design Capitol—Helsinki! Also, his new book “The Mythic Modern: Architectural Expeditions into the Spirit of Place” will launch this coming spring 2011. 1972 MARY BETH (BETSY) SANDERS (A) married Craig Sanchez (A) and moved to Toronto in protest of the Vietnam War. A few years later they divorced, and later still, Sanders had a son, Michael, who is now 28 and married. She is semi-retired and starting to write again, and has obtained a BPh from Thomas Jefferson College in Allendale, Michigan. She would love to hear from former classmates and friends, and can be found at marybethsanders10@hotmail.com. 1973 This past summer ERIC O. SPRINGSTED (SF) and his daughter, ELSPETH (SF07), undertook to walk the medieval pilgrimage route across northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela, crossing the Pyrenees and drinking from the Fountain of Roland, arriving in Santiago 500 miles and 32 days later to meet the rest of the family. “Along the way there was a lot of discussion of The Canterbury Tales, which was surprisingly relevant and a lot truer than we imagined in seminar. There was also a lot of discussion of Don Quixote, and Tolstoy— who wasn’t as relevant to the journey, but both of us like him.” Soon after returning Springsted ﬁnished as interim senior pastor at Georgetown Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., and is now working on several 39 writing projects back in New Jersey, where Elspeth is working on pre-med courses. published a book titled The Major Plays of Horton Foote (Mellen 2010). MARIA VAN BEUREN (A) is editorin-chief of Toad Hall Press, which is publishing Annapolis tutor Jim Beall’s second book of poetry, Republic, in two editions, the English edition (August 2010) and the international edition, in Italian (October 2010), translated by Sabine Pascarielli. Toad Hall Press is an offshoot of Toad Hall Writers’ and Artists’ retreats, which Maria hosts at Toad Hall in New Hampshire. The retreats are invitation-only and have been attended by artists, writers, and poets from across the United States and Europe. Members of the SJC community are encouraged to visit the Toad Hall website, toadhallmedia.com, and are welcome to nominate themselves for an invitation. VIRGINIA HUNT (SF) warns her life is not an easy ﬁt in a nutshell. “I started St John’s with the class of ‘74, married George Graham at the end of junior year, and then managed to return and ﬁnish the Program with the class of 1976. We lived mostly in Santa Fe, spent not quite a year in L.A., back to Santa Fe, then back to Ohio, following the siren song of my family farm in rural southeast farm country there. When George returned to Santa Fe, I remained in Ohio and worked at the thoroughbred race track there, running a little leather business out of my living room workshop while looking after elder relatives. I spent the 80s playing keyboards with the reggae band Identity, acting as their road manager—600 miles a week for 8 years. We made three albums on the Mango label in the late 80s. In 1990 I married again, had a daughter, gained stepchildren, and everybody grew up and took over their own lives. My husband Stephen and I are building our own farm in beautiful Geauga County in northeast Ohio. We have two horses, a cat, a daughter and her boyfriend living with us here. I took a master’s degree in community counseling in the early 90s, am licensed as a clinical counselor, and have worked as a school psychologist for a few years. Now I work for Hospice of the Western Reserve. Life is good! Sixty years approaches, hard to imagine. I remember ﬁnding it difﬁcult to imagine I would be 46 when the century turned. Anybody wants to contact me can use huntdacosta@ roadrunner.com.” 1974 PAULA HARTMAN COHEN, now PAULA BEHNKEN (SFGI), has been living a good, mindful life in rural southern Vermont/western Massachusetts, and is happy to report that she’s now married and enjoying grandmotherly duties to ﬁve beautiful babies. She is still writing for the local newspaper and a few magazines, and welcomes e-mails at phcohen@nasw.org KAREN J. COOK (SF) has been teaching graduate-level courses as an assistant professor in the department of library science at Clarion University of Pennsylvania since August 2009. TOM DOLAN (A) received his MS in Nursing from Regis College. He is teaching medical-surgical and community health nursing at several local schools of nursing. ROBERT W. HAYNES (SF), is now a professor of English at Texas A&M International University in Laredo, and has recently 1976 TED BURKE (A) dropped by the college in August to say “hi.” He’s in good spirits. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } 1977 ED KAITZ (A) is devoting himself to painting as much as possible, and is having some success selling his artwork. He hopes to be curating an art show in 2011, featuring artwork inﬂuenced by Great Books of the Western World. Smaller works of his can be seen and bought as prints or greeting cards at www.EdKaitz.imagekind.com. JUDY KISTLER-ROBINSON (SF) has recently returned to life in the suburbs of Dallas after a brief trip to London, York, Edinburgh, and Glasgow with MIRIAM MARCUS-SMITH (SF76). “Miriam was in England for two weeks before I arrived, and had previously visited Edinburgh and York two years ago,” says KistlerRobinson, “so she was the experienced guide in the ways of British travel. The trip was not nearly long enough, so a return trip to see more of Scotland (especially the Hebrides and highlands) will be necessary. One small highlight was seeing the statue of David Hume across from St. Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh (the statue was wearing a safety cone dunce cap at the time), and Hume’s tomb in nearby Calton Cemetery, next to the tomb honoring ScottishAmerican war dead. Upon retiring from the Foreign Service in 2005, CORRY MILLER WEIERBACH (A) launched a second career, receiving an MDiv from Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Va., last May. She was ordained as an Episcopal deacon in June. “Now I’m looking for a spot in a parish nearby my home in Arlington; I expect to be ordained an Episcopal priest within a year. This work really agrees with me, though I am not relishing the prospect of being called ‘Mother Corry.’ Yikes!” �{Alumni} 40 1978 MICHAEL CIBA (A) received his Doctor of Ministry degree from Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Va., in May. He continues to serve as a Regional Minister for the Connecticut Conference of the United Church of Christ. TERESA FABI (A) has just celebrated her 25th year at the Brooklyn DA’s ofﬁce. “As chief of Crime Prevention, my job is to develop and oversee many of his initiatives. Having spent the better part of my career putting people in jail, I can honestly say that it is far more rewarding ﬁguring out ways to keep them out!” On a more personal note, Fabi reports she is ofﬁcially an empty-nester, as her daughter Elizabeth just started her senior year at Barnard, and Fabi has delivered Robby to Oberlin College. 1979 TOM WELLS (A) is sad to report that his wife of almost 30 years, Kathleen Murphy, died this past June 11 from CJD, a rare form of dementia. “We were able to take care of her in our home in Bozeman all the way,” Wells says. “Our son, Matthew, who completed his freshman year at Santa Fe, stayed home and helped care for Kathleen as well. The good news is that even as Kathleen’s cognitive capabilities declined, her sweetness and good heart never failed.” 1981 DORY (EISENBEIS) CULVER (SF) just swam from Alcatraz to San Francisco, and loves receiving pictures of Nick Cullander’s (SF80) children. A criminal defense lawyer for the past seven years and a public defender in Washington State for the past ﬁve, MARK LANGLEY (SF) has just completed a threeyear rotation representing defendants charged with the most serious felonies. Langley has also completed a novel on the law school experience, titled “Tier One: Law School Odyssey” which he is actively trying to get published. If successful, it will be under the nom de plume Xenophon. He is also working on another novel with a co-author. With his wife of 24 years, Alma, he’s working with a start-up company that is developing wind farms for green energy, she in business development and he as general counsel. “I was thinking that I was slowing down a little,” he writes, “but maybe that’s an illusion.” MARILYNN R. SMITH (SFGI) still loves living 35 or so miles north of Houston. She has been caring for grandchildren before and after school while their parents work, and lately has also been caring for her daughter as she recovers from surgery and under- Single, Studying, Surfing S WILLIAMSON (SF89) has returned to school full time, pursuing a PhD in political science at the University of Connecticut after spending the last 16 years as a full-time tattoo artist and part-time student. His primary areas of interest are Latin American politics and political psychology. “This summer I made a preliminary trip to Colombia in order to narrow my research agenda so that I can frame a dissertation topic when that day comes (in about two years).” He is still single, with one dog, and learning to surf.x TEVEN goes chemotherapy. “One of these days, we’re going to make the trip to Santa Fe and Albuquerque again. We all love that entire area!” Last year, DANIEL VAN DOREN (A) made a pact with himself to read all the books in his house that have lingered on the shelves for years gathering dust and waiting to be read. So far he’s managed 19 in the last 14 months, which he feels is a good pace, especially considering that he got through only 3 to 4 books the previous year. “For the sake of variety, I try to alternate between ﬁction and nonﬁction; in the past month, I read The Double Helix by James Watson and Bee Season by Myla Goldberg. I ﬁgure that I’ve got at least another 10 years to go.” Van Doren has also started his second year on the Board of Visitors and Governors and is currently serving on the Finance Committee. If alumni have anything they’d like him to bring to the board, he says, just ask. LOUBNA A. YOUSSEF (SFGI) got her PhD from Cairo University in 1988; her thesis was titled: “The Evolution of Wordsworth’s Prelude: A Study in the Growth of a Modern Epic.” Since graduating she has been teaching in the Department of English at Cairo University and is at present both a professor in that department and in the Rhetoric and Composition Department at the American University in Cairo. Her brother, Hesham Youssef, is now an ambassador and is the Chief of Staff of the Arab League. At present he lives in Cairo with his wife and two sons, Ahmed and Youssef. “I have a son who is married, and Sarah, his wife, is seven months pregnant. Cannot wait to be a granny!” Loubna has been trying to ﬁnd a classmate of hers, named HELEN YOUNG, for many years, and asks fellow alums for any help in locating her. “She lived in Boston at the time and I spent some time with her in her family home in 1981, but I do not { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } have her address. She must have married and might have a different last name.” 1982 A registered nurse, PHILLIP E. BOVENDER (A) has been named the 2010 recipient of the Donna Dorsey Award by the American Red Cross of Central Maryland in Baltimore. The award, Maryland’s highest for Red Cross nursing, honors outstanding volunteer efforts in emergency services and is named for the former executive director of the Maryland Board of Nursing. Active in the local Disaster Action Team, Bovender was deployed to Mississippi for a tornado and then to Nashville, Tennessee in May for the ﬂood. He is a clinical instructor for the University of Maryland School of Nursing and an Emergency Department nurse for the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions. Last May, DON DENNIS (SF) published a book titled Orchid Essence Healing, about the range of ﬂower essences he makes with orchids. You can read all about it here: www.healingorchids.com/livingtreeorchidsproducts/book.html. 1983 JEFF MCCLELLAND (SF) is living in Nanning, Guangxi, China, where for the past 18 months he has been working on a project building farms in Dahua. “I work with a NASDAQ company which until recently was Chinese operated and originated here in China. I am learning Chinese (slowly) but I must admit it is faster than I learned Greek!” Of Chinese cuisine, writes: “they eat everything—weeds, branches, bamboo, frogs, peacock, cobra, lily bulbs. It has been quite an experience.” He wishes his best to all who’ve made it and are still working to make it, and can be reached jdmac59@hotmail.com. �{Alumni} JOHN “JOHNO” OBENAUER (A) lives near Memphis, Tenn., with his wife, Michelle, and daughter Lily (age 5). (Yes, somebody actually married him.) He wastes his time watching TV comedies (The Simpsons, Big Bang Theory, The Daily Show), reading Facebook, and lusting electronic gadgets. At work he’s the group leader for bioinformatics (a combination of molecular biology, computing, and statistics for ﬁnding disease genes) at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Michelle works for Medtronic in regulatory affairs, submitting medical devices to the FDA for approval, and Lily started kindergarten this year and enjoys gymnastics. CLINTON PITTMAN (A) is getting a master’s in healthcare administration, with lots of reading, even by Johnnie standards. In the meantime he’s looking for a real job to help tide things over. Marshmallow Pie A www.easterislandjournal.com. We welcome comments, hellos, etc.” NTHONY CHIFFOLO (AGI94) and co-author Rayner “Rusty” W. Hesse, Jr., combined their love for cooking with their enjoyment of watching movies in their latest cookbook project, Cooking with the Movies. They selected 14 noted ﬁlms and created recipes that will enable the reader to prepare and serve the very dishes featured in the movies. Thus, if one has a hankering for Quail in Rose-Petal Sauce as shown in Like Water for Chocolate, or Veal Pancetta from Big Night, or a decadent Marshmallow Mermaid Pie from Waitress, the recipes are there. You can even invite your friends over to enjoy the last meal served on the Titanic, and then watch the big ship go down once again. x After spending two years in Taiwan collecting data for his dissertation on transnational bioscience entrepreneurship, JON YING (A) is now a lecturer in the Department of Labor Studies and Employment Relations at Penn State. He is on track to compete his PhD from the ILR School at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., in May 2011. JULIE TURKO (SF) is the Director of Corporate Relations for Southwest Human Development, a nonproﬁt agency that provides services for children birth-to-ﬁve in the areas of child health and welfare, disabilities, early literacy, and training for early childhood professionals. “I always enjoy hearing from Johnnies in and out of Arizona! jturko@swhd.org.” 1991 1992 Thoroughly enjoying retirement, RONALIE A. MOSS (SFGI, EC95) is reading about Paul Cooley biking and keeping bees in Santa Fe. She also enjoys playing Mah Jongg, reading, hiking, making baskets, and bird watching. PHIL POLLARD (AGI) and DAWN BELTZ-POLLARD (AGI94) live in Richmond, Va., with their three beautiful daughters. Dawn teaches kindergarten and Phil teaches ﬁrst grade at Richmond Waldorf School. Phil also performs in a vaudeville-style comedy duo, The Slomski Brothers. Most of the material comes from the hilarious writings of Hegel! HAEWORTH ROBERTSON (AGI) has just published his ﬁrst novella, a murder mystery involving life settlements, an actuary, a stripper, and more. Details are available at http://silverpendantmystery.com. 41 SIOFRA RUCKER (SF) and her two daughters, ages 13 and 7, are living as tenants on a large horse and cattle farm outside of Louisville, Ky., as the owner farms it. The marketing and development director for Yew Dell Botanical Gardens, Rucker is completing a degree in Sustainable Business Practices online through University of California San Diego and planned to run her ﬁrst (and quite possibly last) marathon this fall. 1993 MARY “KAYT” CONRAD (AGI) and KAREN WACHSMUTH (A79) hold sporadic alumni meetings in Iowa City restaurants, where they share their passion for beets and books. Both work at the University of Iowa. If there are other Johnnies in the Cedar Rapids/Iowa City corridor, they’d love to know who you are! JAMES CRAIG (AGI) says that he and Nan are back on Easter Island in the Paciﬁc, working to convert his black-and-white images of the island and its people into book format. “We’ll be here until late November this trip. As always, the blog is active while we are on-island at { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } 1994 Three Graduate Institute alumni are involved in a liberal arts charter school in Colorado Springs, Colo., an enterprise with many intentional similarities to St. John’s College. Now in its second year, Thomas MacLaren School has 112 students enrolled in grades 6-10, with plans to add a grade each year. Two of its founders, ERIC HALL (SFGI94) and MARY FAITH (RANAGHAN) HALL (SFGI97), met at St. John’s. Founding faculty member CARTER YOUNG (SFGI08) joined the school as a teacher in its ﬁrst year, 2009-2010. MacLaren students read original texts (many of which are on the Program) and discuss them in two-hour seminars around a table. MacLaren students read many of the same books as Johnnies, such as Pride and Prejudice, The Communist Manifesto, Crime and Punishment, The Iliad, The Odyessey, Plato’s Republic, Aristotle’s Ethics, Dante’s Inferno, and Descartes’s Meditations. MacLaren’s full reading list can be found here: www.maclarenschool.org/ readinglist.pdf 1995 ASHLEY OLIVER (FISHER, SF) and her husband, Robert, welcomed twins: Barbara Elisabeth and Nicholas Edmund, on August 8, 2010. Ashley has spent the past 11 years teaching in Dallas and Ft. Worth Catholic schools, but now looks forward to staying home with the kids and building up their Goju Ryu karate school’s enrollment. �{Alumni} 42 RICHARD E. MILLER (A) has returned to the faculty after two terms as chair of the Rutgers English department, where he is teaching large lecture courses for the ﬁrst time in his life. He hopes to spend the big 5-0 next year biking and or hiking somewhere he’s never been before. 1984 PETER GREEN (A) got married September 25 to Babette Audant, whom many met at the last reunion. They are living in New York and having a ball. Babette, a former chef, is ﬁnishing a PhD in geography and teaching at Kingsborough Community College. Peter is a reporter with Bloomberg News, covering politics and foreign affairs, and trying not too eat too much of Babette’s feasts. A love story: On a trip to Europe in July, JAMES HYDER (A84) proposed to LESLIE SMITH ROSEN (A82) in the gardens of the Schoenbrunn Palace in Vienna. “We reconnected last fall, 28 years after Leslie’s graduation, with the help of some (non-Johnnie) mutual friends, and although we weren’t good friends in college, we quickly became very close,” writes James. Rosen said yes, and they expect to tie the knot next summer. “Leslie lost a breast to early-stage cancer in May, but has made a splendid recovery, and the outlook is very good,” writes Hyder, who was glad to be around to help. Rosen is dean of general studies at the Shoshana S. Cardin School, a private Jewish day school in Pikesville, Md.; James is editor and publisher of LF Examiner, a business newsletter that covers the giant-screen ﬁlm industry. TOM LOVELAND (A) has enjoyed a month of R&R in Italy this summer, with a 10-day writing workshop. Carol and Laura, seven, and Micah, almost three, are great, and his business does well. He has been appointed Baltimore’s “Google Czar” to attract Google’s ultra-high speed Fiber for Communities project here, and now leads Baltimore’s Broadband Task Force. He cofounded the Baltimore Angels investment group last year, and the Maryland IT PAC this year. VIRGINIA MCCONNELL (AGI) was recently recognized for her philanthropic work as the Founder of Boulder Friends of UNICEF by the Boulder (Colorado) Chamber of Commerce in the Women Who Light the Community 2010 Awards Luncheon. 1985 GENEVIEVE JACOBS (A) earned an unintentional place in oceanic travelling history with mention in A Speck on the Sea: Epic Voyages in Improbable Vessels, by William H. Longyard, published by McGraw Hill. In 1983, she left St John’s Annapolis to sail with her husband, Claude Desjardins, aboard their 18-foot sloop to Australia. She stowed a few of the great books in paperback to read and swap along the trade winds route. After 12 years as a foreign service ofﬁcer, CAMILLE PISK DONOGHUE (SFGI) has begun her second career: teaching language arts at Ortiz Middle School in Santa Fe. 1987 MICHAEL VITAKIS (A) has returned from a year in New Zealand on the South Island, having ﬁnished promotion on his previous book, She and I: A Fugue. He is now in the midst of production on a two-volume set on the Canadian-American feminist writer Mary MacLane (1881-1929), which he thinks will top out at 1,300 pages and be out in 2011. As always, he welcomes hearing from Johnnies. 1988 1990 JAMES O’GARA (A) has returned from a year in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and is enjoying the comparatively dust-free environment of Washington, D.C. as well as that blessed American innovation known as the weekend. KEVIN (SF) and KHIN KHIN GUYOT BROCK (SF88) live with their son, Christopher, in Santa Clara, Calif., where they garden and rearrange boxes of books. Kevin is close enough to bicycle to his work at Citrix. Khin Khin and Christopher play together most of the day. At 2 ½, Christopher loves books and trains and helping with the vegetables. They love being parents and look forward to adopting a second child, hoping have as strong a relationship with the birthmother as they do with Christopher’s. They ask that if anyone knows a woman who is thinking of placing her baby for adoption, to please tell her about them or have her contact Adoption Connection, their adoption agency. JOHN PILLETTE (A) started his own class action employment law practice in San Francisco this summer. “If you work in California, odds are you’re owed money by your employer, so give us a call. On the web at pillettelaw.com.” 1989 AMANDA MARIE DALTON, formerly AMANDA DALTON FERNANDEZ (A), will be studying at Nouveau Clown Institute in Barcelona for the Third Master Class, and will also be performing in the Comedy Review “Cabaret Cabron”at the newly founded theater Asociacion de Freedonia on the Raval. Freedonia will feature outrageous off-the-wall comedy in the spirit of the Marx Brothers, but with a modern twist for young adult audiences. “I plan to live in Barcelona for at least the ﬁrst part of 2011 and then...who knows? I will be writing about it on my web page www.mandydalton.com.” After managing logistics operations at Sandia National Laboratories, DAVID DEPOLO (SFGI) in 2007 started a small consulting business for proﬁt and nonproﬁt organizations. Currently he is serving as general manager of a country club in California and partnering with local and state agencies completing construction of a water treatment facility producing cost-effective recycled water for golf course irrigation and regional agricultural use. He can be reached at david@greatcommunications.org. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } Last April, NELL and KILIAN GARVEY (SF) welcomed their ﬁrst child, a beautiful little girl they named Maris. “She loves to stick out her tongue and touch her nose, among other things,” they report. Kilian will be making a professional change this fall by taking the newly created position of research associate in the Department of Psychology at Bowdoin College. GRAHAM HARMAN (A) began work in September as Associate Provost for Research Administration at the American University in Cairo, Egypt. In November he will publish his ﬁrst book in foreign translation: L’Objet quadruple, trans. Olivier Dubouclez (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2010). Also in November, he will publish the ﬁrst ﬁctionalized version of his philosophical work: Circus Philosophicus (Winchester, UK: Zero Books, 2010). continued on p. 48 �{Alumni} 43 Windows on the Farming Future W by Anna Perleberg (SF02) hen I moved to Brooklyn in October 2009 and discovered that my bedroom window opened up onto the ﬁre escape, I had big window-box plans: Tomato plants! Catnip! Maybe a ﬁg tree! Like many a Midwesterner’s New York dreams, the idea of growing food fell by the wayside. Yet the ambition has been reenergized by Britta Riley’s (SF00) amazing Windowfarms Project, a crowdsourced, sustainable method for city dwellers to create vertical hydroponic gardens in a window as small as 4 feet by 6 feet. The project had a dual genesis: ﬁrst, in Riley’s 2007 graduate degree from New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications program—(“We learned some electrical engineering, some programming, some Web 2.0”) and in her side gig as an environmental artist. Riley read her professor Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, which she describes as viewing “mass collaboration as the Holy Grail of crowdsourcing. Instead of menial tasks, people worldwide would be contributing creative, thoughtful intellectual property.” Simultaneously, she read an article by food activist Michael Pollan, which posited that growing some of one’s own food is the best thing an individual American can do for the environment. Riley was inspired to apply Shirky’s ideas to Pollan’s suggestion, harnessing the power of social media to ﬁnd ways to solve global problems. This inspiration, along with an interest in hydroponics, led Riley and a friend to start tinkering with Tupperware and tubing in a window in her apartment that overlooked an air shaft. “We got this thing put together that would leak all the time and was really loud,” she says, “but we got 25 vegetable plants to grow, and it was a prototype we could show people.” They invited a handful of acquaintances to Riley’s ﬁfth-ﬂoor walkup to see the setup, and each left with an interest in improving one aspect of the project. “One guy named Andy found the perfect drill bit,” Riley recalls, “so you could screw Britta Riley (right) and her friend Rebecca Bray started the Windowfarms Project to create farmers out of city dwellers. each bottle into another, making the whole system stable. I could open my window without the whole thing rattling around!” Another person discovered “drip emitters” used for irrigating lawns, which would regulate water drop by drop at a certain gallonper-hour rate. A third, more botany-oriented person came up with a solution for the novel hydroponics problem of root systems in clear plastic containers. “Exposed to light,” explains Riley, “the roots would mutate into leaves and branches, so there were no roots to absorb the liquid nutrients we were providing.” All this feedback allowed Riley and her colleagues to create a 47-page PDF instruction set, which they made available on the Internet. “Almost immediately, it went viral,” Riley says. In late July 2009, “when we went public with a social media website to chronicle people’s experiences, things started to get really exciting—this network of ordinary people gathering together to solve environmental problems.” Windowfarms currently has around 15,000 members worldwide, whose { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } collaborative tweaking has helped create two completely overhauled systems, increasing output by three times and lowering the carbon footprint by two and a half times. One participant even made solar panels to power the pumps for his massive window farm, sustaining 120 plants completely off the grid in New York City. Riley has been able to quit her day job and is working on the project full-time. “We’re trying to ﬁgure out how we can be ﬁnancially sustainable as well,” she says. The future of intellectual property also plays a huge role in Riley’s thinking: “Hydroponics is one of the most active areas of patenting in the U.S. right now, and yet it makes the most sense as a technology for supplying fresh food to people in cities. Thus, it is an area ripe for going the way of Monsanto and the pharmaceutical industries, where a resource valuable to human life is tied up in privately held intellectual property.” To combat this situation, Windowfarms is securing patents and then passing them on as royalty-free licenses to individuals, helping valuable knowledge to remain in the public domain, rather than being owned—and parceled out—by a handful of corporations. At ﬁrst this amazing marriage of smallscale farming with the globe-spanning Internet might seem unconnected to the great books. Yet Riley thinks that Johnnies are uniquely qualiﬁed for the crowdsourcing future. “We’re starting to move into an era where interdisciplinary knowledge is really important,” she says. “We have a real advantage—an ability to have a big perspective, and some well-developed ethics as well, something we could really use right now. The message I would love to get to St. John’s people is that the tech world really needs us. I would love to see more and more Johnnies in the social media world.” Join the project at windowfarms.org. �{Alumni} 44 1996 JENNIFER (WAMSER) DESLONGCHAMPS (AGI) currently lives in Milwaukee, Wis., with her husband, Paul, and six kids: Thomas (nine), Elena (eight), Camille (seven), C.J. (ﬁve), Zachary (four), and Stephen (two). She is enjoying every minute of her almost continual maternity leave over the past nine years, so that she can stay at home with the kids. “One day I might get back to my dissertation on Nicholas of Cusa, which was left in media res, but for now there is nary a moment to spare. My love of the great books has not been neglected, however. Bedtime stories at the Deslongchamps house often consist of Homer, Virgil, Dante, Oscar Wilde, Twain!” She has lost touch with almost all of her dear GI friends, but will never lose her wonderful memories of evening seminars followed by a pint or two at the Little Campus. 1998 SARA BARKER (A) married Richard Gibson, a friend of her brother’s who she had a crush on when she was 14, which was rekindled when she chatted with him one day about Dostoevsky in her twenties, and which ﬁnally turned into a real relationship in her thirties- in March. “Rich is a public school teacher and working his way towards a masters in history at George Mason University. We live in Arlington, Va., with our whippet, Tybalt.” Barker continues to be active in theater and will be playing Queen Elizabeth in Schiller’s Mary Stuart with the Washington Shakespeare Company at the new Artisphere in Rosslyn, Va., this November; she continues to work as a communications professional, and is currently the manager of Marketing and Communications at the American Intellectual Property Law Association. GLENSCOTT COPPER (AGI) is nearly ﬁnished with the novel he began at 49 West Street while a GI at Annapolis in 1995. “I am retired from teaching, but work part time with Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Milwaukee and a volunteer diver and aquarist assistant at Discovery World Museum, and doing prison visitations for the Quakers.” Cooper is interested in forming an alumni association in Milwaukee if he could get a list of members who live near there, as Madison and Chicago are “a bit too inconvenient.” RICHARD FIELD (SFGI) welcomed the birth of twin girls, Alexandra Electra and Grace Apollonia Field, into the Field household on August 2, 2008. Among their early favorites in stories are the tales of Aesop! LEAH FISCH (A) has been asked to participate in the second season of Hoarding: Buried Alive, and is looking for people to participate, stressing that they will receive a generous stipend if chosen. “My range is basically the east coast, though I am local to New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts. ALEXANDRA BOOZER GIGUERE (A) and her husband, Dan Giguere, welcomed a second son, Alexandre William Buus Giguere, on August 4. “Little Alex is healthy and peaceful. Five-year-old Daniel, who just started Montessori kindergarten, is an excellent big brother and comedic entertainer to his sleepy parents.” JAMES PETCOFF (AGI) currently lives in Yarmouthport, Mass., on Cape Cod, where he is the director of a mental health program serving adults recovering from mental illness. He also plays bass in two bands and is working on his third featurelength ﬁlm script. When he’s not involved in the above he enjoys reading, kayaking, cooking and community theater, and feels that the year and a half that he spent at St. John’s was the most productive and enjoyable part of his life so far. 1999 MIKE BAAS (SF) reports the arrival of Alexandra Josephine Baas into the world on September 11, 2010. “My wife Tracy and I are happy with her in our new home in Orange County, Calif. Life is good, even without Level 2 green chili.” BEN FREY (SF00) and DANCER JENSEN-STARR, (SF99) were married on August 8, 2008, and are building a house on the location in the Maine woods. “We are doing the vast majority of the work ourselves, from designing the house (using the Golden Ratio whenever possible) and clearing the land, through excavation and building a 35 foot long rock wall, to our current state of building the exterior walls from super-insulating concrete blocks,” says Jensen-Starr. “It’s deﬁnitively a learning experience, and we are having a great time.” MIKE and ABBY SOEJOTO (both A) are pleased to announce the birth of their fourth child, James Augustine, in August 2009. The Soejotos, including Lucy (seven), John (ﬁve), and Cecilia (three), live in Los Angeles, where Mike is a tax attorney and Abby homeschools the older kids. Mike and Abby would love to hear from any old friends or any alumni in the area at asoejoto@gmail.com. In a Johnnyesque coincidence, HEATHER (RICHARDSON) WILDE and JOSHUA LOUIS (both A) also chose September 11th this year as a date for something positive- Heather and her husband, Leon, renewed their wedding vows of 10 years in a beautiful ceremony in the Caribbean, and Josh proposed to his girlfriend in grand style in New York (and she said yes!). { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } 2000 VALERIE WHITING (A) is moving to Panama this fall to begin as the Violence Prevention Delegate for the Canadian Red Cross in Panama, where she will be responsible for the ﬁeld management, monitoring and reporting of the Creating Safe Environments—Americas project, working with six National Societies in Latin America and the Caribbean to integrate the prevention of violence into their internal organizational systems. She is sad to be leaving D.C. after six years, but is excited about moving back to Panama. 2001 ADRIANA DE JULIO (SF) completed an MS in Environmental Public Health from Tulane University in 2006 and matriculated into medical school in 2007. This December, she’ll earn her MD. She has successfully completed her medical licensing board exams and has begun the harrowing experience of interviewing for residency positions. Along with every medical student in the nation, this March she will ﬁnd out where she will complete her ﬁveyear residency in general surgery. She is looking forward to beginning the journey of becoming a surgeon and ﬁnally getting a paycheck! After residency she plans on completing a fellowship in Trauma/Critical Care with a special focus on environmental and humanitarian disaster management. JOSH KIRKMAN (SF) has an architecture practice based in Walla Walla, Washington. TALLEY KOVACS (A), still living the dream in Charm City, has been conquered by a little nugget named Wyatt River Kovacs, born January 20, 2010. “Pure joy and exhaustion.” �{Alumni} 2002 ISABEL CLARK (A) and her husband are making art in the Mississippi Delta. JACK DOBBYN (A) and KATHRYN (BUSH) DOBBYN (A03) live in Alexandria, Va., with their two daughters, Victoria (2.5 years) and Marie (10 months), and their dog and cat. HALEY GLOVER (AGI) had a baby, Harper Stuart Matson, November 9, 2009. Harper was born nearly three months early, but came home in early January and is a happy, healthy little girl. More recently, Glover has joined the staff of the Lumina Foundation for Education as the Director of Convening Strategy. “Lumina’s the nation’s largest private foundation focusing solely on higher education issues, and in particular on increasing the educational attainment of all populations. I work at the junction of grant making and policy, designing programs that incite action around issues and using thoughtful discussion as a way to advance policy change.” JOHN RANKIN (SF) worked in politics in Washington, D.C., for a while before ﬁnishing his MBA at UCLA. He has recently started a new job at Southern California Edison, which is the energy utility that serves most of southern and central California. “I am working in a general management rotation program that will involve several assignments over the next two years. Let me know if you’re in the LA area and would like to meet up!” 2003 MEREDITH BARTON and DAVID BOHANNON (A, A99) had a baby boy, named Jackson Thor Bohannon, on January 23rd. Meredith is currently working on her PhD in environmental science at the University of Maryland, while David works for the Center for Health and Homeland Security at University of Maryland, and has also recently started pursuing an MBA at the Smith School of Business at University of Maryland. “In general we like being professional students, and LOVE being parents!” Married Life L ast November, JAMES H. HALL JR. (A00) married a woman who surpasses his dreams. A number of Johnnies made the trek to Houston, where his bride’s parents live. They had an amazing honeymoon in Buenos Aires and Mendoza, Argentina. before returning to their regular lives in Chicago. “Married life has been fun,” he says, “particularly our recent party with two million hockey fans on Michigan Avenue.” x ZACHARY CAMPBELL (SFGI) has settled in Plymouth, Minn., and is the new assistant housing director with Mary T., Inc. in Coon Rapids, Minn. “We provide enhanced social services and affordable rental opportunities with group homes, independent senior housing, assisted living, human service programs, home health, and hospice. I will be directing daily operations, capital development, institutional realignment, and mentoring managers responsible for assisted living, independent senior care, market rate townhomes and villas in Minnesota, Wisonsin, Arizona, and Maryland. I will be focused on developing greater revenues with the knowledge that in the last two years the state has cut funding for human services by 7 percent.” Campbell also notes he has two beautiful children: Ofelia Rayne, age two, and Phoenix Joseph Orion, age one. His wife, Serenity, is a licensed acupuncturist “On August 14, I married Faith Pheterson (artist, adventurer, Spanish teacher, Floridian) in Highland Park, Ill.,” writes JONATHAN LAUX (EC03). “We had a rocking good time, surrounded by friends and family from Chicago, Wisconsin, Florida, Nova Scotia, Paris, and EILEEN STREET (SFGI02, EC03) from Santa Fe. The ceremony included readings from Rumi, Zen teachers and Oriah Mountain Dreamer. At the reception we ate fantastic vegetarian food and danced like mad to West African drummers. I strapped on a djembe and joined them on one rhythm.” The couple enjoyed a week in Costa Rica following the wedding. Laux’s actuarial work goes well, and he intends to be fully credentialed in 2011, having passed eight of the nine required exams. KELLIE and BENNET PORTER (both A) welcomed Helen Siira Porter on September 10, which coincidentally was Kellie’s 30th birthday. “She’s the best present any one could ask for!” { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } 45 RYAN RYLEE (A) welcomes Johnnies to join community seminars on great books at UCLA’s new Center for Liberal Arts and Free Institutions. Two related study groups are also forming at UCLA: (1) A Plato study group and (2) a Paideia group for teachers who use or want to use the seminar method in their classrooms. To join either study group, or to be added to the community seminar mailing list, please email rrylee@hotmail.com and indicate which offering(s) you are interested in. ANDREW SNYDER (A) has started a PhD program in ethnomusicology at UC Berkeley. 2004 ANN BAUM (AGI) is at Catholic University getting her Master of Library Science degree with a concentration in law librarianship. She works in the archives of the Howard University Law Library. MARTIN GAUDINSKI (A) is in his ﬁnal year of medical school at Georgetown and planning on doing his residency in internal medicine. Meanwhile, KIMBERLY GAUDINSKI (A) is teaching kindergarten at Potomac Crescent Waldorf School in Arlington, Va. JOSHUA DIAZ (SF) started a fulltime position at Microsoft as an escalation engineer, after ﬁve years of working at Microsoft as a contract software development engineer on the OneCare antivirus and KIN mobile phone projects. The new job involves debugging the source code for Windows itself, solving critical issues for Fortune 500 companies and large computer manufacturers like Dell and HP, and writing some of the ﬁxes Microsoft pushes out to PCs around the world through Windows Update every month. In June 2009 he received his MS from MIT’s department of �{Alumni} 46 Without a Trace Jeff Dunsavage (A84) works to help families of Americans missing abroad I by Rosemary Harty n May 2009, Joe Dunsavage traveled to Honduras to enjoy his ﬁrst extended vacation in many years and to check up on a small business he had a stake in: a glass-bottom boat catering to tourists on the peaceful Isla de Roatan in the Bay Islands. The morning after he arrived, Dunsavage took a small catamaran out into the shallows of the island’s West End, telling friends he would be back in a few hours. That was the last time his friends saw him. His grieving family back home in the States found that when a person disappears in Honduras, getting help—even from the U.S. government—was harder than they could have imagined. Since the day he ﬁrst learned of his brother’s disappearance, Jeff Dunsavage (A84), has been devoted ﬁrst to trying to ﬁnd his brother, and when that proved fruitless, to helping other families of missing Americans avoid the nightmare his family endured. Since graduating from St. John’s, Jeff Dunsavage has worked in ﬁnancial journalism, media relations, and most recently, in corporate communications for McGrawHill in New York City. When his brother disappeared, Dunsavage and other members of Joe’s family in New Jersey and Oregon put their own lives on hold to try to get some answers. “After we got over our initial shock, we began calling the U.S. embassies in Honduras, Guatemala, and Belize,” recalls Dunsavage. “Everyone we spoke with asked some version of the same question: What do you want us to do?” After many phone calls, the family succeeded in getting the U.S. military to send up two Blackhawk helicopters to look for Joe— and getting chastised by embassy staff for doing so. “We had to discover on our own and make contact with Joint Task Force Bravo in Soto Cano, Honduras. Whatever help we got was with our own sweat; no one in our government volunteered or initiated anything for us. We had to know exactly what to ask for and exactly how to ask it.” The search took place too late to be useful, almost 72 hours after Joe disappeared. Family members pooled their own money and tapped their personal credit cards to pay for photo reconnaissance, but neither Joe nor the boat were found. The family tried to publicize Joe’s disappearance, but couldn’t get media coverage beyond their local newspaper. There was a brief window of hope when rumors reached the family of an American being treated for dehydration in a Honduran hospital, but the story proved false. Dunsavage was frustrated that he couldn’t get local authorities or U.S. ofﬁcials to investigate further. He estimates that family members spent about $160,000 of their own money on the search; Dunsavage mortgaged his house to cover some of the bills. In the meantime—without proof of death—the family couldn’t collect life insurance to support Joe’s two minor sons. “Life insurers won’t consider a claim without a death certiﬁcate,” explains Dunsavage. “The courts in New Jersey won’t provide a death certiﬁcate without a ﬁnding of presumptive death from the State Department, and the State Department insists that their hands are tied by regulations and that we are required to hire Honduran lawyers in Honduras to go through the court system to obtain a ﬁnding.” In the months after Joe’s disappearance, the family learned of other families who were trying to ﬁnd loved ones in Central America and the Caribbean. “From April 2009 to May 2010, a dozen men disappeared in the region, primarily around Isla de Roatan and the Guanacaste region of Costa Rica. Six of the men were American, two British, two Italian, and two Belizean— and these are only the ones we know about. We also are working with families whose members disappeared or were murdered in the region before April 2009.” With the hopes of helping others, Dunsavage created an online community called the Missing Americans Project (www.missingamericans.ning.com) to offer support and information to families of missing adults. The project has three goals: to create rapid-response capabilities that do not rely on government involvement, to advocate for the families of the missing, and to lobby for change in State Department policies that unnecessarily complicate the lives of the families of the missing. He hopes to instigate a thorough investigation into how the Department’s ofﬁce of American Citizens Services handles such cases, with the ultimate goal of changing their standard operating procedures so that Americans in trouble overseas know they can count on their government’s assistance. “Because so many Johnnies travel, I hope this will build a little awareness—if you get into trouble in this part of the world, you may not have the support you’re expecting as an American citizen,” he says. Dunsavage and his older brother were very close. In mid-October, sources Dunsavage cultivated in his investigations gave him information that indicates Joe Dunsavage encountered rough waters and most likely died accidentally. Though his family is comforted by the fact that “we did everything possible to ﬁnd Joe,” Dunsavage remains frustrated that it cost his family a year and a half and many thousands of dollars to obtain information the State Department could have found in a day or two. He plans to continue advocating for change. “This is going to be a big part of the rest of my life,” he says. x Jeff Dunsavage (A84) created the Missing Americans Project after his brother disappeared. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } �{Alumni} Comparative Media Studies, and proceeded back into the video game industry. His employer, San Francisco-based Slide, Inc., was recently acquired by Google, where he continues to work designing games. Diaz now lives, works, and reads in the Bay Area of California, and in his spare time, he eats, hangs out with nerds playing board games in bars, and chases amazing music from around the world to share with his friends. He occasionally writes stuff, mostly via twitter, because constraints are nice. CECILY MARTIN and HANSEN BERGAMINI (both SF) have not sent an update to The College in an unconscionably long time. They got married in Chicago on July 5, 2008, and welcomed their ﬁrst child, Rafe Martin Bergamini, on September 16, 2010. He was born at home and weighed 8 lbs. All are doing well. Hansen will graduate from Loyola University Law School in the spring after having attended every philosophy-based class he could ﬁnd. Cecily continues to live a life of leisure afforded to those with master’s degrees in a bad economy. ROBERT POLLACK (A, EC09) and MARY DAVENPORT (A06) were married on a rooftop in San Francisco on June 15, 2010. Johnnies in attendance included best man AMARIAH FULLER (SF11); maid of honor JULIANA SANTILLANES (SF06); bridesmaids MARIA GREGORI (NÉE SANTILLANES, SF05) and JEN FAIT (A06); PAUL GREGORI (SF05); LYDIA OSSORGIN (SF77); CHARLES (A08) and ANNA HAMM (NÉE AHERN, A06); ROBERT MORRIS (SF04); LAURA MANION (A04); NATHAN STALNAKER (A04); and DAVID JONES (AGI11). The bride and groom are back in Santa Fe, teaching for the public schools and the community college. “Awesome,” says JUSTINE STEWART (SF), of her experience as ﬁeld staff for a wilderness therapy program for adolescents and adults called Second Nature Entrada. She worked with the program in Southwest Utah for the 22 months: “I’ve learned a ton about myself and others, and hopefully have been able to leave a positive imprint on a few lives in the process.” Stewart was next headed to California to prepare for her October 9 wedding to Jason Schneider. After the wedding their was to pack up their $300 van and take themselves and their dog, Banjo, on a year-long driving tour of Central America. “Volunteer work? Paid work? Language skills? Camping and playing outside? We hope so. After that trip, we’ll see what the future holds. Feel free to call or e-mail, fellow Johnnies.” 2005 SAMANTHA BUKER (A) ﬁles this dispatch from Campo Grande, Brazil: “The dry winds of the Cerrado farmlands waft into the city as she dines on breakfast of papaya, good coffee, and enjoys the global ofﬁce that Internet connection brings.” Buker is touring farmland under the auspices of Agora Financial and has learned more about cattle, eucalyptus, and jatropha than she ever imagined. Afterward, she was off to NYC to join 19 other fellows in the National Endowment for the Arts Journalism Institute at Columbia University. She’ll cover the NY Philharmonic and the Met Opera’s latest production, as well as expand her blogosphere to go beyond her current postings at http://auralstates.com/author/ sbuker. She’s also celebrating Mahler’s 150th birthday by crafting a set of three short stories all on a theme of music, the crescendo of which will be the story about a budding conductor and his lover called “The World According to Mahler.” Around Halloween, she will be at the Libertarian Alliance’s London conference, where she will be the guest of a fantastic freedom-lover, Tim Evans and his wife, Helen. Then she’s off to Norway, where she will attend the opera and hear the Bergen Filharmoniske Orkestra—a symphony started back in 1765: “Now that’s history! Thus does the liberal arts prove its merits in advancing itself in the real world and the world of beauty.” GWEN GURLEY (A) recently just moved back to Maryland from Portland, Ore., where she lived for two years, and this fall started teaching Italian at Loyola University in Baltimore. “Before Portland I was studying in Italy for almost two years, and I received a master’s degree in Italian Studies and Linguistics from Middlebury College in 2008.” “I thought med school would be all about memorizing and I didn’t expect to like many aspects of it—but I love it,” writes JAMES HARRISON (A), now in his second year of medical school at the University of Pennsylvania. He’ll be starting clinics in January. “I’ve never worked harder, but the human body is endlessly fascinating and the way others open up to you as a physician, even one in training, is such a privilege. Philly is fantastic, my kitty Czara loves me, and my door is always open to Johnnies passing through.” YOAAV ISAACS (SF) has gotten an MA in Divinity from the University of Chicago and is now ﬁnishing off a Master’s of Philosophy in Philosophical Theology at the University of Oxford. ANDY PATTON (AGI) and KATIE LEHNER PATTON (AGI) welcomed their latest addition to the Patton household this fall. John Angus (Angus) Patton was born on August 8th, and his big brothers James and Liam couldn’t be more proud. Andy received his MBA from the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University in May and has since been working with Mountain Group Capital, a private equity and venture capital ﬁrm in Nashville, TN. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } 47 JERRY SALYER (AGI) is now a contributor to Front Porch Republic, a website devoted to literature, religion, and politics. His essays also appear occasionally in Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. Last May, SARAH STICKNEY (A) completed her MFA in poetry from the University of New Hampshire, where she studied with poets Charles Simic and David Rivard. In October she will leave for Bologna, Italy, on a Fulbright Grant to work with immigrant poets who are writing in Italian as a second language. She invites visitors. CINDY TOBIAS (AGI) has published her murder mystery, Death of a Designer, at the Amazon Kindle Store. Set during a production of the opera Samson et Dalila, murder and mayhem ensue when the scenic designer is stabbed to death while walking his dog, and his assistant ﬁnds out the hard way that all is not well in the New England Opera. A recipient of Boston University’s highest academic scholarship, ABRAM TROSKY (SFGI) has served as Presidential Teaching Fellow for most of the department’s introductory courses. In 2008, he was recognized with the annual Teaching Fellow award of International Relations and has since assisted and taught upper-level courses in each of these sub-ﬁelds. That year he passed qualifying examinations and assumed a Junior Fellowship at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, Austria. He recently accepted the Arthur Clarke Research Fellowship in Global Citizenship at the Consortium for Peace Studies at the University of Calgary for Fall 2011. 2006 NORMAN ALLEN (A) is teaching and writing. His contemporary take on Carmen is now in its �{Alumni} 48 third year at the Karlin Music Theatre in Prague. His play, Nijinsky’s Last Dance, is scheduled for performances in the Netherlands and Slovenia, while “The Eve of Friday Morning,” based on Persian folktales, will play the Oregon Childrens’ Theatre in April. He continues as chair of the English Department at Cesar Chavez Public Charter High School in Washington, D.C. “I am now in Pittsburgh, of all places,” writes AMY BARACKMAN (SF). “I just entered my second year of a doctoral program in clinical psychology at Duquesne University. I still read quite a bit of philosophy (Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, Foucault), but I now take it up with respect to the process of psychotherapy.” ELEANOR CLARK (A) is currently ﬁnishing up a master’s in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) at Brigham Young University. “The project I am working on (instead of a thesis) is to develop a curriculum for refugees who need English proﬁciency for the citizenship test. So I am happy and excited to be doing something I love.” JONATHAN COPPADGE (A) married Darren Freeman on August 14, 2010. They and their Australian Shepherd live in Eastport, and Jonathan continues to teach English and French at Indian Creek School. He is halfway through earning his master’s in English from Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College. He reminds his classmates to drop him a line via Facebook when they’re in town, with the subtle reminder, “Next year’s our ﬁver!” JACQUELINE KENNEDY (AGI) is in her third year of law school and will graduate in May. Between now and July 2011, when she will sit for the Florida Bar Exam, she is enjoying what will probably be the last of her classroom years and the fun of extended discussions about Wanted: Recipes for Eggs E DWARD BENNETT (SF03) received a master’s in Applied Anthropology from the University of Maryland in 2009 and is currently pursuing a PhD in biological anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He married Leah Barnum in May 2009. They had their ﬁrst child, future voter Zora Barnum Bennett, in February 2010. They began their ﬁrst record label in June of 2010. He has too many chickens—egg recipes are appreciated. x various complex topics. “I saw MELODY AND EVERETT REED (AGI07) and CAMILLE STALLINGS (A07) recently; we had a mini-reunion and traveled a bit in Georgia! It was great to see old friends.” Kennedy is also active in the South Florida Alumni Chapter, and would welcome any south-of-Tampa alumni to their seminars. She can always be found at kennedy.jacqueline@gmail.com. KAREN POWELL (SF) is earning a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine (DO) degree at Des Moines University. DAN AND SARAH RERA (A) have another addition to their family: Jane Patricia, born June 22, 2010. She joins her big sister, Elliott. HOLLIS THOMS (AGI) will have the world premiere of his “Passion” presented during the Bach Concert Series in Baltimore on March 27, 2011. This 75-minute work for four soloists, mixed chorus, oboe, horn, strings, marimba and ampliﬁed harpsichord is based on the Gospel of John, the Gospel of Nicodemus, and selected religious poetry. It narrates the trial and death of Jesus as seen through the eyes of Nicodemus and is a work that pays homage to the passions of Johann Sebastian Bach. 2007 AMY FALK (A) has accepted a position with AEON to teach conversational English in Japan; she will be living and working in Hachioji, Tokyo, starting in February. 2008 CHRIS DARADICS (SFGI) was wondering how to keep part of the St. John’s experience in his life, which led to the creation of Overhear, an audio program. Overhear pairs interlocutors with intersecting interests or experience for a conversation about the thing they love; visit the website online at atweoverhear.com. 2009 DALTON LOBO DIAS (A) has completed his Premedical Postbac Program at Bryn Mawr College. Now in the process of applying to medical schools, he is again working with DR. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } STEVEN HOLLAND (A79), chief of the Laboratory of Clinical Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, where Lobo Dias had worked as a Hodson intern before his senior year. The lab helps to treat immunocompromised patients through a fully integrated approach to infectious disease, incorporating the molecular genetics of the host and the pathogen as well as mechanisms of pathogenesis. SARA LUELL (A) is living in Annapolis and has been working for the Anne Arundel County Department of Health as the public affairs specialist since August 2009. She wrote a song and made a video for children about how to be sun safe as part of the department’s skin cancer prevention and sun safety program. You can see it on YouTube! 2011 NICK URBAN (SFGI) works as a web developer, typically in frameworks such as Ruby on Rails, Drupal, and CakePHP. “I believe that liberal education is profoundly important in developing one’s thinking and I would love to meet other software engineers/entrepreneurs/ developers who share my care for the thoughtful life.” x What’s Up? The College wants to hear from you. Call us, write us, e-mail us. Let your classmates know what you’re doing. The next issue will be published in March; deadline for the alumni notes section is January 30. Alumni will also be sent a call via e-mail. The College Magazine St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404 rosemary.harty@sjca.edu �{Obituaries} JACK STEADMAN (HA06) SANTA FE TUTOR Santa Fe tutor emeritus John Steadman, known to his friends and colleagues as Jack, died August 12, 2010. A native of Blossburg, Penn., Mr. Steadman was an instructor in radio repair for the United States Army from 1954 to 1956. He received his bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University of Wisconsin in 1959. He was an assistant in philosophy at Cornell University from 1959 to 1961 and a teaching fellow there from 1961 to 1962. He joined the St. John’s faculty in 1962 in Annapolis, and in 1967, became a tutor in Santa Fe. Mr. Steadman served as assistant dean from 1970 to 1972 and authored “Non-Euclidean Originals and Hints,” which is used in senior math and often in the Graduate Institute. Santa Fe tutor Jack Steadman Remembering Wendy Allanbrook By Steven Crockett When I became a tutor in Annapolis in 1970, Wendy was one of several tutors whose high musicianship and broad engagement with the curriculum made them ideal guides for one who, like me, had musical training and much to learn about the curriculum. From the start I was grateful for that guidance and for the friendship she offered my wife, Margaret, and me. In the early 1970s, as in recent years, the music tutorial was the subject of intense dialogue among the advocates of different approaches. Tutor Victor Zuckerkandl had given the tutorial a distinctive and profound character, but other possibilities were coming into view. By the mid-70s, Wendy was articulating a view of music—especially the classic repertoire—that tied it to grammar and rhetoric, and to classical notions of imitation. I had advocated a different approach, but the power of hers was undeniable and showed clearly already in her Essay on Tonal Harmony, which she completed in 1977, the year I left the college. Within six years, she had published her great book on Mozart, and soon thereafter she was writing articles in which she deepened her approach and applied it to instrumental music. Over the years I became persuaded of its ﬁtness as an account not just of the Mozart she so loved, but of a great deal of other music as well. For her part, she was moderate in her claims, and late in life she was quick, perhaps too quick, to say that her approach did not encompass music that sought, for example, the sublime. But oh, the persuasiveness of her approach: To her, the classic repertoire was a “secular divine comedy,” aiming to “engage the heart” and persuade the hearer that the music mirrored “all categories of human experience in a mode of profound urbanity.” For many years she and I had little contact, for I’d left Annapolis, and she eventually moved to Berkeley. But when in 2005 or 2006 Mr. Steadman was an outstanding tutor, particularly in mathematics and laboratory. He would frequently divide his math tutorials in two, thus doubling his class time, to make sure all students were on task and able to go to the board every day. He even divided a sophomore math archon meeting, so that the “old codgers” wouldn’t interfere with the learning of the new tutors. Students knew they could go to him for help with any subject at any time. Mr. Cornell recalls his great explanation (as a radio expert) of how electromagnetic waves worked. “Well, you know how when you step on a cat’s tail, you get this screech meowww! at the other end? Okay, now remove the cat. That’s how they work.” 49 Each dean on the Santa Fe campus knew that Mr. Steadman could be relied upon to take on any teaching or organizational task on short notice. Dean Victoria Mora says she was fortunate to have Mr. Steadman as her ﬁrst freshman math archon and freshman lab archon when she was new to St. John’s. “He made those experiences come alive; his enthusiasm for the work was infectious, and his sensitivity to ﬁrst-time participants in those classes—students and tutors alike—meant that he was always seeing things and talking about them as if for the ﬁrst time—even while he was taking us to the depths of what was there. Jack was a special sort, moved by books and moving in the world. In some she came East to live for while, to be close to her son, our conversations took up where they had left off, and this time they continued even after she returned to Berkeley. But the time was to be too short. By the fall of 2008, the oral chemotherapy that had helped keep her cancer in check for four years or so was no longer working as well; and though she had the foundation support she needed to complete a book on instrumental music, she didn’t know how much time she would have. In November that year, we spent an afternoon together in Berkeley. She took me through the wonderful music library that her practice of the art of governance had helped bring into being, and we had a meal together and talked about music—about how much musicology had grown up since our graduate school days (partly her doing), about how much one discovers by listening to music in a car, about being the parents of exceptionally musical sons, about which work of Steve Reich’s was his best (she chose Different Trains, a secular divine comedy; I chose the sublime Tehillim). That was to be the last time I saw her. In many ways, the ﬁne qualities she found in Mozart’s music were manifested in her: competence, grace, intelligence, wide sympathies, good humor, honest friendship, steadiness in difﬁculties. Like the music she so loved, she was competent, graceful, persuasive, a light against the darkness, of which her own life had had too much. In her too short later years, she was often like one of those bright “tunes” (her word) that Mozart would sometimes use to close a dark piece. In an essay she wrote about those tunes on the 200th anniversary of Mozart’s death, she urged her readers to “celebrate the enduring afﬁrmation of his commedia per musica.” I shall do likewise for hers. For those of us privileged to have known her, her memory will likewise be an “enduring afﬁrmation.” x Now a lawyer, Steven Crockett was a tutor in Annapolis campus from 1970-77. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } �50 deep sense, Jack helped all of us to see—by his example—how much our work at the college matters for our lives in the world. I felt great sadness at his passing, but I couldn’t help but smile in remembering him.” Ann Walton Sieber (A83) is among the many Johnnies who are grateful to have known Mr. Steadman. “He may well be the reason I went to St. John’s,” says Ms. Sieber. “I was a headstrong senior at the High School for the Performing Arts in Houston, a cellist, and Mr. Steadman asked to meet with the musicians in the upperlevel math classes. Instead of the typical college info session with a Q&A, Mr. Steadman conducted a seminar, with the opening question: ‘How does beauty in music compare to beauty in math?’ I was totally hooked and would consider no other school after that.” As a junior, she had language tutorial with Mr. Steadman. “He had an intensity to him that sparked my own. I remember in particular one afternoon when we met in the Coffee Shop to discuss an essay of mine, and we spent several hours getting hyped on coffee and excitedly discussing the ideas in my piece. He was a great one, and I’m thankful to him.” Mr. Steadman is survived by his wife, Ann, and three children: Sarah, Peter (SF92), and Clyde (SF90). WENDY ALLANBROOK (HA99) FORMER TUTOR, RENOWNED MUSICOLOGIST Wye Jamison Allanbrook, known to her friends and colleagues as Wendy, died of cancer on July 15, 2010, at her home in Oakland, Calif., at age 67. A renowned musicologist, she was widely recognized for her contributions to her ﬁeld, particularly for her 1983 book Rhythmic Gesture in Mozart, which developed from her {Obituaries} Wendy Allanbrook dissertation at Stanford University. Noting her death, the New York Times hailed Ms. Allanbrook as a “musicologist who altered modern ways of thinking about the music of Mozart and his contemporaries.” According to the article, Ms. Allanbrook “showed that the music of Mozart and his contemporaries was not abstract but full of topical references to music of the social environment—in particular, social dances. . . . Her work, cited by the conductor Roger Norrington and the director Peter Sellars, among others, has inﬂuenced stagings of Mozart operas and provides a standard critical tool for opera studies today.” Born in Hagerstown, Md., Ms. Allanbrook majored in classics at Vassar College. She earned her master’s and doctoral degrees in music history at Stanford University, and joined the St. John’s faculty in 1969. During her time at the college, she made signiﬁcant contributions to the study of music. From 1987 to 1990 and again from 1992 to 1994, she served as assistant dean. She received numerous awards and fellowships during her tenure at the college, including those from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. In 1994, Ms. Allanbrook went to the University of California, Berkeley, ﬁrst as the visiting Ernest Bloch Visiting Professor of Music. In 1995 she joined the Berkeley faculty. She was chairwoman of the music department from 1997 to 2003. In 2003, she was elected president of the American Musicological Society. Ms. Allanbrook is survived by her son, John Vincent Allanbrook; Timothy Allanbrook; and two sisters, Stephanie Jamison Watkins and Martha Page Martineau. BENJAMIN MILNER (HA97) TUTOR Benjamin Milner, who was a tutor at St. John’s for 35 years, died on May 23, 2010. Mr. Milner was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1928. He received his bachelor’s degree in English in 1949 from Emory University. Following two years of service in the Army during Benjamin Milner { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } the Korean War, he attended Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia, from which he received his bachelor of divinity degree in 1955. He began his graduate studies at Harvard University in 1956 and earned his doctoral degree in the history and philosophy of religion in 1965. Mr. Milner joined the Wellesley College faculty in 1959, where he taught in the Department of Biblical History. He became a member of the St. John’s faculty in 1965. In addition to many years teaching at St. John’s, he served the college as an assistant dean from 1977 to 1980, director of the Graduate Institute from 1980 to 1983 and, for several years, chair of the Campus Development Committee. A steadfast supporter of the visual arts at St. John’s, Mr. Milner was both active as a student in the college’s studio art classes and served on the Faculty Advisory Committee of the Mitchell Gallery. His service was especially important during the founding years of the gallery. Following his retirement in �{Obituaries} Remembering Ben Milner Tutor Emerita Chaninah Maschler (HA98) recalls Ben Milner: I think of Ben every day: It was on his advice that I planted camellias in front of the house. He knew that they would like the shade, and I trusted him sufﬁciently to invest in four different kinds. Even when nothing else in the yard looks happy, they do. Ben and I became better acquainted by sharing a sophomore seminar, although I seem to recollect that some time earlier in my stay at the college, when [the philosopher] Richard Rorty came to give a lecture and shared a meal at our house, Ben was there too. Ben and Rorty had been colleagues at Wellesley College. Besides, how could I fail to notice that tall, casually elegant man, almost always sporting a bow tie? My husband Henry had spent years manufacturing bow ties. So I had an eye out for them! Two observations of Ben’s stay with me vividly. Hamlet, he said, did much more killing than was necessary. In other words, Ben did not, because Hamlet had been wronged, automatically side with him. That of course came up in seminar. The other was that he thought he now understood the expression of David’s eyes, meaning the David of Michelangelo in Florence: The look in those eyes is a look of fear. That remark of Ben’s probably goes back to the days shortly after the Milner family’s sabbatical stay in Florence. It was at this time that I found out that Ben’s love of the visual arts was as strong as was my husband Henry’s. Ben was intellectually strict: For instance, he would not play along when people tried to whitewash God. But he was always supportive of students who felt morally bereft without religious support and never tried to convert others to his religious persuasion. Not until recently did I read his book on Calvin, Calvin’s Doctrine of the Church. I wish I had done so earlier so that we could have talked about it. I am grateful to the college for letting me make Ben Milner’s acquaintance. x 1998, he continued to serve as a tutor in the Executive Seminar program. In 1970, he published Calvin’s Doctrine of the Church. In addition to his responsibilities as tutor, Mr. Milner was engaged in Annapolis politics throughout the 1960s and 1970s, and was particularly active during the critical era of the civil rights movement. In his later years, along with his great love of family and the continuing joy of teaching, he became an avid gardener and painter. He is survived by his wife of 50 years, Mary Jane Milner; three children: David Baird Milner, Rebecca Milner Stratton, and Abigail O’Beirne Milner; and four grandchildren. ROBERT JOSEPH MCDONOUGH CLASS OF 1982 Robert McDonough, a distinguished attorney and banker who devoted much of his adult life to community activism and urban issues, died July 13, Robert McDonough 2010, from complications of cancer. He was 50. After graduating from St. John’s, Mr. McDonough earned his JD at Cornell Law School in 1989, then joined the ﬁrm of Harter, Secrest and Emery in Rochester, N.Y. For the past decade, he worked for JP Morgan, where he advanced from relationship manager to managing director within JPMorgan’s Private Bank and Private Wealth Management. He served as mentor and friend to colleagues and was admired for his sound judgment, keen insight, integrity, and warmth. In addition to his professional accomplishments, Mr. McDonough was a civic leader, active in Rochester’s 19th Ward Community Association and in St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church. A creative and funloving father and husband, he enjoyed home-cooked meals, movie marathons, picnics, poetry nights, themed dinners, camping trips. He learned to play the violin in his 40s, and took pleasure in discussing everything from politics to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } 51 Mr. McDonough is survived by his wife of 25 years, Anne Brockway McDonough (A84); a daughter, Mary Aurora; his sons Timothy Lazarus and William Pascal; his father, Thomas F. McDonough; two brothers; and a niece. ALSO NOTED LOUIS BEALL (CLASS OF 1939), JUNE 2, 2010 JERMAINE BODINE (CLASS OF 1963), JUNE 23, 2010 J. HARRY RAYMOND BRYANT (CLASS OF 1963), JULY 5, 2010 WILLIAM CARTER (CLASS OF 1940), SEPT. 11, 2010 GIRARD COSTELLO (CLASS OF 1960), SEPT. 5, 2010 CARL HAMMEN (CLASS OF 1944), JULY 28, 2010 JOHN HEDEMAN (CLASS OF 1943), JULY 29, 2010 ROBERT HUNT (HA07), JULY 31, 2010 JOHN LINCOLN (A74), APRIL 26, 2009 REV. JOHN LOBELL (CLASS OF 1949), JULY 26, 2010 DAVID Z. LONDOW, CLASS OF 1966, FEB. 21, 2010 MORRIS ALBERT PARSLOW CLASS OF 1948, AUGUST 25, 2010 RONALD SINCLAIR (AGI91), FEB. 26, 2010 GEORGE E. SAUER CLASS OF 1956, SEPT. 29, 2010. RICHARD ARLEN SMITH CLASS OF 1954, DECEMBER 2009 JESSICA C. STEINGER (SF98) JULY 16, 2010 CHRISTOPHER ANDREW THOMAS (A10), SEPT. 15, 2010 FRANK WARHURST (CLASS OF 1953), MARCH 13, 2010 HENRY WENSEL, JR. (CLASS OF 1946) OCTOBER 11, 2009 �{Homecoming} 52 HOMECOMING 2010 Alumni Return for a Spectacular September Weekend pierpoint photography H omecoming is a time for old friends to meet again, for Johnnies to feed their intellectual lives in seminar, for tutors to meet the children of their former students. But it’s also a time when Johnnies pause to recognize the outstanding achievements of members of the college community. The honorees this year included tutors who served the college for decades, a physician who is one of the nation’s leading cancer researchers, a woman who chose to memorialize her famous husband by establishing a scholarship at St. John’s, and a couple honoring a daughter’s memory through scholarships. Mica Ertegun became part of the college family 50 years ago when she married Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun (class of 1944). Her ties to the college deepened when she became an Honorary Alumna during Homecoming weekend in Annapolis. To honor her husband’s memory, Ertegun established the Ahmet Ertegun Education Fund with personal funds and the proceeds of a 2007 concert featuring Led Zeppelin. Through her efforts, the college now has a The college’s Ahmet Ertegun Scholarship Fund scholars: (from l. to r.) Cinar Doruk, a sophomore from Istanbul; Ali Cihansin Yildiz, a freshman from Istanbul; Sierra Nevada Dombayci, a freshman from St. Cloud, Fla.; and Halil Ugur Kupeli, a freshman from Istanbul met with Mica Ertegun, founder of MAC II interior design and widow of Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun, a 1944 graduate of St. John’s, Annapolis. multi-million dollar endowment fund to support need-based scholarships for students from Turkey. Four recipients of the scholarships were on hand to thank her. Sharing honors at the All-alumni Meeting was tutor Jon Lenkowski, who retired last May. Lenkowski joined the St. John’s faculty in 1979, and taught throughout the undergraduate curriculum and in the Graduate Institute. For 30 years he inspired and encouraged his students. After accepting his award, Lenkowski said that he still ﬁnds it remarkable that the college is able to “stick to our guns in not caving in to the. . .various educational fads and fashions of the moment. . . .” “We have achieved this not only by applying ourselves daily and constantly to the books and the work of our classes, but, Dr. Steven Forman (A70), left, and Dinesh and Jyotsna Pia, right, were honored at Homecoming. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } even more importantly, by continually reﬂecting on these activities and by daily raising anew the great question of whether it is the right way and the best way to educate our students and ourselves.” In Santa Fe, three Honorary Alumni were welcomed into the fold during the Allalumni meeting in the Great Hall: tutor �{Homecoming} emeritus Charles Fasanaro, and Dinesh and Jyotsna Pai, whose daughter, Anjali Pai (SFGI08), died in a car accident in March 2008. In her memory, the Pais established the Anjali Pai Memorial Fund in 2008 to provide scholarships to Graduate Institute students who intend to pursue, in their words, “the same goal that Anjali treasured, that is—making a serious, positive difference in the lives of children from disadvantaged backgrounds.” The memorial fund is close to reaching its ﬁrst-level goal of $50,000 by August 19, 2010, Anjali’s birthday. Charles Fasanaro joined the St. John’s faculty in 1991. He taught throughout the curriculum, helped implement the writing program, and was the ﬁrst writing archon. He also helped initiate Eastern Classics as a degree-granting program, and with Ralph Swentzell, led the ﬁrst EC seminar. He served as assistant dean from 2002-2003. He is the author of a volume of poetry, “Velocities of Rage,” and a play, “Hunting With the Moon,” which was written to help combat veterans heal the scars of their experience. Fasanaro is also president of New Subasio Institute, a nonproﬁt educational institution. In addition to naming Honorary Alumni, the association also selects distinguished individuals for Awards of Merit. In Annapolis, three individuals were honored: Steven Foreman (A70), Robert Tzudiker, and Steve Benedict (class of 1947). For Katherine Hass it was a treat to be fussed over as a member of the class of 1960. “It was all wonderful. The only thing was I was shocked at all the old people! In my brain, I expected to see classmates in their 20s. That is how I remembered them.” It was a little different for members of the ﬁrst graduating class of the 21st century, which also had a good turnout for the weekend. Though he was a regular attendee at croquet each year, Ethan Carrier (A00) waited a decade to come back for Homecoming. He found the trip well worth it. “I was surprised how much I enjoyed attending seminar, and the class dinner we had at Harry Browne’s was fun.” The highlights of Homecoming weekend in Santa Fe include the dedication of Levan Hall, which brought 150 people out to celebrate the occasion, and the Art Show. Kingston and fellow musicians, played for alumni and students at the dance. “One of the best things that happened during Homecoming was constant interaction between alumni and students,” says NancieWingo, director of Alumni Activities in Santa Fe. One of Wingo’s favorite 53 moments came Saturday evening, when she met Lester Strong (SF68) at the art show reception. “We stood in the hallway and talked about how much the campus has changed since he was a student. We walked out on to the balcony where he pointed to a magniﬁcent tree on the grassy knoll and told me that his class had planted that tree as a tiny sapling, complete with a dedication ceremony, with students dressed in togas!” Strong later joined a group of students on the balcony for a conversation between current students and one of the very ﬁrst Santa fe students. “It was a wonderful bridging of generations,” Wingo says. x Alumni and students mingled and danced. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } �{Alumni Association} 54 ALUMNI LEADERSHIP FORUM Charting a course for increasing alumni involvement O Ymelda Martinez Allison (A74) and Matt Calise (A00) revisited laboratory during the ALF weekend in June. jennifer behrens n a weeked in June, a group of St. John’s alumni assembled in Annapolis for the very ﬁrst Alumni Leadership Forum, joining Presidents Michael Peters and Christopher Nelson, St. John’s tutors, and college staff to work towards engaging more alumni in the life of the college. Alumni who return to campus always relish the opportunity to reconnect with the Program, and many signed up to revisit freshman lab and freshman math, as well as take part in a seminar on the Phaedrus. On Friday evening, several tutors sat before alumni in the Great Hall, talking about what it means to be a tutor at St. John’s. “I was once told freshman mathematics teaches itself,” offered Joseph Macfarland (A87). “It does not.” On Saturday morning Michael Uremovich, chair of the Board of Visitors and Governors, joined the presidents and other college leaders in providing a frank and detailed State of the College address. They described both the challenges and opportunities facing the college, including the need to support the academic Program in the face of increasing economic pressures on the college. They described the college’s new admissions initiatives, the need to support ﬁnancial aid and diversity efforts, and the long-term ﬁnancial picture of the college. Lunchtime included the opportunity for alumni to make the Johnnie city of { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } �55 patricia dempsey patricia dempsey {Alumni Association} Above left, Alumni including Mary Fisher (AGI92) and Steve Thomas (SF74) took part in breakout sessions that focused on issues important to the future of the college. Above right, For a hands-on bonding activity at lunchtime, Johnnies assembled their vision of a Johnnie city. their dreams, a hands-on activity that the cerebral group relished. In breakout sessions throughout the afternoon, alumni met with staff to offer their feedback on those areas where alumni input is most needed, such as communications, career mentoring, alumni giving, and chapters and outreach to chapters. A dinner at Chris Nelson’s home on the Severn River rounded out the weekend. Elizabeth Powers (A89) enjoyed the opportunity to renew her friendship with the college, but she brought two linger questions home with her to New York City: “How are we [alumni] fulﬁlling our mission in making free men and women Piraeus 2011 out of books and a balance? What role does liberal education play in helping us be citizens in a democracy?” Powers and other alumni will have the chance to take up those and other questions during the second annual ALF gathering, scheduled for the Sabine Cranmer (SF81), Robert George (A85), Ginger Santa Fe campus, June 10-12, Kenney (A67), and Jo Ann Mattson (A87) observe the 2011. Alumni interested in lead- Johnnie city take shape. ership and volunteer opportunities with the Alumni Association can join the conversation campus: alumni@sjcsf.edu or by e-mailing johnniealumni@gmail.com alumni@sjca.edu. x or contacting the alumni ofﬁces on either seminars on Halldor Laxness’ Independent People. On-campus Join your fellow alumni for a housing is not available for this Piraeus weekend in Annapolis or Piraeus weekend. Please contact Santa Fe. These continuing the alumni ofﬁce in Santa Fe for education opportunities are assistance in arranging lodging. offered on both campus and provide the chance for Johnnies Annapolis: June 2-5, 2011 Choose from two; on-campus to enjoy spirited conversation housing is available. along with social activities. Tutors Tom May and David Santa Fe: January 14-16, 2011 Townsend will lead a discussion Tutors David Carl and David of James Joyce’s Portrait of the McDonald will lead four Artist as a Young Man, along with selections from Joyce’s Ulysses. Tutors Eva Brann and David Carl will lead a seminar of Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origin of Inequality Among Men and James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans. Santa Fe: June 12-17, 2011 Tutors Keri Ames and Grant Franks will lead eight seminars on Ulysses. On-campus housing is available. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } For more information on Annapolis seminars, call the Alumni Ofﬁce in Annapolis at 410-626-2531 or e-mail Dolores Strissel, manager of Alumni Activities, at Dolores.strissel@sjca.edu. For Piraeus in Santa Fe, call the Alumni Ofﬁce at 505-984-6103 or e-mail Nancie Wingo, director of Alumni Activities at nwingo@sjcsf.edu. �56 I {St. John’s Forever} t was nearly 40 years ago, so Mackenzie Waggaman’s memory of the occasion is a little vague. As a long-distance runner, he recalls, he was the natural choice to serve as the torchbearer for a Reality Olympics Parade in 1971. “I was conscripted to run the torch down to the center of Santa Fe, with a gaggle of Johnnies in tow,” he says. “I vaguely remember the run into town, the gawking townies. I’m sure we were conﬁrming their worst fears about what was going on up on the hill.” Now an investment executive in Massachusetts, Waggaman is third from the left in this photo taken by J.R. Thompson. Alex Garklavs and Gary Wolfe are on Waggaman’s left; Steve Goldman is on the right. All are members of the Santa Fe class of 1973. Parades were once a standard event during Reality weekend, which had its genesis in Annapolis in 1955. John Oosterhout (class of 1953) decided to throw a party—with games including a barrel- rolling relay and epicycle race—which he called “The Real Olympics.” A big hit, the Real Olympics evolved into Reality, with many of the annual parties featuring a parade. These parades through town haven’t always gone smoothly. In 1958, toga-clad Stephen Almy was arrested for disorderly conduct after he tried to carry a torch from the Piraeus (City Dock) to the campus. In part because of the permits now required, Johnnies haven’t been as keen on parades in their Reality planning, though races, barbeques and beer are still popular. A couple of years ago, a group of seniors went to the trouble to get a parade permit in Annapolis, but they didn’t go through with the event. Perhaps Waggaman’s daughter Margaret, a freshman in Annapolis, may pick up the torch in a few years, and Townies in Annapolis may have the treat of watching Johnnies don their togas for a Reality parade. x { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } �{Eidos} Capturing Easter Island James Craig (AGI93) F or the past four years, James Craig (AGI93) and his wife, Nan, have spent several months each year on Easter Island. “The original project was to maroon ourselves on Easter Island for a year, me working on my black-and-white photography while Nan did some painting. It was for the adventure more than anything, and we sure got that. We were attracted by the isolation and barren nature of the place, combined with its mysteries and relatively recent connection to man’s stone-age past.” James is nearing completion of a volume of images capturing life on the island. In advance of the book’s publication, James graciously shared his photos with The College. Read more about the Craigs’ adventure on their blog: www.easterislandjournal.com, and see more of James’ photography at www.jamescraigphotography.com. Here are his stories behind the pictures: Haka Pei Girl (top right) “Tahira Nahoe, 12 years old, had just ﬁnished her Haka Pei run in the youth division, from about two thirds up the hill. . . . This is not typically a sport for women. In Haka Pei two banana tree trunks are tied together and used to sled down a long, 45-degree-angle hill on slick grass. Speeds of 60 mph have been clocked. The contestant traveling the farthest at the bottom of the hill wins.” Banana Run (top left) “The second leg of the annual marathon. The race starts off with participants rowing reed canoes (poro) across the crater lake. They then run full out carrying 44 pounds of bananas, barefoot over rocky terrain, completely around the crater. For the third leg, they carry a poro back around to the starting point and swim the lake using the reed bundle as a ﬂoat. Tuma Heke here was well on his way to winning the event.” Cave with a View (above) “Of the hundreds of natural caves on the island, this is the most used today, for family picnics, cookouts, etc. It must have once been a prize location, on the coast, close to Tongariki and Rano Kau, and right along the Moai Road.” x { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2010 } �NON -P ROFIT O RG . U.S. P OSTAGE PAID P UBLISHED BY THE COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE P.O. BOX 2800 A NNAPOLIS , MARYLAND 21404 ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED A NNAPOLIS , MD P ERMIT NO . 120 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The College (2001-2017) Description An account of the resource The St. John's College Communications Office published The College magazine for alumni. It began publication in 2001, continuing the St. John's Reporter, and ceased with the Fall 2017 issue. Click on <a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=56">Items in The College (2001-2017) Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, Md. Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context thecollege2001 Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. 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Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Title A name given to the resource The College, Fall 2010 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf 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 Type The nature or genre of the resource text Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context The_College_Magazine_Fall_2010 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Description An account of the resource Volume 35, Issue 3 of the The College Magazine. Published in Fall 2010. The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/72c6868b0a3b3cd9e07f35b563362f82.pdf 7c7dfbb413698552577be0aad9c138f5 PDF Text Text College The St. John’s College • Annapolis • Santa Fe Chopin Music’s Mysteries F a l l 2 0 1 1 �On Chopin F ranz Liszt, Chopin’s friend and fellow composer, noted of Chopin: “Music was his language, the divine tongue . . . . [T]he anguished cries of Poland lend to his art a mysterious, indeﬁnable poetry which, for all those who have truly experienced it, cannot be compared to anything else.” When paying tribute to Chopin for this issue of The College, Elliott Zuckerman references the human voice—and instruments that sing: “[E]ven in his non-vocal works the player has to ‘sing.’ ” And “it is since Chopin that great pianists have been noted for their singing touch.” Frédéric François Chopin (1810-1849) was a child prodigy in Warsaw; he wrote his ﬁrst polonaise at age seven and by age eleven he performed in the presence of Alexander I, Tsar of Russia. Chopin moved to Paris in 1831, spending his short life as a brilliant innovator in many forms, from prelude to nocturne. His nuanced, deeply felt compositions are written primarily for the piano. “For Chopin to be engraved upon your soul,” writes Zuckerman, “it is perhaps necessary to feel him in your ﬁngers, to respond to music not only as motion and sound, but texture and touch.” St. John’s sophomores in Annapolis are introduced to Chopin through examples, in particular a mazurka (Polish dance) for piano, in The Sense of Music, a book by Viktor Zuckerkandl, a tutor at St. John’s from 1948 to 1964. This mazurka is “an example for Zuckerkandl of the lively interplay between rhythm and meter in music,” says Eric Stoltzfus, who teaches the sophomore music tutorial in Annapolis. In this issue, Stoltzfus tells us how it feels to play Chopin on the cello—with Elliott Zuckerman on piano. In Santa Fe, musician-in-residence Peter Pesic prefers to perform Chopin’s works in intimate settings. “I don’t think Chopin ever imagined his mazurkas being played in a big hall,” he says. Pesic describes how in Santa Fe he introduces several preludes by Chopin in sophomore music: “We study the ﬁrst, his homage to Bach’s ﬁrst prelude, in detail, and the fourth, a miniature masterpiece of chromaticism that helps us approach the musical language of Wagner and the twentieth century.” For some alumni, encounters with music at St. John’s have been life changing. Samantha Buker (A05) lyrically describes how she “came away from my time at St. John’s convinced that music is the purest form of beauty present in the world.” Music connects us all; the deep listening that moved Buker is similar, perhaps, to the “deep reading” that “brings peace,” as novelist Salvatore Scibona (SF97), a ﬁnalist for the 2008 National Book Award, says in his interview. As much as music at St. John’s transformed Buker’s life, learning to read the St. John’s way transformed Scibona’s life. “When a book and a reader are one, the right ﬁt,” says Scibona, “it’s a deeply mind-melded focus.” Similarly, Buker describes a perfect concert in which “music, performer, and listener are as much a unity as can be.” Part of the magic of music is that it moves us. As Eric Stoltzfus says, “music is part of what makes us human, including me.” Deep listening, deep reading—these are among the wonders that The College explores. But something more makes listening to music or reading great works at St. John’s powerful: sharing the experience with others. What Buker calls “the phenomenon of a perfect concert,” Pesic calls “music as conversation.” Scibona simply notes that to have read and discussed the Program books with others is “such a gift.” The fact that individual experience is transformed by collective energy and exchange is not lost on other alumni featured in this issue. Glenda Eoyang (SF76), an entrepreneur who studied the “butterﬂy effect”—the wind from the ﬂapping of its wings can be felt on the other side of the earth—explores how ripples between and among us become the power of “many.” Entrepreneurs like Eoyang and strategic coach Dan Sullivan (A71) tap into the force and mystery of connections among us. Finally, thank you to Barbara Goyette (A73) for her inspired ideas, and farewell and thank you to the previous editor of The College, Rosemary Harty (AGI09). I am honored to carry the torch and celebrate all things St. John’s. —P.D. The College is published three times a year by St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD, and Santa Fe, NM Known ofﬁce of publication: Communications Ofﬁce St. John’s College Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404-2800 Periodicals postage paid at Annapolis, MD postmaster: Send address changes to The College Magazine, Communications Ofﬁce, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800. Patricia Dempsey, Editor patricia.dempsey@sjca.edu Jennifer Behrens Art Director The College welcomes letters on issues of interest to readers. Letters can be sent via e-mail to the editor or mailed to the address above. Annapolis 410-626-2539 Santa Fe 505-984-6104 Contributors Samantha Buker (A05) Michael Comenetz Paul Hamilton Laurent Merceron (A08) Anna Perleberg (SF02) Deborah Spiegelman James Williams Babak Zarin (A11) Elliott Zuckerman Magazine design by Claude Skelton Design �College Fa l l 2 0 1 1 Vo l u m e 3 6 , I s s u e 1 The The Magazine for Alumni of St. John’s College Annapolis • Santa Fe {Contents} 12 Connected by Chopin d e p a r t m e n t s page 2 • • Santa Fe welcomes a new dean A graduating senior on “learning to live” Chris Nelson’s 20th year as president Au revoir, John Christensen (HA99) Cheers for the orchestra! Dr. Norman Levan’s (SFGI74) generous bequest Alumni reﬂect on Reality Summer Academy debut Readers share music stories 30 biblioﬁle • Alumna Samantha Buker (A05) and tutors ruminate on musical conversations and phenomena, including the perfect concert. from the bell towers Peter Eichstaedt (SF92) explores the ravages of Eastern Africa White Asparagus serves up eclectic delights Valéry’s Graveyard: Le Cimetière marin Translated, Described, and Peopled • • • • • 20 Commencement page • • Leo Pickens (A78) reﬂects on the art of contemplation; Victoria Mora celebrates imagination. page 12 24 Reading to Write • Acclaimed novelist Salvatore Scibona (SF97) felt unqualiﬁed to write until he learned to read—the St. John’s way. 32 page 26 The Power of Many • alumni P RO F I L E S page page 32 Glenda Eoyang (SF76) and Dan Sullivan (A71) harness the dynamics of human interactions to transform lives. 32 Laura Strache (A02) hedges her bets on Wall Street 35 Bruce Sanborn’s (SFGI09) mid-life journey to St. John’s 42 Algebra is a “Faustian bargain” for Steve Morse (A68) 44 alumni voices A Joyce ride to Piraeus with Gregory Rhoades (SFGI89) 45 48 on the cover Chopin Illustration by David Johnson croquet 50 association news 52 page 38 obituaries st. john’s forever �2 {From the Bell Towers} St. John’s Welcomes a New Dean in Santa Fe Incoming Dean J. Walter Sterling earned his bachelor’s degree in 1993 from St. John’s in Annapolis, and a master’s degree in philosophy in 1997 from Emory University. He held academic positions at Loyola College, Gwynedd-Mercy College, and Temple University, and worked with Project H.O.M.E. in Philadelphia, before joining the faculty in Santa Fe in 2003. He succeeds Victoria Mora, who has been Santa Fe dean since 2006. Sterling’s tenure began on July 1. teri randall You discovered a community through Project H.O.M.E. Can you describe this experience? After teaching philosophy here and there, I spent several years working for Project H.O.M.E., a nonproﬁt that principally works to transition folks out of homelessness but is also involved in broader urban revitalization efforts. I developed and taught in a whole range of adult education classes—basic literacy, GED, college and vocational prep—working primarily with people in mental health and substanceabuse recovery programs. It was a wonderful Santa Fe’s new dean, J. Walter Sterling (A93) experience. I could go on and on about all the good things that I found there. I maintain a strong connection with that community and try Day to day, I hope to be an advocate and a support for the real to support the organization as much as I can from this distance. I work of our learning community. As far as I’m concerned, turned to that work out of some ambivalence regarding life in St. John’s stands for the greatest aspiration of education: the “academia.” But after a few years, I realized that I wanted to possibility that the human soul can be illuminated and ennobled return to my vocation as a student and teacher of philosophy. by inquiry into the whole of things. That we are acutely aware that we fall short in many ways is further evidence of how persistently What brought you to Santa Fe? high we aim. It’s an honor to serve that end, be it in the classroom I have strong ties to Annapolis. Quite strong. In addition to my or the Dean’s Ofﬁce. being an alum, my father is also an alum and a member of the faculty there. Born and bred in that briar patch! I wanted to come What about when you’re not in the classroom or the Dean’s Ofﬁce? to Santa Fe because it represented the education that I love and to My wife, Meghan, and I are driven to delightful distraction these which I am indebted, but with a new setting, fresh faces, and the days by our two little boys, Will adventure of this beautiful city and [2 years of age], and Luke [3 months]. landscape. It has been the right blend As seriously as I have tried to take of same and other, the familiar and education throughout my life, being a the surprising. father does seem to raise the stakes. I try to maintain a bit of proverbial Do you have particular goals for your balance by running and cycling; I love deanship? to run our mountain trails here. This Not yet. We all recognize that we year, on my sabbatical and in my effort are in a challenging moment for to “grow old learning many things,” St. John’s, for liberal education, for I have been attending classes at the higher education, at the very least a University of New Mexico School of challenging economic environment. Law. I’ve worked with great folks Much of the strategic work of the down there and have enjoyed “just” Dean’s Ofﬁce in the coming few being a student again. x years will involve navigating this J. Walter Sterling environment. —Deborah Spiegelman “St. John’s stands for the greatest aspiration of education: the possibility that the human soul can be illuminated and ennobled by inquiry into the whole of things.” { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2011 } �3 {From the Bell Towers} Learning how to live Kaura Mackey (A11) has deep roots at St. John’s College: she is the ninth person in her family to be a student at St. John’s; her cousin is a sophomore. The Caritas Society asked Mackey to speak at the annual April luncheon, a gathering in the Annapolis boathouse of the volunteer members who host fundraisers and other events to assist students who have unexpected ﬁnancial emergencies. Mackey spoke of her belief in the “value” of a St. John’s education: “What I do treasure most is something that unfortunately is lost on a lot of people. St. John’s gives a liberal education that is ‘education’ in the truest sense of the word. One criticism of St. John’s is that what we learn here does not have a practical application, but this is false, and I will tell you why....I have my family as proof. My aunt went on from St. John’s to become a doctor. My uncle is a diver, and he repairs boats while they are still in the water. Another aunt left St. John’s and became an artist. Another uncle became a chemical engineer. My dad is a mechanical engineer. My cousin is a computer programmer. Another cousin works for a nonproﬁt think tank in D.C.” The most valuable thing that Mackey will take with her from St. John’s is “not that all careers are open to me.” Rather, she said, it “is put very concisely by my father. If asked why he went to St. John’s, he answers, ‘I went to St. John’s to learn how to live.’ He does not mean that St. John’s teaches people what the right way to live is, but rather it gives students the tools to be able to examine our lives and decide for ourselves how we should live.” President Chris Nelson (SF70), Kaura Mackey (A11), and her mother, Surinder Mackey. Mackey, who volunteered at a local Annapolis elementary school while attending St. John’s, headed to Phoenix, Arizona, in July to begin her teacher training at Great Hearts Academy. “St. John’s is the perfect foundation to become a to clarify their opinions, and discussing among themselves to ﬁnd an answer to the societal question that needs judgment,” says Chang Liu (A14). Chang, Maryland v. Kenneth Deibler. named a Davis World Scholar “The Court of Appeals of this past winter, aspires to work Maryland is like the kind of in international law and found discussion you get in a seminar the trip to be a good ﬁrst step as the panel of judges dives into toward that goal. “Seeing the the details of the cases, asking real courtroom inspired me to questions to prompt the lawyers compare the legal systems in the United States. and China. I am going home to China this summer to explore the difference.” Alumni mentoring is not new at St. John’s, but this spring Dunn has infused it with Jaime Dunn, director of Career Services, new energy and connects students with alumni. opportunities. Alumni Mentoring on the Docket When Talley Kovacs (A04) invited Jaime Dunn, Annapolis director of Career Services, to bring students to the Maryland Court of Appeals to hear oral arguments and meet with the judge for whom she was clerking, Dunn gladly accepted. On Tuesday, May 10, nine students from St. John’s—four freshmen, two juniors, two seniors, and a sophomore—sat in on a session at the Maryland Court of Appeals. Arriving before the session began, the students were briefed on the cases they would be witnessing and visited with Judge Clayton Greene Jr. before entering the courtroom. They witnessed two cases that were on the docket: Ford Motor Credit Company LLC v. Maureen P. Roberson and Montgomery County, { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2011 } teacher, because in learning to teach ourselves, we discover how to teach others.” x To read Mackey’s speech visit the Caritas Society’s website: www.stjohnscollege.edu/friends. “Kovacs signed up to be an alumni mentor earlier this semester and visited the campus in April to talk about her experiences post-SJC in applying and going to law school,” says Dunn. Word of the Court of Appeals trip spread quickly. Several Johnnies, hearing about it from their friends, have already begun asking for similar opportunities in other ﬁelds, which Dunn welcomes. “It’s so important to me to be able to expose students to the possibilities that await them after graduation, especially if they involve connecting with alumni. I hope to do more of these site visits with alumni mentors, and I encourage alumni to contact my ofﬁce if they’d like to be a mentor and/or have students visit them at their organizations.” For more information contact Jaime Dunn: 410-6262500 or jaime.dunn@sjca.edu. —Babak Zarin (A11) �4 {From the Bell Towers} Celebrating Two Decades of Leadership Chris Nelson champions the liberal arts When Chris Nelson arrived in Annapolis as the new president of St. John’s 20 years ago, the college’s academic program was its greatest strength. That hasn’t changed. What has changed are the support structures for the Program: the college endowment went from $27 million to $135 million; new dorms were built and a new library renovated; the student body increased from 417 to 485 students; two capital campaigns were conducted, one for $35 million, the second for $134 million; improvements to health and counseling services, career services, and athletics were identiﬁed and funded; staff professionalism increased; the college’s investments were reallocated; and the Management Committee was established to better coordinate administrative matters between the campuses. For someone with no academic leadership background, this is a remarkable achievement. While Nelson is an alumnus (Santa Fe, class of 1970) and has served on the Board of Visitors and Governors, he brought fresh eyes to the job of running a small, Mike Uremovich (SFGI05), Dr. Stephen Forman (A70), President Chris Nelson (SF70), Ron Fielding (A70). unusual liberal arts college. Indeed, over time, Nelson has become one of the most active and inﬂuential liberal arts college leaders. His background as a labor lawyer helped prepare him to read political situations accurately and to react positively. And his true love of St. John’s and his cleareyed understanding of the importance of liberal education has made him a sought-after spokesperson. Such themes as “We don’t live in order to get a job. But we work in order to make it possible for us to live a good life” eloquently address today’s issues and make great media quotes. The Washington Post featured a proﬁle of Nelson this spring, citing him as one of the most inﬂuential college presidents in the country. In celebration of Nelson’s 20 years, the Board of Visitors From left, Jay Schwarz, Santa Fe Dean J. Walter Sterling (A93), Camilla Schwarz (A84), and Bud Billups, former Annapolis treasurer. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2011 } and Governors honored him at a dinner on June 18, attended by 160 of the college president’s closest friends: alumni, Annapolis residents, parents, fellow college presidents, and Maryland education leaders. Following is one in a series of tributes offered. Eva Brann, who served as dean with Chris Nelson during the early 1990s, describes his contributions. x �5 {From the Bell Towers} Chris Nelson’s 20th Year as Our President by Eva Brann, dean emerita This is an occasion, the 20th anniversary of Chris as our president, that I am truly sorry to miss. But I’m off to Tbilisi, the capital of the Republic of Georgia, to lead some demonstration classes at a small independent liberal arts college—the only such, I believe, in Georgia, which had in the middle ages a glorious Platonic Academy—a school with a program largely modeled on our college of St. John’s. A number of tutors and alumni are seriously engaged there, and Chris himself has helped this courageous undertaking, just as he has assiduously spread our gospel in America. My most detailed experience, however, of our president’s devotion to the college comes from the days in the nineties when I was an administratively clueless dean and he a deft new president. Along with Bud Billups and Jeff Bishop, Chris and I met regularly to deal with college issues. We all helped each other, but it was Chris who presided, and I want to tell you in what manner. At other institutions of higher education—I’ve visited scores of them and I think of most of them as “institutions,” while our college is a “school” to me, a student-friendly place of learning—the relation of deans to presidents is professionally if not personally strained, for they are meant to have somewhat conﬂicting agendas. I soon formed for myself a far more friendly notion of my relation to this president. By our Polity, which has protected our stable integrity so well, the Dean, the Instruction Committee, and, of course, the Faculty as a whole are responsible for maintaining the Program’s essence—that is to say, its heart and soul—while the president looks after the school’s existence, its survival, and well-being. Knowing well that you can’t live well unless you’re alive, I never had any problem in thinking of myself as serving under Chris. Someone has to have the last word and that had better be the one who protects our very place in the world. But the real reason that was an easy submission was that Chris was never a “normal” president, even in a good sense. He was a Johnnie through and through. He was, to be sure, the son and father of Johnnies in lineage, but what counts more, he was in soul an alumnus, a nursling of the college. He had one of the gifts of a leader for us: an acute and focused ingenuity in unscrambling difﬁculties. How often did he pull my chestnuts out of the ﬁre when I got terminally confused by numbers, for which he has a genius! How cleverly he would ﬁnd a way to He had one of the gifts of a leader for us: an acute and focused ingenuity in unscrambling difﬁculties. hold onto one of our wicked kids, when in my disgusted deanishness, my hasty prescription would be a brusque “Out!” His capacity for listening, his memory that keeps him on top of details, his patience in massaging problems—are, in one of our students’ favorite terms, “awesome.” But my real point is not that Chris has been, throughout this score of years, within and without, an effective president, canny in keeping us alive and untiring in bringing us before the public. It is that in him, care for the existence of the concrete community and regard for its ideal program have been blended. He is well versed in both the conditions of our survival and the preservation of our substance. Consequently, he really understands our greatest challenge—that the exigencies of St. John’s as an institution might squash the soul of our college as a school, as a community of learning. He knows intimately, from within, how to value and defend this school and its Program, which he loves. And this Program, now nearly three quarters of a century old, is lovable, and our common attachment for it has a very precise cause: Under it, and the pedagogy that goes with it, we infuse thinking with passion and inform passion with reason. That is what makes this tiny place a giant in the educational landscape—but also, on occasion, a giantslayer, for, small as we are, we have fought and won quite a few battles—Chris in the lead. Of course, I have my reservations about some of his proclivities. He has an { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2011 } His capacity for listening, his memory that keeps him on top of details, his patience in massaging problems— are, in one of our students’ favorite terms, “awesome.” enthusiasm for Virgil’s Aeneas, a taste pretty much conﬁned to men, I think. He actually admires this stuffy hero, who probably goes to bed in his breastplate, so driven that he spurns Dido, the passionate African queen who dies for him. For myself, I love Homer’s Odysseus for longing to return home to Penelope, his queenly Ithacan wife who lives for him. This unstuffy hero does take his time getting there and is ardently welcomed and reluctantly released by a number of lushly magical women on the way. But once Odysseus gets home, he stays home, and, like Chris, governs his austere little kingdom, the best place on earth. That’s a serious difference between us, to be sure—but what an occasion for great conversations! And so, even in this lapse, Chris proves a true Johnnie, an engaged lover of our books. For all these reasons I have— I can say conﬁdently, we all have—this hopeful wish: 20 more years! x �6 {From the Bell Towers} John Christensen Retires interest from students in the former Eastern block, where there is a real appreciation of our Program, as these students seldom had the opportunity to study Western philosophy, literature, and history,” he says. Christensen says he especially found rewarding his international admissions work with the United World Colleges, whose mission is to bring students from around the world to each of their small campuses to promote mutual understanding and world peace. “The diversity on these campuses is amazing, and you end up at lunch in the dining hall with Israelis and Palestinians, for example, sitting side-by-side talking calmly and thoughtfully about things they have in common and about their cultural differences. Once I talked to a Bosnian, whose roommate was Croatian, and he was telling me what good friends they had become and how they hoped to attend college together. ‘Just think,’ he said, ‘A few years ago our parents were trying to kill each other.’” Despite the dramatic technological shifts in how liberal arts colleges approach prospective students, there is one aspect of college admissions work that Christensen believes will not change: the importance of helping a prospective student ﬁnd the right ﬁt in a college. “That’s especially important now because everyone who works in the admissions process— high-school counselors John Christensen (HA99) reﬂects on his three decades in Admissions at St. John’s. jen behrens When John Christensen (HA99) arrived at St. John’s College 33 years ago as director of admissions, he embraced the college community and the Program. “I had to learn as much as I could to explain the Program to others and make sure of the right ﬁt for a prospective student,” he recalls. “Friends urged me to consider whether I wanted to embark on a career that depended upon the ability of 18-year-olds to make rational decisions about their futures.” But Christensen knew that in St. John’s he had found the right ﬁt. “John Christensen has been an impressive builder of community,” Christopher Nelson told the tutors, staff, family, and friends that gathered in June to commemorate John’s retirement. “When John arrived at the college in 1978, he undertook with simple directness an education about the college….He engaged with us by taking the full four years of seminar, ﬁrst as a participant and then as a third tutor at the table. He developed an understanding of the books so that he could talk about them with prospective students and also with his fellow members of the faculty. He is in every sense one of us.” In a sweep of three decades, Christensen has seen innumerable changes, among them a heightened interest from international students. He attributes the uptick to the reach of the web, scholarships such as the Ahmet Ertegun Fund, and his travels overseas, especially to the United World Colleges (high schools) in countries such as Bosnia, Wales, Norway, and Italy. “We also saw an increase in and college admissions ofﬁcers alike—knows that the atmosphere is tense and that collegebound students today face even greater pressure and anxiety about choosing a college. I will depart St. John’s College feeling good about our efforts to keep our application process as simple and straightforward as possible—no early decision, early action, regular decision, or wait lists—so that prospective students can focus on what our academic program has to offer them. Our model of education and smaller size have allowed us to operate this way, and I realize how fortunate I have been.” Many at the college feel fortunate to have worked with Christensen. As Nelson said, “John has been the indispensable man, utterly reliable, dedicated to the college that he loves, meticulous in his work, careful, thoughtful and faithful in communicating the nature of the Program to generations of potential students.” Annapolis Dean Pamela Kraus says, “John has shown immense dedication and capacity for work; he has, { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2011 } “Friends urged me to consider whether I wanted to embark on a career that depended upon the ability of 18-year-olds to make rational decisions...” John Christensen an incredibly rich, detailed understanding of the admissions ofﬁce and of St. John’s College—both its history and its purposes—and a generous, cooperative spirit.” John retired on July 30, 2011. “After 33 years in admissions,” he says, “I still ﬁnd great satisfaction in hearing about ‘an ideal match.’” x —P.D. �{From the Bell Towers} Shaded conversation courtyard beckons A conversation courtyard, with its closely planted groupings of Allegheny Serviceberry trees and stone benches, is the perfect shady spot for Johnnies to kick off their shoes, read, and talk on a warm day. The new conversation courtyard is in front of Humphreys Hall, near the entrance to the Annapolis campus bookstore. In addition, the adjacent quad has been revitalized with spruced-up benches and walkways. Two tall and slender “Valley Forge” American Elm trees replace the bushy, low-growing dogwood shrubs by the rear steps—broadening the sloping view of back campus and College Creek. Tutor Jeffrey Black, head of the Campus Planning Committee, says that folks on campus are delighted with the changes: “All of the reactions I have heard so far have been uniformly positive. Community members like the look of the quad and the Humphreys courtyard, and have started to use the seat walls now that the weather has gotten warmer.” The refurbishment of the quad and the new courtyard were funded by a gift from Erwin Greenberg, a member of the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors, and his wife Stephanie Cooper. They wanted to enhance the campus by bringing more life to the Humphreys yard and by sprucing up the well-worn quad. Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architecture of Charlottesville, Virginia, designed the projects, which are part of the college’s comprehensive master plan, with Cheers for Orchestra! Do you have a musical instrument in your home that is gathering dust? The music library in Annapolis is looking to add to the few instruments currently on hand. Of particular need are violin, cello, string bass, bassoon, English horn, brass instruments (trumpet, trombone, French horn), and timpani. “We would love to have a standing collection of musical instruments that we can make available to students in need,” says Eric Stoltzfus, Annapolis music librarian. “In the past we have helped students locate violins, French horns, a string bass, and even timpani to use with the orchestra.” If you own an instrument in good repair, please consider loaning it or donating it permanently to the college. The music library is also accepting donations to purchase or rent sheet music for performing ensembles, to purchase a set of timpani, and for instrument maintenance. Tutor David Stephenson has directed the St. John’s College Orchestra in Annapolis for 20 years. In recent years the orchestra has performed symphonies by Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, and Schubert, concertos by Vivaldi and Mozart, Bach Brandenburg Concertos and Orchestral Suites, and even excerpts from Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute. x For more information, please contact Eric Stoltzfus in the Music Library: 410-295-6904 or eric.stoltzfus@sjca.edu. 7 input from the Campus Planning Committee. In addition, the Historic Preservation Commission of Annapolis approved the college’s proposal after the city’s arborist and archaeologist lent their oversight to the project during a public meeting. “Special challenges arise every time you dig in Annapolis,” says Black. “For example, how to match the College’s many preexisting brick patterns, or how to keep squirrels (and community members) out of freshly-planted ﬂowerbeds.” The trees, shrubs, ﬂowers, and grasses chosen are native species, in keeping with the college’s commitment to environmentally conscious landscaping. “Our chief consideration was to make the Humphreys courtyard a welcoming space—without detracting from the centrality of the quad,” says Black. These new features already seem well-established; on a recent sunny day, numerous students were reading in the conversation courtyard, tucked among the trees. x —Laurent Merceron (A08) �8 Revisiting Reality As an alumnus thinking back on my own St. John’s experience, the event that always strikes me as the most amusing and improbable is “Reality Weekend,” in which our tiny Republic of Letters casts aside its books and balances and transforms itself into a miniature Bacchanalian festival. But for all the revelry and calculated chaos, a strong group of organizers (four reality chiefs and a planning committee) and a lot of time and energy (one month of organizing and a school year of fundraising) ensured that ...Our tiny Republic of Letters casts aside its books and balances and transforms itself into a miniature Bacchanalian festival. {From the Bell Towers} Reality 2011, held on the Annapolis campus, was a party worth attending. In keeping with this year’s theme of childhood, the weekend included a petting zoo, a scavenger hunt, and a messy game of paint-Twister. As usual, the weekend kicked off with the annual marathon relay race, followed by the junior-class skit (in which lampooning students, faculty, and Program authors are the order of the day), and a dance party in the Great Hall. By the following morning, students had been transported to a magical land where colorful streams of crepe paper hung from the trees, and a nine a.m. wakeup call consisted of orange juice and thumping rock ’n’ roll. Chalk drawings covered the brick surfaces of buildings, grills were being lit, and student bands were setting up for outdoor performances. (Oh, and I heard that a few weeks earlier, students recorded Chris Nelson reading bedtime stories—his voice was auctioned to raise money for the weekend’s festivities.) The petting zoo (comprised of a pony, a donkey, a lamb, and two goats) was an especially big hit among students, though animal safety was an important concern for the organizers. In addition to a Reality archon and an animal handler maintaining constant supervision, co-archon Michelle Weinmann (A12) says, “We wanted to make sure that the animals felt comfortable, so we chose only larger animals for this event.” In keeping with this year’s theme, Michael Janakis (A12) put smiles on the faces of his fellow students by dressing up as a clown—something with which he is quite familiar. “My dad’s a clown. He went to Ringling Bros. Clown College, so I was exposed to clowning growing up.” Donning his father’s red clown nose and makeup, Janakis says, “They get a bad reputation, but clowns are supposed to make people happy!” The weekend concluded with a bonﬁre, and, of course, a game of Spartan Madball, a Johnnie invention as bizarre and beautiful as it is difﬁcult to describe. x —Laurent Merceron (A08) A Mad, Mad Game of Ball For this year’s main attraction of Reality Weekend, students ringed the hills of back campus to watch their more courageous (or foolhardy) colleagues participating in one of the college’s most beloved events: Spartan Madball. The oldest event of Reality Weekend, an end-of-year celebration that began in 1955, Spartan Madball appears in records dating as early as 1962 as “an unrefereed volleyball game on a football In 1980 Johnnies march on Main Street to celebrate Reality. ﬁeld,” and has evolved over nearly 50 years of its existence. The general form of Spartan Madball has remained the same. In a reference to Euclid’s Elements, students are divided into two teams: the “Means,” consisting of sophomores and juniors, and the “Extremes,” made up of the freshmen and seniors. Placed on opposite sides of the campus soccer ﬁeld, the two teams struggle to take hold of a large medicine ball and carry it through to the opposing team’s goal. What has changed are the rules. While tradition holds that “there are only three rules,” the actual list of rules of Spartan Madball is far longer and reﬂects the history of the game. Some of the rules include no motorized vehicles (added after an attempt to win by using a Jeep, which was toppled over) and no livestock (added after a student tried to herd some sheep onto the ﬁeld as an obstacle). Most famously, the game lasts three hours, or until three goals, three major injuries, or one death occur. (To date, there have been no deaths.) Many popular legends and stories arise over this event, which in 1999 was described by then-Reality coordinator Tim Carney (A00) as a “completely primal” chance to “gain glory and valor.” One of the most recent is if a freshman team wins, they are likely to go on to win all four years. Among the changes made to the game’s rules in response to last year’s match—one of the most violent in recent memory— was the addition of “violence referees,” who halted game play whenever it appeared action on the ﬁeld was escalating too far. This year the Extremes, made up of the three-time winner class of 2011 and the class of 2014, were defeated 3-0 by the other classes. So much for the legend. x —Babak Zarin (A11) �9 {From the Bell Towers} High school students discover St. John’s This summer the ﬁrst St. John’s College Summer Academy attracted 32 mostlyhigh-school students from around the country to the Santa Fe campus from June 26 to July 2. On the Annapolis campus, 35 high school students enrolled for a similar week-long immersion in the college from July 10 to 16. Participants lived on campus and explored seminars, math and language tutorials, and science labs, interspersed with ﬁeld trips, presentations, and performances. On both campuses, St. John’s undergraduates and tutors joined participants in and out of the classroom. “Summer Academy serves as a means of bringing the type of education found at St. John’s to another group of students, and gives students interested in learning more about the college a week-long submersion into Johnnie life,” says Amy Sandefur, assistant director of admissions on the Annapolis campus. In Santa Fe, not all students were from high school. Alexandra Forman is currently enrolled at Santa Monica College in California. A family friend recommended that she try the Academy. “I love to learn,” she says, “and to question what I’m told, not just accept facts as facts, but to know why.” Forman says she “loves the great books curriculum, the fact that I’m not studying textbooks that someone else has written and then told me what they’re about; but I get to read the works and decide for myself what they’re about.” Others seek “something more” than high school can offer. Connor Groat of Battle Ground, Washington, enrolled in the Santa Fe Academy because he hasn’t been challenged at his high school. “It’s just so much underachievement, and everybody lowers the standards so that people can trip over them; now that the standards are above my head, it’s a nice change to try and reach for something.” Grace Obregon, a rising senior at Robert E. Lee High School in San Antonio, Texas, enjoyed the discussions of Plato and the consequence of choice during her week on the Santa Fe campus. “The questions are the basis of who we are,” she says, adding that Summer Academy is about “just being comfortable with questioning.” She was also encouraged by the breadth of the lessons in the Academy’s curriculum: “It allows you to be interested in many different things, so you’re not just on this one path with a limited number of professions you can go into.” —James Williams Levan Makes $12 Million Bequest This spring Dr. Norman Levan (SFGI74), a generous and dedicated friend of St. John’s College, made a bequest to the college’s Santa Fe campus of one third of his estate, valued in excess of $12 million. The bequest is Dr. Levan’s third gift to St. John’s College. In 2006, he donated $5 million, which funded the construction of the Betty and Norman Levan Hall, the home of the Graduate Institute. Dedicated September, 25, 2010, Levan Hall houses administrative and faculty ofﬁces, seminar rooms, a graduate lounge, and an exhibition space. In 2010, Dr. Levan also provided an endowment of $2 million for the Norman Levan Faculty Chair, held by the current dean. “We are exceedingly grateful for Dr. Levan’s continuing generosity,” says Michael P. Peters, president of the Santa Fe campus. “He is a constant friend and supporter of the mission of St. John’s College and liberal education more broadly.” Dr. Norman Levan is professor emeritus and former chief of dermatology at the University of Southern California School of Medicine (class of 1939). He served in the United States Army Medical Corps during World War II, including the battle of Okinawa, and then embarked on a long and distinguished career in medicine. Among his important achievements is the establishment—at the request of state and federal health ofﬁcials—of the Hansen’s Disease Clinic at the Los Angeles County/USC Medical Center in 1962, one of only three such clinics in California. A long-time resident of Bakersﬁeld, California, Dr. Levan supports the Norman Levan Faculty Seminar Series at Bakersﬁeld College, where he also made a bequest as well as a generous gift for the creation of the Norman Levan Center for { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2011 } the Humanities. A strong advocate of examining societal issues, Dr. Levan envisioned the Center as a way to involve the Bakersﬁeld community in exploring the importance of the humanities in people’s lives. “In all his endeavors, Dr. Levan demonstrates his commitment to knowledge, to an informed and educated citizenry, and to our collective responsibility to make a better future,” says Peters. “He is an inspiration to all of us.” x —Deborah Spiegelman �10 {From the Bell Towers} News and Announcements St. John’s Hosts Community Seminars on “Pilgrimage to Nonviolence” St. John’s College, Annapolis welcomed the wider community for a weekend of events in honor of the life and legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The weekend opened on Saturday, January 9 with community seminars, co-led by St. John’s College tutors and faculty from Sojourner-Douglass College. More than 150 members of the community gathered in small seminars to discuss “Pilgrimage to Nonviolence,” an essay by Dr. King. The next day approximately 500 members of the community attended the fourth annual “Lift Every Voice” concert. The ﬁfth annual concert will be held on January 8; the seminars will be held on January 7, 2012. Staff Announcements The college welcomes SARAH MORSE, who joined the Annapolis campus as the new director of admissions on July 11. She replaces John Christensen, who retired on July 30. Morse has served as Eastern regional director and national director of special projects for AFS Intercultural Programs. More recently she was dean of students and director of admissions and ﬁnancial aid at St. Timothy’s School in Stevenson, Maryland, and subsequently director of admissions for the Lower and Middle School and director of ﬁnancial aid at Jemicy School in Owings Mills, Maryland. MARILYN HIGUERA completed her service as director of the Graduate Institute in Annapolis. She is succeeded by tutor JEFF BLACK, who begins his four-year term of ofﬁce this summer. Higuera returns to full-time teaching on the faculty. SHARON HENSLEY retired on September 2 from the Annapolis Graduate Institute after 30 years with the college. Four new tutors have joined the faculty—two each in Annapolis and Santa Fe. In Annapolis, SARAH BENSON previously taught part-time in the Graduate Institute. After receiving her PhD from Cornell University in the History of Art, she was a visiting fellow in the Southeast Asia Program at Cornell University. New Annapolis tutor HANNAH HINTZE received her PhD from the University of Chicago, Committee on Social Thought, in 2009. Santa Fe welcomes NATALIE J. ELLIOT, who received her PhD in political science with specializations in political theory and comparative politics, from the University of North Texas in 2009. In her previous position, she was visiting assistant professor of political science at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. ERIKA TROSETH MARTINEZ, who was initially hired for a special one-year appointment last fall, also joins the college as a tutor on the Santa Fe campus. On both campuses, the directors of communications have left the college. ANNA SOCHOCKY, director of communications in Santa Fe, left in August 2011 to pursue her writing and equine interests. ROSEMARY HARTY, Annapolis director, departed in February 2011 to teach developmental English. PATRICIA DEMPSEY, formerly associate director of communications in Annapolis, became director of communications in Annapolis on July 1. She brings more than a decade of experience in journalism, editorial management, and higher education media relations to her new role, and has contributed to publications such Aeschylus’ Furious Thespians This spring, The King William Players—student thespians in Annapolis—performed two 20-minute segments of Aeschylus’ Eumenides and Molière’s Tartuffe in their original Attic Greek and French. Pictured above are students performing Eumenides, as Clytemnestra and the Furies react to Apollo’s command to get out of his temple. as the Washington Post. She has an MA in Writing from Johns Hopkins University and is the parent of a Johnnie, ALEXANDER KRIZ (SF09). In Annapolis, Director of Major Gifts RUTH ANDERSON COGGESHALL retired on June 30, after more than 6 years with the college, contributing to a successful capital campaign. St. John’s in the News In recent months St. John’s has been in the national public eye. The New Yorker (June 13, 2011) summer ﬁction issue includes Salvatore Scibona’s (SF97) essay, “Where I Learned to Read,” an account of his years on the Santa Fe campus. The Washington Post (May 14, 2011) features a proﬁle of president Chris Nelson, a national spokesperson for the liberal arts, and St. John’s, where “a passion for liberal arts withstands an adversarial economy.” A related Washington Post blog includes Nelson among the country’s most inﬂuential presidents; some of the others are from Harvard and Cornell universities, and Earlham College. The Chronicle of Higher Education (May 29, 2011) captures the pulse of campus life in a story on a “sartorial marvel”—the annual croquet match in Annapolis; in a related blog on how “bookworms ﬁnd their inner athletes” at St. John’s, Annapolis Athletic Director Leo Pickens describes the college’s intramural sports program. The Hufﬁngton Post (May 20, 2011) included Pickens’ address at Annapolis commencement in a roundup of ﬁne speeches. And John Christensen, now retired, describes a “sea change” in admissions for The Chronicle of Higher Education (June 29, 2011). To read these and other stories on St. John’s, visit: www.stjohnscollege.edu/ news. x �11 {From the Bell Towers} Readers Share Music Stories A Place of Honor Music at St. John’s? There’s so much to love! I still sing songs I learned in Freshmen Chorus. “By the Waters of Babylon” makes for good singing to a fussy baby, I’ve found. I love that the whole school can sing all four parts of “Sicut Cervus” at a moment’s notice at Collegium. I am thankful that Mr. Stephenson introduced us to the St. Matthew Passion in sophomore music. I try to listen to it every year during Holy Week. Learning rhythms by dancing down the halls in music tutorial; the sweet sounds of “Primum Mobile” echoing through the Pendulum Pit; Mrs. Seeger leading us through “Green Grow the Rushes, O” at Christmas time. I spent many an hour in the practice rooms in the basement of Mellon Hall composing songs; to my great surprise and honor, I even won the Best Original Composition prize in my sophomore year. St. John’s gives music its place of honor among the liberal arts, and I’m the richer for having experienced it. Jenny Lowe Cook (A06) Still Rocking I will never forget when Marshall McMillan (A90) and Jeff Schwartz played “Ripple” by the Grateful Dead at the Collegium Musicum evening in the Great Hall in Annapolis. Those years also saw the birth of the eclectic and world-famous Philly band, EDO, with Eliot Duhan (A90), Yanni Papadopoulos (SF91), and managed by the talented Joe Boucher (A89)—all of whom are still rocking 25 years later. Beth Heinberg (A89) Finding Her Voice My life was transformed through the musical experience at SJC. I had always been “musical,” but it was really at St. John’s that I discovered my voice, and my love for the history in music. I starting singing in Anne Berven’s Chamber Choir at Santa Fe early on in the second semester of my junior year. I was 20 years old and all of a sudden I had an immediate sense that I wanted to be a singer. I began to study music seriously at that point. After graduation I went to Italy and studied voice for two years in Florence. Last spring I completed a Master of Fine Arts degree in Music Performance and Literature from Mills College in Oakland, California. This spring I sang the alto soloist in a performance of the St. John Passion in New London, New Hampshire. I’ve returned to the Bay Area where this summer I am working with the San Francisco Boys Chorus. Isn’t it amazing what unexpected paths we ﬁnd through the Program? Alexis Segel (SF05) Musical moments There are so many musical moments. There’s a memory of Viktor Zuckerkandl conducting Freshman Chorus in—no, not McDowell—but in the Question Period room in Key Auditorium. I can’t imagine why, nor can I remember why, but what I do remember vividly was emerging from the relative darkness of the room to ﬁnd that it was snowing. The magically light, mica-like snow, the beginning of a long storm, drifting down...and my head ﬁlled with “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming....” And another time: Mr. Castillejo, little remembered, I dare say, who taught us to listen profoundly to Lisa della Casa’s Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro. “Oh,” he said, “Listen to Susanna, and how she soars above the rest!” His delight was so palpable that I imagine none of us have forgotten that moment. Not to mention hearing the Countess’s words of pardon and forgiveness, which he was quick to point out. Another moment: Elliott Zuckerman, whose Freshman Chorus I tried always to attend, even though I was no longer a freshman, rehearsing the glorious Haydn Creation and a bit of Fauré’s Requiem and Mozart’s Ave verum corpus, which we had also sung under Mr. Zuckerkandl, and which was both the same and not. Incommensurate magnitudes, as Douglas Allanbrook once said. Another kind of music: John Kieffer reading Sophocles. What a revelation! In my girlhood, I learned a round: “All things shall perish from under the sky. Music alone shall live, never to die!” Perhaps it’s truer than I knew. Constance (Connie) Bell Lindgreen (A66) Swim before singing A great music experience for me was the class chorus, part of our music curriculum, under the leadership of Viktor Zuckerkandl, in which he patiently drilled us through Bach’s “Break Forth, O Beauteous Morning Light” from the Christmas Oratorio. The four voices were somewhat tricky, but with repetition we actually became pretty good at it. Zuckerkandl’s stamina for this arduous job stemmed, I would guess, from his habit of swimming every morning in College Creek in December. Temple Porter (A62) Rock ’n’ Religion During the Febbie summer of 1980, we made a habit of inviting a different tutor each week to our Wednesday night parties. One week, we invited (The Reverend J.) Winfree Smith, and to our delight, he showed up. I welcomed him, thanked him for coming, and then ran back to the turntable to put on Flatt and Scruggs’ “Let the Church Roll On.” He was without a doubt the most stylish partygoer out on the { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2011 } Tom May leads freshman chorus in Annapolis. patio in front of Chase-Stone, in his black dress shorts, knee socks, black shirt, and white Episcopal collar, bobbing to the rhythm of Earl Scruggs’ banjo breaks. Mark Middlebrook (A83) Formal Training Can Wait When I entered St. John’s in 1951, it was already fairly clear to me that I would “go into” music, but that formal training could wait. Wait? The exposure to music I received at St. John’s could not have been more valuable or preparatory. Viktor Zuckerkandl had studied and worked with the leading musical ﬁgures in Vienna. I learned so much from him, and he pointed me toward Mannes College in New York, where I studied with Felix Salzer, the great proponent of Schenkerian theory—then revolutionary, now standard. In quite a different way, Douglas Allanbrook became an inspiring mentor, and in later years I conducted ﬁve of his wonderful orchestra scores. Ralph Kirkpatrick playing Bach on the clavichord in a McDowell Hall classroom; the Juilliard Quartet rehearsing and performing— St. John’s was the perfect place to “major” in music. And I like to think that I learned a few other things as well…. Harold Bauer (class of 1955) Thank you for your letters! Look for more letters from readers of The College in the next issue. �12 {Music} MUSIC’S MYSTERY Reﬂections on the power of music to change our lives and shape our psyches L egend has it that in the early days of the New Program (1937 plus a few years), the books on music were shelved in the library’s stacks along with the books on mathematics. Music has been included in the Quadrivium of the liberal arts for more than 1,500 years, grouped with Arithmetic, Geometry, and Astronomy, and with the Trivium of Grammar, Rhetoric, and Logic. The mathematics of music consists most basically in the magical ratios that characterize the scale. In the sense of music as a liberal art, it was sometimes called “harmonics” or “measurement.” In the 1937 St. John’s catalogue, music was described as “the Pythagorean name for mathematical physics.” The study of music at St. John’s has taken a variety of forms. Viktor Zuckerkandl, a tutor who joined the college in the 1940s, at the dusk of the Barr and Buchanan era, devised the ﬁrst music tutorials for sophomore year and later wrote a book called The Sense of Music, which is often used in those tutorials in Annapolis. Freshman chorus differs according to campus, and often according to the tutor who leads it. That Johnnies can sing “Sicut Cervus” from the middle of freshman year on is a given; there’s a famous story that when the Palestrina Choir performed in Annapolis in the early 1990s, the entire audience stood and joined in perfect harmony. Other music-related observations: 1. Many St. John’s students and faculty are preternaturally talented musically—a higher proportion than might be expected at a school with no music major offered. 2. Tutors who take the “teach across the curriculum” mantra seriously sometimes have great difﬁculty bringing themselves to try the music tutorial. The college sought and was granted funds from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation so that more faculty could become better prepared to teach the tutorial. 3. Many Johnnies know Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73 (“That time of year thou mayst in me behold…”) through the study of rhythm in the music tutorial, not through the language tutorial. 4. It’s difﬁcult to have a seminar on an opera, but we keep trying. Sometimes it works really well. 5. Music is a mystery. No matter how well we might know all the components, no matter how unsure we might be about our own singing abilities, no matter how sensitive and astute we are about various musical forms—we still can’t explain why it makes us cry or laugh, feel content or revved up, why we want to dance or are lulled to sleep by it. Everyone at St. John’s studies music; there’s no escape from its power. As with other subjects like physics or Greek, sometimes those who least expect it become enamored and ﬁnd their life’s work. Here are reﬂections on the power of music to change our lives and shape our psyches. �dimitri fotos {Music} Playing Chopin together at St. John’s: “I finally got to study, along with Eric, the dark and elusive Sonata for Piano and Cello.” —Elliott Zuckerman, Tutor Emeritus, on piano. “For me to play Chopin with Elliott—this is a treasure.” —Eric Stoltzfus, Tutor, on cello. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2011 } 13 �14 {Music} The Centrality of Chopin by Elliott Zuckerman W dimitri fotos hen I was seven, my musical life— and much of the rest of my life—was turned over to a beautiful and imperious Russian woman, who had been a star graduate of the Moscow Conservatory and later a student of the great pianist Ferruccio Busoni. One reward for what sometimes seemed my martyrdom was that the works of Chopin became central in my world. My lessons started with Bach, and in the course of years I studied many of the sonatas of Beethoven, a proper amount of Mozart, Brahms, and Debussy, and a great deal of Liszt and Schumann. I learned pieces by Elliott Zuckerman explores “inﬁnite gradations of the palette” on the piano. Medtner, who had been one of my teacher’s professors, and Scriabin, whom she knew, and Tchaikovsky, couldn’t play decently, I would get the urge to resume whose only trio she (with her husband and his brother on lecturing, and then return to the music somewhere beyond the strings) had played for the Queen of Romania. And I the difﬁculties. It was a technique I continued in Annapolis, learned music that no one else had played for decades, by when, in the early years of the Caritas Society, I gave yearly composers such as Joachim Raff and Xaver Scharwenka. talks at the piano, this time on Chopin alone. But the daily sustenance was the Chopin Études, and It was here, too, that I ﬁnally got to study, along with our when I had to play over the radio, it was the Fantasy in F colleague Eric Stoltzfus, the one great work that Chopin Minor, and when big works were needed for recitals, the wrote for more than one solo instrument, the very beautiful Ballades and the Scherzos, and when I played at parties, the but dark and elusive Sonata for Piano and Cello. It is signiﬁMazurkas and the Waltzes, and of course the Nocturnes, cant that when Chopin chose to write for a second instrueven though I was probably too pudgy to look properly ment, it was the cello. For he seemed to write only for consumptive. I even had to play the very few works of instruments that sing. We should remember that he wrote Chopin that no one else was playing, a prime showpiece quite a few songs. But even in his non-vocal works, the being the Allegro de Concert, the abandoned sketch for a player has to “sing.” Some of the passages that are most third Concerto. Chopinesque are marked sfogato—let loose, a vocal term; In college, my ﬁrst published essay was a review of André and the famous rubato, a sort of rhythmic borrowing of one Gide’s Notes on Chopin. In it I naively announced that beat from another that is now indelibly associated with playing Chopin had been Gide’s most private pleasure. Chopin, is also most naturally carried out by singers. To Just before I came to St. John’s, I gave the last course of Sing is an injunction that is heard most often from good my life (for at this college we don’t have courses). It was teachers, and it is since Chopin that great pianists have called “Chopin, Schumann, and Liszt”; in it I played what I been noted for their singing touch. In much of his music, knew of the complete works, and when I got to a passage I his inspiration was Italian opera, and (apart from Bach and { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2011 } �{Music} Mozart) the composer he seems to have most imitated was Bellini. In some of my talks I have composed my own “Chopin Nocturne” simply by taking an aria from Norma or I Puritani, and, with a few adjustments, playing it as a piece for piano. All this on a percussion instrument where the strings are struck by hammers! And the vocal breathing, I should add, is required not simply when the right hand is engaged in an obvious soprano solo, but even, somehow, when the texture of the music is that of quick scales or complex arpeggios, even when the piano is tinkling and when it is thundering (for Chopin can thunder!). Those textures are manifold, for there is scarcely a ﬁguration that Chopin did not adapt or invent. From time to time, my more prosaic friends would send me scientiﬁc articles in which it is proved that the sound of the piano is merely the result of how hard you strike the key and how long you hold it, with some help from the pedal. Meanwhile my teacher (supported by the great tradition) was showing me, sometimes by the pressure of her ﬁngers on my back, an almost inﬁnite gradation of colors in the palette of this piano that is merely a machine. Most musical people can remember the ﬁrst time they heard, or noticed, a bit of music that was to become, say, a leitmotiv in their lives. It may be a tune—such as, for me, Handel’s “V’adoro, pupille”—or a remarkable harmonic turn—as in the Andante of Schubert’s last sonata. In Chopin such deﬁning moments are likely to be a bout of passage-work, often of his own invention, that may otherwise be melodically or harmonically unremarkable. I can remember the ﬁrst time I heard someone play the cascades that accompany the chorale in the Third Scherzo and, at another recital, the sweeping ascending scales that underpin the return of the second theme in the Fourth Ballade. I later realized that both are in the key of D-ﬂat major, and suit the positions of the hand that feel most natural in that key. There is very little in Chopin that is not intimately connected with positions of the hand—which may account for why the dance music that has been orchestrated for ballets like Les Sylphides seems to have lost its sparkle. For Chopin to be engraved upon your soul it is perhaps necessary to feel him in your ﬁngers, to respond to the music as 15 not only motion and sound, but texture and touch. Chopin learned from Bach and like other so-called Romantic composers, studied his counterpoint. But Mozart spanned Chopin’s career, which began with the variations on “La ci darem la mano.” And at Chopin’s death, along with an orchestration of his own Funeral March, they played and sang sections of the Mozart Requiem. x Tracing the Phenomenon of the Perfect Concert by Samantha Buker (A05) riday, April 5, 2002. Alban Gerhardt’s evening of cello stormed my soul in my freshman year and sealed my fate as a future music writer. That night proved to me that the seduction of music far surpasses the charms of painting because music invades the whole body—the virtue of vibration. Zoltan Kodaly’s Sonata for Cello Solo worked me over. A pluck made my left shoulder ﬂinch. Certain phrasings sent a ﬂock of sparks coursing the length of my spine. His three principal motions had all the dynamics of an Expressionist painting, so I sketched him. The drawing, which he autographed as I blushed, remains for me a Veronica’s veil, a faded impress of a moment rich for its passing. Music librarian Mr. Stoltzfus is most responsible for my awakening to music—as he is for others—by ﬁnding superb concert artists whose lecture-spot performances rouse new passions. The splendor of the moment, the sense of occasion in the concert hall—these things I strive to bring alive to readers of my music criticism. And I ﬁrst experienced them at St. John’s. For me, the greatest moments musicaux happened outside the Program, but without the sweet salve of Freshman Chorus with Mr. May, I’d never have stayed beyond the ﬁrst year. There is joy in a place where one can take Palestrina for granted. So I stayed, and reaped rich rewards. Music tutorial’s grunt-work backed pleasure and trained the ear. Mr. Smith welcomed our every class with a snippet from the Goldberg Variations, but his curious experiment with modern music made me the advocate for new composers I F There is very little in Chopin that is not intimately connected with positions of the hand. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2011 } �16 {Music} samantha buker am today. One day, he ditched Die Zauberﬂöte and cued up Arnold Schoenberg’s dissonance over the speakers. He mocked Schoenberg and moaned. In short, he asked us to defend Schoenberg as music—based on all we’d absorbed so far. Only Erica Naone and I leapt to this composer’s defense. Next year, in the coffee shop, I overheard Mr. Smith confess that he was an atheist who adored 12-tone music. For who among us will not declaim the glory of Bach’s Matthäus Passion? I wrote my ﬁnal paper in a ﬂush—a ﬂirtation with Orthodox Christianity that to this day remains unconsummated. As I typed, the tones of the allnight Pascha Vigil were still chanting in my head. Incense clung to my hair. I had 10 more pages to go, but I needed a break. My roommate Dillon (Wright-Fitzgerald) Naylor (A05) and I strolled the harbor’s edge at dawn. A majestic ridge of purple clouds hung over the water’s distant shore, ever changing as they rolled away. In that vision, I heard the earthy viola de gamba, a weeping Peter. We made our way back to Paca through a court of blossom-laden cherries. We buried our noses deep in the branches. The scent conjured ethereal oboes and the chorus of ﬂutes. We took turns shaking petals upon each other in the breeze. Refreshed, I ﬁnished my essay, the ﬁrst writing I’d ever done on the dynamics and mechanics of the phenomena that take up so much of my present life. In the summer of 2004, I found myself a “post-tutorial” summer camp: the three days of Baltimore’s New Chamber Festival. Classmate Jacob Thomas (A05) came along. We never shared a music class beyond chorus, but our conversation over Indian food after the ﬁrst concert rolled along the back of our common language for hours. On Sunday, June 27, the Leipzig String Quartet played Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 8. The unshakable magnitude of their performance bid me to write my ﬁrst music review, although it would be four more years until I found editor Greg Szeto and his blog, “Aural States.” I’ll never forget the long holy silence after the ﬁnal note crept away. For that second, all clocks held their breath. Ivo Bauer put the scroll of his viola to his lips, resting its body on his knee, to drink in the communion of quietude that hushed his listeners. He closed his eyes and smiled gently. Applause erupted only as they shut their scores. I came away from that Leipzig concert—and my time at St. John’s—convinced that music is the purest form of beauty present in the world. I’ll risk a ﬁstﬁght with a geometer for this: Ptolemy’s sentiment, in his preface to the Almagest, that the study of divine planetary motions creates like conditions of soul in those who study them, describes the phenomenon of the perfect concert. That perfection comes into being when music, performer, and listener are as much a unity as can be. Of course, such a condition is often sensuous, even dangerous. St. John’s is probably the only school where you could be walking to the symphony and be stopped by a classmate, who asks what you’ll hear and warns you to watch out for your soul if the composer is anything but Bach. My advice to Johnnies embarking on Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde is not to study the libretto laboriously. Don’t see how many times you can listen to the whole thing. Instead, listen to the two preludes and the ﬁnal aria in a constant loop, until you are steeped in the sea Samantha Buker (A05) is a 2010 National Endowment for the Arts Journalism Institute Fellow concentrating in opera and classical music. �17 {Music} The spirit of the cello suits Eric Stoltzfus. Leipzig String Quartet for Baltimore’s City Paper this week. The reverberating acoustics of the hall cried out for their Bach, which sent me craving the Passion like an old friend. How familiar and beautiful it becomes. x Samantha Buker (A05) was chief classical critic for the blog “Aural States” before moving on to be a freelance critic for Baltimore’s City Paper. If someone has an unwanted cello, she’d consider it a dare to learn to play the instrument. The Sound of Music jen behrens E of Wagner’s colors. The experience roiled over my head in waves, in the last hour before seminar. My being could not separate itself from the music. The resulting ﬂush of anger, passion, and dread infused me. I tore posters off my walls and drapes off my windows before collapsing. Then I walked to seminar. Mr. Comenetz opened with the question, “What is Liebestod?” No takers. Many thumbed the pages of the score helplessly. I began to answer…. The circle of ﬁfths was hardly the only circle of my music experience. In the last days of senior year, cellist James Pearson and I dined out in town with friends and alumni. Coming back to campus, I said, “I want to dance!” We were merry with the spell of Dionysus, and James offered to play. “I always wanted to have someone dance to my playing Bach cello suites,” he said. And so, taking the stage in the Great Hall, James in the same spot where Alban Gerhardt had played, James took up his bow and I turned his motions into my motions. I danced the skin clean off my pinky toes and didn’t even notice. Life comes full circle all the time. I’m reviewing the ric Stoltzfus grew up in a family that sang and played music together. As a young teenager in Iowa who was one of four children, he recalls his family embarking on a “summer singing road trip” with another family of four children. They drove from Iowa to Virginia and performed from a new Mennonite Hymnal that his father had helped edit—Bach chorales, folk hymns, and instrumental classical works. “Those songs, when you sing them over and over at age 13, really stay with you,” says Stoltzfus. To St. John’s he brings his love of choral singing—today his own family sings together around the dinner table—and disciplined study of the cello. For the past 15 years as Annapolis music librarian, Stoltzfus has taught sophomore music tutorial; he sings and plays throughout the community and organizes the acclaimed St. John’s College Concert Series. He reﬂects on the music he discovered and the rituals he treasures, such as playing Chopin with Elliott Zuckerman. What inspired you to play the cello? “I was horriﬁed when as a ﬁfth grader my mother suggested the violin—I knew then I wanted to play the cello. It was the right choice. The spirit of the cello is in tune with my own spirit. There’s a certain melancholy, a darker color { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2011 } �18 {Music} to the tone. The art of drawing a deep sound with the bow from the cello is very satisfying, especially as compared to striking piano keys or blowing a tuba. I studied in Marburg, Germany, for a year. From my dorm room, I would haul my cello down 450 steps—and back up—and take a train to private lessons in Frankfurt. It was a real devotion.” When did you begin playing with Elliott Zuckerman? “I have had the pleasure of 20 years of playing cello and singing with Elliott. We have performed and recorded 15 songs that he has composed over decades. He translated La Fontaine Fables into a clever ‘Zuckerman’ English translation. Then he wrote the music for them, for tenor and piano. I’m the tenor singer. (We recently recorded Five Fables of La Fontaine—available in the Bookstore). Elliott and I have given more than a dozen performances together of music for piano and cello or tenor. For instance at Gisela Berns’ retirement party, we played a Rondo by Beethoven.” feeds the soul. Our students become really interested in music they didn’t know they liked. I feed on their enthusiasm.Their eyes are bright with discovery. They listen to Bach’s St. Matthew Passion in sophomore music and come to the music library wanting to know more. They learn to sing in freshman chorus, or they become curious about how different performers might characterize Don Giovanni. At other music libraries where I’ve worked, students would walk in with clouds over their heads—research papers due, requirements. There is such a difference here—it’s all about discovery.” Have you made any musical discoveries at St. John’s? “There are many things here I have discovered and learned to treasure. I am thankful to St. John’s for introducing me to the music of Palestrina, which I didn’t know when I came here, and the operas of Mozart, which I have grown to love. I was an instrumentalist and thought opera was something Mozart did to make money. How wrong I was! But mostly I discovered Is it true, as Elliott notes, “Chopin Eric Stoltzfus 16th-century polyphony. About 12 seemed to write only for instruments years ago, the students wanted to form that sing”? a small group of eight to sing more of it. I joined in with “Chopin didn’t write any choral music. He wrote music them, and we became Primum Mobile. Of course there is for the piano: what could be a voice is really the piano Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. I was already in awe of it, but singing. Together Elliott and I play Chopin’s Sonata for working with sophomores, studying it over the years, I have Cello and Piano. Chopin didn’t write for the cello until the come to understand that Bach has a deep respect for human end of his life. He wrote this cello sonata with very lyrical, beings, including their shortcomings. Here I have develsinging melodies. It is immensely satisfying to play. In the oped an appreciation of music as part of what makes us slow movement, the cello and the piano take turns. The human, including me.” cello plays a high melody, then a low bass line while the piano sings the melody. It goes back and forth in equal Is there a higher form of musical expression? parts, with total cooperation. This is especially wonderful There is always that tension between instrumental music to play with Elliott. He knows what he wants to do and is and the purely vocal for me. Which is the higher form of always making music. Where some may spin it out techniexpression? Difﬁcult to say. All my life, I have been involved cally, not Elliott. He delves into how phrases work, not just in both strands, playing cello with orchestras and chamber the technical. It is a joy to play with him. Besides, he is a ensembles, traveling to the Shenandoah Bach Festival every delightful conversationalist.” summer, singing at home with my family, with the Frankfurt Choir, the Washington Bach Consort. I sing here with Any awakenings as a music librarian? Primum Mobile, direct the Madrigal Choir (an informal “It is wonderful on so many levels. The material is so lunchtime group of staff, faculty, and students), perform at generous. For me, a law library saps one’s soul, with all Collegium, and of course sing with sophomores in the those old cases lining the shelves. But the music library is Music Tutorial. Over the years I have joined the student full of life. Particularly here at St. John’s, the music library “The cello plays a high melody, then a low bass line while the piano sings the melody. . . .This is especially wonderful to play with Elliott.” { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2011 } �19 {Music} christopher quinn Peter Pesic helps the audience “into the music” when he performs. orchestra or accompanied the St. John’s Chorus on cello. But my work here at St. John’s is largely vocal. So for me to play Chopin with Elliott—this is a treasure.” x —Patricia Dempsey Music as Conversation L istening through the audience is how Peter Pesic describes playing Chopin and other classical works during his lunchtime concert series, held in the Peterson Student Center. Since 1984, Pesic, tutor and musician-in-residence, has performed on the piano for students, tutors, staff, and the wider Santa Fe community. Pesic brieﬂy introduces the work and the historical or biographical context in which it originated. “I want ﬁnd a way to help people into the music,” he says. Then he plays. “I don’t think Chopin ever imagined his mazurkas being played in a big hall,” he adds. “An intimate setting seems right. Somehow the audience senses that its presence is a part of the whole experience.” For Pesic, music is conversation, especially when he plays for an audience. “Performance is a chance to experi- ence the music more intensely. You experience this more when you’re playing for other people than when you’re playing for yourself,” he says. “The audience’s attention and different way of listening gives me a different awareness, in the same way that talking about a book with students changes my view in almost every case.” Pesic pursues his piano playing with something of a collector’s mania. “I wonder, for example, what would it be like to play all of Schubert’s sonatas,” he says. This approach he compares to the Program in that it gives one a view of the whole. “It’s as if you’re getting to know a person—for instance, meeting Chopin or Beethoven at different points in their lives.” Growing up in California, Pesic’s ﬁrst instrument was the violin, but while studying physics at Harvard University, he became fascinated with the piano and tried to teach himself. By the time he was a graduate student at Stanford University, he was playing the piano seriously. His pianistic explorations over the years have been numerous, from the complete keyboard works of Bach performed over four years (“that was a crazy project”) to a traversal of Chopin’s piano works, from preludes to mazurkas. On the St. John’s faculty since 1980, Pesic has received a number of honors, including the Peano Prize in 2005 for his book Abel’s Proof, as well as being named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2006 and 2007, respectively). “Being here has been a liberation,” Pesic says, crediting the college with enabling him to think about things freely— “to wonder and ask questions with a kind of honesty that I wasn’t capable of before.” x { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2011 } —Deborah Spiegelman �20 {Commencement} A S O C R AT I C PAU S E Commencement 2011 speakers embrace contemplation and intellectual curiosity. D uring the 2011 commencement ceremonies in Annapolis and Santa Fe, the speakers urged graduates to embrace the art of contemplation and the gift of imagination. Grey skies and light sprinkles may have moved the 219th Annapolis commencement ceremony indoors, but as President Chris Nelson (SF70) remarked to those graduating—88 seniors and 36 graduate students—who gathered with family, friends, and faculty members in the Francis Scott Key auditorium, “Fortune may have soaked our grounds, but we will not let it dampen our spirits.” The mood during the May 15 ceremony was celebratory and reﬂective as Leo Pickens (A78), Annapolis athletic director, delivered a much lauded commencement address. “Who are you under that cap and gown?” asked Pickens, who was chosen by the 2011 class to deliver this year’s address. Pickens, who has served as athletic director for 23 years, developed a close rapport with members of this “Who are you under that cap and gown?” asked Annapolis commencement speaker year’s class, many of whom have been Leo Pickens (A78). leaders in intramural sports and crew. The question revisited a similar one out of the contemplative tradition of the [Quaker] Friends, and posed during Convocation 2007 by President Nelson. In his part of that tradition is that I often sit in silent worship. It’s somespeech, Pickens also described at length the “arts of freedom” thing that has become a very important practice in my own life. cultivated at St. John’s—another revisiting of President Nelson’s “Moving out into the world of trying to make a living, you often earlier speech. get wrapped up in the press of business and can lose the connecThough his speech was primarily an opportunity for the gradution with what is important to you. Practicing how to pause ating class to reﬂect on its achievements over the past four years, certainly makes my life much more rich in the moment.” it also sounded a caveat on life ahead: “In our efﬁciency-obsessed, It snowed two days before commencement in Santa Fe, and yet continuously accelerating world, the pressure upon you to May 21 hinted at the promise of summer, with bright sunshine. produce may knock you off center.” He called upon the newly graduated students to regain balance by taking a “Socratic pause,” More than 700 parents, guests, faculty, and staff assembled on the upper placita outside Weigle Hall to honor more than 90 underso named for the description in Plato’s Symposium of Socrates’ graduate and nearly 30 graduate students as they received their habit of standing in place for hours. degrees. Asked if he partakes in this practice, Pickens says, “Yes, I come { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2011 } �21 {Commencement} Outgoing Dean Victoria Mora’s commencement address was met with enthusiasm as she asked, “What does one do with a St. John’s education?” The answer she initially offered is that graduates have the potential to do anything they want: “All you have to supply is a little imagination—and the willingness to be the author of your own story.” Acknowledging that “imagination doesn’t enjoy unqualiﬁed esteem, especially among philosophers,” Mora suggested that “at moments like you are facing now, transitions into the still unknown and the yet undone, you might even want to get friendly with your imagination.” While this means taking risks, she noted that it was precisely this kind of intellectual courage that drew students to St. John’s. The ﬁrst step is “to recognize that when it comes to living your life, you have to be the author.” Mora then delivered the good news by way of a question: “What have you learned if not...to transcend time and place, to transcend the divide between self and other, to bring together the known and the unknown in your own narrative?” Returning to the question that launched her observations, she asked: “What will you do with this education? Anything you want.” Mora, who joined the faculty in 1992, began her tenure as dean in 2006 and as of July 1 has rejoined the faculty. x —Laurent Merceron (A08) and Deborah Spiegelman To read the 2011 Commencement addresses, visit: www.stjohnscollege.edu/events. Babak Zarin (A11), a member of the Senior Gift Committee. Senior Gift “For this year’s senior class gift we wanted to buck the tradition,” says 2011 senior gift committee member Joshua Paul (A11), whose class has decided to present the college with three senior gifts instead of one. After an initial callout to the senior class for gift proposals, the committee was showered with so many good ideas that the process of narrowing them down proved to be a challenge. The committee ultimately decided on three gifts, which would allow them to “cover both academic and social elements of the college,” says committee member Babak Zarin (A11). For the latter, the class has proposed to improve the Wi-Fi access in the Coffee Shop in McDowell Hall. “The Coffee Shop is a major social center, and improving Internet access there would be a huge service for students socializing and doing research,” says Zarin. The 2011 class will also be contributing ﬁnancially to the Greenﬁeld Library’s effort to increase the number of Program titles available for students. Over the years, an increasing shortage of these books has affected those students who are unwilling or unable to purchase them. Perhaps the most exciting of the three gifts will be the repairing of the Foucault Pendulum, which has been out of operation for most of its existence. Annapolis tutor James Beall, a longtime champion of restoring the pendulum, will be overseeing the repair arrangements. Awakened from decades of dormancy, the sight of the pendulum in action will be a welcome gift indeed. For more information contact Jennifer Petricig at: 410-626-5557 or jennifer.petricig@sjca.edu. —Laurent Merceron (A08) Mirielle Clifford (SF11) { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2011 } �22 {Commencement} Junia Cho (A11) (below, right) is spending two months this summer in South Korea as part of the Critical Language Scholarship Program of the United States Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Her award is a prestigious one, and the intensive language program is part of a government effort to expand the number of Americans studying and mastering critical-need foreign languages. For Cho, it is a chance to explore more fully her Korean background: “I was born here but my parents are Korean, so I’m curious about their culture.” She is considering attending graduate school in Korean studies, with the possibility of working in the political arena. x Clockwise (l to r): James Russell (A11), the fourth son of tutor George Russell to attend St. John’s, and Anna Sitzmann (A11). Annapolis and Santa Fe graduates celebrate with their families; Commencement at the upper placita outside Weigle Hall, Santa Fe; Andrew Peak (A11) captures the moment during the reception inside Iglehart Hall, Annapolis. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2011 } �{Commencement} Reading Across Generations By the end of the ceremony in Annapolis the sky cleared, matching the bright spirits of the crowd, which gathered outside of Mellon Hall for congratulatory hugs and photos. Among those celebrating were Daniel (A11) and Jerome Dausman (AGI11), a graduating father-and-son duo from Brookville, Maryland. “I never thought I would go back to college,” says Jerome, who enrolled in the Graduate Institute one year after his son began his undergraduate studies, “but Daniel kind of pulled me into the Program.” Hooked on following along with Daniel’s freshman reading list at home, Jerome ﬁgured that a St. John’s education would complement his new occupation as a volunteer science teacher at Alexandria Academy in Alexandria, Virginia. Do they ever discuss their readings together? “Not really,” says Jerome, “ but we did attend ‘Open-Mic Night’ poetry slams at Galway Bay together.” x Counterclockwise (R): Santa Fe graduates celebrate; Mike Peters, Santa Fe president; Commencement speakers Victoria Mora, Santa Fe dean; and Leo Pickens (A78), director of Athletics, Annapolis; Annapolis President Chris Nelson (SF70). Daniel (A11) and Jerome Dausman (AGI11) 23 �24 {Apprentice Reader} AN APPRENTICE READER When it comes to reading and writing, novelist Salvatore Scibona (SF97) is a beginner at heart. by Patricia Dempsey S alvatore Scibona (SF97) has been typing for a long time. In ﬁfth grade, his grandmother taught him on an electric Royal during his weekend visits, a few miles from his childhood home in the suburbs of Cleveland. “I decided then that I wanted to write novels and got a typewriter of my own. I went halves with my mom—it cost $60—and I put down $30 of my savings.” Decades later Scibona’s debut novel, The End, was a ﬁnalist for the 2008 National Book Award; its language was celebrated for its elegant richness and Scibona was compared to Virginia Woolf, Saul Bellow, and Graham Greene. But Scibona still prefers low-tech simplicity. Although he owns a computer, he writes his ﬁrst drafts longhand with pen and paper, then rewrites on a manual typewriter. “I’m not wedded to this, but right now this is how I work. I’m trying to stay close to the words themselves,” he says. “We think of words on the computer as a ﬁle, a digital assemblage of information. The words written by hand with a pen—there are no codes, no hard returns, just words, language. I believe in words.” Scibona carefully chooses the technology that works for him. “I don’t do Facebook. I don’t have a TV,” he says. “I’m not a Luddite, but I just don’t want to risk distraction. I ﬁnd it very difﬁcult to concentrate.” Sophisticated technologies, he says, “are drawing my attention away from doing certain things—like writing.” Scibona lives simply on the Outer Cape in Provincetown, Massachusetts, an old whaling port that became a mecca for artists in the early 1900s, nurturing many iconic American writers and painters. He spends most days writing, typing, and looking out his small apartment’s window at Provincetown’s seafaring harbor. For eight months each year, Scibona works halftime at the Provincetown Fine Arts Center, administering fellowships for a residency program for emerging artists. During the summers, he usually teaches at Harvard, but this summer, as a Guggenheim Fellow, he has been working on another novel— “about what, I’m not supposed to say.” His is the writing life described by one of his favorite authors: “To quote Annie Dillard,” says Scibona, “ ‘I’m a gregarious recluse.’ ” He watches occasional TV shows on his computer— “The language is awesome,” he says, referring to “Friday Night Lights,” “In Treatment,” and “Deadwood.” Yet in “Where I Learned to Read,” his New Yorker essay of June 13, 2011, Scibona describes a childhood in which he could not escape the babbling clamor of the TV—until he attended St. John’s College in Acclaimed novelist and short-story writer Salvatore Scibona (SF97) Santa Fe. “As a kid growing up I wasn’t watching TV, but it was always on. It was an opiate.” “TV is like a martini,” he says. “You do not have to think about meddlesome things. It induces a ‘TV state of mind,’ a bogus sense of peace. The experience of deep reading brings the opposite kind of peace. At St. John’s, I discovered a ‘reading state of mind.’ ” Scibona reads widely—“a lot of books at one time, “ he says. “Right now I’m reading a novel by Sarah Braunstein, The Sweet Relief of Missing Children.” Stacked on his coffee table are the books he’s been reading, captured in a photo in the New Yorker’s blog, “The Book Bench” (www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/ books/2011/06/what-im-reading-this-summer-salvatorescibona-1.html), linked to the 2011 summer ﬁction issue that �25 {Apprentice Reader} features Scibona’s essay about St. John’s. One blog reader posted an admiring comment regarding Scibona’s “perfect” reading list. “It’s so elegant—ﬁction, nonﬁction, poems, new things, old things, friend-recommended things, lover-recommended things, rabbit holes of taste.” Says Scibona, “A favorite author of mine, Donald Woods Winnicott, makes the analogy that reading is like breastfeeding— there is an intimacy there, a real experience of being fed. If the book is not for you—it’s obscure, poorly written, you’re not hungry for it—your mind wanders. But when a book and a reader are one, the right ﬁt—it’s a deeply mind-melded focus.” Scibona discovered “deep reading” at St. John’s with tutors such as Phil LeCuyer, whom he describes in “Where I Learned to Read.” Says Scibona, “He is a deep, deep, deep reader, devoted to reading closely, and is an extraordinary humane person—a genius.” Scibona says that by the time he graduated from St. John’s, he was “a garden well fertilized but not planted.” “I am an apprentice reader. I learned that I am going to be an apprentice reader for the rest of my life. I did not want to be a master reader when I attended graduate school.” He received his MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop. Instead Scibona savors “the somewhat childlike experience of being naked before a book—being unqualiﬁed. The book will push you as far as you can go. It is toxic to be ‘above it.’ I want to stay a beginner at reading—and writing.” Scibona began writing his ﬁrst novel the year he learned to type. He worked on it for about 4 years and then gave up. “It was too jejune,” he says. “I kept rewriting the ﬁrst couple of chapters. By tenth and eleventh grade, I started another novel and brought it with me to St. John’s.” Again he got 20 pages into it and kept rewriting the ﬁrst few chapters. During the summer between junior and senior year, Scibona started another novel. Twelve years later it became his acclaimed novel, The End. “The ﬁrst seven years of writing, you cannot see in the book,” he says. “I was inspired during junior seminar with Mr. Katzen, when he presented this paradox: ‘If you have a boat and you replace every piece of the boat over 100 years, in the end is it the same boat?’ That is how it was with my ﬁrst novel.” One Writer’s Roots Scibona’s debut novel, The End, is a gripping and intricate saga that unfolds across generations of Italian immigrants in Cleveland through 1953. It is in no way autobiographical, he says, even though his great-grandparents immigrated from Italy and Poland and he grew up in a cocoon of family. The End is dedicated to his grandparents. “I didn’t realize until I came to St. John’s just how much other families move around,” he says. “I was close to all my grandparents.” The End was a ﬁnalist for the 2008 National Book Award. Scibona has also received a Fulbright Fellowship (2000), a Guggenheim Fellowship (2010), and the Whiting Writers' Award (2009). In 2010, the New Yorker featured Scibona as one of its “20 under 40” notable ﬁction writers and published his short story, “The Kid.” “Where I Learned to Read” is linked at: http://www.stjohnscollege.edu/news/SJCnews.shtml x “When I am reading, I decompose—I read for pleasure and for joy—and the [thoughts] come out when I’m writing.” Salvatore Scibona Scibona’s conversation lilts with vivid metaphors, many drawn from another of his passions—gardening. When Scibona wasn’t typing on his grandmother’s electric Royal during his weekend visits, he was outside with his grandfather, who taught him to garden. Scibona later took to worm farming, a form of composting. Reading, he observes, feeds his writing in much the same way that composting does a garden. “It’s more a metaphor for the way you grow a garden by compost,” he says. “Vegetable peelings go into the compost and are similar to what comes out of the garden; the peelings feed the new plants. When I am reading, I decompose—I read for pleasure and for joy—and the [thoughts] come out when I’m writing. What you write is not deﬁned by what you read, but it is dependent on what you read. If I’m reading an intensely theological work, for example, it ﬂavors my writing, carries into the stories.” At St. John’s, Scibona realized he needed to learn to read in order to learn to write. “I really wanted to write ﬁction. I really wanted to read. It was clear to me that I was somehow unqualiﬁed to write because I had read so little.” St. John’s gave “an exceptional education for a creative writer, even though the Program is not heavy in contemporary literature,” he says. “All the creative writers I know wish they had read these books when they were younger, with other people. I have always been really grateful for that. It shaped my head. I had no experience being able to talk about books casually with other students with a vast common frame of reference. Being part of that conversation all the time—that’s a gift.” In his recent New Yorker essay, Scibona describes the delight of ﬁnding “his tribe” at the college, a place where he belonged. “Before going to St. John’s, I was under the impression that I was an introvert. I wasn’t hanging out with the right people. Readers of the Johnnie stripe read with their whole heart and mind. It was a culture shock to leave and be in this other world where reading wasn’t what everyone was doing.” On the Outer Cape, Scibona says there are many with a similar sensibility, especially artists and writers. “Once again, I’m with my tribe.” A “gregarious recluse,” he guards his writing solitude, even eliminating a few low-tech distractions. This summer he even decided not to garden. “Gardening is in complete competition with writing,” he says. “It consumes the part of my mind that is obsessive, that keeps tabs on the tiny changes in the plants. I get emotionally attached to the plants— like characters [in ﬁction].” Instead this summer, “I spend the day alone typing and looking out the window,” he says. “Around 3 or 4 p.m., I go outside, sit on a bench, and read among other people. It’s like St. John’s. I spend a lot of time reading.” x �26 {Entrepeneurs} How To Succeed In Business And Life: The St. John’s Way Two entrepreneurs illuminate change and progress. W hat happens in a St. John’s class is mysterious— and powerful. A challenging text. Ideas. Questions. The individuals who’ve read and studied the text. More ideas. The thoughts in the minds of those individuals and the Logos that expresses those thoughts. The receptive minds of others at the table that process the text, the nuances of language, the words of the other participants. Insights. The dialectic or interplay between the thoughts, words, and understanding of those at the table. Fusion. Occasionally, something whole emerges, either for an individual or for the group. Awareness, recognition, light bulbs. Ideas ﬂash. Here are the stories of two alumni who have harnessed that power and mystery, each in a different way—one observed chaos theory and the other studied human nature—to create businesses that improve how organizations and individuals function. Harnessing Butterflies by Anna Perleberg (SF02) E ven though Glenda Eoyang (SF76) has helmed three companies, she says “It’s very strange to be thought of as an entrepreneur—it’s not a path that I planned or even imagined. But looking back, I can see it’s in my nature.” In fact, her current work at the Human Systems Dynamics Institute (HSDI)—named for a ﬁeld of research she founded—seeks to understand the conditions that form just such obvious-in-retrospect paths, and apply their lessons to an uncertain future. At ﬁrst, Eoyang thought her own post-graduation future lay in education, and she spent ﬁve years teaching physics, chemistry, and math at the high school level. But she found herself interested in the then-burgeoning computer industry—so new, she says, “There were no regular jobs. So I started my own business.” Called Eidos, the ﬁrm helped develop computer-based training. At some point during the late 1980s, she started reading about complexity science and chaos theory and was surprised to discover that many of the same concepts with which so-called “hard” scientists were working seemed equally �{Entrepeneurs} 27 Glenda Eoyang (SF76) uses seminar as an example of non-linear dynamics. relevant to human interaction. Her next entrepreneurial venture, called Chaos Limited, strove to integrate these difﬁcult theories with leadership in management. “Over time, complexity work drew me more and more into it,” recalls Eoyang, “and in 1996 I decided to get my doctorate.” For the next ﬁve years, at Union Institute and University, Eoyang carved out her own, ﬁercely multidisciplinary degree, studying computer science, political science, mechanical engineering, and management theory—a blend that her doctoral committee would help her to dub “human systems dynamics.” This at-ﬁrst opaque term describes a ﬁeld based on non-linear dynamics, “which is to traditional dynamics what non-Euclidean geometry is to Euclidean geometry: a formal discipline of describing the world and relationships that has different fundamental assumptions,” Eoyang explains. One metaphor for this system of thinking about the world is the oft-cited “butterﬂy effect,” ﬁrst formulated by Edward Lorenz, in which a butterﬂy’s ﬂapping of its wings on one side of the world generates a tiny breeze that eventually causes a hurricane oceans away. In this way, says Eoyang, “a small cause can be ampliﬁed by the relationships in the system to create a huge effect,” rather than a Newtonian scheme in which you can’t get a large effect without a large cause, since any reaction must have a equal and opposite action. Eoyang also likes to use seminar as an example of non-linear dynamics: “We have agents relating to each other who create system-wide patterns over time. You know how sometimes, when the conversation is beginning to stall, someone will say something that seems off the wall—but the group shifts its pattern of discourse in response to that one little comment.” The seminar experience strongly inﬂuenced both her dissertation and her work at HSDI. “Those four years watching groups of people making meaning together has become a model of self-organizing systems for me, like a laboratory. Conditions are set so that a group of individuals can interact and create meaning that belongs to all of them.” Her senior essay at St. John’s dealt with Galileo’s argument about inﬁnity, trying to answer the questions, “How do you know and how do you take action if you are not able to predict or control the future? How do you equip yourself to do that with grace and accountability?” In her subsequent chaos theory research, she realized that “sometimes that process [of creating meaning and taking action] is very quick and coherent and clean, sometimes messy and wandering. Sometimes it just dissipates”—again, familiar experiences to anyone who has sat through a seminar. She became fascinated with what it is that allows for a speedy, lucid, successful process, and boiled it down to three main factors: “There has to be a container, something that pulls the agents together. There must be differences that make a difference—if everyone just nods and agrees, nothing will move forward. Finally, there must be exchange, whether of money, energy, or ideas.” It’s these three principles that form the cornerstone of HSDI’s work in training, consulting, research, and support. Founded in 2003, the Institute now has 152 trained associates worldwide, all applying HSD to the varied work they do, in ﬁelds like education reform, conﬂict resolution, health care service delivery, leadership, and process improvement. This characterization of the dynamics of human interaction is especially useful in what Eoyang calls “evaluating systemic interventions.” She offers the example of a foundation starting an agricultural research program in Africa, and wanting to gauge its success several years along. “Traditionally, the way these judgments were made was by setting goals—‘in two years we will do X, Y, and Z.’” If in two years X, Y, and Z were not done, the project would be considered a failure. But human systems dynamics acknowledges that with so many small and even hidden inﬂuences at play, the deﬁnition of “success” ﬂuctuates over time. HSDI attempts to keep track of the inﬂuences; making people aware of the patterns they create gives them ways to achieve desired outcomes. Paradoxically, the current economy has been good for the company: “Because we’re combining models and methods for thriving in uncertainty, our business has really blossomed in these current crises.” Eoyang also cites HSDI’s very low overhead and ﬂexible workforce, with few regular employees and most work done by associates under contract, as creating a resilient business model that can weather ﬁnancial storms. There’s no doubt that business is booming: Eoyang’s current clients include the United States Children’s Bureau, the Ofﬁce of Child Abuse & Neglect (OCAN), the state of Minnesota’s Department of Human Services, the McKnight Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Authentic Leadership in Action Institute. Last year, Eoyang taught in London, Ottawa, Tel Aviv, New Orleans, and Vancouver. It’s the kind of exhausting schedule that only pays off for those who genuinely love their work and have made their own niche in the world: in short, entrepreneurs. x Find further patterns at www.hsdinstitute.org. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2011 } �28 {Entrepeneurs} says. “Low point of my life: a single day, two failing grades.” As for the business, Sullivan stuck it out, in part because he recognized that he didn’t belong in a corporate culture. by Paul Hamilton “In spite of the bankruptcy, I was more determined than ever to be a successful entrepreneur,” he says. “Besides, an Sullivan (A71) helps business owners there was no alternative. My personality and approach to become millionaires. “I’m a natural work make me totally unﬁt to be working for someone else.” coach,” Sullivan explains. “That’s been In the early 1980s, Sullivan’s fortunes dramatically true all through my life. Ever since I was a improved. He met Babs Smith, who at the time owned a child, I had the ability to sit down with holistic health practice in Toronto. She came on board to people and help them think clearly about help him develop and market a coaching strategy based on what it is they want to do.” his techniques, which could be applied on a large scale. There is one question he has been asking individuals for “We called it The Strategy Circle,” says Sullivan. “I can more than 36 years, a question that has transformed their teach anybody how to do it in half an hour, and it works for businesses and their personal lives: “If you were looking the rest of their lives. It’s a very simple process: You pick a back three years from now, what has to have happened in date in the future and ask the question: What results do you your life, both personally and professionally, for you to be want to see on that day? You let them talk about it, and happy with your progress?” numbers have to be involved. Once they’re really happy That question lies at the heart of Strategic Coach, a with that, I say, ‘Tell me every reason that company Sullivan started with his wife, can’t happen.’ The obstacles tell you what Babs, in 1987. The company operates in you have to do. You identify actions, deciseven cities in the United States, Canada, sions, and communications, and you stay and the United Kingdom; generates more with that plan until all the results are than $20 million in revenue annually; and there.” has 100 employees. Sullivan launched The Strategy Circle in “My basic belief is that people have an 1982. Within seven years, the business enormous amount of crucial experience multiplied ten times and ﬁlled up all of his and aspiration that they can’t see or use time. He saw that he needed to bring more until someone asks them the right people into his organization, and in 1989, questions,” says Sullivan. Dan Sullivan he and Babs (now his wife) launched After graduating from St. John’s, Strategic Coach, with the idea of having Sullivan moved to Toronto and found a job successful entrepreneurs—schooled in Sullivan’s strategies— as a copywriter for BBDO, a large international ad agency. coach other business owners. Their clients included Kraft and Chrysler and other large “I’ve carried the great ideas, great questions, great corporations. Through his creative work, Sullivan got to discussions of St. John’s to Strategic Coach,” says Sullivan. know the owners of small businesses, and he learned that “I’ve also created a single, integrated program that many had trouble articulating their long-term goals. At his continually evolves and strengthens—not unlike the clients’ request, academic program at the college. At St. John’s, the process he began leading weekend retreats on strategic planning. is facilitated by dedicated tutors. In our approach, there “This opportunity developed because of my continual are 16 coaches, all entrepreneurs who have been in the habit of asking questions that went way beyond the scope of program, who run their own businesses, and who can coach advertising,” says Sullivan. “St. John’s strengthened my from experience.” ability to ask penetrating questions—but I’ve been doing Sullivan explores the success of many of his clientsthat since I was ﬁve or six years old. I chose St. John’s turned-coaches in his book, Industry Transformers: How because it was based on strengthening a capability that I was Unique Process Entrepreneurs Create New Markets. One already good at.” such client is John Ferrell, an intellectual property lawyer in Sullivan saw that he could do more than help business Silicon Valley who saw other law ﬁrms going out of business owners sell their products or services; he could also help during the dot-com bust in 2002. Ferrell rebuilt his practice them improve their business practices. At the same time, he by pursuing a new niche: Instead of only helping inventors also discovered his passion and skill for strategic planning. write patents, he guides them in “Strategic IP,” helping After just three years at BBDO, Sullivan quit his job and entrepreneurs guard their intellectual property by started his own ﬁrm, Dan Sullivan Communications. Thus protecting the unique customer experience their product began eight tough years, with the stagnant economy of the provides. mid-1970s proving to be a formidable obstacle. He had been Another client, David Allen, started out washing cars married for about a year when he went out on his own, and when he was 15 years old and later developed it into a before long, both the marriage and business faltered. “On a valet-parking business for Class-A buildings and single day in 1978, I was both divorced and bankrupt,” he The Multiplier Effect D “One of the ﬁrst questions I ask is... ‘What would you do if you had 15 extra years?’ ” { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2011 } �{Entrepeneurs} restaurants. He then added a detailing service. When one of his car detailing clients asked if he would be willing to clean his airplane, Allen learned everything he could about the process. Within a few years, he had a thriving international enterprise, with Warren Buffett’s NetJets and Delta among his clients. While Sullivan is proud that his work creates jobs and grows businesses, he also strives to help business owners improve their own lives. Brothers Noah and Dan Katz run a third-generation family business: a chain of 11 small grocery stores in New York City. They signed up for the Strategic Coach program about ten years ago. “Since joining Strategic Coach,” Sullivan says, ”they now have 14 stores, and their proﬁt margins have increased signiﬁcantly.” Sullivan helped the brothers adopt cutting-edge technology, but he also emphasized customer loyalty. “Technology frees us up from repetitive things so we can humanize all the other experiences,” explains Sullivan. More importantly, Sullivan adds, the two entrepreneurs don’t put in 65-hour workweeks anymore. “One of the ﬁrst questions I ask is ‘At what age are you going to die?’ ” What would you do, Sullivan asks next, if you had 15 extra years? “The clients tell me ‘I’d educate people, I’d travel, I’d write’—all these things that are in the back of their minds as they’re becoming successful. Their businesses are what they do, not who they are.” One of the Katz brothers now spends more time with his family; the other recently married, takes more time off, and climbs mountains. “He’s also giving back to his community, and that makes him happy,” says Sullivan. “It’s a pleasure for me to see it, and that’s what makes it all worthwhile.” Though the recent recession was declared ofﬁcially over, some jobs have disappeared forever and businesses must adapt to changing times, Sullivan says. To meet this challenge, he recently launched Stage 2 of Strategic Coach, which he calls “You x 10.” Sullivan’s new structure takes advantage of Moore’s Law, a prediction made by Gordon Moore (co-inventor of the microchip) that the power and speed of microchips will double every 18 months, while the cost of computing will be halved during the same period. Today’s economic upheavals are due mainly to technological breakthroughs created by entrepreneurs; entrenched bureaucratic structures become obsolete when they cannot adapt to the change. Countless new inventions using the microchip—the iPad being just one example—are giving rise to thousands of new kinds of entrepreneurial businesses. Sullivan’s ﬁrm offers entrepreneurs in the “You x 10” program a framework that enables them and their companies to achieve a “multiplier effect” of ten-times greater performance and results by taking advantage of microtechnology. There are already highly successful business owners who can now multiply their success in extraordinary ways. Sullivan strives to show entreprenuers how they can make a good living— while pursuing a life worth living. As for his personal life, Sullivan travels the world with Babs, ﬁnding great cities, hotels, and restaurants, and he’s passionate about jazz, history, and politics. Sullivan says, “Entreprenuership is the driving force of society. I believe the United States, especially, was established by the Founders to be an entrepreneurial nation. But we can take any successful entrepreneur and, if they’re willing, help them to continually multiply the performance and results of every part of their business. It’s a marvelous way to spend my life.” x Paul Hamilton is director of marketing for Strategic Coach. margaux yiu 29 Dan Sullivan (A71) asks great questions to transform businesses. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2011 } �30 {Biblioﬁle} A Journalist’s Searing Accounts of Piracy and Child Conscription Pirate State: Inside Somalia’s Terrorism at Sea by Peter Eichstaedt Lawrence Hill Books, 2010 First Kill Your Family: Child Soldiers of Uganda and the Lord’s Resistance Army by Peter Eichstaedt Lawrence Hill Books, 2009 Peter Eichstaedt (SF92) has spent recent years as a journalist covering the bleak conditions in much of Eastern Africa. The pace of his output—two books published in the last two years—suggests just how quickly events have unfolded in this unstable region. In Pirate State: Inside Somalia’s Terrorism at Sea, Eichstaedt asks what drives a person to hijack ships and hold their crews hostage. Beginning with the capture of the United States-ﬂagged ship Maersk Alabama in April 2009, Eichstaedt takes readers on a tour of Somalia, as well as neighboring Kenya and Sudan, through a series of reports and interviews with the friends, families, and victims of pirates—and in a few notable cases, the pirates themselves. He reveals a world of poverty and the high-stakes risks of survival. The personal stories he recounts have an added dimension; multiple viewpoints reveal the complicated efforts and motives of all parties involved. Interviews with the families of hostages, for instance, depict brutal captivity conditions, widespread government failures, and the desperation in the everyday lives of the pirates. Reaching beyond a mere reporting of events, Eichstaedt leaves readers with his own recommendations for ending the current pattern of Somali piracy; these include everything from working with Somali clan leaders to rebuilding the nation’s oncethriving ﬁshing industry. Equally as riveting is First Kill Your Family: Child Soldiers of Uganda and the Lord’s Resistance Army, which chronicles the last 20 years of conﬂict between Ugandan government and rebel forces, leading up to the stalled peace talks of 2008. The title refers to the LRA’s practice of forcing children to execute their parents before being conscripted into their ranks. Escaped ex-child soldiers and female child “brides” recount their ordeals. (Some are reluctant to do so because of the subsequent ostracizing they endure from their families and communities when they return home.) Eichstaedt presents these searing stories of kidnapping, physical and emotional abuse, murder, trauma, and the religious confusion of the LRA against the larger backdrop of a society desperate to ﬁnd peace again. Yet Eichstaedt is careful to give context to the actions of the LRA by tracing the precursor religious and political movements in Uganda in the 20 years prior to the LRA’s formation. Whenever possible, he provides the explanations LRA leaders themselves give for their actions. Peter Eichstaedt (SF92) { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2011 } Interviews...depict brutal captivity conditions...and the desperation in the everyday lives of the pirates. Both titles offer readers compelling and unforgiving accounts of current hostilities in Eastern Africa. Those looking for more of Eichstaedt’s astute and sometimes raw, hair-raising journalism can watch for his upcoming book, Consuming the Congo: War and Conﬂict Minerals in the World’s Deadliest Place (Lawrence Hill Books, July 2011). x —Babak Zarin (A11) and Laurent Merceron (A08) �{Biblioﬁle} White Asparagus D. R. Belz (AGI03) Apprentice House, 2010 “Now that there’s a well-established European Union, you can bet that sooner or later the specter of the United States converting to the metric system will rise again. But I don’t care what they say. I don’t care how many public service commercials they produce. They might be able to tax my income, regulate my driving, standardize my deductions, approximate my demographic make-up, optimize my consumer-producer potential, as well as take all of the hormones out of my beef jerky, but no government in the world is going to make me ‘think metric.’ ” With these words, satirist D. R. Belz begins White Asparagus, a humorous and often insightful collection of his essays, poetry, and short stories across the years. He covers a wide array of topics and quirky incidents, ranging from the world of family and the workplace to small moments of everyday life, such as shopping at the mall or encountering and early-morning car accident in the Baltimore-Washington region. White Asparagus is divided into three sections: essays, poetry, and stories. While there is one short story that prominently references Program works (“There Angels Dance”), to read the anthology for that story alone would be to miss the wealth of writing the book contains. “Essays” offers multiple works that reﬂect and satirize familiar cultural traits, such as a drive for commercialism (“ValuesRUs.com,” “The GreatIdeas-That-Never-Got-Off-theGround Catalogue”), a sense of vanity (“Your Astrological Forecast,” “The Caveman Diet”), or stereotypes (“The Joy of Cooking Internationally,” “Hand Jive,” “The Million Monkey Room”). “Poetry” showcases Belz’s serious side as he ponders the stages of life, from childhood (“September’s Child”) to death (“Suicides in Heaven,” “Plato’s Tree”). “Stories” merges the best of the two prior sections, portraying realistic characters in extraordinary situations of love (“Tidings,” “The Perfect Pancake”) and death (“The Fabulist,” “The Green Bacon Boy”). Belz, who has been writing professionally for more than 30 years and has contributed to publications such as The Baltimore Sun, The Southern Literary Messenger, and The Oregon Review, lists Swift, Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, James Thurber, H. L. Mencken, and Kurt Vonnegut as being among his heroes. White Asparagus is eclectic, a delight to read, and offers a little bit of something for everyone. —Babak Zarin (A11) Valéry’s Graveyard: Le Cimetière marin Translated, Described, and Peopled Hugh P. McGrath and Michael Comenetz Peter Lang Publishing, 2011 Hugh McGrath (1914–1995), for many years a tutor at St. John’s, had a profound understanding of language in general, and of the English and French languages, with their literatures, in particular. An inspiring presence in the classroom and a champion of liberal education, he was also known for his public readings of poetry { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2011 } 31 and his performances on the stage. In 1978 he delivered a lecture titled “Translation and Description: Paul Valéry’s ‘Le Cimetière marin,’” calling it “a labor of love and a work of propaganda.” Its subject was one of the most celebrated works of poetry of the last hundred years, widely recognized as distinguished for beauty of form and wealth of meaning. This he translated as “The Graveyard by the Sea,” producing an English version at once faithful and poetic, and went on to provide an elegant “description” which set out the main structural and dynamic features of the poem and traced its narrative. Valéry’s Graveyard is in two parts. The ﬁrst presents the French text of “Le Cimetière marin” with McGrath’s translation on facing pages, followed by the descriptive account given in his lecture. The second part, by the second author (also a St. John’s tutor), consists of nine chapters on selected themes awakened by McGrath’s work, with reference to other writings of Valéry, Greek and other poetry, and some of the poet’s scientiﬁc concerns. The whole affords an introduction to the complex intellectual world of Valéry as well as to his splendid poem. —Michael Comenetz �32 {Alumni} Finance, Risk, Diligence, and Kant Laura Strache (A02), once a high-ﬂying rocker, lands on Wall Street. by Anna Perleberg (SF02) anne-marie howard S ince Laura Strache (A02) came to St. John’s eight years after ﬁnishing high school, her path before college is diverse. She spent ﬁve years in an “automotive industrial” band called the Motor Morons, who make music with car parts and power tools. She learned to ﬂy small planes—despite not yet having a driver’s license at the time. It was her last job before matriculating, however, that focused her future energies; she worked in a unique form of insurance called surety, in which, rather than paying premiums and receiving a payout when needed, a client receives a sum from an insurance company contingent on completing a task—the most well-known form of surety being bail bonds. Strache’s work in surety claims sealed the deal. She was determined to build a career in ﬁnance. Her determination and guts—useful as a punk rocker, pilot, and Johnnie—led to her current position as managing director of operations at a midtown Manhattan hedge fund. First, a detour and a stroke of luck. Graduating in 2002 as the dot-com bubble burst, Strache struggled to break into ﬁnance; at the suggestion of her sister Vivian (A88), a lawyer, she became a paralegal. The hours were grueling and the work less than dynamic, but Strache’s Johnnie-bred curiosity and knack for plowing through dense philosophical texts paid off. During the closing stages of a large merger, she found herself at a gigantic conference table covered with manila ﬁles. Strache’s only task was to check off documents as they arrived, labeling folders and making sure all the necessary information was complete. “It was tedious. So one night, waiting for documents to come in at three a.m., I started reading them.” Though she didn’t have all the nuances of the legalese, Strache did notice that certain changes to the language occurred in some texts but not in others. She attempted to bring it to the attention of her supervisor, who dismissed her concerns. Further down the table, a more senior lawyer overheard, asking “How Laura Strache (A02) has determination and guts in spades. did you know what you were reading?” Strache’s response? “Look, I’ve read Kant!” In other words, she knew that fully understanding a reading wasn’t required to glean knowledge from it. And she’d impressed the right person: “Over time, I would work on every project this lawyer had. I was told by partners when I left the ﬁrm that I was doing the work of a ﬁfth-year lawyer.” She left with this mentor when he was appointed general counsel of the hedge fund { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2011 } where she now works. Starting as a senior paralegal, she was responsible for keeping corporate books in order, and created a system of records to document compliance. As Strache started doing “a little bit of everything,” she enrolled in an executive MBA program, offered jointly by Columbia Business School and London Business School. For four days every month over two years, she studied intensively in a very different learning environment than St. John’s, but one she was pleased to �33 {Alumni} 1946 PETER WEISS was one of the organizers of a conference of legal experts held in Vancouver, Canada, February 9-11, 2011, which produced a declaration afﬁrming the incompatibility of nuclear weapons with international humanitarian law. See www.lcnp.org/wcourt/Feb2011 VancouverConference/vancouverdeclaration.pdf or contact him at petweiss185@gmail.com. 1955 After a short stint as copyboy at the Washington Post, and on-stage Navy experience at Franklin and Marshall College, JOHN M. GORDON joined the Navy as an Air Intelligence Ofﬁcer. Following another short career as a freelance motion picture writer-producer, he went to work as a civilian for the Navy, writing and directing training ﬁlms and videos and retiring in 1997 to continue full-time as a landscape designer and watergarden installer. After more education in landscape architecture at the University of Maryland, he followed the designer track with clients in the Maryland-D.C.-Virginia zone, and is now writing a murder mystery set in Annapolis and, yes, the victim is a student at SJC. Write-What-You-Know! www.tudor-roses.vpweb.com. RICHARD LEVERING writes, “I need to pay my gratitude to the classmates of 1955, to the upper classmen of 1952, 1953, 1954, the class of 1956, and all the remarkable tutors and ancillary staff that kept the dorms, grounds, Liberty Tree, and rooms of learning in functioning order. My need to pay tribute to those deserving souls is summed up in this attempt at verse: discover wasn’t boring. “At times I hit up against a different pedagogical approach— I would ﬁnd an inconsistency, or something I didn’t understand, and question it. Some professors didn’t like that at all!” Other students, too, believed that the only reason to ask a question was to show off or to get a better grade for class participation. Persevering with her inquisitive nature intact, she graduated in spring of 2008, and assumed the position she now holds as managing director of operations. It’s a job with many responsibilities, in number and in kind. Essentially, Strache “supervises the processes by which we settle our trades, conﬁrm our assets, make sure securities are paid for.” This entails the logistics of managing what as well as examining how business is conducted. “Is it most efﬁcient? Are there appropriate checks and controls in place to prevent fraud and catch people’s mistakes?” Special projects such as preparing annual ﬁnancial statements and helping with the ﬁrm’s taxes also fall within Strache’s bailiwick. Much of her work involves translating between departments; lawyers, traders, and marketing professionals all speak different jargons, and she must use the “very St. John’s skill” of being able to listen to the ways diverse people talk and see Unspoken Praise A thousand doors will open and close, my years have taught me this, each one can change or end your life, bring agony or bliss. So I step from the path to smell a rose, am hushed by the song of birds, and will yield those praises that I feel, freeing the captive words. For a common crime, not named by laws nor punished for its commission, not carved in stone by God’s own hand, not a deed, but an omission, is that of a compliment unsaid, that small but valued token, for those to whom our debt unpaid is the gratitude unspoken. So I will seek that special time when, free from obligation, my motive cannot be construed the commonalities. An aptitude for nonverbal communication learned from her bandmates has also served her well. Yet another aspect of Strache’s work involves relationships with brokers and banks doing due diligence on the hedge fund, and trying to feel out risk. “I need to understand how my business does things, what a bank might be nervous about, and explain why or why not they should be. If they should be nervous, then of course I go back and look at what we can do differently.” It’s this role that has changed most in light of the recent ﬁnancial crisis. “Investors used to take a cursory look at operations. But now, a lot of them have a knee-jerk reaction to certain practices. I need to understand what their concerns are and address things they may think are problematic that we believe are not.” Her MBA couldn’t have come at a better time: “Had I been in school in fall 2008, I would have had to drop out.” She estimates that between Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy in September of that year and January 2009, she had not a single day off, including Christmas. The ﬁrm lost large numbers of employees, and unfortunately, as director of operations, handling layoffs was also in her purview. Her business school skills in the best ways of communicating bad news came { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2011 } as a desire for recognition. To speak requiring no reply, lest tomorrow I must go and bear the burden of praises felt for those who will not know. 1958 MARY BITTNER GOLDSTEIN has co-edited a collection of essays on contemporary Chinese Art, titled Subversive Strategies in Contemporary Chinese Art, which was published by Brill Academy Press in March 2011. 1959 ROBERTO (ROBBY) SALINAS PRICE, is currently working on his Elements of Homeric Geography, A Treatise on the Geographical Grammar and Syntax of the Iliad and Odyssey, which he hopes to ﬁnish by into play. And her encyclopedic awareness of how the business worked, its rights and responsibilities, came to the fore: “My role was not as interesting to people when the markets were good—it seemed to them like I was keeping things from going as fast as they wanted.” But her risk-averse nature when it comes to ﬁnancials and insistence on preparing for the worst-case scenario was essential when the market faltered. Risk-averse? A punk rocker and a pilot? Of course, says Strache: “Sure, ﬂying is risky, but what I enjoyed about it so much was the habits learned to manage the risk.” In fact, the dominant theme in her life and work seems to be learning to handle uncertainty with aplomb. She loves “planning, preparing checklists, imagining possible scenarios and leaving myself an out wherever possible.” The potential for and rapidity of change in the ﬁnance world is one reason Strache likes her work. “Even though hedge funds have been around for decades, it’s still a maturing industry. There’s lots to learn all the time.” She ﬁnds the constant problem-solving of operations—shifting between “the ﬁve-milehigh picture and the details”—exciting and fulﬁlling. And it’s in demand. “There’s more career security in breadth.” x �{Alumni} 34 year’s end. “The thesis rests squarely on the premise of my earlier work that, if Homer’s Troy corresponds with Croatia’s Dalmatian Coast, then the entire body of geographical information found in the Iliad and Odyssey must likewise be reviewed. The work calls for a revisionist understanding of the so-called ‘Heroic Age,’ prior to the acquisition by a nascent Greek cultural identity of Homeric toponyms and ethnonyms (the ‘elements’ or building-blocks of geographical information).” 1961 DR. R. DOUGLAS BENDALL is the founder and president of The Newark School of Theology, Newark, New Jersey. NST offers seminary level theological education to inner-city ministers, lay persons, and others unlikely to matriculate at a seminary designed to prepare students for the professional degree (M.Div) in theology. “We teach theology as a liberal art,” Bendall says. “Our philosophy and teaching methods are grounded in the educational model found at St. John’s College in Annapolis and Santa Fe.” Married with ﬁve children, daughter Lisa Bendall is the Sinclair and Rachel Hood lecturer in Aegean Prehistory, Institute of Archeology, and Tutorial Fellow for Arch & Anth at Keble College, Oxford, England, while son David Bendall is a mathematician who works as a software engineer in Southern California. DR. STEPHEN B. BERNSTEIN writes: “After graduating from Franklin & Marshall College I attended and graduated from New York Medical College. I did a Psychiatric Residency at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, and am currently a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Tufts Medical School, a Lecturer in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and a Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. I am in private practice in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. I have been married for 48 years to Judith Bernstein, and have one married son and two grandchildren. My son is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the College of Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. 1964 ERIC LUTKER (A) has retired and is enjoying life in Florida— walking, shooting in the 70s, reading, and in his spare time running a local learning institute and writing a health care blog, healthdiscussions.net. 1966 JUDY ANDERSON (A) did two memorable things on January 1 this year: retired and became a vegan. Planning to move to South Carolina, which was supposed to happen in February, but turned out to be a slower process than anticipated, Anderson celebrated the 5-year anniversary of her cancer surgery, and was ofﬁcially declared a survivor and discharged from oncology; she plans to keep everyone posted on both developments. JULIE BUSSER DU PREY (A) is now a grandmother of a sixmonth-old and her daughter is expecting her ﬁrst child, too. 1968 RICK WICKS (SF) and his daughter Linnéa (who just completed her ﬁrst semester of medical school) spent two weeks in Eastern Europe, where he drove through Poland (to Auschwitz and Krakow), Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia the ﬁrst week, and then took night trains to St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev (Ukraine), and Minsk (Belarus) the second week. Then he and his son Hendrik (almost 17) spent the summer in Alaska. 1970 LES MARGULIS (A) is back in Sydney for a year now after 18 months running an ad agency in Mumbai, India. After publishing magazines and websites for adults 50-plus (although barely 39), Margulis now works for an ad agency called Naked (www.nakedcommunications. com.au), and is not ready yet for retirement or the glue factory. 1971 JOHN STARK BELLAMY II (A), steadfast chronicler of scandalous tales, has a new book available as a Kindle download at Amazon.com. “A Woman Scorned,” he says, “is the greatest story I have discovered during my two decades of total immersion in northeast Ohio woe.” Bellamy is also expecting a print edition to be available this spring. 1972 JIM CARLYLE (A) retired April 1 after 34 years as an Episcopal priest at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Columbus, Ohio, and is contemplating his next career. ELIZABETH (A73) continues to practice law, concentrating on criminal post-conviction work. Earlier this year, she was a member of a legal team that persuaded the governor of Missouri to commute a client’s death sentence to life imprisonment two days before the client’s scheduled execution. With Jim’s retirement, they have returned to Kansas City, Missouri, and would be pleased to introduce their St. John’s friends to the neighborhood. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2011 } CRAIG FREEDMAN (A) says, “After six academic books, my ﬁrst novel, The Last Time I Saw Richard, has been published. It is available via Amazon.” 1975 HOWARD MEISTER (A), is delighted to announce that one of his pieces, a chair called Nothing Continues To Happen (1980), has been purchased by The Victoria and Albert Museum in London for their permanent collection. The piece will be included in a group exhibition, “Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 19701990,” opening at the museum in September 2011 and scheduled to travel to museums across Europe. Another chair (from the edition of three), in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City since 1992, has been on exhibit there for the past year as part of a group show, “Highlights from the Modern Design Collection: 1900 to the Present.” K.C. VICTOR (A) and ED BRONFIN (SF78) spent May Day weekend together in Denver and Boulder. Ed lives in Denver, and now uses some of the justice dispensing skills he learned at the college on the job. Since 2008 he has been a Colorado State Judge, and is currently serving in criminal court. K.C. (in Los Angeles since 1998) continues her work as a business advisor and executive recruiter for lawyers. K.C. and Ed met in Annapolis when Ed was a freshman there, and have maintained a friendship ever since. 1976 In 2009, after working in marketing consulting for years, ELIZABETH COCHRAN (SF) got her masters in social work and has been working with family caregivers, most of whom care for someone with a diagnosis of dementia. She is also doing �{Alumni} 35 A Mid-life Master’s After teaching high school, attending law school, and running the family insurance business, Bruce Sanborn (SFGI09) found his way to St. John’s. By Deborah Spiegelman P ressing on Bruce Sanborn (SFGI09) in 1970 when he left Minnesota was the desire to prove his uncle wrong. “Uncle Malcolm’s opinions were [that] our family went to church because society expected us to, and humans invented God,” says Sanborn, who headed off to Dartmouth College to study religion. At Dartmouth, he enjoyed the smorgasbord of the liberal arts: Russian literature, art, biology, astronomy, Latin. “I liked college lectures. The good professors showed me things I missed reading on my own. Then, in my senior year, I fell in love with “The Faerie Queene”—Edmund Spenser’s poem,” Sanborn says. “In order to get more time with the poem, I enlisted my Aunt Polly, who lived in town and knew my professor, to sign a note urging him to extend the deadline for my term paper, which he did. On my own—without a lecture as intermediary—I approached the beauty of this poem.” After graduation, Sanborn imagined himself “a Queene’s knight ‘pricking on the plaine,/Y cladd in mightie armes and silver shielde’ and heading into the world to make my way and do good.” He landed a job back in St. Paul’s teaching high-school English and Latin. Two years later it was on to the University of Virginia Law School. When Sanborn decided to return to Minnesota, joining the insurance company that had been in his family since the 1950s, he and his wife Thea and their three children made a life there. Sanborn served on community and business boards, helped with some political campaigns, and chaired a California think-tank. All the while, he kept studying. “I admired Abraham Lincoln and read a lot about him,” Sanborn says. “I took short classes at Stanford Business School Bruce Sanborn (SFGI09) is a member of the St. John’s Board of Visitors and Governors. “For anyone on a quest to ﬁnd the good life, . . . go to St. John’s.” Bruce Sanborn and at Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry.” Eventually, Sanborn determined that whatever his future held, it no longer involved running an insurance company. With the endorsement of Thea and his siblings, he sold the family company. “Not long after the sale, I read the opening lines in Dante’s Inferno—‘In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost.’ That ﬁt,” he says. The straight way turned out to involve more studying—a path Sanborn had followed throughout his life. Starting with the Summer Classics program in Santa Fe, { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2011 } he read Locke and Rousseau, then War and Peace and Don Quixote. In 2006, he applied to St. John’s Graduate Institute, was accepted, and found a place in Santa Fe for himself and Thea to live, their children having grown up. Sanborn’s mid-life advice: “For anyone on a quest to ﬁnd the good life or anyone going a bit wobbly sensing the wood is darkening, go to St. John’s for ﬁve days, ﬁve semesters, or however long you can, and meditate on God, the human mind, and the summum bonum [the highest good]. These borrowed words from Bishop Berkeley could just as well have come from Kant; I discovered them while meditating on the human mind, God, and the summum bonum in an eight-week preceptorial on Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason and Metaphysics of Morals.” The Program, he adds, “has an attractive fullness, immediacy, and elevation to it.” Now on the College’s Board of Visitors and Governors, Sanborn has expanded his circle to include tutors, students, and other friends on both the Santa Fe and the Annapolis campuses. “While I was at St. John’s, my thinking got better the more I was part of the conversation,” he notes. “My mind’s eye was excited to see things—things I had been really sure of—in different lights and shadows and better. The opinions I held dear often proved murky, but got clearer in conversation, moving me closer to what is true and what is the good life. All of which helps me in my mission to answer Uncle Malcolm.” x �36 {Alumni} some in-home therapy with seniors, from a narrative perspective. “This represents a signiﬁcant shift from my readings at St. John’s,” Cochran says, “but without them, I doubt I’d appreciate this approach as much.” Finally, she is the project coordinator for the Elder Justice Network of the Greater North Shore (of Boston), whose mission is to educate professionals and the public about elder abuse and the services available to reduce and eliminate it. “We’ve put on three productions of an original play incorporating real stories of abuse, poetry, and songs in three different senior centers. More than 400 people have seen it, many more than would ever attend a presentation on elder abuse.” Beyond this, Cochran has a 16-year-old son who will be a senior in high school next year, with all the accompanying joys and stresses. “He has a good sense of where he’s headed, lots of friends and is fun to be around!” Cochran hopes to get back to Santa Fe some day soon, maybe with classmate and longtime friend, JUDY KISTLERROBINSON (SF77). LORIS NEBBIA (A) has published her ﬁrst novel, Solomon’s Puzzle (Blessing House Press, 2010), which reﬂects her love for Annapolis. The Maryland Writer’s Association honored Nebbia with its top prize for short ﬁction for the novel. Other publications credits include an entry on “The Great Awakening” in the Dictionary of Women’s Education published by Greenwood Press. Her essays appear online at: eighthandsaround.blogspot.com and christianityisjewish.org. Learn more about Nebbia’s novel at solomonspuzzle.com. North to Alaska P KNEISL (A77) left for Alaska on his motorcycle June 18th. If you would like to be added to the list of people receiving pictures, send an e-mail to pkneisl@verizon.net. He and Maureen have been married 31 years and have two children, Megan and Jeffrey. Megan is about to start work for the ACLU as a lawyer. Jeffrey is a mental health counselor. Kneisl has 32 years at L-3 Communications making electronic gadgets for military and space applications. He knows that “you are all on an island somewhere just like I last saw you. While I have grown old, it is a comfort to know you, my friends, have not aged a day.” x AUL 1977 ED J. KAITZ (A) organized the April 2011 art exhibition, “Local Art Inﬂuenced by Great Books,” at 49 West Coffeehouse & Winebar in Annapolis. The show featured Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. artists offering representations of works by authors such as Ovid, Nietzsche, and Mark Twain. 1978 TOM WISE (SF) writes, “I am still at UCSB doing the computer thing (and I thought the Internet was just a fad), but as of June 30, 2011, my wife Kathleen will have retired from the Child Development Program with the Santa Barbara School District. Our home is on the market (www.716cathedralpointe.com) and we are looking for our retirement home in Santa Fe. I have been in Santa Barbara for 30 years and I always said if I weren’t living here, I would go back to Santa Fe in a heartbeat. So with Kathleen’s daughter studying for her masters in psychology at Bucknell and her son Ken entering pharmacy school at Thomas Jefferson in Philly, our time has come! Cheers to all and a shout out to STEVE (SF) and Surinder Mackey and JIM (SF77) and Andrea Ham.” 1980 CHRIS BANTA (A) had her short piece, “Wallﬂowers Don’t Always Triumph at the High School Reunion,” published in We Came to Say: A Collection of Memoir, edited by Theo Pauline Nestor. “I’ve been writing ﬁction and memoir for several years,” says Banta, “and have won a couple of writing contests, but this is my ﬁrst publication.” Those interested in getting a copy of the book can ﬁnd ordering information at http://writingismydrink. com/we-came-to-say or by e-mailing Banta at cbanta@aol.com. 1982 LESLIE SMITH ROSEN HYDER (A) married JAMES HYDER (A84) before a small gathering of family and closest friends on Sunday, April 17, 2011. It was a “surprise” wedding for almost everyone—guests were invited for an engagement party and a half an hour later, a huppah was brought out! 1983 BARBARA M. MEDINA (SFGI) is currently assistant commissioner in the Colorado Department of Education, where she oversees an Ofﬁce of Language, Culture, and Equity that oversees Title III education for the linguistically diverse, as well as migrant education. She also oversees the ofﬁces of Choice or Charter Schools and online learning. DESIREE ZAMORANO’s (SF) ﬁrst mystery novel has been published as an e-book by Lucky Bat Books. Find Human Cargo on Amazon, Smashwords, or her website. 1984 MARK NIEDERMIER (A) is leaving Anchorage’s Paciﬁc Northern Academy after ﬁve years experiencing the joys and challenges of subarctic living in Alaska. In the fall he begins as Head of School for the Logan School for Creative Learning in Denver, Colorado, a progressive kindergarten-through-eighthgrade school for gifted students. He can be reached at mark@niedermier.com. �37 {Alumni} 1985 MAGGIE HOHLE (A) reports: “We moved to Northern California in 2007. My mom passed away suddenly from lung cancer in 2008, just as the ﬁnancial markets were beginning to melt down. Now it’s 2011, and I feel like our family is ﬁnally stabilizing, at least internally! Our oldest daughter, Hannah, is a proud freshman at UC Berkeley, and Tom and Molly are both in high school, while Billy is just a ﬁrst grader. As for Brad, he’s still at Dolby Laboratories (20 years!) and I’m still freelancing as a writer and translator (Japanese to English). In fact, a new website is what prompted this update: takumitranslate.com. Check it out! Turns out that my partner in Japan and I have been translating for a decade, including the recent book, MUJI. Thought we’d ﬁnally publicize the fact a little wider than our circle of usual clients, which include Kenya Hara at the Nippon Design Center, and Lars Mueller Publishers, as well as the International Design Center Nagoya (IdcN) and Idea Magazine now and then. And our latest project that will be out soon is a book on the Japan-based lifestyle brand Mina Perhonen. If anyone knows of someone who would like to avail themselves of our services, send them along, please. Our hope is to assist non-Japanese speakers/readers with research, communication, or translating entire websites if necessary, in the creative ﬁelds, since that’s where our experience lies. Design, art, architecture, that kind of thing! Anyone planning on visiting the Bay Area, come on by! We’ve got a great little town here, a couple hours from the snow, 40 minutes from the Paciﬁc, and in the heart of wine country. Can’t beat it!” MICHAEL STRONG (SF) attended the University of Chicago, studying why the Chicago economists, who considered themselves scientists, were On the Campaign Trail J ACK DOBBYN (A02) is running for state Delegate in the 42nd District of Virginia, a race that the Washington Post has called one of the “most competitive House races in the state.” He is married to fellow alum Kathryn (Bush) Dobbyn (A03), with whom he has two daughters, Victoria and Marie. The Vice President of Operations at his family’s real estate business, Dobbyn became highly involved with the Fairfax County Democratic Committee in the late 2000s and served as treasurer of the Lee District Democrats. Currently he serves as the chairman of the Fairfax County Young Democrats. In his spare time, he is an active member of the Mount Vernon Kiwanis Club and enjoys coaching youth sports teams for Woodlawn Little League and Gunston Soccer Club. Dobbyn’s top priority is improving transportation in southeastern Fairfax County. He wants to partner with Delegate Scott Surovell (D-44th) and Senator Linda “Toddy” Puller (D-36th) to improve trafﬁc on Route One, and also wants to alleviate the inﬂux of trafﬁc expected from the completion of the Base Realignment and Closure process at Fort Belvoir. Education is another priority for him, as he wants to see more of an investment in trade schools and smaller class sizes. “When I get down to Richmond, I want to get all the decisionmakers around the table and ﬁnd out what’s possible and what’s not,” said Dobbyn. “If I were going to say I wasn’t going to work with people to solve problems, I’d have a tough time in Richmond and not be able to solve our problems.” x advocates of free markets—which seemed self-evidently harmful. They gradually developed respect for free-market economics. He began a dissertation under Nobel laureate economist Gary Becker on “Ideas and Culture as Human Capital” while training Chicago public school teachers in how to lead Socratic seminars. Before ﬁnishing it, he was hired as a full-time Socratic teacher trainer in Homer, Alaska. That led to a 5-year year career in education, starting as a public school reformer and leading to the creation of innovative private schools and programs in Alaska, Texas, Florida, California, and a charter school in New Mexico that was ranked the 36th best public high school in the United States on the Washington Post Challenge Index. Meanwhile he acted as a consultant for hundreds of schools, writing The Habit of Thought: From Socratic Seminars to Socratic Practice. While at his last school, he met John Mackey, the CEO and cofounder of Whole Foods Market. Together they created Freedom Lights Our World (FLOW), a nonproﬁt dedicated to “Liberating the entrepreneurial spirit for good,” leading to programs promoting peace through commerce, accelerating women entrepreneurs, and conscious capitalism. Most recently he has begun an exploration of legal techniques that will allow for the entrepreneurial creation of legal systems and the creation of Free Cities. He blogs on these topics at “Let a Thousand Nations Bloom” and is working on creating Free Cities at various sites around the world. Michael has two grown children and is married to Magatte Wade, the Senegalese serial entrepreneur who founded Adina World Beverages and the Tiossano Tribe. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2011 } 1986 GWENDOLYN CHEATHAM (A) has published two exciting books which can be found at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Borders bookstores. Their titles are: Give Your Teacher this Note: Parents Say the Funniest Things and Big Mama: The World is a Playground—Enjoy it! ELISABETH LONG (A) is still enjoying running the Digital Library Development Center at the University of Chicago Library. In her ‘spare’ time, she is the editor of a new journal for the College Book Art Association and is trying to sell her second-ﬂoor condo in order to buy a house with a basement to hold her very heavy, old-fashioned printing press. Long writes, “I was visiting my family in Baltimore at the end of April and arranged to meet TIA PAUSIC (A86) at croquet and can’t believe what an event it has become. Ran into lots of old friends from ’84 and ’85 and had a wonderful time.” STEPHANIE RICO (A) writes on behalf of herself and her husband, TODD PETERSON (A87): “After many years of plotting and planning and wishing, we are moving to Spain on an all-expense-paid vacation courtesy of the American taxpayer! (At least being in the Navy has had some perks, to make up for the free trips to Afghanistan and Iraq.) We’ll be in Spain for at least two years, maybe three. Our daughters, Tia (9) and Sasha (7), will go to Spanish public school in between education-travel trips. ¡Estan invitados avisitarnos!” 1988 EDWARD KOMARA (A) received the State University of New York (SUNY) Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities last May, a statewide recognition for his �38 {Alumni} Finding Flamenco Chana Goodman (SF94) unveils her inner Gypsy. by Anna Perleberg (SF02) A tania trelles s it turns out, Chana Goodman (SF94) and I have met before—not at St. John’s, but at WORD, the bookstore in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, where I used to work. (I tried to sell her Bridget Jones’s Diary as an antidote to Proust.) For each of us, ﬁnding out the other was a Johnnie explained a lot about our mutual bookishness. We each also studied dance while at St. John’s, in classes taught by fellow students. Alas, my contact improv has grown rusty–apologies to Alana Chernila (SF02). But Goodman has remained active with few lacunae, through cross-country moves and the birth of her son, in her dance of choice: the wildly expressive, proudly rhythmic ﬂamenco. In recent months, Goodman has been dancing ﬂamenco more than ever. She gave up her day job, determined to have more control over her time and creative passions. She is putting the ﬁnishing touches on an art studio—when not dancing, she paints. She practices ﬂamenco six days a week, performing about once a week in local restaurants, bars, and other venues in New York City. Goodman traveled to Seville, Spain, in July for three months; there she plans to study ﬂamenco with her mentor, Yasaray Rodrigues, and other masters, including Andres Peña, Pastora Galván, and Adela Campallo. Flamenco has roots in Gypsy culture; it moved with its people across India, Turkey, and Romania, and came to its full ﬂowering in ﬁfteenthcentury Spain, mixing Jewish and Moorish inﬂuences with those of the Andalusian gypsies, the Gitanos. For them, says Goodman, “dancing and singing is like a religion. Kids do it from the time they walk—they’re expected to. And it’s not just moving your feet; it’s reaching into the other world constantly through dance.” At parties and community celebrations, it’s traditional to simply form a circle and …[Goodman] found that the exaggerated gestures she picked up from her Italian stepfather have served her well in ﬂamenco. start clapping. Whatever one’s technical proﬁciency, stepping into the circle to express the dance in one’s own way is a natural part of the culture. For audiences, though, jangly guitar music and extravagantly rufﬂed dresses are also par for the course. After her initial exposure in a beginner’s class at college, Goodman continued to dabble in ﬂamenco, ﬁrst while working in Seattle as a digital illustrator for a gaming ﬁrm. She studied with the acclaimed Carmona family and Ana Montes. While she and her husband, Roderick Gilman (SF93), lived in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he went to law school, she found herself driving long distances twice a week to attend the only nearby ﬂamenco classes. Then the couple moved to New York City, “and I have just not stopped dancing.” While not an ethnic Gypsy herself, Goodman ﬁnds connections to the dance in her own family history: Her Romanian grandfather hailed from Soroca, a city in modern-day Moldova with a large Gypsy enclave, and he was also a child dancer, who came to the United States to sing and dance in vaudeville. He continued to dance as long as he could walk, she says. “I’m intrigued by the connection–he had a very Gitano style in his dance.” As she speaks, Goodman strikes a dynamic attitude with her arms: elbows, wrists, and ﬁngers angled, yet regal and alluring. She’s also found that the exaggerated gestures she picked up from her Italian stepfather have served her well in ﬂamenco. While it has taken years to acquire the skill to perform regularly, she considers the training as time well spent. “Because it’s taken me so long,” she says, and “I’ve been an observer instead of a producer, I have a sense of the deeper signiﬁcance of it. It’s not that it’s just cute, or pretty, or beautiful.” Like so many Johnnies (myself included), Goodman found inspiration for her unusual career path in her untraditional education. In addition to her ﬂedgling steps in ﬂamenco, she took a life drawing class one semester that got her started in illustration and graphic design. “One thing that’s amazing about St. John’s is that it teaches people to make choices in their lives, and to carry through – that whatever it is you want to do, there’s a way to achieve it, and it’s up to you. It asks people to question the idea of happiness and fulﬁllment, and to seek it out.” After that, our conversation devolved into a discussion of books, and we ambled over to WORD to pick up the Pevear/ Volokhonsky translation of Anna Karenina. Happy families and Johnnies— we’re all more alike than we realize. x Chana Goodman’s (SF94) hands are elegantly expressive when she dances flamenco. �39 {Alumni} achievements to date. He is the author of four books on blues and jazz (including the editing of the two-volume Encyclopedia of the Blues (Routledge Press, 2005), and of numerous articles and reviews for music journals. Since 2001 he has been the Crane Librarian of Music at SUNY Potsdam; previously, he served as music librarian/blues archivist at the University of Mississippi. “Potsdam is a small village near the Canadian border,” he writes. “The Victorian-era buildings and the cold winters lend themselves to some very intense creative activities for the music students and faculty.” His next project is contributing entries for the prestigious New Grove Dictionary of American Music, including one for tutor DOUGLAS ALLANBROOK (HA85), with whom he worked for 14 years. KIM PAFFENROTH (A) just had his fourth zombie novel published, Dying to Live: Last Rites (Permuted Press, 2011). His second novel was just released in a German edition, Die Traurigkeit der Zombies (Festa Verlag, 2011). When not writing about the undead, he continues to teach religious studies at Iona College. He and his wife, MARLIS (A86), are also celebrating their son Charles’ winning the West Point Bridge Design Contest. CLAUDIA (PROBST) STACK (A) has ﬁnished her documentary ﬁlm, Under the Kudzu, which traces the history of two historic African American schools in Pender County, North Carolina. The ﬁlm premiered at UNC Wilmington in April 2011. Stack received the David Brinkley Preservationist of the Year Award from Historic Wilmington Foundation for the ﬁlm and for her work to help restore the Canetuck Rosenwald School (featured in the ﬁlm) this past May. “To learn more about Rosenwald schools, please see my website www.underthekudzu.org; my e-mail is on the website and I would love to hear from Johnnies!” DAVID BLANKENBAKER (SF) quips that “on May 31st, between 2:05 and 2:15 p.m., David Blankenbaker ate an apple and thought about his undergraduate experience.” 1989 Passage Around the World W HEDLESKY (A09) and boyfriend Kristian have begun a bold plan. Starting the ﬁrst leg of their journey, from San Diego to the island of Nuku Hiva in French Polynesia on June 4, 2011, they are attempting to sail around the world. “Crossing from the West Coast of North America to islands in the South Paciﬁc is by no means unprecedented,” writes Wynne. “What makes our trip unique is that we do not own our own boat, and we aren’t taking a lot of fancy equipment. We are traveling as crew on vessels owned by others, earning passage in exchange for our hard work and sailing experience. We plan, when possible (and legal), to camp and live off of local resources, such as ﬁsh and fruit. We hope that by living simply and courageously, pushing ourselves outside of comfortable borders and modes of transportation, we can gain valuable perspective on our land-based life. Nuku Hiva is located in the Marquesas, one of the most remote island groups in the world. We will make the 3,000-mile journey across the Paciﬁc Ocean on a 50-foot sailboat owned by a French family that we discovered on the Internet, and met in person in San Diego. Using resources on the Internet, connections in the sailing world, and on-the-ground networking, we intend to ﬁnd other vessels to carry us further west, to other islands in the South Paciﬁc, to Australia, New Zealand, Southeast Asia, and beyond. If our strategy is successful, we will ﬁnd ourselves back in the United States, having circumnavigated the globe under sail. Here’s an update: We left on the ﬁrst leg of our journey on June 4. Melville readers may be familiar with Nuku Hiva from the novel Typee. We are traveling on a sailboat with a French family. After Nuku Hiva, we plan to go to Tahiti, Fiji, Australia, and wherever else the wind whisks us. Follow our progress on our blog: www.crossingtheline2011.blogspot.com.” x YNNE SARITA CARGAS (A) has just changed jobs and will be teaching human rights at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. She is excited to be near a St. John’s campus, and looks forward to catching up with her dear alma mater. ANNE LEONARD (A) graduated law school, passed the California bar, and is now busy getting paid to win arguments (or at least to make them). Still happily settled in Cotati, about 50 miles north of San Francisco, she can be reached at leonarde@sonic.net. 1990 GRAHAM HARMAN (A) has been promoted to full professor of philosophy at the American University in Cairo. He was recently named editor of the Speculative Realism book series at Edinburgh University Press, which will launch July 2011 with his own book, Quentin Meillassoux: Philosophy in the Making. KEVIN (SF96) and KHIN KHIN (SF88) BROCK are overjoyed to welcome bright-eyed Rebecca Wren Brock into their family. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2011 } Rebecca was born April 8 to birth parents who chose the Brocks to raise their daughter in part because of their adopted son, Christopher. While waiting for a second child, Khin Khin ran a marathon. They continue to work, garden and read in Santa Clara, California. 1991 LAKE JAMES PERRIGUEY (SF), who founded the queer student groups at St. John’s College and was among the ﬁrst to press the College to adopt a non-discrimination policy to include gay and lesbian students, recently represented a student teacher who was banned from the Beaverton School District when he answered a fourth grade student’s question about his marital status by saying that Oregon would not allow him to marry a man. The School District ultimately settled for $105,000 and achieved districtwide change. (More details regarding the case can be found at http://abcnews.go.com /US/student-teacher-ﬁred-gayjob-back/story?id=11957152.) 1993 MARY “KAYT” CONRAD (AGI) and KAREN WACHSMUTH (A79) hold sporadic alumni meetings in Iowa City restaurants where they share their passion for beets and books. Both work at the University of Iowa, and would love to know of any other Johnnies in the Cedar Rapids/Iowa City corridor. 1994 PAUL BARKER (AGI) received his doctorate in Educational Leadership in May from the University of Pennsylvania. His dissertation focused on the classroom experience of high school seniors perceived by their teachers as being quiet. After �40 {Alumni} serving ten years as principal of the John Carroll School in Bel Air, Maryland, Paul starts the 2011-2012 school year as president of Our Lady of Good Counsel High School in Olney, Maryland. 1995 BENJAMIN FRIEDMAN (SF) married Rocio Alvarez on May 29, 2011, in Los Angeles. 1996 CHRIS ANDERSON (A) was recently named a Cardozo Scholar and will begin attending Cardozo Law School this August. Writing Contest, a novel on dragons in the San Gabriel Valley of Southern California. SHANI N. WARNER (SFGI) married Dave Horlick last November, and is expecting a little girl this August. Warner was also elected Ward 2 Representative to the City Council of Hyattsville, Maryland. 1999 RACHEL (VEDAA) PENDLETON (SF) and WALKER PENDLETON, (A) welcomed son James Pascal on May 8, 2011. Enjoying the fun of watching how much he’s changed in such a short time, they are reading to him and preparing him for the Great Books when he’s ready. 1997 2000 BENJAMIN BLOOM (A) is happy to announce the birth of his second daughter, Olivia Quinn Bloom. She was born on May 15, 2011. Mother, sister, and baby are all doing ﬁne. Daddy is still catching up on his sleep! BUCK COOPER (A) is now working as Program Coordinator at the Mississippi Academy for Science Teaching at Jackson State University, supporting secondary science teachers from around the state and preparing undergraduates to teach science. He is settled in Jackson and awaiting the arrival of a second child in August. JENN COONCE (A) recently completed a Masters in Psychoanalysis at the New York Graduate School of Psychoanalysis, and now sees patients as a part of certiﬁcate candidacy at the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies. Coonce is also continuing freelance work as a user experience designer and researcher. CHRIS ENGLISH (SFGI) and DIANE SHIRES (SFGI98) are pleased to introduce their latest addition to the family: Kayleigh Noel English, born June 12, 2009. Baby Noel joins her 7-year-old-brother, Max, in general mischief and mayhem. Chris continues working as an art director in Los Angeles, and Diane is teaching high school English at her alma mater in South Pasadena, California. Chris and Diane’s latest creation is an entry in the 3-Day Novel DEBERNIERE TORREY (AGI) and her husband Nathan Devir completed their degrees in Comparative Literature last year. This summer they move from Middlebury, Vermont, to Salt Lake City to teach in the Department of Languages and Literature at the University of Utah. 2001 TALLEY (A) and LOUIS (A) KOVACS are participating in Charcutepalooza, a year-long blog collaboration with approximately 200 other food bloggers around the world. They are working their way through basic and master meat preparations based on Michael Ruhlman’s Charcuterie cookbook. They can be followed at http://meatandday. blogspot.com. PAIGE MAGUIRE (A) is living in Austin, Texas, with her son, Daschel Auden, and several animals. She works at Dell in the Global Marketing department as an online strategist and project manager. Previously she held a similar role in a much different environment—the Austin NPR afﬁliate public radio station. 2004 MELISSA and MARTIN ANDERSON (both A) have relocated to Eugene, Oregon, so that Melissa can start her graduate architecture program at the University of Oregon. They’re missing their friends in New York and those scattered along the East Coast, but are already enjoying the trees and mountains and looking forward to at least three years in the Paciﬁc Northwest. They can be found at 854 Pool St., Apt. 54, Eugene, OR 97401. MARTIN and KIMBERLY GAUDINSKI (both A) write: “2011 has been an eventful year for the Gaudinski family. With much happiness, on Valentine’s Day we welcomed our son Benjamin David Gaudinski. He has been growing by leaps and bounds. Although we hesitate to tempt our fate by writing such words, he seems to have the happiest and most contented disposition with a great love of smiling at his parents. He was present at Georgetown University on ‘Match Day’ when his daddy learned he got his top choice of post-graduate medical programs: he will be training in internal medicine at Georgetown University Hospital. Finally, May 22 came and Martin Gaudinski BA became Martin Gaudinski MD. In this spirit of change and tumult we moved from one end of Silver Spring, Maryland, to the other and are now apartment dwellers once again, after three delightful years ﬁlled with conversation and laughter while living with the SULLIVAN (A02) family. We feel very blessed.” CHRISTOPHER HENDERSON (A) married GENEVA HINKLE (A06) on May 29, 2011, in upstate New York. Their guests dined on cupcakes and barbecue. Mr. and Mrs. Henderson look forward to many happy years of ﬁghting evil together. Mr. Henderson is not yet Batman, but he’s getting there. Mrs. Henderson is working on her Alfred voice. 2005 SAMANTHA BUKER (A) just took a seat on the board of directors of the Post-Classical Ensemble. This Washington, D.C.-based orchestra will put on three collaborative festivals this year: Jeremy Denk playing Charles Ives, Igor Stravinsky/Manuel de Falla’s El Amor Brujo, and Schu- Nuptials in New Mexico J TRAVIS PITTMAN and ALLISON HAUSPURG (both A08), were married just a few miles from where they met at St. John’s Santa Fe in the historic chapel at Our Lady of Guadalupe off the Santa Fe plaza. Eleanor Mathis (SF07) was in attendance. x OHN { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2011 } �41 {Alumni} bert (Uncorked). “I invite any curious D.C.-Baltimore area Johnnies to go to a concert with me personally. Each performance recasts everything you thought you knew about a composer and his work.” She is proud to support P-CE’s partnerships with Georgetown, Strathmore, the National Gallery of Art, and choreographer Igal Perry that take classical music way beyond the concert hall. She’s always eager to hear from folks at sam.buker@gmail.com, whether you want to talk ﬁnance, ﬁne art, or fugues. ALEXIS SEGEL (SF) went to Italy after graduation and studied voice for two years in Florence, completing a Master of Fine Arts degree in Music Performance and Literature from Mills College in Oakland, California, last spring. This spring, she sang the alto soloist in a performance of the St. John Passion in New London, New Hampshire, and has returned to the Bay Area, where this summer she will be working with the San Francisco Boys Chorus. SEAN VALLES (A) married MARGOT BEHREND (A06) in 2007, and received his PhD from the History and Philosophy of Science department at Indiana University, Bloomington in May of 2010. Sean began a position at Michigan State University that following August, and is currently a tenure-track assistant professor with a dual appointment. He has a 75-percent appointment in the Lyman Briggs College of MSU, a residential college within the university with the mission of E SAMARIN (A10) has started a tradition of having a trophy for the last soccer game of the spring season. He wants to call it the Freedom Cup in honor of his mother, who brought him to this country from Russia. After becoming a United States citizen last spring, Samarin is now living in Annapolis, working for a local law ﬁrm, and is planning on going to law school in the next few years. x UGENE Bar, which she takes in July. Kennedy says, “Life is wonderful: I got to see Melody and EVERETT REED (AGI07) in May, and we’re all looking forward to CAMILLE STALLINGS’ (AGI07) wedding in August in Oregon. I also just discovered another Johnnie, BENJAMIN BARRIENTES (AGI88) at law school and am glad to have a compatriot so nearby. If anyone is in the Southwest Florida area, please look me up at kennedy.jacqueline@gmail.com. It would be great to catch up with old friends.” 2007 jen behrens TOM JACOBS (A) and BRIANNE JACOBs (née BELL; A06) are married and living in the East Village in New York City. Brianne is pursuing a PhD in Theology at Fordham University, while Tom is earning his doctorate in Education Policy at the New School University. They send their best wishes to all their classmates and friends. Annapolis Freedom Cup bridging the gap between the sciences and the humanities, and a 25-percent appointment in the Philosophy Department. Specializing in the philosophy of medicine, especially evidentiary problems in medical genetics. His dissertation, “Explaining the Evolution of Common Genetic Disease,” is a philosophical analysis of the (failed) scientiﬁc attempts to explain why certain genetic diseases have evolved to be more common than others. He began adapting it into a book manuscript this past summer. NIC STRAHL (A) has had the distinct pleasure of marrying Rajneesh Sudhakar, whom she met in 2009 through mutual Johnnie friends. Their June 24 wedding ceremony and reception took place in New York City, surrounded by family, friends, and Johnnies. Johnnies were in the wedding party, curated the music, and assisted in appropriating and misquoting excerpts from Mark Twain (among other great book authors) to compose the secular wedding vows. The ceremony was emceed by a member of the United States Navy. 2006 TESS GILMAN (SF) and JESSE POSNER (SF05) are getting married in September 2011 and are currently loving their new home and jobs in the Bay Area. EMILY NISCH (A) married Jeff Terrell on May 7; Jeff recently received his PhD in computer science from the University of North Carolina, where he and a few Johnnies are starting a business based on his research. “More broadly, we’re settling into our new home in Durham, North Carolina, and loving life.” ALI BASTIAN (AGI) is beginning the third year of medical school at the University of North Dakota. JACQUELINE KENNEDY (AGI) graduated from law school in May and is now fully immersed in preparation for the Florida { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2011 } CLARE DAVITT (SFGI) moved to Boston after ﬁve years in Santa Fe, and has begun the Masters of Science in Library and Information Science program at Simmons College. She was also awarded a position as the Fellow for Dean’s Initiatives, which will send her to Korea for a few weeks this summer as a liaison for the students and faculty. She already misses the skies and mountains of Santa Fe, but is very excited and grateful to be in Boston doing such interesting work. LAUREN ROBBINS (AGI) is getting married in Charlotte on September 3, 2011, and starting classes at General Theological Seminary four days later in New York City. She and her ﬁancé Jay (and their dog!) are very excited about the move. 2008 MARGARET HENNESSEY (A) is the recipient of the 2011 Mathematics Teaching Fellowship by the Knowles Science Teaching Foundation. This prestigious, ﬁve-year fellowship will prepare her for a career in teaching mathematics, and comes with a two-year teaching commitment to the Durham Public Schools in North Carolina. �42 {Alumni} A Johnnie’s Geometry Business Takes Shape Mathematician Steve Morse’s (A68) intuitive models delight educators. by Laurent Merceron (A08) T he Platonic solids just got a colorful, 3-D revamp. Attendees of the mid-Atlantic chapter meetings of the Mathematical Association of America this past year caught a glimpse of the latest build-it-yourself geometric models by Dominion Polytopes. The ﬁve Platonic solids, along with 13 other 3-D models for sale at a display table, delighted and intrigued students and professors with their vivid colors and intricate designs. The company’s founder, Steve Morse (A68), is hoping that his 3-D kits will make Euclidian geometry more intuitive and visually appealing to children, educators, and the public at large. Dominion Polytopes is the result of Morse’s decades-long fascination with building geometric models, coupled with a desire to promote a more visual approach to the ﬁeld of mathematics. Morse, who for the past two years has taught as an adjunct professor at George Mason University in Virginia, eagerly describes abstruse geometric concepts in a passionate, almost giddy manner. He chose the name “Dominion Polytopes” both as a reference to his home state of Virginia—its nickname is Old Dominion—and as a dofﬁng of his hat to renowned 20th-century geometer, H. M. S. Coxeter, author of Regular Polytopes and an outspoken proponent of the classical approach to geometry. “I’m part of a small community in mathematics-land that values visualization and intuition over algebraic computation,” he says. Morse, who has a doctorate in mathematics, is in many ways a surprising candidate for such a venture: “I disliked mathematics when I began at St. John’s. The mathematics classes I took in high school involved banal formulations and computations, not reasoning,” he recalls. It wasn’t until arriving as a freshman in Annapolis that his impression of mathematics was turned on its head. “Studying Euclid was an ideal experience for me, playing to my geometric sensibilities. It wasn’t computational; it was reasoning without computation.” It wasn’t long before Morse was engaged in his own mathematical explorations outside of class. In what he calls “a very satisfying obsession,” he spent hours each night working on Apollonius’ famous threecircle problem, using only a ruler and compass for the constructions. By senior year, he was proﬁciently demonstrating proofs in non-Euclidian geometry, and decided that a career in mathematics—as unlikely as that once seemed—was indeed possible. “I found I had a talent for it. I found conﬁdence in doing it, and decided it was something I could do.” After graduating from St. John’s in 1968, Morse rapidly immersed himself in his newly chosen ﬁeld; the following year he took a position teaching high-school geometry at Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C., and in the evenings pursued a master’s degree in numerical science from John Hopkins University. In 1978, he earned his doctorate in mathematics from the University of Maryland, College Park, and a year later established himself as a consultant to the defense and intelligence community centered in the Washington, D.C. region. One occupation, however, remained ﬁxed in his mind—building geometric models. “I’ve been building models ever since I ﬁnished St. John’s,” he says. “I even had my high school students design and build models for class.” (One notable instance involved Morse and six students building a 14-foot-high walk-in geodesic dome on the exterior grounds of the campus.) The initial models that he began building in the 1970s, constructed from archival-quality matte board that he cut and glued by hand, were mostly simple convex ﬁgures. But by 1980, Morse’s command of 3-D modeling had grown to the point where his models had become, “pretty doggone complex.” Each Steve Morse (A68) encountered Euclid as a math-resistant freshman. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2011 } �43 {Alumni} JOHN NEWTON (A) is nearing completion of his JD degree at U.C. Hastings College of the Law, after transferring from Indiana University, Bloomington’s Maurer School of Law. He is studying for a tax concentration in addition to the regular law degree, and plans to take the California Bar in the summer of 2012. “I am living happily with my partner, Madeline, and our son, Alec, who just turned one in April.” Elected to be the editor-in-chief of the Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly’s 39th Volume for 2011-2012, he is soliciting article submissions from JD-holding St. John’s alumni, which can be sent to him at newtonj@ uchastings.edu. CARTER YOUNG (SFGI) writes, “I am looking to connect with other alumni in Toronto, Ontario, and hoping to work in a school with other Johnnies. I can work as a primary teacher at the secondary level or an instructor at the college level. I would also love to meet some more Johnnies in Colorado Springs while I am still here.” 2009 CLAIRE GRIFFIN and KRIS KLOTZ (both A) will celebrate their second anniversary in August. Nearly two dozen Johnnies made the trek out to central Minnesota to see them tie the knot. Kris completed his Master’s at Claremont School of Theology this spring and now they’re off to Happy Valley, where Claire will be entering a PhD program in philosophy at Penn State. NATHAN KROSS (A) recently published a book of humorous poetry called The Supervillain Sonnets, which can be found at www.amazon.com/TheSupervillain-Sonnetsebook/dp/B0053NZD4C/. DALTON LOBO DIAS (A) has completed his research year at DR. STEVEN HOLLAND’s (A79) Laboratory of Clinical Infectious Diseases at NIH and will be attending The University of Maryland School of Medicine this coming fall. MARIA LUNSFORD (A) married ﬁancé JAMES FULMER (A) on June 11, 2011, in Annapolis, Maryland. (continued from page 42) new model required between 80 to 100 hours to construct. In 2009, Morse bought a compact laser cutter and began experimenting with cutting thin sheets of polypropylene, the same material used for food-storage containers, into precisely described rings. He fashioned a way to interlock the rings by cutting slots at given lines of intersection. The rings could then lock into place—much like a cardboard partition in a case of wine— to form a 3-D model. It was a clever display of mathematical engineering, and meant that his models could now be easily reproduced and assembled. “Each model now takes about 30 to 45 minutes to make, depending on the number of rings.” With his new laser cutter, Morse designs entire kits in about 100 hours—the amount PAUL WASSERMAN (AGI) recently published a volume of poetry, Say Again All, sourced in his experiences as a soldier in Iraq. It was primarily written while at the University of London (U.K.), where he went to study comparative literature after completing the program at St. John’s College. MCGEE, ABIGAIL DANCEY, JACOB DINK, JESSE KING (SF), CHASE MCPEAK (A09), DREW SIZEMORE, EILEEN CHANTI, and CAROLYN STRIPLING (SF07). The Striplings now reside in Chicago. 2010 JUNIA CHO (A) has been awarded the 2011 Critical Language Scholarship by the United States Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. She will spend two months this summer in South Korea as part of this intensive language program. x DONALD GEORGETTE (A) recently got a job at Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital in Baltimore, as a mental health worker on its Addictions and Mental Illness ward, and will begin working on a Masters in Social Work at the University of Maryland-Baltimore in the fall of this year. He invites any SJC students needing/wanting any advice on how to get into the ﬁeld of Mental Health/ Addictions Treatment/ Counseling/Psychiatry/ Psychology to contact him. MATTHEW STRIPLING and MALLORY HEPBURN (both SF) were married at St. Stephen’s Orthodox Church in Crawfordsville, Indiana, on January 9, 2011. Johnnies in attendance included SKIP of time once required to build one complex model by hand. He begins by making calculations in Excel, then drafts each ring template using CorelDRAW graphic design software. “The greatest learning curve initially came from trying to ﬁgure out how to say what I wanted to say in Corel.” Once the model is complete, he types up a set of user-friendly assembly instructions, and the kit is ready for production. After formulating his business concept, Morse hired a local web designer to boost his online presence with a website and online store (DomPoly.com), and started taking his kits to mathematics conventions. The public response has been overwhelmingly positive, with customers applauding the fact that the 3-D models can both educate and decorate. Says Morse, “One customer even happily told me the model makes a great dog toy.” Recently Morse has been using his laser cutter to experiment with building models { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2011 } 2011 What’s Up? The College wants to hear from you. Call us, write us, e-mail us. Let your classmates know what you’re doing. The College St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404 thecollegemagazine@sjca.edu out of two very different materials—acrylic and wood—and is excited by the results: “Acrylic sheets are more widely available than polypropylene, and they leave a nicer, polished edge when cut with the laser. And using wood has allowed me to completely redesign my approach; I’m hoping to build wooden models that are about twice the size of my current ones.” He returned to the Mathematics Association convention this summer to unveil these latest models. Morse hopes that his kits will make a particular impression on professionals working in the mathematics community. “Algebra is in many ways a Faustian bargain. I want these models to remind my colleagues of a happier, more fun way, one that recovers the use of their intuitive faculties.” As the freshman-at-heart says, “I delight in these things, and I want to share my delight!” x �44 { A l u m n i Vo i c e s } A Joyce Ride Gregory Rhoades (SFGI89) motorcycles through great American landscapes to reach Piraeus. by Gregory Rhoades (SFGI89) L ike Odysseus, it has taken me 20 years to achieve a homecoming. In my case, it was getting back to St. John’s in Santa Fe, where I had graduated from the Graduate Institute in 1989. My alumni participation in the Seattle/Puget Sound Chapter lagged after my wife and I moved more than 30 miles north of the city in 2000. In June 2009, resolving to change my habits, I made my ﬁrst visit back to the Santa Fe campus in 20 years, to participate in the Piraeus continuing education program on Stendhal’s The Red and the Black. A round-trip motorcycle tour of 4,500 miles sweetened the deal, taking me through national parks at Arches, Canyonlands, and Mesa Verde on the way. My return route wound through Great Sand Dunes National Park to the top of Pikes Peak, and then Badlands National Park, Wounded Knee, and Little Bighorn Battleﬁeld. Buoyed by my Stendhal experience and a wonderful February 2010 discussion of Plato’s Phaedrus joined by President and Eleanor Peters in our Seattle/Puget Sound Chapter, I made my ﬁrst trip to the Annapolis campus in June 2010 for the Piraeus offering of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. This time the discussion was sweetened by walking around the A round-trip motorcycle tour of 4,500 miles sweetened the deal, taking me through national parks at Arches, Canyonlands, and Mesa Verde on the way. Gregory Rhoades (SFGI89) atop Colorado’s Pikes Peak in June 2009—the day after leaving Piraeus in Santa Fe. Naval Academy and historic downtown, and seeing the sights on the Annapolis campus, of which I had only seen pictures. As a longtime sculler, I especially enjoyed my tour of the St. John’s College boathouse. I returned to Seattle with a rekindled desire to participate in the monthly book discussions of the Seattle/Puget Sound Chapter—which has proven to be worth my more than 70-mile roundtrip ride into the city each time. The act of shared inquiry in a liberal arts light is sublime. In June 2011, I jumped at the chance to participate in both the Piraeus offering of Joyce’s Ulysses and the Alumni Leadership Forum (ALF) in Santa Fe. I took a “Joyce ride” on my motorcycle from my home north of Seattle down to eastern Oregon and the eastern edge of California, with ﬁrst-time visits to Yosemite and Death Valley. From Las Vegas, I rode through three national parks in Utah: Capitol Reef, Bryce Canyon, and Zion. On from the North Rim of the Grand Canyon to Canyon de Chelly National Monument in Arizona, I arrived in Santa Fe after riding for more than 3,600 miles. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2011 } Like reading and discussing great books, motorcycle riding involves skill and taking risks—not unlike the experience of the rowers and sailors on the Annapolis campus. One reaps rewards for exercising those skills: As a solo rider, I ﬁnd that I’m more approachable by other travelers. Without the cocoon of a car around me, I experience the landscape in a more Joycean way. And it’s just plain more fun. I’m in my late 50s, but only started riding my motorcycle 10 years ago. It took about 5 years of local and regional trips before I was up to riding long distances. Now I usually take one long ride of 3,000 to 6,000 miles across the West and Canada each summer. As I get older, time has become more precious to me. Therefore, I do the Piraeus trips in part to honor friends, classmates, and others who have passed away. x You can reach Greg when he’s not trekking on his motorcycle at gregory.rhoades@ frontier.com. �45 {Obituaries} LAURENCE BERNS (HA00), ANNAPOLIS TUTOR The college community mourns the sudden death of Laurence Berns (1928-2011) who died of a heart attack on March 3. The community expresses its gratitude for his nearly 40 years of devoted service as a member of the faculty. There will be a memorial for him on Saturday, September 24 at Homecoming in Annapolis. Born in Newark, New Jersey, Berns graduated from the University of Chicago with a PhD in International Relations. The great loves of his life were philosophy, political philosophy, and politics. He taught at St. John’s in Annapolis from 1960 to 1999 and stayed an active member of the college community during his retirement. Berns never stopped being a full-time student, in all areas of human knowledge. His enthusiasm and curiosity about learning, his openness to the world and its joys and problems, was unbounded. His sunny, warmhearted nature was a blessing for all those around him. Above and beyond his being a serious scholar, Berns was a great storyteller, to his own as much as his listeners’ delight. Not the least of his charms was a beautiful musical voice—he just loved to sing! Immediately after graduating from high school in 1946, he enlisted in the military, and was a photographer at Kimpo Army Air Base in Korea. He was a member of Congregation Kneseth Israel in Annapolis. A graveside service was held at There will be a memorial for Mr. Berns on Saturday, September 24, at 1 p.m. at Homecoming in Annapolis. Laurence Berns leads a commencement procession. civility of his heart, the life lessons he imparted, the diversity and intelligence of his thoughts, and the twinkle in his eyes. The Board of Advisors of the Mitchell Gallery of St. John’s College, the patrons of and visitors to the Mitchell Gallery—past, present and future—are grateful for the gentle and wise leadership of John Buell Moore Jr. that resulted in the founding of the Mitchell Gallery and securing its permanence. Kneseth Israel Cemetery in Annapolis on March 7. Predeceased by two of his brothers, he is survived by his wife of 45 years, Gisela, of Annapolis, and his daughter Anna, son-in-law Joel, and grandson Rory of Palo Alto, California. JOHN BUELL MOORE JR., (HA01) John Buell Moore Jr. (19162011) was a dedicated friend of St. John’s College, and widely appreciated for the founding and development of the Mitchell Gallery. Always curious, he was interested in the life of the mind and deeply engaged with the arts. Moore agreed with others that an intimate environment to contemplate and study works of art could enhance the college. “He understood that a college gallery could be a bridge to the surrounding Annapolis community with exhibitions and opportunities for arts education and collaboration with artists and other arts disciplines,” says Hydee Schaller, director of the Mitchell Gallery. “When the college decided to establish a gallery, John served on an advisory board along with directors of major art museums to help with planning and designing, meeting frequently with college ofﬁcers and staff.” Moore was a leader in the local, state, and regional arts community as well. For Moore it was always a matter of seeing the myriad possibilities in things, large and small. Moore will be keenly missed by his friends and colleagues because of the JAMES W. CONRAD (CLASS OF 1949) A character, pleasant and jovial, and active with his class especially during Homecoming, James W. Conrad donated the American ﬂag used at the All Alumni meetings at Homecoming. The son of a banker, Francis and his wife Frances (Watson), he grew up in thrall to his grandfather, Frank Conrad, the Westinghouse inventor who pioneered early radio. They would tinker together late into the night in Frank’s lab, the teenager and the veteran engineer, and the joy of that time never left the boy. Neither, sadly, did the need to measure up to a brilliant forefather. His ﬁrst love was anything that ﬂew or anything that sailed on the sea. His tragedy was being born too late and with the polio that kept him out of the great crucibles of his time: World War II and the Korean conﬂict. He loved children, and any animal his sons might bring home was welcome: cats, dogs, gerbils, snakes, even once a baby raccoon that would perch on his shoulder. He liked ﬁreworks, golf, bagpipes, and the occasional cigar. If you liked to listen, he was a remarkable conversationalist. His memory was extraordinary— �46 {Obituaries} Remembering Charles G. Bell, Tutor It was clear from remarks given during the memorial service for Charles G. Bell (1916-2010) that he made time to listen to those who needed him. It was also clear that he could almost always be found in the upper branches of a tall tree. Colleagues, friends, and family gathered on the Santa Fe campus to honor Bell on May 22, 2011. The service was a tribute from both the college and his family. Arriving guests listened to St. John’s tutor David Bolotin perform works for the piano by Bach and Beethoven and watched a slideshow: family pictures, images from his travels, photos of Bell in his cap and gown at various graduation ceremonies, even Bell in the high branches of an enormous tree. As the images progressed, guests heard a recording of Bell’s “matchless voice” reading his own poetry. Following the memorial, guests sampled one of his favorite Charles Bell in his study. drinks, Pickwick punch, a concoction of boxed burgundy wine, grape juice, and a splash of rum. St. John’s President Michael Peters and then-Dean Victoria Bell is survived by his ﬁve daughters: Nona Estrin and Delia Mora gave tribute to Bell’s dedication to the college. Bell’s daughter Sandra Colt recalled how her father opened the family Robinson of Montpelier, Vermont; Carola Bell of Santa Fe; Charlotte Samuels of Fairfax, California; and Sandra Colt (SF75) home over the years to people in need of support. “Real acts of of Belgrade, Maine; and by many grandchildren and greatgenerosity involve risk,” she said. “By stretching the limits of grandchildren. After his memorial celebration in May, Bell’s our comfort, our lives in turn are enriched.” ashes were scattered privately in the mountain stream above Dustin Gish, who as a student at the University of Oklahoma, met Bell when he came to teach a course at the college, said Bell Santa Fe where in 2004 he scattered Danny’s ashes. was, “of course, high up in a tree behind his motel,” and Curtis Wilson, tutor emeritus in Annapolis, pays tribute to “surveying the mundane realm with a keen, penetrating eye.” Bell and a life that he writes, “had a singular unity of purpose.” Another of Bell’s daughters, Carola Middlemore Bell, shared It was, he said, “a fond attempt to bring all realms of knowledge her father’s love of books and poetry. At home in his study, she would point out to him a poem like “Kubla Khan” by Coleridge. into creative cognizance.” To read Wilson’s tribute to Bell visit: He would adjust his spectacles, then “smile again with www.stjohnscollege.edu/news. x recognition” before sharing the words once again with his —James Williams daughter. She closed with a poem her father loved, “Lines Above Tintern Abbey” by William Wordsworth: GNOMIC “…And I have felt The night each plows A presence that disturbs me with the joy A furrow of death Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime In the ﬁeld of stars Of something far more deeply interfused, Who calls? Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, I am nothing And the round ocean and the living air, But one with the one And the blue sky, and in the mind of man: That makes the nothing A motion and a spirit, that impels All. All thinking things, all objects of all thought, —Charles G. Bell And rolls through all things.” tossed back into a city he hadn’t visited in 25 years, he could navigate you out of trouble in a jiffy. He was a member of the Pittsburgh Aero club for more than 50 years. Late in his career, he helped raise money to have two submarines named after his home—the fast attack USS Pittsburgh and the boomer boat USS Pennsylvania. One of his sons took a ride on the former, and never forgot the experience of standing up in the sail with his father, as the massive thing roared through the Connecticut Sound like a muscle car built by the gods. His brother Harry died in 1991. He is survived by his younger brother David of Los Altos Hills, California and his sister Susan of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; three sons: James Jr. of Alexandria, { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2011 } Virginia, Philip of San Diego and David in Pittsburgh; four grandchildren: Elizabeth, Caroline, Bennett, and Olivia; and his beautiful and tolerant wife of 56 years, Margaret (Clement). He was 83. �47 {Obituaries} SYDNEY WAYNE PORTER JR., (CLASS OF 1954), APRIL 23, 2011 He was involved in radiation safety with both the Navy nuclear submarines and also with nuclear power plants. When Three Mile Island occurred, Porter was one of ﬁrst radiation safety experts at the scene. He and his team worked 18-hour days for months, assessing the damage from a core meltdown in one of the reactors and supervising the response. Porter also worked with the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia to preserve and restore a piezoelectric sensor donated by radiation pioneer Marie Curie, whose husband invented it in 1880. This device measures pressure acceleration and other forces. STEVEN T. BRENNER (SFGI83), JANUARY 16, 2011 A native of Colorado, Brenner graduated from Colorado State College, now the University of Northern Colorado, in 1968 with a degree in English and then served as an ofﬁcer in the Navy from 1969 until 1973. He received his Graduate Institute degree in 1983. Steve cherished the experience of his studies at St. John’s, beginning with his graduate work, and continuing through active participation in many community seminars over the years. He especially valued a two-year study of Marcel Proust in 2004 to 2006, with tutor Jim Cohn. Steve’s career as a court reporter allowed him to pursue his deeper interests: a wideranging passion for music, including his 30-year study of the guitar, and a carefully cultivated ability to read the world’s great literature closely and with insight. In recent years, he had been delving deeply into a study of his favorite book, Hermann Broch’s The Death of Virgil. Steve is missed by his family and his many friends in the Santa Fe St. John’s community. He was 65. ZACHARY TODD JEMISON (SF97), JUNE 25, 2011 Zachary Todd Jemison of Georgetown, Texas, died after a courageous battle with cancer. Husband, son, brother, uncle, friend—he was a true giver. Jemison was born October 7, 1975, in Seattle, Washington. His childhood took him to live in Bloomington, Indiana; Palo Alto, California; Fontainebleau, France; and ﬁnally Austin, Texas. He then headed to St. John’s College, Santa Fe. Austin eventually drew him back, and he became something of a Zack-of-alltrades, working in sales at Dell and as a liquor store lackey, standardized-test grader, organic farmhand and more. His fave four sang “money can’t buy me love,” but Cash ended up getting him that. (If you don’t know the story, search for “Jemison” on kut.org.) After meeting in Waterloo Records the day after Thanksgiving and a swift courtship (just old-fashioned enough for both of them) and engagement, Zack and Anne were married in 2004. They counted among their travels a honeymoon in Belize; holidays in Paris; heading west to Santa Fe and Telluride; a recent jaunt to New York City; and too darn many to Houston. Zack’s desire to give led him to return to school and pursue a career as a paramedic, somehow a perfect use for that encyclopedic mind of his. Stationed at Williamson County EMS in Taylor (Medic 42), though his time there was too short, he found a calling as a public servant. Life in Austin and later Georgetown consisted of him cooking many a holiday meal, following an intensive regimen of quality TV shows and movies, caring for a cat and then her kittens, and remaining a music aﬁcionado (country, western, rock and/or roll—live and otherwise) of the highest order. Zack is survived by his loving wife, Anne Jemison, of Georgetown; parents, Dave and Kelley Jemison of Austin; sister, Emily Francis and many other loving friends and extended family. A service celebrating Zack’s life was held on July 6, 2011, in Austin. In lieu of ﬂowers, memorial contributions can be made to Williamson County EMS (c/o Joe Granberry), 303 Martin Luther King Street, Georgetown, TX 78626. Personal words of comfort may be sent to the family online at www.gabrielsfuneral.com. He was 35. ALSO DECEASED: TUTOR MOLLY GUSTIN, JUNE 10, 2011 GERALD ATTERBURY, CLASS OF 1946, MARCH 24, 2011 CHARLES C. BALDWIN, CLASS OF 1946, MAY 27, 2011 WILLIAM BANKS, A64, APRIL 25, 2011 EARL BAUDER, CLASS OF 1944, DECEMBER 2, 2010 ALLAN R. BECKANSTIN, AGI93, MARCH 6, 2011 SALLY R. BELL, SF74, NOVEMBER 17, 2010 W. JAMES BIENEMANN, A66, APRIL 21, 2011 FRANCIS E. BURROUGHS, CLASS OF 1942, NOVEMBER 29, 2010 NICOLAS H. EKSTROM, CLASS OF 1961, MAY 16, 2011 WILLIAM ENGELHARD, CLASS OF 1952, OCTOBER 2, 2005 ARMANDO GUADIANA, SF81, MAY 13, 2011 JAENET N. GUGGENHEIM, SF88, APRIL 5, 2011 EDWARD JACOBS, CLASS OF 1954, NOVEMBER 4, 2010 JOHN J. LAMBROS, CLASS OF 1938, FEBRUARY 21, 2011 SAMUEL LARCOMBE, SF68, NOVEMBER 5, 2010 JEAN LAWSON, SFGI79, MARCH 2, 2011 KATHLEEN A. LEAR, SF72, JUNE 3, 2011 RICHARD O. MILLS, AGI82, DECEMBER 21, 2010 SLATON TILLEY ORR, SF09, JUNE 4, 2011 ADAM A. PINSKER, CLASS OF 1952, OCTOBER 29, 2010 CLAYTON T. ROWLEY, SFGI87, DECEMBER 27, 2010 GEORGE E. SAUER, CLASS OF 1956, SEPTEMBER 29, 2010 WILLIAM J. SCHWEIDEL, CLASS OF 1963, NOVEMBER 12, 2010 FREDERICK P. SEELIG, CLASS OF 1956 BARBARA W. SILLS, CLASS OF 1960, OCTOBER 19, 2010 THEODORE B. STINCHECUM, CLASS OF 1961, MARCH 24, WILLIAM A. CARTER, CLASS OF 1940, SEPTEMBER 11, 2010 2011 CH’AO-LI CHI, CLASS OF 1947, OCTOBER 16, 2010 JOSEPH SWEENEY, AGI86, SEPTEMBER 16, 2010 ELOISE COLLINGWOOD, A79, APRIL 17, 2011 JAMES SYKES, CLASS OF 1951, DECEMBER 29, 2008 GIRARD COSTELLO, CLASS OF 1960, SEPTEMBER 5, 2010 CHRISTOPHER A. THOMAS, A10, SEPTEMBER 15, 2010 WILLIAM H. CRAWFORD, CLASS OF 1953, OCTOBER 3, 2010 LESTER A. WALL, CLASS OF 1937, JANUARY 18, 2011 JOHN M. CUDDIHY, CLASS OF 1946, APRIL 18, 2011 MARILYN S. WILLIAMSON, AGI81, APRIL 15, 2011 GEORGE DEPUE, CLASS OF 1961, MAY 16, 2011 J. RODNEY WHETSTONE, CLASS OF 1944, MARCH 4, 2011 JAMES F. DUGAN, A93, MARCH 22, 2011 { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2011 } �48 {Croquet} A HIGH FORM OF FL ATTERY by Laurent Merceron (A08) O Class Dan Abney, would be a nlookers gathered tough one to beat. “They’ve around the steps deﬁnitely been getting better and of the Barrmore serious, “says St. John’s Buchanan Center Imperial Wicket Blake Myers. for the most anticAfter a close ﬁrst couple of ipated moment of matches, the Johnnie team pulled the 29th St. John’s-United States ahead to win, three games to two. Naval Academy Croquet Match— The crowd stayed on for a few the unveiling of the Johnnie’s more hours. themed uniforms. The crowd erupted in cheers and surprised laughter when the team Match opener triumphantly strode down the front Celebrating his 70th reunion, steps wearing near-replicas of the alumnus Henry Robert (class of Navy team’s traditional all-white 1941) hit the ﬁrst ball, a ceremouniforms. nial match opener. Robert, who Throughout the day, spectators was invited by the Annapolis had to observe closely the details of Imperial Wicket Blake Meyers (A11) shows off his shaved Alumni Ofﬁce to be an honorary head and nostalgic croquet mallet. players’ uniforms, as competitors guest at this year’s event, from each team orbited around proclaimed to the crowd before each other on the courts while his shot, “I’m now a St. John’s man A tremendous turnout taking their shots. Scruffy, white sneakers through-and-through!” Robert is the The 2011 match for the Annapolis Cup helped distinguish the Johnnies from their grandson of General Henry M. Robert, Croquet Match boasted everything that military rivals, but it was an even smaller author of the preeminent guide to fans of this annual 29-year tradition have detail that revealed their guise: the Navy parliamentary procedure, Robert’s Rules come to expect—vintage fashions, chamteam had playing-card emblems on their of Order. x pagne picnics, lawn-game heroics—though cardigans, but the Johnnies’ cardigans this year’s event will undoubtedly be featured veggies circled by a Mark Twain remembered for something else: drawing a quote: “Cauliﬂower is nothing but cabbage crowd. “I’m not an ofﬁcial crowd estiwith a college education.” mator,” says Annapolis tutor Thomas May, St. John’s Imperial Wicket Blake Myers “but this is the largest crowd I’ve ever seen (A11) says his team’s white cardigans with at this event.” More than 3,000 attended. matching gold-letter “N’s” were “the real Beneath clear, sunny skies, spectators thing: they were ordered from the same near the croquet courts watched the company that the Navy team orders theirs. competition unfold, while others sipped That company actually just went out of champagne or started swing dancing. business. While every Johnnie got a Mostly, people came to show off the latest sweater, a couple of the Midshipmen in garden-party fashions, as bow ties and didn’t.” parasols, starch-white Navy uniforms, and The Navy team was clearly impressed cloche hats blended into a stylish, colorful and ﬂattered by their competitors’ springtime panorama. creativity and attention to detail. The Johnnies entered the competition “I thought it was great! It was the best knowing that this year’s Navy team, led by Henry Robert (class of 1941) and theme they’ve ever done!” declared Navy’s President Chris Nelson (SF70). their Imperial Wicket, Midshipman First Imperial Wicket Dan Abney. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2011 } �49 {Croquet} Sing, Heavenly Muse During the opening ceremony for croquet, two members of the original St. John’s croquet team, Adrian Trevisan (A84) and Claiborne Booker (A84) announced a contest for the composition of a new St. John’s College school anthem. The Trevisan-Booker Prize aims to ﬁnd new lyrics for the college’s ofﬁcial—and littleheard—song, the “St. John’s College March” (known colloquially as “St. John’s Forever”). Fittingly the duo announced the competition on the centenary of the date when the older song was composed—1911. Dismayed by the lack of a unifying song for the college and by the current song’s reputation as an archaic curiosity, the two alums had a brainstorm: a contest to ﬁnd a song that speaks more directly to the St. John’s community. “The current ‘St. John’s College March’ song has fallen into disuse, and we thought this would be something fun to do,” says Trevisan. According to the contest’s written announcement, a cash prize of $1,696 will be awarded “to whomever updates [the March’s] lyrics to make our school song more relevant to the Program.” In addition, the two men are hoping to ﬁnd someone interested in composing a new musical arrangement for the prize-winning lyrics. The winner of the contest will be announced on January 31, 2012, with the new lyrics being performed for the ﬁrst time at the 2012 Croquet Match. Says Booker, “We want to ﬁnd something that Johnnies would be happy to sing.” x For more information on the contest, visit: www.stjohnscollege.edu/resources/an/1112_sjcforever_lyric_contest.pdf. Counterclockwise (from top): “Beat Navy!” buttons; Adrian Trevisan (A84) and Claiborne Booker (A84); St. John’s team on the left (Navy on the right); John Dusenbury (A11) takes a shot; Members of the class of ’84; waltzing on the lawn. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2011 } �50 {Alumni Association} A LU M N I L E A D E R S H I P F O RU M 2 011 Initiatives to involve Johnnies in recruiting, mentoring, fundraising T he Alumni Leadership Forum 2011 convened with about 60 participants in Santa Fe on June 10-12. This second gathering of alumni leaders focused on starting up several new programs, designed to bring more alumni into action as volunteers and involved members of the college community. ALF, as the forum is known, serves to inform alumni about college priorities and issues. This year, campus presidents Mike Peters and Chris Nelson provided a summary of the college’s ﬁnancial picture, which they outlined as depending on two main factors: a strong admissions program, and a need-based ﬁnancial aid program. The difﬁcult economy is putting pressure on families, who then require greater ﬁnancial assistance to meet tuition and other college costs, explained Nelson. Mike Peters noted the importance of alumni support for many initiatives at the college: making gifts to The Fund for St. John’s, which provides 6% of the college’s substantial ﬁnancial aid budget; working with the Career Services ofﬁces to provide mentoring for current students and young alumni; and serving as advocates for the admissions efforts. Identifying and recruiting Class Agents was a major initiative of the weekend. Class Agents will work with college staff to encourage giving to the college and attendance at Homecoming, as well as providing news and updates between alumni and the college through the college website, and Facebook, and The College magazine. Alumni from 17 states and all eras— undergraduate and graduate—participated in the weekend’s events, which also Among the Alumni Association’s accomplishments is the restructuring of its leadership into a small governing board. The result is a structure in which alumni volunteerism can make an impact, while the board concentrates on strategy and policy governance. Welcome to a new slate of leaders: Matt Calise (A00), John Clasby (A95), Bill Gregoricus (SFGI01), Erin Hanlon (SF03), Katie Heines (SF82), and Adrian Trevisan (A84) joined the board; Lee Katherine Goldstein (SFGI90) and Phelosha Collaros (SF00) became Alumni Association president and president-elect, respectively. They join Patricia Sollars, (A80), past president; Dick Cowles, (SFGI95), treasurer; and Liz Travis, (SF83), secretary. Presidents Mike Peters and Chris Nelson (SF70) (l. to r.) called on alumni throughout the weekend, inspiring them to step forward in support of St. John’s. included a focus on chapter activities in the many cities with St. John’s Alumni Association chapters. Look for more on the Class Agent program and other volunteer opportunities { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2011 } on the alumni website: www.stjohnscollge.edu/alumni and Facebook page, “St. John’s College Alumni.” ALF 2012 will be held on June 8-10, in Annapolis. x �{Alumni Association} Clockwise : Liz Travis ( SF84) and Sanjay Poovadan (SF83); (l. to r.) Tamaki Ishii (SF12), Jim Williams, senior writer, communications, Barbara Lucero-Sand, career services; (l. to r.) Lee Katherine Goldstein (SFGI90), AAB President, Patty Sollars (A80), past president, and Phelosha Collaros (SF00), president elect. Homecoming 2011 Annapolis Santa Fe Friday, September 23, 2011 4-8 p.m. Registration, Coffee Shop 5 p.m. Alumni/Student Networking Reception 8:15 p.m. Concert, Bill Charlap Jazz Trio After Concert Reception with current seniors Saturday, September 24, 2011 8:30-11:30 a.m. Registration, the Coffee Shop 9:30-10:15 a.m. State of the College, Honorary Alumni Celebration 10:30 a.m. Seminars/Story Hours Noon. Lunch on the Lawn 1-3:30 p.m. Class Photos, Children’s Carnival 2-3 p.m. Planetarium Demonstration led by Jim Beall 3 p.m. Freshman Chorus Revisited, Mitchell Gallery Tour 4 p.m. Soccer Classic, Book Signing. A conversation and presentation, “So Reason Can Rule: The Necessity for Racial Integration at St. John’s College” 6 p.m. Cocktail Party 7:30 p.m. Banquet 9:30 p.m. Reception, Rock Party, Waltz/Swing Party Sunday, September 25, 2011 11 a.m.-1:30 p.m. President’s Brunch Friday, September 16, 2011 4-8 p.m. Registration, Thorpe Room 4:30-6 p.m. Alumni/Student Networking Reception 6-8 p.m. Welcome Home Reception 8 p.m. Lecture, Janet Dougherty, Plato’s Statesman 9 p.m. Post-Lecture Question Period Saturday, September 17, 2011 8:30 a.m.-noon. Registration, Thorpe Room 10 a.m.-noon. Seminars/Story Hours 12:15-1:30 p.m. State of the College Luncheon, Alumni Awards, Honorary and Merit 1:30-2:30 p.m. Book Signing, Class Photos 2:30-4:30 p.m. Bocce Ball Tournament and Kids’ Lawn Games on the Soccer Field 5-7 p.m. Art Show Opening and Reception 6:30-8 p.m. Waltz /Swing Party 8 p.m. Down thru the Decades Dance Party Sunday, September 18, 2011 10:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. President’s Brunch For the full schedule of events and to register please visit: www.stjohnscollege.edu/alumni { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2011 } 51 �52 hans mar x {St. John’s Forever} An Illustrated Conversation W hat’s he saying? In this photo, circa 1954, three years after the college admitted women for the ﬁrst time in its 254-year history, Barbara (Dvorak) Winiarski (class of 1955) and Bernard E. Jacob (class of 1954) strike a dramatic pose and share a somewhat fantastical reptilian drawing. We invite you, dear readers, to tell us about Dvorak and Jacobs’ conversation. Please send to The College (TheCollege@ sjca.edu or Communications Ofﬁce, St. John’s College, PO Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800). x { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2011 } �{Eidos} Lens on the Land of Enchantment Deborah Moll (A69) D eborah Moll (A69) began taking photographs as a youth in Oxford, Maryland, a small town on the Eastern Shore. Although both of her parents had attended art school, she was encouraged to go to college. She has always been grateful for discovering St. John’s. She arrived in Annapolis shortly after the founding of the Santa Fe campus and heard intriguing tales about New Mexico. After graduating, Moll moved to Austin, Texas, where she received her MA in English and a JD degree from the University of Texas. She relocated to Santa Fe. When not working as an attorney for various New Mexico state agencies and as general counsel for the New Mexico General Services Department, Moll photographed New Mexico places. Now retired, Moll continues this exploration. “In many ways New Mexico is like a foreign country,” she says. “It is not difﬁcult to ﬁnd interesting and striking subjects, and with the advent of digital [cameras], photography has become more approachable and versatile.” Moll primarily works in color. Her subjects include landscapes, historic and other structures, botanicals and wildlife. She has exhibited her work in Santa Fe, Los Alamos, Silver City, and at the Northern New Mexico Regional Art Center. She can be contacted at deborahmollphoto@aol.com or msterkels@aol.com. Clockwise (top, l. to r.): Santa Cruz Church, Ojo Caliente. One of New Mexico’s oldest churches, Santa Cruz Catholic Church was built sometime between 1793 and 1811 when it was licensed. Ojo Caliente is situated beneath a mesa where ruins of the Tewa people’s pueblo (1300s to 1500s) have been found. Today Ojo Caliente is known for its hot springs and mineral baths. Santuario de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, Santa Fe. Franciscan missionaries built the Santuario of Our Lady of Guadalupe between 1776 and 1796 as a shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe. It is thought to be the oldest such shrine in the country and is still in use. “Sprite” Parjarito Plateau. The “little bird” plateau was formed from volcanic eruptions in and around the Valles Caldera of the Jemez Mountains. The plateau stretches from the Valles Caldera to the White Rock Canyon of the Rio Grande River. This photograph was taken on New Mexico Route 4 between Bandelier National Monument and the town of White Rock. Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon National Historical Park. Pueblo Bonito is one of the { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2011 } great houses built in Chaco Canyon by the Chacoan people between the mid-to-late 800s. The park was designated a World Heritage Site in 1987. x �NON -P ROFIT O RG . U.S. P OSTAGE PAID P UBLISHED BY THE COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE P.O. 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Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Title A name given to the resource The College, Fall 2011 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf 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 Type The nature or genre of the resource text Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context The_College_Magazine_Fall_2011 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Description An account of the resource Volume 36, Issue 1 of the The College Magazine. Published in Fall 2011. The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/9e4a948ec92a592da63c86d2bb24741a.pdf 31fff4781372c92f39f0cb8ef2d6fc17 PDF Text Text College The SUMMER 2012 • S T. J O H N ’ S C O L L E G E • ANNAPOLIS • S A N TA F E Shakespeare Is All the World a Stage? �ii | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 �from the editor The College is published by St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD, and Santa Fe, NM Known office of publication: Communications Office St. John’s College Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404-2800 Periodicals postage paid at Annapolis, MD Postmaster: Send address changes to The College Magazine, Communications Office, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800. Editor Patricia Dempsey patricia.dempsey@sjca.edu Contributing Editor Gabe Gomez Associate Editor Gregory Shook Art Director Jennifer Behrens Contributors Genevieve Dufour-Allen (A12) Chelsea Batten (A07) Susan Borden (A87) Jillian Burge (SF12) Charles Fasanaro Catherine Fields (A12) Joseph McFarland (A87) Laurence Nee Anna Perleberg (SF02) Leo Pickens (A78) Deborah Spiegelman Babak Zarin (A11) Design Consultant Claude Skelton The College welcomes letters on issues of interest to readers. Letters can be sent via e-mail to the editor or mailed to the address above. Annapolis: 410-626-2539 Santa Fe: 505-984-6104 On Shakespeare “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts. . .” As You Like It, Act II, Scene 7 William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was born, and died, in the village of Stratford-upon-Avon. The man is less known than his works. Shakespeare, sometimes called “Bard of Avon,” penned some 38 plays and 154 sonnets. It has been more than 400 years since Shakespeare began staging his works in the late 1580s in Elizabethan England, but we are compelled to return to them again and again. “Shakespeare in our seminar list would be as inevitable as Plato, or the Bible, or Kant,” says Annapolis tutor Jonathan Tuck, for a feature in this issue in which several faculty members share observations. At St. John’s, notes Santa Fe Dean J. Walter Sterling, students “inhabit the poetic form” when they encounter Shakespeare, the great poet of the English language. As Annapolis Dean Pamela Kraus notes, “We encounter Shakespeare’s work in various ways: through tutorials, study groups, preceptorials, lectures and question periods, annual essays, orals, and dramatic performances. . . . he instructs and inspires us daily.” In his essay, Santa Fe tutor Laurence Nee explores how Shakespeare reveals “our dearest and most powerful desire” in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and King Lear. At St. John’s and beyond, Shakespeare’s works remain timeless. For the alumni profiled in the story, “All the World’s a Stage,” Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets inspire transformation: these Johnnies have built careers around the stage. Actress Sara Barker (A98), describes a modern retelling of Mary Stuart through her work with the Washington Shakespeare Company. Ilana Kirschbaum (SF07) melds “science, art, and alchemy” as a set and stage designer in New York City. A junior-year preceptorial inspired Jack Armstrong (SF83) to devise plot charts for the Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre in which “every scene . . . advances...like rising and falling notes.” Playwright Damon Rhea Falke (SFGI01) “ listens” to his characters. Recent graduate Maria Jung (A12) landed a role in the in Annapolis Shakespeare Company’s production of The Comedy of Errors. The College magazine, in a way, is like a stage— ready to transform your stories. We hope you enjoy the changed set, the new design for The College, unveiled in this issue. Thank you to the more than 400 readers who responded to the Reader Questionnaire on The College, and those who joined informal focus groups on campus. Thank you for your many excellent, candid suggestions and ideas. As readers, you want The College to be “distinctive, without gimmicks,” and to “convey excellence,” brimming with stories about fellow alumni in their careers, the Program, and the college community. You shared countless insights: you want to hear from alumni who are beginning their careers, as well as those who are established; you like to read historical stories, in-depth essays, want to see more photos, and are intrigued by the idea of Johnnie trivia. Although you love the classic black-and-white design of the past decade, many of you said “yes” to a mix of color and blackand-white photos and illustrations, and many see a future that includes electronic formats. Each issue will have a black-and-white feature or photo essay. In this issue, A. Aubrey Bodine’s iconic view up Main Street sets the stage for Susan Borden’s (A87) story on desegregation on the Annapolis campus. As in the past, the magazine connects you to the voices of tutors, students, and fellow alumni. Since you want to hear from more members of the college community, new short sections—such as “Mentors,” “Conversation with the Chair,” and “Briefly Quoted”—have been added, along with color photos of student and campus life. At the back of each issue, you will find the familiar “St. John’s Forever.” This is your magazine, a work in progress. As we unveil changes, please let us know what you think! —P.D. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 1 �su m me r 2 01 2 volume 37, issue 1 A. AUBREY BODINE PETR JERABEK HENLEY MOORE (A13) Shakespeare’s plays provide an unsurpassed depiction of abiding human desires. Like mirrors, the plays use characters’ poetic speeches and deeds to reflect for our consideration the objects of our desires and the reasons we seek their fulfillment. —Laurence Nee, tutor F E AT U R E S page 18 Love and Desire: “What Fools These Mortals Be” Faculty members reflect on Shakespeare, and modern and archival images of the King William Players provide visual history. p a ge 25 “All the World’s a Stage” Meet five alums whose repertoire includes acting and writing “drama so intense you’d feel it even if the actors weren’t speaking,” set design, and plot charts for cross-dressing comedies. on the cover: Shakespeare illustration by Marc Burckhardt 2 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 page 34 Rule of Reason What can the oral histories of St. John’s veterans returning after World War II tell us about freedom and injustice? For the first African Americans who enrolled at St. John’s, the college was a haven from discrimination. �DEREK STENBORG D E PA R T M E N T S ALUMNI From Our Readers Bibliophile Profiles 4 6 39 46 Shakespeare Stories Letters From the Bell Towers 8 40 Eva Brann (HA89): Tutor, Traveler, Pendulum Pit: A Gift for Learning and 10 10 11 12 12 13 14 14 15 16 17 Mentors early activism leads him to Navajo railroad workers. Alumni Notes 53 In Memoriam Alumni News 55 Notes from the Chancellor Johnson House Apollonius’s Conics New Winiarski Student Center Hodson House Underway Johnnie Traditions 50 Croquet 2012: A new school song christens the annual match. Sarah Morse: Director of Admissions in Annapolis Jay Youngdahl’s (SFGI03) Michael Fried (A82) on the lost book of A Hunger for Shakespeare Fulbright Fellow to Teach in Malaysia 51 Fred Bohrer (A78) examines photos of excavation sites around the world. New Board Members Talk of the Towers crafting furniture by hand. 42 41 Tutor emeritus Charles Fasanaro on Perry Lerner: New Board Chairman Conversations with the Chair Geremy Coy (A06) finds truth Jorge Aigla’s Intimate Microscopy Homerathon: An Oral History Singing Joshua Parens (A83) and Joseph C. Macfarland’s (A87) sourcebook on medieval political philosophy Thinker, American 9 Andrew Krivak (A86) comes of age as a writer with The Sojourn, National Book Award Finalist. 58 56 Homecoming 2012 above: Theatrical set design by Ilana Kirschbaum (SF07). St. John’s Forever The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 3 �from our readers Readers Share Shakespeare Stories The Bard as Teacher When I came to the Annapolis campus as a prospective student— croquet weekend of 1992—a King William Players’ production of Love’s Labour’s Lost replaced the Friday night lecture. That same week, the sophomores were discussing Hamlet in seminar. St. John’s did not teach Shakespeare’s plays; it allowed the Bard to teach me. Shakespeare led me to Freud in my sophomore year when I attempted to define Hamlet’s madness in my enabling essay. Were it not for his plays, I would have had little cause to ponder the nature of madness or the human condition in such a way. The poor young scholars of Love’s Labour’s Lost revealed to me the problem of the divided will far better than St. Augustine or St. Paul had been able to do, although the fault was entirely mine. After my own conversion, I found great comfort in returning to those two saints because they understood the battle that I had originally faced alone. Since then I have had the chance to share those plays with my own students, and see them loved anew. I teach seventh through twelfth grades at Holy Rosary Academy, a small, Great Books-styled Catholic school in Alaska. My 7th and 8th graders just finished performing some of the Bard’s notable monologues as part of their first acting project; soon I will be reading Julius Caesar with the 9th grade and Hamlet with the 10th. During the last couple of years, we have performed Twelfth Night, Love’s Labour’s Lost, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. My students are clamoring to do The Taming of the Shrew next year. Shakespeare teaches them far better than I could. —Erin (Hearn) Furby (A96) Conversational Epiphanies My seminar experience of Shakespeare was strangely cold. Our Shakespeare seminars were dull soup. For some reason, our seminar group never got into the Elizabethan swing of things—never effervesced around the object under discussion. After graduating, I earned a PhD on Shakespeare (along with Homer’s Odyssey, Hellenistic romances, and medieval romances) and, specifically, Shakespeare’s last four plays, at the University of London and with the assistance of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-uponAvon. Something at St. John’s must have helped to get me there. Two or three off-the-cuff conversations with key tutors of my St. John’s generation— Mr. MacDonald and Mr. McGraw— led me to click with Shakespeare. I complained that Shakespeare wasn’t accessible, wasn’t satisfactory somehow. McGraw quoted Shakespeare sonorously, really sang it as lyrics, when we discussed it while walking up from town to the Bell Tower. Suddenly I saw behind the curtains: The text was illuminated. Later, discussing Shakespeare with Mr. MacDonald, I made the same idiotic complaint about Shakespeare’s inaccessibility. Mr. MacDonald breathed deeply, looked at me with his gimlet eyes, and said, “You really have to dig deeper there. Listen to the man. His work is packed with treasure. What are you looking for?” They both provoked me with Socratic techniques. They whet my hunger. It’s those epiphanylike conversations that spark interest—sparks that lead to real bonfires, as it turns out. —John Dean (A70) 4 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 Christel Stevens (A72) as Rosaline and Richard Ferrier (A69) as Berowne illuminate the stage in the King William Players’ production of Love’s Labour’s Lost circa 1969. A Prospie’s Point of View As You Like It was the seminar reading during my prospective visit to the Santa Fe campus. I had always been a voracious reader, but sitting in that seminar room, I realized that I hadn’t been much of a thinker. I could actually feel my mind come alive with ideas. This little play, which I had read as an historical curiosity on the flight out, was suddenly the gateway to where I needed to be. By the end of the evening, I knew that St. John’s was going to change my life. —Steve Hillson (SF86) On Par with the Pros I acted in Measure for Measure at St. John’s in the spring of 1997. Ably directed by Heidi Jacot (A97), the show’s fabulous leads were Sara Barker (A98) and Weldon (Michael) Goree (A98), who are both now involved in Washington, D.C.-area theater. Since leaving St. John’s and continuing to watch, read, and act in Shakespearean plays, I have come to appreciate the passion that Johnnies brought to the classic plays mounted by the KWP. Although we had [sparse] sets and costumes, the commitment to the acting and the desire to bring the text to life was amazing. I had the privilege to be in both Measure for Measure and Electra. Later I saw a production of Hamlet that, in its acting at least, truly rivaled the Shakespeare Theater Company’s Free for All production that same summer in Washington, D.C., which starred professional actors. The fencing scene at the end was truly memorable. —Jill Nienhiser (A/SFGI97) A Bravura Performance This picture (above) of Richard Ferrier (A69) as Berowne and me as Rosaline in Love’s Labour’s Lost is from the King William Players’ 1969 production. (Others may chime in with the correct date.) Directed by Michael Victoroff (A71), it also featured such luminaries as Patrick D’Addario (A71) in the role of Dumaine, Patti Posey (A70) as Katharine, Harry Koenig (A69) as Holofernes in a bravura performance, and my own brother, Richard Stevens (A69), as Constable Dull. —Christel Stevens (A72) A Life-Altering Moment I had the opportunity to act in two Shakespeare plays at St. John’s, and I directed The Winter’s Tale while writing my senior essay on it. Our cast was an eclectic mix of undergraduates, GIs, and tutors. Imam Sawez (A95) stole the show with his cameo as the bear! Encouraged by my experiences at St. John’s, I auditioned for a classical theater training program in London and spent the year after graduation studying with amazing British actors and directors. I had a life-changing experience while playing the patriarch Leonato in an all-female production of Much Ado About Nothing in London. �from our readers During one of the performances, I found myself fully inhabiting this character whose worldview and priorities couldn’t have been more different from my own. I was suddenly able to understand this man at a fundamental level and feel a deep sense of compassion for him. I now strive to bring these same qualities of awareness and open-mindedness to my work. My life-altering moment wouldn’t have been possible without Shakespeare’s powerful words— and my time at St. John’s that led me to them. —Adee St. Onge Swanson (A95) Wild for Togas My favorite Shakespeare memory from St. John’s was As You Like It in 1980. When Johnny Moron appeared as the god Hymen on his leafy throne, resplendent in his toga and crown of flowers, surrounded by fairies, the whole audience went wild. —Jack Armstrong (SF83) “The Player King” When I was a student at St. John’s, there was, mysteriously, a record album of the entire play, Richard II, on a side table in the seminar room. Mesmerized, I listened to it repeatedly. Years later, as a graduate student at Tulane, the major dramatic offering was—you guessed it—Richard II. I auditioned and got the part! I went on to an illustrious acting career, including much Shakespeare. I consider Richard II one of Shakespeare’s finest plays, containing some of his best poetry. The character of Richard is one of his best portrayals. By the way, my senior thesis, “The Player King,” was an analysis of Richard II. —John Chase (A56) Moved by Henry V The scene in Shakespeare that has always moved me most is perhaps a minor part in Henry V, in the history series beginning with Richard II and concluding with Henry VIII. Richard II sets up the tragic sequence; although Richard’s kingship is depicted as mercurial and capricious, Shakespeare cannot morally justify the usurpation by Bolingbroke, later Henry IV. Bolingbroke’s son, Henry V, pleads with God regarding his offerings of Masses for the soul of Richard II, who was murdered. Yet Henry senses that Masses cannot compensate for the injustice of Richard’s deposition, however better Bolingbroke ruled England than Richard did. The audience knows that the tragedy will culminate in the deposition and murder of Henry’s son, Henry VI, during the War of the Roses, which will not end until the triumph of the Tudors at Bosworth Field and the birth of Henry VII’s granddaughter, the future Queen Elizabeth. —Steven Shore (SF68) Dramatic Memory The first time I went to St. John’s, in the early 1950s, a lecturer from Harvard University spoke on Macbeth, listing all the times the word “blood” appeared in the play. I never heard anything so exciting in my life—I had goose pimples on my arm! A few months later, I met this man, (whose name, I believe, was F. O. Mathiesen), in the Harvard University Library, and tried to congratulate him on the excitement he generated with his lecture. He refused to talk to me. A few months later, I read in the newspaper that he committed suicide. Now that is drama at its highest. —Alvin Aronson (A72) “As I teach Shakespeare to my students, I am still in wonder at how well he captured the transformative qualities of human beings. Be it an army of Englishmen or an angry shrew, Shakespeare always left room for his characters’ capacity to change.” Tobin Herringshaw (a05) Recollecting the Shrew In my sophomore year at Santa Fe, I had a role in The Taming of the Shrew. I mainly recall using the time when I was not needed onstage in rehearsals memorizing the opening passage from Book Three of Paradise Lost, which remains with me to this day, some thirty years later. Happily, I have little recollection of how well I played the role of the hapless lover. —Don Dennis (SF82) Is Change Possible? I directed Hamlet in 2002 at St. John’s. Naturally, I wrote my junior essay on that paragon of plays. The real focus of my essay was on the reversal and recognition moment of Aristotle’s Poetics. I argued that Hamlet’s moment In 2002, Joe Hyde (A03), playing the role of Hamlet with the King William Players. occurred on the pirate ship, when Hamlet, accompanied by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, discovers himself anew. Now, as I teach Shakespeare to my students, I am still in wonder at how well he captured the transformative qualities of human beings. Be it an army of Englishmen or an angry shrew, Shakespeare always left room for his characters’ capacity to change. Through his work, I continue to believe that people can bring change to their lives. Aristotle, in his Ethics, would probably disagree. In the accompanying photograph, Joe Hyde (A03) plays Hamlet in our production. —Tobin Herringshaw (A05) A Prancing Mustard Seed I played the part of Mustard Seed in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at St. John’s, which involved prancing around and singing songs that Mr. Zuckerman composed for the occasion. It was one of those lighthearted moments in my otherwise earnest years studying the Great Books and trying to be wise long before I was ready. —Julia Busser du Prey (A66) To Act or Not to Act I can’t remember whether I played Prospero in The Tempest during my sophomore year or my junior year. Jack Landau (A44), who directed it, embarked on a brilliant career in the theater upon graduation. (His life was tragically cut short by a burglary[continued] The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 5 �from our readers Readers Share Shakespeare Stories (continued) related murder at the age of 42.) Rehearsals were great fun at the digs of Captain Dickinson, the U.S. Naval Academy quartermaster, who was reputed to have the Academy’s best liquor supply and whose daughter Laetitia played the role of Prospero’s daughter Miranda. One of Landau’s inventions was to have Ariel appear only as a disembodied voice emanating from loudspeakers placed in the crowns of several tall trees surrounding the open-air stage. The day after the single performance, a Naval Academy English professor, who had seen the play, called to ask if I could spare a few minutes to visit him. When I found his office, he announced that he wanted to lend me a book, Stanislavski on Acting. I have never come to a satisfactory conclusion about the motive behind this generous gesture. On good days, I flatter myself by thinking it must have been due to my stellar performance. On bad days, I wonder whether I could really have been that lousy. At any rate, my role in The Tempest was both the beginning and the end of my thespian career. —Peter Weiss (Class of 1946) Liberated I was exposed to Shakespeare in high school when I was full of zeal for a narrow form of Christianity. I had doubts about reading secular literature, wondering if God approved. The beauty of Shakespeare’s language and the expansiveness of his worldview liberated me. In fear and trembling, I set out to explore a world fraught with the poignant ambiguities of the heart. —Kevin (Johnson) Thomas (A93) “The beauty of Shakespeare’s language and the expansiveness of his worldview liberated me. In fear and trembling, I set out to explore a world fraught with the poignant ambiguities of the heart.” Kevin (Johnson) Thomas (A93) The Singing Sonnet On a sauntering expedition through the stacks of St. John’s library, I found a book of sonnets by Shakespeare. After reading for quite some time, I took the volume home. Then I bought Helen Vendler’s great analysis, The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, and later, more books on his sonnets. Eventually I got serious about my research, delving into the magnificent collection at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. As a composer, I began to think about setting sonnets to music. As I viewed others’ musical sonnet manuscripts and publications from the Folger collection, my creative muse was awakened. I began to write a 60-minute work for soprano, baritone, and string quartet titled “O, know, sweet love, I only write of you,” based on Shakespeare sonnets. Now I am seeking a premiere performance of this new work—all a result of sauntering through St. John’s College [Greenfield] library. —Hollis Thoms (AGI06) Letters The Real Olympics The “Real Olympics” were an annual athletic event (of sorts) with chariot races, a teeter-totter weighting the Bible against Aristotle, epicycle races in which a woman ran around a man who in turn ran around a large circle . . . . The event was started by Seth Bernadette, a tutor pouring a cup of beer on the ground while muttering in ancient Greek . . . . We decided to spice them up in the spring of 1958 by having Steve Almy (A60, pictured here) run through Annapolis carrying a torch! He was arrested for “parading without a permit” —but quickly released to the cheers of a few dozen students; the [story and photo] appeared later in the New York Times. The following year, we got a permit; the police stopped traffic and allowed Almy to run from Piraeus (Annapolis harbor) to campus amid much fanfare. —Hugh Curtler (Class of 1959) Thank you for your letters on the fall Chopin issue. Look for more letters in the next issue. 6 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 Thank you A special thanks to those who joined a College magazine focus group or took the time to review ideas: Matthew Calise (A00); Thea Chimento (A10); Genevieve Dufour-Allen (A12); Nadia Al’Taie (A14); Erin Fitzpatrick (A14); Beth Martin Gammon (A94); Jessica Kjellberg (A14); Alexander Kriz (SF09); Hannah Pasternak (A12); Alex Plunkett (A14), Babak Zarin (A13); tutors Nicholas Maistrellis, Jonathan Tuck, and John Verdi; Elliott Zuckerman, tutor emeritus; Annapolis Dean Pamela Kraus and Santa Fe Dean J. Walter Sterling; A special thanks to Barbara Goyette (A78), Annapolis vice president for Advancement, for her savvy ideas; and to my colleagues: Susan Borden (A87); Jaime Dunn; Susan Kaplan; Susan Patten; Leo Pickens (A78); Victoria Smith (AGI09); Melissa Stevens; Nancie Wingo. Thanks to Claude Skelton for his elegant design. For the photos they provided, thanks to Jen Behrens, Jennifer Bodine and Lucinda Edinberg, Henley Moore (A14), Cara Sabolcik, and Melissa Stevens; thanks to our copyeditor, Cathi Dunn MacRae. Welcome to Gabe Gomez, new director of Communications, Santa Fe. Finally, a standing ovation to my staff who kept their sense of humor during all the deadlines: Jen Behrens, art director; Gregory Shook, associate director; and Katie Matlack, web specialist. It took a village—a collaboration of expertise and ideas—to transform The College magazine. —Patricia Dempsey, editor �“The day after the single performance, a Naval Academy English professor, who had seen the play, called to ask if I could spare a few minutes to visit him. When I found his office, he announced that he wanted to lend me a book, Stanislavski on Acting. I have never come to a satisfactory conclusion about the motive behind this generous gesture.” —Peter Weiss (Class of 1946) The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 7 �Eva Brann: Tutor, Traveler, Thinker, American by Genevieve Dufour-Allen (A12) Homage to Americans: Mile-High Meditations, Close Readings, and TimeSpanning Speculations is a collection of essays and talks by Annapolis faculty member Eva Brann (HA89), published last year. Brann shares her inspirations and stories spanning the scope of the essays and her own life. discover—its spirit is large and generous. At the last faculty meeting we actually discussed whether it ought to be read as poetry or prose. Madison’s rhetoric is elegant and effective; it was a beautiful speech at a time of difficult decisions. Both are certainly worth studying. You mentioned that Madison and Lincoln are heroes of yours. Tell me more. I’ll start with Madison because he seems to have the most practical wisdom. He succeeded in helping to write a Constitution that has stood for over two centuries. And Lincoln is a model for leaders; he was a great leader. While I was the Dean for seven years, I found him to be an inspiring and comforting model. He was firm but not ignoble or mean. You can always ask yourself, “What would Lincoln do?” JEN BEHRENS Why is it important to examine the roots of America? This book pays homage to Americans. Why is it important to you to address the people of America, and those who adopt the demonym? Every article is a celebration of America, North to South. The first is about living with one’s fellow citizens and the last is remembering the Aztec civilization as a part of American history, i.e., North American. The first essay is the most important to me, concerning tolerance, which I think is a flabby virtue and should be replaced with respect, which is active and humanly engaged. The first essay is the one in which I tried to summarize my philosophy; it shows how I thought and think about living here. It begins in the airport where I observed an American couple eating a great deal of gross fast food—but they were also reading a book on classic chess moves and practicing with a travel chessboard. There are also two central essays, one on Madison’s Memorial and Remonstrance and one on Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. What is the value of Madison’s eloquence? Some think that the Gettysburg Address is the high point of American speechmaking. Do you agree? The essays on Madison and Lincoln are important to me; they are heroes of mine, you see. The Gettysburg Address was a piece of prose that comes very close to poetry. It is close, precise, fraught with meaning and full of things, details, to 8 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 Roots are important. Particularly in a political world, it is important to look at foundations, to ensure we are holding true to them. It is also important in intellectual matters to go back to ideas that the Civil War introduced. It’s where our current country comes from. And that’s what the [St. John’s] program is about, isn’t it? It’s about the things we take for granted, the roots of our assumptions. It’s not possible to understand what is going on presently if we don’t know what we embody or what we are losing with respect to our foundations. Because it is what we have in common, our country is built on something we have together. The beginnings are always important, in order to have perspective. The last essay connects the Aztecs of Central America. How do you see that history affecting America as a whole? Well, imagine that the Spanish had not conquered and the Aztecs influenced the development of the Americas more than the West. Imagine a modern Aztec influence; it would be very different from what did happen. The god of the West is vastly different from the god of the �PENDULUM PIT: A GIFT FOR LEARNING AND SINGING the Earth’s rotation, as well as some of the math and physics covered in the Program. For example, the Pendulum is a handy resource for demonstrating Newton’s “bucket” experiment, arguing the idea that the Earth is not a true sphere shape, but rather oblate from the effect of centrifugal force due to rotation. Aztecs. There was a great problem in the defeat of the Aztecs, such a large civilization brought down in a matter of a few years. It is important to remember how we influence our neighbors, and how they influence us. So imagine what we could have become if the West had not won. It gives another perspective; what might have been is an interesting way to think about our present condition. Today the Pendulum’s mathematical and scientific applications are studied in the Program. Demonstrations of its mechanics are carried out by Junior Lab classes in their study of Newton’s Laws of Motion as well as attempts to replace the Aristotelian efficient cause with Descartes’ quantity of motion, Leibniz’s “living force,” and other concepts. The Americas and particularly the United States are important to look at. For me, it is partly because I was an immigrant, a refugee. I moved here from Germany when I was 12, escaping the Nazis. I landed in Hoboken first, and then spent my grade school and high school years in Brooklyn, eventually landing here at St. John’s, where I fell in love with the college. The U.S. is my adopted country; typically adoptive citizens have stronger connections to the adopted country. It is certainly true for me. What did you fall in love with at St. John’s? Well, many things—I’ll tell you a few. I had just obtained my degree in archaeology when I visited the college for an interview. I fell in love with it. I had a room in Campbell, which was where they would put interviewees up back then. In the closet of the room, there was a red skeleton painted behind the closet door with the Greek γνωθι σεαυτόν, or “know thyself,” above it. I thought it was charming. That night I was woken up by students singing madrigals in the courtyard. It was wonderful. The same weekend, I had breakfast with Jacob Klein at his house, and Viktor Zuckerkandl. At the time, the bookstore was in the coffee shop in the room where the fireplace is now. There was a big problem with books being stolen, which came up at breakfast. Zuckerkandl said, “What a wonderful school at which we live where students steal books!” I was enchanted with everything. JEN BEHRENS How did you come to America? On Friday afternoons, Mellon Hall dwellers—mostly staff and tutors—cherish the sound of choral singing that emanates from the lobby near the Pendulum Pit. The curious mechanism that hangs in one of the stairwells nearby is a familiar sight to Annapolis Johnnies. The nearly 300-pound pendulum and the space it occupies, affectionately known as the Pendulum Pit, is like a member of the college community. The fact, too, that only a handful of other institutions have a pendulum makes it even more special that Johnnies have one to call their own. For most of its existence, the Pendulum was inoperable. That changed, however, when the class of 2011 approached Annapolis tutor James Beall to donate funds from their Senior Class Gift to pay for the restoration of the Pendulum, a gesture that complemented the previous year’s class gift of a new projector for the McKeldin Planetarium. The Colorado School of Mines gave Beall the design for the Pendulum, which he describes as “very contemplative . . . the motion of a whole swing is 7.1 seconds.” “THE PENDULUM PIT IS THE CLOSEST OUR CAMPUS COMES TO [PRODUCING] THE SOUND OF A RESONANT STONE CHAPEL —THE SORT OF PLACE FOR WHICH 16THCENTURY VOCAL MUSIC WAS WRITTEN.” Eric Stoltzfus, tutor With support from students, whose help included soldering electrical connections and putting together circuitry, Beall embarked on the Pendulum Project. “The students had a fun time getting the electronics running and understanding the Pendulum’s inner workings,” says Beall, a physicist who studied astrophysics at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and received his PhD from the University of Maryland. Modeled after Léon Foucault’s Pendulum invented in 1851, the Pendulum was included in the building’s original 1958 construction to give students and tutors a practical understanding of the effect of The Pendulum has surprising artistic merits, too. Due to the impressive acoustics of the Pendulum Pit, the space is a favorite among musicians and vocalists. The Freshman Chorus and the Primum Mobile ensemble gather there on Friday afternoons to belt out wellloved songs such as William Byrd’s Mass for Five Voices, Josquin des Prez’s Missa Pange lingua, and Tomás Luis de Victoria’s Missa O Magnum Mysterium. “I find it moving to sing while the Pendulum is swinging, as if reminding us of our place in the universe as the heavenly bodies silently sing out the music of the spheres,” says tutor Eric Stoltzfus. “The Pendulum Pit is the closest our campus comes to [producing] the sound of a resonant stone chapel—the sort of place for which 16th-century vocal music was written.” Recently students have been meeting there on Wednesday afternoons to sing Palestrina’s “Sicut Cervus” for fun. In true Johnnie tradition, this gift will continue to give—and swing—and sing—for generations to come. —Catherine Fields (A12) The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 9 �from the bell towers 2011-2012 New Board Members homerathon AN ORAL HISTORY The Board of Visitors and Governors welcomes these new members: HENLEY MOORE (A13) Claiborne B. Booker (A84) has been active in investment management since 1985, when he joined what is now known as LGT Group, a European private bank. During the past decade, he has focused on early stage venture capital and private equity placements and has worked with investors and their advisors to raise capital for companies and new investment funds. He is a 1992 graduate of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, where he earned his MBA in finance. He lives in Alexandria, Virginia. Student voices echoed off the quad as the third annual Homerathon paid tribute to the immortal epic of the Greek oral tradition: Homer’s Iliad. Gathered under a partially cloudy sky from 9 a.m. on Saturday, April 14, to 1 a.m. on Sunday, Annapolis students dropped by to read aloud a hundred lines or a whole chapter of the epic, giving voice to the gods and heroes of Homer. Homerathon began in 2009 when Bradley van Uden (A10) “just wanted to have someone read the entire Iliad out loud” to him. Virginia Early (A13), one of the participants in the original Homerathon and current leader of the event, decided to continue because it’s “worthwhile,” she explains. “It’s beautiful reading the poetry out loud and hearing it— it hits you more deeply.” Thus a new Johnnie tradition was born. Logan Dwyer (A12), who has attended all three Homerathons, recalls, “The fancy struck me to sit and listen to the entire Iliad when it first started. It appealed to me to reenact what Homer and the Ancients did. It smacks of St. John’s.” Homer brings Johnnies together with a nostalgia and fondness unrivaled, perhaps, by any other book on the Program. Part of the appeal lies in returning to the Program’s first book. “This year,” says Early, “hearing the Iliad read by a lot of people “IT’S SO ORGANIC; IT’S A CREATIVE OUTPUT EMBRACING THE JOHNNIE NERDINESS. I GOT TO READ THE BEST PART IN THE ENTIRE ILIAD! IT’S ACHILLES’ REPLY TO ODYSSEUS AFTER AGAMEMNON TOOK HIS BRIDE.” Lucy Ferrier (A12), a three-year Homerathon veteran and from many translations brought out different things in the poetry and story. I get more out of it—the forgiveness of Achilles really spoke to me in a new way. The whole experience brought home the force of the Iliad and Achilles as a character.” The participants’ shared enjoyment of the story deepened as they not only read aloud but performed swordfights, voiced Poseidon’s 10 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 speeches with an underwater burbling achieved by a finger on the lips, and carried out a funeral of Patroklus as it was read. “Homerathon has a very communal spirit,” says Early. “Everyone is involved in the story together; we all booed when Hektor died.” A staunch few triumphantly lasted all 16 hours with a gallon of wine in hand for the necessary libations to Zeus, Hera, Athena, and Apollo. Lucy Ferrier (A12), also a three-year Homerathon veteran, says, “It’s so organic; it’s a creative output embracing the Johnnie nerdiness. I got to read the best part in the entire Iliad! It’s Achilles’ reply to Odysseus after Agamemnon took his bride: ‘For hateful in my eyes, even as the gates of Hades, is that man that hideth one thing in his mind and sayeth another’ (9.310-315). “I shouted, declaimed it for Achilles. This was definitely my top experience this year; it’s fitting to hear Homer echoing off the quad. It’s part naïveté, part being not so cool—just being able to listen and love Homer and embrace what we do here.” —Genevieve Dufour-Allen (A12) Lee Katherine Goldstein (SFGI90) received her bachelor’s degree in criminology from the University of Florida in 1988 and her JD from the University of Miami in 1993. She has been an active part of the St. John’s College alumni community for many years and is the current president of the Alumni Association. She currently lives in Denver, Colorado, where she is an attorney practicing in the areas of civil and commercial litigation. Joan M. Haratani (SF79)is a litigation partner based in San Francisco, for Morgan Lewis. In her 27 years of practice, she has handled all phases of pretrial and trial proceedings, with a particular emphasis on complex products liability and high stakes commercial disputes. She has received numerous awards for both her practice accomplishments and service on behalf of minority and female practitioners. Among many, she has been named a Northern California Super Lawyer (2004-2012). She lectures on topics of diversity and trial work, and is a board member of several philanthropic organizations. Harold Hughes (A84) is senior managing director, Alliance Bernstein, head of retail for the Americas. He is also the CEO of Alliance Bernstein Investments Inc. in New York. Mr. Hughes joined Alliance Bernstein in 2004 as managing director of the Washington D.C. Bernstein Private Client office. In 2008 he moved to London, U.K., to head Bernstein Private Client for the U.K. and Europe. Previously he was with Legg Mason in Baltimore as senior vice president and head of wealth management. �from the bell towers New Board Chairman: A Conduit for Ideas “Barring asteroids falling on the Earth, St. John’s will remain strong. We have a broad base of support. As long as we do our jobs well, we will continue to have support. We need to focus on enrollment, control our budget, and build our endowment.” Perry Lerner takes the helm of the Board of Visitors and Governors (BVG) at a time when liberal arts colleges are defending the value of the education they offer, and families are struggling in an uncertain economy to pay the high costs of four-year college programs. “St. John’s is committed to sustaining its Program and its standing among liberal arts colleges,” he says. “St. John’s excels in ensuring that our students develop the knowledge and skills which are critical to leading successful and fulfilling lives.” A graduate of Harvard Law School and Claremont McKenna College, Lerner is a former international lawyer who has also managed several business ventures. A member of the BVG since 1999, forward-thinking Lerner has a visionary, collaborative strategy for St. John’s future. “The role of the BVG is to act as stewards of the college, providing strategic direction and leadership while avoiding involvement in the college’s day-to-day operations. Notwithstanding today’s challenges, we are an extraordinary institution.” He shares his priorities with The College. What is the legacy of Mike Uremovich, the previous chairman? He was very effective. He became chair in 2007 when the economy suffered many shocks. Under Mike’s leadership we balanced the budget, grew the endowment, and have developed a greater awareness of issues affecting our sustainability. By streamlining board operations, he enabled the BVG to be more effective. Our new structure will have fewer committees and members, which should help us be more focused on our goals. What are your priorities for St. John’s College? Our first priority is to improve our admissions program. It is important that we attract and retain excellent students during these difficult economic times. Second, we must look at our branding, whether we are receiving the kind of recognition that our unique education offers to our students. There was a time when our brand was easily identified in the market—now there is more competition for good students, and too many potential applicants rely on external measures such as blogs and popular ratings. Accordingly, we must do more to strengthen our brand so that we attract students who would benefit from the St. John’s Program. A BVG committee chaired by Robert Bienenfeld (SF80) is charged with the responsibility to examine our branding and is hard at work on these issues. As an exceptional and extraordinary institution, our brand should not be drowned out by “noise” in the marketplace. Third, we must strengthen our financial resources. In the last few years, our endowment has held steady despite difficult fi- nancial markets. The BVG has been exceptional in its support for the college, having increased its giving by 20 percent this last year. BVG support needs to continue as we focus on gifts to meet our current needs as well as our endowment. Fourth, the BVG must support the Instruction Committees on both campuses as they consider broadening the curriculum; they should be free to examine ways to create opportunities for students to be exposed to new readings, ideas, languages, and cultures. I believe that students are anxious for opportunities to learn and travel during breaks and vacations, and we should make this possible. Finally, we should attract more students outside the U.S. We do not want to ignore new markets where the college’s Program can attract students from other parts of the world. What will ensure the sustainability of the college? Barring asteroids falling on the Earth, St. John’s will remain strong. We have a broad base of support among BVG members, graduates, faculty, staff, friends, and foundations. As long as we do our jobs well, we will continue to have their support. We need to focus on enrollment, control our budget, and build our endowment. We need to do better in all these areas. Describe your leadership style. Good leadership is enabling others to do their best work. I will be a conduit for ideas and a supporter of innovation. I am primarily an enabler, encouraging others to do their best. As chair, it is my responsibility to help set priorities and to see that the important work of the college is done. I believe that everyone in our community will work hard to meet our challenges. What is the importance of St. John’s? I believe that the education at St. John’s opens unrivaled opportunities for acquiring the ability and understanding needed to live a good and balanced life. Very few have those opportunities. —P.D. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 11 �from the bell towers A Hunger for Shakespeare On a Tuesday evening last fall, Annapolis students occupied every seat around the enormous table in the Barr-Buchanan Center’s elegant General Hartle Room. Tutor John Verdi led a discussion on William Shakespeare’s Richard II. This discussion was one of many voluntary evening seminars—“Shakespeare in the Fall”—organized by the Student Committee on Instruction (SCI). The limited number of Shakespearean plays and poems that students study at St. John’s leaves many hungry for more. Johnnies are particularly interested in revisiting the plays they may have read or encountered in high school. Paul Wilford (A07), who was then a member of the SCI, began “Shakespeare in the Fall” nine years ago. Each year the dedicated following grows. Tutors John Verdi, Louis Petrich, Daniel Harrel, Michael Grenke, and Eva Brann led the sessions this year; Ms. Brann also read some sonnets for the last meeting. The SCI chose a historical play theme—Richard II, Henry IV parts one and two, and Henry V. “Students ask me to lead a session and so I help them out,” says Mr. Verdi, who has participated for many years in “Shakespeare in the Fall.” He finds it a “project worth doing. It’s always enjoyable to get all the different classes together—like the all-college seminar. There is always a mix: freshmen, Graduate Institute students, other tutors as well.” Last fall, Mr.Verdi led two sessions on Richard II. Mr. Verdi enjoys returning to Shakespeare, finding different pieces suitable to mood or time. This time around, his favorite quote happens to come from Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. Mentors “It’s Cleopatra speaking, from Act V, Scene ii, 279-289. She’s about to let the poisonous asps bite her. She and Antony have shared a passionate, consuming love, a true love, I think. He is already dead. As she is about to take her own life, she hears him praising her deed, which is an act both of love and of royal autonomy. Their very physical love gives way in the face of death to one of the highest spirituality:” Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have Immortal longings in me: now no more The juice of Egypt’s grape shall moist this lip: Yare, yare, good Iras; quick. Methinks I hear Antony call; I see him rouse himself To praise my noble act; I hear him mock The luck of Caesar, which the gods give men To excuse their after wrath: husband, I come: Now to that name my courage prove my title! I am fire and air; my other elements I give to baser life. The hunger for Shakespeare is not a singular phenomenon; students and theatergoers around the world have been devoted to his works for centuries. Through “Shakespeare in the Fall,” Johnnies can look at Shakespeare’s poetry and eloquence with a new understanding. The word “mentor” has its roots in the Odyssey, in which Pallas Athena’s guise before Telemachus and Odysseus is that of Mentor, the elderly advisor and “shepherd of the people” who rules in Odysseus’s absence. The goddess of wisdom’s advice and assistance to those under her care is a fitting comparison to the benefits of career mentorship. A recent mentorship in the field of finance introduced Brian Warczinski (A13) to Laura Strache (A01), a managing director of operations for a Wall Street hedge fund, who was profiled in the Fall 2011 issue of The College. Strache mentored and connected Warczinski with two internships in the competitive and intimidating world of finance in New York. The benefit is not one-sided: alumni who mentor, host an Ariel or Hodson internship, or participate in forums or panels reconnect to the college, often restoring a link that they have missed. Director of Career Services in Annapolis Jaime Dunn recalls, “An alumnus and attorney in Philadelphia, Andrew Schwartz (A91), signed up to be a mentor last year, and I invited him to participate in a law panel, which he did. He hadn’t been back to the college in 10 years but found himself reconnecting in a meaningful and fulfilling way.” —Genevieve Dufour-Allen (A12) “For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings.” Richard II 12 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 Jaime Dunn, director of Career Services, Annapolis HOST AN INTERN OR FORUM Contact Jaime Dunn (jaime.dunn@sjca.edu) or Margaret Odell (modell@sjcsf.edu) to host a forum or panel, and for internship opportunities or tips on hosting an intern. Visit www. stjohnscollege.edu/admin. Click on Annapolis or Santa Fe Career Services. �from the bell towers MELISSA LATHAM-STEVENS NEW WINIARSKI STUDENT CENTER OPENS IN SANTA FE Agora: Career Network “A virtual mentoring network” is how Jaime Dunn, director of Career Services in Annapolis, describes Agora, an initiative launched by the offices of Career Services in 2011. Agora reflects the Greek concept of a gathering place and was named by students in a college-wide competition. Job seekers, employers, and mentors register on the website according to the campus from which they graduated. Tribute to Laurence Berns (ha00) This year, tutors Eva Brann (HA89), Peter Kalkavage, and Eric Salem (A77) published a translation, with an introduction, glossary of crucial Greek terms, and an exploratory essay, of Plato’s Statesman, dedicated to their friend and colleague Laurence Berns, who died in March 2011. In addition, befitting tutor Berns’ love of music, at a memorial service held during Annapolis Homecoming 2011, tutors Eric Stoltzfus and Elliott Zuckerman performed Beethoven’s moving “Sonata in A Major for Cello and Piano,” and the Madrigal Choir sang “Aura Lee,” “Mon Coeur,” and “The Silver Swan,” a tribute that captured Says Margaret Odell, director of Career Services in Santa Fe, “Students no longer need to wait for on-campus, face-to-face opportunities for interaction with alumni. That’s the beauty of the constant availability of mentors through Agora.” Bill Gregoricus (SFGI01), an Alumni Association Board member, is also working on the site. “What Agora represents is a reliable web-based point of access to the college and to all registered students and alumni, regardless of where you are, across the globe,” he says. “Agora will also help students and alumni seeking Berns’s warmhearted, spirited nature. President Christopher Nelson’s (SF70) remarks touched on Berns’s “boundless energy and engagement in the life of learning at the college.” Tutors Harvey Flaumenhaft, Joseph Cohen (A56), and Eva Brann (HA89); and former students Jerrold Caplan (A73), Theodore Blanton (A75), Sharon Portnoff (A85), and Daryl Li (AGI10) shared stories about Berns’s scholarly contributions, storytelling, and generosity. Berns’s wife, Gisela, read “L’Envoi,” the final section of “The Seven Seas,” a long poem by Rudyard Kipling. An obituary for Laurence Berns (1928-2011) was published in the Fall 2011 issue of The College; www.stjohnscollege.edu/news/ memoriam-berns.shtml Barbara (Class of 1955) and Warren Winiarski (Class of 1952), and their daughter Julia (SF92) joined Santa Fe President Mike Peters, members of the St. John’s Board of Visitors and Governors, and Santa Fe city leaders and community members for the dedication on June 30 of the new Winiarski Student Center. The Center will accommodate 45 students and is expected to earn a LEED Silver Certification. Mr. Winiarski is the founder of Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars in Napa Valley, Calif., and was inducted into the California Vintners’ Hall of Fame in 2009. employment to develop closer ties with top employers and recruiters by delivering interview opportunities, hosting great career fairs, connecting with alumni mentors, and more.” For Agora’s success, the criteria are simple: all alumni and students should register online, which takes less than five minutes. www.stjohnscollege.edu/admin/agora —Genevieve Dufour-Allen (A12) briefly quoted “It is meant to integrate the classroom with the living experience. Another way to think about our Program is that it is interdisciplinary. This is an effort to try to bring these things together, both the living experience and the learning experience, in one.” Mike Peters, Santa Fe president, on the dedication of the new Winiarski Student Center Santa Fe New Mexican, June 24, 2012 The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 13 �from the bell towers briefly quoted CONVERSATIONS WITH THE CHAIR “If we play, if we make ourselves present to the joy of using the Books to exercise our will and chose our life in a daily way, they will be a fountain of happiness for the rest of our lives.” Salvatore Scibona (sf97), noted author and novelist, 2012 Commencement speaker, Annapolis Hodson House Underway Hodson House, a multi-use building that will hold a seminar/meeting room, faculty offices, and administrative offices, will be constructed on the Annapolis campus in 2012. Subsequently, a full renovation of the 18th-century Carroll Barrister House, which holds the admissions offices for the college, will be undertaken. The majority of the funding for the project has been provided by the Hodson Trust; some funding is also being provided by the State of Maryland through the MICUA capital projects program. We meet at last. If someone had told me when I was a small footstool that one day I would be given the honor of holding court in The College magazine, I would have thought him out of his mind— πλαγκτός. Yet here I am, resting on my easy rug at home, a well-thumbed copy of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Grandfather’s Chair on my seat, musing on a headline. Hodson House, east entry elevation 14 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Johnnie Chair, or JC, as my friends call me. I was born in Madison, Virginia, where I spent my childhood under the watchful eye of my maker in the company of my many, many kin. Time passed, and like many other chairs, I found myself desiring an adventure. Therefore, when I reached what you, our “sitters,” call “legal age,” I found myself joining the Class of 1941 at a small college in Annapolis, Maryland, that was on the cusp of something new. I doubt many of my classmates remember me—I was a rather quiet chair, one that tried to embody the Johnniechair trivium of steadiness, tolerance, and poise. I have spent the roughly seventy years since then as a member of the Polity, doing my best to lead by quiet example. I have attended every tutorial, seminar, lecture, waltz party, and don rag, albeit as a wallflower at times. I have also tried to join every club and student organization that I can. That doing so has required my re-engaging in the Program every four years, as if I was a scholastic phoenix, has kept things interesting. Much has changed since 1941. When the Internet found St. John’s, it was only a matter of finding a few souls willing to type for me before I had a Facebook following. I had no idea what it would become, that there would be so many thoughtful conversations regarding literature, good writing, philosophy, or what role members of the Polity ought to have. I confess your conversations tend to be more interesting than my own musings! Nevertheless, I have felt needed there. I have confronted easy questions (yes, it is wrong to go white-water rafting when you should be in seminar) and challenging questions (while worthwhile, starting a conversation about politics or sexuality is not always the best idea). I attempt to write little notes or answer questions in the hope of having more avenues for conversation, something that Facebook’s many changes continually frustrates, though the connections it brings encourage me on. However, I digress. My responsibilities as First Chair (both in seniority and in rank) are varied. Beyond aiding my sitters, I seek—and offer—advice, consolation, curios, even trivia. So please send your questions, dear readers, and let’s have a conversation. For instance, Q: Do you have children? JC: Not yet—finding a spouse is a bit difficult for a chair. Yet I suspect watching over thousands of present and former sitters—as well as managing a Facebook page— makes for good preparation. Until we speak again, JC (www.facebook.com/johnnie. chair) �from the bell towers talk of the tow ers collegium At the end of every fall and spring semester in Annapolis, the Great Hall in McDowell fills to the brim with students and tutors attending Collegium, an opportunity for St. John’s students to showcase their musical talent in a formal performance. (Above), Zachary Wells (A13), Alex Lankford (A12), Frank Pecoraro (A15), and tutor Peter Kalkavage sing in the 2012 Spring Collegium in Annapolis. briefly quoted “St. John’s provides one of the most distinctive forms of liberal education in the country.... But for such an education to be accessible to all requires a great commitment of financial resources,...we have added more than $4 million to our financial aid budget in just the last few years when our students and families have needed it most.” Christopher Nelson, Annapolis president, guest blog, “Yes, You Can Afford the College of Your Choice,” Huffington Post, March 14, 2012 Santa Fe Tutor Arcelia Rodriguez, who has been at St. John’s since 2008, was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship. She will work with the Department of Political Theory and Thought at the University of the Andes in Mérida, Venezuela, and develop course materials and curricula for undergraduate and graduate classes in American political thought. Four new tutors have joined the faculty—two in Annapolis and two in Santa Fe. In Annapolis, Gregory Freeman comes to the college from the University of Chicago, where he received his PhD, Committee on Social Thought. Tutor Steven Crockett returns to Annapolis part-time. He was a tutor in Annapolis from 1970 to 1977 and at the Graduate Institute in Santa Fe during most summers from 1976 to 1981. In Santa Fe, Sarah Davis and David Levy (A03) join the faculty. Davis received her PhD in anthropology from Emory University; Levy received his PhD in political science from Boston College. Annapolis tutor Joseph Cohen (Class of 1956) retired from the Annapolis faculty on December 31 after nearly 50 years with the college. Santa Fe tutor David Bolotin has formally retired. Queens College and at St. John’s University in New York. Leo Pickens (A78), who held that position for the past 23 years, became director of Alumni Relations, replacing Jo Ann Mattson (A87), who became director of Individual Giving. Gregory Shook is the new associate director of Communications. In Santa Fe, tutor David Carl became the new director of the Graduate Institute. He has been at St. John’s for 12 years, and in that time he has also served as assistant dean. Jim Osterholt retired from the position after more than seven years as vice president for Advancement. Victoria Mora, tutor on the Santa Fe campus since 1992 and dean from 2006 to 2011, will become the new vice president of Advancement. Susan Patten is now the director of Development. Gabriel Gomez joined the college as the director of Communications in Santa Fe. He was the director of External Affairs with the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts: Santa Fe Indian Market, where he directed the marketing and development departments. Larry Peppin, formerly the finance director of Las Cumbres Community Services, a nonprofit in northern New Mexico, became the new controller for the Santa Fe campus. Susan Kaplan, formerly director of Corporate and Foundation Relations in Santa Fe, became the associate vice president for Advancement. Do you know a student who belongs at St. John’s? Let us know. annapolis : admissions@sjca.edu or 410-626-2522 santa fe : admissions@sjcsf.edu or 505-984-6060 In Annapolis, Michael McQuarrie, formerly director of the Office of Recreation and Intramural Sports at the New School in New York, became the new director of Athletics on July 2. He received his MA in sports management from California University of Pennsylvania and taught sociology at The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 15 �from the bell towers As a recipient of a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship, Aparna Ravilochan (SF12) leaves for a year in Malaysia in January 2013 to teach English in a rural primary or secondary school in the state of Terengganu, Pahang, or Johor. Ravilochan has not yet received her Malaysia assignment, but she knows that any town will hold treasures as she takes her love of teaching and English with her. Ravilochan’s typical Malaysian workweek will include 20 hours of teaching as well as theater and choral music. Ravilochan hopes that these activities, along with her teaching and general community presence, will help foster meaningful relationships. “The relationships are what I’m most excited about. It’s an opportunity to connect with people I otherwise would never be able to meet and to live with them in a completely different lifestyle,” she says. “I’ve come to love talking to people, hearing their stories. I think having an exchange like that across cultural boundaries will be even more illuminating and exciting.” Ravilochan also looks forward to sharing her knowledge of English. As a writing assistant for two years at St. John’s, she discovered a passion for English and teaching. Although Ravilochan has much to bring to her Fulbright teaching position, Aparna Ravilochan (SF12) SANTA FE STAGES MAN OF LA MANCHA CORRIE PHOTOGRAPHY Fulbright Fellow to Teach in Malaysia This spring, the Santa Fe campus community presented the musical Man of La Mancha in three soldout performances. Directed by Artist-in-Residence Roy Rogosin (SFGI08) Man of La Mancha featured a cast of 15 students, two tutors, and a staff member, as well as a four-piece orchestra of students and an alumna of the college. Man of La Mancha, with book by Dale Wasserman, lyrics by Joe Darion, and music by Mitch Leigh, is inspired by Miguel de Cervantes’s 17th-century masterpiece, Don Quixote. It tells the story of the “mad” knight as a musical play-within-a-play, performed by Cervantes and his fellow prisoners as he awaits a hearing with the Spanish Inquisition. Pictured (l. to r.): Rachel Reid (SF15) as Antonia; April Cleveland (SF15) as Aldonza; James Irwin (SF14) as Don Quixote/Cervantes; and Felipe Motta (SF13) as Sancho. she knows that Malaysia will have much to teach her as well. Ravilochan will be living in her village among her students and their families, learning their culture and lifestyle from the inside. She is excited about the illuminating experience, but is a little nervous as well. “I’ll have to live in a way I’m not used to, without the creature comforts here. I’ve been to India for a few weeks before, but it will take some getting used to for almost a year,” she says. “I’ll miss my parents, my brother and sister.” Family has been a source of constant encouragement, and Ravilochan is also grateful to the tutor community at St. John’s for their support. “The tutors are interested in who you are in class, and take that to the next level and are interested in who you are as a person. We have something special here that you couldn’t find anywhere else.” —Jillian Burgie (SF12) 16 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 briefly quoted “One of the great things about our St. John’s education is that most people won’t know what to do with you. You don’t fit a mold. Make it to your advantage. Try being a little over-confident, and a little bit of a risk-taker.” Robert Bienenfeld (sf 80), senior manager, Environment and Energy Strategy, American Honda Motor Co., Inc.,member, St. John’s College Board of Visitors and Governors, 2012 Commencement speaker, Santa Fe. �from the bell towers Sarah Morse: New Director of Admissions in Annapolis For Morse, a graduate of Smith College and a former Annapolis resident, her new role at St. John’s is a natural, albeit unexpected, fit. Originally from St. Louis, she has worked for more than 25 years in the education field, including 15 years as an admissions and financial aid director at two independent schools in the MidAtlantic region—St. Timothy’s School and Jemicy School—and as eastern regional director and national director of special projects for American Field Service (AFS) Intercultural Programs. Morse is also committed to volunteer service, including a six-year term on the Commission on Ministry for the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland, as regional alumnae admissions coordinator for Smith College, and mentor to AFS exchange students. Morse’s role at St. John’s is her first in higher education; her expertise and insight are embraced by the college community. “Sarah brings with her a genuine liking for people, especially young people. She has imagination, resourcefulness, and a collaborative spirit, all of which are essential to this office,” says Annapolis Dean Pamela Kraus. Morse reconnected with the college when she attended Executive Seminars in Baltimore last year. Her seminar experience resonated deeply, as “a terrific example of what St. John’s is all about. Once a month, that Tuesday morning was an oasis. Having discussions about great books JEN BEHRENS At a time when the world appears transfixed by technology, Sarah Morse, the new director of admissions at St. John’s in Annapolis, emphasizes in-person conversations to help prospective students get to know St. John’s and understand the Program. “We work very hard to bring students to campus so they can meet tutors, staff, and students. We encourage them to spend a night on campus, go to seminars, and sit in on labs and tutorials,” says Morse. Her reach extends beyond prospective students; the Admissions Office recruits staff volunteers to have lunch with parents of prospectives who are visiting campus. “We link prospective students who have particular interests with alumni who are working in those career fields. St. John’s alumni represent the college so well—their passion for the college really shows.” with interesting people got me excited about the Program,” she says—and propelled her to accept the position at St. John’s. That exposure helps her articulate to the outside world the heart of the college’s curriculum. “It’s challenging, of course, for me coming from the outside, but I have a love and appreciation for the college.” Morse looks forward to enlisting Johnnies to engage prospectives around the country. “There is tremendous potential for involving alumni in admissions. Alumni volunteers have been extremely helpful at various events for students and prospectives, including recent receptions in New York City and Baltimore,” she says. Those receptions give prospectives an opportunity to have informal discussions with alumni about the college and their careers. “We link prospective stu- dents who have particular interests with alumni who are working in those career fields. St. John’s alumni represent the college so well—their passion for the college really shows. We value alumni involvement and are eager to involve them more in our admissions efforts.” Morse also reaches out with a robust virtual presence. “Recruitment has changed, and using that technological aspect is crucial. I’ve talked with a lot of students who watched our videos, read our materials online, and learned about the college from the website and our social media sites.” Above all, Morse wants prospectives to know why St. John’s is special. “From the first class, Johnnies practice and hone skills in critical thinking, careful listening, and thoughtful analysis,” she says. “They learn to support contributions to the discussion with structured reasoning and become comfortable with trying out a variety of ideas. Taking intellectual risks and seeking out other viewpoints is woven into the Johnnie fabric. Students learn to be fearless in approaching new and challenging situations. They become skilled at asking questions to get to the heart of the matter. And they understand the value of considering a variety of viewpoints, unimpeded by a fear of ‘getting it right’ the first time. This is unique to St. John’s.” —Gregory Shook The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 17 �Love 18 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 �and Desire PHOTOS: HENLEY MOORE (A13) “What Fools These Mortals Be” Junior Henley Moore (A14) shows us Shakespeare through her camera lens, a counterpoint to decadesold images of the King William Players from the Greenfield Library Archives on the following pages. Shown here, the King Willam Players perform Titus Andronicus with Alex Lankford (A12), opposite, as Aaron and Tessa Nelson (A12), above, as Lavinia. How do we encounter Shakespeare at St. John’s? The deans and several tutors share observations on Shakespeare and his place in the Program, “as inevitable as Plato, or the Bible, or Kant,” tutor Jonathan Tuck notes. In his essay, tutor Laurence Nee considers how Shakespeare holds “mirrors” that reveal “clear reflections of our dearest and most powerful desire—love,” in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and King Lear. Many Johnnies hunger for more than their encounters with Shakespeare in the Program. Some, such as the King William Players in Annapolis and the Santa Fe student theater troupe, inhabit Shakespeare by staging his works. How do we encounter Shakespeare at St. John’s? One way is through Shakespeare’s sonnets. When we turn to English poetry, we look at Shakespeare—the metric scheme, poetic form, how it is structured. In sophomore language, many students memorize and recite Chaucer and Shakespeare. They are also asked to compose poems—a sonnet, for example. In this way, students inhabit the poetic form; it is a pathway to understanding it. We do run a risk with poetry. Some critics would say we turn everything back to philosophy: “What is the thesis of the poem?” Poems are meant to be read aloud, recited. Plays, to be performed. Music, to be performed and heard. The Psalms, to be prayed. But we certainly don’t require students to pray. To some degree, we take these art forms out of their natural habitat and put them into our habitat, one of inquiry. However, when we do turn to poetry in the language tutorial (and music in the music tutorial), we go as far as we can in recognizing this and correcting for it. —J. Walter Sterling, Santa Fe dean The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 19 �How do we encounter Shakespeare at St. John’s? We encounter Shakespeare’s work in various ways: through tutorials, study groups, preceptorials, lectures and question periods, annual essays, orals, and dramatic performances. Perhaps the greatest genius in English literature, he instructs and inspires us daily. —Pamela Kraus, Annapolis dean Why is Shakespeare on the Program? Most tutors would agree that if you are on a sinking ship full of Program books and they have to be thrown overboard, Shakespeare would be one of the last to go. It has even been said that Plato, Shakespeare, and the Bible could be the whole Program. He is a universally recognized genius. We are living in a world that Shakespeare helped shape. Some great writers become parents and creators of their language. Homer is the teacher of the Greeks and of the Greek language; Dante of Italian; Shakespeare of English. Our linguistic memory and architecture is saturated with Shakespeare; he lies behind our consciousness and our living language. For English speakers, he is our governing genius, our great, great poet. —J. Walter Sterling, Santa Fe dean Why do we read Shakespeare at St. John’s? I would think that Shakespeare in our seminar list would be as inevitable as Plato, or the Bible, or Kant—perhaps more so, since he writes in English. A more interesting question might be which plays to read. I have long thought that Shakespeare’s comedies are underrepresented in our program, as comedy is generally. I gave a lecture a number of years ago (“Restoring Amends: Philosophy and Forgiveness in Shakespeare’s Comedies”) in which I argued that the comedies are a tutor’s view The Greatness of Shakespeare’s Plays by Laurence D.Nee, tutor Shakespeare’s plays provide an unsurpassed depiction of abiding human desires. Like mirrors, the plays use characters’ poetic speeches and deeds to reflect for our consideration the objects of our desires and the reasons we seek their fulfillment. Clear reflections of our dearest and most powerful desire—love—can be found in the opening scenes of two of his most familiar and popular plays: a comedy, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and a tragedy, King Lear. A Midsummer Night’s Dream begins by vividly depicting the problematic nature of love. Theseus has “wooed” and “won” the “love” of his future bride, Hippolyta, with the conquering force of his sword and longs to enjoy her “[n]ow” (AMND 1.1.1-17). But this conqueror has also been conquered—he is a slave to the internal compulsion of satisfying his “desires.” Wedding harsh images of rape to his servile need for immediate gratification, Theseus presents love as the violent satisfaction of bodily lust. The temptation to assume that this initial presentation provides a complete picture of love is moderated, however, by Theseus’s subsequent restraint, which is as strong if not stronger than his lust. Wishing to “wed [Hippolyta] in another key,” Theseus willingly delays his gratification for four days until the new moon appears and brings his “triumph” (1.1.18). The speeches of the young Athenian lovers suggest why a lover might exercise restraint: “true love” depends upon it. Egeus interrupts Theseus’s nuptial plans for “merriments” and “reveling” in order to marry Demetrius—who previously loved Helena—to his daughter, Hermia, who loves Lysander and would die rather than resign herself to her father’s “will.” When 20 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 Hermia and Lysander are alone, they recount the tales from which they learn that the “course of true love never did run smooth”—it must bear a restraining “cross,” which transforms the character of their desires and their beloveds (1.1.199). The tales depict mere “desires” as “momenta[r] y,” “swift,” “brief,” and “short as any dream”— nothing more than the “base and vile” bodily urges or impulses of the “spleen” (1.1.143-145). They present “true love” in the “form and dignity” of a religion through which enduring devotion will replace the inconstant, fleeting rewards of lust. The “translated” beloved appears to be a “god,” before whom the lover offers “prayers” (1.1.197, 232; 2.1.203). HENLEY MOORE (A13) Q&A Lysander bestows From l. to r.: Danny Rodrinumerous gifts upon guez (SF15) as Chiron, Alex Lankford (A12) as Aaron, Hermia without reand Andrew Hastings (A13) ceiving any immedi- as Demetrius in the King ate reward; he ap- William Players’ production pears not merely to of Titus Andronicus. restrain his needs but to possess a godlike freedom from them. Seeking to emulate her divine Lysander, Hermia will “starve” herself, display “patience,” and endure the “trial” of being deprived of her lover’s “food” (1.1.134-142, 150-155, 222-223). By enduring pains and restraining her desires, Hermia imitates the “true love” of her divine beloved and hopes to transcend her embodied, mortal, and �the greatness of shakespeare’s plays Q&A more “philosophic” than the tragedies, more interested in themes and general ideas, less dependent on our empathetic identification with individual characters. I still hold this view. At the very least, I wish we could add Twelfth Night, one of Shakespeare’s greatest plays. I know they have often had it on the seminar list in Santa Fe. It would also be wonderful if we could find room for the other two plays in the second English history tetralogy. We now read, as we should, both Richard II and Henry IV, Part I, but Henry IV, Part II and Henry V are remarkable works, too. Many people think that the four plays were conceived as a single work…(Naturally, I am violating the most sacred obligation of anyone who proposes to tinker with the seminar list—I have not said which books I would drop to make room for these.) ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE, GREENFIELD LIBRARY It is good to be reminded that any of Shakespeare’s plays will yield extraordinary and unlimited insights if we can find the time to read slowly and carefully. In the sophomore language tutorial, we can read scenes dramatically together, perhaps commit whole speeches to memory, and look at individual words as we would in a sonnet. We may be frustrated that we can’t do all this in the seminar, but it’s exciting to be able to think about each play as a whole. We are free to treat our seminar reading of Shakespeare as an invitation to go deeper, whenever we can find the time. needy condition. The strong temptation to reduce the lovers’ willingness to bear these “crosses” to mere delayed gratification must be moderated by their own accounts of their love. They experience their sacrifices as free from future rewards. Despite their myopic vision, their unrecognized hopes John D. Oosterhout (Class of 1951), George A. Sperdakas (Class of 1954), and Richard T. Congdon (Class of 1950) onstage during the King William Players’ rehearsal of Shakespeare’s King John (ca.1950-1951). imply that they endure these restraints or crosses for the sake of future rewards. They may starve themselves for an evening, but they expect to feast on their “lovers’ food” tomorrow. Helena will deliberately “enrich” her “pain” by telling Demetrius where Hermia has fled, but she suffers in the hope that his “sight” will turn “back again” to her (1.1.222-223, 250-251). The reward received from this “sight” can be distinguished from that received from other goods. Helena could relieve her hunger by con- As Dr. Johnson remarked about London, I would say that the man who is tired of Shakespeare is tired of life. –Jonathan Tuck, tutor Might we read Shakespeare at St. John’s in order to experience the joy and sorrow of a desire like love? We read Romeo and Juliet and long to feel the love that can make a “pilgrim” lover view his beloved The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 21 �Q&A a tutor’s view ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE, GREENFIELD LIBRARY as a divine, “holy shrine.” We suspect, however, that love may be only a dangerous “dream”—not only “blind,” “rude,” boist’rous,” and “like [a] thorn” but also so variable as to transfer Romeo’s devotion from Rosaline to Juliet with a momentary gaze. We persistently hope for the elevating weight love brings and, therefore, angrily defend it against the hedonist and materialist attacks of the Nurse and Mercutio. And we fear that the story of these and all lovers is one of “woe.” —Laurence D. Nee, tutor We read eight of Shakespeare’s plays in sophomore seminar (four tragedies, two histories, two comedies) because he is the best of the playwrights and these eight are among the best of his plays. No one writes equally well in the tragic and comic modes. No one expands the possibilities of English speech more than he does. No one is as intensely theatrical and deeply literary as Shakespeare. He contains half the world. For the other half, there is the rest of the Program. —Louis Petrich, tutor Describe an opening question on Shakespeare’s works that still fascinates you. Are there fairies in the woods (from A Midsummer Night’s Dream)? The lovers escape tragedy, and enjoy the prospect of happiness, because the fairies intervene. The fairies, however, seem and do not seem to exist. They are only visible to one character, under very peculiar circumstances, and yet are seen by the audience. They are said to act providentially to care for particular human beings and yet appear reducible to natural phenomena. They may be little more than “airy nothing” and yet point to our deepest desires and hopes. —Laurence D. Nee, tutor The lovers’ account of their desire for love reveals that what appeared as a tension between lust and restraint is, in fact, a tension between their desire for bodily gratification and their desire to enjoy a godlike freedom from bodily needs. Their account asks us to consider whether both desires can be satisfied. suming any “food,” but she cannot overcome her “starv[ation]” for her lover’s “food” simply by physically gratifying her lust. The hungry are indifferent to whether an apple “consents” to be eaten, but lovers are not satisfied simply to take, “force,” or consume their beloveds, as Theseus’s restraint demonstrates (1.1.134-142, 150-155, 222-223). Lovers desire their beloveds’ voluntary reciprocation of their affections, which shows that they are worthy of being loved by their divine beloveds—that they are nothing less than godlike themselves. When these lovers are “well derived,” “possessed,” or “fair,” have endured considerable sacrifices for their beloveds, and yet remain unloved, they are filled with anger, which destroys the friendship of the women and sets the men on a course to deadly war (1.1.99-103). The lovers’ account of their desire for love reveals that what appeared as a tension between lust and restraint is, in fact, a tension between 22 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 Above: Charles Finch, their desire for bodiformer director of financial ly gratification and aid, as King Henry and their desire to enjoy Harold O. Koenig (A69) a godlike freedom as Prince Hal in the from bodily needs. King Williams Players’ production of Henry IV, Their account asks Part I, Francis Scott Key us to consider whethAuditorium, November 1970. er both desires can be satisfied. The opening scene of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, then, poses the question of whether the desire for love is inherently tragic. King Lear begins by drawing our attention to the difficulty of thinking about the desire for love. King Lear intends to bestow equal portions of his kingdom on his sons-in-law, the Dukes of Albany and Cornwall. His trusted advisors, Kent and Gloucester, cannot discern “which of the Dukes he values most.” Kent had previously “thought” that Lear “affected” the Duke of Albany more than Cornwall; Gloucester concurs—it “did �the greatness of shakespeare’s plays Q&A ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE, GREENFIELD LIBRARY There are two works for which I have asked opening questions that are based on past performances that altered the endings in misguided ways. One was the Don Giovanni (allowed by Mozart himself) that omitted the final sextet; the other was the 18th-century King Lear that saved Cordelia and married her to Edgar. I wasn’t “fascinated” by these questions, but they did set off good discussion. I couple Shakespeare with Mozart because they are poets whose inclusion in any program needs no good reason simply because the question ought never to come up. —Elliott Zuckerman, tutor emeritus always seem so.” What both had “thought” does not accord with what now “appears” to be the case (KL 1.1.1-6). According to Lear’s original plan— designed prior to the proclamations of love by Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia—his two vicious daughters, Goneril and Regan, and their husbands, the Dukes, would be relegated to the extremes of the kingdom. The favored daughter, Cordelia, would receive the most “opulent” portion and the foreign support of her husband-to-be (1.1.86). Lear would live with Cordelia as King, attaching his “retainers” to his beloved daughter so they would remain loyal to her after his death. Focusing on the Dukes, Lear’s advisors fail to see that his “division of the kingdom” would wisely overcome the absence of a son and ensure that the kingdom would pass to his “best” daughter (1.1.214-216). They also fail to see that Lear divided the kingdom to reward the merit of the daughter he “loved . . . most” (1.1.123). The play’s opening suggests that thinking clearly about Lear’s plan is intimately linked to thinking about his love for Cordelia. Lear quickly destroys his own prudently devised plan when he believes that he has been George A. Sperdakas (Class of 1954), Richard T. Congdon (Class of 1950), Jeremy P. Tarcher (Class of 1953), and John D. Oosterhout (Class of 1951) in the King William Players’ production of King John [ca. 1950-1954]. unjustly deprived of Cordelia’s public proclamation of her love for him. Goneril and Regan attribute their father’s “poor judgment” in casting off the daughter he “always lov’d . . . most” to the fact that “he hath ever but slenderly known himself” (1.1.322-323). Lear and his trusted servants corroborate this claim (1.1.120-166; 1.4.148; 1.5.24). Lear’s failure to know himself is directly attributable to his failure to recognize that he longs to be loved by Cordelia as much as he longs to love her. The duality of Lear’s love is encapsulated in his remark to the soon-to-be banished Kent: “I lov’d her most, and thought to set my rest on her kind nursery” (1.1.123-124). Lear loved Cordelia “most” and sought to reward her through his division of the kingdom. He also desired to be rewarded for his service: to receive her “kind nursery.” Lear does not recognize, however, how deeply he desires to be rewarded by Cordelia for what he has allegedly given to her. The King of France’s subsequent discourse on love provides a possible explanation for Lear’s blindness: “Love’s not love when it is mingled with regards that stand aloof from th’ entire point” (1.1.239-240). Lovers do not think of or experience their love as self-interested; rather, their love is kindled or inflamed when they believe that their beloveds cannot benefit them because they are “poor,” “forsaken,” and “despis’d.” A lover There are so many fundamental questions that will always remain fascinating because their answers go deep into what Lear calls “the mystery of things.” For example: what causes the death of Cordelia? Why is Macduff able to kill Macbeth? Why does Shakespeare bring Falstaff onstage during the climactic sword fight between Prince Hal and Hotspur? And a question of particular fascination for all lovers of books and believers in the liberal arts: why does Prospero drown his books before retiring to Milan, where every third thought is of his death? —Louis Petrich, tutor Describe a defining moment for you in one of Shakespeare’s plays. The opening words of a Shakespeare play explicitly or implicitly raise a critical question. Hamlet, for example, begins “Who’s there?” The play could be said to ask how human beings can determine whether apparitions are “there” if they live in a hamlet—a land without a church. The struggle to confront such an opening question is a defining moment in reading a Shakespeare play. —Laurence D. Nee, tutor The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 23 �Q&A a tutor’s view Are Shakespeare’s comedies and tragedies so very different? like the King of France or Lear believes that he loves only for the sake of his beloved—for “thee and thy virtues” (1.1.250-255). In the duality of his love and his blindness to what he truly desires, Lear especially resembles the young Athenian lovers in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The sources of Lear’s blindness emerge if we consider more carefully the confusion of his two advisers who open the play. Kent refuses to flatter Lear with “glib and oily” speech when Cordelia shows her “love” for her father by being “silent”— even though she claims to “know” her sisters for what they “are” and that time “shall unfold” their “faults” (1.1.61, 94-95, 269-275, 280-281). He offends the King with “plain”—or non-flattering—speech and refuses to persuade him that his daughter’s silence reflects her great love for him. Kent claims to have “loved” Lear as a “father” but leaves him in the hands of the wicked Goneril and Regan (1.1.141-153). He believes that his plain speech arises from selfless love—a devotion to the King’s life above his own—but later admits that his allegedly noble, selfless speech is self-inter- The answer to whether the comedies (I should say the Romances) and the tragedies are (very) different is yes, except perhaps in the case of Measure for Measure (and the two neighboring plays), which are known as Problem plays, not so much because they have plots about moral problems but because we have a problem classifying them. —Elliott Zuckerman, tutor emeritus All of Shakespeare’s comedies occur in Christian settings (including A Midsummer Night’s Dream). The young men in these plays seem beset with a peculiar melancholy and appear remarkably unimpressive when compared to the women of the comedies. Thinking about what changes Christianity brings, particularly to young men, would be a fruitful place to begin thinking about how Shakespeare’s comedies differ from his tragedies. —Laurence D. Nee, tutor Different, yes; so very different, no. I laugh more during Hamlet than any of the comedies makes me, and the lonely sadness that endures to the end of Twelfth Night is as deeply felt as the happiness of requited love. At the end of his career, Shakespeare wrote four comedies (culminating in The Tempest) that feel different from the earlier comedies because they take account of the actions of the preceding tragedies. A great challenge for me is to try to understand the wholeness of Shakespeare’s career as a writer, with comedy prevailing in the end over tragedy. I happen to prefer the tragedies, so I hope to learn from Shakespeare how to take comedy as seriously. —Louis Petrich, tutor to ask what they are; he assumes that gratifying passions like lust is good for him. Theseus cautions Hermia against making a similar assumption: she should “question” her “bewitch’d” desires and “examine well” her “blood” (1.1.27, 67-68). Gloucester does not believe that he needs to scrutinize his passions because, as his pun on conceiving suggests, thinking and desire are indistinguishable for him; reason would not direct him to goods distinct from those desired by his immediate bodily impulses. He believes that his body inherently leads him to what is good for him and, as a result, enjoying these good things is as easy as gratifying the motions of the “spleen” (1.1.143-145). Just as Kent fails to see what he ought to do to salvage Lear’s plan because he does not recognize his desire for reward, Gloucester fails to see the true character of his bastard son because he assumes that he must be rewarded for gratifying his immediate desires. The opening scene of King Lear presents obstacles that impede us from thinking clearly about our desire for love. By presenting penetrating depictions of the desire for love, Shakespeare’s plays serve as mirrors in which we may see both the desire for love in ourselves and the obstacles that prevent us from understanding it. Yet like the characters in these plays, we are blind. ested: he believes that “plainness” brings honor (1.1.146-148, 155-157, 223-233). Like the Athenian youths who emulate the honored lovers of the tales they recite, Kent blindly assumes that being recognized as honorable is a great good—perhaps the greatest good. His unwillingness to question this assumption causes him to bring certain harm to himself, Lear, and England. Kent fails to see what is good for Lear or himself and, hence, what the foundation for loving and being loved is. Gloucester blindly assumes that gratifying his immediate desires must be good for him. He holds Edgar, his legal son, “no dearer” than the perpetually-absent “bastard” Edmund and longs to believe that the “good” lust which attracted him to Edmund’s “fair” mother must be rewarded with “good” fruit, just as it rewarded him with so much “good sport” at the time of the “making” (1.1.12-18). Gloucester acknowledges that he seeks good things for himself but fails 24 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 A Midsummer Night’s Dream and King Lear provide two examples of the way in which Shakespeare fosters dialogue both within his plays and among them. By presenting penetrating depictions of the desire for love, Shakespeare’s plays serve as mirrors in which we may see both the desire for love in ourselves and the obstacles that prevent us from understanding it. Yet like the characters in these plays, we are blind. Through the conversations cultivated within St. John’s classrooms, our own desires and the impediments that prevent us from seeing them can emerge; the fog that impedes us from seeing into these mirrors may be lifted. Our conversations promote the discovery of the reflections made possible by these mirrors and distinguish the education provided by the college. St. John’s considered reading of great works like Shakespeare’s plays, when united with openness to learning from—and not just about—them, fosters our ability to see ourselves with sharpened sight. �setting the stage “All the World’s a STAGE ” For centuries actors, writers, directors, set designers, and many others have been drawn to the stage, interpreting dramatic works and theater. Five Johnnies transform— and are transformed by—the stage. As a set designer in New York City with a flair for opera, Ilana Kirschbaum (SF07) is both scientist and illusionist, tinkering with the audience’s perception. When actress Sara Barker (A98) “treads the boards” as Queen Elizabeth, she becomes larger than life and looks like Hillary Clinton. At the Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre, Jack Armstrong’s (SF83) inventive plot charts reveal hidden notes: “A well-told story,” he says, “can be graphed like a piece of music.” Playwright Damon Rhea Falke (SFGI01) lets his characters lead and morph into themselves on the page. Shakespeare’s strong female leads inspired actress Maria Jung (A12) to take the reins of her life, just weeks after graduation. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 25 �26 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 �“all the world’s a stage” “MacGyvering Your Way Around” Set designer Ilana Kirschbaum (SF07) melds materials and paint with “lots of research” into historic, visual details. Ilana Kirschbaum (sf07) sets the stage by Anna Perleberg (SF02) “This above all: to thine own self be true.” DEREK STENBORG Hamlet PHOTO BY PETR JERABEK—LIGHTIMAGINATION.NET “Science, alchemy, art, practice, and craft,” is how Ilana Kirschbaum (SF07) describes her work in the theater as a scenic artist and designer. One could add tradition, collaboration, and improvisation. In September 2011, Kirschbaum landed an amazing opportunity at the Juilliard School in New York City, as one of two technical theater interns in their scenic painting department. By midMarch of this year, she had worked on 15 productions, and was solving a conundrum for Mozart’s opera, Don Giovanni. The stage floor, done in faux wood (to blend with a beautiful half-opaque, halftransparent forest backdrop), needs a ground cloth to look like moss and dirt, but will have barefoot people dancing on it and set pieces coming in and out. “So it needs to read from far away—have a pronounced texture—but be soft, and able to stand up to having scenery moved onto it.” Her current idea involves putting foam in a food processor, mixing the bits with shreds of plastic grocery bags, and putting flexible glue on the material in layers. There’s a good amount of “MacGyvering your way around” in scenic art, Kirschbaum says, “a lot of fake wood, faux finishes, fooling the eye. I’ve done a lot of fake food.” Some techniques in the field are traditional painting methods not used elsewhere; the two-dimensional creation of a three-dimensional space can be traced back to van Eyck’s medieval altarpieces. In that way, she feels she’s carrying on a long tradition. With a long background in the visual arts—“I’ve been drawing and painting forever”—Kirschbaum first dabbled in stage work when a friend volunteered her to paint what she now describes as an “awful” backdrop for a St. John’s production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. “I was amazed by how much time it took,” she says. “I just fell in love with theater.” A college-sponsored summer Ariel internship with Santa Fe artist Paco Benitez put her in touch with David Olson, artistic director of theaterwork, a company that produces plays and perfor- mances of all stripes, from Shakespeare to puppetry. They were a perfect fit for a Johnnie, Kirschbaum found—“They’re interested in developed visual theater, but there’s also lots of discussion of the texts, lots of research, especially in the visual details.” She describes the process as making SJC text exploration “exist in a physical way: now move this, now clean this, now carry this, now paint this.” During several years with theaterwork, she did a little bit of everything, becoming increasingly focused on scenic elements. Kirschbaum got a kick out of participating in a stage version of Anna Karenina, having written her senior essay on the Tolstoy novel. Her favorite theaterwork production was Jean Anouilh’s Sophoclesby-way-of-the-Nazis retelling of Antigone, mounted in a most unusual space: an abandoned swimming pool whose building had moldered unoccupied for years. After a thorough cleaning, it was turned into a 150-seat theater. Lighting the space is a challenge; the electrical system doesn’t have sufficient wattage and the ceiling is inaccessible—regular stage lights can’t be hung. But the atmosphere worked to their advantage for Antigone. The bare space of the pool’s floor became a desert with rivulets of poetry written across it (and also written on the costumes), flowing into the murky depths of the deep end, from which the chorus emerged. The effect is spooky and woebegone, perfect for the tragic story of defiance. This kind of visual storytelling is a huge part of scenic art, Kirschbaum affirms. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 27 �DEREK STENBORG “When you walk in the room, before you see actors, you see the set, and that affects where the audience’s focus is.” Whether scenery is abstract and minimalist or realistic and historically detailed sends cues to the spectators about how to respond emotionally to the work in front of them. “A good set deals in subtle ways with the complexities of the story, its key concepts. This could mean a lush set, or something very stark.” It always means research, particularly for older works, and paying close attention. A play set in the 1940s in the home of aristocracy, for example, wouldn’t have cutting-edge, then-modern furniture and decoration, but would show generations of inherited belongings. Such detail may not be noticed by the casual observer, but Kirschbaum believes that element is always there. At the same time, a balance must always be struck, because the set can’t overwhelm the story. “Sometimes you want to do really cool pieces, but you have to remember they’re in the background!” Expanding her repertoire of scenic art techniques keeps providing Kirschbaum with new subjects of study. “By the nature of the work, you learn a lot about art history and the history of materials,” she says. “If you’re imitating a fresco, you have to know how it was done, and then figure out how to do it in a simpler and quicker way.” She is currently interested in the history of ornament; she finds similarities between a culture’s alphabet and its styles of ornament in architecture and illustration, seeing echoes of the cadences and structures of language in physical forms. Greek and Roman, for example, have individual, separate letters of standard sizes, and one can view the strict, clean lines of their buildings as similarly discrete forms. The loops and mazes of Arabic or Hindi decoration also resemble their connected scripts. A scenic art department operates almost like a medieval guild, with a “master” designer and apprentices who carry out the work. Apprentices don’t have to abandon painting for design, but can discover what aspect of the field they enjoy most. The two groups definitely share a do-or-die emphasis on teamwork. “You don’t know what the word means until you’re standing on a 50-foot painting with two other people,” says Kirschbaum, “and you have to make it look like it’s been painted by one person. And there’s wet paint on it!” Any process must be streamlined so many people can contribute to one smooth result, tailored for different skill levels. “The weirdest thing is how much it makes sense after St. John’s, all the random toolmaking, figuring things out, experimentation—developing methods around the process and hoping it turns out in spite of the variables,” she says. “It reminds me of senior lab.” Although in some ways she’s “behind” in her line of work, as almost everybody has an undergraduate degree in theater, Kirschbaum is happy to be filling in the gaps. She is amazed by how often a little geometry comes in handy: “Euclid construction proofs are a big part of my life right now.” The Juilliard internship has focused her eclectic experience. Kirschbaum was also 28 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 lucky enough to work with the Santa Fe Opera for two summers. (She can’t even summon up an articulate adjective for how much she enjoyed it, simply emitting a happy “yeah!”) She has also done visual elements for a project called Lifesongs (brainchild of Santa Fe collaborative art ensemble Littleglobe), which creates music based around the lives of the elderly in nursing homes and hospice care. And she has done freelance work at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, California. Not sure if she will spend her entire career in theater, Kirschbaum will be able to apply her skills to other endeavors such as painting murals for natural history museum displays. She also has a passion for working in opera. As for so many artists, the connections she is making in New York City will take her far. And she emphasizes that she would be happy to talk to current students thinking about pursuing their own theater work, on the stage or behind the scenes. �“all the world’s a stage” FROM SHYNESS TO ROYAL HIGHNESS Sara Barker (a98) transforms the stage “When you do dance, I wish you a wave o’ th’ sea, that you might ever do nothing but that.” The Winter’s Tale Suffering from debilitating shyness as a child, Sara Barker (A98) could have never imagined summoning the courage to speak in front of her class, let alone starring onstage as Queen Elizabeth in the Washington Shakespeare Company’s production of Mary Stuart. “I was the shyest kid in elementary school,” says Barker. “It was so bad that I developed speech problems and needed speech therapy.” Even as a Johnnie in her freshman year, she recalls her tutors urged her to speak up more in seminar. “That whole ‘putting yourself out there’ has always been difficult for me,” she says. “But I counter that with a love of imagination and creativity.” Barker began to dabble in acting during her senior year of high school. While at St. John’s, she studied her craft more seriously. On weekends, she regularly commuted to Washington, D.C., where she took classes at the Shakespeare Theatre Company. She also volunteered as the assistant director for a community theatre show in Annapolis. With the King William Players, she starred in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. “After the show,” she says, “tutor Jon Tuck came up to me and told me that I should [act].” She took his advice to heart. Not long after graduating from St. John’s, Barker landed in New York City, where she acted in a wide range of productions, in roles traditional to avant garde. By 2005 she was entrenched in the Brooklyn theater scene, treading the boards with the Chekhov Theater Ensemble—she also played Paulina in the Hipgnosis Theatre Company’s production of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale. Whatever role Barker takes on, she embraces the character, giving her full self— mind, body, and spirit—to make the emotional transformation into somebody new. As an actor, Barker finds that an important part of making that transformation is the costumes she wears. “When you inhabit these characters, you want to experience what it’s like to be that character, and costumes make you move like they did and give you an idea of what they felt like.” Costumes inform both an actor’s and the audiences’ understanding of a character. For example, last year when Barker played the role of Queen Elizabeth in Mary Stuart, instead of donning an elaborate gown, accompanied with the ruffles and corsets one would typically expect, she was dressed as Hillary Clinton in a rather severe fitted blazer and skirt. The austere attire illuminated the Queen’s power and authority then and now. In fact, the production underscores the timeless resilience of Shakespeare’s work; actors and audiences alike remain fascinated by his plays. “He took archetypal stories and brought them to life in such an amazing way,” says Barker. Barker has certainly overcome the intense shyness she experienced as a child. Her work C. STANLEY PHOTOGRAPHY By Gregory Shook “‘PUTTING YOURSELF OUT THERE’ HAS ALWAYS BEEN DIFFICULT FOR ME, BUT I COUNTER THAT WITH A LOVE OF IMAGINATION AND CREATIVITY.” is acclaimed by the Washington Post and the Washington City Paper and has garnered multiple awards, including Best Drama and Best Overall Production at the Capital Fringe Festival 2009. This spring Barker finished up a production of The Nightmare Dreamer at Flashpoint in Washington, D.C. This summer she is juggling her full-time job at an IT solutions company with rehearsing the lead role of Catherine for the world premiere of The Ice Child with the new theater collective, Factory 449, of which she is a founding member; the Washington, D.C.-based company was last year’s Helen Hayes Award Recipient of the John Aniello Award for Outstanding Emerging Theatre Company. Sarah Barker (A98) shines as Queen Elizabeth in Mary Stuart. Onstage Barker exudes confidence, though she admits having difficulty looking the audience in the eyes when performing. Like many actors, she relies on what’s known as “the fourth wall,” which in theater parlance refers to the invisible “screen” at the front of the stage in a proscenium theatre, which separates the audience from the stage. This imaginary wall helps Barker psychologically balance her need to breathe in the energy of the audience without being overly aware of their presence. And she uses her imagination to connect with the audience. During her 2009 performance in The Cherry Orchard, “instead of seeing faces I was seeing cherry trees,” says Barker. “I was describing the trees and what the orchard meant to me—the lines were so beautiful. I could feel that the audience was right there with me, and I was bringing them along for the ride.” The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 29 �“all the world’s a stage” Graphing Shakespeare Like Music Jack Armstrong (sf83) plots charts by Anna Perleberg (SF02) “If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as improbable fiction.” Twelfth Night Jack Armstrong’s (SF83) official title at Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre (PST) is vice president of the board of directors—but his roles are many: producer, fundraiser, dramaturge, and graphic designer. He is also charter of plots, a title all his own, with its roots in a junior-year preceptorial, where Armstrong first encountered Heinrich Schenker’s musical analysis. “Schenker was the first person who codified music theory,” he says, inventing a system of notation to show “how the composer creates and releases tension in each of the lines to form a symbolic whole.” Armstrong sees story structure the same way: “A well-told story can be graphed like a piece of music.” The chart for cross-dressing comedy Twelfth Night, for instance, unfurls in a riot of color and a wealth of information. Columns for each scene run across the top; below, color-coded bars for each actor show who is present in the scene and with whom. A row titled simply “Drama” asks the question the scene poses: “Can Viola land safely in this strange country?” “How far do they dare push Malvolio?” Running down the side, where Schenker might have kept track of major triads, are the myriad subplots of the play, again phrased as questions: “Can Viola keep her female identity secret?” “Will Sebastian be reunited with Viola?” Every scene that advances one of these plots is faithfully noted, and their progress can be tracked across the acts, like rising and falling notes, until they reach their resolutions. It’s both a beautiful representation of data and a handy primer for anyone working with the play—actor, director, or student. Although he acted in high school—and developed a lifelong affection for Hamlet in particular—Armstrong says he would never have worked in the theater without his wife, Carmen Khan, an English actress who credits the Bard with saving her life. “She grew up in a rough family, a rough neighborhood. And she came into English class one day and her teacher recited a passage from Macbeth. It opened her eyes. It was the first time she saw life as more than a trial to be endured, that there could be joy and fulfillment.” One of their first dates was to a production of Hamlet that Armstrong hated so much he had to leave—“she thought I didn’t like her!” “Shakespeare’s plays are full of these passages, which at first blush seem to be a pause in the action for sizzling wordplay. It’s not a pause at all, but drama so intense you’d feel it even if the actors weren’t speaking.” In the late 80s, Khan was working with a classical company called Red Heel Theatre when circumstances thrust her into the position of artistic director. Under her leadership, the company began exclusively performing Shakespeare, changing their name to reflect this. Currently, the PST does two repertory plays every spring—this season Twelfth Night 30 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 was paired with the blood-soaked tragedy Titus Andronicus in a unique production inspired by the Grand Guignol puppet theater—in a 120-seat theater converted from a former parish hall. Armstrong freely admits that their preparation for being on the board of a theater company was “nothing.” Then he adds, “It’s like having a baby—that baby teaches you what you need to know about being a parent, whether you like it or not.” He does have a day job—printing election ballots—but he says it’s only busy for three months in the spring and two months in fall, allowing him to spend as much time on the theater as he does on his “paying gig.” Long before the actors tread the boards, Armstrong and Khan go through the script line by line, asking three questions of each: What is this person saying? Why does the character say this—what is he or she trying to accomplish? Why is this in the play? Once they know the answers to these questions for each line, Armstrong writes up an annotated script with all their notes, and then generates his Schenkerian plot charts. It’s a monumental task: He estimates spending at least 60 hours for the close reading and the creation of chart and annotated director’s script. The result of all this preparation, he says, is that “the actors get to know the story so well that five minutes into it you forget you’re listening to archaic language. Sometimes it’s like you’re listening to improv comedy.” The prep work can also bring scenes to life that seem to be just trading lines on the page. “Shakespeare’s plays are full of these passages, which at first blush seem to be a pause in the action for sizzling wordplay. It’s not a pause at all, but drama so intense you’d feel it even if the actors weren’t speaking.” As an example, he offers Twelfth Night, where Duke Orsino �JOHN BANSEMER presses the disguised Viola about “his” favored lady, who, Viola says, is Orsino’s complexion, Orsino’s years. In other words, she’s mustering up the courage to tell him she’s really a woman, and that it’s him she loves. When he keeps not taking the hint, she backs off—and then tries again. Played this way, says Armstrong, “instead of just clever wordplay, you’re on the edge of your seat.” Their mission reaches far more than their main-stage audience. PST has a dizzying array of educational programs: Classes in Shakespeare for teenagers and adults. School matinees. Lectures by Shakespeare scholars. Workshops for English and drama instructors on teaching the Bard. A three-person touring production of Hamlet. An artist-inresidency program in which teams of actors work with a class of high school students for an intense week or two; then the students perform a scene. PST’s plot charts, in poster form, are up on the walls of English classrooms across the city. “A lot of kids are introduced to Shakespeare through our programs. And we’ve been doing this long enough that some of the first generation are now teachers.” Asked what he thinks about the state of theater in the U.S., Armstrong answers with a quote from George Bernard Shaw: “Our generation is a low ebb in the history of the theater. Every generation is a low ebb in the history of the theater.” In other words, he feels the perennial proclamation of the death of live theater is an exaggeration. “I think it’s very healthy! We envy, of course, companies in Canada and England and other enlightened countries where the government supports the theater.” But he admits that the lack of government funding gives them more freedom to do their productions exactly how they wish, even if raising the money to do so is an “endless, exhausting, terrifying process.” Philadelphia, with 80 professional theater companies, has “an extraordinary pool of actors.” Most of the organizations, says Armstrong, are working “on an even more tenuous basis than us. It’s mindblowing what people will give up to be on stage. But the work is amazing! I think it’s a golden age of theater in Philly.” He’s pleased to be able to share it with playgoers from his alma mater, too. “We have been hosting a ‘St. John’s Night’ at the theater for several years. A dozen or so alumni come early, we have a little party beforehand, then watch the play. It has been great to reconnect with old classmates and meet new friends.” For Armstrong, the struggle to bring Shakespeare to all is vitally important work. He recently read an article about a symposium “justifying teaching the humanities,” and although some of the points made by the disciplines’ defenders were interesting—such as that they In one of his many roles, Jack Armstrong (SF83) analyzes each script produced by the Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre. “can help you get through tough situations”—Armstrong thinks they were really peripheral. “Asking why you teach the humanities is like asking why you put gas in a car. If you know what a car is, you don’t have to ask the question.” Drama, literature, writing, history: these are “the science of being human,” he says passionately. “Through stories we learn to be human. They’re how we expand our vocabulary of possible human behavior, and the bigger our vocabulary is, the better our chances of making a good decision. Hell is the accumulated result of bad decisions. Paradise is the result of education in the humanities.” To view one of Armstrong’s plot charts, visit www.stjohnscollege.edu/news. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 31 �“all the world’s a stage” “A Difficult Pleasure” Playwright Damon Rhea Falke (sfgi01) listens to his characters by Babak Zarin (A11) “ The course of true love never did run smooth.” A Midsummer Night’s Dream Damon Rhea Falke (sfgi01) began his career as a writer because of a girl who broke his heart when he was a teenager. “I thought I could write all that hurt out of me,” says Falke. He also thought he could “keep her with words. Pretty soon I wanted to keep certain places and then certain people and later still, certain memories and stories I’d heard.” Many works Falke encountered at St. John’s continue to inspire him. Among the playwrights on the Program, he leans toward the classics: “Aeschylus reaches us with a kind of ritualized grandeur. Sophocles can be wonderfully ambiguous. Look at Oedipus at Colonus or Philoctetes. Consider even Antigone. What are we to feel at the end of that play? There is real pleasure in this sort of ambiguity,” which “we can learn from deeply.” And then, of course, there’s Shakespeare. “More than once I have opened a play or a collection of sonnets with a willed feeling of skepticism, as if to find out whether Shakespeare is indeed as great as Shakespeare is supposed to be. And, of course, he is.” Falke points out that in The Tempest, “there is something very human” in Prospero the magician “when he longs for his library or his vanquished home. We’re all vanquished from home. Certainly this can be the stuff of tragedy, but Prospero clings to other parts of himself” that are gifts. “So that’s not tragic,” he says. “That’s a comfort in this play.” Falke finds deep satisfaction in playwriting: “It has its own peculiar difficulties, to be sure, but in the beginning stages, in that first draft or two, it’s “Imagine having a Big Daddy in you or an Antigone, or an Ahab or a Sherlock Holmes. I’ve wept over Anna Karenina. There’s some kind of wonder to hold those characters in you.” the pleasure that carries me and sustains the process of the work. I’m glad to start when I start and glad to listen when I do.” “In a poem,” Falke notes, “you might become conscious of the musical qualities some words carry. A pleasure I find in writing plays, however, is in listening to characters for what one is saying or will say.” Although Falke finds it hard to write 32 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 a character that stays with him, those who do stay seldom leave. “Imagine having a Big Daddy in you or an Antigone, or an Ahab or a Sherlock Holmes,” he says. “I’ve wept over Anna Karenina. There’s some kind of wonder to hold those characters in you. When characters achieve lives of their own, you experience a gift, and you go on experiencing it.” When asked for a play focusing on characters’ individual stories, Falke wrote The Sun Is in the West in 2010. The idea of telling stories became an important theme. In a graveyard on the storm-ravaged Gulf Coast of Texas, its characters deal with their family stories and their relationship with the region. “Inspiration came when the characters started to talk, and I started to listen,” he says. Although Falke spoke with the director about the play’s set and general look, he wasn’t heavily involved with the staging. “Directors come with their own creative �“all the world’s a stage” LEADING LADY Maria Jung (a12) pursues acting By Gregory Shook “Say, from whence You owe this strange intelligence?” Macbeth Maria Jung (A12) is trying hard not to freak out. Hoping to launch a career in acting, she just landed the part of Emelia in the Annapolis Shakespeare Company’s summer 2012 production of The Comedy of Errors. Set in 1890 in a visually striking “steampunk” style, the play signals Jung’s professional theatrical debut. Shakespeare’s strong female characters resonated with Jung as she played Tamora in Titus Andronicus, the First Witch in Macbeth, and Olivia in Twelfth Night with the King William Players. “My dream roles would be Cleopatra or Lady Macbeth,” she says. “These women are so nuanced and possess such fierce power— it blows my mind that Shakespeare wrote them.” Jung’s admiration for such vital characters inspired her career path; she’s going for it with gusto. She credits her experience performing Shakespeare with the college’s King William Players. “I learned so much from working with my fellow Johnnies,” says Jung, having “great conversations about the dialogue and monologues, as well as the JEN BEHRENS processes,” he says. “If a director is willing to be part of a production, then my hope is he’s already eager about the work and what it can become. If the writing is strong and the director has a vision and can trust his own creative impulses, you might see something worth saving.” Falke was unable to be there when The Sun Is in the West opened in a town far from his home in Port Arthur, Texas. “It was a treat to see a production in Santa Fe,” he says. “I was nervous. I want a work to be enjoyed or appreciated. I hope people take something good away from seeing a show.” Writing can be a difficult craft. “You have to work hard to get it right, and sometimes you might not know when you do. The hard work and the not knowing are in part what makes the process rewarding,” says Falke. “They lead to what you might call a difficult pleasure.” Falke has long moved on from the girl who broke his heart. Having become a prolific writer, Falke has published poems and short stories in addition to his plays. Falke’s publications included a 10,000word piece in The Langdon Review, a poem in The Aurorean, and others. He also finished writing a couple plays that he hopes to see in production soon. In March 2012, a book containing a single poem, Notes on Paper, was published. But he isn’t about to rest on his laurels. “I’m still pleased when a piece is published or given a stage,” he says. “It means there’s someone who wants to listen to you and who believes others should listen also. You need to accept such an opportunity with humility; there is plenty of fine work that only a few souls will ever read.” various characters.” Club archon Tessa Nelson (A12) worked hard to make the King William Players “reflect well on the college. She’s taken theater at St. John’s to an amazing place.” During “Dead Week” on the Annapolis campus—the calm period each spring when tutorials are cancelled for sophomore and junior Don Rags—Jung sequestered herself in Greenfield Library’s basement, engrossed in the Bard. With scribbled notes strewn on open plays, she spent many hours memorizing monologues from Titus Andronicus and Twelfth Night to prepare for her callback with the Annapolis Shakespeare Company. Sounding like a seasoned actor, Jung explains that a callback is about “getting a sense of the chemistry between the actors” and “showing that you can really get into the character and have fun onstage.” Jung’s only previous acting credit was playing the role of Mrs. Gibbs in her high school’s production of Our Town. “I got into acting on a whim,” says Jung. “My friends [at Hunter College High School in New York City] were involved in the arts, so I thought I’d give acting a try.” She has also been inspired by a strong female lead, her mother, now retired, who is taking acting classes –“and getting lots of work!” Jung is curious to explore acting possibilities beyond the stage. Last year, she had a Hodson internship assisting with film shoots and editing at the Doc Tank, a Brooklyn-based international creative center for documentary directors. “With film, there are so many subtle, dramatic details that can’t be conveyed in plays—like zooming in on the expression on a person’s face,” she says. “I really like those possibilities.” The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 33 �St. John’s College was a haven from the segregation in Annapolis before Brown v. Board of Education. 34 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 �Rule of Reason In a Small College Seeking Enlightenment SIGNS, WIRES AND CONCRETE. PHOTOGRAPH BY A. AUBREY BODINE, COPYRIGHT © JENNIFER B. BODINE, COURTESY WWW.AAUBREYBODINE.COM by Susan Borden (A87) Remembering Martin A. Dyer (193o–2011) Martin Appell Dyer (Class of 1952), was a dignified, thoughtful, and gracious pioneer, the first African American student to attend St. John’s College. He was admitted in 1948 after the college community challenged the legitimacy of segregated education. Throughout his distinguished career as an attorney in public and community service, Mr. Dyer remained devoted to St. John’s. He recalled how he “was welcomed on campus, a bastion, and that welcome made all the difference in the world. . . St. John’s was just a beacon of freedom compared to anything in Annapolis.” It was to St. John’s that Mr. Dyer attributed his “lifelong love of books and language” and his “passion for music.” During his time at St. John’s, Mr. Dyer arranged for W.E.B. Du Bois to give a lecture—he brought to campus the only author read in the St. John’s Program to also visit and speak at the college. Mr. Dyer was born and raised in East Baltimore, the son of Martin A. Dyer, a steelworker, and Margaret Louise Dyer, a secretary to Lillie Mae Jackson, president of the Baltimore chapter of the NAACP. What can the voices of St. John’s veterans returning after World War II tell us about freedom, injustice, and segregation in a small college town? In the crowded Conversation Room at the 2011 Annapolis Homecoming, more than 60 alumni, tutors, and other members of the college community gathered for a first reading of “So Reason Can Rule: The Necessity of Racial Integration at St. John’s College.” The script, drawn from numerous oral histories and written by Charlotta Beavers (AGI11), tells the story of the conditions, circumstances, and people that led to the enrollment of Martin Dyer (Class of 1952), the first African Martin Dyer (Class of 1952) American student to attend St. John’s College. Dyer enrolled in the fall of 1948, six years before Brown v. Board of Education established the unconstitutionality of separate public schools for black and white students. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 35 �Remembering Martin A. Dyer “I learned about discrimination and segregation when I was sent to Fort Bragg. It had an impact for everybody. Whether you were a southerner or urban or rural—just being in the military and wondering why [the soldiers] were separated . . . made you think.” (continued) He graduated at the top of his class in 1948 at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School but family circumstances were such that he expected to attend a state teachers college. At that time, students and faculty from St. John’s actively sought African Americans to attend the college and Mr. Dyer was the first to enroll. Inspired by the college’s activist stance, he attended the college after “a core of students actively scouted Baltimore’s two black high schools to recruit students for a college virtually unknown in the black community. . . . To accept [blacks] is one thing,” he told a reporter from the Baltimore Sun, “but to deliberately and consciously seek someone is another.” Graduating from St. John’s in 1952, he enlisted in the Army and served in Europe until 1954. Mr. Dyer earned his law degree from the University of Maryland School of Law in 1959. In 1962, Mr. Dyer married the former Jane Weeden and began his family. In the 1960s, Mr. Dyer worked as a congressional intern on Capitol Hill and principal legislative aide and speechwriter for Alaska Sen. Edward L. “Bob” Bartlett, architect of Alaskan statehood. Mr. Dyer then worked in public service in the Health Care Finance Administration until retiring in 1990. A champion for fair housing, after retiring from federal service he served as associate director of Baltimore Neighborhoods, Inc. In 1997 he was honored at Homecoming with the Alumni Association Award of Merit. He gave a moving talk to those —Jules Pagano (Class of 1948) When Beavers started working on “So Reason Can Rule,” its working title was “The Magnificent Seven,” a name affectionately bestowed on the first seven African American students to enroll at St. John’s by Everett Wilson (Class of 1956), the second African American student. Beavers came to see that her project was about far more than these seven alumni. It was about a world seeking enlightenment after the darkness of World War II. It was also about deeply entrenched prejudice in a small southern city, and the necessity of racial justice in an institution centered on liberty, open-mindedness, and the rule of reason. “So Reason Can Rule” originated as an oral history project; Beavers conducted 13 oral histories as a collective memory of a pivotal time at the college. As Beavers reviewed the recordings and transcripts of these oral histories, she noticed a theme that seemed essential to the college’s integration: the significant role played by veterans returning to the college from World War II. In his essay, “Race, Language, and War in Two Cultures: World War II in Asia,” author John W. Dower describes the U.S. soldiers’ need to remain blind to the “hypocrisy of fighting with a segregated army and navy under the banner of freedom, democracy, and justice.” To their credit, Beavers says, many St. John’s students returned from World War II with their eyes opened. “I learned about discrimination and segregation when I was sent to Fort Bragg,” says Jules Pagano (Class of 1948). “It had an impact for everybody. Whether you were a southerner or urban or rural—just being in the military and wondering why [the soldiers] were separated... made you think.” George Van Sant (Class of 1948), another veteran, returned to the college in 1947 as a junior, joining a student body of mostly veterans, including the dean, who had been “commander of a company of all black soldiers that had fought 36 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 in Germany with distinction,” Van Sant recalls. “By the junior year, you begin to read some of the 18th-century political stuff. Most Johnnies develop, I hope, a very enlightened view of our Founding Fathers and their Constitution and what it all means.” Van Sant says that his senior year saw a lot of ferment and turmoil. “The race issue just came to a head and there was an open discussion of it and open encouragement for [integration on the campus].” A voluntary meeting in the Great Hall about the issue during the ’47 to ’48 academic year was well attended, he says, by a lot of students and veterans. Pagano recalls the sense of political possibility that informed the meeting: “Just the fact that we were reading the Great Books made us very concerned with the movements that were taking place: Will there be something like the Roman peace? Will there be an American peace? Will we run the world? Will we be the new empire? What will the United Nations be and how will it affect us? Will it change America and will we have a voice in the world?” Charged with the possibility of change and the hope for a better world, the undergraduate students gathered on March 16, 1948, to vote on a resolution: “The Student Polity hereby resolves that it would welcome the admission of students of any race or color to St. John’s College,” it read. “This resolution is not intended as a petition to or demand on the administration, but rather is the result of a student discussion and deliberation about whether an admissions policy which would enter Negro students would be acceptable to the student body.” Gene Thornton (Class of 1945), who served in the Navy with African American men, reflected on freedom and segregation: “You get to thinking about things, and you realize you want to do something about them.” He drew up the petition that circulated among the students before �“The race issue just came to a head and there was an open discussion of it and open encouragement for [integration on the campus]. A voluntary meeting in the Great Hall about the issue was ‘well attended.’” —George Van Sant (Class of 1948) Remembering Martin A. Dyer (continued) The Board was facing a number of pressures that seemed to endanger the college’s very existence, most significantly a recent attempt by the U.S. Naval Academy to take over the college. Given the high level of segregation in the city of Annapolis, they also feared that publicity surrounding a new policy of integration would turn the town against St. John’s. Following their discussion, the Board decided unanimously that no action be taken. Despite the Board’s reluctance to integrate the college, the students pressed on. With the support of New Program founder Scott Buchanan, Dean Harvey Poe, and tutor Winfree Smith, they visited guidance offices in black high schools in Baltimore to recruit an African American male to attend St. John’s. In his interview, Van Sant made it clear that special credit should be given to Peter Davis (Class of 1948), who spurred this recruitment movement. In 2004, St. John’s honored Mr. Dyer and six other pioneering African American students who followed him at St. John’s in the 1950s. He served as a member of the Board of Visitors and Governors and chaired an advisory committee in Annapolis to recruit, enroll, and retain students of color. He helped frame the college’s continuing conversation about diversity. He drew attention to the college’s ongoing need to ensure that its Program is available to all. He wanted St. John’s to keep the commitment it had made when he was recruited and enrolled. “Doctor Weaver founded a Negro national scholarship fund. . . . Their one sentence of St. John’s: ‘St. John’s College is an island of liberality in a sea of segregation.’ And the next sentence went on to explain that fortunately everything you needed was on campus, so you did not need to depend on offcampus for anything else, except if you went to church, [a dentist, or for a haircut].” Jerry Hynson (Class of 1959) came from a segregated community where his only connections to white people were as employers. Nevertheless, he found life at the nearly all-white St. John’s agreeable: “St. John’s was easy socially. . . I liked to talk and enjoyed the company of others.” SHERRI HOSFELD JOSEPH the meeting, which asked what students thought of St. John’s enrolling “colored” or “Negro” students. Robert Davis (Class of 1945) was the meeting’s moderator. He argued against the idea that the high tuition ($1,100 in 1948) and the study of the Classics were deterrents for African American students. Unlike others, who thought that African Americans would forego St. John’s for job preparation training, Davis believed that a St. John’s education was practical and that African American students would come if they were welcomed. Ralph Finkel (now known as Raphael BenYosef, Class of 1948), Michael Keane (Class of 1945), and Phillip Camponeschi (Class of 1946) assisted in organizing the meeting. Finkel told a reporter, “You can’t go to a place like St. John’s and learn all about the great ideas of the world without practicing them.” Keane felt strongly that the challenge to dismantle segregated education must originate with the students. Camponeschi, who led seminars on Greek and Shakespearean tragedies in the African American communities of Annapolis, was recorded as saying, “Western civilization has lagged intellectually while developing its material wealth.” The students concluded that if all men are free, then a system that denies the right of freedom to certain men is wrong. The resolution passed by an overwhelming vote: 162 in favor, 33 against, and two indifferent. Less than a month later, at a faculty meeting on April 10, a motion was made by tutor Winfree Smith that “the faculty go on record as favoring the admission of Negro students as a matter of college policy.” The motion passed unanimously. The Board of Visitors and Governors met on April 17. Richard F. Cleveland, the son of former President Grover Cleveland, presided as Chairman. President John Kieffer told the Board about the decisions made by the students and faculty. assembled. His great care and concern for each individual made all who knew him feel welcome. In his honor St. John’s initiated the Martin Dyer Book Fund in 1997, which helps students meet the expenses of Program books. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 37 �Remembering Martin A. Dyer (continued) Mr. Dyer included everyone in the discussion; he could lead a group around a difficult issue and never lose sight of the goal. He led with grace and a finely tuned ability to listen. A lover of art, classical music and opera and a gourmet chef, Mr. Dyer was a member of the Peabody Choir, a founding member of the board of the James E. Lewis Museum of Art Foundation at Morgan State University, and past president of the board of Young American Audiences of Maryland. A tribute by a friend and colleague might well serve to sum up his life: “He had no trepidation about doing what was right….he made the world not a little better but a lot better. He was a perfect gentleman. I have nothing but fond words and memories of Martin. He was a beautiful person.” —Mark Lindley (A67) “I had spoken to one or another tutor about my concern . . . . I was put in touch with somebody from Baltimore . . . . knowing that there were the Maryland scholarships that meant someone recruited in Baltimore could come to St. John’s without having tuition. I tried to urge that person, whoever they were, to come to St. John’s.” —Peter Davies (Class of 1948) The students were put in touch with Martin Dyer, a senior at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in Baltimore, Maryland, and an honors student with the second-highest grade-point average in his class. At the meeting of St. John’s Board on July 17, President Kieffer reported that “an application had been received from Martin Dyer, a Negro, a graduate of Dunbar High School of Baltimore City.” In his opinion, Kieffer said, Martin Dyer’s application should be accepted if he met all other qualifications; he should not be rejected because he was a Negro. Kieffer noted that Johns Hopkins University admitted Negroes in its undergraduate department, that the Archbishop had instructed all Catholic colleges in Maryland to admit Negroes, and that there was a Negro at the Naval Academy. To refuse to admit a Negro to St. John’s would be inconsistent with the DAN COOK “There was so little to do in Annapolis because of the segregation. I certainly didn’t go socializing off campus with my classmates unless we were all going to the Little Campus. I was Catholic. But I was not welcome at the Catholic church in Annapolis, St. Mary’s. I certainly didn’t blame it on St. John’s. St. John’s opens your eyes…gives you an opportunity to think about what is the best way to respond to this kind of travesty.” Charlotte King (Class of 1959) was one of the first African American women to attend St. John’s. She remembers an admissions officer showing her and her family a film of the college that was too good to resist: “I lived in urban New York and here was this beautiful movie with beautiful music in the background, students sitting around at classes that made it look like a wonderful way to learn.” 38 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 liberal education offered by the college and would be bad for student and faculty morale. Yet the Board’s Executive Committee voted nine to three against admitting Dyer, who was sent a letter of rejection. What happened next, says Beavers, is unclear. She speculates that someone on the Board rallied support for the Executive Committee of the Board to reconsider. A letter dated August 26 shows that the majority of the Board supported such a move. When the Executive Committee met on September 17, each member was asked to express his views. Their vote was six to three—this time in favor of admitting Dyer, who attended his first class at St. John’s College on September 27, 1948. The story doesn’t end with Martin Dyer’s successful enrollment, says Beavers. Once her script is turned into an audio-visual presentation—to be narrated by tutor Jon Tuck—she will return to her research. Her next script will explore what life was like for the first seven African American students during their time at St. John’s and in their lives after graduation. The first presentation, using the script of “So Reason Can Rule,” the oral history tapes, and photographs from the college archives, is planned for screening during Homecoming 2012. Beavers is working on a “So Reason Can Rule” web page: www.stjohnscollege.edu/alumni/AN/so-reasoncan-rule.shtml. Send relevant reminiscences, photographs, and documents to Beavers, in care of Susan Borden, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404. �bibliofile Andrew Krivak (A86): A Coming of Age MARZEUA POGORZALY Following up on his 2007 “I go back to Aristotle [as a teacher] for constructing a story’s beginning, middle, and end.” memoir, A Long Retreat: In Search of a Religious Life, Andrew Krivak (A86) takes on a new subject in his latest book, The Sojourn. This time, the subject is his grandfather—or rather, an amalgam of traits both real and imagined, distilled to create a version of his grandfather, the protagonist in Krivak’s first work of fiction. Having only heard tales about his grandfather, Krivak envisioned the book as a way to explore his personal family history. But an unexpected discovery happened midway through writing his novel. Krivak found that he became less concerned with documenting history and more focused on becoming a writer in a bigger sense. “A Long Retreat is a story about my personal coming of age,” says Krivak. “The Sojourn is my coming of age as a writer.” As he wrote, blending history and landscapes, Krivak—who hadn’t previously thought to cross genres—became excited about the craft of storytelling without being beholden to specific times, characters, and places. “I’m always thinking about plot. A good story moves. How will a character or place move a story?” Whether writing memoir or fiction, the writing process is essentially the same for Krivak, who says, “No matter what the subject, it’s about writing a story.” The story of his latest work centers on the protagonist Jozef Vinich, who in the wake of a family tragedy was uprooted from a 19thcentury Colorado mining town to return with his father to rural Austria-Hungary, where he lives an impoverished shepherd’s life. At the outbreak of World War I, Jozef joins his cousin and brother-in-arms as a sharpshooter on the southern front, where he must survive a perilous journey across the frozen Italian Alps and enemy capture. Krivak draws from the classics for inspiration. As a freshman at St. John’s, reading the Odyssey had a profound impact—he was taken with the formal and aural sensibilities of the language, which seemed to come alive. He also looks to the Greeks for getting to the root of good storytelling. “I go back to Aristotle [as a teacher] for constructing a story’s beginning, middle, and end.” Krivak’s storytelling has earned him serious recognition. The Sojourn was a 2011 National Book Award Finalist, as well as a Boston Globe bestseller and the Washington Post’s Notable Book of the Year. Not bad for a novel that was turned away by nearly every large publishing company. Thrilled by the favorable response his book has received, Krivak says that being nominated for a National Book Award is “psychologically, an experience that can’t be beat.” Most recently, in April 2012 the Chautauqua Institution, a not-for-profit educational and cultural center in southwestern New York state, selected The Sojourn as the first-ever winner of The Chautauqua Prize, a new national prize that celebrates a book of fiction or literary/narrative nonfiction that yields a richly rewarding reading experience and honors the author for a significant contribution to the literary arts. The Chautauqua Prize reviewers, who chose The Sojourn from a finalist shortlist that includes five other titles, describe the book as “a novel of uncommon lyricism and moral ambiguity.” Given the plentiful accolades, it is clear that Krivak has come of age as a writer. Still, he insists that his motivation is not influenced by reviews and awards. “Reviews teach me nothing. If it doesn’t get me back to the [writing] desk, I don’t care about it.” Future plans include a book that he describes as “sort of a follow-up to The Sojourn. It’s much bigger and taking more time to write.” As a husband and father of three based in Somerville, Massachusetts, finding time is a challenge. “I used to think, ‘What days can I write?’ Now I think, ‘What hours can I write?’ ” —Gregory Shook The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 39 �bibliofile Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook, 2nd Edition Joshua Parens (A83) and Joseph C. Macfarland (A87) Cornell University Press, 2011 In light of recent events that pose a The Sourcebook’s readings provide the means to rediscover and contemplate the confrontation between reason and revelation, free from many modern presuppositions. secular West against a radicalized Islamic world, while the West alternates between safeguarding secularism and questioning it, medieval political philosophers provide a remote viewpoint from which to reconsider the relationships between science, religion, and politics. They consider how philosophy might inform the practice of politics and religion independently of the modern, western model—the liberal democratic separation of religion from politics that lowers the ends of politics for the sake of securing the conditions of material well-being. This second edition of Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook, brings together in one volume works from the three monotheistic traditions: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Despite their different traditions, these authors shared a greater uniformity of intention than may perhaps be found at any other time, for each studied classical political philosophy in the works of Plato and Aristotle and each sought to articulate the implications of classical teachings for contemporary life in his religious community. The Sourcebook’s readings provide the means to rediscover and contemplate the confrontation between reason and revelation, free from many modern presuppositions. Despite the authors’ similarity of intention, this confrontation between reason and revelation takes different forms, as Judaism and Islam are religions of law and Christianity is a religion of faith. Thus Alfarabi (ca. AD 870-950), along with several Muslim and Jewish authors after him, took their bearings from Plato’s Republic and Laws and identified the lawgiving prophet with the Platonic philosopher-king. By this understanding, the authoritative religious science, jurisprudence, is guided by political philosophy, which comprehends the characteristics of divine law in principle and the nature of the prophetic legislator. In Christianity, without a lawgiver as the central figure, the authoritative religious science was not jurisprudence, but theology. Many Christian authors, following Aristotle’s Politics, understood political philosophy as a branch of practical philosophy, safely segregated from the speculative sciences and implicitly subordinate to theology. In this context, any attitude that conversely subordinated theology 40 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 to philosophy was reviled as “Averroism”; in a few Christian authors, however, one detects a similarity of purpose with Averroes and his predecessor, Alfarabi. Despite the relative subordination of political philosophy within Christianity and the relative independence of political philosophy from jurisprudence and theology in Islam and Judaism, it is puzzling that political philosophy in the medieval Islamic world ended with the death of Averroes in AD 1198, whereas one may trace in several doctrines a continuity in Christian political thought from medieval to early modern thinkers. The first edition of the Sourcebook, edited by Ralph Lerner and Muhsin Mahdi in collaboration with Ernest Fortin, appeared in 1963. The original editors passed the project on to their former graduate students, Joshua Parens (A83), a professor of philosophy at the University of Dallas, and Joseph Macfarland (A87), a tutor in Annapolis, whose revised edition includes new readings. More vividly highlighting the debate between the philosophers and those defending the three religious traditions from philosophy, these readings include selections from Judah Halevi’s The Kuzari, Alghazali’s The Deliverer from Error, and Boethius of Dacia’s On the Supreme Good. Additions also highlight particular themes: for example, selections by Maimonides (Eight Chapters) and Thomas (Commentary on the Ethics) enable the reader to consider with greater precision different opinions regarding the connection between law and nature. This revision takes advantage of many new translations (e.g., Alfarabi’s The Book of Religion, William of Ockham’s Dialogue), and improves old translations on the basis of new critical editions (e.g., Thomas’s Commentaries, Dante’s Monarchia). The Sourcebook has been used frequently in undergraduate and graduate classrooms; now Parens and Macfarland make it more inviting to novice readers in political theory. Each section includes a new bibliography with additional primary and secondary sources, and new introductions highlight salient themes and questions articulated by the thinkers of that religious tradition. —Joseph C. Macfarland (A87) �bibliofile Photography and Archaeology By Fred Bohrer (A78) Reaktion Books (Exposers), 2011 Fred Bohrer’s (A78) Photography and Archaeology, the first book-length study of its topic, is the result of nearly a decade of research on some of history’s most famous and lesser-known archaeological excavations. Accompanied by a stunning array of images, many of which are published for the first time, Bohrer examines photographic representation of excavation sites from the Mediterranean, Edmond Halley’s Reconstruction of the Lost Book of Apollinius’s Conics By Michael N. Fried (A82) Springer (Sources on the History of Science) 2011 Apollonius’s Conics was one of the greatest works of advanced mathematics in antiquity. The work comprised eight books, of which four have come down to us in their original Greek and three in Arabic. By the time the Arabic translations appeared, the eight books had already been lost. In 1710 Edmond Halley, Intimate Microscopy By Jorge H. Aigla Farolito Press, 2010 In his review of Intimate Microscopy, a book of poems in English and Spanish by Santa Fe tutor Jorge Aigla, Charles Fasanaro, tutor emeritus, Santa Fe, writes, “I had the telling experience of saying, ‘Yes. That’s right. That’s it.’ It was an experience such as one has reading Montaigne, something akin to friendship on a very deep level. Aigla’s ensouled words take me to places I had forgotten about, or—ignoring the truth of our shared humanity—to places I thought only my memories inhabited.” In Aigla’s Middle East, Asia, Europe, and the Americas; he explores how the development of photography has affected the way that people engage with the past. Spanning the histories of both fields from the early nineteenth century to the present, Photography and Archaeology surveys the thought of archaeologists, historians, photographers, artists, critics, and theorists, in describing how its images are situated between two opposite, and possibly contradictory, inclinations. Bohrer will give a presentation and book signing at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., on September 12. then Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford, published an edition of the Greek text of the Conics of Books I-IV, and a reconstruction together with copious notes on the text. It also contains an introduction discussing aspects of Apollonius’s Conics and how Halley understood the nature of his venture into ancient mathematics. In particular, it asks how Halley understood his project of reconstructing a historic mathematical text: in what sense, in other words, was Halley a historian of mathematics? The book also includes appendices giving a brief account of Apollonius’s approach to conic sections and his mathematical techniques. poetry, Fasanaro discovers that “Aigla grapples with life and especially death, understanding that there are many deaths—which, handled intelligently, are gateways to a richer life and a brighter light. In reaching the very ground of human experience, Aigla shows us who we are and what being human ultimately means.” Aigla’s medical studies at the University of California lend insight to his observations as a poet; Fasanaro culls relevant poems, such as “The Need for Trees,” “Dog Surgery,” and “An Oasis,” to share with the readers of his review. To read Charles Fasanaro’s elegant review of Intimate Microscopy, visit: www.stjohnscollege. edu/news/main.html. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 41 �DOUG PLUMMER “The books have a kind of restraint. We have to give to them before they give to us. We might have to work hard to get to their riches, but they are capable of enormous generosity.”— Pamela Kraus, Annapolis Dean 42 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 �alumni notes 1952 1949 Allan P. Hoffman (A) writes, “Yes, I still ski—even at age 83. I avoid the bumps. I teach my youngest grandchildren, the twins, how to ski. I am still active on the Board of Visitors and Governors—honorary member—and on the Alumni Board—emeritus. I look forward to seeing many old friends and classmates at Homecoming this fall, the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the founding of the New Program by Scott & Winkie. We knew them both. We know what it was like when they were there. I think we owe it to them to help the college recollect.” 1958 On the heels of the publication of her collection of essays on contemporary Chinese art, Mary Bittner Goldstein (A) was invited by the People’s Republic of China to be a guest speaker at the 30th Anniversary of the founding of the National Institute of Chinese Painting held in Beijing, China, at the end of October 2011. 1959 Marshall Lasky (A) and Mary left at the end of September for a three-week trip to Nepal, Bhutan, Thailand, and Cambodia. Before leaving, he wrote, “We couldn’t resist the opportunity to see Bhutan before it gets spoiled by tourism, and Mary has long wanted to see the entire Angkor temple complex, which includes a fast area in addition to Angkor Wat. While most people go to Nepal to go up, up, up into the Himalayas and maybe trek into Everest Base Camp—have any of you done that?—instead, (other than a few days in Kathmandu) we will be heading down nearly to sea level near the India border to a remote location called Tiger Tops, in the subtropical jungle of Royal Chitwan National Park, an area of grasslands and forests and wetlands. Staying in a tented safari camp and excursioning by elephant back, river boat, Land Rover, and jungle walks, we’ll be hoping to spot hundreds of bird species, sloth bear, and freshwater dolphin, as well as the Greater OneHorned Rhinoceros, leopards, and Bengal tigers (oh, my).” Barbara Tower (A) has eight charming grandchildren, the eldest 19 and at St. Mary’s College. Barbara has been doing a bit of traveling, is enrolled in Executive Seminars at the college, is studying the New Testament, and went to Jerusalem in February. She is still enjoying her interesting Annapolis real estate career, “teaming” with her daughter Alex and her husband Fred. Study Abroad Program Celebrated Walter Schatzberg’s study abroad program was celebrated at the Embassy of Luxembourg. The event commemorated the ClarkLuxembourg study abroad program that was started by Walter Schatzberg (Class of 1952) nearly 25 years ago. Clark University President David Angel spoke, recognizing Walter and Professors SunHee and Uwe Gertz, who took ownership of the program as Walter approached retirement. His Excellency, the Honorable JeanPaul Senninger, Ambassador of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg to the United States, and his wife, Elizabeth, were hosts at the historic embassy near Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C. The embassy provided drinks and hors d’oeuvres for Clark graduates from 2011 and many decades before. The Clark University motto, “Fiat Lux,” was amended for the event to “Fiat Luxembourg.” Uwe Gertz, Sarah Zapolsky, and Walter Schatzberg (Class of 1952) at the Embassy of Luxembourg. 2012) in the Providence Journal, “France Must Heed the Cry of SOS Paris!” Next stop: Urging UNESCO to delist Paris as a World Heritage site if this vandalism goes forward. 1960 1962 Mary Campbell Gallagher’s (A) new study guide for the bar exam has garnered exceptional professional reviews and high praise on Amazon. Called Perform Your Best on the Bar Exam Performance Test (MPT): Train to Finish the MPT in 90 Minutes “Like a Sport™,” it will be recognized by Johnnies as lessons in grammar, rhetoric, and logic. Meanwhile, her campaign against plans to blight the horizon of Paris with skyscrapers is gaining traction. The organization to which she belongs, SOS Paris, and the international NGO called the Council for European Urbanism have worked together. The CEU has produced a white paper and now they are getting publicity, starting with David Brussat’s column (March 29, After serving as the CEO at Hampton National Historic Site in Towson, Maryland; Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens in Akron, Ohio; and Edsel and Eleanor Ford House in Grosse Pointe Shores, Michigan; John Miller (A) retired and expects to move to Maryland when he sells his house in Grosse Pointe. He has been President of the Library of American Landscape History and wrote the “Afterword” to The Gardens of Ellen Biddle Shipman by Judith B. Tankard. Currently he is exploring the idea that women have played a leadership role in the U.S. preservation movement since Ann Pamela Cunningham saved Mt. Vernon in the nineteenth century. St. Clair Wright did the same for Annapolis in his time at St. John’s. 1963 Marcia E. Herman-Giddens (A) writes “I am still trying to retire and getting close. For a change from scientific writing, I tried my hand at describing my love affair with my herbs and an easy way to make teas with common garden plants, both domestic and wild (obviously, must be edible!). The result is a small publishing company, Seed Pod Press, and my book, Sipping My Garden (www.seedpodpress.com and www. facebook.com/SippingMyGarden). It has been work, fun, and a lot of learning. Now I am looking forward to starting on the second book!” 1964 Cecily Sharp-Whitehill (A) writes, “contrary to most people’s images of Florida, life here is not equated with retirement! My companion [Dr.] Jürgen Ladendorf and I teach (by the Harvard case-based interactive discussion method) and consult with a number of clients in Australia, Europe, and Asia Pacific. It is a joy The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 43 �alumni notes 1972 From Words to Wood not only to travel to work with clients, but to learn in the process!” 1966 After a 10-year collaboration, Joseph Anderson and Judy Millspaugh Anderson, M.D. (A), announce the birth of . . . a book! Kissing the Underbelly, a novel published by Xlibris Press, is available via www. kissingtheunderbelly.com. The two do not pretend that it is great literature or a scholarly work, but they had great fun writing it and hope that others will enjoy reading it. 1968 Rick Wicks (SF) had radiation and chemo treatments for HPV-induced tongue-base cancer in the fall of 2010 and is now cancer-free. He and the family took a wonderful “resurrection” trip to Israel for a week around New Year 2012. In mid-April, he headed to an “alumni” retreat at Tassajara, a Zen Buddhist monastery in California, where he lived for a year in the mid-’70s. On May 30, 2012, Rick is scheduled to defend his PhD thesis concerning the place of conventional economics in a world with communities and social goods (i.e., in the real world!). His daughter Linnéa (21) is working hard and doing well in her second year of medical school, and he and his son Hendrik (17) are planning to spend the summer in Alaska again, like last year. He and Ellinor did lots of day-hikes on a wilderness trail near Anchorage last spring and fall—soon it will be warm enough to start them again. During the winter, they’ve been watching lots of movies on TV. below: Les Margulis (A70) pictured standing in front of the largest Buddhist Temple in the southern hemisphere. Juan Hovey (SF) spent 15 years in daily journalism, including stints as city editor of the Santa Fe New Mexican and assistant city editor of the Oakland Tribune. After that, he spent 10 years in the insurance industry, gaining an understanding of how insurers identify, manage, and price risks of all kinds. By happy coincidence, Hovey then found work as an editor for a Marin County publisher of high-value newsletters focusing on the insurance industry. He became that rare bird: the journalist who actually understands his subject matter—which put him in position some years later to write a weekly column on finance and insurance for the business page of the Los Angeles Times. Those were amazing years: he had a voice in a big-time paper, and he felt he was doing some good in the world. More recently, Hovey developed another specialty as a ghostwriter for a number of partner-level attorneys, accountants, and other professionals in Los Angeles. He and his wife of 33 years, Elise Cassel, have two daughters plus Maya, his first child. They are “more or less retired” and live in Santa Maria, California. Hovey has taken up woodworking in earnest, building furniture including tables and chairs, beds, cabinets, and other items. The work is an entirely new undertaking for him; he spent his life figuring out how to put language to good, practical use, and now is happiest when knee-deep in sawdust striving to make something beautiful with his hands. 1970 Les Margulis (A) writes, “I am still working, although I must say I am the oldest man in advertising anywhere in Australia. I am what’s called a ‘pitch consultant.’ If clients want to change advertising agencies, they hire the company that I work for (www.trinityp3.com) and we organize the whole thing. In my spare time, my wife and I explore the interesting, lesser-known areas in Australia and nearby countries.” Connie Shaw (A) is living in Boulder, Colorado, near her 26-year-old son, Forrest, and is publishing books at the company she started 11 years ago, Sentient Publications (www.sentientpublications.com). She publishes mostly nonfiction, with an emphasis on transformative spirituality, alternative education, and holistic health. 44 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 Anthony Vitto (A) has sold his solo private neurology practice in Morgan Hill, California, and has recently relocated to the Berkshires in Western Massachusetts, where he is now doing teleneurology out of his house. He is on call at more than 20 hospitals across the United States, and carries out video-tovideo HD teleconsultations to emergency rooms where he is asked to “see” neurology patients on an emergent basis. He writes, “This is very exciting and rewarding and allows patients to be examined and treated by a neurologist when and where none would normally be available. It is especially cool to be on the cutting edge of consultative medical technology while living in a house built in 1782, one year before the signing of the Treaty of Paris, which formally ended the American Revolutionary War.” �alumni notes Barbara Rogan (SF) would like to let the St. John’s community know that her latest novel, the mystery Can You Hear Me Now?, has been acquired by Viking Penguin for publication in the spring of 2013. “In addition,” she says, “five of my earlier novels will be released by Simon & Schuster in new editions, including ebook editions, over the coming year. Although they are not great books, they are, I think, rather good books, and I’m very happy that they’re getting a new life. And to think I owe it all to the St. John’s tutor who, after reading one of my essays, suggested I consider fiction instead.” 1973 “What happens to blues fans when they die? They go to the Reincarnation Blues Club, a way station where they can listen to great blues and have interesting conversations on their way to their next life,” writes Richard Cohen (SF73), who published his second novel, The Reincarnation Blues Club, in 2011. You can reach him at cohen03@ bellsouth.net. Jane Spear (A) writes, “In January I had a nice but sad ride up to Michigan from my Ohio home to attend the memorial of my ‘cosmic twin,’ dear friend, and classmate, Jon Ferrier, who died of a heart attack in his sleep on January 6, 2012. He leaves behind his fabulous wife, Kayne, and their daughter, Valerie, an attorney with the transit authority in New York City. His death came just a week after the news that we had lost Jeff Sinks on Christmas Eve—and so soon, too, after the sad loss of Philo Dibble. I took the opportunity of being in Michigan to visit Bill (now ‘Harry’) PAUL KNIESL 1972 1977 Back on His Bike Paul Kniesl (A) writes, “Last year about this time, I sent you an e-mail saying I was riding my motorcycle to Alaska. I had to drive my car instead because my back went out. This year, barring an act of God, I’m riding the motorcycle.” Shown above: Rocky Mountain Forest Reserve, west of Calgary, Alberta. E-mail him, if you wish, at 233@excite.com. Kelley (A75), who lives in Mt. Pleasant. So wonderful to continue my long acquaintance with him, each of us popping up in all sorts of different places throughout the years, but managing to find each other. Ferrier’s death was a sad reminder that we never have as much time as we think we do—and that we must ‘make hay’ while the sun shines. Other than an abysmally mild winter here in northeastern Ohio, and missing my dear friends, life is good. I continue to write a daily history column for my local newspaper and other freelancing, and fill in at my neighborhood middle-school cafeteria to keep things real. My fondest greetings to all classmates and Johnnie friends out there with whom I don’t already correspond through the J List, Facebook, emails, and frequent phone calls.” 1975 1974 Paula Cohen (now Behnken, SFGI) sends greetings from Western Massachusetts, where she still writes for the local newspaper and several other publications. Contact her at phcohen@nasw.org. John H. Rees, MD (A) gave the Dean’s Lecture at St. John’s College in Santa Fe on September 9, 2011. Rees comments: “This lecture, ‘Normal and Abnormal Neuronal Migration; or, Why Your Brain Is Wrinkled,’ represents a convergence of ideas and thoughts that I began to consider as a Johnnie and continued to study and ponder after becoming a physician and a neuroradiologist.” From Vancouver, Washington, Dr. Dale Mortimer (A), chairman of the Clark County Medical Society Committee for Profit and Joy in Private Practice, reports that last year was his most profitable in the past 22 years. His son, Grant, is planning to apply to St. John’s in Annapolis for 2013 or 2014. Anne Ray (SF) is teaching in Islamabad, Pakistan, which, she says, is an interesting place these days. She will be in Santa Fe for part of the summer. “Newsies the Musical,” based on the film written by Bob Tzudiker (A) and Noni White, opened at the Nederlander Theatre on Broadway on March 29, 2012. The show was The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 45 �alumni notes The Search for the Perfect Board By Chelsea Batten (A07) Geremy Coy (a06) was a perpetual sleeper hit during his time at St. John’s, always pulling a new skill out of his pocket. He swept the 2006 production of As You Like It with his emo portrayal of Jaques. He took the class prize with an essay on Middlemarch that, according to rumor, he crumpled up and rewrote two days before it was due. He could also dance, when he wanted, and played guitar with the epochal band Tandoori Jones. So I was fairly underwhelmed to learn that he now builds furniture—even traveling across state lines in search of the perfect board. My blasé stance changed when I saw his work. His pieces, each as balanced and light-bodied as a ballerina, hold a strange gravity. One can feel the air circulate around them, see the shapes, as if they were backlit by morning fog. It’s as if he’s coaching the wood into expressing itself. Which, it seems, he is. “I’m interested with going inside of a thing, creating something that reflects an inner life.” Coy’s values have this intuitive ring that contrasts with the Aristotelian approach I remember from school. In fact, it was this contrast that attracted him to woodworking. “Coming out of St. John’s, your head is sort of spinning [from] 46 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 receiving so much. I needed to decompress—like an astronaut coming back to earth,” he says. On Ms. Locke’s recommendation, he attended a two-year course at Provence’s Marchutz School of Art. “In the same way that St. John’s opened me up to philosophical ideas, this program opened my eyes to aesthetic experiences.” Yet several months into it, he realized, “I didn’t feel like a painter.” (Coy describes, only half-facetiously, what being a painter means to him—“I think of someone who wears all black and is angsty, sphinx-like, and does things that are really opaque and obscure”—and I flash back to my junior/his senior year, when he played the melancholy Jaques. He’s describing almost exactly the way he looked in that role—all he left out is the Rubik’s cube he carried around onstage.) Searching for other crafts he could adopt, he was drawn toward wood as something immediately accessible. He found “weird old books” about woodworking. And an experience from his AmeriCorps days proved to be an augury. “One of the volunteers mentioned, ‘You know, people who make fine furniture, instead of marking with a pencil, they mark with a razor.’ And I thought that was the coolest thing.” By this time, the economy had slumped. The job closest to his goal was in carpentry, which he says “did not help me much toward furniture making. I had to work toward that in the evenings. I got a small portable workbench, set up in the kitchen of our one-bedroom apartment, and started planing away.” Upon moving to Washington, D.C., in 2010, Coy obtained an apprenticeship with William B. Schreitz (A67), who encouraged him: “You certainly have the skill, the patience, and the attention to detail to do this for a living.” Coy knows the pedigree of every tool he uses, including 100-year-old handsaws, and a series of specialized planes whose designs, he tells me, “even go back to Roman times, which is sort of terrifying.” And the outcome of an entire piece can be determined by the kind of knife he uses to mark his measurements. “Then I use chisels and a mallet to make mortises, then different sizes of handsaws to cut tenons or dovetails,” he explains. Among Coy’s favorite woods is Alaskan yellow cedar. “It has a beautiful smell. Like if you had a mountain chalet somewhere and you stepped outside on a wintry day.” He also likes cherry wood for its “mild figure,” the brush strokes in the grain. “If you can imagine figure running straight up and down on two boards, and you set those two next to each other, when they’re �“Work done by hand is incredibly meaningful, and leads to truth.” Geremy Coy (A06) parallel they’ll appear calm and peaceful; where they intersect, it might be more dramatic,” he says. “Much of bringing out the life of a thing is in knowing how to arrange that figure in a way that doesn’t conflict with the life, but enhances it.” It’s always a dilemma whether he should start from a concept and find the wood to match, or construct around the potential of a given board. “Where you have an idea and try to find material to fit, it’s almost like giving the universe a dare,” says Coy. “Somewhere in America, 150 years ago, a little tree had to start growing in just the right way to produce just the right grain. And that tree had to be selected and cut down, and then sawn in just the right way to create just the right figure. And then you have to show up at the right lumberyard at the right time to find this perfect board. The demand you put on nature is pretty great.” That demand was answered in what Coy considers his crowning achievement. Inspired by a Shaker sewing stand and a Japanese teapot, he conceived of a cabinet devoted to the traditional tea ceremony. He envisioned “something that was very calm and quiet, but would nevertheless powerfully occupy the space.” For the top, he wanted a single piece of wood that would make “a dramatic sweep, like a breath.” But he also wanted a significant surface flaw. “I didn’t want to put a pristine piece on top of a cabinet that was supposed to be built in the spirit of tea, which has something of . . . .” He pauses. “I don’t know how to say this. Has something of death in it. Something of the wholeness of being.” In this moment, philosophy’s hand is evident in Coy’s work. “Heidegger talks about [how] the flow of energy through a system affects what is revealed. Craft is one way of questioning: ‘What kind of work am I capable of? And how vividly can I bring into creation an idea that I have?’ It’s interesting to see what happens when you’ve worked in nothing but thought, and try to impose order on the world. You start to respect the way that things grow.” After searching across three states, Coy found the perfect board in Pennsylvania. “It was the crotch of a cherry tree; where the two branches come together, the grain interacts in a really ripply figure. This board had a wonderful, dark, gnarly crack right in the middle. I put it into the back of my blue Volkswagen beetle, which I’m sure was hilarious at the lumberyard.” But Coy is taking the opposite approach with the linden tree that recently blew down on St. John’s front campus in Annapolis. Whatever he makes with it will be inspired by the Program. “It’s the perfect tree from the perfect location,” he says. “In the ancient world, linden was a prized source of ‘liber’—this tough, stringy inner bark. Liber was used for making paper, and the word eventually came to mean ‘book’ in Latin. That same ‘liber’ is one of the roots that the college’s motto puns so well: ‘Facio liberos ex liberis libris libraque.’” Geremy Coy’s work is featured at: www.geremycoy.com, and on DcbyDesign.com and the online edition of Washingtonian Magazine. nominated for eight Tony Awards, and won for Best Score and Best Choreography. Its limited run is now open-ended. The performance on March 31 was attended by classmates Patricia Joyce (A), Jon Church (A), Jim Jarvis (A), and Ann Peterson (and her children Andrea and Tyler). 1977 From Thomasina Brown (SFGI): “Taught for almost fifty years, then retired and then went back to teaching elementary school. Hoping to get back to campus sometime soon—my sons have brought their families by on visits recently, and we wish you the best of luck.” 1978 Victor Lee Austin (SF) is the author of Up with Authority: Why We Need Authority to Flourish as Human Beings (T & T Clark, 2010). He comments, “I was stumped in trying to write a normal academic book, when I realized that what I really wanted to do was to write an essay, not be an expert. This book is, it seems to me, just the sort of thing a Johnnie would write.” He and his wife, Susan (née Gavahan, SF76), are now grandparents. Fred Bohrer (A) has a new book, Photography and Archaeology, the result of almost a decade of research. It was published by Reaktion Books in November 2011. “I’m quite excited about it,” Bohrer comments. “It’s already listed on Amazon. I’m thrilled at how beautifully it has turned out.” Fred will be doing a presentation and book signing at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., on September 12. Laura Maclay (SF) just received certificates in Music Production and Advanced Music Production from the University of New Mexico’s continuing education division. She is also studying African drumming and playing accompaniment for dance classes and performances. Robert Perry (A) writes, “My wonderful wife and companion for 30 years, Kathy Squillace, lost her battle with cancer in April. She loved our class reunions and I want to thank all of you for making her so welcome at St. John’s.” Lucy Tamlyn (A) writes, “I am still with the State Department, currently stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Lisbon where I am Deputy Chief of Mission. It has been a very interesting career, and I’m pleased to see that St. John’s continues to be decently represented at the State Department (relative to its size, of course!).” 1980 Tom G. Palmer (A) is the author of Realizing Freedom: Libertarian Theory, History, and Practice (Cato Institute, 2009). His recent writings include “Classical Liberalism, Poverty, and Morality” in Poverty and Morality: Religious and Secular Perspectives, edited by William A. Galston and Peter Hoffenberg (Cambridge University Press, 2010) and The Morality of Capitalism (Jameson Books, 2011); he was its editor. After receiving his BA from St. John’s, he earned his MA from The Catholic University of America and his PhD from the University of Oxford. He is a board member of several think tanks, the advisor of Students for Liberty, and is involved with Mercy Corps and Mont Pelerin Society. 1981 Elizabeth Affsprung (A), known as “Buffy,” is currently pastor of First Presbyterian Church, Sunbury, Pennsylvania. Her son Joseph is The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 47 �alumni notes 1983 Liberal Arts Apps Peter McClard (SF) has released his 99-cent app called ‘pixound’ for iPhone and iPad. This app converts color into musical information and allows one to play pictures, which is more fun than it may sound. He recommends this app to any Johnnie who loves music and art; it shows how liberal arts can liberate new art forms. Find out more at www.pixound.com/ios. Inner Hebrides off Scotland’s Atlantic coast. His wife is a native of the island (population 150), which is called Gigha. She runs a dairy farm at the north end of the island, and Don makes flower essences (like the Bach Flower Remedies) with orchids that he grows in a greenhouse (see their website: www.healingorchids.com). In October 2011, their son was born there in the house. Don also has three wonderful children by his first marriage, now in their 20s. The youngest is studying at Stanford, near where he grew up. 1983 a sophomore at the College of Charleston, son Daniel is writing poetry and short stories, and husband Eric is a psychologist at Bloomsburg University. Buffy is taking lessons in relaxation from Petey the cat. John Schiavo (A) received his MA in the Management of Information Technology in 2010 from the University of Virginia. His and Monika Schiavo’s (A84) oldest daughter Hellena is a senior at St. John’s in Santa Fe, and their son, Anthony, is starting his second year in the Engineering School at Virginia Tech. 1982 Don Dennis (SF) lives on a wee island in the southern part of the Jack Armstrong (SF) writes, “Our son Michael finished college in December [studying film at the University of Southern California] and went straight to Central America to make a documentary on shamans. I can’t wait to see what he comes up with. Daughter Emily is in ninth grade, still obsessed with surfing. She has followed her brother and joined the rowing team. I look forward to joining St. John’s classmate Mike Henry at the river to watch our kids race. We [also] had a mini-reunion at Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre last month. A dozen Johnnies came for a party, and then we all watched Twelfth Night—really fun. We’ll be doing it again next year, so if you are in the area, please come.” 1984 Monika Schiavo (A) has just completed her course work and submitted her thesis for a master’s degree in the Smithsonian-Corcoran College History of Decorative Arts program. She has recently joined the board of the Decorative Arts Society, where she will be administering the website and helping with development and program efforts. 48 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 1986 1988 Carl Buffalo (SF) has changed his name to better reflect his gratitude toward his Native American ancestors. Shirley Banks (SF88), of Atlanta writes: “In the fall of 2011, I began work on a Master of Theological Studies degree at Candler School of Theology at Emory University. I work at Emory as a Health Educator and AASECT-Certified Sexuality Counselor in the Office of Health Promotion at Student Health & Counseling Services. I’ll be working on the MTS parttime on a Courtesy Scholarship (a sweet deal for university staff) while continuing full-time employment. I’m planning to investigate how Jesus and the Buddha understood the human problem and how their pedagogies reflected that understanding. I am not planning to be ordained. I lead hiking trail maintenance trips for American Hiking Society as a volunteer. In June, Marty Llewallen (SF 87) and I volunteered together for a week at Yosemite National Park, working on a trail maintenance crew at Hetch Hetchy. After not seeing each other in 25 years, we had no difficulty picking up where we left off, and I’m hoping Marty and his family will come South to backpack next spring.” Douglas A. Gentile (A) was recently selected by The Princeton Review as one of the top 300 professors in the U.S. Then The Huffington Post put him in the number-one position. “Based on what,” he writes, “I haven’t a clue.” Elisabeth Long (A) writes, “Since January 2012, I have a new position as associate University Librarian for Digital Services (still at the University of Chicago), which means I am now responsible for shaping our support programs for our faculty’s increasing use of digital technologies in their research.... My St. John’s education has been invaluable in being able to work with such a wide variety of research.... I can always be found in the University of Chicago directory and would love to hear from anyone coming through town.” Mally C. Strong (née Mechau, SF) from Carbondale, Colorado, writes, “I continue to work on my publication, Mountain Medicine Directory, and am so glad to have this project to sink myself into now that Homer (Reed College 2010, mathematics) and Jemima (SF15) are flown. I’m pretty peaceful.... My goals are to get better organized, go back to Naxos with my sister, Clarissa, for a solid month in the off-season, and read all the Palliser novels. Good wishes to all. This spring, life seems very sweet as I sketch out the garden plan and relish sleeping in late. The really big challenges in my life have been safely dispatched. I have no idea what’s next.” David Blankenbaker (SF) shares his haiku: “Outside our back door / A solitary cricket / Calls to the new moon.” 1989 From William Hickman (SF) and Stacey Phillips (SF): “Hello to all our classmates. We have lived in Portland for 18 years. We have a daughter, Mirabel (age 12), and we would love to hear what the rest of you are doing.” �alumni notes Mark Shiffman (A) recently published a translation of De Anima with Focus Press, and was awarded tenure at Villanova University, where he is Associate Professor in the Humanities Department and also teaches courses for Classics and Political Science. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife Cristina and sons Bruno (13) and Elio (7), and occasionally runs into Eliot Duhan at the pool in the summertime. 1992 Alec Berlin (SF) writes, “I’ve released a new record, Innocent Explanations, and am currently spending my time promoting it via radio and performance. Keep your eyes open for shows and such, especially on the East coast. Otherwise I’m still living in Brooklyn and still playing guitar for various theater projects. You can find my music on all the usual social media sites— check it out, and thanks!” 1994 William Kowalski (SF) wants to share the news that his first novel, Eddie’s Bastard, published in 1999, was referred to as an “overlooked American classic” in an October 2011 article in The Guardian. 1995 On September 23, 2011,—the Fall Equinox—Kira Zielinski (SF) and Nathan Blaesing were wed in a private ceremony in a stone circle in Clarkdale, Arizona. Jennifer Swaim (A) served as Zielinski’s Rhinemaiden of honor and fellow Valkyrie. Nathan and Kira plan to move to Cremona, Italy, in 2012, where they look forward to luthier school, period music ensembles, and many guests. Edward Scott Michael (AGI) and his wife, Anya Sammler, a 1998 Sewanee alum, are both Unitarian Universalist ministers. It has been a productive few years for Kersti Tyson (SF). She earned her PhD in Learning Science from the University of Washington in June 2011. She and her partner, Matthew Sexton, brought their son, Mateo Pond Sexton, into “this wild and wonderful world” in October 2011. In 2010, “the stars aligned” and she returned to her homeland, New Mexico. As an assistant professor in the department of Teacher Education at the University of New Mexico, she’s putting her education to work. She learns about learning so she can teach teachers (elementary mathematics) and does research on listening and learning. She urges classmates to stay in touch (kersti@unm.edu), especially if they are in New Mexico. Kira Zielinski (SF95) and Nathan Blaesing 1996 John T. Andrews (AGI) has taken a discussion to a local retirement community in Marin County, California, using texts from the Touchstones Discussion Project. Although the goal is primarily to engage group members in conversation and discussion about the text, the Touchstones technique of the small group helps them to get started and focus, and aids large-group discussion. The group’s size ranges from 12 to 20 participants on any given day; their average age is over 85 and they are sharp, witty, and engaged. After five years, John is “moving on” to pursue other volunteer opportunities. If any Johnnies in the Bay Area, especially Marin County, would be interested in continuing with this challenging and rewarding group starting in the fall of 2011, please contact John at stbch@att.net. 1997 Peter Eichstaedt (SFGI) is the author of four books: If You Poison Us: Uranium and Native Americans (Red Crane, 1994); First Kill Your Family: Child Soldiers of Uganda and the Lord’s Resistance Army (Lawrence Hill Books, 2009); Pirate State: Inside Somalia’s Terrorism at Sea (Lawrence Hill Books, 2010); and Consuming the Congo: War and Conflict Minerals in the World’s Deadliest Place (Lawrence Hill Books, 2011). Note the reviews of Pirate State and First Kill Your Family in the Fall 2011 issue of The College. Melanie Kirby (SF) and partner Mark Spitzig are excited to have expanded their hive. They welcomed Esai Mateo Aristaeus, who came as a belated birthday present for mama Melanie in late September. Esai has a big sister, Isis Rose Blossom, who is now 3½. This year also marks Melanie’s 15th anniversary as a professional apiculturist. She has been specializing in queen honeybee breeding. High altitude bees and babies keep buzzing! Email ziaqueenbees@hotmail.com. 1998 1999 Sarah Fridrich (SF) released her first full-length album of piano/ drum-based indie-rock, You Call That Brave, on June 4, 2011. Full recordings can be heard here: http://msfridrich.bandcamp.com. Any alum who wants a complimentary hard copy can email her directly at sarah@msfridrich.com, or purchase it from the website. Sarah makes a living as a private piano teacher—for more than 10 years now!—in the Washington, D.C. area. She credits her St. John’s education with making her a sought-after, versatile teacher. Mike and Abby Soejoto (both A) were happy to welcome their fifth child, Beatrice Marie, on February 25. Mike, Abby, Lucy (8), John (6), Cecilia (4), James (2), Beatrice, and McDuff the dog are still living in Los Angeles, taking advantage of the beach, the pool, and year-round soccer. Mike is an attorney, Abby homeschools the older kids, and the kids cheerfully spend all their free time memorizing passages from great books. Mike and Abby Soejoto (both A99) and family Juliana Laumakis (née Martonffy, A), and her husband, John, are very excited to announce the birth of their daughter, Thea Lucia Laumakis, in December 2011. Her big sisters are pretty smitten with her, too! The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 49 �alumni notes 2000 Mark Shiflett, (SF) left the Active Duty Navy as a Chief Petty Officer last month, and has transitioned to the U.S. Naval Reserve. “I will be staying here in Yokosuka, Japan, having taken on a federal civil service job at the U.S. Navy’s Japan Regional Maintenance Center. It was hard to leave active duty—saltwater streams in my veins—but a more ‘regular’ job (and one that doesn’t require being away on deployment for five to seven months at a time) works better for me, my wife, Yasuyo, son Ben (5), and daughter Mia (6 months).” 2001 After graduating from medical school in 2010, Adriana de Julio (SF) spent part of 2011 in Las Vegas, Nevada, as a surgical intern. She decided against surgery residency and went for psychiatry. In March 2012, she was matched to a medical residency at the University of Illinois in Advocate Lutheran General Hospital. She will begin her training in psychiatry in June 2012 in the Windy City. Her main interests will be working with veterans with Traumatic Brain Injury and doing community psychiatry with Assertive Community Treatment Teams in the Northwest Chicago area. Training takes a minimum of four years, but she will be there no less than five years to complete a psych-neuro fellowship. Dan Weiland (A) is the manager of a pair of Bikram’s Hot Yoga Studios in Portland, Oregon. Visit anytime! 2002 Charles Green (AGI) writes, “I recently added Publishers Weekly to the list of publications for which I review books. I’m also very excited about buying my condo in Annapolis. Life is wonderful!” Maria (Goena) Leigh (SF) performs in The Odyssey on Angel Island State Park in California. This site-specific, interactive performance unfolds over the course of five hours. Once on the island, audience members receive a map, timecard, and survival “kit bag” to support them as they navigate the carefully crafted scenes, interactive installations, meals, and diverse pathways through the space. She urges Johnnies anywhere near the Bay Area to come experience The Odyssey as you’ve never seen it before. Visit www.weplayers.org for additional information. After earning a degree in Classics from New York University and a masters in philosophy, John Rogove (A) has been living in Paris for the last six years, finishing his doctorate in philosophy on the a priori in Husserl’s phenomenology at the Université Paris-Sorbonne, where he teaches philosophy. He also taught at Boston College. Lauren Shofer (A) and Baldwyn Bourgois share their birth announcement: Emile Bourgois, born on August 29, 2011, joins his sister, Amelie, and brother, Julian. They live in Aalst, Belgium. Michael and Rachel (née Roccia) Sullivan (both A) will be moving to Honolulu, Hawaii, in September 2012. Rachel will be pursuing a two-year child and adolescent psychiatry fellowship after finishing her adult psychiatry residency training at Walter Reed Military Medical Center. Michael will be teaching and reading philosophy on the beach, under palm trees, and by waterfalls. Their two daughters, Clare (7) and Grace (5), are doing well and looking forward to seeing erupting volcanoes. 50 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 Christopher J. Warnagiris (A) is deployed to the Mediterranean Sea and Middle East aboard the USS Iwo Jima in support of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit. 2003 Alana Chernila (SF) has a new book titled The Homemade Pantry: 101 Foods You Can Stop Buying and Start Making. It’s available on Amazon.com. On March 9, 2012, Lawrence (Ler) Nelson (SFGI) successfully defended his doctoral dissertation on “Chan Sickness and the Master’s Role in Its Diagnosis, Treatment, and Prevention” at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. Kate Redding (A) recently completed her MA in Music with an Emphasis in Piano Technology from Florida State University. She writes, “I look forward to resuming my career as a professional piano tuner and rebuilder with the information and skills that I learned in graduate school!” Cassie Sherman (A) and Martin Marks (A04) are surprised, grateful, and most of all ridiculously happy to announce that, after more than ten years of friendship, they seem to have fallen in love and gotten engaged. The wedding will take place in the spring of 2013. Given their mutual love of Spoonerisms, the joined and hyphenated last name that will result should provide amusement for decades to come. 2004 Kristi Durbin (A) returned to school full-time this fall, studying Sustainable Agriculture at the University of Kentucky. She dreams of owning land in the Bluegrass region and running a Community Supported Agriculture program in the future. Rhonda Ortiz (née Franklin, A) writes that her “husband Jared (AGI05) successfully defended his PhD dissertation on Augustine’s theology of creation in February at The Catholic University of America and will graduate in May. He has also accepted a position as Assistant Professor of Religion at Hope College in Holland, Michigan. Holland is as-cute-as-a-button (our mothers will love it), located near the shore of Lake Michigan. We’ve already purchased snow boots. I am working on a novel. I haven’t written much fiction and I hardly know anything about the matter, but I’m learning as I go. Benedict, our oneyear-old, grows like a weed; he’s one hundred percent ‘snakes and snails and puppy dogs’ tails.’ We look forward to seeing any Johnnie friends passing through Michigan. Email me at rhondaortiz@gmail.com.” Lucia Staiano-Daniels (SF) began her PhD program at UCLA last year, focusing on the history of philosophy and modern European intellectual and cultural history. Her first publication, “Illuminated Darkness: Hegel’s Brief and Unexpected Elevation of Indian Thought in ‘On the Episode of the Mahabharata known by the name Bhagavad-Gita,’ by Wilhelm von Humboldt,” is forthcoming from the Owl of Minerva, the magazine of the Hegel Society of America. “It’ll be out sometime after Christmas,” she writes. “I’m enjoying Los Angeles’s excellent climate and wide variety of interesting food, although the thought of my upcoming qualifying exams terrifies me. I am also pleased to announce my catechumenate in the Orthodox Church. I miss having Johnnies to talk to; you all are welcome to write me at luciasdan@gmail.com.” �alumni notes Finding Intellectual Courage by Gregory Shook and Deborah Spiegelman Jay Youngdahl (sfgi03) melds a lawyer’s activism with intellect Growing up in Little Rock, Arkansas, during the height of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, Jay Youngdahl (sfgi03) was keenly attuned to the social injustices and unrest experienced by African Americans living in the Deep South. Knowing that he wanted a life of service, he found inspiration in his family of advocates for social welfare and civil and political rights. His grandfather was the dean of the School of Social Work at Washington University in the 1940s—his department was the first to admit African American students. In 1957, nine African American students were denied entrance to Little Rock Central High School in defiance of the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling ordering integration of public schools. This landmark act of the civil rights movement focused the nation’s eyes on Youngdahl’s hometown. Deeply affected by these events in his own backyard, he became an attorney specializing in civil rights law, union law, and discrimination law on behalf of minorities and women. As a young attorney, “I had an activist’s courage,” says Youngdahl, “but I also wanted an intellectual courage.” That desire led him to St. John’s in 2001. “It was a way to try to light up those parts of my brain that I hadn’t used in those last 25 years [practicing law].” Youngdahl embraced the Program, which he describes as “showing the arc and commonality of issues and concerns expressed by our human species. [The fact that] our worries of today have been the focus of great minds throughout human history is extraordinarily helpful to consideration and comfort with such issues.” At the Graduate Institute in Santa Fe, he was excited to explore new authors and approached familiar works with a fresh perspective— and “learned to read Shakespeare like never before.” In 2005, Youngdahl found himself at a crossroads. Believing he had accomplished all that he could in his chosen field, he was ready to make way for a new influx of young lawyers, eager to “carry the torch to do the right thing” for civil and workers’ rights. Although he continues to practice law today, he was ready to challenge himself in new ways. An eternal activist who believes in the power of ideas to foster change, Youngdahl began exploring ways to elevate discourse on important issues. Having practiced law throughout the South and Southwest, he had worked on cases regarding claims by injured Navajo rail workers, who for more than 100 years took on the arduous work of laying and anchoring tracks. Seeking “to understand the culture, the people, and to try to improve their lives and situations,” Youngdahl had done archival research and oral history on the Navajo Reservation. In his new book, Working on the Railroad, Walking in Beauty: Navajos, Hózhq, and Track Work, Youngdahl presents a cultural ´ history of how Navajo track workers have modified their traditions, particularly religious practices, to protect themselves against the perils of their livelihood. His experience at St. John’s is evident in his multi-disciplinary approach: the book touches on philosophy, religion, literature, economics, human rights, and conversation. Today Youngdahl raises awareness of important social and political issues through journalism. As the majority owner of the Oakland, California-based newspaper East Bay Express, he is committed to “producing hard-hitting journalism and fighting to keep quality journalism alive.” He also contributes a biweekly column, “Raising the Bar,” in which he addresses ethical and moral perspectives on current issues and events. In addition, Youngdahl is an in-demand speaker, traveling to colleges and universities around the country to talk about matters close to his heart. At Harvard Divinity School, where he graduated with a master’s degree in 2007, he recently gave a talk about the juxtaposition of compassion for others as the basis of moral action and an ethical life. Youngdahl continues to examine the world around him and generate dialogue to find ways to make it a better place. Concerned with how “the speed of human life today makes important considerations seem to just zip by the window of our moving societal train, leaving us without the ability to fruitfully examine and evaluate them,” he makes a point to carve out time for personal reflection. As Youngdahl writes in his book, for the Navajos, to “walk in beauty” requires harmony and order in the universe. It also takes courage. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 51 �alumni notes 2005 Samantha Buker (A) writes this note fresh from filing her most recent opera review for the City Paper. This year, she also began freelancing for The Washington Post. In even bigger news, she’s published her first book: Little Book of the Shrinking Dollar. She hopes every single dollar-earner in America will pick up a copy of this shocking, yet handy book of currency problems and solutions that she co-authored with Addison Wiggin (SFGI96). She soldiers on as managing editor at Agora Financial, which sends her to far-flung corners of the globe. After a stint on a 2,700-acre beachside ranch in Nicaragua, she had a brief rest before heading off to Mongolia, ever on the quest for a new investment opportunity. Feel free to reach her at sam.buker@gmail.com (or please leave a nice book review on Amazon). Best adventures to all! Note Buker’s article “Tracing the Phenomenon of the Perfect Concert” in The College Fall 2011. Jon Cotner (SFGI) writes, “I’m co-author of Ten Walks/Two Talks, which was selected as a Best Book of 2010 by The Week, The Millions, Time Out Chicago, and Bookslut. My new collaboration is called Conversations over Stolen Food. I live in Brooklyn, NewYork, where I teach in Pratt Institute’s Creative Writing Program.” 2006 Norman Allen’s (AGI) play, On the Eve of Friday Morning, was produced by the Oregon Children’s Theatre in 2011. His other play, The House Halfway, will be part of the Source Theatre Festival in Washington, D.C., this summer. This May, he’ll be the guest of the Mladinsko Theatre in Ljubljana, Slovenia, where he will lead a twoday playwriting workshop and also will see his play, Nijinsky’s Last Dance, performed. Shilo Brooks (A) and Siobhan Aitchison (A05) were engaged in January and plan to marry this summer. Shilo expects to complete his PhD in political theory at Boston College this winter, and Siobhan expects to complete her Masters in landscape architecture at Harvard next spring. Jonathan Freeman-Coppadge (A) and his husband, Darren, recently bought their first home in Odenton, ten miles north of Annapolis. Jonathan continues to teach English and French at Indian Creek School, and will finish his MA in English at Bread Loaf School of English next summer. Daniel Grimm (SF) has been accepted to Rutgers University School of Law for the fall term. Enrolled in the night program, he will continue working part-time at Hartman & Winnicki, P.C., a law firm in New Jersey. Daniel and his wife just had a baby girl, Parker Bay, last October. Their restaurant, Fishbar, now in its fourth season, continues to do well. The two are hoping their daughter can start seating tables soon! Erin Ingham (A) and Mark Ingham (SF05) joyfully welcomed the arrival of their first child, Gabriel Joseph Ingham, at 6:06 a.m. on March 29. Born at 8.5 pounds, 20.5 inches, Gabriel is doing great! Emily Terrell, formerly Nisch, (A) will attend Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina, this fall. Hollis Thoms (AGI) will have an article, “Rolling His Jolly Tub: Composer Elliott Carter, St. John’s College Tutor, 1940-1942,” published in the upcoming St. John’s Review. Thoms did research at the St. John’s College Library Archives, the Maryland State Archives, and the Library of Congress on Elliott Carter, one of the great living 52 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 on malaria eradication. 2009 Rowenna (Thorson) (A10) and Nate Oesch (A09) American composers, who recently celebrated his 103rd birthday. 2007 Chelsea Batten (A) is a writer and itinerant journalist. She profiled Geremy Coy (A06) for this issue of the magazine. You can read more of her work at www.chelseabatten.com. Jack Langworthy (SF) writes, “From 2009 to 2011, I served in the Peace Corps teaching math and physics in a village in Tanzania. St. John’s prepared me for that experience more than I expected. I felt right at home teaching in a physics laboratory with no modern technology, and learned Kiswahili with ease. Ancient Greek was way more difficult. I started helping farmers preserve and trade their maize when prices spiked. After Peace Corps, I was lucky enough to use those skills to get a job managing a micro venture capitalist firm called Cheetah Development here in Tanzania. Any Johnnies are more than welcome to a place to stay if they are passing through Iringa, Tanzania.” 2008 John Matthew Griffis (SF) will be attending Parsons The New School for Design this fall to pursue his MFA in Design and Technology. Jessica Seiler (A) is currently working for the Peace Corps in Senegal, West Africa. She finished her two years in the village and was given a job in the big city working Nate Oesch (A) and Rowenna Thorson Oesch (A10) were married in the Great Hall on July 23, 2011, with 16 Johnnies (including seven National Champion croquet players) and one tutor in attendance. Following the ceremony, Luke Russell (A), Sam Porter (A), and Robbie Shaver (A) provided excellent jazz music in Randall Hall. Rowenna completed her MEd at Loyola University in 2011 and is now teaching in a Montessori school in Bowie. Nate does research for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety in Arlington. 2010 Candice Benge (SFGI) and colleagues have recently started a theater co-op, Transient Theater, in San Francisco. They’re mounting their first production this summer and taking it on tour across the U.S. for six weeks. Visit their website at www.transienttheater.com or contact Candice for more information. Ethan Brooks (A) is a Marine Officer at The Basic School and recently was pleased to receive Ground Intelligence as his occupational specialty. He looks forward to graduating in October and attending Infantry Officer’s Course in January 2013. Megan Kennedy (A) is currently taking Russian classes in Washington, D.C., preparing for a PhD program in Russian literature in the fall of 2012. She is hoping to find a full-time, entry-level job in the metro area that would help support her while she pursues further education. �in memoriam Luke Harvey Poe Jr. Scott A. Abbott march 30, 2012 Tutor and assistant dean, Annapolis Class of 1943 august 28, 2011 The college community mourns the loss of Luke Harvey Poe Jr. and is deeply grateful for his service as a tutor and assistant dean. Born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1916, Poe received his BS in mathematics and a JD from the University of Virginia. As a Rhodes Scholar, he earned a PhD from Oxford University, Christ Church. After serving four years in World War II as a Lieutenant Commander with the North Atlantic, he joined the faculty of St. John’s in 1946. Poe’s rich legacy to the college includes his support of the efforts to open St. John’s to African American students, especially its first, Martin Dyer (Class of 1952). After Poe left St. John’s in 1960, he lectured for governmental and academic organizations, including the Foreign Service Institute, the International Labor Center, the Aspen Institute, and the U.S. Air Force War College. Dedicated to the Annapolis community, Poe worked to have the city declared a Historic District and served on local boards and associations. He was finishing his book, A Study of the Origins of the Political Philosophy of the American Republic, at the time of his death. He is survived by his wife, Josephine Jastor Poe (Class of 1957). A memorial service was held on May 19 in the Great Hall. Scott Alexander Abbott (1921-2011) lived his life in service to others. As a teacher known for his generous heart, Abbott’s favorite subjects were history, geography, and civics. He taught elementary through college students and continued tutoring until he was 83. Abbot never stopped extolling the merits of the seminar approach to learning. He is survived by his daughters Jane, Becky, and Debby Abbott, and Sue Schneider. Philip Camponeschi Class of 1946 january 4, 2012 Philip Camponeschi of Rattail Ridge, Conn., was born on May 30, 1923, in New York City. After serving in the Military Police during World War II, he attended St. John’s in Annapolis and married his first wife, Mary Jean Casey. He obtained his JD from the University of Maryland in 1957. Camponeschi was a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, a speechwriter for vice president Hubert Humphrey, a leader in the Peace Corps, and a professor of philosophy and literature at SUNY Old Westbury in Long Island, where he met his second wife, Nejla. He loved spending time with his family and friends. A memorial service was held at Friends School in Baltimore, Maryland, on January 14, 2012. Philip is survived by his wife, Nejla; five children, Scott Camponeschi, Lisa Mistovich, John Camponeschi, and Geannnan Camponeschi-Papanicolaou; and nine grandchildren. In lieu of flowers, his family asks that contributions be made to UNICEF. Classmates such as Jules Pagano (Class of 1948) remember him as someone who “listened with that intelligent and respectful care which earned him the right to be heard with comparable respect when he spoke.” Peter Davies (Class of 1948) saw him as “a wonderful role model—his wisdom and probing intellect were valuable examples for those of us who had not experienced war as he and older Johnnies had.” Allan Hoffman (Class of 1949) writes, “I remember Phil as being hilariously acerbic. Phil and Jules Pagano once saved me from being beaten up by some “townies” who crashed one of the cotillions.” In retirement, “he was happy with his garden of vegetables and herbs.” below: Philip Camponeschi (Class of 1946) and Bill Goldsmith (Class of 1946). Peter Weiss (Class of 1946) notes, “I always thought of him as a man of ‘the people,’ in the best sense of that word, who was as seriously concerned about the true, the beautiful, and the difference between prudence and wisdom as some of us ‘intellectuals.’” Philo L. Dibble (A76) october 1, 2011 Ten days before his death, Philo Louis Dibble (1951-2011), a Foreign Service officer, completed his most notorious assignment—helping to free two American hikers imprisoned in Iran. The Washington Post reports that Shane Bauer, Joshua Fattal, and Sarah E. Shourd had been hiking in the mountains of Turkey when Iranian authorities apprehended them for allegedly crossing the Iranian border. Shourd was released; the two men were convicted of espionage by an Iranian court and sentenced to eight years in a Tehran prison. Dibble, who retired in 2006 as one of the State Department’s leading authorities on Iran, returned four years later as the Department’s deputy assistant secretary for Iran, coordinating efforts to secure the hikers’ release. Dibble never met the freed hikers. Born in Alexandria, Egypt, where his father also served in the Foreign Service, Dibble received his MA in international affairs from Johns Hopkins University in 1980, after attending St. John’s. He died from a heart attack at his home in McLean, Virginia. He is survived by his wife, Elizabeth Link Dibble; three daughters, Kate, Sarah, and Caroline; his mother, Cleopatra B. Dibble; and a brother. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 53 �in memoriam Captain Alton L. “Red” Waldron (HA07), september 2, 2011 Captain Alton L. “Red” Waldron, USN RET, died at his Annapolis home at 93. Waldron had great affection for the college, having participated in seminars for 50 years. In 1935, he attended the U.S. Naval Academy; his numerous tours of duty included Pearl Harbor and Guadalcanal. Among his awards were the Silver Star and the Legion of Merit. Predeceased by his wife of 60 years, Katherine Joyce Waldron, he is survived by his daughter, McShane W. Glover. Loretta Wasserman (SFGI86) and Irving Wasserman (SFGI86) Loretta Wasserman (1924-August 7, 2011) and Irving Wasserman (1926-August 25, 2011) were honored at a memorial service at Homecoming 2011 in Annapolis. During a sabbatical year (1972-1973) at St. John’s in Annapolis, and a summer (1974) at the Graduate Institute in Santa Fe, Irving taught and Loretta took classes. Loretta received her MA in English from the University of Minnesota and was a professor of English at Grand Valley State University in Michigan from 1966 until her retirement in 1991, when she published her book, Willa Cather: A Study of the Short Fiction. Irving received his MA in philosophy from the University of Indiana. He worked as an editor and was a professor of philosophy at Grand Valley State University. They are survived by two children, Adam and Jessica, and four grandchildren. March 6, 2012 Patrick New, SFGI08, August 29, 2011 Also Deceased: Donna Gavora, A80, January 5, 2012 Louise Antinori, AGI88, April 8, 2012 George Graefe, Class of 1941, December 14, 2011 Richard Ballen, A67, July 17, 2011 Todd Grier, Class of 1938, April 26, 2012 Richard Batt, Jr., Class of 1951, February 3, 2012 Dexter Haven, Class of 1942, March 12, 2011 Teddy Betts, Class of 1949, September 18, 2011 Cecilia Holtman, SFGI71, February 5, 2012 Robert Bonham, Class of 1945, December 18, 2011 Daniella Hope, SF82, July 31, 2008 Jonathan Brooks, Class of 1949, October 31, 2011 Gilbert Hull, Class of 1942, February 5, 2008 Jeffrey Cynx, A73, December 24, 2011 Ralph Keeney, Class of 1945, May 15, 1999 Augusta DeGrazia, A77, October 20, 2011 David Kerr, A71, October 10, 2011 Donald Edwards, Class of 1959, August 15, 2011 Jane Evans, SFGI84, April 20, 2012 Carl Linden, April 2, 2012 Annapolis tutor from 1965 to 1970. College memorial to be announced. Ruth Farrell, A74, January 17, 2012 William Lundberg, Class of 1945, October 15, 2006 Sidney Rosenthal, Class of 1948, March 5, 2006 Jon Ferrier, A73, January 6, 2012 Joseph Morray, Class of 1949, November 27, 2011 Lawrence Saporta, A90, September 9, 2011 Charles Forbes, Class of 1940, July 11, 2009 Arthur Myers, Class of 1938, October 28, 2011 Dr. Donald Saunders, SFGI92, July 2, 2011 Edna Frye, SFGI71, Robert Neslund, SFGI80, October 9, 2011 Henry Shryock, Class of 1932, February 17, 2012 54 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 Jon Park O’Donnell, AGI80, June 13, 2011 John B. “Jack” Owens, Class of 1937, February 4, 2012 Marcia Peterson, A70, March 29, 2012 Phillip A. Pollard, AGI92, October 29, 2011 Richard Siegle, A65, September 8, 2011 Alexander Slafkosky, Class of 1943, July 15, 2011 Everett Smith, Class of 1937, August 6, 2005 Richard Stevens, A69, December 8, 2011 Gene Thornton, Class of 1945, January 10, 2012 Roger Tilton, Class of 1945, May 22, 2011 Lenke Vietorisz, Class of 1962, October 27, 2011 Robert Warren, SFGI93, December 29, 2011 Leroy Webster, Class of 1936, May 7, 1998 Richard Woodman, Class of 1935, June 15, 2011 Elizabeth Grant Yolton, A75, November 10, 2011 Jonathan Zorn, SF72, April 25, 2011 Dr. Martha Post, SF79, September 1, 2011 Neil Potash, Class of 1962, April 16, 2012 David Pugh, Class of 1932, October 6, 2000 Victor Purdy, Class of 1951, April 9, 2012 Siobhan Reynolds, SFGI94, December 24, 2011 Barbara Rigall, A84, January 17, 2012 Correction to a Fall 2011 obituary: The work of Sydney Wynne Porter—not Wayne—(Class of 1954) at Three Mile Island demonstrated that there was a release of fewer than 20 curies of iodine 131 into the environment. In press interviews, he stated that the U.S. was receiving many times that amount of fallout from Chinese nuclear tests. Porter was a professor of radiation physics at Drexel University and a benefactor of St. John’s. Apologies and thanks to Temple Porter (A62) for this clarification. �alumni news Notes from the chancellor johnson house By Leo Pickens (A78) “Why in heaven’s name would you ever want to leave your private little duchy in the Temple, where, for all intents and purposes, you’re paid to play with the students, to take on the thankless and nearly impossible job of trying to keep our perpetually restive alumni happy? Have you taken leave of your senses?” JEN BEHRENS “I like that idea,” she responded. “It seems to be a kind of excellence.” She referred me to Book IV, Chapter 1 of the Nicomachean Ethics. The last time I encountered this passage was my freshman year at St. John’s 37 years ago, and it had slipped from my memory, but upon reading, the words seemed fresh with insight: “It is not unclear that acting well and doing beautiful things go with giving . . . and This from a rather plain-speaking generous people are loved practically colleague of mine (who happens, by the the most of those who are recognized way, to be an alum) upon hearing that for virtue, since they confer benefit and I was interested in succeeding Jo Ann this consists in giving.” Mattson as director of Alumni Relations Then later in this examination Aristoin Annapolis. This co-worker’s amazed tle states—and this to my mind is the real puzzlement, I believe, mirrors that of gist: “But generosity is meant in relamany in our community, so allow me to tion to one’s means, for the generosity is share my reasons for making the move. not in the amount of what is given, but First, after nearly 23 years in the same in the active condition of the giver and role, I feel ready for something fresh. this depends on one’s means. So nothIt’s really that simple. I pride myself on ing prevents someone who gives less being, first and foremost, a fairly able from being the more generous if one is administrator—in the traditional sense giving out of a smaller supply.” of the word: a minister or servant—and Aristotle’s “active condition” of givam eager to serve the college in a new ing at a level appropriate to our means capacity. And for someone like me, who applies as well, I believe, to our most is constantly encouraging the students important supply of riches—our own to step out of their comfort zone and time and energy. have a go at something strange and difThis leads to the question I want to ficult, it’s high time that I practice what ask of all my fellow alumni: how can we, I preach. the permanent members of the college, In addition, I am grateful to have stay actively engaged with each other— been able to participate for so long in Leo Pickens (A78), director, Alumni Relations, Annapolis doing beautiful things—and help keep the work of the Program (if you believe, the wheel of the Program turning? as some old-time jocks like me do, that Let me conclude with this conversaathletics are an integral part of the ProThe importance of the alumni’s role in tion with the dean, Pamela Kraus. In gram), and now I feel led to do my part to the college was brought home to me recent- discussing my meditation on generosity, I try to help with the challenges of sustaining ly in a conversation I had with a longtime asked, “Is there an element of generosity in the Program at this critical period in the tutor and alumnus. “The long-term health the classroom?” history of the college. What better prepaof the college,” he said, “depends upon our “All good teaching,” she said, “involves ration could I have possibly had to take alumni.” a kind of open giving—a willingness to share on the work of alumni relations—in which This has led me to reflect quite a bit on with others freely.” participation is the sine qua non—than such generosity—for cultivating and practicing “Do you think,” I asked, “that the books long seasoning in a job for which one of generosity appears to be at the heart of a we read are generous in some way?” the main goals was that of getting out the vibrant alumni program. In a conversa“The books have a kind of restraint,” she players? Helping nurture the spirit of one tion with tutor and alumna Katie Heines, I said. “We have to give to them before they community was another of my major efforts expressed my thought that generosity must give to us. We might have to work hard to as athletic director. I look forward to taking be some kind of a habit. get to their riches, but they are capable of this same effort outward into our alumni “Maybe giving,” I said, “is something enormous generosity.” diaspora. that we can practice on a regular basis.” The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 55 �alumni news s av e t h e d a t e Homecoming 2012 Annapolis Friday, September 28– Sunday, September 30 Paintings and Proust in California Southern California alumni gathered from June through October at the homes of Los Angeles alumni chapter president Tom Melgun (SFGI08) and K.C. Victor (A75) to tackle Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way. “It’s a literary and psychological work [that is] an act of genius,” says Victor. Approximately seven determined alumni met for five sessions and used a creative approach to exploring this first of seven works in Proust’s magnum opus. Deirdre Sloyan (A67) arrived at the initial session with a book that surveys the numerous Western paintings referenced in Swann’s Way, which Victor described as “an invaluable resource.” With lively discussions over French-inspired potluck fare and madeleines, the seminars were so successful that the Southern California alumni chapter scheduled additional seminars on the remaining texts in Proust’s monumental series, In Search of Lost Time. —Gregory Shook Dear Alumni, At Homecoming 2012 we will celebrate the 75th anniversary of the New Program. There will be numerous activities throughout the weekend—including a panel discussion on Saturday afternoon among former and current deans, tutors, and alumni—that will recognize the history of the New Program and the college. Please join us and your classmates as we celebrate St. John’s College. Alumni Association President Lee Katherine Goldstein (SFGI90) For more information and to register: http://alumni. stjohnscollege.edu. Click on “Homecoming.” Annapolis Alumni Office 410-626-2531 alumni@sjca.edu Santa Fe Alumni Office 505-984-6103 alumni@sjcsf.edu 56 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 KATIE MATLACK Presidents Christopher Nelson and Mike Peters Alumni Leadership Forum 2012 KATIE MATLACK Santa Fe Friday, September 14– Sunday, September 16 More than 100 alumni attended ALF 2012. Shown here, alumni re-live a Galileo-inspired junior lab experiment—one of several sessions that engaged alumni in leadership and the life of the college—at the Alumni Leadership Forum on June 8-10 in Annapolis. AFL 2013 will be held on June 7–9 in Santa Fe. “ This is a very exciting time to be involved in the leadership of the Alumni Association and to be working with the college. Together, we are creating more ways in which alumni can engage with and contribute to the well-being of the college, the students, and other alumni.” �alumni news Art and Conversation in Denver Nestled in the heart of the Mile High City’s cultural district, nearly a dozen Denver/Boulder alumni chapter members challenged their minds—and awakened their senses—in a rather unlikely setting for a seminar. Last September, the group gathered together in a coffee shop on the second floor of the Denver Art Museum for a conversation on the existential perspectives of Simone de Beauvoir; in particular, her 1947 work of nonfiction, The Ethics of Ambiguity. Encouraged by chapter leader Beth Kuper (SF69), alumna from the pioneer class at Santa Fe, Elizabeth Jenny (SF80) was inspired by the Washington, D.C., alumni chapter’s recent seminar on de Beauvoir. “I was looking to integrate the senses with the intellect,” says Jenny, a commercial artist who taught graphic design for several years at Montgomery College in Rockville, Maryland. “And ALL ABOUT SHAKESPEARE IN PHILLY Last spring, in keeping with an annual tradition begun several years ago by Jack Armstrong (SF83), several Johnnies gathered at the theater for a party and mini-reunion, then watched a performance of Twelfth Night. From left: Steve Zartarian, Peggy Kozierachi, Helen Zartarian (AGI86), Sigmund Kozierachi, Adam Thimmig (A07), Matt Horst (A07), Cynthia Tobias (AGI05), Leslie (Laszlo) Ujj (A07), and Carmen Khan. the museum turned out to be a great community partner,” adds Jenny. “The institutional and the personal played together so nicely.” Seeking an innovative twist on the traditional seminar format, Jenny arranged a postseminar tour of the museum’s impressive collection of contemporary Western art, which combines the literary arts with the visual arts. The collection features work by artists Clyde Aspevig, Len Chmiel, Daniel Morper, Leon Loughridge, and T. Allen Lawson, including images depicting landscapes completely dominated by man, as well as more idyllic views of man and nature in harmony. Alumni from the Denver Chapter mingle over cocktails and conversation at Robin Riddel Lima’s (SF77) Native American Trading Company after a seminar and art tour at the Denver Art Museum. “The tour provided a powerful, thought-provoking juxtaposition to the de Beauvoir seminar reading,” says Jenny. After this full day of intellectual stimulation, the Colorado alumni chapter members and friends mingled over hors d’oeuvres and signature cocktails—the Apollonian (vodka and apple martini) and the Dionysian (martini with a sugar and Absinthe-dipped rim)—at the Native American Trading Company, across the street from the Denver Art Museum. The gallery’s founders and owners, Jack and Robin Riddel Lima (SF77), hosted the event. There, among the vibrant displays of antique weavings, pottery, baskets, jewelry, artifacts, and vintage photographs, alumni reawakened their senses and kept the relaxed conversation flowing well into the evening. The Colorado alumni credited the party-like atmosphere to the generous hospitality of the Limas, whose gallery is “a work of art itself,” says Jenny. “They brought us into their world, which was great for facilitating conversation.” —Gregory Shook Piraeus In Santa Fe, Piraeus 2012 kicked off on January 13-15 with seminars on selected stories from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, led by tutors Jay Smith (SF77) and Alan Zetilin. In June, alumni in Annapolis explored Misha Berlinski’s Fieldwork and Clifford Geertz’s Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology, led by Eva Brann and David Carl, and Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood and several of her short stories, led by Tom May and David Townsend. Attendee Gil Roth (AGI95) returned to campus after 17 years and was inspired to interview May and Townsend for his blog, “Virtual Memories.” (Podcast: http://chimeraobscura.com/vm/ podcast-here-at-the-western-world). Mark your calendar for Annapolis Piraeus 2013 May 30-June 2. Piraeus is offered several times each year on each campus. CONNECT TO THE COLLEGE Alumni online community: http://alumni.stjohnscollege.edu/ Agora career mentoring network: http://alumni.stjohnscollege.edu click on “Career Services” Alumni offices: alumni@sjca.edu alumni @sjcsf.edu Facebook: facebook.com/stjohnscollege The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 57 �johnnie traditions Rite of Spring by Gregory Shook Grey skies and chilly temperatures couldn’t dampen the Johnnies’ spirits as they gathered on April 28 in and around the Great Hall to celebrate the 30th annual St. John’s-U.S. Naval Academy Croquet Match—nor did the event’s new ground rules quash the convivial atmosphere. In fact, for many alumni, the highly cherished rite of spring signaled a return to form. The class of 1984 led the charge, providing quintessential Johnnie enthusiasm throughout the day. Per tradition, honored member(s) of the St. John’s community struck the opening shot. This year, Claiborne Booker (A84) and Adrian Trevisan (A84)—who received the new “Prime Mover” award—swung the mallet in unison. The Johnnies swept the Mids 5-0, racking up 25 victories out of 30 matches. Spectators donned outrageous, vintage-inspired attire, with a few new twists. Ornate, wide-brimmed hats like those seen topping the Duchess of Cambridge were en vogue. And young alumni donned fancy footwear and filled the air with the robust aroma of cigars. The St. John’s school song, “St. John’s Forever,” even got a makeover. However, the most conspicuous bend on tradition was the sighting of an Elvis impersonator—by all counts, a first. Unchanged was the fact that, for alumni, the annual match is as much about catching up with old friends and reconnecting to the college as it is about the competition. “Croquet has evolved into our annual spring reunion,” says Leo Pickens (A78), director of Alumni Relations on the Annapolis campus. This is certainly true for a devoted group of more than a dozen alumni from the class of 1984. “I’ve attended 27 of the last 30 58 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 matches,” says John Ertle (A84), the pioneer croquet team’s Imperial Wicket. Sporting a neon Hawaiian-print hat and ubiquitous “Beat Navy” button, Ertle says that all year he looks forward to attending the event along with his wife, Kathy Ertle (A84), and their two sons. An admirer of tradition, Ertle points out, “This is the same hat that I wore during the first croquet match.” He adds, “Even today’s weather is just like it was then.” Huddled around the front steps of the Barr-Buchanan Center, spectators anticipated one of the match’s most revered traditions—the unveiling of the Johnnie team’s uniforms. And the Johnnies did not disappoint. Bursting through the doors to a cheering crowd, the players donned replica St. John’s Public Safety Officer’s uniforms, complete with functioning walkie-talkies, mirrored shades, and novelty mustaches. It was a playful spoof on the new ground rules, for which the Imperial Wicket and team showed tremendous support. “It’s important to keep it fun,” says Johnnie Fleming (A12), the team’s Imperial Wicket and the fifth in his family to graduate from St. John’s. Fleming refers to both the competition and the fact that the croquet match has grown from a purely St. John’s event to one that includes the wider community; hence the college’s new policies restricting outside alcohol and other changes. “We want croquet to be something that we can all enjoy and that reflects well on our community,” says Pickens. Fleming echoes this desire; he penned an editorial in The Gadfly weeks before the match to make his point. “We’ve opened our campus to the public and it certainly would be a bummer if the [wider community members] who come were to ruin it for the people already here.” After 30 years of croquet in Annapolis, the pageantry and spirit remain strong, if somewhat evolved. As Fleming notes, “[Johnnies] have built it, and people just keep coming, and it is excellent.” �Ornate, wide-brimmed hats like those seen topping the Duchess of Cambridge were en vogue. And young alumni donned fancy footwear and filled the air with the robust aroma of cigars. St. John’s Forever New lyrics by Charles Branan (A13) Arranged by John Bonn True love of wisdom is sheltered in her halls. Seekers of virtue will answer to her call. Books and a balance are all the tools we need. St. John’s forever! She will make us free. Clockwise (from top): Spectator Susanna Herrick shows off her wide-brimmed hat; Patrick E. McDowell (A01) and his wife, Citlali, in festive attire; Imperial Wickets Johnnie Fleming (A12) and John Ertle (A84, the original Imperial Wicket); Annapolis President Chris Nelson (SF70), Claiborne Booker (A84), Adrian Trevisan (A84); Longtime attendees Carolyn Smith, William Henley, and Jane Taylor. View video by Domenic D’Andrea (A15) and more photos at facebook.com/ stjohnscollege. Charles David Branan (A13) won the Trevisan-Booker Prize for penning new lyrics to the school song, “St. John’s Forever.” In a nod to the college’s origins as the King William’s School, founded in 1696, he was awarded a cash prize of $1,696. A music aficionado from Sandersville, Georgia, Branan is a member of the St. John’s Madrigal Choir, a group inspired by Renaissance polyphony. “Music is absolutely crucial to the Program,” says Branan. “It has influenced everything we study as well as the authors we read.” John Bonn, father of Tommy Bonn (A13) and winner for the song’s new four-part a cappella vocal arrangement, values music in a liberal arts education and says, “Music pushes the mind and encourages abstract thought.” Long-time friends Adrian Trevisan (A84) and Claiborne Booker (A84) created the contest to update the college’s original anthem, “St. John’s March.” The new song will be sung each year at croquet. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 59 �st. john’s forever Classic Cellar Nestled in the basement of Humphreys Hall, the College Bookstore, with its centuries-old brick walls, eight-foot ceilings, and walls of books, remains as much a haven for Annapolis Johnnies today as it was in this circa-1974 photo. But where have those couches gone? As part of the first building added to the college, the Bookstore has endured myriad changes, including from dormitory to military hospital and morgue for Union soldiers during the Civil War. Even the couches, ashtrays, and chess boards for 60 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 Johnnies who play games changed; they found their way into the Coffee Shop in McDowell, to make way for expanded shelf space. When this photo was taken, the Bookstore housed approximately 12,000 titles. In 1998, Robin Dunn, manager for the past 15 years, ushered in one of the Bookstore’s most significant changes to date: a computerized system to track inventory, which has grown to include nearly 45,000 books and more than 21,000 different titles. �eidos DOUG PLUMMER Eidos is a section of the magazine that showcases alumni who are accomplished in the visual arts. Please send us a link to your portfolio and an artist’s statement for consideration in future issues of The College. �Non-Profit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Communications Office P.O. Box 2800 Annapolis, Maryland 21404 a d d r e ss se rvi ce r e qu e st ed Annapolis, md Permit N0. 120 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The College (2001-2017) Description An account of the resource The St. John's College Communications Office published The College magazine for alumni. It began publication in 2001, continuing the St. John's Reporter, and ceased with the Fall 2017 issue. Click on <a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=56">Items in The College (2001-2017) Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, Md. Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context thecollege2001 Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 60 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Title A name given to the resource The College, Summer 2012 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf 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 Type The nature or genre of the resource text Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context The_College_Magazine_Summer_2012 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Description An account of the resource Volume 37, Issue 1 of the The College Magazine. Published in Summer 2012. The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/58259f4dda4961cb5f8ee34caf39df62.pdf 1a886afd997cb600012e9b1ee7738f96 PDF Text Text College The summer 2013 • S t. J o h n ’ s C o l l e g e • Annapolis • S a n ta F e Copernicus Imagination & Discovery �from the editor The College is published by St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD, and Santa Fe, NM thecollegemagazine@sjca.edu Known office of publication: Communications Office St. John’s College Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404-2800 Periodicals postage paid at Annapolis, MD Postmaster: Send address changes to The College Magazine, Communications Office, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800. Editor Patricia Dempsey patricia.dempsey@sjca.edu Contributing Editor Gabe Gomez Associate Editor Gregory Shook Art Director Jennifer Behrens Contributors Anna Perleberg Andersen (SF02) Chelsea Batten (A07) J.H. Beall Nutchapol Boonparlit (A14) Erin Fitzpatrick (A14) Charlotte Lucy Latham (SF02) Jennifer Levin Robert Malka (A15) Paula Novash Greg Recco Henry Robert, Class of 1941 Design Consultant Claude Skelton The College welcomes letters on issues of interest to readers. Letters can be sent via e-mail to the editor or mailed to the address above. Annapolis: 410-626-2539 Santa Fe: 505-984-6104 ii | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 On Copernicus “�... I began to be annoyed that the philosophers, who in other respects had made very careful scrutiny of the least details of the world, had discovered no sure scheme for the movements of the machinery of the world, which has been built for us by the Best and Most Orderly Workman of all.” Copernicus’s Preface and Dedication to Pope Paul iii Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) was born in Royal Prussia, a region of Poland. He studied at universities in Poland and Italy and was, among his many pursuits, a mathematician, astronomer, classicist, linguist, and economist. He proposed a groundbreaking idea, in which he upended Ptolemy’s observations with a heliocentric model that placed the sun, rather than the Earth, at the center of the universe. Copernicus’s book, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres), was published in Germany during the last year of his life; it was met with controversy and debate, a resistance not so unfamiliar to those who propose revolutionary ideas, even in modern times. Copernicus’s heliocentric theory marked a fundamental shift in assumptions. Although his model was not proven until later, it “supplanted forever the former way of understanding our place in the universe,” notes Annapolis Dean Pamela Kraus. As Santa Fe Dean J. Walter Sterling (A93) tells us, “The Copernican revolution became both (partial) cause and icon for Modernity and for the intellectual and spiritual revolutions that propel it,...” In this issue, faculty consider Copernicus and Ptolemy and how, at St. John’s, the sequence of study requires of students “a combination of reasoning and imagination employed in a different way than they are used to....” notes Dean Kraus. Do such leaps of scientific insight rely on the imagination? Annapolis tutor Jim Beall considers Ptolemy’s Almagest and Copernicus’s work in his essay, “Imagination and Creativity,” noting that “for all its vividness and limitations, imagination seems to go hand in hand with creativity.” The alumni profiled in the feature “Seeing Stars” would agree. They seek a “delicate balance,” as U.S. Naval Observatory astronomer Rachel Dudik (A02) says, with analysis and observation, instrumentation and imagination. Not surprisingly, the technology at their fingertips is sophisticated. Yet aspects of their work exploring the cosmos have not changed since Copernicus’s time: the deep curiosity to know more, the challenge of unanswered questions. Can a black hole hurl across galaxies? Erin Bonning (A97) contributed research to the discovery of such a gargantuan “runaway.” At NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Kevin Parker (A79) creates futuristic simulations that allow communications with satellites. Gabrelle Saurage (EC04) flies most evenings on the “Clipper Lindbergh,” the largest airborne observatory in the world. For Donna Contractor (SF82), celestial observations are woven into tapestries. Copernicus had not only tremendous powers of observation and the imagination and intellect to articulate his ideas, but also the courage to be committed to them. This commitment, along with “resiliency and a strong set of analytical skills,” says Harold Hughes (A84), senior managing director at Alliance Bernstein and St. John’s Board of Visitors and Governors member, is among the qualities lauded in this issue by visionary entrepreneurs. In his essay, “Shadow of War,” Henry Robert (Class of 1941) recalls a different kind of commitment: a fight for democracy and freedom. He describes how the conflict in Europe was brought to campus. At the other end of the generational spectrum, Charlotte Lucy Latham (SF02) invites recent graduates to candidly share—as she does in this issue—their journeys: life after St. John’s. Thank you to all those who have contributed their time, talent, and insights to this issue. Thank you, dear readers, for your letters and stories! We heard from many of you, young and old, who applaud The College’s new design (it debuted with the Shakespeare issue) and stories that celebrate St. John’s through the voices of alumni, students, and faculty. Please let us know how we are doing. I look forward to hearing from you. —PD The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 1 �su m me r 2 013 volume 38, issue 1 feat u res page 16�� james kegley Greenfield Library archives NASA, esa Donna Contractor, Tunnel Vision (detail) From the thought experiments of Huygens or Einstein to Copernicus’s model of nested circles with the sun at the center, the very nature of thinking through a scientific challenge involves the imagination. —Greg Schneider, tutor departments p a ge 2 4�� page 3 4�� Imagination and Creativity Seeing Stars Shadow of War Faculty members consider Copernicus and a revolution that required “bold, imaginative insight.” Images from the Hubble Space Telescope illuminate the universe. Five alumni explore the cosmos, whether observing the birth of a star, detecting phenomena in deep space, coding satellites, even weaving wool thread to illustrate a theorem. Symbols on a brick wall during the 1940s spoke louder than words. The traces of a prank remain visible today. ��From Our Readers Bibliophile 42 �Alumni Notes 4 38 �Gary Borjesson, tutor, dissects the art 46 �Profile: Mimi Nguyen (A09) riffs C � opernicus Stories �Letters From the Bell Towers 6 E � ntrepreneurs: The Value of Ideas Harold Hughes (A84) Dominic Crapuchettes (A97) Jac Holzman (Class of 1952) 7 Visionaries: Robert Malka (A15) 8 � Judgment of Annapolis 9 �Polity Radio: Jessica Kjellberg (A14) 10 �� onversations with the Chair C 11 Starry Nights 12 �Ariel Intern: Bilsana Bibic (SF13) � 13 � Ancients Google Earth 14 � Investing in Banking: Gordon Seltz (A14) H � odson House Welcomes Alumni on the cover: Copernicus illustration by Gary Kelley 2 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 al u mni 15 �Mike McQuarrie: New Athletic Director � Sarah Palacios: New Alumni Director of friendship and the role of authority in Willing Dogs and Reluctant Masters. 39 �Thomas Simpson (Class of 1950), tutor emeritus, illuminates connections among three thinkers in Newton Maxwell Marx. on identity and high fashion in the blogosphere. 50 �Profile: David Drury (SFGI09) deciphers Tocqueville in a mobile classroom. 51 �In Memoriam 40 ��Ellen Dornan’s (SF93) Forgotten Tales of New Mexico celebrates the rich heritage of the Land of Enchantment. �Tutors Eva Brann (HA89), Peter Kalkavage, and Eric Salem’s (A77) Statesman, the latest installment in their series of Plato translations. � Richard McCombs on the irrationalism of Søren Kierkegaard. 54 �Philanthropy: Hallie Leighton (SF92) and Michael Chiantella (A97) 55 Transitions: Charlotte Latham (SF02) 56 �Almuni News: Homecoming 2013 Johnnie Traditions 58 �Croquet: Johnnies Lost in Wonderland 60 � t. John’s Forever S Eidos 61 Ebby Malmgren (AGI88) above: Rachel Dudik (A02) at the U.S. Naval Observatory. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 3 �from our readers Magical Moment Explaining St. John’s is tricky, whether to the world outside (“great basketball team?”), to our inner circle (“great books?”), even—perhaps especially—to ourselves (“what do we mean by great?”). For me, it is Copernicus , or rather, the way we read him, that embodies the Program’s essence. us, that Earth is not the center of the universe. That the Earth is just another planet and that all of us are moving around the sun. And though it was but a few years before the start of the third millennium, with space shuttles in orbit and a flag planted on the moon, the suggestions came to us as nothing short of a shock. “�We shake our heads in disbelief that Copernicus’ book was for centuries banned by the Vatican, or that Galileo was brought to trial for upholding similar ideas. (“E pure muove, he muttered as ” he trudged defeated out of court).” Jennifer A. Donnelly (A96) The sophomore reading list is celestial, from Genesis to the Almagest. In Santa Fe, where I spent that year, the expansive sky seemed to bring the heavens even closer. As the summer became fall, our mathematics tutorial resumed the work on Ptolemy begun in freshman year. Under the goodhumored guidance of our tutor Mr. Pesic (who, rumor had it, had discovered an element), we picked painstakingly through the classic model—Earth standing stock still, sun, moon, and stars spinning around it. Chalk dust drifted from the blackboard and ink-stained fingertips as all through winter we drew circle after circle backing this up. The premise was contrary to the received wisdom of our day, the geometrical manipulations were long and complex—but they worked. Then spring rolled around, bringing warm sun and De Revolutionibus. The title, already, was suspect; and the contents between the cover were revolutionary indeed: consider, Copernicus asked In our day, the solar system is a truth taught to schoolchildren. We shake our heads in disbelief that Copernicus’ book was for centuries banned by the Vatican, or that Galileo was brought to trial for upholding similar ideas. (“E pure muove,” he muttered as he trudged defeated out of court). But after the journey through Ptolemy’s equants and epicycles, the St. John’s scholar comes to feel how a now commonly accepted fact was once earth-shattering. Soon enough, the effect wears off and Copernican ideas become acceptable—as they did, eventually, to the Vatican. But this return to our familiar notions never completely eclipses that magical, fleeting moment when we saw our world in a way contrary to the ways we always believed it to be. T.S. Eliot has written: “the end of all our exploring / will be to arrive where we started / and know the place for the first time.” What better way to sum up St. John’s? —Jennifer A. Donnelly (A96) 4 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 copernicus haiku not at some center. more over here. with us guys. now. how bad is that? Charles Jones (A79) Double Dactyl This is the first double dactyl I ever wrote. Inspired may be too strong a word, but after all that study of Ptolemy I was impressed by the superior economy of the Copernican hypothesis. Tollemie, shmollemie. Heliocentricists, Sun down to sun up they Reckon aright, Save the appearances With an hypothesis Counterintuitiive, Earth in its flight. —Robert Main (A71) Courage of Copernicus I remember being fascinated in sophomore math class by the nerve (read “courage”) of Copernicus. I also remember reading his description of motion, during which he cites a passage from the Aeneid that we had only just read for seminar. Coincidence? I think not. But a couple of years earlier, I had had the pleasure of visiting the home town of the man himself—Torun, in the north of Poland. They have his house, and a monument to him at a central square that bears the inscription, “Nicolaus Copernicus Thorunensis, terrae motor, solis caelique stator,” meaning, “Nicolaus Copernicus of Toruń, mover of the Earth, stopper of the Sun and heavens,” or so Wikipedia tells me today. I myself remember reading back then, “Nicholas Copernicus: he stopped the sun with one hand, and moved the Earth with the other.” Don’t ask me whether or not I made that up. All I know is that Copernicus got to hold the universe on his fingertips in a way that our smartphone-abundant age cannot quite match. —Nareg Seferian (SF11) heather wilde (a09) Readers Share from our readers Critical Thinking in Warsaw I just returned from Warsaw, Poland, setting up a new satellite office, and went on a tour that started at the Copernicus statue.... I’d never been anywhere in the Eastern block, and I was surprised by the people there. They had a pragmatism that I associate with their Russian neighbors; they were able to explain the good and bad of Communism without any hint of shame. It was my own American guilt that I had to drop at the door when speaking to these phenomenal people. Whenever I travel anywhere, the way that I speak and phrase my thoughts makes it hard for people to immediately believe that I’m an American. I’m able to argue any point. ... People are amazed at the seemingly unbounded knowledge I have. I always point out that you do not need to know about a topic ahead of time to be able to discuss it thoughtfully. I teach critical thinking to everyone I can. That’s what St. John’s means to me, and that’s what I do for a living. —Heather Wilde (A09) allowed you to insert a location and a date, so one of the things Mr. Beall did was to input Alexandria, Egypt around Ptolemy’s lifetime, showing us what the stars could have looked like at that time. But the best part was that after resetting the date to the then modern time, he asked the audience to pick the location. My immediate response (I can’t remember if I was the first to speak—I want to say I was) was to ask for the sun. That was awesome: most planetariums that I’ve been to were geocentric, and I remember a few students commenting how useful that’d be when you got to Copernicus, because you could switch back and forth between having Earth and the sun at the center. Another popular request was Pluto, giving you the ultimate outsider’s look into our solar system (Man, are we so tiny from that perspective). If I remember right, there was even a request to go onto an asteroid—I can’t remember if we did that one. —Babak Zarin (A11) Good, Gooey Gravy The best parts of lab at St. John’s were the first year basics and then our biology labs. First year had all the magic and creativity of the best learning experiences; genuinely at work with material which evoked ideas about both the universe of “stuff” around us and the principles inherent in all this good, gooey gravey. Secondly, Biology and the wonderful world of dissecting frogs and pigeons— plus the funky fruit flies—opened up a whole world of awareness. It profoundly deepened one’s sense of the designs at work in nature. As Melville wrote, one came faceto-face with a “dull blankness full of meaning”; nature’s unceasing change and infinite variety, an order one had to learn to obey in order to command. Unforgettable. Great stuff. Thank you! —John Dean (A70) Letters An Exemplary Tutor The new issue of The College [Summer 2012] landed in my mailbox. . . I like the new format very much. In his Shakespeare story on page 4, John Dean refers to Mr. McGraw. I am certain that he talking about Hugh McGrath, whose name is pronounced “McGraw.” Mr. McGrath was indeed an exemplary tutor with a special gift for languages and literature. After nearly 40 years, I remember many of the things he said in my junior-year language tutorial. He deserves to be remembered under his real name. Jessica Weissman (A73) A Minor Wonder Before I put it in the recycling bag, I wanted to send you this belated note of thanks for the Summer 2012 issue. I appreciate not only the color photos and illustrations, but the quality of the articles. The increased focus on alumni who are doing outstanding and/or unusual things will make the magazine a better promotional tool for the college. . . . Considering that St. John’s is a small college and many of its alumni, like myself, either “march to different drummers” or fall out of step and do not achieve material affluence, The College is a minor wonder. —Kevin Snapp (SF72) Praise Deserved Congratulations on a very fine Summer 2012 issue.... And thank you, Mr. Kowalski (SF84) for your class note (1994) on the acclaim bestowed on your 1999 novel, Eddie’s Bastard. The book was read; it deserves the praise on the cover and The Guardian’s citation. —H.A. Hammond, Class of 1947 Choosing the Sun Mr. Beall opened the planetarium for students to see a demonstration of the new planetarium software that had just been installed. Seeing as how I had missed going in my freshmen and sophomore years, I jumped at the chance . . . . The show was fantastic. The new software The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 5 �“�It’s amazing what happens when the world understands that you are committed to something.” Gary Pierpoint A group of aspiring Johnnie entrepreneurs packed a forum during Homecoming in Annapolis to talk with three visionary alumni: Harold Hughes (A84), senior managing director at Alliance Bernstein, an investment management company, and Board of Visitors and Governors member; Jac Holzman (Class of 1952), record executive and founder of Elektra Records; and Dominic Crapuchettes (A97), founder and copresident of North Star Games. Harold Hughes (A84), Dominic Crapuchettes (A97), and Jac Holzman (Class of 1952) mentor students. What are the skills and qualities needed to be a successful entrepreneur? HH: You need to be relentless and willing to take calculated risks. We often read stories about entrepreneurs who took ridiculously stupid risks [that] somehow work out well. What we don’t hear about are [endeavors] that failed. Resiliency, a strong set of analytical skills, and the ability to take calculated risks are so important. JH: Most important for me is understanding what commitment is and making it—not only to a project, but also to every minute aspect of an idea. In the early ’70s, for example, I was given a finished tape of the band Queen’s first album to demonstrate a London studio’s [capabilities]. The band was going to sign a deal with Columbia [Records], but they had only committed verbally. I pursued them relentlessly for three and a half months, waiting for Columbia to drop the ball. Ultimately, I was able to swoop in and sign Queen to Elektra. To be a successful entrepreneur, you need to have a strong belief in yourself. Part of commitment is saying, “I’m going to pretend I’m right and see how it turns out.” It’s amazing what happens when the world understands that you are committed to something. DC: Being a Johnnie, when considering an idea, I look to Plato and Aristotle and ask myself: What is the good? How am I serving the community? With any pursuit, it’s important to understand how to bring value to the community and determine efficient ways to do [it]. To be an entrepreneur requires commitment to an idea, [which] usually takes considerable 6 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 by Robert Malka (A15) interpreter who has just bailed from his scheduled appointment, or a prospective investor has important questions about our company’s financials. Suddenly, everyone (including me) forgets I am a student as I rush out the door. Jac Holzman, Class of 1952, founder, Elektra Records time—sometimes 10 to 15 years—to come to fruition. Fundamental skills such as understanding finance, accounting, and marketing are also essential. Why do Johnnies excel as entrepreneurs? HH: In order to be a good entrepreneur, a person needs to have the ability to make decisions sometimes without having all the data. Johnnies have a strong set of analytical skills based on their deep understanding of truth and ethics, not just right and wrong, but the laws of nature. Business school offers one equation and one variable. Entrepreneurs need to make decisions using multiple variables. Johnnies are adept at making [such] decisions. I’ve been in my career for 29 years, but I know that in another 29 years, my job may not exist. I’ve trusted my decisions to stay [in a position] or move on. JH: Listening is something Johnnies typically do quite well. It took me a long time to learn how to listen because I have so many ideas, but it has been so important to me. My St. John’s experience was the perfect incubator. I did a lot of listening [because my] class had a number of seasoned [World War II] veterans who had seen a lot of life. I’ll never forget the opening question at the first seminar: Do you think Achilles wanted to die to achieve immortality on the battlefield? One of the veterans started talking about [his experience at] war, and I learned to respect the real-life grounding they had. I had grown up [in New York City] in a protected environment, so for me, being a Johnnie was about shedding that and connecting with the world. Connecting with the world is the seed of our entrepreneurship. DC: Johnnies are really good at learning how to solve problems and to work through them in order to determine a best course of action. For someone interested in a start-up venture, success is dependent on one’s ability to work well with other people. For example, my business partner and I partnered with a company that went bankrupt, and they owned the rights to all our games. I maxed out three credit cards to win back our inventory. That was a huge risk, but I felt I could declare bankruptcy and start over if I had to. Fortunately, sales went very well, and our leap of faith paid off. Anyi Guo (A14) Entrepreneurs: The Value of Ideas (Trying) to Live the Great Books What advice would you give to budding entrepreneurs? HH: At a time when so many people emphasize service to society, there is a feeling that making money is evidence of a lack of service. But that’s not always the case. While Frederick Smith was a student at Yale, he wrote a paper that became his business plan for Federal Express. He received a low grade on that paper, but he persevered and found something that serves society’s need. JH: An important aspect of entrepreneurship is knowing when to let go. Follow your instincts. Trust yourself and don’t be afraid. Pursue an idea because you love it, and hope that others will see its value. You may inspire others to accomplish things. You never know how it’s going to turn out. [At the forum,] I was impressed by the student interest. The idea to put the plaque up between the two dorm rooms I had at St. John’s was great. DC: I’m an advocate for finding your passion. In business, it may take three to five years to develop a brand and work out the kinks. If you lack passion for what you’re doing, you’ll run out of steam and likely give up. Focus on adding value to others. Any good business is serving the community, which Johnnies do well. Determine what the community needs, and provide value in the most efficient way possible. Read more: www.stjohnscollege.edu/admin/ AN/careers – Gregory Shook My first don rag included a warning to fix an early bad habit: I kept walking out of class to take phone calls. I had to be in class, I was told, if I wanted to learn something. Since then I have rarely, if ever, left class to answer a phone call. So it goes. Now I am a sophomore, and I still run a telecommunications company that I co-founded with my mom and a fellow Johnnie, Zeke Schumacher (A15). I work full-time. (The immediate relevance of those calls speaks for itself.) Our company, Malka Communications Group, Inc., provides a number of communications solutions for the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing, such as mobile-phone data plans and interpretation services. For example, an office with a Deaf employee or client can download our app onto an iPad, which allows him to dial one of our interpreters, who mediates between both parties remotely while both clients are in the same room. We are also an international consulting firm that cooperates with several countries to implement communications services for their Deaf populations. This business venture was a natural choice for me, a Child of Deaf Adults (CODA). In addition to learning sign language, I grew up in and Of all the issues I must face, maintaining my role as a serious, committed student is the hardest. It can be jarring to jump from the quiet solitude of reading Chaucer to lobbying European Union Representatives via Skype. around Deaf culture, my first home. I am protective of that culture. I have also been interested in business since childhood; when I was twelve, I tried to create a card game company and almost made it. At seventeen, I was on the way to founding a non-profit to help provide legal services to the disenfranchised, but lacked the infrastructure and experience. Juggling my business and St. John’s can be overwhelming, especially since headquarters are located in my hometown of Los Angeles. I often wake up early to catch up on work from the evening before, wolf down lunch, and have a “morning” meeting by noon. Several times, I have been in the fray of a great discussion in the coffee shop when my phone buzzes. An employee asks me what to do about an Of all the issues I must face, maintaining my role and image as a serious, committed student is the hardest. It can be jarring to switch gears from negotiating contracts with vendors to allocating money as a student on the Delegate Council, or to jump from the quiet solitude of reading Chaucer to lobbying European Union Representatives via Skype. Why do I stay at St. John’s? Because running a company requires understanding people and motivating them toward a fleshed-out vision. To do so, I must know how to listen, articulate, and think critically. St. John’s has taught me these skills very well. “But,” says my inner Devil’s Advocate, “valuable skills or not, you seem to be missing the point of St. John’s. Why are you running a company when you are supposed to contemplate, and be otherwise immersed in the Johnnie bubble?” Good question, Devil-Friend. On one level, this is my income, and on another, it’s my life. But more than that, I seek to live the Great Books. For me, that means more than just discussing and thinking about them; it means doing Good in the world. Why wait, if I can do my best to live them now? I love the learning that we do together at the College, but I cannot do it without also giving back to the community.My education feels incomplete without it. Although eventually I want to move on to other ventures, this business niche has a special place in my heart, and the experience will continue to change me for as long as I pursue it. I think I can say the same thing about St. John’s, itself a niche venture with a special place in my heart. To reach Robert Malka: (818) 943-7350 or rjmalka@gmail.com The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 7 �from the bell towers from the bell towers New Pathways briefly quoted In Your Dreams Recently, the St. John’s alumni Facebook page was buzzing with comments from Johnnies who have all had the same reoccurring dream: they are in the basement of McDowell Hall, unable to open their mailbox. “Glad to know I’m not the only Johnnie with that dream. The schedule, the mailroom...and the tutor who is disappointed because you haven’t been to class in months.” —Edward Conway (SF00) “�OMG, I have the same mailbox/class schedule dream too! That and the one where I show up on the last day of math class and haven’t done the readings all year.” —Hillary Fields (SF97) Carroll Barrister’s School Spirit Considering that the Annapolis campus was the site of a Civil War camp and hospital, it is no surprise that for decades, students and staff have reported seeing ghosts, including soldiers and a shadowy cloaked figure, on campus and inside the historic buildings. On June 14, Carroll Barrister reopened its doors as home to Admissions. How do the spirits feel about the renovation? They declined to be interviewed. Dr. James Schamus (a81), CEO of Focus Features and professor of professional practice at Columbia University’s School of the Arts, 2013 Commencement speaker, Annapolis The Judgment of Annapolis You’re traveling through another dimension—a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. Your next stop: Polity Radio! © Mary Ella Jourdak/maryellajourdak.com “� am highly entertained that I’m not the only I one with this dream! What’s really funny is that I almost never dream about the dorms, dining hall, boathouse, classrooms, etc. But that MAILBOX gets me constantly!” —Cindy Lutz-Spidle (A98) Read more at: www.facebook.com/stjohnscollegealumni What is Chris Nelson (SF70), Annapolis president, reading to Cady, the college dog? Let us know: thecollegemagazine@sjca.edu Polity Radio Breaks New Ground Gregory Shook o f f t h e wa l l “For if you’re just out there blindly and instinctively reacting to stuff, you’re definitely not free; you’re an automaton or a mere animal . . . . whether or not the world will always be able to make use of you, the world needs you—thinker-doers, doer-thinkers, genuinely free human beings.” Johnnie winemakers gathered on April 5 for the third annual In Vino Veritas wine event, organized by The Friends of St. John’s. From left: August Deimel (SF04) of Keuka Spring Vineyards in Penn Yan, New York; Zach Rasmuson (A95) of Goldeneye Winery in Philo, California; Abe Schoener (A82) of The Scholium Project in Fairfield, California; Sue Bishop (AGI03) of Bistro Freres Wines in Arnold, Maryland; Alex Kongsgaard (SF05) of Kongsgaard Wine in Napa, California; Christina Turley, daughter of Helen Turley (Class of 1967) and John Wetlaufer (Class of 1967) of Turley Wine Cellars in Templeton, California. Evan Frazier (SF04) of Kongsgaard Wine is not pictured. 8 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 The two-day event led with the Judgment of Annapolis, a reimagining of the Paris Tasting of 1976 that put Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars (founded by Warren Winiarski, Class of 1952) in Napa Valley—and California wines—on the map. A wine-paired reception, with a dinner created by renowned Baltimore chef Jerry Pelligrino, followed at the home of President Nelson. Johnnies kept the wine and conversation flowing the next day in the Francis Scott Key Lobby, where alumni and other noted winemakers talked about their craft, and poured and discussed nearly 100 wines and craft-brewed beers arranged by country of origin. With the launch of the premiere episode last May, which featured a dramatic reading of “The TellTale Heart,” on-campus music and bands, and a radio serial starring a St. John’s vigilante superhero, Johnnies have entered new terrain. And the response has been “overwhelmingly positive,” says Jessica Kjellberg (A14), producer and co-founder of the college’s first-ever online radio program. She also serves as the program’s creative director, bringing together segments that reflect the diversity of the students who submit them. Other segments include readings of essays and poetry, music, student-written radio dramas, and more drawn from the college community. The fall 2012 episode featured a candid interview with Annapolis President Christopher Nelson. “Some students just walk in and do something spontaneous,” says Kjellberg. “Others help by lending their ears and offering opinions. We want to be mindful of the listener.” “� wanted to create I a forum that is fun and entertaining but would foster greater communication between students, tutors, and staff.” Jessica Kjellberg (A14), producer and co-founder of Polity Radio Kjellberg, who is considering a possible career in journalism, has discovered hidden talent of her own through Polity Radio. “I learned how to edit on the first episode,” she says. That D.I.Y. spirit is at the core of the radio program and its group of dedicated student organizers. “We set up the equipment ourselves and do a lot of problem solving,” says Kjellberg, undaunted by teaching herself new skills and figuring things out as she goes. “Being Johnnies, we’re pretty comfortable working with systems that are unfamiliar.” The idea for Polity Radio came to Kjellberg while working as an admissions tour guide at the Annapolis campus during summer break. “It was the first time I really took notice that there was a much larger community here beyond the students and tutors,” says Kjellberg, who approached fellow classmate and Polity Radio co-founder Robert Malka (A15) with her idea. “I wanted to create a forum that is fun and entertaining but would foster greater communication between students, tutors, and staff,” she says. Kjellberg hopes that the radio program will continue to grow after she graduates. “I don’t see it as an end in itself,” she says. She envisions the program someday developing into a live, on-air radio station, but for now, she’s focused on the program’s primary mission. “Polity Radio is valuable and needed. It’s indicative of ideas of the polity as a whole,” says Kjellberg. “Everyone is encouraged to be part of the conversation.” Listen to Polity Radio at polityradio.wordpress.com. –Gregory Shook An award from the new Pathways Fellowship will help Adam Maraschky (A13) decide which branch of chemistry he wants to pursue after he graduates from St. John’s. “The Pathways Fellowship provides funding and enables rising St. John’s juniors and seniors and graduating seniors from both campuses to transition into graduate study or careers that call for special or prerequisite work,” says Jaime Dunn, director of Career Services at the Annapolis campus. Maraschky will use his award to study organic chemistry courses at the University of Maryland in College Park. In the summer of 2012, Maraschky received a Hodson Trust internship grant and spent three months studying plasmonic solar cell technology at the University of Maryland. “In my case, organic chemistry was a bit of a dream,” says Maraschky, who took AP chemistry courses in high school. “I wanted to take the course before attending St. John’s because I like thinking about the shapes of molecules and the energetics of reactions.” With a Pathways Fellowship, students can spend their summers gaining specific prerequisites and knowledge, and immerse themselves in their St. John’s education during the academic year. “My plan for now is to spend two years doing more undergraduate course work while researching and working, then apply for a master’s program in materials engineering,” says Maraschky. —Nutchapol Boonparlit (A14) briefly quoted “I am quite sure that everything we do—consciously or unconsciously—makes a difference. Every act of kindness and every act of cowardice. There are always consequences. It has been said that if anything matters, then everything matters.” Jill Cooper Udall, member, St. John’s College Board of Visitors and Governors, 2013 Commencement speaker, Santa Fe The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 9 �from the bell towers Hello, dear friends. I am never too old for games. This year, the night before Croquet, there was a “thunder-battle.” The term comes from chapter IX of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, and nothing better describes the explosive downpour that hung in Annapolis until the late hours of the night. It was ominous, a warning that it would be a long battle for the Cup with an unhappy end. Nevertheless, Croquet Saturday dawned with clear skies. at St. John’s College AN INTELLECTUAL ADVENTURE for High School Students More than 145 students from around the world immersed themselves in Summer Academy 2013 in Santa Fe and Annapolis. Learn more: www.stjohnscollege.edu Starry Nights Conversations with the Chair “She was looking about for some way of escape, and wondering whether she could get away without being seen, when she noticed a curious appearance in the air: it puzzled her very much at first, but, after watching it a minute or two, she made it out to be a grin, and she said to herself, ‘It’s the Cheshire Cat: now I shall have somebody to talk to.’” -Alice, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll Do you know a student who belongs at St. John’s? Let us know. annapolis : admissions@sjca.edu or 410-626-2522 santa fe : admissions@sjcsf.edu or 505-984-6060 10 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 That morning I was called upon to aid in seminars on Alice in Wonderland (chapter VII, “The Mad Tea Party” and chapter VIII, “The Queen’s Croquet Field”). I listened to chair sitters ponder Alice’s journey and her interactions with the Mad Hatter, the Dormouse, the Queen, the King, and the Cheshire Cat who after Alice is my personal favorite character. Admittedly, this could be because I, like so many others, identify with Alice: the dizzy journey Alice takes, a tumble in which language seems almost nonsensical, the logic puzzling, but where the games are fun in their intricacy. Indeed, my own journey has been filled by the characters of my sitters, quite a few of whom that day were already in their Gatsby-esque seersucker (something I confess I wish to see more of: the Jazz Age was closer to the fashion of my childhood). By noon, the Croquet match popped open like champagne. Unlike Alice’s match, there were no warring hedgehogs, no flamingo mallets that flew away, no human-card arches, and no complaints that people were not attending to the rules of the field. And unlike the Chesire cat, Cady (the college dog) was well behaved. Sadly, the thunderous omen of the night before came true: the match went on and on and on, a great “thunder battle” between the Imperial Wickets. You know the rest. Within moments, my wall on Facebook was filled with anguished cries –“sobs” and “scowls” and “will wonders never cease”– followed by jokes that the loss required a new drinking policy and athletic director. Thankfully, no one followed the example of the Queen of Hearts in calling for beheadings. I must admit a kind of quiet welcome of the fact: there is no shame in the Naval Academy winning a round once a decade; the match becomes more interesting when the result isn’t a predetermined given. After all, look at Alice and her adventures. —JC (www.facebook.com/johnnie. chair) On clear evenings after seminar, Johnnies experience firsthand the deep fascination that humans across the centuries have had with the night sky. From Ptolemy to Newton and Copernicus to Kepler, the stars and planets have played an important role in the study of not only astronomy but physics and theology. “Astronomy addresses the question of the Whole,” says Margaret Matthews (A14), archon of the Astronomy Club on the Annapolis campus, “which are implications for everything else we learn in the world.” The Astronomy Club conducts not only stargazing but also planetarium shows for classes and community members who are interested in learning more about the motion of the heavenly bodies. “Anybody NASA, esa, hubble space telescope—Taken Under the “Wing” of the Small Magellanic Cloud Summer Academy 2013 from the bell towers “�Astronomy addresses the question of the Whole, which are implications for everything else we learn in the world.” Margaret Matthews (A14), astronomy archon who wants to come and look at the stars is welcome,” says Matthews. “We invite all guests to join us.” By witnessing and understanding the laws that govern the motion of the stars, we can better comprehend the laws that govern everything from the orbits of a planet to the path of a falling stone. The planetarium shows offered by the Astronomy Club provide students with the opportunity to observe these phenomena directly, seeing what Ptolemy saw in the night sky over Ancient Greece. “By placing Earth at the center, Ptolemy is thinking of the heavenly bodies themselves as they appear to an observer on Earth,” says tutor Nicholas Maistrellis. During planetarium shows, archons guide students through various motions of the stars, replicating many of the observations that early astronomers made in their studies. They host special shows for freshmen when they begin to study astronomy in their second semester. Students are introduced to the motions of the stars that Ptolemy uses as references so they can grasp the line of reasoning he pursued in developing such ideas as epicycles and eccentric motion. Stargazing hosted by the Astronomy Club is open to all members of the community. “In the winter, we saw the Andromeda Galaxy. In the spring, we see Saturn, Mars, and a bit of Venus,” says Matthews. Archons are always present to help visitors learn how to use and operate the telescope. “It takes a lot of practice and patience to become familiar with the various stars and constellations, but it helps to be curious and have a sense of wonder.” briefly quoted “We must have intellectual bravery, that is, the courage to push forward, to continue seeking truth even in the face of doubts about its very existence.... St. John’s has given me the tools: the ability to listen, think, speak, write, and ultimately act.” Grace Tyson (ao13), speech to The Caritas Society, April 2013 —Nutchapol Boonparlit (A14) To learn more visit: www.stjohnscollege.edu/ admin/AN/observatory The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 11 �from the bell towers from the bell towers Bilsana Bibic (SF13): Ariel Internship at the United Nations How the Ancients Googled Earth Bilsana Bibic (SF13) One of the more unique structures on both the Annapolis and Santa Fe campuses is the Ptolemy stone, an ancient Greek tool used to measure changes in the motion of the sun at apogee. “Ptolemy is one of the very earliest to take something that seems very complicated and reduce it to rational and comprehensible ideas,” says tutor Nicholas Maistrellis. “The Ptolemy Stone has only one function: it allows you to measure how high the sun rises at noon. By doing so, we can measure how quickly or slowly the sun orbits around the Earth.” gabe gomez Inspired by her life experience and activities at St. John’s, Bilsana Bibic (SF13), a senior from Montenegro, has chosen a career in international relations and development, focusing on immigrant and refugee rights. “My country was very involved with refugees during the war in Kosovo,” says Bibic. “Refugees especially have problems with traveling documents and basic necessities for life. There is also the issue of education, to prepare students to face the world with a necessary set of skills.” In addition, she hopes to fight unemployment in her country and internationally. Bibic became interested in international relations and conflict resolution as a high school student at the United World College in Costa Rica, where she lived with people from 80 different countries. At St. John’s, she served on the Student Review Board, building upon her skills by participating in mediation. That experience helped prepare Bibic to address opposing views and face challenging questions “without being paralyzed by fear,” she says. “You’re not just an observer. You learn that you can’t know everything on your own, that you need a community to see the openings for improvement.” To prepare for her career, Bibic took on Rousing production of Kiss Me, Kate Artist-in-Residence Roy Rogosin (SFGI09) directed Santa Fe campus students, alumni, and staff in a rousing, fully-staged production of Cole Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate in the Great Hall last December. The Tony Award-winning musical involves the often amusing difficulties encountered by a troupe of players performing a musical version of William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. At the center of the conflict is Fred Graham, the director, producer, and star, played by Sidney Velasquez (SFGI14), and his leading lady and ex-wife, Lilli Vanessi, played by Elizabeth Hyde (SF16). Pictured are members of the company. Back Row: Sidney Velasquez, Elizabeth Hyde, Joseph Muse (SF16), Cody Winning (SF12), Hania Stocker (SF12), Dana Relue (SF15), Ruochen Bo (SF14), and staff member Susan Kaplan. Front row: Yue Gong (SFGI13), John Panagiotidis (SFGI14), Hope Lang (SF15), Roy Rogosin, and Melissa Balch (SFGI14). two significant projects last summer that also allowed her to work on current, pressing problems. During her Ariel internship at the United Nations in New York, she worked one-on-one with the Ambassador of Montenegro on his mission and agenda. “I really got to see what it means to represent my country and how we represent ourselves to the world—what our priorities are, what we’re looking to gain from the international community. Since we became independent from Serbia, we’ve had to learn how to develop a country based on democracy. A true republic, I suppose.” Using the pass that came with her internship to attend many U.N. meetings, Bibic gained a broad perspective on the needs and interactions of many nations. Before heading to New York, Bibic joined three other Johnnies in the Republic of Georgia to work on a Project for Peace with high school students who were affected by Georgia’s civil war, a conflict that remains unresolved. The Johnnies held seminars for the participants as a prelude to a political conference where the teens discussed new ways of looking at the civil conflict with refugees and representa- 12 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 tives from government and NGOs. In seminars, they read and discussed the Oresteia, focusing on questions of war. They also studied history, took conflict resolution training, and visited refugee camps to see what it was like to live under such conditions, witness the consequences of war, and learn from the refugees’ stories. These experiences opened the teenagers’ eyes. “At the political conference,” says Bibic, “the adults were a bit hostile because they didn’t think the kids had the right to ask them questions about the conflict. A proud moment for our team” occurred, she says, when one girl explained “they’d been learning about conflict resolution and the importance of listening, and it really hurt them that the adults weren’t giving an example of that. A lot of Georgians still blame Russia for what happened during the civil war, and the kids asked if the conflict could be resolved without Russia. I think the people there were very impressed with their approach.” —Jennifer Levin “It’s very important for studying Ptolemy,” says Nino Benashvili (A16). “It’s what we use to measure the angle of the sun relative to the Earth.” Ptolemy states in the Almagest that the sun’s highest point in the sky changes during the year due to its angular orbit around the sun. This slanted revolution is what causes the differences in length of daylight and determines the seasons. Freshmen in math tutorials in Annapolis can study a smaller version of this phenomenon through a twelveinch wooden model called the armillary sphere. Built by St. John’s College craftsman Gary Dunkelberger, the model uses a set of rings to illustrate the differences in the revolutions of bodies around the Earth. The lateral ring represents the motion of the heavenly spheres; an angular ring represents the motion of the sun. “Ptolemy’s universe can be very hard to imagine, so the armillary sphere gives you a three-dimensional model of the whole thing,” says Maistrellis. “You can actually use the Ptolemy Stone in correlation with the armillary sphere and information from the Almagest to find your location on the Earth.” – Nutchapol Boonparlit (A14) talk of the tow ers This spring, four longtime tutors at the Annapolis campus, Deborah Axelrod, Nancy Buchenauer, Nicholas Maistrellis, and Jonathan Tuck, have formally retired. Students, faculty, and staff gathered on April 24 in the Great Hall for a ceremony to honor their combined 150 years of dedicated service to the college. Two new tutors have joined the faculty at the Santa Fe campus. Marsaura Shukla (A93) joins the college from the University of Chicago where she received her PhD in theology. Raoni Padui comes to the college from Villanova University where he received his PhD in philosophy. In Annapolis, four new tutors have joined the faculty. Sarah Stickney (A04) joins the college from Johns Hopkins SAIS Center in Bologna, Italy, where she was also a Fulbright Scholar. She received her MFA in poetry from the University of New Hampshire. Brendan Boyle comes to the college from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, where he taught classics. He received his PhD from the Department of Classics at the University of Chicago. Leah Lasell (SFGI04), who received her BA in mathematics from the University of Chicago and her PhD in philosophy from the University of Texas, taught mathematics at St. Paul’s School in Concord, N.H. Christine Lee joins the college from the University of Bristol. She received her PhD in political science from Duke University. Terry McGuire (HA12), assistant to the dean and a 44-year staff member at the college, was named an honorary alumna. briefly quoted “At St. John’s, we acquire the skill of interacting with other people’s minds. By not restricting ourselves to like minds, we discover what’s weak about our minds and what’s really strong about them.” Hannah Crepps (SF13), interview with The Santa Fe New Mexican, May 17, 2013 The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 13 �from the bell towers Michael McQuarrie: Gordon Seltz (A14) credits his interest in business and economics to his experience with the math tutorials during his freshman and sophomore years. “For math, we have this logic-based system that we use to explore and explain the world,” says Seltz. “Economics is simply taking that a step further by applying it to human behavior. By doing so, we can see how business and finance affects us in very real ways.” Seltz, who plans to pursue an investment-banking career, was awarded funding by the Hodson Trust and interned last summer at George K. Baum and Company, a middle-market sized investmentbanking firm in Denver. “Economics is an amalgamation of political factors, environmental factors, and business factors,” says Seltz. “It’s an abstraction of everything working together, similar to the liberal arts program at St. John’s where we see all the subjects as being interconnected. Economics is a field where that mentality is carried on.” “I was responsible for research, taking aggregate data, analyzing it, and putting it in a logical and comprehensible format,” says Seltz. “I was also in charge of monitoring the market and updating various databases. There was a lot of opportunity for learning by osmosis.” Seltz recalls how, as an intern, he was asked to do calculations to update the database for the firm. “The executive vice president asked me to consult an analyst about how to do them. The analyst wasn’t there. So I found the document where the calculations were already done and sort of reverse-engineered it to find the formula. It is similar to what we have to do in a St. John’s math tutorial: we have to figure “�Economics is... an abstraction of everything working together, similar to the liberal arts program at St. John’s where we see all the subjects as being interconnected.” The Hodson House-Carroll Barrister House project was funded by gifts from the Hodson Trust and by a grant from the State of Maryland. Extensive new landscaping, including four gardens and new seating areas, are also featured in the space between Chase Stone, Pinkney, and the new building. out how one gets from a general question to a specific answer. My St. John’s education helped me adapt to this completely foreign and new environment.” This summer, 34 students received funding through the Hodson Trust Internship Program. They will work at organizations such as the U.S. Naval Observatory, the Library of Congress, and the University of Chicago’s Institute for Mind & Biology. Gary Pierpoint Hodson Intern Investing in Banking Representatives from the Hodson Trust and the Board of Visitors and Governors, along with Annapolis faculty and staff, gathered to dedicate the new Hodson House on June 21. Its modern, urban design blends seamlessly with its historic surroundings. The building houses the Advancement Office and the new Alumni Center. Featuring a seminar/ meeting room as well as administrative and faculty offices, the Hodson House served as a temporary space for the college’s Admissions staff, which moved out of the Carroll-Barrister House while it underwent a full renovation that was completed in June. The Carroll-Barrister House, originally constructed in 1722 and located on Main Street in Annapolis, was moved to campus in the 1950s. This major renovation is the first since then. The newly refurbished Admissions Office will provide a welcoming first stop on the campus for the college’s visitors and prospective students. – Nutchapol Boonparlit (A14) 14 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 Hodson House, home to the new Alumni Center New Athletic Director in Annapolis Lauds Amateurs Among many pleasant surprises since joining the St. John’s faculty, new Annapolis Athletic Director Michael McQuarrie discovered a collection of old photos and records of the college’s sports history. In the 1880s, when St. John’s had more intercollegiate teams, the college played basketball and football against McQuarrie’s alma mater. “I was going through all these old records, and I saw photos of Elon University. I thought, ‘St. John’s College really played Elon? How long ago was that?’” programs, thinking that students need that push. At St. John’s, students don’t require that push quite as much, if at all.” Previously McQuarrie was the director of recreation at the New School in New York City. At this university containing seven different colleges, “much of my job entailed marketing and advertising, simply making sure the college community knew what was happening in the athletics program,” he says. Dedicated to creating and continuing programs centered on students’ needs, McQuarrie essentially built the New School’s athletic program from scratch; he focused primarily on the intramural program and clubs as opposed to competition with other schools. It prepared him well for St. John’s. “When I first started, I said to one of the gym assistants, Eric Shlifer (A13), that I love “�I’ve worked and been a student at schools that claim to be student-centered, but that term takes on new meaning at St. John’s.” gary pierpoint Katie Matlack Hodson House Opens Its Doors Since his arrival last summer, McQuarrie has grown increasingly appreciative of the student-centered athletics program at St. John’s. The fact that Johnnies are often proactive in their education—from tennis to Tchaikovsky to Tocqueville—has been a refreshing but not entirely surprising discovery. McQuarrie, who grew up in Montgomery County, Maryland, was drawn to St. John’s largely because of how athletics are taught here. “I’ve worked and been a student at schools that claim to be student-centered, but that term takes on new meaning at St. John’s,” he says. “At other colleges and universities, administrators, faculty, and staff usually manage amateur athletics,” says McQuarrie. “He replied, ‘Well, you’re going to love it here!’ My role is to be here for the students and to be able to, as best I can, produce the [results] they want.” As an athletic director, McQuarrie best serves the college community by being “flexible, understanding, and above all, an educator. Anyone who works at a college is an educator,” he says. Not surprisingly, mentors have played an important role in his athletic and intellectual development. “When I was a kid, my mom was my baseball coach for three years,” says McQuarrie. “During college, I had two sociology professors, one at Elon University and one at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, who taught me how to teach and how to help students learn.” —Erin Fitzpatrick (A14) and Gregory Shook New Alumni Director in Santa Fe is a Johnnie at Heart Anne Staveley from the bell towers Sarah Palacios, the new director of Alumni Relations at the Santa Fe campus, has a Johnnie-like spirit. This winter she participated in Piraeus in Santa Fe, where the focus was on Dante’s Inferno. Aside from loving the reading and the discussion, Palacios was thrilled to receive feedback from an alumna who stated that if she had not known Palacios wasn’t a Johnnie, she never would have guessed. An avid reader who cites Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy among her favorite authors, she also looks forward to re-reading works such as Oedipus Rex. Originally from Pojoaque, New Mexico, Palacios previously served in alumni relations at her alma mater, Stanford University, where she worked with young alumni as well as in student development. Palacios recognizes the importance of reaching out to what might be referred to as the “future alumni” population. “In alumni relations, we have four years to help current students create a love for and connection to the St. John’s community,” says Palacios. “You’re an alum for far longer than you were ever a student. You’re an alum for the rest of your life.” Palacios welcomes the opportunity to be working for a small, private college. “Private colleges have more unified communities,” she says. Seminars and alumni events, such as Piraeus and the alumni-student ski day, have helped her get to know the St. John’s alumni community. “I can learn so much from alumni,” says Palacios. “I invite everyone to reach out to me, even if I haven’t had the chance to reach out to them yet. Send me an e-mail, or call, or drop by the office. My door is open.” Palacios earned her bachelor’s degree in cultural psychology with an emphasis on American Indian identity; she also has an MBA from the University of New Mexico. She hopes that her research on the challenges encountered by first-generation college students, specifically minority students, can benefit St. John’s. Her background will also be useful in understanding the varying needs of alumni. Palacios says, “I get the sense that no matter how long it’s been since alumni have been to St. John’s for a visit, they step on campus and it feels like home.” —Jennifer Levin The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 15 �tutor views Imagination and Creativity by J. H. Beall Imagination and creativity seem at first gloss to be positive things that hold high sway in the court of modernity. They are said to be responsible for much of the good in our lives and the source of the relative comfort in which the majority of us can live. These claims are, to my mind, true. Given the high regard in which these terms are held, it is of interest to investigate them in some detail. Exploring the Cosmos: Faculty members consider Copernicus and a revolution that, to be understood, requires “careful observation, study and reflection and bold, imaginative insight,” notes Annapolis Dean Pamela Kraus. opposite: A barred spiral galaxy was captured in spectacular detail in this image taken by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope. Superimposed over the photo is Copernicus’ diagram from 1543 of the movement of the planets around the sun—a page from De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium, published the same year. photos: courtesy nasa, esa, the hubble space telescope. 16 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 As the word suggests, imagination seems to be associated with an image that one can hold in the mind, like the “picture” of a cat or a unicorn. But the idea of imagination can be extended beyond that of a simple picture. In Psychology: The Briefer Course, William James talks about the different kinds of imagination. For example, he catalogs an “auditory imagination” that can be as delightful as “Fingal’s Cave” or some terrible tune that keeps reprising itself in one’s head, mewling like a hungry cat, but for no good reason. My favorite example in James’s work is the kinesthetic imagination. Anyone who has ever seen a friend (or especially one’s child) fall down and felt the shock of it for themselves has had the experience of the kinesthetic imagination. There is also a species of imagination that James doesn’t directly address. Most of us have felt it when we are alone, walking at night. It’s that strange feeling that makes us afraid to turn around and look behind us, dreading what we suppose to be there. The vividness of this experience is much like a kinesthetic occurrence. It can be quite arresting—and not particularly positive. James is quick to point out that the imagination is of different degrees for different people. In some individuals, it is remarkably vivid, and in others, it is barely a capacity. To illustrate this, imagine three “dots,” like dots on a piece of paper. Now imagine four dots. Now imagine five. Now imagine seven. Now imagine thirteen. At some point for most of us, the image gets fuzzy. Yet it is easy to think about the number seven or a million or 106. This by way of analysis. It is not my intention to cast aspersions on the imagination or to say that it is not powerful in some ways. To say the least of it, imagination is a complex subject. Eva Brann’s wonderful book, The World The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 17 �Q&A tutor views imagination and creativity Q&A The introduction of Copernicus, which follows, presents another kind of imaginative challenge, to return to the familiar assumption that the sun is the center. Students have to revolutionize their thinking twice, then, once to register the appearances and imagine them accounted for through Ptolemy—this is an undoing of a former opinion; and then, again, to take stock of the revolution through Copernicus. They are in an optimum position to appreciate and even appropriate the fuller meaning and consequence of the Copernican revolution—that to understand the appearances, or our experience, however fundamental, requires careful observation, study and reflection, and bold, imaginative insight. How do we encounter Copernicus in the program of study at St. John’s? This study of Ptolemy continues into the fall semester of the sophomore mathematics tutorial, as his account becomes more complex in order to address the various positions of the planets, which do not appear to travel in an uninterrupted circle around the earth. We focus on the motions of Venus. After that study we turn to Copernicus, whose account revolutionizes astronomy, since it replaces the geocentric with a heliocentric model. Although the account was not finally proven until later, after the telescope was invented and certain measurements could be taken, it supplanted forever the former way of understanding our place in the universe. This is an important sequence for our students. The astronomy sequence in these years first restores the appearances, that is to say, our experience, to a kind of primacy; and then students begin to appreciate Ptolemy’s achievement, how he combined the observed regularities of the heavenly bodies, representing them and accounting for their movements through geometry. This requires in our students a combination of reasoning and imagination employed in a different way than they are used to. Ptolemy then proceeds to turn the world upside down. He applies his mathematical knowledge to the motions of the heavens, a region between the Earth and the divine. of the Imagination: Sum and Substance, is an intensive consideration of the topic. Imagination for all its vividness and limitations seems to go hand in hand with creativity. This was brought to mind recently when my niece, an accomplished photographer, posted an image of a deer track on Facebook with the footprint oriented upside down. That is, the inverted deer track—filled with water in the soft earth—looked “heart-shaped.” She posted the image on Valentine’s Day with an appropriate caption. This simple re-orientation of an existing image now had a new aspect, a new meaning for someone looking at the picture. This bears on the question of what creativity actually is. In certain glosses, the word can suggest creation “ex nihilo,” which in the Latin means literally “out of nothing.” One can think of the Prime Mover in Aristotle’s Physics and Metaphysics, or the Lord’s “Let there be light” from the Old Testament. In Aristotle’s case, the example clearly shows that the essential source of motion has no antecedent cause. And clearly, God has no cause beside itself. But this interpretation of the word “creativity” might be too strict. In the case of the photograph of the deer’s footprint turned upsidedown, the new aspect that is revealed brings together a particular image with a particular day and a particular set of associations. It connects an image with an understanding. This is essential for coming up with something new. 18 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 Ptolemy’s Almagest and Copernicus’s work are particularly fine examples of this more general idea of creativity. In Ptolemy’s case, as students at the college discover in the second semester of the freshman year, there is a metaphysical justification for using mathematics to discover the regularity behind the flux of experience. Ptolemy begins with Aristotle’s division of the “theoretical [sciences] into three immediate genera: the physical, the mathematical, and the theological.” Ptolemy despairs of finding the regularity behind physical things, those below the lunar sphere, since they are too changing and complex. In addition, he believes theological science is too high, too transcendent for us, being related as it is to Gods or Prime Movers. Yet the mathematical is within our grasp, and Ptolemy has Euclid’s Elements to show the truth of that. Yet there is little or no motion in Euclid’s Elements. Ptolemy, however, proceeds in a way worth quoting whole cloth: And therefore meditating that the other two genera of the theoretical would be expounded in terms of conjecture rather than in terms of scientific understanding [emphasis mine]: the theological because it is in no way phenomenal and attainable, but the physical because its matter is unstable and obscure, so that for this reason philosophers could never hope to agree on them; and meditating that only the mathematical, if approached enquiringly, would give its practi- −Pamela Kraus, Annapolis dean The Heart of the Whirlpool Galaxy The freshman mathematics tutorial spends much of the academic year studying Euclid’s Elements, going through many of the propositions in its twelve books. In the spring semester, the tutorial turns attention to Ptolemy’s Almagest, the work that assumes that the earth is at the center, and ends the year by introducing Ptolemy’s geometrical account, concentrating on his account of the sun. tioners certain and trustworthy knowledge with demonstration both arithmetic and geometric. . . . [W]e were led to cultivate most particularly . . . this theoretical discipline” (Almagest, trans. by R. C. Taliaferro, University of Chicago Press: Great Books edition, 1952. Ptolemy then proceeds to turn the world upside down. He applies his mathematical knowledge to the motions of the heavens, a region between the Earth and the divine. This bears on his fascination with circles, since the most manifest motion of the sky is the rising of the Sun in the east and its setting in the west. More properly, there are also the uniform circular motions of the “fixed” stars that Ptolemy uses as his elements to show this underlying order behind the flux of experience. As such, Ptolemy’s Almagest is the forerunner of every modern physical theory. Of course, “saving the appearances” by showing their underlying regularity in spite of manifest variations requires a bit of artifice, and Ptolemy’s theory is a fine example of such amplification. The point here is that he took elements he already knew from Euclid and from his own One of our Socratic hypotheses is that to come to know for oneself, even just to inquire for oneself, presupposes recognition of one’s own ignorance, i.e. our knowing that (or what) we do not know. In many respects, our “knowledge” that the earth revolves around the sun is the paradigm specimen or occasion for breaking open our too easy confidence in what we know. What we think we know is counter-intuitive (it appears that the sun is moving and we and the earth are still). It does not seem to be derived from our everyday experience (or our ways of talking: the sun rises and sets). Furthermore, most of us cannot “replicate” or even narrate the body of theory and evidence and experimentation that have gone into this knowledge. Under cross-examination, it seems that we are trusting in the authority of others: books, scientists. Now, at St. John’s, we do “cross-examine” this knowledge (and we do replicate or narrate its history and development). It turns out to be a long and hard question The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 19 �Q&A tutor views imagination and creativity Q&A as to what would decide the issue between a geocentric and heliocentric “hypothesis” or “theory.” As I understand it, it is not until the nineteenth century (roughly 300 years after the publication of Copernicus’s theory) that some astronomical measurement or observation appears to weigh decisively in favor of the Copernican theory. The comparative study of Ptolemaic and Copernican astronomy (and its later development) is one of the most powerful introductions to the hidden questions of the philosophy and history of science. It is probably the most significant and the most telling case of the problems associated with science’s “ascent” from appearance to reality, as well as the most telling case of the problems associated with relating mathematical models to nature and natural phenomena. –J. Walter Sterling, Santa Fe dean The Copernican revolution became both (partial) cause and icon for modernity and for the intellectual and spiritual revolutions that propel it. Kant, very famously, analogized his philosophical revolution in the Critique of Pure Reason to the Copernican revolution. This icon has meant different things for different thinkers: a defiant challenge to received authority, philosophical and theological, in favor of one’s own reason (this may be seen as “political” as well, e.g. with Galileo’s trial and his alleged “And yet it moves”); the displacement of Man from the center of the cosmos (or the loss of a “center”), a displacement that arguably undermines Biblical cosmology, or Providence; the abandonment of “naïve” observation; the movement toward a consistent mathematical physics of matter in motion, freed from religion and metaphysics; the paradigm for the indefinite and open-ended revision of scientific theory. And so on. Spiral Galaxy NGC 3370 Hubble’s Sharpest View of the Orion Nebula The point is not to generate a fixed skepticism among our students or faculty, nor to rehabilitate geocentricism, but rather to bring to the fore, for our conscious study and reflection, a variety of hidden assumptions that lurk behind our everyday knowledge or our tacit acceptance of scientific knowledge. How do we apply mathematical models to “physical” phenomena? How do we “save the appearances”? What kinds of arguments or evidence can persuade us of the truth of a physical model or theory? Can such theories be “proven” at all? The “facts,” or the “appearances,” admit of various interpretations. What criteria are most important in adopting one over the other— predictive power, coherence and consistency, elegance or beauty, theological argument, physical argument, mathematical argument? Did Copernicus change scientific thought? –J. Walter Sterling, Santa Fe dean Copernicus’s inversion from a geocentric to a heliocentric model of the universe still required something other than simple circles, which led him to place an epicycle at the center of the Sun. and others’ observations of the motions of the sky, and brought those together to give us a new understanding of the regularity behind the appearances of the world. Ptolemy’s epicycles are, of course, the key part of the model. One of that model’s complexities is the assumption that Venus’s and Mercury’s epicycles are centered on the Sun. This in turn is necessary because of the observations that Mercury and Venus never exceed certain angular distances from the Sun. For example, when Venus is the “evening star” (that is, when it is in the sky after sunset), it gradually attains a greater and greater distance away from the Sun, a phenomenon especially noticeable because Venus is so bright. The maximum angular distance of Venus from the Sun—Venus’s maximum elongation—is around 20 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 44 degrees, so that when Venus is at maximum elongation after sunset, it is remarkably far from the Sun. Yet immediately after this, it begins to approach the Sun again, eventually moving past the Sun in order to lead it across the sky, thus becoming the “morning star.” Mercury is the only other planet that has this apparent association with the Sun, although Mercury’s maximum elongation is much smaller at 15 degrees of arc. Ptolemy seeks to explain these observations by placing each of the planets on an “epicycle,” a circle upon which the planet moves as the center of the epicycle moves in a perfect circle around the center of the Earth. In the special case of Venus and Mercury, the center of their epicycles is tied to the position of the center of the Sun, as the Sun moves around the Earth. For Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, the centers of their epicycles have no spe- cial relation to the Sun. Ptolemy uses his model to explain the special motions of each of the planets, but makes an ad hoc assumption about where Venus and Mercury’s epicycles are centered, albeit an assumption required by observation as it manifests itself in his theory. That is, there is no explanation arising from Ptolemy’s model that explains the special status of Venus and Mercury. It is precisely this sort of complexity that Copernicus seeks to address with his heliocentric or Sun-centered model in his work, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres. By placing Earth as the third planet after Mercury and Venus, Copernicus gives a natural explanation not only for the maximum elongations of Mercury and Venus, but also for the retrograde motion of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, without resorting to epicycles. Yet Copernicus’s inversion from a geocentric (Earth-centered) to a heliocentric model of the universe, while it solved the problem of the maximum elongation of Venus and Mercury and the retrograde motions of the “outer planets,” still required something other than simple circles, which led Copernicus to place an epicycle at the center of the Sun. Of course, Newton’s interpretation of Kepler’s laws provided a simpler explanation still: an inverse-square force law for the attraction of the planets, and a force directed to the Sun’s center. Newton’s model saved the appearances by placing the regularity in the understanding and not in the imagination. In these examples, creativity and imagination have more modest poses. They help us rearrange the elements given to us by experience (or our predecessors’ observations and theories) into a new understanding of the ever-changing flux of experience before us. At the heart of this fluence are certain “regularities” which we now call physical laws and theories. These relate matter, time, motion, and our experiences with a mathematical regularity that is truly remarkable. And even if the day-to-day world seems like shadows on a cave wall, the regularities we have begun to notice suggest an underlying structure and light from which these shadows are cast. Visit Jim Beall, Annapolis tutor, on Facebook for daily astronomical postings. He presented the first modern account of a unified, systematically arranged planetary system revolving around the sun. The world no longer is what it looks like. There is now a split between being and appearance. Perspective and relative motion enter as major players in physical science. --Peter Kalkavage, tutor Was imagination essential to a scientist such as Copernicus? Absolutely. It is a real challenge to the imagination to think that perhaps this world upon which we are standing is moving! And that the sun is standing still! It takes even more imagination to grasp how what we seem to see can be explained on those grounds. It takes almost as much imagination, however, to think that the world is round, and that the sun is millions of miles away, larger than the earth The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 21 �tutor views But in addition to all this, Copernicus’s system did not make any better predictions than Ptolemy’s, and it was also not primarily based on new evidence. (He was before the telescope: new evidence did not begin to pour in until Galileo.) Perhaps Copernicus’s most important argument is that in his theory, the solar system makes more sense as a whole, as a system: and that argument appeals powerfully to the imagination. Ptolemy’s planets were not related to each other in any satisfying way; he analyzed each separately. It wasn’t even clear which were closer to the sun. In Copernicus, the planets are all locked into one easily imaginable whole. The relative sizes of the orbits and their arrangement is more satisfying to the intellect because it is so graspable by the imagination. --Henry Higuera, tutor Imagination was indeed essential to Copernicus, as it was for all the astronomers who came before him. We cannot stand outside the cosmos to see its scheme. Nor can we perform experiments on it. We can only observe, and based on our observations, formulate hypotheses that are true to what we observe. This is where imagination comes in—as the power of devising hypotheses. --Peter Kalkavage, Annapolis tutor It strikes me that many aspects of science involve imagination. For the sake of argument, let’s define imagination as the faculty or act of forming ideas or conceptions using images beyond what is present to the senses. Though scientists rely on the senses for observations and in experimentation, many of their ideas involve an imaginative act. From the thought experiments of Huygens or Einstein to Copernicus’s model of nested circles with the sun at the center, the very nature of thinking through a scientific challenge involves the imagination. --Greg Schneider, tutor Mathematical astronomy is the most beautiful application of mathematics to the visible world. The heavenly bodies exhibit an unsurpassed regularity in their motions. Chance seems to be either absent or negligible. The heavens are deeply connected with the divine—with theology. — Peter K alkavage, tutor Why is astronomy included in the Program? We don’t do “astronomy” as a subject. To be frank, I think that what we do is string together brilliant excerpts by three or four very great thinkers (Ptolemy, Copernicus, sometimes Kepler, and Newton) who treated astronomy. These works and their authors are worth appreciating on their own and comparing each to each on many levels: geometrical, logical, imaginative, methodological, and even theological. Ptolemy, Copernicus, and Newton each give different answers as to why we study astronomy. As a college, we think that each is worth taking seriously. --Henry Higuera, tutor Mathematical astronomy is the most beautiful application of mathematics to the visible world. The heavenly bodies exhibit an unsurpassed regularity in their motions. Chance seems to be either absent or negligible. The heavens are deeply connected with the divine—with theology. Also, mathematical astronomy, to a greater extent than other sciences, brings to the fore the curious thing we call a hypothesis. It also gives us an opportunity to discuss what it means to “save the appearances.” Ancient thinkers, especially those influenced by Pythagoras, believed that mathematical astronomy was good for our souls. Mathematical astronomy is the effort to think of the visible world in its wholeness. --Peter Kalkavage, tutor You will probably get many different answers to this question. Among the various reasons that occur to me, one is that astronomy was included among the original liberal arts. To be an educated human, you had to know something about the 22 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 cosmos of which we are a part. To the ancients, the heavenly spheres were eternal, so contemplating their motions was a way to reflect upon the eternal. And even the ancients acknowledged that astronomy has practical features for agriculture, for navigation, etc. In the introduction to On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres, Copernicus himself argues: “Unquestionably the summit of the liberal arts and most worthy of a free man, it is supported by almost all the branches of mathematics. Arithmetic, geometry, optics, surveying, mechanics and whatever others there are all contribute to it. Although all the good arts serve to draw man’s mind away from vices and lead it toward better things, this function can be more fully performed by this art, which also provides extraordinary intellectual pleasure.” Also, what are we to make of the sun’s not really being at the center of the earth’s movement? The “center” in Copernicus is a mathematical average of the centers of all the non-concentric planetary orbits. Also, what physical assumptions does Copernicus have to make in order to reject Ptolemy’s arguments against a moving earth, and how secure is the ground for these assumptions? What physically must be going on in a sun-centered cosmos? Is the sun somehow a cause of motion? Why are the planets (and now the earth) moving at all? And why in circles? In our world of atomic clocks and light-obscured night skies, my students and I have less daily contact with the heavens. We tend not to think of the eternal or the gods when we look up at the stars, but looking at the motions of the sun and the planets and the moon raises many fascinating questions about motion, mathematics, and physics, not to mention our place in the order of things. To me, Copernicus occupies this fascinating place between Ptolemy and Kepler. He retains Ptolemy’s reverence for circles while being willing to take the bold step of asserting a sun-centered universe. Why does he insist on circles and spheres in his model? --Greg Schneider, tutor Describe an opening question on Copernicus that still fascinates you. Why is Copernicus not more bothered by his little epicycle, the radius of which in effect reduplicates the eccentricity of the equant? How big a problem is it that the orbit that results from this little epicycle is a circle that has a slight bulge, or, as Copernicus puts it, “differs imperceptibly” from a circle? Another important and persistent question is the following: Has the meaning of “hypothesis,” and of “saving the appearances,” changed in the transition from Ptolemy to Copernicus? --Peter Kalkavage, tutor --Greg Schneider, tutor Is there a certain proposition or mathematical element of Copernicus’s work that amazes or puzzles you? Why? It puzzles me why Copernicus, who boasts of having more systematic unity than Ptolemy, doesn’t say more about the sun’s not being the mathematical center of the system. --Peter Kalkavage, tutor Active Galaxy Centaurus A itself, which Ptolemy already argued for. In this way Ptolemy was also “a scientist such as Copernicus.” tutor views Related to the last question, as a predictive model, Copernicus’s approach turns out to be less accurate than Ptolemy’s. Both rely on circles, but Ptolemy’s arrangement gives remarkable results in predicting the positions of the planets, compared to Copernicus’s model. This fact has always puzzled me. It raises intriguing questions about what makes a scientific model more compelling or powerful, from its predictive features to its agreement with experiment to its more aesthetic features. With regard to a specific proposition, his proof of the immensity of the heavens compared to the size of the earth in Chapter Six for some reason fascinates me. It relies, to some extent, on lines drawn from the center of the earth and from a point on its surface, seeming, at immense distances, either parallel or the same line. The proof anticipates some things that Newton does much later and highlights interesting ways in which our sense experience does or does not coincide with a mathematical portrayal of the same phenomenon. Perhaps Copernicus’s most important argument is that in his theory, the solar system makes more sense as a whole, as a system: and that argument appeals powerfully to the imagination. — Henry Higuera, tutor --Greg Schneider, tutor The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 23 �Seeing Stars Most of us gaze at the night sky with the naked eye or a backyard telescope, yearning to know more. These Johnnies have pursued, with deep curiosity, answers to the mysteries of the cosmos. Using sophisticated instrumentation, they are observing and recording celestial phenomena in far-flung galaxies, communicating with satellites that observe Earth, bringing their Johnnie imaginations to the puzzles of binary black holes, and illustrating mathematical theorems with thread. “�Instrumentation remains ‘a delicate balance’ because you need to know what the question is before constructing a means to an answer.” Charting the Cosmos: Rachel Dudik (a02) is a Star Detector —Rachel Dudik (a02) by Anna Perleberg Andersen (sf02) photos of Rachel Dudik by James Kegley In Plato’s Theaetetus, Socrates tells a humorous anecdote about Thales of Miletus, often considered the first philosopher proper in the Greek (and hence the Western) tradition. 24 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 Thales, he claims, was so focused on looking upward at the stars one night that he fell down a well, prompting a servant girl to laugh at him “because he was so eager to know the things in the sky that he could not see what was there before him at his very feet.” We have no way of ascertaining how much of this tale is true, of course; it has been suggested that Thales was in the well on purpose, knowing he’d be able to see the stars better through such darkness. The story illustrates how closely philosophy has been linked to astronomy since the beginnings of both—from Aristotle and Ptolemy to Newton and Copernicus. So it’s no surprise that the field of astronomy attracts Johnnies— although it’s not a career that Rachel Dudik (A02) ever expected. Growing up in central Pennsylvania, Dudik “was good at math and science,” she says, “but I really liked art and literature.” Now she’s an astronomer employed by the Department of Defense at the U.S. Naval Observatory (USNO) in Washington, D.C, surrounded by dyed-in-the-wool stargazers, most who “knew they wanted to be astronomers from the time they were seven,” she says. “So they were out with a telescope looking at the constellations; I was in my room drawing.” During her senior year, Dudik attended a lecture on black holes by Shobita Satyapal, a professor at Virginia’s George Mason University. She was immediately (forgive the pun) sucked in by “the fact that there were these massive things lurking out there in the centers of galaxies and that their presence could only be observed through indirect means. Also, I just like very powerful exploding things.” Dudik’s lab tutor, Jim Beall—also an adjunct professor at GMU at the time—arranged this lifechanging lecture. He describes Dudik today as an “intelligent, resourceful, and accomplished scientist.” In 2002, Beall recommended her for Satyapal’s summer internship at GMU immediately after graduation. When the university began to offer doctorates in astronomy, they actively recruited St. John’s students—an unusual resource for the so-called “hard” sciences. Dudik was one of these initial recruits: “There were two Italians and three Johnnies,” she recalls. In January 2009, she became the first to earn a doctorate from the new program—a PhD in Physical Sciences with a concentration in physics and astronomy. (The program has since changed slightly.) “Going from the Socratic method to advanced coursework in modern physics wasn’t an easy transition,’” she recalls. Although she took a few undergrad astrophysics classes to get up to speed, Dudik attributes her success to the program’s chair, Maria Dworzecka, who was a strong supporter of St. John’s students, and Satyapal, who became The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 25 �Rachel Dudik (A02) is on a quest to increase the precision with which we chart our universe. knowledge of astronomy. Dudik needs to understand some engineering to guide their work, as she must decide what the detector is supposed to do and how to make it happen. Instrumentation remains “a delicate balance,” Dudik says, “because you need to know what the question is before constructing a means to an answer.” Dudik’s advisor. As a graduate of Bryn Mawr, Satyapal understood the liberal arts approach to math and sciences. “She was an amazing advisor for someone with my background,” says Dudik. “It was like I hadn’t left home.” “�You need to catch every single light particle, and not confuse them with According to Dudik, modern astronomy can be roughly subdivided anything else.” into three spheres: observation, theory, and instrumentation. During her graduate studies, which included a fellowship at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, she concentrated on observation, using astronomical data to investigate how black holes are formed. A layperson might imagine a figure in a white lab coat, squinting through the eyepiece of a telescope and taking furious notes. Today, however, a camera, spectrometer, or other device far more precise than the human eye plays the role of squinter, and the telescope itself might be in space. Because data is only as good as the instrument that gathers it, ever more sensitive (and expensive) equipment must be built for discoveries to continue. As Dudik began her post-degree career, she moved away from the observational side of astronomy. “I’m the kind of person who likes to study something really hard for about six years and then wants to do something else,” she says. Since May 2008, her work at the USNO has primarily involved instrumentation. Once again, she has benefited from a St. John’s mentor—Bryan Dorland (A92), chief of USNO’s Astrometric Satellite Division, who has allowed her to learn engineering on the job. “His having the background that I did has been very important for me,” says Dudik. “He’s also very supportive of my career, teaching me what I don’t know.” The U.S. Naval Observatory was founded in 1830 as the Depot of Charts and Instruments, caring for the Navy’s nautical charts and chronometers—the means for ships to orient themselves in time as well as space. Both are vital to celestial navigation. Throughout the 19th century, the observatory honed the accuracy of these tools. Systematic observations of heavenly objects led to scientific achievement. In 1877, using the largest refracting telescope in the world, Asaph Hall discovered the two moons of Mars. That telescope is still in use today. Although technology has evolved considerably, the USNO’s mission has changed little; they determine the positions and motions of celestial bodies, the Earth, and precise time; they keep the official time of the United States, now determined by atomic clocks aboard GPS satellites. Those same satellites act as 26 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 high-tech sextants, allowing ships to determine their exact positions. The quest for increased precision in celestial observation—and the expansion of our charted universe—requires constant innovation. Dudik and Dorland work in detector development, seeking ways to improve the informationgathering capabilities of the USNO’s telescopes. These detectors are sensitive to visible light, similar in purpose to those found in any camera phone. Since their extraterrestrial quarry is often too faint to be seen, they are far greater in strength: “When you take a picture with your phone,” explains Dudik, “there’s light everywhere.” Stars, however, can’t be seen without the most expensive detectors. “You need to catch every single light particle, and not confuse them with anything else,” she says. No mean feat in the blackness of space. Each “hybrid” detector has two layers. One layer consists of a material sensitive to a certain wavelength of light—silicon for the visible spectrum, and usually mercury cadmium telluride for an infrared detector. The second layer is an electronic readout; data from both layers is “smashed together” to create a single detector. Additional electronics “send signals to the readout layer on the detector to tell it when to integrate and when to stop integrating,” says Dudik. The detectors are built by engineers in California, who may have little While the USNO’s main mission is practical astrometry, the Navy realizes that its scientists must do research, too. At the end of March, Dudik spent two nights at Palomar Observatory in California, using data from its telescopes to search for planets orbiting different stars. Sometimes ground-based observation isn’t enough for the research Dudik wants to do –she needs an instrument far out in space. NASA’s multi-billion-dollar space telescopes are, of course, in high demand. Detailed proposals must be submitted and reviewed before a project is granted observation time. “You’re competing against hundreds of astronomers across the country who all have really great ideas on science targets to use these particular telescopes,” says Dudik. “You have to look at the science idea from every angle.” Luckily, that is a skill familiar to Johnnies. “An essential part of being a good researcher is reading on your own, coming up with your own ideas, writing really good papers—and being critical of your own ideas,” she says. She has noticed that traditionally trained physicists are often able to solve problems, but less able to think of new ones. The numerous philosopher/astronomers on the St. John’s Program have inspired her. Beyond the usual suspects, she mentions Kant, whose 1755 monograph, Universal History and Theory of the Heavens, was the first work to theorize that nebulae glimpsed through telescopes were actually distant star systems like our own Milky Way, later called “island universes.” Now they are known as galaxies, and we can see farther into the heavens than Kant or Thales ever imagined. seeing stars Searching the Universe: Night Flights with Gabrelle Saurage (ec04) by Anna Perleberg Andersen (sf02) Gabrelle Saurage (EC04) considered herself “done with astronomy” after years as a telescope operator. She was pursuing a master’s degree in philosophy from the University of New Mexico until this past January, when she was offered a chance to fulfill a childhood dream: to work for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The telescope she drives these days—or rather, these nights—makes its home in the guts of a converted 747 airplane, and casts its infrared eye on celestial objects far and near, recording images at wavelengths that no other telescope can. The project, which has a planned 20-year lifetime, is called the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, SOFIA for short—an evocative name for any Johnnie. It’s the largest airborne observatory in the world, the result of a partnership between NASA and its German equivalent, the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR). SOFIA’s revamped 747, dubbed the “Clipper Lindbergh” after the pioneering aviator, contains a 17-ton telescope with three internal mirrors, which reflect and focus energy from space through an infrared camera called FORCAST (Faint Object Infrared Camera for the Sofia Telescope). The camera was developed by scientists at Cornell University; its largest mirror is 2.7 meters across. Operating from NASA’s Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility in Palmdale, California, SOFIA’s night flights carry anywhere from 14 to 38 people within the gutted and rebuilt interior of the aircraft. Evenings at Dryden begin with a crew briefing where, clad in her khaki flight suit, Saurage joins other members of the team to go over the rules and objectives for that flight, such as what objects they’ll be observing and what specialized instruments will be used. Many sub-groups take part in the mission: the flight crew; the operations crew, which includes Saurage and another telescope operator; and visiting astronomers gathering data on a particular heavenly body or phenomena. All are shepherded by a mission director. In addition, NASA’s public outreach means that media and science educators are often present. Saurage’s role is crucial, as she is responsible for the exacting, computer-driven process of actually moving the telescope, “working with astronomers trying to get observations of different things. Every night it’s something different.” Many objects in space emit their energy at infrared wavelengths, hidden not only Inset photo: Gabrelle Saurage (EC04) The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 27 �from the human eye but from ordinary cameras and telescopes located beneath the earth’s stratospheric clouds. Other objects are obscured by interstellar dust or gases that visible light cannot pass through—but infrared can. SOFIA, then, is able to perceive things previously invisible, such as newborn stars at the hearts of galaxies, exotic molecules never before detected in space, or the vibrant Modern science “wasn’t really tackling the questions I was looking for,” which were Big Questions: “How did this all get started? layers of cloud surrounding the planet Jupiter, with the heat of the planet spilling through. Wavelengths emitted by a given object tell scientists much about the materials it is made of, providing insights into the construction of the universe as well as its turbulent history. And because NASA is a government agency, SOFIA’s awe-inspiring images are freely available to the public: a visit to the project website, sofia. usra.edu, is the best kind of Internet black hole. For Saurage, some of the information that SOFIA collects speaks directly to her intellectual interests: “You tend to lean either macro or micro [in science]. Some people are interested in DNA and genetics, so they might lean toward biology and chemistry, even particle physics,” she says. “I’m interested in galaxy structure and star formation. seeing stars Because of that, the part of physics that always interested me was cosmology, the story of the beginning.” While other Johnnie astronomers followed philosophy with physics, Saurage took the opposite path. She earned a B.S. in physics in 1996 from Southwest Texas State University (which dropped the “Southwest” in 2003). She “drove” telescopes at various observatories: McDonald in west Texas and W. M. Keck in Hawaii—near the summit of Mauna Kea, Keck houses the largest optical telescope on Earth. Although Saurage found the work rewarding, she felt that modern science “wasn’t tackling the questions I was looking for,” which were Big Questions: “How did this all get started? What is all this?” Saurage enrolled in the Eastern Classics program, where her favorite readings were from Indian philosophy, exploring “the relationship of humanity to divinity.” Cosmology stories from the Upanishads continue to influence her work. After receiving her master’s, Saurage put in time at the Apache Point observatory in southern New Mexico, but found herself drawn back to philosophy—until SOFIA came along. Saurage finds that her St. John’s education occasionally confounds the scientists with whom she works. “I’m an oddball—but to me it makes sense, because it fits in the realm of pursuing these ideas. I have always been more oriented toward math and science in the classical Greek way. I don’t see the divisions that we create in the modern American university. If I’m interested in how the universe works, I’m not going to isolate myself in any one of those fields. It’s all up for grabs.” 28 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 Intergalactic Wanderers: Erin Wells Bonning (a97) Trails a Nomadic Black Hole by Anna Perleberg Andersen (sf02) In 1971, British astronomers Donald Lynden-Bell and Martin Rees hypothesized that the center of the Milky Way galaxy contained a black hole—no run-of-the-mill black hole, either, but a gargantuan one now known to be the mass of four million suns. Three years later, a pair of Americans, Bruce Balick and Robert Brown, discovered an enormous source of radio waves in a region of our galaxy called Sagittarius A, now widely accepted as the theorized black hole. In fact, the astronomical community now believes that most, if not all galaxies contain what is termed “supermassive” black holes. How these are formed, however, and their connection with the creation of the galaxies themselves, is still a topic of intense debate and research. Erin Wells Bonning (A97), along with her University of Texas at Austin colleague Greg Shields, recently gained the attention of Science News with a paper that may contribute greatly to our understanding of these giant phenomena. Scientists believe “�You have to go on faith that there is reason and meaning to be found there, and you struggle with it. [Science] is the same process.” rick dahms seeing stars that when galaxies combine, their two central black holes sink to the center, orbiting each other until they eventually merge. Computer simulations, says Bonning, suggest that these pairs “are giving off gravitational radiation, ripples in space-time propagating away from the binary black hole. It’s something that’s predicted in Einstein’s theory, and there are experiments going on right now attempting to detect this phenomenon.” These simulations also imply something perhaps more astounding: that the union of two black holes can release energy so great as to fling the new object entirely out of its home galaxy, sending it flying across the universe until it settles elsewhere. The idea of such a “runaway” black hole remains unproven, however. Researchers like Bonning and Shields have combed through dozens of likely candidates, and now believe they have identified one. In 2012, a team of Dutch astronomers led by Remco van den Bosch discovered an anomalous black hole at the heart of a galaxy called NGC 1277, 250 million light-years from Earth. This black hole is much larger than the galaxy’s size would predict—a staggering 17 billion solar masses. Bonning and Shields’s explanation is that it’s a nomad, having been hurled quintillions of miles over billions of years to reach its position. If true (and in theoretical astrophysics, it’s a long road to certainty), this would be the first definite evidence supporting the “runaway” theory. As such, it is exciting to the scientific community—although difficult for laypeople to wrap their heads around. (Andrew Grant’s Science News article on Bonning and Shields’s paper can be read online at www.sciencenews.org/view/ generic/id/348554/description/ New_home_for_runaway_black_ hole.) Astronomy was always an interest for Bonning, as “a little geek girl [who] read all about black holes and relativity and quantum mechanics, and it was just the coolest stuff I’d ever heard of.” While she devoured “anything and everything” in the space and physics section of the library, her supportive parents nurtured her interest in science, giving her a small telescope, a microscope, and a chemistry set. “One of my fondest childhood memories is of the day when my dad and I played hooky (me from second grade) to go visit the Air and Space Museum in D.C.,” she says. “For the longest time, I thought it was the ‘Erin Space Museum’ because obviously it was built for me!” Like other Johnnie astronomers, Bonning cites Annapolis tutor Jim Beall’s influence in her choice of astronomy as a career: “He was my freshman seminar tutor, and we eventually ended up working together at the Naval Research Lab for a couple of summers while I was an undergrad” in 1996 and 1997. Beall calls Bonning “a young woman of enormous energy, focus, and goodwill.” He is “especially fond” of her postdoctoral discovery of the concurrent radio and gamma ray The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 29 �seeing stars seeing stars variability of an active galaxy—because he discovered the first such concurrent variability years ago. During her junior and senior years at St. John’s, Bonning was invited by USNA professor AnneMarie Novo-Gradac to work in her optics lab. (Novo-Gradac is now a program executive in astrophysics at NASA headquarters.) “She allowed me to audit her class, gave me homework sets. She was just amazing,” Bonning says. “I learned so much from her in the lab, about science and also about the professional reality of being a scientist.” In 2004, Bonning earned a PhD in physics from the University of Texas at Austin. She has since held a Marie Curie Fellowship at Observatoire de Paris à Meudon, “�I was a little geek girl [who] read all about black holes and relativity and quantum mechanics, and it was just the coolest stuff I’d ever heard of.” and was the Debra Fine Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University. Currently she is a teaching fellow in physical sciences at Quest University Canada in Squamish, British Columbia. Quest’s educational philosophy is “in some respects very similar to St. John’s,” Bonner says. “It’s very studentcentered, discussion-centered, everyone around a big table.” (The school’s chief academic officer is former Santa Fe tutor Jim Cohn.) As an educator, Bonning believes her job is “not to place knowledge into the mind of the student, but to lead the student through the process of learning.” Bonning divides her time between teaching and research, which for her and other astronomers in Hypatia’s Legacy If Thales of Miletus was the first classical astronomer, Hypatia of Alexandria was the first woman to gain wide renown in the field. Hypatia, who flourished in Roman Egypt during the fourth century C.E., was educated by her father, Theon, and is said to have authored The Astronomical Canon. She also studied and taught mathematics and Neoplatonist philosophy. Apparently she was murdered by a Christian mob, caught up in a conflict between the bishop and the prefect of Alexandria. Although her work is lost, she is immortalized not only in numerous historical novels but in the heavens themselves; her name has been given to an asteroid in the belt between Mars and Jupiter, and to a crater on the moon. In the modern era, it remains common to hear concerns that women are under-represented in the hard sciences. Whether this lack of diversity is the result of institutional discrimination, cultural conditioning, or inherent gender differences is an ongoing and controversial discussion. Physics (of which astronomy is considered a sub-discipline) is the most male-dominated of the sciences—but many St. John’s-educated women who have gone on to astronomy careers feel comfortable in their field. Rachel Dudik (A02), an astronomer at the U.S. Naval Observatory, and Erin Wells Bonning (A97), a teaching fellow at Quest University in Canada, agree that astronomy has changed drastically in the past 10 to 15 years in terms of gender balance, as a new scientific generation advances. academia involves more computermodeling and data-crunching than direct observation of the heavens. “The vast majority of time is not spent at the telescope,” she says. “You go and take your data, and then bring your data back to your home institution, where you use it to answer whatever questions you’re posing to the universe at that time.” The topics of Bonning’s questions are nigh incomprehensible to the outsider: “Multiwavelength observations and theoretical modeling of active galactic nuclei and relativistic jets. Astrophysics of strongly gravitating systems. 30 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 Both are grateful for the example and guidance of older female scientists, like George Mason University’s Shobita Satyapal (Dudik’s post-graduate advisor) or NASA’s Anne-Marie Novo-Gradac, who mentored Bonning in her optics lab at the U.S. Naval Academy. “At the observatory,” Dudik says, “I’m really outnumbered, but I don’t think that’s for lack of effort. We have tried to hire a number of women there, and most of them end up choosing not to come.” She thinks many prefer to go into education. Bonning, too, admits that “you can be the only woman in a room, but we’ve really come a long way. My advisor has experienced overt sexism—professors actually saying, ‘Women do not belong in this class; you’re taking the space of a man.’ I’ve never heard that, and most of my female colleagues have not.” Gabrelle Saurage (EC04) studied physics as an undergraduate at Southwest Texas State University, where she was the only woman in her department, among both students and faculty members. “There was always an awkwardness about that,” she says, “but I was never harassed, just looked over.” The university now has a female professor on staff, who contacted Saurage years after her graduation, just to check up on how her career was progressing. “I thought that was great!” says Saurage. “Because there are so few women, we all need to take care of each other and encourage each other to keep doing what we’re doing.” — Anna Perleberg Andersen (sf02) Electromagnetic signatures of binary black hole mergers and post-merger recoils. Sources of gravitational radiation, binary black holes, numerical relativity.” In less technical terms, these subjects of study seek to learn about the origin, construction, and continuing life of the universe. Asked about which Program readings have most influenced her scientific career, Bonning names not Ptolemy, Newton, or Copernicus (although they certainly helped), but Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. “Not because of any questions it made me ask about astronomy, but because it’s the sort of training we’re given at St. John’s,” she explains. “We’re given a book and we’re asked to read it, and we trust that it makes sense. You have to go on faith that there is reason and meaning to be found there, and you struggle with it. [Science] is the same process. We observe the universe, and there seems to be a system of physical laws that describe what we see, that are knowable through reason.” Although most of her scientific training took place outside St. John’s, Bonner is grateful for an education in “being fearless when presented with something that doesn’t seem to make sense at all.” Donna Loraine Contractor (SF82) at her loom, and one of her tapestries, Involute Curve. Weaving Theorems: Donna Contractor (sf82) Intertwines Art and Science by Gregory Shook Is it possible to express the hundreds of ways to solve the Pythagorean Theorem using only cotton yarn and a loom? For Donna Loraine Contractor (SF82), a mathematicianturned-weaver, this question speaks to the heart of her work. Sharing her love of quadratic equations, elliptical curve theory, irrational root rectangles, and the golden mean, last year Contractor put out a call to scientists and mathematicians to collaborate in creating woven, visual models of intricate and beautiful constructs; an example of which is Apollonian Gasket, a piece from her “Universal Language” series. As a part of her “New Math Plus” series, she may feature a tapestry based on a Copernicus theorem. Contractor has a gift for illustrating complex ideas in ways that are easy to understand. “I meet a lot of adults who think, Math? I hate math!” says Contractor. “And then they look at the piece and start letting go of their mathophobia.” Contractor did not go to art school. In true Johnnie fashion, she learned to weave by reading, observing, and engaging with other artists. Her selftaught approach coupled with a passion for great minds such as Apollonius of Perga, Helge Von Koch, Gerog Cantor, and Copernicus help her create distinctive works of art. “I’m good at finding books, reading them, and pulling in all that information,” says Contractor. “Part of the reason I got into working with mathematical designs was through the process of self-teaching about color and design theory. Throughout the history of art, so much of design and composition were thought out in terms of mathematics. I’m showing those actual concepts in my tapestries. With my designs, I pull the mathematical idea—things like where the horizon line and focal point should be—to the forefront and illustrate that.” Contractor first came to New Mexico in 1977 to attend St. John’s. Arriving in Santa Fe by Greyhound bus, the Midwest transplant from Kenosha, Wisconsin connected with the Southwest spiritually and intellectually. She has called New Mexico home ever since. Planting roots in Albuquerque, Contractor works from home inside a 350-square-foot studio built from a converted garage by her architect husband, Devendra Contractor (SF79). The setting is ideal. “He’s done a wonderful job lighting it, with lots of windows to let in sunlight from all directions,” she says. “�Throughout the history of art, so much of design and composition were thought out in terms of mathematics.” “I put crystals in the window, which cast lovely rainbows.” Having originally set out to pursue interests in math and science, she increasingly found herself wanting to nourish her artistic soul. Contractor discovered weaving by happenstance—a moment that would forever change her life. “I walked into my friend’s house, The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 31 �seeing stars seeing stars Back to the Future: “�We had to basically write our own operating systems. Now it’s more a matter of integration, what we call ‘glueware,’ or putting all of those pieces together.” Kevin Parker (a79) Helps Humans “Talk” to Satellites by Paula Novash and there was a beautiful, six-foot loom with these great baskets full of colorful yarn. That attracted me to weaving right away,” she says. Given her mathematical bent, it is no wonder she was fascinated by the loom, with all its intricate, moving parts. “My primary loom has a dobby mechanism, pneumatic tensioning system, and a worm gear,” says Contractor. “I love the parts!” Contractor enjoys weaving tapestries that teach, tell stories, and express ideas. Though math and science are perhaps the themes closest to her heart, she looks to other weaving traditions such as Old French, Native American, and Oaxacan as well as other artists’ work as sources for ideas. “I have a series of tapestries called ‘The Fractured Square’, which is about looking at artists who I am excited and inspired by, such as Gustav Klimt,” says Contractor. “I like the idea of the seemingly fractured nature of life in this modern world. You try to pull yourself together and make a whole out of all the pieces.” Creating tapestries that celebrate theorems, precision and elegance of geometric forms, formulas and the beauty of color and balance, Contractor finds peace in the fine details of weaving. “You have to love the process and how the loom works.” In the 1985 science fiction film, Back to the Future, teenager Marty McFly is accidentally transported back thirty years using a time-traveling DeLorean automobile. When scientist Emmett Brown proposes returning him to his own era with a plan that involves harnessing electrical energy from a bolt of lightning, Marty is skeptical. “Don’t worry,” Dr. Brown reassures him. “As long as you hit that wire with the connecting hook at precisely 88 miles per hour the instant the lightning strikes the tower, everything will be fine!” Kevin Parker (A79) may not be a professor of sci-fi lore, but he also juggles precise, high-tech options while trying to predict the future. As a software engineer, he creates satellite simulators at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and is currently working on the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS), developing the next generation of polar-orbiting weather satellites. NASA Goddard has several dozen satellites in space, doing a variety of jobs that include gathering information about global climate change. In addition to ensuring a continuation of over 50 years of weather satellite observations, these new JPSS satellites will generate more accurate and timely weather- and climate-related data, ultimately saving lives and property by allowing scientists to monitor catastrophic phenomena like tornadoes and hurricanes more closely than ever before. Parker is creating the Flight Vehicle Test Suite, a high-fidelity simulator that tests ground systems 32 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 for the JPSS project and trains the engineers who run it. Once a satellite is launched, Parker explains, it streams data to these engineers in the control center. They make sense of the data and respond, he says, with “messages that the satellite will understand.” Calling himself a “fake rocket” scientist, Parker makes replica systems— literally “fake rockets”—that allow scientists and engineers to practice this process. “�It is like composing a response that not only makes grammatical sense, but endeavors to sound like [a particular] person.” Parker uses e-mail as a metaphor to help laypeople understand the different types of simulation tools. A low-fidelity simulator, he says, is like a program that can generate “To” and “From” fields, a subject line, and maybe some gibberish for a message. A medium-fidelity simulator could go a bit further and respond to a message in a routine way, by picking out a phrase like “How are you?” and answering “Fine.” But Parker’s sophisticated high-fidelity simulators have the ability to respond to the spacecraft itself. That, he says, is like “having some sort of artificial intelligence parsing an e-mail and composing a response that not only makes grammatical sense, but endeavors to sound like [a particular] person.” Parker provides this example to illustrate the simulators at work: A satellite’s ground system sends a command to fire a thruster that will turn the spacecraft. A low-fidelity simulator would track the command. A medium-fidelity simulator would realize that the thruster is being fired and is now hot. A high-fidelity simulator would do all of these things plus, says Parker, “register the force on the spacecraft, gradually increase the temperature readings from around the thruster, reduce the amount of fuel remaining, and indicate to any device on the spacecraft that looks outward that it’s turning, and that whatever it’s looking at now is different from what it was looking at before.” Parker describes the bricklayer in the traditional story, who says he’s not simply slapping together masonry, but building a cathedral. For instance, during Superstorm Sandy, weather satellites helped forecasters determine that the hurricane, which was expected to shift out to sea, was actually turning back toward the New York/ New Jersey coastline. “Without the weather satellite input, they would never have seen that,” he explains. “So that’s the ‘great cathedral’ part of the work” that Parker’s simulators make possible. more a matter of integration, what we call ‘glueware,’ or putting all of those pieces together. You can actually go out and buy the software that is the core of a spacecraft control center.” Parker has also seen many technologies developed by NASA scientists filter down to the wider public. For instance, charge-coupled devices (CCDs), instrumental to the Hubble’s photographic processes, now are widely used in digital cameras and medical imaging. “The Hubble,” he jokes, “is like a digital camera the size of a bus.” jen behrens Donna Loraine Contractor, Tunnel Vision This integrated view is natural for a Johnnie; a long tradition connects astronomy and the liberal arts—Kepler united theories of astronomy, mathematics, music, and theology in his Harmonices mundi, for example and early Christians recognized astronomy as one of the seven liberal arts as far back as the sixth century AD. Parker thinks the connections between disciplines could be strengthened as society is increasingly shaped by engineering and technology. “Even at St. John’s, which has a decent science program, it’s still very much weighted towards liberal arts and literature and history,” he says. “Both sides really need to talk to each other a lot more.” After graduating from St. John’s, Parker spent several years in Illinois while his wife Tina (A79) was in graduate school; she has an master’s in zoology. When they returned to Maryland, he got a job with a Goddard contractor. During his 30-year tenure there, he has completed two advanced degrees (a computer science master’s from Johns Hopkins University and a Master of Astronomy from James Cook University) while contributing to a variety of highprofile projects that include the infrared-optimized James Webb Space Telescope. At NASA Goddard, visitors can peer through huge glass windows to view a dust- and contaminant-free “clean room” where scientists and technicians clad in full-body white suits are working on James Webb. The telescope, scheduled to launch in 2018, will seek out some of the youngest planetary systems and oldest galaxies in the universe. Parker’s contributions included writing scripts to ensure that science instruments work together within the Webb’s framework, so that “all the pieces are talking to each other,” he explains. Parker has also developed simulators and code for the Hubble Space Telescope and the Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope. Over the years, Parker has observed major shifts in his work due to radical changes in technology. When he started, “We had to basically write our own operating systems,” he recalls. “Now it’s Parker enjoys the creative challenges of his work—“It’s like getting paid to solve puzzles,” he says—but in his day-to-day routine of writing and testing code, he sometimes loses sight of how much he’s contributing to the advancement of science. A good reminder, he says, comes from visitors to NASA Goddard. “It’s really appealing to show someone around, because I see the enthusiasm. I remember [walking past] a bunch of scientists, and on their door it said ‘Origins of the Universe Section.’ And I was like, ‘holy cow.’” For more information on the JPSS project and the James Webb and Hubble Space telescopes, visit www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/ home/index.html. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 33 �Shadow of War by Henry Robert, Class of 1941 Some who attended or worked at St. John’s in Annapolis may have wondered about certain discolorations of the brick on the outer northeast wall of Chase-Stone House (facing King George Street). For a long time, the stains were prominent. They have faded through the decades, but what’s left of them is clearly visible if one looks closely. Their origin may be of some interest. Members of St. John’s College class of 1941 34 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 Between the window frames of the first and second stories (above the basement) is a horizontal line of lighter-colored brick a few inches wide, running from front to back. The building had a side porch until its complete renovation in 1963, and the line of lighter brick is where the porch roof was attached to the building wall. Below the porch roofline at a level that would have confronted you Henry Robert, class of 1941 directly if you stood on the porch, The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 35 �When I went to bed, it must have been around two a.m.; nothing seemed amiss. That morning when we got up, lo and behold, staring passersby in the face on the outside brick wall of Chase House’s side porch, were two accurately drawn, neatly painted swastikas. We knew that in all probability, we were moving toward war, even if much of the country’s population wouldn’t face the fact. opposite page: Members of the Class of 1944, St. John’s College 1944 Yearbook, p.30. Photos courtesy of The Greenfield Library archives. Class of 1941 and Henry Robert images: SJC-P-1906; SJC-P-0214. are two squares of similarly lighter-colored brick approximately 30 inches on a side, centered from front to back on the wall, maybe fifteen feet apart. These discolorations arise from a very different cause from the one along the porch roofline, and they make a bit of a story. The relevant incident happened one weekend in the early spring of 1941. The student body of the college, if I remember correctly, then numbered about 125. It was my senior year as a student in the first New Program class, the only class that had students in both programs. There were nine of us New Programmers and my recollection is then in the Old Program. A few words about the campus climate at that time may be appropriate. That period may have been looked upon as part of a “golden age.” It was exciting, to be sure. Apart from the many directions in which this was true at the intellectual level, I believe we as students took a certain devilish satisfaction in thinking of our college as a place where “anything can happen and usually does.” Among the factors that contributed to this atmosphere, the college had been through a period of “civil war” between the Old (elective) Program students on the one hand, and the college administration on the other, supported by the New Program students. For a couple of years, there evidently was a feeling among Old Program students that they were merely tolerated. Through those two years, acts of vandalism, particularly window breaking, were a regular occurrence. These acts most often happened in the wee hours of Sunday mornings, doubtless done by students after drinking. This conflict had subsided by the year 1940-41. The ten or so Old Program students in my class were the only ones left, and by then our small senior group had become one happy brotherhood. Yet much of the student body’s conditioning as to what might be expected on Sunday mornings persisted. The other significant overriding element in campus outlook was that we knew that in all probability, we were moving toward war, even 36 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 if much of the country’s population wouldn’t face the fact. England was deep in it. The continent of Europe was blacked out, cut off from civilization, overrun by Hitler’s Nazis the preceding June. The Navy, in their outpost across the street, well knew that we were already at war in the Atlantic. On the Saturday evening of the weekend of our episode, there was a formal dance in Iglehart Hall. I lived on the top floor of Stone House that year. When I went to bed, it must have been around two a.m.; nothing seemed amiss. That morning when we got up, lo and behold, staring passersby in the face on the outside brick wall of Chase House’s side porch, were two accurately drawn, neatly painted swastikas. These 30-inch squares with arms two or three inches wide, inscribed with green paint, were the emblem of the enemy, the symbol of Hitler’s Nazis! The Navy obviously didn’t think it was funny. An “unconfirmed report” had it that Winkie Barr’s telephone rang promptly at 9:00 a.m. Monday. A voice demanded to speak to him, and instantly barked, “This is the Superintendent’s Office. Get those things off that wall NOW!” At that time, it was easier said than done. Today you could call a power-wash man who does paint removal. He would come with his machine, fitted with an attachment to feed certain chemicals into the spray. Armed with this rig, he would— for a fee of several hundred dollars—quickly wash away all traces of paint. Evidently, that technology did not exist or was not readily available in 1941. A laborer from the college’s Buildings and Grounds force went to work with a pair of heavy-duty rubber gloves, a bucket of acid, and a scrub brush, with which he scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed. Two days later, the swastika patterns were gone, but in their place on the wall were two thirty-inch squares of brick uniformly stained a conspicuous yellowish-green. And there they stayed! Apparently that was the best anybody knew how to do, leaving the wall for the weather to do what it would—very slowly—through the years to come. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 37 �bibliofile bibliofile Gary Borjesson: Dogs and the Art of Friendship “Dogs have four hundred times the power of sense that humans have.” With a nod to Aristotle, Gary Borjesson, tutor at the Annapolis campus, says that friendship is an art. Like all arts, it requires mindfulness and practice in order to flourish. In his debut book, Willing Dogs & Reluctant Masters: On Friendship and Dogs (Paul Dry Books, Inc. 2012), Borjesson uses our relationships with dogs as a way of examining themes central to all friendships, such as spiritedness and the role of authority with those we love and want to love us in return. “I was already interested in dogs, but as a teacher and as a student of philosophy, I was especially interested in friendships, particularly in the moments when one friend has to tell another friend something hard and when we find ourselves judging or holding something against another friend,” says Borjesson. “Those moments are really difficult for human beings to sort out.” As the book’s title suggests, Borjesson is interested in exploring inequalities in friendships, in which one person has some responsibility toward the other. He conducted his research from both scientific and philosophical points of view, refining what he learned by working with his canine companions, Kestra, a mixed-breed of German shepherd and Border collie, and Aktis, a nine-year-old German shepherd. The dogs helped to illustrate the book’s themes and bring them to life. “We often want to keep friendships unconditional,” says Borjesson. “We don’t like the idea of judging our friends, and yet at the same time we are always engaged in keeping score. The point of practicing friendship is to get beyond the inequalities, to develop trust through mutual understanding.” Part of the path to achieving this in our relations with dogs—or children or students, for that matter—is by compassionately using our authority to educate them. Borjesson also points out that with his dog, Aktis, “the best promise for reaching a kind of equality was 38 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 to figure out what sorts of activities he takes joy in doing and bring him a sense of accomplishment.” Tracking turned out to be the perfect, shared activity. Says Borjesson, “Dogs have four hundred times the power of sense that humans have, so I’m meeting Aktis where he can be fully realized, which is part of the way Aristotle defines happiness—activity of the soul in accordance with virtue.” Borjesson argues that a friendship is a journey wherein both parties have a choice. “If dogs are to be called friends, and not merely friendly in the natural, familial sense, then they, too, must be capable of choosing us as friends,” says Borjesson. Training a dog, he says, builds a dog’s capacity to choose and creates a world that is more coherent and trustworthy. This point relates to the role of spiritedness in friendships. “Spiritedness is the drive in the soul, both in the human and the canine soul, to be sociable and put oneself out there, to fight and love, to compete and cooperate.” Part of what masters try to achieve through training and education is to use authority to nurture the cooperative nature of spiritedness. Many dog owners may agree with Borjesson’s comparison of friendships with dogs and parent-child relationships. In the classroom, Borjesson sees a similar dynamic in his role as tutor. “Like most teachers, I naturally want my students to like me,” says Borjesson. “Yet I can’t let this desire override my responsibility to compassionately use my authority when doing so is in the student’s best interest. At St. John’s, those occasions are relatively rare, as tutors and students feel more of a connection and regard for our mutual interest. When classes are at their best, the issue of authority disappears because we’re all sharing responsibility for making the conversation fruitful and enlightening.” Borjesson relates that experience to working with Aktis and Kestra. “There are moments when you use your authority to encourage and praise, others when you use it to discourage and correct, but as the training proceeds, you and the dog begin simply to enjoy cooperating on behalf of common good.” —Erin Fitzpatrick (A14) and Gregory Shook Thomas Simpson: A Vision of Science Simpson illustrates that there is much to be gained from revisiting the major works of this familiar— albeit unlikely— trio of thinkers. What do Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell, and Karl Marx have in common? In his recent publication, Newton, Maxwell, Marx: Spirit, Freedom, and the Scientific Vision (Green Lion Press, 2012), Thomas Simpson, Class of 1950 and tutor emeritus, proposes that these three iconic figures share a vision of science that lends itself to achieving intellectual, material, and spiritual freedom. The book is a collection of three of Simpson’s earlier essays (“Science as Mystery: A Speculative Reading of Newton’s Principia,” “Maxwell’s Treatise and the Restoration of the Cosmos,” and “Toward a Reading of Capital”). These essays were first published more than 20 years ago, under the editorial direction of John Van Doren, in the Encyclopedia Britannica’s annual series, The Great Ideas Today, as supplements to the Great Books of the Western World. Simpson expands beyond the essays—reprinted in their original form—adding introductory and concluding essays. He considers each separate work as an inquiry into and also a response to the fundamental ideas of science and nature of each of the three authors’ time—one’s concepts of which, says Simpson, necessarily concern one’s beliefs about society and freedom. Simpson reads the three essays anew. Inspired by fresh insights, he connects the material and proposes a dialectical thread that begins in the 17th century and develops a vision of science that remains challenging today. Simpson illustrates that there is much to be gained from revisiting the major works of this familiar—albeit unlikely— trio of thinkers; their intense regard for the human spirit is what unites them. Beginning with Newton, Simpson writes: “We once approached the Principia as the founding work of modern physics; now we see it as the culminating work of serious alchemy—a mathematical biology of all natural functions, inclusive of the very cause of life itself—and indeed, as Newton’s book of life. The unity of Newton’s thought may astound us, as we ourselves try to piece together in our own time a coherent picture of the world; thus, the Principia holds a central place in Newton’s theology, since the concept of force restores scope for God’s active presence in the world, a presence crucial to Newton’s faith, for which mechanism had left no room.” Simpson is passionate about the scientific contributions of Maxwell. He has published three books on the subject: Maxwell on the Electromagnetic Field: A Guided Study (Rutgers University Press, 1998), Figures of Thought: A Literary Appreciation of Maxwell’s Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (Green Lion Press, 2006), and Maxwell’s Mathematical Rhetoric: Rethinking The Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (Green Lion Press, 2010). Simpson writes, “Maxwell perhaps reflects the larger course of human history when with equal concern he carries this same human spirit to the level of its democratic manifestation.” Arguably, Simpson’s connection to Marx is the most curious, as he examines the science behind Marx’s vision of human society. “It is almost as if we had read Capital until now only as ideology, failing to confront the vastly expanded concept of science which Marx is proposing, in which society itself, its institutions and its practices, become objects of serious scientific thought,” writes Simpson. According to Simpson, Marx extends the scope of science, and would have us reason as a community, intelligently and cooperatively, in matters belonging to the social domain as we do in those of nature and technology. A dyed-in-the-wool Johnnie, Simpson reminds us that a great work of science is a great work of literature. He invites readers to explore Newton’s Principia, Maxwell’s Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, and Marx’s Capital with fresh eyes and open minds, receptive to the possibility of rethinking prior notions about these individuals whose revolutionary ideas have been reduced and even distorted over time. When taken together and presented as an intertwined scientific vision, these complex works underscore that history is never left behind, but always remains an integral part of the present. —Gregory Shook Thomas Simpson and illustrator Anne Farrell (A69) recently released an e-book, Lewis Carroll Meets the Imaginary Number, available on iTunes. To learn more: http://thomasksimpson.com. The College ||st. john’s college ||summer 2013 | The College st. john’s college spring 39 �bibliofile Forgotten Tales of New Mexico By Ellen Dornan (SF93) The History Press, 2012 Coinciding with the 100th anniversary of New Mexico’s statehood, Ellen Dornan’s (SF93) Forgotten Tales of New Mexico takes readers on a voyage through the state’s colorful past, from the Apache Wars to Los Alamos. In the collection of 40 quirky stories rife with complexities and controversies, Dornan carefully balances oral history, genealogy, and scraps of 400-year-old documents to present alternate The Paradoxical Rationality of Søren Kierkegaard By Richard McCombs Indiana University Press (Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion), 2013 In his new book, The Paradoxical Rationality of Søren Kierkegaard, Santa Fe tutor Richard McCombs presents Kierkegaard as an author who used irrationalism as a deliberate strategy to present rational arguments about reason and faith, often via the use of pseudonymous writings. McCombs finds Kierkegaard’s pretense “rational enough to be instructive and mistaken Plato Statesman: Translation, Introduction, Glossary, and Essay Eva Brann (HA89), Peter Kalkavage, and Eric Salem (A77) Focus Philosophical Library, 2012 This valuable new translation of Plato’s Statesman by three St. John’s tutors does justice to the distinctive character of the philosopher’s style. Plato’s artistry exists in the nuances of diction and register, metaphor and allusion that leave the reader with much to think about when the resources of the argument turn out to be insufficient to answer all our questions. It is particularly useful to have a translation of Plato 40 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 interpretations of individuals and events that shaped the course of the state’s development. From heroic outcasts and scheming governors to women warriors and fierce revolutionaries, she sheds light on stories unfamiliar even to New Mexicans. For those who have ever wondered about the tiny plaque commemorating Fray Geronimo de la Llana in Santa Fe’s St. Francis Cathedral, or why New Mexico leads the nation in midwifery care, Dornan’s tales surprise and delight and give readers the inside scoop on the rich heritage of the Land of Enchantment. enough to need correction.” Initially, McCombs explores Kierkegaard’s conception of reason and why Kierkegaard thought his irrational rhetorical pose was necessary to communicate its opposite. In subsequent chapters, he delves more deeply into the paradox that Kierkegaard creates through his use of indirect communication regarding the paradox. McCombs shows evidence of Kierkegaard’s respect for reason in several instances, such as his great admiration for Socrates, whom he could not respect so highly if he did not respect reason, “For to esteem Socrates but not to respect reason would be like loving circles but detesting roundness.” that acknowledges this supreme importance of style by its exquisite attention to detail and its unerring ear for what is both readable English and faithful to the peculiar speech and thought of the dialogue’s main speaker, the stranger from Elea. The translators include thoughtfully chosen aids that prepare the novice for the journey and help the serious student to delve into Plato’s restless political and philosophical imagination. —Greg Recco, tutor “�Students have to revolutionize their thinking twice, then, once to register the appearances and imagine them accounted for through Ptolemy—this is an undoing of a former opinion; and then, again, to take stock of the revolution through Copernicus.” — Pamela Kraus, Annapolis dean The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 41 �alumni notes 1934 Celebrating a Century Mary J. Leslie writes, “My grandfather, James F. Leslie (Class of 1934), turned 100 years old on March 30, 2013. From him, I have heard many stories of his time spent at St. John’s, including missing his graduation ceremony, to the deep disappointment of his mother because he was ill (I think he told me he had the measles). He was a Naval Officer during World War II and a history teacher and guidance counselor at Towson High School in Towson, Maryland. He lived many years in Stevensville, Maryland, and is presently fairly healthy and living well for a 100-yearold in Tappahannock, Virginia. He can be reached at P.O. Box 2025, Tappahannock, VA 22560.” 1942 At Homecoming last September, Ernest Heinmuller, Class of 1942, had planned to have his new book, A Different Reading, available for signings. It did not come from the publisher on time. The book is a series of Bible passages, each followed by a poem that conveys a different idea about the passage. 1951 Tony Hardy (A) announces the publication of his new book, Symbol Philosophy and the Opening into Consciousness and Creativity, in which he explores the symbol philosophy of Ernst Cassirer (not on the St. John’s reading list!). 1961 Richard Freis (A) has released his debut novel, Confession, an intense and engrossing thriller of psychological suspense. It was published by Sartoris Literary Group in May 2013 and will also be available in an e-book edition. A Mississippi resident for almost 40 years, Freis is a poet whose work has appeared in Poetry, The Southern Review, Drastic Measures, and other magazines and anthologies. 1963 Easing into retirement, Marcia E. Herman (A) enjoys doing a blend of scientific and garden writing. She writes, “A second edition of my first gardening book, Sipping My Garden, came out in the spring of 2013 and is available at www.seedpodpress.com. I have several more in mind. I hope to make Homecoming in Annapolis this fall.” 1966 Ian Harris (A) writes that a third edition of his book, Peace Education (co-authored with Mary Lee Morrison), is being published by McFarland Press. 1971 George Elias (A) and his wife just sent their youngest daughter off to Vassar, while their 21-year-old daughter announced she was taking a year off after completing her junior year at Columbia. Their 42 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 alumni notes older sister graduated from the University of California, Berkeley several years ago. Alas, none of them wanted to attend his alma mater. More than five years ago, George changed careers to become a financial advisor (and trader) at Merrill Lynch. He expects to continue working in this field for at least another 20 years, perhaps longer. He also finished the manuscript for his second book, New Genesis: A Creation Story for Global Civilization. Championing monotheism and evolution, it is a sequel to his first book, Breakout Into Space (William Morrow, 1990). Visit his website at www. newgenesis-creationstory.com. He is looking for severe and articulate critics to review his work. 1973 Susan Martin Dressel (SFGI) writes, “If I survive my husband, for whom I am now caregiver, I will definitely come for some alumni seminars in a year or two. It will be nice to see new faculty and students.” Barbara Rogan (SF) has a new novel titled A Dangerous Fiction, coming out with Viking Penguin in July 2013. She writes, “I think that Johnnies, as people who appreciate the power of books, will get a particular kick out of this mystery set in the New York City publishing world. I’m delighted to announce that my last three books, Suspicion, Hindsight, and Rowing in Eden, have been reissued as e-books and paperbacks by their original publisher, Simon & Schuster, and two more backlist titles will follow shortly. On a personal note, we had the pleasure of seeing our elder son marry this year. He and his Israeli wife have moved from Tel Aviv to New York, and we couldn’t be happier about that. Our younger son lives in D.C. and works for the government. We could tell you what he does, but then we’d have to kill you.” 1974 During the last few years, Roberta Faulhaber (SF) has been developing a new business in visual facilitation. She writes, “It’s a fascinating field, first developed by David Sibbet in the 1970s and inspired by watching designers and architects work and applying their visual thinking-based approach to the business environment. I’m based in Paris and have been working 15hour days to introduce the French to using visual facilitation in meetings, especially in collaborative and creative sessions such as world cafés, open-space meetings, and innovation development. During the process, I find myself calling on skills I developed at St. John’s, such as active listening, the ability to wade through verbiage to the salient points in record time, and a complete faith in people’s ability to solve their issues through dialogue, if one can call that a skill. As a side benefit, I’m finding the work incredibly stimulating for my personal idiom as an artist, and have taken to creating pieces using the Surrealist technique of automatic writing/drawing by doing both at once while listening to Collège de France lectures in metaphysics. I suppose that’s a start!” 1976 Alice Joy Brown (A) writes, “I spend a great deal of time when I’m on the Internet learning Torah. Great sites for learning are www. chabad.org, www.aish.com, www. torahanytime.com (try Rabbi Zecharia Wallerstein, among others); and www.torahlectures.com (try physician and rabbi, Rabbi Akiva Tatz, among others). I’d welcome hearing from anyone who wants to recommend other speakers, spe- cific articles, videos or audios, and other Torah sites. You can contact me at ajbluv@yahoo.com.” Christian Burks (SF) and Janet Moody (SF) had their first grandchild, became dual citizens (Canada and U.S.A.), and relocated to Seattle. Janet is working in recruiting on the creative-design front, and Christian is working in biotech. Their daughters are in Portland and the Bay Area. Christian and Janet write, “Look for us on any map of seismic, volcanic, or career hotspots/risk in North America.” Miriam Marcus-Smith (SF) writes, “I’ve worked in the fields of health-care quality improvement and patient safety for about 15 years in the Seattle area, and for several years have split my work life between the Foundation for Health Care Quality, where I’m the program director of the Washington Patient Safety Coalition, and the University of Washington, where I’m a research manager in the Department of Health Services. It’s a mix that works well for me. My boys are growing up: Nathan (25) is in grad school at UMass Amherst, working on his masters in biomechanics; Aaron (23) lives in Seattle and is nearly done with an associate degree; his plan is to become a history teacher. When not working, I play a lot of chamber music, sail whenever I can find a boat that will take me, hike, cross-country ski, read, and weave. I may be the only person in Seattle who does not have a computer at home by choice. (I don’t have a TV or microwave either, but it’s the lack of computer that people seem to find odd.)” 1977 Paul Kneisl (A) writes, “Recently at work I soldered the (top secret) CPU on the motherboard of the computer that controls the look-down-shoot-down-target- 1983 An App for That Peter McClard (SF) writes, “I’ve just released a new iPad app called Biographer, which helps people organize the events of their lives into chapters and then within those chapters to sort out the memories, anecdotes, pictures, etc. The final result is a nicely formatted e-book that can be shared or not, with no knowledge of design or layout required. Love to all my fellow Johnnies! Send me your stories.” acquisition device of the hit-to-kill kinetic warhead of the SDI Missile Interceptor, for a program sometimes known as Star Wars.” Carla Schick (A) won first place in the 2012 Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Contest for her poem, “Their Grandmother’s Palm,” which is in the style of a Pantoum, although modified. During most of her time, she is teaching mathematics at a high school in Hayward, California. She is currently teaching the AP calculus class. Her St. John’s background prepared her well to teach this course that focuses on critical thinking and problem solving rather than rote memorization. 1979 Lisa Simeone (A) reports that since being blacklisted by NPR in 2011 for her involvement with the Occupy movement, she’s as politically active as ever. She still hosts two nationally syndicated public radio programs, World of Opera and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Broadcast Series, and she continues to write for Baltimore’s Style Magazine, where she’s the beauty editor. She keeps in close touch with Bruce Babij (A) and his family, who live only half a mile away. Rosenberg, have issued The Bretton Woods Transcripts as an e-book from the Center for Financial Stability in New York. A hardcover version will appear in the spring. Schuler’s discovery of the transcripts was the subject of stories in the New York Times and foreign newspapers. The book is available at www.centerforfinancialstability. org/brettonwoods.php. Read the New York Times story here: www.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/ business/transcript-of-1944-bretton-woods-meeting-found-at-treasury.html?_r=1&. 1983 Ann Walton Sieber (A) and Coldwell “Khyber” Daniel IV (A84) married each other twice, in Quaker meetinghouses in Houston (July 2011) and Memphis (May 2012). Both are independent writers, and they are living a two-city life. In addition, Khy continues his theater work, and Ann cooks for meditation retreats. After a 25-year separation, they rediscovered each other on Facebook in 2008. They are pretty tickled about this whole turn of events, and welcome contact and tidings from other Johnnie friends. 1987 1981 While browsing in the library of the U.S. Treasury Department where he works, Kurt Schuler (A) found the transcripts of the Bretton Woods financial conference. The conference, held in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944, established the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the world exchange-rate system that lasted until the early 1970s. The transcripts, never intended for publication, show previously unknown details of how it all happened. Schuler and his co-editor, Andrew Scott Cuthbert (SF) is pleased to announce the publication of two new chiropractic textbooks: Applied Kinesiology Essentials: The Missing Link in Health Care, and Applied Kinesiology: Clinical Techniques for Lower Body Dysfunctions, which bring the outcomes and basic-science research underlying applied kinesiology chiropractic technique up to date. Another textbook, Applied Kinesiology: Clinical Techniques for Upper Body Dysfunctions, is under development. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 43 �alumni notes alumni notes 1989 1986 Bullies Beware! Kristen Caven’s (SF) new book, The Bullying Antidote: Superpower Your Kids for Life (Hazelden, 2013), will hit the shelves in July. Caven, who co-wrote the book with her psychologist mother, Dr. Louise Hart, says that it provides a “unified field theory” of bullying. Aiming to help parents teach their children to develop the communication skills, self-respect, and self-esteem needed to be confident and resilient when facing a bully, Caven writes, “The book also includes a pretty thorough presentation of the best current thought on positive parenting.” In addition, she just released a new e-book, The Souls of Her Feet, a postmodern, magical-realism version of Cinderella, and is currently writing a blog column, “Life in the Fast Brain,” for ADDitude magazine. Her books can be ordered through the St. John’s bookstores. Visit www.kristencaven.com for more information. 1988 Tobias Maxwell’s (A) book, Homogium, was published in January. Jimmy McConnell (SF) is now a published author. He can be found on Amazon under Curtis James McConnell. His other work appears in a free podcast at drabblecast.org and two anthologies from thirdflatiron.com. He welcomes contact from Johnnies at cjmfanbase5@ ymail.com. Kim Paffenroth (A) edited three essay collections in 2012: Augustine and Psychology (Lexington Books, 2012); Augustine and Science (Lexington Books, 2012), which includes a back-cover endorsement by Mr. Kalkavage; and The Undead and Theology (Pickwick Publications, 2012). The latter was recently announced as a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award, which was given on June 15 at a ceremony in New Orleans. 44 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 Burke Gurney (SFGI) was recently promoted to full professor with tenure at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine Physical Therapy Program, where he is an active researcher, teacher, and clinician. In addition, he directs a yearly trip to Guatemala, where his students study Spanish and do volunteer work in physical therapy at a hospital/orphanage in Antigua. He is married with two children, both of whom chose small liberal arts schools (but alas, not St. John’s). His older daughter just graduated from Colorado College with a degree in comparative literature and is studying in Colombia on a Fulbright scholarship, and his younger daughter is finishing her degree at Carleton in economics. Sarita Cargas (A) has just changed jobs and will be teaching human rights at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. She is excited to be near a St. John’s campus and looks forward to catching up with her dear alma mater. 1990 Kilian Garvey (SF) writes, “My wife and I welcomed our second daughter into the world. Margaret MacEachern Garvey was born on June 8, 2011. I also just recently joined the Department of Psychology at the University of Louisiana, where I teach social cognition and evolutionary psychology, among other things, and conduct research primarily at the intersection of affect, (ir)rationality, and motivated cognition.” David Long (A) lives in Baltimore with his wife, Dr. Liz Selvin, an associate professor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins, and his two boys, Benjamin (5) and Eli (2). He writes, “My work is divided between my management consulting firm that specializes in pre-K-12 and higher education, and my film production company. That and writing puppet shows for my boys.” Jon Ying (A) earned a PhD from Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. His dissertation was entitled “Essays on Translational Bioscience Entrepreneurship: Evidence from America, China, and Taiwan.” Currently he is an assistant professor of global business and society at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, where he teaches courses on global corporate social responsibility and on China. 1993 Rachel E. Blistein (A) has been meaning to share the news of the launch of her natural hair-care company for some time. She writes, “I went from a graduate degree and career in landscape design to formulating, manufacturing, and selling my own hair-care products. Everyone always asks me if I have a degree in chemistry (I do not), but I do feel that my education at St. John’s gave me the tools I needed to educate myself, and the belief that I can do anything! As far as an update on the personal front, I am living in Ypsilanti, Michigan, with my husband of eight years, Paul Alexander, who is a senior research engineer at General Motors, our two active dogs, and one surly cat. Life is good!” James Craig (AGI) has published a book of his photography, The Moon has been Eaten—Images from a Year on Easter Island, in the form of a signed, limited edition (500) hardbound volume. The book features 98 tritone images, with anecdotes and extras. More information is available on his website, www. jamescraigphotography.com. 1994 1997 William Kowalski (SF) and Alexandra will celebrate 11 years of marriage this March. They have been living in Nova Scotia for 10 years now. He writes, “Our girls are aged 7 and 9: beautiful, healthy, smart, bilingual in French and English. Alexandra is over a decade deep into a rich, tantric yoga practice; I write and teach adults how to read, find jobs, and use computers. Life is quiet and good. My fifth novel, The Hundred Hearts, will be published by Thomas Allen Publishers in April of 2013. Please visit my website (www.williamkowalski.com) for more details, or just to say hello.” Heidi (Jacot) Hewett (A) writes, “I’m temporarily taking a break from my career in data analysis to be a stay-at-home mom. My daughter, Ariadne (good classical Greek name!), is almost a year and a half now, very bright, very curious, very into everything. We live in Woodstock, Illinois, with my husband, Bob, a sculptor, teacher, and the art department chair at a local high school. I’ve recently started a classics reading blog based on Clifton Fadiman’s ‘Lifetime Reading Plan’ at http://hjhreader.blogspot.com.” 1995 Janet Sunderland (SFGI) has a new book of poetry, At the Boundary, published by Finishing Line Press and available through the press and on Amazon. Some of the work is thanks to studies at St. John’s. “If I hadn’t read the Iliad again,” she writes, “I’d never have found a line like “bronzed green-gold like Hephaestus forging eternity.’” 1996 Heather Pool (SF) writes, “I graduated from the University of Washington with my PhD in political science in December 2011, and, after a year and a half on the academic job market, landed a tenure-track job at Denison University in Granville, Ohio, starting in August 2012. Denison, like St. John’s, is a small liberal arts school (enrollment is a whopping 2,200), and I’m thrilled to be on faculty there. If folks are passing through Columbus and want to get in touch, give me a shout at heatherpool@ gmail.com.” Jill Nienhiser (SFGI) started a blog last summer to promote sustainable agriculture and food freedom. Read it at farmfoodblog.com. She continues to work as a consultant for Mind & Media in Alexandria, Virginia, and as the webmaster for the Weston A. Price Foundation (westonaprice.org and realmilk. com). In addition, she is developing new shows for children as a member of Kaleidoscope Theatre Company (ktheatre.org). 1998 Philip Armour (EC) married Amanda Dumenigo (EC), whom he actually met in the Eastern Classics program and eventually married in 2006. He writes, “We have two boys (7 years and 9 months) and have much to thank St. John’s for—and Santa Fe and New Mexico, in general. We still have many dear friends in the area, and my graduate degree helped me kick-start my journalism career at Outside magazine, where I worked from 1998-2004. Amanda now does therapy work using horses (mainly to help children), and we live on a five-acre farm/ranch in north Boulder County, Colorado. We thought a lot about St. John’s recently, with Baltimore’s run to the 2013 NFL championship; our elder son is named Raven, which amused us all. Max Fink (SF) returned to the States after living for eight years in South America. He is raising boisterous 3-year-old Anastasia with “Porteña” wife Gabriela. He works in Internet marketing in the finance industry and resides in Las Vegas, Nevada. He is happy to meet any Johnnie who comes through town! Dawn Star Sarahs-Borchelt (A) (nee Shuman) and her husband, Matt, gave birth to Juniper Evening Sarahs-Borchelt on December 9, 2012. Juniper joins older siblings Wolfy (8), Robin (6), and Daysi (3). The family is now living full-time in Philadelphia, home/unschooling away, and hoping to sell their house in Maryland as soon as it’s worth more than its mortgage. 2000 Doug Howard (SFGI) is one of 10 attorneys who have been named to the partnership at Duane Morris law firm, where he is a member of the firm’s Corporate Practice Group in Baltimore. Zach Warzel (SF) and Erika (Carlson) Warzel (SF) welcomed the birth of their second child, Rye Samson Warzel, on November 21, 2012. Rye, Corrina, and parents are happy and healthy. Erika also took a new position as the National and State Register Historian for History Colorado, the State’s historical and preservation arm. Abby Weinberg (SF) has been working for nine years at the Open Space Institute directing conservation research. She is currently doing a deep dive into climate adaptation, water quality, and sustainable forestry. Her 3-year-old son and learning about physics and meditation are providing great joy outside of work. 2001 Raife Neuman (SF) graduated from Lewis and Clark Law School in 2008 with a certificate in environmental and natural resource law. Two years ago, he founded Intelekia Law Group (named after his favorite Greek word!) with two other partners, in Portland, Oregon. Intelekia focuses on forming and advising sustainable businesses and working with entrepreneurs of all types. Raife also works extensively with homeowners facing foreclosure. If Johnnies are in the Northwest, he’d love to hear from you at raife@intelekia-law.com. 2002 Dillon and Justin Naylor (A) write, “Thomas John was born on August 30, 2012, weighing 8 pounds, 15 ounces. He joins brothers Peter (5) and James (3). We’re still dorm parents at Wyoming Seminary, a college prep school in northeast Pennsylvania, where Justin teaches Latin. Our labor of love is Old Tioga Farm, our four-acre property where we raise vegetables and run a farmto-table restaurant on weekends. Staying busy, as always!” 2003 Cassie Sherman (A) and Martin Marks (A04) married on April 19 in a small ceremony at the Cloisters in Baltimore. Many thanks to Aidan O’Flynn (A05) for his design of invitations and all graphics for the wedding website, which can be chuckled at here: mermansharks. com. Neil Swanson-Chrisman (A02) officiated, and various Johnnies were in the party, including Sarah Peters (A02), Katherine Nehring (A), Tori Tyrrell (A), and Remi Treuer (A00). They write, “We are very happy that St. John’s gave us The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 45 �alumni notes In Eloquent Fashion FASHION WATCH Mimi Nguyen’s fashion sense was inspired by a few SJC tutors. Some of the tutors are fondly remembered for their sartorial panache—described by the Johnnies who admired them: by Chelsea Batten (A07) With insight, humor and disarming intensity, Mimi Nguyen (A09) sports the personae of fashionista and bookworm Like much of literary fiction, Mimi casey danielson “� may not entirely enjoy I Mies van der Rohe’s architecture, but I do subscribe to his philosophy of less is more when it comes to clothes.” Nguyen (A09)—fashionista, bookworm, first-generation Vietnamese American —does not fit neatly into a category. No matter where you encounter her—in the main branch of the Washington, D.C. public library, where she works as an associate in the Popular Services division, or on her edgy fashion blog—you’re seeing only one side of a multifaceted person who has spent as much time examining her lens on life as looking through it. Read her blog, “Mimi+Pravi,” to find references to Mimi’s favorite literature. Canonical Russian novels keep company with pulpy urban fiction: “I learned English largely because of the Sweet Valley High series, so just ’cause I’ve read, like, Kant in college (re: read, not understood), who am I to get all high and mighty about tastes?” she writes. 46 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 “People who read totally rule. High five, lovely, literate humans.” Mimi observes that “the way people present themselves through dress is literally a snapshot of history.” Her own history can be graphed through the evolution of her personal style. Growing up as the daughter of Vietnamese immigrants made it hard to fit into her high school in Little Rock, Arkansas. Fashionable clothes helped her to blend in with her peers. But her deep respect for her mother kept Mimi from becoming one of the crowd. Mimi describes her mother as “really intense, but down-to-earth, kind of a feminist.” As an original hipster, she bought her clothes at thrift stores before it was cool. “Back then, I was really ashamed,” Mimi says, “because as Nabokov says in Lolita, there’s nothing more conservative than a child.” Eventually “the way she carried herself, the way she dressed really influenced me. She was always interested in the unique.” Mimi’s own sense of style was established by the time I met her on the third floor of Pinkney Hall, when she was a junior and I was a senior. With her striking appearance counterbalanced by demure poise, Mimi seemed like Billy Wilder’s Princess Anne reimagined by Wong Kar Wai. One day, she knocked at my door, holding an armful of clothes. She’d been cleaning out her closet, she said, and thought I might be interested in some of her clothes. I caught my breath at the sight of what must have been the eidos of trench coat. It was the perfect color (camel beige), the perfect weight (assertive but flexible), and boasted ideal proportions between its length and the spread of the lapels. It was the kind of garment that advertises nothing but the wearer’s discerning taste. Last year, I was elated to learn that Mimi was launching a fashion blog. “Mimi+Pravi,” a bicoastal collaboration with her friend Pravisti, is nothing like the what-to-wear guides that glut the genre. Like Mimi herself, the blog recombines facets from several categories to create something novel. It’s free of label-worship; if a designer is mentioned, it’s likely to be someone from another field. “I may not entirely enjoy Mies van der Rohe’s architecture, but I do subscribe to his philosophy of less is more when it comes to clothes,” she writes. “This dress is very minimal, structured, and, to me, lovely. Paired with maroon red heels for a bit of pop, and a little belt, and this entire outfit took me from work to after-hours play with no fuss.” She includes affectionate tributes to her upbringing: “Built-in accessories are an excellent economical choice for those who want to look fairly fancypants nice without spending over $7 on any given clothing item. Hey, I’m a proud product of immigrant parents, OK? Cut me some slack.” And yes, even homages to Program authors: Feeling “good in this color,” she says, “is the sartorial equivalent of Baudelaire’s ‘Enivrez-vous’; on wine, on poetry, on virtue.” As a fashion blog must, “Mimi+Pravi” features headlines both silly and snarky, such as “The Return of Flower Power” and “Space, the Final Frontier.” Plenty of photographs appear, with sources for each clothing ensemble. Would-be imitators beware: Nearly everything shown on Mimi’s blog was thrifted or gifted—part of Mimi’s style ethic. “I don’t believe in spending a lot of money on clothes,” she writes. “I really want to stress that. You can find beautiful, well-made clothes in thrift stores.” This statement reveals the blog’s subtle ethnographic slant. Mimi says she’s “obsessed with identity as a narrative expressed through clothes.” As “a first-generation Vietnamese woman who grew up in Arkansas,” she explains, “sometimes I feel like I don’t have cultural legitimacy in either country. Sometimes I don’t know who I am, beyond my experiences and personal preferences. Perhaps these experiences and preferences are precisely what build identity. I am always concerned about what sort of narrative I’m projecting when I pull on a certain sweater, wear a certain hat, throw on a certain scarf, because, at the age of 26, I haven’t decided yet what sort of human I am. But clothes are pretty expressive.” When Mimi began working in the library after graduation, her first foray into the blogosphere, “POP! Street Fashion,” featured photographs and interviews with library patrons about their varied, distinctive styles: WASPs dressed in J. Crew read Tobias Wolff, punkers in torn jeans and imitation leather checked out comic books. Like Mimi herself, most of her profile subjects defied categorization. Yet the details of dress offer glimpses into intriguing stories. In a Raymond Chandler-like spirit, Mimi charges each scene with visual details, and leaves you to imagine the rest. These days Mimi prefers to wear clothes with “clean, classic lines. I like red a lot. I like to wear things that fit me, that are unusual, that punctuate subtly, that evoke a mood.” Although she hasn’t yet defined her personal style, her blog requires her to carefully assemble interesting outfits that “maintain a sense of self.” Mimi often finds books to be better companions than people. Her life has more in common with the originality and unpredictability of a great novel than with the average Washington twentysomething. She shares that experience in much the same spirit as she gave me the trench coat. Feeling as though some ineffable wisdom had been passed on to me, I wore the hell out of that coat during life after graduation. Ms. Kraus always reminded me of Jacqueline Kennedy with her classic sweater-skirt-andpearls combination. Mr. Zuckerman had a set of linen suits, and could rock a corduroy sport coat better than any man in history. Ms. Heines’s perfectly styled hair and coordinated jewelry set off her striking eyes. Not sure if that was a coincidence or a calculated move. Mr. Maistrellis was like a pre-hipster prep poster boy. Ms. Kronsberg’s pencil skirts, paired with tall leather boots, made it look as though she was carrying a riding crop. (It was actually Cady’s leash.) Mr. Sageng had a dapper-looking white mustache and long white hair, and often wore bow ties or loud ties with clashing button-down shirts. But with his horn-rimmed glasses and smile, the effect was charming. Mr. Badger’s wardrobe appeared to have been lifted from the set of The Matrix— trench coat and all—and the gorgeously greasy hair of a ’90s grunge rocker. Mr. Milner always wore bow ties with exceptional conviction. Mr. Page’s tweeds and perfectly laundered shirts, all in a color spectrum evocative of the Scottish moors. Mr. Beall gave a Sean Connery vibe, especially when crossing the field from the observatory in his leather jacket and aviator glasses. Mr. Bell talking with Mr. Simpson—“one glorious shock of white hair nodding to another.” Brother Robert seemed to possess exactly two suits, two hats, and two different pairs of Birkenstocks. He always looked exactly like Brother Robert, and more than this we cannot ask. FASHION STANDOUTS Ms. Seeger’s chunky folk-art necklaces Mimi Nguyen’s personal fashion blog is at mimipravi.com. Find “POP! Street Fashion” at dclibrary.org. Mr. Aigla’s magnificent black beard Mr. Lenkowski’s safari vest Ms. Delgado De Torres’s urban black chic The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 47 �alumni notes alumni notes 2005 1997 2004 Award for Exceptional Service Emma Elliot (A) was married to Lucas Grassi Freire on December 22, 2012 in College Park, Maryland. A large number of Lucas’s family in Brazil was able to travel to the wedding. After their marriage, the two moved to Exeter in the United Kingdom, where Lucas works at the University of Exeter. Juan G. Villaseñor (A), Assistant U.S. Attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, received the U.S. Department of Justice’s Assistant Attorney General’s Award for Exceptional Service for Securing the Extradition of Five Terrorists from the United Kingdom. He writes, “This award was presented to a group of 11 individuals responsible for securing the extradition from the United Kingdom of five terrorists who now face charges in the United States in connection with, among other things, the 1998 East African Embassy bombings and the taking of 16 hostages in Yemen in 1998. The ceremony was held on December 10, 2012, in the Great Hall of the Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice building in Washington, D.C.” Pictured from left to right: Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole, William Nardini, Stephen B. Reynolds, Juan G. Villaseñor, Susan Prose, Chris Synsvoll, Lystra Blake, Berit Fitzsimmons, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., Deputy Assistant Attorney General Bruce Swartz, and Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Bruer. so many wonderful friends to stand by us—not to mention each other. The date was planned so that the celebration could continue the next day at Croquet in Annapolis. We recently bought a house in the improbable and charming Dickeyville neighborhood in Baltimore; are reading about the care and feeding of its slate roof and how to vanquish English ivy in our absolutely nonexistent spare time.” Michael Tereby (A) is moving to Arizona from China. Michael and his wife, Yan Ma Tereby, celebrated their first anniversary at the Grand Canyon after their marriage in the Great Hall on August 13, 2011. 48 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 Annette Prapasiri (SF), after four children (Sam turned 8 in March, Rose and Claire turned 5 in February, and Fin will be 3 this August), is venturing back into the world of design. She writes, “Keep an eye out for my interpretation of the Johnnie Chair in the 2013-2014 Calendar due to be released this summer. Reserve your copy of this limited-edition print at aprapasiri@gmail.com.” Justine Schneider (SF) and her husband, Jason, have welcomed their first child into the world. Gabriel John Schneider was born on November 14 at 12:06 p.m., happy and healthy. They write, “He was born at our home in southern Utah (yes, we planned to have him there).” Amy E. Taylor (A) finished her clinical psychology PhD in 2012 at Duquesne University, in a psychology program that finds its roots in philosophy and is a good fit with the St. John’s Program. She writes, “At that point, I began a postdoctoral fellowship at the Austen Riggs Center, a top-ranked psychiatric hospital using psychodynamic and systems approaches to treatment. At Austen Riggs, my primary task is to engage in intensive fourtimes-weekly psychotherapy with individual patients. The hospital offers research internships for undergraduate students, which may be of interest to current St. John’s students or recent grads.” 2006 Allison (Ali) Bastian (AGI) is graduating from the University of North Dakota School of Medicine and Health Science this May. She is looking forward to residency in family medicine somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. Aran Donovan (SF) received his masters in Italian from Middlebury Language School in May 2012. He is now finishing his MFA in poetry and translation from the University of Arkansas. Christopher Stuart (A) and April Sharp (A07) welcomed Kallan Stuart (A35?) into their lives this past October. They write, “He is beautiful, fine, noble, and good.” Emily Terrell (A) (formerly Nisch) is having a baby due in August! Hollis Thoms (AGI) has been invited to submit 11 of his major musical scores, which include operas, oratorios, and three symphonies, for a special collection at the Maryland State Archives in Annapolis. Thoms has written more than 125 works for a variety of ensembles. His Symphony 2 will be premiered in January 2014 by the Londontowne Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Dr. Anna Binneweg. Visit www.hollisthoms. com for more information. 2007 Chelsea Batten (A) is a writer and itinerant journalist. She profiled Mimi Nguyen (A09) for this issue of the magazine. You can read more of her work at www.chelseabatten. com. Christopher Benson (SFGI) now teaches literature at The Cambridge School of Dallas, a classical Christian school. He continues to write for Christianity Today, Books & Culture, and The Weekly Standard. Anna Fenton (SFGI) is one of the founders of a new venture, Sustainable Learning Inc., a nonprofit incorporated in the state of New York for the purpose of facilitating experiential and theoretical learning on the subject of environmental sustainability. She writes, “Under the name Sustainable Summer, we operate summer educational travel programs for teen student groups with a curricular focus on sustainability issues, while also providing an enriching, safe, and exciting travel experience. My business partner and I have combined our expertise in teen travel programs and environmental education with the resources and experience of like-minded organizations in developing communities that possess dynamic opportunities for the experiential teaching of sustainability.” Blair Thompson (A) traveled to Hong Kong, where she taught for three months. She writes, “After my return, I applied to law schools, and received a full scholarship to attend law school at Drexel University. I graduated and passed the Maryland bar exam in 2011. I served as law clerk for the Honorable Robert B. Kershaw on the Circuit Court of Maryland for one year, and am now an attorney at the Maryland Office of the Public Defender in Baltimore City, where I represent indigent persons charged with crimes who cannot afford to hire private attorneys. I wanted to go to law school so that I could become a public defender, and I am living the dream, fighting the good fight, and always contemplating what justice means. I encourage anyone interested in public criminal defense to contact me at bthompson2@opd.state.md.us.” 2008 Ashley Cardiff’s (A) new book of humorous essays, Night Terrors: Sex, Dating, Puberty, and Other Alarming Things (Gotham Books, 2013), will be published in July. Reid Pierce (EC) writes, “After St. John’s, I received my JD from the University of New Mexico. I am about to start a cool job as manager of legal affairs for a tech startup in Kathmandu.” 2009 Sara Luell (A) was recently promoted to the position of Public Affairs Officer I for the State of Maryland at the Anne Arundel County Department of Health, where she has served as Public Affairs Specialist since August 2009. João Santa-Rita (A) graduated in 2012 with a JD from the University of Chicago Law School. He is currently working at a private firm in Washington, D.C. Students or alumni considering law school may contact him at santarita.joao@ gmail.com. Pauline Stacchini (A) became the new reference and instruction librarian for the Bellevue University Library in Omaha, Nebraska, after graduating from the University of Iowa with a masters in library and information science in 2011. 2010 Kirstie Dodd (A) just received notification that she has been accepted as a Fulbright Scholar, and will be teaching English in Luxembourg starting September 2013-June 2014. Aldona Dye (SF) is currently working on her masters in musicology at Brandeis University, from where she expects to graduate in 2014. Drew Nucci (SFGI) currently works at Santa Fe Prep, where a very exciting summer program for teachers is starting. Information on the program as a whole can be found at www.sfprep.org/index.php?/ colloquium/C184, and information specifically on the course that he is teaching can be found at www.sfprep.org/index.php?/colloquium/ mathematics_as_the_gateway_to_ western_metaphysical_thought. Theater Goes National San Francisco playwright Candice Benge (SFGI) is in her second year as a founding member of a national traveling theater cooperative, Transient Theater (www.transienttheater.com), a group she started last year. Following the group’s first production in summer 2012, they did a tour to 14 cities in nine states across the country. The group performed at the New York International Fringe Festival, where it received great reviews and won several awards, including the Overall Excellence Award for Directing, as selected by a panel of 40 theater professionals. This year, Transient Theater plans to perform in 20 cities from coast to coast, and has recently hired current St. John’s sophomore, Gabriele Montequin (A15), as Annapolis co-producer. Candice writes, “Our mission is to increase empathy in our culture by producing new plays from various communities and giving those plays a national audience. There’s a short documentary video (about 13 minutes) that summarizes our process last year.” View the video at https://vimeo. com/58157656. The password is “sweetpotato.” 2013 New Year card by Annette Prapasiri (SF04) The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 49 �in memoriam alumni notes David Drury (SFGI09): Firefighter Turned Teacher Inspires Future Johnnies David Drury (SFGI09) understands what it means to triumph over adversity. After 20 years as a New York City firefighter, Drury was looking at retirement and planning to go to college. Then the World Trade Center was attacked on September 11. “Certainly it was a crossroads for me,” says Drury, who was one of the first-responders that morning. Following his intended plans, he ultimately pursued his undergraduate degree at Columbia University. Two years later, his wife passed away. With school as his solace, he threw himself into his studies, setting his sights on graduate school. “Life just changed,” says Drury. “But I told myself, ‘I can do this.’” Armed with a bachelor’s in history and a minor in teaching, Drury came to the Graduate Institute at Santa Fe with the goal of becoming a teacher. As a firefighter, he taught courses in rescue and hazmat skills at the New York City Fire Academy on Randall’s Island. Until recently, Drury taught middle-school history both in a classroom and on a moving bus. His students were professional singers at the American Boychoir School in Princeton, N.J., the country’s only non-sectarian boychoir boarding school. The students, who tour four times a year for up to a month at a time, sing at churches, schools, and larger venues, including Carnegie Hall. In 2005, they performed at the Academy Awards. Drury was drawn to the American Boychoir School because of its emphasis on discussion-based learning; the head of the school, Lisa Eckstrom (A84), is a Johnnie. In his regular classroom, Drury and the students engaged in texts while gathered around a seminar table in St. John’s style. “In sixth grade, they’re learning how [the seminar process] works,” says Drury. “By the eighth grade they handle it really well.” He was recognized at his school for his ability to motivate his students and instill in them a passion for learning. “I call our history classes an ongoing historical discussion with a little bit of philosophy thrown in,” says Drury. Observing Drury’s classroom, Eckstrom was surprised to find the boys reading a Supreme Court decision. “To be honest, I was a little skeptical that middle-school boys would be able to decipher the text,” says Eckstrom. “But within 15 minutes, I was silently applauding. David’s teaching style—grounded in the St. John’s approach to discussions—has had a wonderful impact on our students. Imagine finding your seminar voice as a middle-school boy!” Curtis A. Wilson August 24, 2012 Tutor and dean, Annapolis John Drury by Jennifer Levin Drury’s discussion approach was also useful when the students were on tour, as classes on the bus vary in duration and are often disrupted. Being able to pick up where the class left off is a way of keeping the learning engaging as well as flexible. “It’s not a stationary classroom,” says Drury. “You have to get your sea legs, which is certainly challenging, but it’s a great experience.” This summer, Drury returned to New Mexico, where he will be teaching at the Estancia Valley Classical Academy, a new charter school in Moriarty. He relished the opportunity to parlay his St. John’s experience at the American Boychoir School, inspiring a new generation of future Johnnies. Last school year Drury’s seventh-grade class read portions of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, a book he first encountered at St. John’s. It continues to resonate with him today, especially ‘The Unlimited Power of Majority’ chapter. Tocqueville writes, “If these lines are ever read in America, I am well assured of two things: in the first place, that all who peruse them will raise their voices to condemn me; and in the second place, that many of them will acquit me at the bottom of their conscience.” As a teacher, Drury finds the book an excellent, if challenging, source of inspiration. “I fought Tocqueville—that book and that line—tooth and nail,” says Drury. “And then I came to love it for its accuracy, its impressions, and its philosophy.” Drawing from his own life experience, Drury looks to his young students, as they, too, grapple with the text, and tells them the same thing he told himself several years back: “We can do this.” “Curtis stood for something, a kind of moral perceptiveness and intellectual integrity. He showed himself genuinely unselfish and completely honest. Invariably his words were deeply considered and deeply human in the highest sense.” —Nancy Buchenauer “Curtis Wilson was universally admired and loved by everyone whose life he touched as tutor or dean, friend or colleague, including those who knew him mainly as a renowned scholar of the history of astronomy.” —Joseph Cohen Gentle of heart and wise in spirit, Curtis Alan Wilson (1921-2012), a widely recognized historian of astronomy who twice served as dean of St. John’s College in Annapolis, died in Petoskey, Michigan, at McLaren Northern Michigan Hospital. He had been vacationing at nearby Mackinac Island when he sustained a heart attack. He was 91. A 1945 graduate of the University of California at Los Angeles, Wilson received his doctorate in 1952 from Columbia University. He undertook two separate, four-year stints as dean of the Annapolis campus and, as part of the original faculty, taught for two years on the Santa Fe campus when it opened in 1964. Wilson’s association with the college began in 1948 during the formative years of the New Program. During his first deanship (1958-62), Wilson effected the first major change in the New Program when the college approved his proposal for preceptorials for the junior and senior years, the only elective part of the curriculum. Another change occurred during his second deanship. In 1976-77, the faculty, under his guidance, decided that five sophomore classes were too many, and the sophomore laboratory should be discontinued, with its components absorbed into the three other years. An important effect of this decision was that the college was able to strengthen the sophomore music tutorial. He also was respon- sible for planting the seeds of what was to become the Mitchell Gallery. Wilson retired in 1988 but continued an active association with St. John’s. His extensive writings resulted in an international reputation. He became the first recipient in 1998 of the LeRoy E. Doggett Prize for writings in the history of astronomy, awarded by the American Astronomical Society. Wilson was “the most highly regarded historian of astronomy of this generation,” wrote the Journal for the History of Astronomy. Besides Wilson’s final book, The Hill-Brown Theory of the Moon’s Motion: Its Coming-To-Be and ShortLived Ascendancy (1877-1984), published just before his 90th year, and many articles and reviews, he edited the second volume of The General History of Astronomy: Planetary Astronomy from the Renaissance to the Rise of Astrophysics, published by Cambridge University Press. Wilson belonged to both the International Academy of the History of Science and Commission 41 of the International Astronomical Union. He is survived by his wife of 58 years, the former Rebecca Marston, their two sons, and a number of nieces and nephews. A memorial service was held on September 30 in the Great Hall. Gifts in his memory may be made to St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, Maryland 21404. At Wilson’s memorial service, he was lauded with speeches by five tutors—former Dean Thomas Slakey, Nancy Buchenauer, Joseph Cohen, Thomas May, and Louis Petrich—by Professor Paolo Palmieri, a Galileo scholar from the University of Pittsburgh, and by Wilson’s two sons, John (A81), of Blacksburg, Virginia, and Topper (Christopher), of Pueblo, Colorado. Repeatedly, speakers cited three qualities for which Wilson was known: his gentleness, kindness, and integrity. “Curtis was more than a historian and a philosopher of science. Curtis was a master of humane scholarship. He was a rare figure of humanist and scientist. His rigorous methodology was never divorced from poetic imagery. He cultivated the history of astronomy, combining the rigor of intellectual analysis with the most sophisticated elegance of exposition.” — Paolo Palmieri 50 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 51 �in memoriam in memoriam David Hanford Stephenson November 29, 2012 Tutor, Annapolis David Hanford Stephenson (19362012) joined the college as a tutor 50 years ago. An informal gathering in the Great Hall was held on November 30, 2012, the day after he died. Students, faculty, and staff remembered him in speech and joined in singing Sicut Cervus in his memory. The community gathered again for a memorial held on April 14 in the Great Hall. Over the course of his devoted service, Stephenson led every one of the seminars and tutorials that comprise the curriculum of the New Program. When asked what his favorite class was, he replied that it was usually the one he was teaching at the moment. Accordingly, his Elliott C. Carter November 5, 2012 Tutor, Annapolis Elliott Cook Carter Jr. (19082012), the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and St. John’s tutor, died at his home in New York City. He was 103. From 1940 to 1942, Carter was a tutor and director of music at the Annapolis campus during a time when the college was establishing the New Program. He approached music as an art form closely intertwined with the liberal arts. In the years after St. John’s, Carter wrote two essays that relate to his tenure at the college: “Music as a Liberal Art” (1944) and “The Function of the Composer in Teaching and the General College Student” (1952). Carter received his bachelor’s in English literature and his master’s in musical composition from Harvard. He is best known as favorite author was Montaigne or Sophocles or Leibniz or Dante or Kant, though he confessed that he was drawn back to Homer every other year. Stephenson’s very first seminar, in 1962, had been with Jacob Klein and John Sarkissian as co-leaders. His students and advisees remember him as a leader rather than an expert, one who met them from the start as an equal and then patiently drew them forward and upward, as curious and delighted as they were in what could be found and seen together. This was equally true of the way Stephenson conducted the St. John’s Chamber Orchestra for many years. In his very gestures, he expressed Schopenhauer’s claim about the absolute uniqueness and universality of music. Similarly, in freshman music he firmly believed the class capable of the most difficult and beautifully splendid things, whether it was the final chorus of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion or the finale of Mozart’s Magic Flute. He led his laboratory classes with a confidence born from his na- a composer who fused European and American modernist traditions in seminal but formidable works. “As society evolves,” he once said, “people will have to become much cleverer and much sharper. And then they will like my music.” Igor Stravinsky was credited with calling Carter’s “Double Concerto for Harpsichord, Piano, and Two Chamber Orchestras” (1961) the first American masterpiece. In the late 1930s, Carter created neoclassical, approachable, “American” works such as the ballet “Pocahontas,” which had its premiere in 1939. That same year, he married sculptor Helen Frost-Jones. She died in 2003. In the mid-1940s, Carter wrote the “String Quartet No. 1,” which was considered his first real breakthrough. The work won him the first of his two Pulitzer Prizes in 1960; the second was for “String Quartet No. 3” in 1973. In addition to his two Pulitzer Prizes, Carter’s awards include the National Medal of Arts, the Edward MacDowell Medal, and two Guggenheim fellowships. He is survived by his son, David, and a grandson. 52 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 Journet G. Kahn Class of 1942 October 7, 2012 Tutor, Annapolis and Santa Fe Journet Gordon Kahn (1921-2012) dedicated his life to the art of the Socratic seminar and innovation in interdisciplinary program design. A tutor at both the Annapolis and Santa Fe campuses, he died at 90. Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Kahn was the oldest of four children of Rose and Ellis Kahn. After graduating from the Annapolis campus in 1942, he joined the faculty for the following year. Kahn received his Licentiate from Quebec’s Laval University, his doctorate in philosophy tive interest in all things natural, as well as from his formal study of physics and music at Columbia University. The phenomena themselves as well as their theoretical illumination interested him deeply, and he was delighted by the restoration of the Foucault pendulum in Mellon Hall. Stephenson was a poet as well as a composer, and he hosted a poetry writing group in his home on Prince George Street for a number of years. His final lecture this past November, a meditation on the Meno, was a typically profound, wide ranging, and witty exploration of questions and analogies suggested by this dialogue so central to the program he loved. It was truly a poignant ending to a half century of joyful inquiry and dedicated service to this community. from the University of Notre Dame, and completed 14 post-doctorate courses in graduate psychology. He taught at numerous Midwest universities, including Notre Dame, Marquette, and St. Xavier in Chicago. From 1964 to 1965, Kahn returned to St. John’s, where he was one of the original tutors at the Santa Fe campus. In addition to his passion for education, Kahn was an accomplished photographer and an avid supporter of the arts. He lived in Chicago for 48 years, raising two families, his first with Peggy Kahn, and his second with Barbara Moriarty. Preceded in death by his parents and one sister, he is survived by his eight children, David, Carl, Stephen, Judy, Elizabeth, Margaret, Jonathan, and Daniel; two sisters, Harriet Kessler and Thelma Richman; 13 grandchildren; a greatgrandchild; and numerous nieces and nephews. Carl A. Linden Tutor, Annapolis April 2, 2012 In 1965, Carl Arne Linden joined the faculty in Annapolis, where he taught for five years and led study groups with students on 19th- and 20th-century political writings of Russian authors. Born in Greenwich, Conn., Linden received a master’s degree in Russian studies from Harvard in 1956 and a doctorate in political science and international affairs from George Washington University in 1965. He did intelligence work with the Air Force during the Korean War and was a political analyst for the CIA-affiliated Foreign Broadcast Information Service from 1956 to 1965. At the time of his death at 82, Linden was a professor emeritus at George Washington University’s Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies. He taught fulltime at GWU from 1971 to 2001. Teresa (Engler) Raizen (SF78) December 13, 2012 Teresa Raizen (1955-2012) of Cambridge, Mass., died of metastatic breast cancer. She was 57. After earning a JD from the University of Chicago, Raizen spent three years practicing law. She worked for several years as the director of development at the Waldorf High School of Massachusetts Bay and volunteered as a La Leche League leader. She also enjoyed writing short stories, singing, playing recorder, knitting, and travelling. Raizen was thrilled to see both of her sons find their way to St. John’s. She was a strong supporter of the college and gave generously to it. Raizen was loved for her devotion to her family, strength of character, steadfast courage, and the loving kindness she displayed to all. She is survived by her husband, Dan (SF79), Carol Lackman, A78 June 9, 2012 John C. “Jake” Smedley Class of 1944 December 9, 2012 Gloria Lagasse-Page, SF76 February 24, 2013 Born in England, John C. “Jake” Smedley (1921-2012) moved to California to live with his aunt and uncle in 1930, following the death of his parents. Smedley studied at St. John’s from 1940 until he entered the Army in 1942. After marrying Georgianna “Georgie” Rogers of Baltimore, he served in General George Patton’s Third Army in Europe. Following Smedley’s discharge in 1945, he returned to Annapolis, where he graduated from St. John’s in 1948. He pursued a career in social work and received his MSW from the University of Pennsylvania in 1951. His career took him from Ruxton, Maryland, to Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. In 2007, Smedley and his wife moved to Silver Spring, Maryland, to be closer to family. Smedley is survived by his four children Beth, Bill, Joe, and Webb; five grandchildren, including Giovanni (A08); and three great-grandchildren. and her three children, Nathaniel (SF10), Ben (SF13), and Claire. William A. Rohrbach (A85, SFGI-EC98) January 15, 2013 William Alan Rohrbach, a Santa Fe resident for 37 years, died at home at 50. Devoted to his family and to his community, he will be remembered for his intellect, warmth, and imagination, and for his fidelity to St. John’s College. Rohrbach was a member of the St. John’s Search and Rescue team from 1995 to 1999. He became an accomplished artist over the past decade and enjoyed playing the piano. Rohrbach also served on the board of the William H. and Mattie Wattis Harris Foundation for 20 years. Over the years, the foundation has been a champion of the Eastern Classics program. He is survived by his wife of 24 years, Elizabeth Rohrbach, (SF85, SFGI-EC03); son Alan; mother Louise Heydt, (SFGIEC95); father Charles; and many other caring family members. Also Deceased: Irving Abb, Class of 1947 July 13, 2012 Harvey Alexander, Class of 1961 November 23, 2012 Anne Allen, Class of 1954 May 23, 2012 Dawn Osoff Andrews, SF80 October 2012 H. Richard Bixby, Class of 1951 September 19, 2012 Lorin Blackstad, SF08 November 7, 2008 Louis Brin, Class of 1947 December 23, 1998 George Cochran, AGI82 March 30, 2013 Thomas Eaton, Class of 1965 March 1, 2013 Hallie Leighton, SF92 April 30, 2013 Barry Lexton, Class of 1960 April 28, 1995 Paul Liebow, Class of 1964 April 30, 2012 Kathleen MacDuff, A68 October 20, 2012 Gordon McNamee, Class of 1949 October 16, 2012 Don McQuoid, Class of 1961 February 10, 2013 John Meehan, Class of 1952 January 29, 2013 John Miller, Class of 1948 April 16, 2013 Ernest Piron, Class of 1954 December 23, 2012 John Povejsil, A92 June 26, 2012 Gilbert Renaut, A68 February 27, 2013 Nicolas Richardson, A99 February 8, 2013 Tevell Scott, SFGI69 August 28, 2009 Haven Simmons, Class of 1944 May 15, 2012 Vernon M. Smith, Class of 1945 July 30, 2012 Gerard Sparaco, A90 February 20, 2013 Raymond Starke, Class of 1951 March 22, 2013 Robert T. Everett Jr., Class of 1942 F. Elizabeth Tapia, SFGI94 October 12, 2012 Lawrence Scott Fitzpatrick, A83 April 4, 2013 George Van Sant, Class of 1947 January 20, 2013 Jack Cruz Hopkins, SFGI78 March 30, 2004 Peter Whipple, Class of 1950 January 2, 2013 Robert Hunter, Class of 1943 June 3, 2012 Diane Katz, Class of 1965 September 5, 2012 Samuel Kramer, Class of 1964 November 13, 2012 The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 53 �philanthropy transitions The Graduate’s Odyssey By Charlotte Lucy Latham (SF02) Fund for Health and Wellness Honors Hallie L. Leighton (SF92) At the time of her death, she was working on a documentary on her father’s career. Hallie L. Leighton (SF92) April 30, 2013 Leighton is survived by her mother, Lynda Myles; her brother Ross Leighton; her Aunt Wendie Myles; and a large, loving extended family. with Bill Fant (A79) in the 1990s. The board served as a mechanism for alumni diaspora communication about job openings, rental property availability, and other short announcements. Hallie Leland Leighton, who fought successfully for passage of New York State’s Breast Density Inform Bill, a bill that would require doctors to notify patients if they had dense breast tissue, which can hide cancer during a mammography, died while fighting her own battle with metastatic breast cancer. She was 42. Born and raised in New York City, Leighton attended the High School of Performing Arts where she majored in drama. After St. John’s she worked in writing and publishing. At St. John’s, Leighton was known for her many friendships as well as her intellectual and leadership contributions, among which was the creation of JohnnyXpress, an electronic bulletin board for alumni that she started With her late father, the actor/ impersonator Jan Leighton, she co-authored two books: Rare Words and Ways to Master Their Meanings I and II (Levenger Press, 2003, 2008), a collection of useful but little known words. Scholarship Fund in Memory of Michael A. Chiantella (A97) Michael A. Chiantella (A97) May 30, 2012 Michael A. Chiantella was only 16 when he started his freshman year at the college. We first met when I showed up looking for a corkscrew on the second floor of Randall. We began a conversation that lasted 18 years. We sat in his room, smoking cartons of cigarettes and drinking cases of Coke, and talked about everything young Johnnies talk about. Even early on, he knew exactly what he wanted from his life. My greatest memories of him, selfishly, have to do with how he, through our interactions, made me feel about myself and the hope he gave me for my future. Through who he was innately and the generous soul he had cultivated, he gave me a glimpse of who and how I wanted to be. Chiantella was a gallant dreamer. He married his childhood love, Karen. They had two children, Dylan and Morgan, and lived in Venice, Fla., where Chiantella had a successful estate law practice. I saw him build the life that he had so wanted and so clearly described as a 16-year-old boy. Chiantella’s dreams included not only helping his family and friends, but also buying a house across from the college and getting a third master’s degree from the Graduate Institute. 54 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 Inspired by her many contributions, fellow alumni, friends, and family have launched the Hallie Leighton Fund for Health and Wellness at St. John’s College. The group hopes to raise $50,000 to name the student health office on the Santa Fe campus after Leighton. It will serve as a tangible and lasting memorial to Leighton’s legacy of advocacy, commitment, and action. In addition, it will provide needed health-related services and support to St. John’s College students. The goal is to raise $50,000 by June 30, 2014, in time to hold a naming ceremony as part of the Fiftieth Year Celebration of the Santa Fe campus. To make a gift to the Hallie Leighton Fund for Health and Wellness, send a check to the college, or visit www. stjohnscollege.edu/giving. The Fund will serve as a tangible and lasting memorial to Leighton’s legacy of advocacy, commitment, and action. It would belittle his memory to solely state the obvious: that he was brilliant, beloved, and generous. This man was a catalyst. He changed people and the course of their lives. From the charity work he did with his law practice, helping thousands of veterans create wills, to telling me to change my major in graduate school, he nurtured and encouraged those he knew. The last book he gave me was a volume of Marcus Aurelius. As I sat in the church while they held his funeral mass, I found a passage that did not comfort, but did explain why my dear, dear friend was now dead. I have thought so many times about the Oxford English Dictionary sitting on his bookshelf, surrounded by books from the authors whose names we all know. His OED was both the latest and the last edition. That large collec- tion of words, with its history and dedication to helping us more fully understand the words we use each day, is married in my mind to my memory of Michael A. Chiantella. The OED will not be printed again; a renewed, physical version will not enter new peoples’ lives. Accessing the OED online is not the same as pulling one of its volumes off the shelf, just as the memory of Chiantella is not the same as him living in the world with us. –Vada Mossavat (A00) To make a gift to the Michael A. Chiantella Memorial Scholarship Fund, send a check to the college, or use the online giving form for the Annapolis campus. (Select “other” and designate the Michael A. Chiantella Memorial Scholarship Fund.) The online form is available at http://community.stjohnscollege. edu/AN-DonationForm-CURRENT “�I have brought you here with intelligence and art; Now you must take your pleasure for your guide; You are out of the steep and narrow way. [...] No longer wait for words or signs from me. Your will is free, just and as it should be, And not to follow it would be a fault: I leave you master of your body and soul.” thought, and watched their little ones become conscious of the world around them. And so did I. Working with children was, I learned after another year, no longer for me. From working as an artist model at an art gallery and school in Santa Fe, I —Virgil to Dante, The Divine Comedy: Purgatory Canto 27 became their interim art director. My organizational experience (from previous work as a stage manager and as Polity Chair) got me planning one-week workshops, helping visiting students, overseeing the bookkeeper, writing content for the website, and pretending every day that I knew what I was doing. I learned most of it after hours. Unfortunately, I found the owner careless and stupid, and argued with her vehemently. Though everyone thought my work was excellent and expected that I would be promoted, she fired me. I was devastated. Not knowing what to do in Santa Fe, I moved to Vermont where I don’t remember the day after graduamy boyfriend had family, where we could tion. I had a job to teach in France, but live and reassess our options. I went online halfway through the summer, I refused to do personality tests. I read horoscopes. it. Not because something else appealed, I talked to friends. I think we all felt guilty but because I didn’t know why I was going admitting how much we were flounderother than to do the next thing, always the ing. With no clear goal in mind, I decided right thing. I remember a lot of fear that to become a family therapist. When I was summer while others seemed so relaxed. rejected from an MSW program, I tried By August, I found work as a governess, not to cry. Visiting an aunt in New York, I tending a six-year-old girl and eightdecided to stay. With a few hundred dollars year-old boy for a wealthy Texas family. I to my name, I needed employment, an spun romantic stories for them about my apartment, and a new life. life in Pecos, living in an old, baby-blue I left messages with everyone I knew Airstream trailer on top of a hill made of that I was looking for a job. I would take rose quartz, though the long drive each anything. A week later, over a Diet Coke, way felt lonely. However, their troubles the owner of a medical publishing compadid not need the addition of mine; in fact, ny to whom I had been referred asked me they needed me to help them learn how many unexpected questions, including to handle their challenges. The job ended “Pick: black or white?” I answered red. after eighteen months, whereupon I deWhat I knew about publishing came from cided to work with another family. I moved working as an editor at my high school with the family to a plot of land deep in paper, but I made it sound good. I had a Santa Fe National Forest. I got a truck that job. Promotions came regularly, until I could make the hill out of Tesuque up to launched the education division, overseethe stone cabin where I lived and read and ing a half-million-dollar budget in the “�With a few hundred dollars to my name, I needed employment, an apartment, and a new life.” first six months. The job was grueling but I learned about work, life, business, and myself across those four years. I left the job, despite my success there, because I realized that I really could learn anything, and the compelling work I sought would only come from a new direction. I’m now in graduate school at the City University of New York. My dissertation thesis focuses on how poetry and prose can help us look at fine art—full circle to the conversations I had with the artists in Santa Fe. I have discovered a niche: helping artists and writers break through creative and business challenges by offering them readings that shake them out of mental stupor. This fall I will be on the job market again because a PhD isn’t the end of the road. All is not settled, but my liberal arts education at St. John’s College helped me immeasurably in finding my way. I learned non-linear geometry and the rationality of freedom in the books, but also the faith to persist, to keep on discovering. Virgil spoke to Dante with sincerity, and though Dante wept, he knew that the stories from their travels had taught him much. Now in my conversations with Johnnies, we admit how complicated the first decade out of school was. Yet we describe our quests with pride. We were lost innumerable times, but learned to incorporate missteps into our journey, to tread paths we couldn’t have imagined. Life is an odyssey, and it’s the adventures—and terrors—that make the story so satisfying in the end. Charlotte Lucy Latham seeks stories from liberal arts graduates about how they have fared in the first decade after graduation. www.scriptandtype.com The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 55 �alumni news alumni news s av e t h e d a t e Homecoming 2013 Santa Fe Friday, September 20Sunday, September 22 Annapolis Friday, September 27Sunday, September 29 Homecoming 2013 is gearing up to be a fantastic weekend for alumni. Both campuses will offer a wide variety of activities, including seminars, dancing, and career networking events, that will make your return to St. John’s fun and memorable. Early Bird registration opened June 7. A special rate is offered to recent alumni. Please join us and your classmates as we celebrate and support St. John’s College. Sarah Palacios and Leo Pickens, directors of Alumni Relations For more information and to register: http://alumni.stjohnscollege.edu. Click on “Homecoming.” Annapolis Alumni Office 410-626-2531 alumni@sjca.edu Santa Fe Alumni Office 505-984-6103 alumni@sjcsf.edu 56 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 Inviting Conversations in Texas Admissions staff and alumni worked together to host two “Inviting Conversations” events in Texas that combined alumni gatherings with receptions for prospective students and their families. On April 20, at the Driskill Hotel in Austin, and the following day at Hotel Icon in Houston, alumni played a key role in recruiting new students. According to Larry Clendenin (SF77), director of Admissions in Santa Fe, anywhere from 50 to 75 percent of prospective students who attend these events go on to apply to or confirm their decision to enroll at St. John’s. “We’ve been doing these joint receptions for a few years now,” says Clendenin. “Alumni introduce themselves and talk about when they graduated and what they’ve done with their St. John’s education since then. We had a wonderful mix of younger and older alumni, men and women—scientists, professors, attorneys.” The alumni introductions in Houston went especially well, convincing one applicant’s father of the college’s virtues. He approached Clendenin at the opening of the reception to say that he just wasn’t sure how St. John’s stacked up against the other colleges where his daughter had applied, despite her enthusiasm for St. John’s over the other schools. “He didn’t know why she wanted it so much or how practical it was going to be,” says Clendenin. “But at the end of the event he told me the alumni had sold him, that they’d made the case for the college perfectly.” In addition to talking to prospective students and their families at “Inviting Conversations” events, the Austin/San Antonio alumni chapter has found a number of ways to give back to the college, including raising scholarship funds for the Summer Academy at St. John’s. Each year for the past five years, Larry Davis (SFGI87) has also searched all the Half Price Books locations in Austin “�We had a wonderful mix of younger and older alumni, men and women— scientists, professors, attorneys.” —Larry Clendenin (SF77) for complete 54-volume sets of the Encyclopedia Britannica’s Great Books of the Western World to give to an underclassman from the Austin/San Antonio area. He uses coupons and sales to further reduce the cost to as low as $100 per set. He then asks other chapter members to help underwrite the gift. This year, Davis found two sets. One was given to a rising sophomore from Austin and, after the college confirmed there were no other currently enrolled underclassmen from the area at either campus with financial need, the other set went to an incoming freshman from San Antonio. —Jennifer Levin Lincoln Comes to Baltimore The elegant 1847 mansion at 14 Mount Vernon Place in Baltimore’s historic Mount Vernon neighborhood—one of nine buildings in that area belonging to Agora Inc.— was the ideal setting for a seminar led by Annapolis President Chris Nelson on Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address and the Gettysburg Address. “These two documents, more than any others since 1790, have provided the basis for the re-founding of the nation on the ‘proposition’ (requiring demonstration) that all men are created equal rather than the ‘selfevident truth’ that this is so,” says Nelson. “I think this has profound implications that would be good to explore. And for those who have seen the recent film, Lincoln, the time is fortuitous.” Baltimore chapter Johnnies gathered in March for lively conversation. “During the discussion, an interesting question came from the Gettysburg Address regarding political philosophy and the nature of being tested,” says chapter coleader Nathan Betz (AGI09). “We talked about whether or not war is a suitable example for testing humanity.” Betz and fellow chapter co-leader Talley Kovacs (A01) were among the approximately 20 alumni, along with President Nelson and Annapolis Alumni Director Leo Pickens, who participated in the seminar—and kept the conversation lingering afterward over glasses of wine at a local watering hole. “This was definitely one of the best attended seminar events we’ve had,” says Betz, who initiated the reading. “At first I proposed that we read Lincoln’s and President Obama’s respective second inaugural addresses. It was President Nelson who suggested we read two Lincoln documents instead, which actually worked even better.” As for the chapter’s future activities, Betz says the members balance socializing with scholarly pursuits. They welcome Johnnies in the Baltimore area to connect with them via their Facebook page: www.facebook.com/ groups/71905982751. “We’ve got plans to catch an Orioles game and do a seminar on Euripides’ The Trojan Women. There’s a real desire for ongoing interaction among Baltimore Johnnies.” —Gregory Shook To read President Nelson’s “Lincoln and Liberal Education” blog, visit www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-nelson/liberal-arts-educationlincoln_b_2966192.html CONNECT TO THE COLLEGE Alumni Association Board President Phelosha Collaros (SF00) “�The Alumni Association and St. John’s staff are working together to create meaningful ways that alumni can volunteer to support the mission of the college. Together, we can make sure the life-changing education we had is available to new students for many years to come.” Alumni online community: http://alumni.stjohnscollege.edu Agora career mentoring network: http://alumni.stjohnscollege.edu Click on “Career Services” Alumni offices: alumni@sjca.edu alumni @sjcsf.edu Facebook: facebook.com/stjohnscollege The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 57 �Croquet Mix Waltz archon Virginia Early (A13) provided a local radio station deejay with the playlist for dancing during croquet, including these favorites: Waldo in Wonderland “After I Say I’m Sorry” Throughout the afternoon on April 20, 2013, St. John’s croquet players, decked out in red-and-white-striped shirts and hats and round black glasses, peeked through the crowd of more than 3,000 spectators gathered on campus for the 31st annual St. John’s-U.S. Naval Academy croquet match. This year’s croquet team, led by Imperial Wicket Drew Menzer (A13) of Granville, Ohio, sported uniforms inspired by the globe-trotting character from the Where’s Waldo? children’s books created by British illustrator Martin Handford—and rather convincingly at that. Unlike in the books, in which Waldo is clearly hidden, the team’s outfits popped against the backdrop of bow ties, spats, umbrellas, vintage suits, and festive frocks. “I got the idea for the uniforms during the summer after my sophomore year, long before I knew I would become Imperial Wicket,” says Menzer. “Out of nowhere, the idea just popped into my head, and I went with it.” With new wooden mallets in hand, courtesy of the Annapolis campus master craftsman, Gary Dunkelberger, the players burst onto the front lawn with vigor and gusto. This year’s “Prime Mover” award recipient, Shaun Callahan, U.S. Naval Academy Class of 1985 and the Imperial Wicket that competed against former St. John’s Imperial Wicket, John Ertle (A84), struck the opening shot. The “You Are My Sunshine” “Bei Mir Bist Du Schein” “Oh, Lady Be Good” “C-Jam Blues” “720 in the Books” “They All Laughed” “On a Slow Boat to China” “I’ve Got the World on a String” “Lean Baby” “Take the ‘A’ Train” “Jersey Bounce” “Route 66” “I’m in the Mood for Love” “My Blue Heaven” “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love” by Gregory Shook “Bye Bye Blackbird” “Crazy Rhythm” “�When it comes to game time, we’re not afraid to make the bold move—and we’re not afraid to have it go wrong either.” “Jive at Five” “Hey, Good Lookin’” “Sailing Down the Chesapeake” “Hallelujah, I Love Her So” “Tainted Love” “Hard-Hearted Hannah” “Ja-Da” “Oh, When the Saints” “All God’s Children” “Bidin’ My Time” Imperial Wicket Drew Menzer (A13) “Moon River” kenneth tom johnnie traditions “Honeysuckle Rose” game was afoot! Geared up for another St. John’s triumph, the teams tapped and swung their mallets for more than five hours, one of the longest matches—if not the longest—in the event’s colorful 31-year history. Alas, like Waldo, for the Johnnies victory was hard to find. Their seven-year winning streak ended. The Midshipmen paraded downtown with the Annapolis Cup after a decisive 4-1 win. Josh Cohen, Annapolis mayor and son of tutor emeritus Joseph Cohen, Class of 1956, presented the victors with the trophy. “I have never even seen the Annapolis Cup until today,” says Midshipman First Class Ross Herman, the U.S. Naval Academy’s Imperial Wicket. For students on the croquet team, the sport is not only about having fun; it is an opportunity to build relationships with their neighbors on the other side of King George Street. Menzer was impressed with the level of camaraderie established between the two schools during the past several months. “More than any other year, the St. John’s and Navy teams really made an effort to spend time together and get to know each other as friends,” says 58 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 Menzer, who plans to start law school in the fall. “Croquet’s been such a fun part of my experience at St. John’s. I hope to keep playing for years to come.” The match is a centerpiece for the waltz and swing dancing, a grand lawn party, and alumni homecoming. “Croquet is a great second Homecoming, when alumni can catch up with each other and their friends at the college,” says Babak Zarin (A10), a law student at Elon University who hopes to attend the match each year—and the alumni-student seminars. “A Mad Tea-Party” and “The Queen’s Croquet-Ground,” two chapters from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, were the readings at the alumni-student seminars led by President Christopher Nelson (SF70), and tutors Eva Brann (H89), Sam Kutler (A54), and Joseph MacFarland (A87). Gathered in one of the McDowell Hall classrooms, Brann posed the opening question, “How can you achieve depth through pure zaniness?” Alumni and students explored the value of silliness and the meaning of Wonderland, which, it seems, is always close at hand. Opposite page: Saul Leiken (A13), master of ceremonies, introduced the players from both teams. Clockwise (from top): Swing dancing all afternoon; spectators toast the match; Patrick E. McDowell (A01), his wife, Citali, and their newborn son in the vintage outfits that Citali designs for the match each year; former Imperial Wicket John Ertle (A84) and Shaun Callahan (U.S. Naval Academy Class of 1985), former U.S.N.A. Imperial Wicket (1983-1985); Mandee Glasgo (A14) prepares a shot; the “Prime Mover” mallet. Photos by Anyi Guo (A14) unless otherwise noted. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 59 �st. john’s forever eidos Continuing the Conversation anyi guo (a14) “This photo resonates with Johnnies because of our fierce, and occasionally irreverent, pride in the Program,” says Hugh Verrier (A14). “Johnnies appreciate the freedom of thought that is encouraged at the college, and we are glad to see that culture grow and renew itself with each generation of students.” During Homecoming in Annapolis, Verrier and Noam Freshman (A14), joined by photographer Anyi Guo (A14), immortalized their Johnnie pride by recreating the familiar photograph of Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan, founders of the New Program, in conversation on the steps of McDowell Hall. “We were both trying to stand there and look as accurate as possible, even standing on the exact steps they did. As the photo was being snapped, I couldn’t help but think of what Barr and Buchanan were thinking when the original was taken, and what courage it took to start the college and embark on the New Program,” says Freshman. After the image was posted on Facebook, the trio was surprised by the response from fellow classmates. “It was this outpouring of appreciation that really made me feel like we had tapped into a deep tradition, which was very fulfilling,” says Verrier, who credits Freshman for originating the idea. “His passion for the Program and his good nature drive him to find new and fun ways to participate in our college traditions.” “During our summers in Taos, I worked and talked often with another potter and St. John’s graduate, Betsy Williams (SF84). Our conversations ranged widely over many things besides clay…. We also talked about printmaking, and one winter day I got a package from Betsy, enclosing used tea bags with the opening question, ‘What can you do with these?’ This series of [collagraphy] prints is my attempt to answer that.” —Ebby Malmgren (AGI88), member, Mitchell Gallery Board of Advisers Ebby Malmgren (AGI88), a printmaker, potter, and writer, lives in Annapolis, Maryland. Her work can be seen at The Harwood Museum of Art in Taos, The Rift Gallery in Dixon, New Mexico, and The Eastport Gallery, in Annapolis. Her interest in printmaking began with a chance invitation to a monoprint workshop in Taos. After about a year of monoprinting, Malmgren realized she missed the three-dimensional aspect of her work in clay; she has adapted her Bret clay slab roller as a printing press, and uses polymer clay—“Sculpey”—which can be run through a press without breaking. Collagraphy, from the Greek koll or kola, describes a printmaking process in which materials such as clay are applied to a rigid surface, inked with a roller or paintbrush, then printed onto paper or another material. From top to bottom: Imaginary Journey, Meditation, There is Always a Bright Spot. Photos: Courtesy The Eastport Gallery 60 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | iii �Non-Profit Org. U.S. Postage paid Communications Office P.O. Box 2800 Annapolis, Maryland 21404 a d d r e ss se rvi ce r e qu e st ed Annapolis, md Permit N0. 120 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The College (2001-2017) Description An account of the resource The St. John's College Communications Office published The College magazine for alumni. 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Published in Summer 2013. The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/1b9deca7a4e06e3dfe48f5af2a992481.pdf 082e2b9209a9fe4628d5f5e1f05a5f43 PDF Text Text College The SUMMER 2014 • S T. J O H N ’ S C O L L E G E • ANNAPOLIS • S A N TA F E Anna Karenina The Truth of Stories �“How glorious fall the valiant, sword [mallet] in hand, in front of battle for their native land.” —Tyrtaeus, Spartan poet The St. John’s croquet team greets the cheering crowd in Annapolis. ii | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 �from the editor The College is published by St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD, and Santa Fe, NM thecollegemagazine@sjc.edu Known ofﬁce of publication: Communications Ofﬁce St. John’s College 60 College Avenue Annapolis, MD 21401 Why Stories? “He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.” Periodicals postage paid at Annapolis, MD Leo Tolstoy, ANNA KARENINA Postmaster: Send address changes to The College Magazine, Communications Ofﬁce, St. John’s College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401. “Emotions are what pull us in—the character’s vulnerabilities, desires, and fears,” says screenwriter Jeremy Leven (A64); he is one of several alumni proﬁled in this issue of The College who tell stories. Leven reveals “moments of truth” with nuanced, often sparse dialogue and subtext. Although certainly not sparing with words, Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (1828-1910) revealed human emotions with great insight, with what tutor Jonathan Tuck calls “the raw power of storytelling” in his essay for this issue. Tolstoy was born at the family estate, about 130 miles south of Moscow. Educated at home by tutors, Tolstoy enrolled in the University of Kazan in 1844 to study Oriental languages; he transferred to the less demanding law faculty but left without a degree. In 1851 he joined the army and fought in the Crimean War (1853–56). Tolstoy’s two masterpieces are War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877). He deftly paints intimate details of his characters’ lives, set against the sweeping canvas of history. Notes Santa Fe Dean J. Walter Sterling (A93) in this issue, “Tolstoy brings to life (or to the work of art) Napoleon as man and myth, the great movements of modern Russian politics, the general tumult of enlightenment rationalism (and nationalism), and the many other forces by which Europe was convulsed in the 19th century....” Tolstoy’s ﬁctions reveal truth. It is no surprise that they continue to be embraced by popular modern culture—for instance, both Greta Garbo (1935) and Keira Knightly (2012) starred in ﬁlm adaptations of Anna Karenina. We care about what happens to his memorable characters— Pierre, Prince Andrei, Anna, and Kitty Levin, to name a few. “We come to know these people inside and out, better perhaps than we know our own families or close friends. It is very hard to remember that they are not real,” notes Tuck. Film director Domenic D’Andrea (A15) tells us it Editor Patricia Dempsey patricia.dempsey@sjc.edu Contributing Editor Gabe Gomez Associate Editor Gregory Shook Design Skelton Design Contributors Thomas Alleman Anna Perleberg Anderson (SF02) Chelsea Batten (A07) Nutchapol Boonparlit (A14) Sus3an Borden (A87) Domenic D’Andrea (A15) John Emerson Erin Fitzpatrick (A14) Anyi Guo (A14) Eunji Kim (A15) Jennifer Levin Adam Maraschky (A13) Paula Novash Jonathan Tuck Copyeditor Cathi Dunn MacRae The College welcomes letters on issues of interest to readers. Letters can be sent via e-mail to the editor or mailed to the address above. Annapolis: 410-626-2539 Santa Fe: 505-984-6104 is not just the suspense, but the connection made through storytelling that matters: “Storytelling ought to be done by people who want to make other people feel a little bit less alone.” In this issue we meet Johnnies who are storytellers in modern and ancient forms, ﬁlmmakers, poets, even a fabric artist. N. Scott Momaday, Pulitzer Prize winner and artist-in-residence on the Santa Fe campus, says, “Poetry is the highest expression of language.” Along with student poets, he shares insights on this elegant form and how it touches our spirits and hearts. The Johnnies in ﬁlm featured in this issue each transform an individual vision for a story with their craft—screenwriting, directing, ﬁlm editing, and digital animation, to name a few— and close collaboration with others; the end result is there for all to see on the big screen. James Schamus (A81) describes what it took to be CEO of Focus Features, where he stewarded ﬁlms that speak to the historical context of our times, and, as great stories do, captivated a generation of ﬁlmgoers. For Hanna Jayanti (SF07) ﬁlm editing “is a form of writing in the visual world.” She collaborated on a documentary shown at the New Yorker Festival. Mavericks such as Mike Lacy (A12) direct music videos in which lyrics are like characters, and Geoff Marslett (SF96) jumps from writing a software program for his animated feature to directing actors without scripted dialogue. Richard Saja (SF93) transforms the art of toile. These Johnnies have in common a deep appreciation of universal stories that connect us all. Screenwriter Lee Zlotoff (A74) shares his method for tapping these stories from the subconscious: “We are a narrative species; each night we dream and each of our dreams is a story. We need these stories,” he says. We need oral stories as well. In this issue, tutor Claudia Hauer describes her oral history project about the founding of the Santa Fe campus 50 years ago, and the spirited pioneers who envisioned it. Chelsea Batten’s (A07) search for connection reminds us that a good conversation just might be better than anything—even a great ﬁlm. Thank you to our contributors, and especially to our readers for sharing stories! I look forward to hearing from you. —P.D. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 1 �su m me r 2 01 4 volume 39, issue 1 ART RESOURCE ILLUSTRATION BY JULES FEIFFER, THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH ...We want desperately to ﬁnd out what will happen next....It’s this very curiosity that keeps us reading; though the book [War and Peace] is long, we ﬂy through it after a while, hoping that our favorites will ﬁnd the happiness they have been seeking for years. —Jonathan Tuck, tutor F E AT U R E S page 18 p a ge 24 page 38 Why Stories? Modern Takes Vision Realized Faculty members consider Tolstoy, and how reading the works of the greatest minds can illuminate historical context. Seven alumni touch our deepest emotions and reveal a truth of the moment through the power of narrative stories in feature ﬁlms, animated shorts, documentaries, television characters, even embellished toile. Oral histories on the founding of the Santa Fe campus, from faculty innovations to horse rides to seminar, reveal the passion of the early pioneers. on the cover: Anna Karenina illustration by Gayle Kabaker 2 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 �THOMAS ALLEMAN D E PA R T M E N T S From Our Readers Biblioﬁle Alumni 4 42 45 Alumni Notes 55 In Memoriam 58 Philanthropy: Anjali Pai (SFGI08), Tolstoy Stories From the Bell Towers 6 Spirit of Poetry: N. Scott Momaday Alexandra Wick (A15) Alexandra Welm (A14) Joshua Sturgill (SF17) 9 Lunch with Anna Karenina 10 First Person: Domenic D’Andrea (A15) 11 Summer Film Institute in Santa Fe 12 Ariel Intern: Elizabeth Fedden (SF15) 13 Reading Tolstoy: Tutor emeritus Sam Kutler (Class of 1954) Johanna Omelia (SFGI03) and Michael Waldock (SFGI03) celebrate Come Fly with Us! A Global History of the Airline Hostess. Wright (A84) create fantasy and sci-ﬁ in Moth and Spark and Judge of Ages. 44 Hilary Fields (SF97) follows her bliss in the City Different. Nora Gallagher’s (SF70) memoir, Moonlight Sonata at the Mayo Clinic, chronicles her medical system struggles. Tutor Gregory Recco and University of Kentucky professor Eric Sanday’s essays explore Plato’s Laws. 14 Hodson Intern: Rachel Howell (A16) 15 Larry Clendenin (SF77) Retires Proﬁles 16 Santa Fe Celebrates 50 Years 50 Jamaal Barnes (A10) advocates 17 On Liberal Education: Chris Nelson (SF70), Annapolis president Larry Saporta (A91), LCDR Erik Kristensen (AGI00), Curtis Wilson, Annapolis tutor and dean 43 Anne Leonard (A89) and John C. 60 Almuni News: Homecoming 2014 Johnnie Traditions 62 Croquet: A Toga War 64 St. John’s Forever Eidos 65 Adam Maraschky (A13) above: Screenwriter and director Lee Zlotoff (A74) at work in his Malibu home public service. 53 Elizabeth Powers (A89) sheds light on workplace bias. 54 Chelsea Batten’s (A07) search for conversation The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 3 �from our readers Readers Share Tolstoy Farm My main memory of Tolstoy is of Leo Pickens’s (A78) brilliant oral exam on his senior essay on War and Peace in the reading room of the old library. Separately, I learned that Gandhi was inspired by Tolstoy and lived in an ashram called Tolstoy Farm during his formative years in South Africa. There he led nonviolent protests against the “Black Law,” which deprived Asians of their civil rights, until it was repealed in 1914, seven years after its promulgation. struggle of the Transvaal Indians, and asked him to air his views on the subject of morality....” —Chris Olson (A78) Channeling Prince Andrei I will never forgive Tolstoy for what he did to Natasha and Anna K. That said, I was ferociously devouring War and Peace, for the second time, this past autumn (a book that improves with age—my age!). On the very night I was in the thick of the Borodino aftermath, I got a deep cut from “Gandhi attributes the success of the ﬁnal phase of the satyagraha campaign in South Africa between 1908 and 1914 to the ‘spiritual puriﬁcation and penance’ afforded by the Tolstoy Farm.” —Chris Olson (A78) Gandhi attributes the success of the ﬁnal phase of the satyagraha campaign in South Africa between 1908 and 1914 to the “spiritual puriﬁcation and penance” afforded by the Tolstoy Farm. The Tolstoy Farm was the second of its kind of experiments established by Gandhi. The following is an excerpt from www.tolstoyfarm.com: “It was Tolstoy’s writings that impressed [Gandhi] the most. The Russian’s ideas about renouncing force as a means of opposition were akin to Gandhi’s own thoughts, although he did not share Tolstoy’s intense dislike for organized government. The Indian had read Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God Is Within You in 1894. This had stimulated his search for truth and nonviolence in his own religion . . . . Prompted by his deeper appreciation of the Tolstoyan philosophy, Gandhi wrote in October 1909 the ﬁrst of his four letters to the Russian. He described in it the a piece of glass straight into my upper thigh in an around-thehouse accident. Rather than take my one-inch gaping wound to the ER in Baltimore at midnight on a Saturday, I channeled my inner Prince Andrei. I washed out the wound, poured half a bottle of peroxide over it. I tore a big strip off a clean tee shirt and wrapped my thigh. The next day—not awakening in a pool of my own blood—I walked to the ER, got my stitches, and walked to Fell’s Point in time for noon tea with fellow alum João Santa Rita (A09). —Samantha Buker (A05) Free Speech I remember reading Tolstoy’s War and Peace at St. John’s with great interest. I was asked to talk about it in my senior oral exam and, for once, did not feel tongue-tied, as I often did in seminar. —Julia du Prey (née Busser) (Class of 1966) 4 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 A view from inside the Tolstoy Literary Museum in Moscow. Literary Sites My wife and I were in Moscow last year and visited the Tolstoy Literary Museum there. We intended to get to Tolstoy’s house in Moscow, where he lived for a time with his wife and 13 children after writing his masterpieces, but we never got there. —Mike Woolsey (Class of 1965) Train Trips I wrote my senior essay on Tolstoy’s War and Peace in 1975, and it won the senior essay prize, tied with my esteemed classmate Cary Stickney’s (A75) essay on Hegel. My paper was typed by Jane H., my helper-typist and I on three different typewriters at the last minute, up in my room on the third ﬂoor of the dorm with the bookstore in the basement. Probably Tolstoy typed on a typewriter, too? Don’t bother looking up a copy of the paper; it was not well written! I realize this now, but I loved the experience of spending a couple of months pondering one great book and author. I retain images such as that of Nicolai lying face up on the earth, wounded, looking up at the clouds, pausing in the midst of life. All my life, I’ve been a religious seeker, and I’m in a very different place from where I was in ’75. I live back in central Maine, whence I began my journeys from home with train trips to St. John’s College in Annapolis and back. Here is peace and many distant wars. Didn’t Tolstoy’s life end with a train trip? —Laura Bridgman (A75) A Battleﬁeld Revelation Think of New Mexico. Now think of Russia. There’s probably not a lot of overlap in your mental Venn diagram. But that wasn’t the case for me when I was working towards my MA at St. John’s four years ago. Tolstoy wrote that “Russia and hot weather don’t go together,” and it was a harsh winter in Santa Fe the ﬁrst time I read War and Peace. I slogged through the snow and slush two nights a week to attend my preceptorial on the novel. And, of course, keeping up with the assigned readings meant taking Tolstoy along with me wherever I went that frigid winter. During a post-lunch lull at the pizzeria where I worked, Prince Andrei and I had a battleﬁeld revelation involving an inﬁnite and lofty sky. While my clothes were drying at the Solana Laundromat, I was hunting wolves with a nobleman and his loyal team of serfs and borzois. I swaddled myself in every blanket I owned when my heater was on the fritz and felt decidedly well-off compared to Napoleon’s retreating troops. Russia and hot weather don’t go together, but, for me, Russia and New Mexico somehow do. —Wint Huskey (SFGI10) Disruptive Conclusion I remember that [Tolstoy] seminar very well because of our discussion of the characters of Andrei and his pal Pierre, and because of War and Peace’s addendum—that disruptive conclusion—which we jointly concluded in seminar did not go �from our readers with the rest of War and Peace. Tolstoy’s historical P.S. was a declaration of faith, which he wanted to make happen because he declared it so. It was the beginning of a new book. It almost spoiled the whole novel—like the extra chapter added on to T. H. White’s The Once and Future King (which White’s editor wisely cut). Years later, I’ve re-read both War and Peace and Tolstoy’s addendum, but never together. In my humble opinion, War and Peace works inﬁnitely better on its own, without that false handle of religious faith which Tolstoy glued to its end. —John Dean (A70) The Third Epilogue Time travel to the Graduate Institute, Santa Fe, 1971: My preceptorial was War and Peace. My dilemma: A week before the work was due, what to write? A strong thought passed through my mind, “Why don’t I write the Third Epilogue?” That was followed immediately by, “But you’ve never written ﬁction in your life.” What then ensued were six intense days, during which time I wrote a more than 90-page extension to Tolstoy’s epic work. The words just ﬂowed to the point that there were entire pages without one typo—and this was in the days before correcting typewriters. There were times that I had no idea what would happen next in the story. As the words ﬂowed, I cried; I laughed. I truly felt as if Tolstoy were directing what was appearing on the page. Back to 2013: A friend said, “Why don’t you put the Third Epilogue on Kindle?” After going through the learning curve of designing a cover, ﬁguring out how to publish something on Kindle, and re-typing the document, War and Peace: The Third Epilogue is now on Kindle under the pseudonym of Samantha Jean Wiley. —Margaret Sansom (SFGI74) A Well-Worn Copy Here is a picture of my copy of War and Peace from my senior essay. Obviously, that system was color-coded! —Erin Martell (A98) “Tolstoy wrote that ‘Russia and hot weather don’t go together,’ and it was a harsh winter in Santa Fe the ﬁrst time I read War and Peace. I slogged through the snow and slush two nights a week to attend my preceptorial on the novel.” —Wint Huskey (SFGI10) Contributors Behind the Lens: Anyi Guo (A14) “I like revealing things to people that they don’t know,” says Anyi Guo (A14). “Sometimes they don’t know how beautiful they are.” Guo prefers dramatic portraits to poses and ﬁnds that she captures the moment best when the subject is relaxed, allowing their personality to shine. “It helps when you genuinely like the person because I believe that a picture reﬂects how you—the photographer—really think of them,” she says. Her lively images of student life appear throughout The College magazine, in a 2011 yearbook she created, and in other print and digital publications. Guo favors ﬁlm photography over digital. “The process is very slow, so you can’t see what you just took,” she says. “It’s almost like a Christmas gift when you look at the ﬁlm and think, ‘I don’t remember taking that.’” Yet she doesn’t eschew digital photography entirely. “I love that [digital photography] captures every moment, and by just pressing the button, one of [the photos] will eventually come out right,” says Guo. “That’s the trick to digital photography—a bit of patience and a bit of luck.” Not much of a gear head, Guo keeps it simple. She uses a Pentax K-5 digital single-lens reﬂex, an entry-to-middle-level DSLR that’s “not really professional, but it’s good enough for the work that I do.” She uses only two lenses: one for portraits and another for everything else. “Good lenses are expensive,” she says. “They cost around $3,000, while my camera only cost $300. But what can I say? Photography is more about the eyes than the equipment.” —Nutchapol Boonparlit (A14) The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 5 �Although N. Scott Momaday is best known as a novelist—his first novel, House Made of Dawn, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1969—poetry is his most abiding love. He is also a visual artist and was appointed artist-in-residence on the Santa Fe campus in April. Of Kiowa-Cherokee heritage, Momaday was raised first on the Kiowa Indian Reservation in Oklahoma and then in Arizona, where he was exposed to the Navajo, Apache, and Pueblo Indian cultures of the Southwest. After graduating from the University of New Mexico, he won a poetry fellowship to Stanford University’s Creative Writing program and earned a doctorate in English literature in 1963. Momaday has received numerous awards, including the National Medal of Arts. When did you start writing poetry? I started thinking of myself as a poet when I was just a child. My mother was a writer; I followed in her footsteps. I watched her work and she read to me. There were always books in the house that were inspiring to me that led me to become a writer. What compels you to write a poem now? How do you go about writing a poem? Poetry is the highest expression in language. It’s my goal to be as responsible in language as I can be and that leads me directly to poetry, the crown of literature. I try to ﬁnd an idea that I want to explore in poetry and then I work it out mostly in terms of traditional English forms. I do a lot of traditional work in iambic pentameter, but I also write free verse (a contradiction in terms). I like prose poems, short, lyrical pieces that are not written in free verse but in a kind of free style. My most recent poem is “The Sake of Appearance.” I was interested in the idea that nothing—nothingness—is an important concept. I composed a poem of about nine lines; it’s written in iambic pentameter with a deﬁnite rhyme scheme. That’s how a poem comes about: TERI THOMSON RANDALL The Spirit of Poetry you have an idea and put the idea into the highest possible expression. Can you describe the work you’re doing as artist-in-residence? I meet with students every two weeks or so. I assign a poem to read or a painting to study and we have a discussion. It’s a wonderful exercise in the seminar form and I’m delighted with the students I’ve encountered here. I look forward to continuing in this post for a good, long while. Some of the works we have discussed are “The Snow Man” by Wallace Stevens, “Poem in October” by Dylan Thomas, Peter Brueghel’s “Hunter in the Snow,” and Munch’s “Cry” and “The Red Vine.” Is talking about a painting similar to talking about a poem? They are different expressions of the spirit. A poem is composed in language as we understand the term. A painting is vivid and uses visual expression, so they’re worlds apart in many ways. But you can talk about them in the same terms: What is on the poet’s or painter’s mind? How does he realize his vision? What are the techniques he uses to convey his expression? How does he communicate his spirit? 6 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 “It’s my goal to be as responsible in language as I can be and that leads me directly to poetry, the crown of literature.” N. Scott Momaday How did you develop an interest in painting? My father was a noted Native American painter, so I watched him work when I was growing up. I didn’t want to be a painter at that time; it was not until I was well into my adulthood that I began painting and drawing and making prints. What is your goal in working with St. John’s students? I’m trying to give the students the beneﬁt of my experience as an artist and to share with them something of the oral tradition. St. John’s students can beneﬁt from it because oral tradition is very powerful. The best expression we have of it is theater: You go to a production of Hamlet and you see oral tradition in the raw, people speaking �PHENOMENAL POEM to each other on the stage and giving meaning and expression through voice and body language in the way you don’t ﬁnd in the pages in a book. It’s a welcome addition to reading. Does your new position mark a change in your relationship with St. John’s? I have been associated with St. John’s College for some time in different ways. I’ve given the Commencement address, delivered public lectures, and [Mike Peters], the president in Santa Fe, is a good friend. I’m pleased to have a relationship with the college; I think the world of it and want to keep my ties to it alive. This is [my] ﬁrst chance to meet with students in a discussion situation. I’ve had a whole career of teaching in large institutions. I taught at Stanford [and] other colleges, and I ﬁnd that St. John’s students probably have a greater freedom of thought than students have elsewhere. Being exposed to great books is wonderful and I want to know more about that process, how it works having such close association with the greatest thinkers of the human experience. That’s not something you can say about most places. — Interview by Sus3an Borden (A87) “Earth and I Gave You Turquoise” is the ﬁrst poem Momaday kept, written when he was an undergraduate. Earth and I Gave You Turquoise Earth and I gave you turquoise when you walked singing We lived laughing in my house and told old stories You grew ill when the owl cried We will meet on Black Mountain I will bring corn for planting and we will make ﬁre Children will come to your breast You will heal my heart I speak your name many times The wild cane remembers you Poems were popping up everywhere on the Annapolis campus on April 24—National Poem in Your Pocket Day. Since 1996, April has been National Poetry Month, started by the Academy of American Poets to celebrate poetry. In 2008, the Academy made New York City’s Poem in Your Pocket Day a national event; several students read about it in the Gadﬂy. There were poems taped on walls and placed on tables in the Mellon ﬁshbowl. Chinese poems had accompanying English translations. A Chilean poem was posted on a student’s Facebook wall. Students pulled iPhones from their pockets to read poems aloud. When it was Wick’s turn, she read “Revolution Within an Electric Embrace,” her original twopage poem. “I’ve been thinking about all these things throughout the year, and I put them into rhyming couplet form.” In the machine, she sees the force that she learned about from Newton: In a Mellon science lab, a poem moved several students to tears—and joy. Tutor Patricia Locke had previously agreed that the student who came up with a name that everyone agreed to adopt for the “Faraday Machine” would be exempt from the end-of-the-year paper. Alexandra Wick (A15) thought of a name, “Revolution Within an Electric Embrace,” that was also a poem: “I didn’t have any conﬁdence that I could win it with a name alone, so I decided to write a poem and appeal to the end-of-the-year nostalgia,” says Wick. When she learned that it was also Poem in Your Pocket Day, she found it a perfect convergence of forces. “This embrace, though stable, can never be at rest— The wire cannot linger and put its head on electric’s chest. Here the wire reminds me of Phèdre herself, longing to clutch. Her passion hovers about Hippolyte but never allowed to touch.” It was not the ﬁrst time Wick had read a poem in lab class. “I really like the junior year because of the holistic experience of math, lab, and seminar. Ms. Locke has prepped us to see lab this way; she has brought in poems about the experience of bursting into tears and what kind of phenomenon it is, or a video of birds ﬂying in what looks like magnetic lines of force. So we’ve been primed by her to see science as poetry, and poetry as science; I like that transitive property of phenomena.” My young brother’s house is ﬁlled I go there to sing We have not spoken of you but our songs are sad When Moon Woman goes to you I will follow her white way Tonight they dance near Chinle by the seven elms There your loom whispered beauty They will eat mutton and drink coffee till morning You and I will not be there I saw a crow by Red Rock standing on one leg It was the black of your hair The years are heavy I will ride the swiftest horse You will hear the drumming hooves “If attractive force spins the planets above, Why not be simple and just call it love? Then force is love and love is God, And the world’s a stage on which we’ve all starred.” And the motion of the machine reminds her of Phèdre’s struggle: By the end of the reading, everyone agreed they had a winner. Locke modiﬁed the assignment and gave students the option of writing a poem instead of the paper. Whether handwritten on paper or read from an iPhone, Locke says, “the whole idea is to encourage people to start reading poems and realize that they do have poems in their pockets at all times, and have it be more part of their daily life. I like poetry because it seems to be the most intensiﬁed language we have. It has meaning on multiple levels that act with each other and it really is an entity itself. It’s not just pointing to something else; it is its own being.” — Eunji Kim (A15) briefly quoted “The uniqueness and glory of St. John’s is not about the outside world or our next steps, it is about a life absorbed and obsessed with books, ideas, and the importance of those who thought and wrote before us. But the question remains, even if unspoken,‘What are we going to do, and from your perspective as a graduate, why?’” John L. Gray (EC12), director, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, 2014 Commencement speaker, Santa Fe The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 7 �from the bell towers Alumnus and Tutor Co-direct NEH Summer Institute POEMS FROM THE HEART JENNIFER LEVIN Alexandra Welm’s (A14) ﬁrst publication, My Eden Home (Alondra Press, 2013), is a collection of poems accompanied by her illustrations, completed when she was 19 years old. Putting the book together, she says, “was as close as I could possibly feel to having a baby.” Having worked with magazines in high school, she downloaded a layout program and positioned the poems and art. “It was so entirely my own; I’ve never had anything like this that’s mine. When I realized it was actually going somewhere, I could hardly believe it.” Joshua Sturgill (SF17) BOOKSTORE POET Welm loves ﬁction, but poetry has always been a more accessible medium for her. “I loved dabbling in other people’s stories; I loved writing extensions to them and exploring what my favorite characters did, but I don’t have an expansive enough imagination to make my own stories. Poetry was something I felt I could always tap into.” Joshua Sturgill (SF17) doesn’t call himself a poet. The oldest freshman on the Santa Fe campus, Sturgill, 37, worked in a bookstore in Kansas for 10 years while keeping a journal and writing essays and reviews about literature and philosophy. Many of his journal entries were fragments and impressions—poetic and otherwise—recorded for future reference; some he turned into poems. My Eden Home is not only the title of the book, it is also the title of a poem that Welm cherishes. “I wrote it after my father passed away and it felt powerful to me,” she says. “It seemed to say everything I wanted to say about an event which otherwise I simply couldn’t put into words.” When Muse Times Two, a poetry series in Santa Fe sponsored by the nonproﬁt organization Lore of the Land, announced its ﬁrst annual competition for local college students, Sturgill decided to work with the notes he took during Holy Week in 2013. The result: a three-part poem called “The Narrow Year” was selected as the winner for St. John’s. Welm believes in the storytelling power of poetry. “It allows both the reader and the writer to experience powerful emotions in a condensed space,” she says. “What would take many chapters in a book, you feel instantly with a poem. You feel great loss, great pain, great love. And it washes over you immediately in just a couple of lines.” On Sunday, April 13, Sturgill read his poem at Collected Works Bookstore and Coffeehouse, in a lineup that included the winners from the other colleges in town—Santa Fe University of Art and Design, the Institute for American Indian Arts, and Santa Fe Community College. Each school was asked to submit poems by three students; the Muse Times Two jury selected one winner from each institution. — Eunji Kim (A15) “I’m an Orthodox Christian and Holy Week is a really intense time—lots of services but also a meditative period,” says Sturgill. “I wrote about events from last year and it’s interesting that one year later, I read my poem on Palm Sunday.” To read these poems in full visit: www.sjc.edu/ news-and-media Joshua Parens (A84) and Joseph Macfarland (A87) are co-directing the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Institute on Medieval Political Philosophy, from June 16 to July 11, 2014, at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington. Parens is dean of the Braniff Graduate School of Liberal Arts and a professor of philosophy at the University of Dallas; Macfarland is a tutor in Annapolis. They are co-directing the Institute with Douglas Kries, professor of Christian philosophy at Gonzaga. The Summer Institute is intended to address the relative neglect of medieval political philosophy in undergraduate education (compared to ancient and modern thought), and more speciﬁcally, the relative neglect of Islamic and Jewish medieval thought. Examining writings by Alfarabi, Maimonides, Thomas Aquinas, and many others, participating faculty and graduate students will be able to rediscover and contemplate the confrontation between reason and revelation free from many modern presuppositions. It is hoped that the 25 participants from colleges and universities across the country will subsequently incorporate medieval political philosophy into their courses. Learn more about the Institute: http:// medievalpoliticalphilosophy.gonzaga.edu Sturgill’s winning three-part poem traces a challenging yearlong journey that culminates in this verse, a resurrection of hope: 3. I drank an ode this morning: sunlight ANYI GUO (A14) standing in a cup of tea. I saw the leaves Alexandra Welm (A14) unfold a solemn reﬂection of life, lending the water green memory. Imperceptibly (except by intuition) the cup pulses, rings, to my pulse and I hold myself uncoiling from a point of concentrated hope—there! that hint of rainbow! rising in an angle of the steam — Jennifer Levin 8 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 briefly quoted “We are stories, each of us an imagination, each of us tracing an arc of beginning, middle, and end, on the course of which each of us must struggle…” National Book Award ﬁnalist Andrew Krivak (A86), 2014 Commencement speaker, Annapolis �from the bell towers “Reading Anna Karenina might well take time, but it is time very joyously spent,” says Annapolis tutor Brendan Boyle, who was part of a yearlong study group on the Tolstoy novel. Although Tolstoy’s War and Peace has been read by Johnnies since the inception of the New Program, Anna Karenina is usually relegated to preceptorials and post-graduation reading. It is clearly worth the community’s attention. Dostoevsky called it “ﬂawless as a work of art” and Faulkner said it was the best novel ever written. The study group, made up of faculty, staff, students, and other community members, met at lunchtime for 15 Mondays throughout the year, reading roughly 50 pages for each session. Participants looked forward with “delight” to each reading, Boyle reports, as they followed married aristocrat Anna’s struggle with questions of marriage, passion, society and her affair with Count Vronsky. Annapolis President Chris Nelson (SF70) launched the study group nine years ago out of a desire to stay in touch with what he calls “the real work of the college.” In the early years of his presidency, he often led undergraduate seminars. When his job became more demanding, tutor Debbie Axelrod became the group’s co-leader. They began with short ﬁction but have recently been reading long works including War and Peace and Ulysses. Axelrod says that Anna Karenina shows Tolstoy’s great sense for human emotion and interaction: “Tolstoy gets it,” she says. “When he describes what a person is feeling or how a relationship is unfolding, so many times he writes exactly what they would say, exactly what they would feel.” Nelson agrees. “Tolstoy seems to create a character who behaves in a certain way, but these characters are complex,” he says. “Just when I think: ‘Well, they ﬁt that mold,’ it turns out they don’t. And that’s true of every character in this book.” Sophomore William Brown (A16) believes that this surprise is part of a ANYI GUO (A14) Lunch with Anna Karenina “Tolstoy seems to create a character who behaves in a certain way, but these characters are complex. Just when I think: ‘Well, they ﬁt that mold,’ it turns out they don’t. And that’s true of every one of the characters in this book.” Chris Nelson (SF70), Annapolis president narrative ambiguity that is characteristic of Tolstoy. “In Anna Karenina, Tolstoy often writes in a style that suggests he shares opinions with the characters when he is writing about them, but then it changes when he’s talking about different characters.” Brown sees an interesting technique throughout the book: “There’s a way that the characters infect the narrative and the narration becomes much less certain as a result,” he says. “That’s one of the things I ﬁnd myself most interested in.” Linda Tuck, wife of retired tutor Jon Tuck, joined the group this year after retiring from a career as an elementary school librarian in Anne Arundel County. She notes that one of the strengths of the group is the variety of people participating: staff, undergraduates, GIs, retired tutors, current tutors, and other members of the community. Often, she says, the chemistry of the group is working so well that she holds back from participating. “Lots of times the discussion is so lively that I’ll have things I want to say and I don’t say them because the conversation is going and it’s wonderful to listen to,” says Tuck. Boyle agrees that the participants work extraordinarily well together. “The group itself is, I think, a model of humanistic investigation,” he says. “If one takes a class on Tolstoy or, say, Dostoevsky, it will invariably be occupied with questions about political, economic, and cultural developments in late 19th-century Russia. The works themselves have a tendency to get lost. Our seminar, by contrast, allows the book to question us about love, marriage, children, happiness, God. ‘Why might Anna love him?’ ‘What would a free life look like for Anna, for Vronsky, for Levin, for us?’ In our seminar, that’s what we’re trying to ﬁgure out. As, I think, Tolstoy himself was.” —Eunji Kim (A15) The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 9 �from the bell towers THE MIRACLE OF FILM I applied to St. John’s not because I wanted to be a ﬁlmmaker but because I wanted the ﬁlms that I made to be for something great. This is what I told those who said, “Aren’t you a ﬁlm major?” “But there’s no ﬁlm department?” “But wait— philosophy?” In truth, the real reason I applied is that I was insecure at parties, decidedly unable to hold my own (read: to sound “smart”) when stuck at the punch bowl with a friendly stranger. I came to St. John’s because I wanted to learn how to hold a conversation. I knew that depended on my ability to think well and deeply, and to collaborate—a concept with which I was familiar, but practiced little. None of my adolescent friends were terribly interested in making movies, so the ﬁlms that I made were almost always solo projects. To make a truly good ﬁlm is to ﬁnd some collaborative center of gravity, some harmonization of all its parts. If a ﬁlm, miraculously, turns out to be good—and a good ﬁlm, regardless of the individual talent involved, must always be a miracle—then it is both everyone’s and no one’s fault. Toward the end of my freshman year, some friends and I made a short halfnarrative, half-documentary ﬁlm, And for My Next Trick. It was about an eccentric freshman who was with us for a few months before he abruptly disappeared, leaving behind most of his possessions and a cryptic message scribbled in darkpurple sharpie on his dorm-room wall. The movie premiered during “Dead Week,” and a surprising number of students—about 50—showed up. We tried to make it funny. A lot of people laughed, and reportedly, some cried. I say this not to congratulate myself (although I will occasionally re-watch the ﬁlm’s frankly awesome and climactic swing-dance-turned-ﬁght-scene), but rather to note that the movie united my class in a way that was meaningful and unexpected. Without realizing it, we had told a story about the caricatured versions PHOTOS: ANYI GUO (A14) by Domenic D’Andrea (A15) SOMEWHERE ALONG THE WAY, WE TOLD OURSELVES THAT STORYTELLING MATTERS, THAT IT MEANS SOMETHING AND OUGHT TO BE DONE BY PEOPLE WHO WANT TO MAKE OTHER PEOPLE FEEL A LITTLE BIT LESS ALONE. of ourselves to which we cling when thrust into a new community. We’d made a movie about how it felt to be a freshman. As I sat in the projection booth and the crowd below me laughed, I knew that with this clumsily shot and hastily edited movie, I had struck that ﬁne chord between the Bitter and the Sweet of something true. A few days after the screening, one Very Cool Upperclassman told me, “Film is the culmination of the liberal arts, a marriage of visual art and narrative and music and dialectic and philosophy—all unfolding in time.” This is true, but what I like about ﬁlm is that it is an expression of the visible. There must be something real before the lens of a camera. And that something begs to be seen both for what it is—the light through a tree or the subtle crack of a smile—and for how it ﬁts into a greater narrative: that tree the place where a painful longing ﬁrst was felt, that smile a hint of mirth during an argument between two old but not close friends. Is this any different from poetry or theater or music? We experience and repurpose things to tell stories. We know this. We do it all the time, but ﬁlm reaches the places that words struggle to touch. This is why a coherent ﬁlm—not necessarily a good or great ﬁlm—is a miracle. This statement is a slightly pretentious 10 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 way of saying that a good story—be it visual or musical or spatial or all of the aforementioned at once—requires a whole lot of work and collaboration. I don’t just mean collaboration between myself and the audience or myself and the crew, but between myself and the ﬁlm’s subject matter. For this reason, ﬁlm is not just a liberal arts thing or a conversational thing. It’s a tender thing. More accurately, it’s a trusting thing. That is why I like ﬁlm so much. At the Annapolis Film Festival last year, I heard this sentiment articulated by Albert Maysles during a screening of his acclaimed documentary, Gimme Shelter. “If when you’re making a ﬁlm you’re not trying to make friends,” he said, “then I don’t really know why you’re making that ﬁlm.” I’m happiest when I’m chasing a moment with a steadicam, with a few friends and a small window of time to get a shot “in the can” before the sun sets, or before that ominous storm cloud eats it whole. Make no mistake: this description is romantic because it has to be. In truth, setting up a scene is arduous. The amount of time it takes to shoot something is typically quadruple the duration of the ﬁnal result. I’ve talked here mostly about the “making” because it is the “telling” of storytelling that interests me. In the telling—that is, in the making, in the long nights of editing hours of footage with some faithful friends and a big bag of candy, a ﬁlmmaker anticipates how the story will be seen and understood. Somewhere along the way, we told ourselves that storytelling matters, that it means something and ought to be done by people who want to make other people feel a little bit less alone. And if we get good at making things together, odds are we’re doing something right. View Domenic D’Andrea’s (A15) ﬁlms at www.vimeo.com/domdandrea. �from the bell towers o f f t h e wa l l GIMME FIVE The virtual world was buzzing with comments from students, alumni, and parents in response to Annapolis President Chris Nelson’s SignPosts blog, “Five Reasons to Attend St. John’s College”: www.sjc-christopherbnelson.com “I am a parent of a sophomore, and whenever I have to describe the kind of college my daughter attends, my short pitch default answer is always this: ‘Every single kid going to this school is incredibly employable when they come out. Because every day, in every class, they have to fully participate in their own learning, thinking, and defending their understanding of something. Most important, they have to do it with respect for every other person in the room.’” —Lisa, St. John’s parent “As a fellow parent, I am simply amazed at the level of maturity and thoughtfulness that my 19-year-old son has demonstrated since being here a little over one semester! It is hard to believe how much growth he has realized in such a short time. Not to mention him literally telling me—for the ﬁrst time in his life—that ‘I’ve fallen in love with a man who has been dead for 2,089 years— Euclid! I really love math.’” —Anonymous parent “Is no degree better than a liberal arts degree?” is a new study published on Forbes.com in May that considers millennials (born between the early ’80s and the early 2000s). “The only ones who could ﬁnd this study, its premises and ﬁndings, to be valid are those who have not been trained in critical thinking.” —Caroline Killian (SF05) “If your sole aim is to get well paying jobs, and you have no interest in meaning, thoughtful reﬂection, or understanding of different worldviews, then focusing solely on money makes sense. To those who desire a thoughtful life, a life better prepared for all of the interesting twists and turns, our college motto makes the case.” —Anonymous alum A still from Nosferatu, F.W. Murnau’s 1922 ﬁlm. READING GREAT FILMS Moved by the power and beauty of early cinema, Scott Buchanan once envisioned the New Program with a ﬁfth year devoted to the study of great cinematic works. More than 75 years later, this summer marks the arrival of the St. John’s College Film Institute (June 15 to August 8) at the Santa Fe campus. Several alumni, including Hannah Jayanti (SF07) and Bob Tzudiker (A75) are leading workshops. An idea spawned by Santa Fe Graduate Institute Director David Carl and other ﬁlm-minded tutors at the Santa Fe campus, the Film Institute emphasizes reading ﬁlms as well as viewing them; it includes seminars, tutorials, and workshops with ﬁlm professionals. “A great ﬁlm has to work on multiple levels, with many possible interpretations,” says Carl. “It has to exceed the artist’s intentions and provide a forum in which [audiences] can engage serious questions.” Summer Academy 2014 at St. John’s College AN INTELLECTUAL ADVENTURE for High School Students Students from around the world immersed themselves in Summer Academy 2014 in Santa Fe and Annapolis. Learn more: www.sjc.edu Local theater groups are showing ﬁlms on large screens at venues throughout the city. Films include: F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922), Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story (1953), John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939), Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries (1957), and Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mirror (1975), among others. Each week focuses on ﬁlms by a different director as well as books that either they or critics have written about their work. “Like poetry, a director or cinematographer is very deliberate about what we see,” says Carl. “Images are inseparable from the story.” The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 11 �from the bell towers Ariel Intern Finds Order and Purpose ANYI GUO (A14) In July 2014,the Laboratory of Anthropology (LOA) Research Library at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture on the piñon-studded Museum Hill in Santa Fe will migrate its catalog to the Koha Integrated Library System, a move that will make the library records searchable on the Internet for the ﬁrst time. Helping to facilitate the migration is Elizabeth Fedden (SF15), who was awarded a second Ariel Internship to work for LOA Library Director Allison Colborne. Fedden started working at the library in fall 2012 when she helped with a book sale to PROGRAM PAGE TURNERS Is there a work of ﬁction or storytelling on the Program that you ﬁnd to be especially compelling? JENNIFER LEVIN “My favorite narrative on the program is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn because the language of the story transcends the story itself. Its cadence and rhythm become the central characters.” — Josh Kelly (SF15) Elizabeth Fedden (SF15) raise funds. She continued to work with Colborne on other projects; when Fedden learned about the database migration project, she applied for the Ariel Internship to fund the work. “I’m not very tech-savvy, and it was a good opportunity to work more with computers,” says Fedden. Fedden, 29, a native of Normal, Illinois, came to St. John’s after serving as a U.S. Army nurse at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. She then spent ﬁve years working in cafés, becoming a competitive barista, and volunteering at the World Barista Championship in Bogotá, Colombia.She eventually came to realize that in order to move beyond the espresso machine, she needed a college degree. At ﬁrst, the LOA Library database cleanup was overwhelming—detailed and often tedious—moving authors’ names and book titles into the correct ﬁelds, deleting “Herodotus’s Histories. I ﬁnd the best way to learn about people is through actual actions. I think it is easier to learn about people, philosophy, virtue, and anything through actual human actions.” — Sally Jankovic (A17) “One of my favorite narratives so far has been Don Quixote. I can identify with someone who sees all around him what he needs in order for the outer world to match his inner world.” “As You Like It, because the hero is a woman, and it is hilarious to watch [the characters] run around the forest and pretend they know what’s going on when no one really understands.” — Caroline Snizek (A15) “I love the Iliad. It was the ﬁrst book we read here during freshman year and I remember being enthralled by it. It is so exciting—tales of glory and the gods. I have two copies in my room, a Lattimore and a Fitzgerald translation. I plan on rereading them both this summer.” — William Kinum (A17) “The thing that really moved me was both of the Euripides plays. But I would choose the Bacchae because it is so sensual and violent at the same time. It’s a very disturbing combination and unlike anything else on the Program [so far]. It certainly leads to a very interesting discussion. I’m still not sure what it’s about, but it was deﬁnitely compelling.” — Collin Ziegler (A17) — Joseph Leakakos (SF15) or merging duplicate records, running into the stacks to conﬁrm the location of an obscure holding, and making sure records are precise. “If periods aren’t in the right places, the record won’t come up,” says Fedden, who is exploring a master’s program at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign; she is particularly interested 12 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 in library conservation, digitizing fragile materials, and making them searchable. Colborne calls Fedden a librarian in the making. “I’ve had other interns, and you can just tell,” says Colborne. “I never have to explain things to her. She understands the order and the purpose.” —Jennifer Levin �from the bell towers Spurred by Henry Robert (Class of 1941), this spring the Annapolis alumni chapter, headed by Beth Martin (A94), formed a study group to read the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation of War and Peace. Erin Fitzpatrick (A14) met with participant Sam Kutler (Class of 1954), retired tutor and dean emeritus, to discuss Tolstoy’s great work. How many times have you read War and Peace? I’ve read it more than four times. As many senior seminars as I’ve done, I’ve read it at least that many times. The small things get changed because you’ve forgotten exactly where they are, but you know where the large movements are; you know what’s coming. Is there a particular scene or line that has stayed with you? When Pierre speaks to Andrei and says, “You gave such a beautiful talk about forgiveness. This is the time to forgive Natasha.” And Andrei says, “I never said I could do it.” He’s too proud. That’s a very important part of the novel. Tolstoy says “this is not a novel,” but he’s wrong. People have often described Tolstoy’s novels as “character driven.” Do you agree? Tolstoy wants War and Peace to be history driven, but the book is character driven. Many years after reading War and Peace, ﬁne memories of Natasha, Pierre, and all the other characters linger. I cherish most Pierre’s statement to Andrei about forgiving Natasha. Pierre was always in love with Natasha, even when she was a child, and he would have given anything to be in Andrei’s shoes so he could have forgiven her. That would have been the greatest act of his life. I’ve always thought about that business about forgiveness. Do you have a favorite character in the novel? I’ll tell you a story instead of answering that question. I think the Program was made solid by Jacob Klein. I went to Mr. Klein’s seminar before I joined the faculty in ’61. He went around the room and asked every single person, “What is War and Peace about?” When he’d ﬁnished, he said, “You’re all wrong. It’s about Natasha.” Tolstoy doesn’t mind repeating the same phrase. He wants to drive it home the way Beethoven does. He’s a very musical writer. The main problem for me is thinking of what a strange couple Prince Andrei and Natasha would be. He’s so stern and unusual and half of him is his father. A little bit like Hamlet in that respect. I don’t know if that had any effect on Tolstoy. to read. I wince a bit with Tacitus. I enjoy the freshman and sophomore readings more than those of the junior and senior year. They seem more plausible and richer. But the last time I did the junior year, I thought they were strange books and very well chosen. Every time I reread a book, it was a new adventure, and every time I did it in seminar, it was never the same. People were always interested in talking about different things. Why should we read War and Peace? We should read it because of its extreme richness. I love its repetitions, I love that everything’s there on the surface, but Tolstoy doesn’t mind repeating the same phrase. He wants to drive it home the way Beethoven does. He’s a very musical writer. How would you compare Anna Karenina to War and Peace? I recognize it as a masterpiece. I can’t ﬁnd time to read it often, nor can I compare the two novels, for they are so different. War and Peace is dear to my heart because of the well-drawn characters and because Tolstoy is anxious to disabuse us of our false notions about war. How can we ﬁnd joy in reading an assigned book? JEN BEHRENS Return to the Novel The list of books on the Program is so good that I always delight in reading any of them, even if not especially Adam Smith. I would have found it hard, year after year, to do Justinian—we used to read Justinian on how the Romans freed their slaves. It was a bit tedious. We got rid of books like that when we started the preceptorial list. There’s hardly anything that isn’t a delight the surface is so huge. The hard part is to integrate it all in your imagination. Seminars are very helpful because somebody will speak who has an entirely different way of looking at it. Every single time I’ve read it, it got better. That’s one test of a great book: its “rereadability.” —Interview by Erin Fitzpatrick (A14) The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 13 �from the bell towers Working at Talmar Gardens in Baltimore, Maryland, last summer was the perfect ﬁrst internship for Rachel Howell (A16). Talmar Gardens is a nonproﬁt organization that provides horticultural therapy, which uses plants and horticultural activities to assist in improving one’s body, mind, and spirit. Howell turned to horticultural therapy in hopes of merging two of her interests: psychology and nature. “The brain is an amazing thing,” she says. Growing up on a small farm surrounded by gardens and animals nurtured her love of nature and working with plants. At Talmar Gardens, Howell interned in a vocational program in which students with mental disabilities learn a horticultural trade. “It involved working out in the ﬁeld, transplanting plants in the greenhouse, and showing the students how to use the tools and how to work with others.” Howell’s Hodson internship helped her reﬁne her interest in horticultural therapy and exposed her to expectations of the work world. “Class will go on without [me], but if I’m not there [at my job], they’re going to have a problem getting the group going,” she says. She sought to develop leadership and communication skills through the internship, taking charge of her assigned group of students and learning to communicate clearly. “I had to be direct, lay everything out, and be speciﬁc when I was talking to the students.” This experience complemented the communication skills that she has been developing at St. John’s College. “I also learned patience,” she says, “from dealing with things like rush-hour trafﬁc to working with students with mental disabilities.” Howell did not receive much instruction on how to work with the students, so she learned on the job “by watching what other people did. We would have meetings once a week about the students. We talked about their progress and I would ask questions: ‘This happened, this is how I dealt with it. Is there a better way to deal with it?’” The most fulﬁlling moment was at the end, when her group graduated from the vocational training program. “I was so proud of them and happy to see them be proud of themselves for what they had accomplished. I was really glad to have had a part in it.” — Eunji Kim (A15) CHILDREN’S LITERACY ADVOCATE Joanna Purpich (A14) takes the idea of “ﬁnd a need and ﬁll it” to heart. While volunteering as a math and reading coach for elementary and middle school students this past year at the Bloomsbury Square Community Center in Annapolis, Purpich discovered that the organization’s supply of children’s books needed a serious boost. An avid reader and advocate for children’s literacy, she sprung to action. On April 9, she launched a children’s book drive on the Paca quad, inviting the college community to donate new and gently used books, primarily for ages 7 to 14. She collected more than 200 books, including classics such as Roald Dahl’s Matilda, Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, and Anne McCaffrey’s The Coelura. “The drive was a success,” says Purpich. “Being a community of book lovers, St. John’s is a great place to do a book drive.” The following day, Purpich delivered the books to the community center. “The kids were excited to see the boxes. We sat in a circle and read Shel Silverstein poems.” Purpich is looking forward to organizing another children’s book drive. “I want to make sure teachers have tools to effectively reach students.” Purpich hopes to forge a career in publishing; this summer she is attending the University of Denver Summer Publishing Institute. ANYI GUO (A14) ANYI GUO (A14) Plants and Psychology: Hodson Intern Finds the Link Purpich was raised on classics by Roald Dahl and Tolkien. “My favorite was The Hobbit.” Growing up in Houston, Texas, her parents encouraged reading. “For a bedtime story, my mom read Don Quixote to me. I felt comfortable with epics and books with cool plotlines.” One book, in particular, she holds dear to this day. “I keep a copy of Harry Potter, to comfort me when I’m sick or not feeling well,” says Purpich. “My original copy is missing its spine and completely worn out from use—and from being dropped in the bathtub.” — Gregory Shook 14 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 �from the bell towers Hitting the Global Airwaves LARRY CLENDENIN (SF77) RETIRES Pictured (left to right): Linda Lin, co-op producer, U.S. Department of State; Maria Acosta, Teleamazonas reporter; Francisca Soto Bravo (A17); Edison Choco, Teleamazonas cameraman After nearly three decades as admissions director on the Santa Fe campus, Larry Clendenin (SF77) ofﬁcially retired in July. “Every student who has signed the college register at Convocation over these years, and therefore every student who has received a diploma at Commencement for most of those years, owes something to Larry’s work,” says J. Walter Sterling, Santa Fe dean. “I am deeply grateful for his service to the college.” During the last 30 years, Clendenin has witnessed tremendous changes in higher education, particularly in the ways that colleges and universities reach out to prospective students. “What is really different is the communication—the connectivity and mediums that are available to us,” says Clendenin. “That really pushes on our lives and on our private time, and opens up more public avenues. But young people keep up with it.” Clendenin has also seen the cost of higher education rise, St. John’s College garnered international attention when television documentary ﬁlm crews visited the Annapolis campus last fall. They traveled to the U.S. on separate assignments, but with a similar interest: discussion-based higher education. A noted television journalist, producer, and camera crew from the Korean Educational Broadcasting System (EBS), one of the leading networks in Korea, visited in October. In a partnership with the U.S. Department of State, a similar team from Teleamazonas, a major television network in Ecuador, arrived in November. Both news teams immersed themselves in campus life: they met with students, faculty, and staff, and attended seminars, labs, and concerts. They were especially interested in the college’s emphasis on original sources and classroom discussion. Each news team noted the heightened interest among youth in their respective countries in studying classic works and perfecting conversational English. Among the students who participated in the documentaries were JuChan Park (A16) from Korea, and Francisca Soto Bravo (A17) from Chile; they shared their experiences as international students at the college. talk of the tow ers Santa Fe Admissions staff and Larry Clendenin In Annapolis, four new tutors have joined the faculty. Robert Abbott (A04) is from the University of Chicago, where he is working on completing his joint PhD from the Committee on Social Thought and the Department of Germanic Studies. Karin Ekholm (A00) joined the college from the University of Cambridge, where she was a teaching and research fellow in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science. She received her PhD in history and philosophy of science from Indiana University. Rebecca Goldner (AGI02) comes to the college from Villanova University, where she earned her PhD in philosophy. Matthew Holtzman (A00) earned his PhD in philosophy from Johns Hopkins University. In Santa Fe, Mary Anne Burke is the new Facilities and Athletics manager, and Aaron Young is the new director of Human Resources. Chris Gruber is the new Webmaster, and Lisa Neal is assistant director of Communications. In Annapolis, several new directors have joined the college: Bill Hocking, director for the President’s Initiative for a Liberal Education; Tim Leahy, director of Information Technology; and Susan Jenkins, director of Web Initiatives and Social Media. Annapolis Treasurer Bronte Jones left the college in September; Bud Billups, interim treasurer, retires (again) this summer. which he says can be “overwhelming for a lot of families. St. John’s is doing a good job of addressing that. One thing I tell parents is that our graduates go on to write great literature, make movies, and become businesspeople, doctors, lawyers, and teachers.” Clendenin emphasizes that St. John’s is about ﬁnding the right ﬁt. “We’re talking about a particular student and whether or not it’s going to be practical,” says Clendenin. “It’s not a question of whether it’s practical for all students. But for those of us for whom this is perfect, it brings out the best in us. It brings out great things that take us where we want to go.” — Jennifer Levin The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 15 �from the bell towers Santa Fe Campus Turns 50 This summer, St. John’s College kicks off the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Santa Fe campus. The yearlong celebration includes activities and events that will recognize and honor the people and the community that make St. John’s in Santa Fe so distinctive. “This year marks a signiﬁcant milestone in the history of the college and the Santa Fe campus, conclusively demonstrating for more than 50 years that the St. John’s Program is an education for all and has no geographical or cultural bounds,” says Santa Fe President Mike Peters. THE ST. JOHN’S EDUCATION IS FOREVER YOUNG. THE PIONEERS, THE WESTERN COLONY, THE ODYSSEAN WANDERING, WERE— AND ARE—IMPLICIT IN THE GENETIC MAKEUP OF THE PROGRAM. Richard Weigle, founder and president of the Santa Fe campus It was a bold and visionary move to establish a campus in Santa Fe, offering the college’s unique, and in many ways radical, academic program to more students. “The founding of the Santa Fe campus in 1964 was a reminder that the educational program installed in Annapolis in 1937—one that could be mistaken for something traditional, if not hidebound—is in fact radical, volatile, and nomadic,” says J. Walter Sterling, Santa Fe dean. “As was said of the Greeks, the St. John’s education is forever young. The pioneers, the Western colony, the Odyssean wandering, were—and are—implicit in the genetic makeup of the Program, waiting to be expressed.” The commemoration of 50 years in Santa Fe “gives us a perfect opportunity to highlight the signiﬁcant place that the college has in higher education, reafﬁrm together our core values as a community, and heighten the visibility of St. John’s locally and nationally,” says Victoria Mora, Santa Fe vice president. “It also is important for Santa Fe to step up and leverage gifts to the campus in honor of the anniversary, making us a stronger partner in our one college, two campus structure.” The college also will salute innovations ﬁrst established in Santa Fe—such as the Graduate Institute, the Eastern Classics program, and Summer Classics. On June 20, a public media event launched the celebration with proclamations and remembrances. The campus is taking every opportunity to mark the anniversary throughout the summer, beginning with Music on the Hill, Summer Classics, and the ﬁrst-ever Summer Film Institute (www.sjc.edu/events-and-programs/santafe/summer-ﬁlm-institute). The celebration will continue throughout the academic year and will include a national academic conference, “What is Liberal Education For?” on October 16 through 18 (www.sjc. edu/events-and-programs/santa-fe/50thanniversary-conference). The conference is envisioned as a broad platform to speak about the challenges and opportunities for liberal education today, and to engage in exemplary studies in the liberal arts. Sterling reﬂects on the value of the conference and its place in the campus’s 50th anniversary celebration: “Our insight into the true ends and appropriate means of an education for the human being as such suggests an alternative to what has sadly become mainstream and conventional. Such an education should be made available to, and pursued by, many more people—ever more people. This was audacious in Annapolis in 1937 and in Santa Fe in 1964, and seems more so now. But it happens to be true.” — Jennifer Levin 16 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 2013-2014 NEW BOARD MEMBERS Elizabeth (“Betsy”) Ann Bassan (A75) is founder, president, and CEO of Panagora Group, a womanowned small business providing integrated and novel solutions in health and development. Previously she held executive and leadership positions with Chemonics International, Save the Children, and the Society for International Development (SID)-Washington. She is a senior planner and management specialist with more than 30 years of experience designing, implementing, and evaluating international development projects, strengthening institutions, and building public-private partnerships. Her sector expertise includes global health and private sector development. Her regional experience includes Africa, Asia, Europe, Eurasia, and the Middle East. She lived and worked overseas for seven years in Kenya and Sudan. She speaks French and holds an M.A. from Columbia University, where she participated in a joint degree program on Planning in Developing Nations. Robert Mass is head of Goldman Sachs’s International Compliance, which comprises Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) and Asia Paciﬁc Compliance. He is also global head of Securities Division Compliance. He joined Goldman Sachs in 1992 as the ﬁrst head of Compliance for the J. Aron Currency and Commodities Division. He managed FICC Compliance for eight years until 2004. He was named managing director in 2001 and partner in 2010. Prior to joining the ﬁrm, he was an assistant district attorney in New York County, where he served as deputy chief of the Investigation Division and chief of the Labor Racketeering Unit. Before that, he worked at Kramer, Levin, Nessen and Kamin, a New York corporate law ﬁrm, and at the American Civil Liberties Union. He is a graduate of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Harvard Law School. Mass has participated in the New York Executive Seminars for many years, as well as in Summer Classics in Santa Fe. �from the bell towers TONY J. PHOTOGRAPHY Committed to Liberal Education Chris Nelson (SF70), Annapolis president Last October, more than a dozen college and university presidents dined at the Penn Club in midtown Manhattan while ﬁelding questions from a select group of editors, producers, and journalists—from CBS News, the New York Times, Inside Higher Ed, Bloomberg News, the Christian Science Monitor, Money magazine, NPR, and Forbes, to name a few. What was on their minds? Questions such as “How can you show the success and value of a college degree?” and “How is the increasing student-debt burden impacting college and career choices?” Annapolis President Chris Nelson (SF70) was one of the few liberal arts college representatives in the mix. The media’s take on higher education heavily inﬂuences public opinion, so it is important for St. John’s College and liberal education to be well represented. This higher-education media dinner is one of many events Nelson attended this year as part of his outreach campaign to increase the visibility of St. John’s College and liberal education. Nelson’s message is reaching alumni, students, and friends who are familiar with and support liberal education as well as audiences who—after listening to Nelson—want to learn more: prospective applicants, parents, donors, teachers and guidance counselors, policymakers, and, of course, the media. Nelson, a respected national spokesperson for liberal education, is regularly publishing and making appearances. His blog for Hufﬁngton Post (www. hufﬁngtonpost.com/christopher-nelson) touches on topics such as “Lincoln and Liberal Education,” “The Miracle of Imagination,” and “The World’s Longest Running Seminar of Free Government.” His “SignPosts” blog (www.blogs.sjc.edu/ christopher-nelson) celebrates everything at St. John’s from Senior Orals to the joys of original thought and Euclid. His blogs are linked to a growing number of other sites—further increasing the reach of the message about St. John’s. Nelson is recognized as a leader in national, state, and local higher education circles. As an advocate for liberal education, he is a regular contributor to higher education-speciﬁc and mainstream media. Nelson is invited to comment and join forums for noted publications such as Time and The Hechinger Report. His letter to the editor, “The Fervor for Great Books and Big Ideas Isn’t Dead,” appeared in the New York Times in May. He was invited by the Washington Post to review an important new book, Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters by Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University. Nelson is also writing his own book. In fact, the cornerstone of his outreach campaign is a book intended for a wide audience; he plans to meld his congenial “deskside” conversations with stories that speak to the values of St. John’s College and liberal education. Nelson reﬂects, for instance, on his son’s encounter with liberal learning and “repairing an old junker, a 1960s vintage Volkswagen bug.” As his son tried to ﬁx the broken washers for the windshield wipers, Nelson says “he was led to ﬁnd for himself the answer to the problem just by a series of questions. His experience was liberating and a reminder that we all practice the liberal arts constantly. The “All members of the St. John’s community are potential ambassadors for liberal education and for St. John’s College.” only question is whether we practice them well or poorly. If we open ourselves to the possibility of learning something new, without relying on manuals or seasoned experts, we can all make new discoveries for ourselves.” Nelson is working closely with a team of staff and faculty and a media consultant, as well as alumni and friends, as he moves forward with his campaign. “But of course, all members of the St. John’s community are potential ambassadors for liberal education and for St. John’s College,” says Nelson. “My role is to spur on that continuing conversation about the value of what we do at the college, so that it can be better understood and appreciated.” —PD Learn more about Nelson’s activities: www.sjc.edu/about/leadership/presidents/ annapolis-president Subscribe to the SignPosts blog: www.blogs.sjc.edu/christopher-nelson briefly quoted “In the end, liberal education must take its bearings from the most fundamental question of all: What does it mean to be human?” Annapolis President Christopher Nelson (sf70), in his book review for The Washington Post of Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters, by Michael Roth, president, Wesleyan University The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 17 �18 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 �tutor views Why by Jonathan Tuck For rising seniors at St. John’s College, summer provides an important rite of passage. In preparation for the ﬁrst two seminars of the fall, each of them must read Tolstoy’s War and Peace. It’s prudent not to begin too late: the vast historical novel of the Napoleonic wars occupies 1,215 pages in the excellent Pevear/Volokhonsky translation, apart from notes and index. The Use of Stories: Faculty members consider Tolstoy and compelling works of ﬁction on the Program. OPPOSITE: A scene from War and Peace ART RESOURCE, NY At the rate of 90 pages per week, it’s enough to ﬁll the whole summer with seminar readings for each Monday and Thursday. The action ranges across most of Europe and involves armies of hundreds of thousands of men. It is truly a “great book” in size and scope as well as in power and beauty; yet most of the reader’s concern is narrowly focused on the fates of six or seven characters, members of three noble Russian families. We come to know these people inside and out, better perhaps than we know our own families or close friends. It is very hard to remember that they are not real. As Isaac Babel said, “If the world could write by itself, it would write like Tolstoy.” When the narrative proper concludes with Part One of the Epilogue, we feel betrayed. It cannot be that there is no more! Another generation is growing up: what will become of young Nikolenka? And what about Pierre? Will his political activities get him into trouble? How happy are these marriages? We want desperately to ﬁnd out what will happen next. It’s this very curiosity that keeps us reading; though the book is long, we ﬂy through it after a while, hoping that our favorites will ﬁnd the happiness they have been seeking for years. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 19 �Q&A tutor views Why is Tolstoy on the Program? An old saw I have heard is that St. John’s students graduate unaware of the Protestant Reformation and the French Revolution. It is one of many variants on the theme that we somehow neglect “history.” The particular variant and the general charge have some force to them, though the true force is not what is most often intended. What is most often intended is the idea that we do our students a disservice by leading them to neglect the “historical context” in which the authors wrote (and which shaped their ideas). The typical argument is upside down: In fact, we come to understand the historical context by reading the works of the greatest minds that illuminate such context. It is in this light that some of the power of reading Tolstoy’s War and Peace emerges for us. Tolstoy brings to life (or to the work of art) Napoleon as man and myth, the great movements of modern Russian politics, the general tumult of enlightenment rationalism (and nationalism) and the many other forces by which “Europe” was convulsed in the 19th century, the twilight of the ancient regime, and the lived experience of the consequences of Hegel’s interpretation of the “worldhistorical.” Without reading the great literature that comments on, or animates, the times, we do indeed have a “historical” lacuna. Reading the enlightenment philosophy of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, without reading War and Peace, is something like reading Plato and Aristotle without reading Homer, Aeschylus, and Sophocles. —J. Walter Sterling (A93), Santa Fe dean This longing is inspired by the raw power of pure storytelling. Most of us have stayed up all night to ﬁnish a compelling tale. We have to ﬁnd out; it seems like a matter of life and death, as it was for the Sultan and Scheherazade. Sometimes the story will lack the grandeur and dignity of Tolstoy or Homer; we call them “guilty pleasures”—police procedurals, country-house whodunits, Gothic romances, beach reading, pageturners. But why should this pleasure make us feel guilty? As Aristotle reminds us, our desire to know, to “have seen,” is natural to us as human beings. Unlike gossip, for example, even the most trivial ﬁctional narratives don’t seem to harm anyone else. Perhaps certain kinds of coarseness in a story can harm us, but often the shame we feel at having squandered a few hours on the wrong sort of book springs 20 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 from a tacit comparison: we could have spent that time reading something more useful, something good for us. What use can we make of stories? At St. John’s, novels usually appear in the seminar list right after a lengthy vacation. War and Peace, Don Quixote, Middlemarch, The Brothers Karamazov—each long book gets only two evenings of discussion. The usual result, of course, is that we try to see the work as a synchronic whole, rather than focusing on the diachronic experience of reading. We look back and try to pick out themes and ideas. At the end of his book, Tolstoy does the same thing. In Part Two of the Epilogue to War and Peace, he discards his characters and suddenly turns philosopher, telling us what we should infer from the events of the story about causation in history and human freedom. Many of �the truth of stories Q&A his claims have appeared before, embedded in the text. (For example, see the beginnings of Volume III, Parts 1, 2, and 3; Volume IV, Parts 2 and 3; and Epilogue, Part 1.) Like many other readers, I have always thought that Tolstoy marred his great novel slightly by giving in to the temptation to preach a moral at the very end. He should have trusted his tale more. But in our seminars, in our necessarily retrospective treatment of his story and other stories, we often do something very similar. We distance ourselves from the events narrated in searching for their meaning. Should we ﬁrst approach a seminar work from the outside, as a whole, or work through it from the inside? If we are reading a work that is not a story—say, a philosophical work with an argument—we often try ﬁrst to restate the argument with precision. But when we read a story, we seldom feel the need to retell the plot. Instead, we reach into the story from without, looking for what it is “about.” We are used to arguments; it is tempting to try to ﬁnd a doctrine, a truth-claim, in everything we read. Our desire to make our stories philosophical may assure us of our own seriousness, but do we then misrepresent the concreteness of our experience of reading? I have sometimes ﬂippantly tried to deﬂect students who try to turn a novel into a treatise by saying, “The moral of every great novel is that There is and should be wisdom in the best stories, even if it is hard to specify it in the form of a proposition. Although Tolstoy’s story seems to tell itself, as Babel said, there is always a teller behind the tale, and a reason for telling it. Stories that provoke reﬂection and repay rereading are never just about themselves. Pace Socrates, the war between philosophy and poetry need not last forever. It’s no doubt foolhardy to try to write a short paragraph about a writer with such epic proclivities. But Tolstoy himself suggests that small drops may reﬂect entire globes. At a key moment in War and Peace, Pierre has a brief vision of a vibrating globe composed of water drops. In an urge to reﬂect the divine being at the center of this globe, each drop strives to expand, spreading until it eventually merges with the whole and loses its identity. The peasant Platon Karataev embodies this essential tendency: his every feature and gesture is “round,” he doesn’t distinguish one person from the next, and his speech consists mostly of common folk-sayings. Even the dog that has attached itself to Karataev is characterized only by an absence of particularity—by “its not belonging to anyone, and the absence of a name and even of a breed, even of a deﬁnite color.” The impulse to dissolve the bounds of individuality extends even to the central characters: Pierre and Natasha ﬁnally appear as a typical married couple, talking contentedly “as only a husband and wife can talk.” This drive toward the archetypal isn’t peculiarly human: the old oak that initially attracts Prince Andrei’s attention by its apparent refusal to put out leaves in expansive springtime gestures has, a month later, become indistinguishable from the other trees in the forest. Only after some effort does Andrei discern it “spreading out a canopy of juicy, dark greenery.” As the old oak comes to life it looks more and more like every other tree in springtime. Perhaps we read Tolstoy, then, for the very reasons we read every other great writer: to catch sight, if we can, of how particulars reach out toward the universal. —Margaret Kirby, tutor The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 21 �Q&A tutor views When we tried to take him off once on the Santa Fe campus, the rising seniors wouldn’t let us. We could not persuade them that there could really be a substitute. I think Dostoyevsky is right to say that Tolstoy writes the way a dreamer dreams: with every detail in place, fully realized down to the last cuff link and collar button. Or so at least it seems to the rapt audience. The deployment of such Old Master portraiture on the biggest story of the 19th century—the story of Napoleon’s conquest of Russia and subsequent ignominious retreat—makes a book unlike any other I know. Tolstoy means to step into the same arena as Homer: War and Peace is his Iliad and Odyssey in one. And he is worthy of his model without ever seeming a mere imitator. Robert Bart once proposed that we read great works of literature partly in order to approach the various Medusas of human life as Perseus did the Gorgon: not looking directly into their petrifying faces but in the reﬂection of a shield. Tolstoy offers a shield for anyone who hopes not to wind up paralyzed by Love or War, Ambition, Ideology, Politics, or History. One comes to live inside his book and through his characters for the weeks one reads it, and perhaps (especially after a good seminar or two) never entirely leaves it behind again. The characters are unforgettable. Sixteen-yearold Natasha is able to look into a mirror before her ﬁrst ball and say, in all sincerity, “Who is that charming girl?” Pierre is saved from a ﬁring squad because of how he looks into an ofﬁcer’s eyes. For Prince Andrei, living becomes an insoluble problem. How does one know that the pictures a book shows of human hearts life is complicated.” Similarly, Mark Twain begins Huckleberry Finn with the disclaimer: “Persons attempting to ﬁnd a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to ﬁnd a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to ﬁnd a plot in it will be shot.” Apart from a desire to be funny, Twain may have other motives here, but he knows, and we know, that his story has a moral content that can be questioned and discussed. That’s why Huck Finn is a great book. There is and should be wisdom in the best stories, even if it is hard to specify it in the form of a proposition. Although Tolstoy’s story seems to tell itself, as Babel said, there is always a teller behind the tale, and a reason for telling it. Stories that provoke reﬂection and repay rereading are never just about themselves. Pace Socrates, the war between philosophy and poetry need not last forever. The heroes and heroines of War and Peace all suffer greatly in their search for happiness and meaning. Some of them, especially Pierre Bezukhov, continually ask about the meaning of their experience, even while it is happening; but all of them engage in such questioning at the novel’s end. Though most readers love Pierre, it is hard not to consider 22 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 him somewhat comical, at least some of the time; part of the reason is that he sometimes seems to think that the meaning of life should be easily expressible in the form of doctrine or a proposition. If learning comes through suffering, perhaps these characters learn not to expect such easy answers. Because they seem so real, we suffer along with them, and we learn, too. If the story can make us wiser, it must be a complex kind of patient, experiential wisdom. It’s ﬁtting, then, that we survey the events of the story in retrospect, as the characters do themselves. If Tolstoy erred in Part Two of the Epilogue, it was only in his tone of impatience and overt didacticism. In the greatest stories—and War and Peace is one of them—the ideas, the themes, the world view are fully incarnated in the action and the characters. Often it’s necessary to abstract them in order to speak of them, but it should feel like an act of violence, like a translation or a prose paraphrase of a poem. The way to regain the perfect interpenetration of Aristotle’s big three—plot, character, and thought—is to read the novel again. Jonathan Tuck is a tutor in Annapolis. �the truth of stories Illustrations: below and page 18: Illustrations for War and Peace found in the collection of the State Borodino War and History Museum, Moscow. Paintings by Andrei Nikolayev. page 20: The reading of the novella, The Kreutzer Sonata, at the Leo Tolstoy House (1889), painting by Grigori Myasoedov. opposite page: Tolstoy in his study. Engraving in “The Artistic Illustration” (1892). Our desire to make our stories philosophical may assure us of our own seriousness, but do we then misrepresent the concreteness of our experience of reading? I have sometimes ﬂippantly tried to deﬂect students who try to turn a novel into a treatise by saying, “The moral of every great novel is that life is complicated.” are true pictures? Maybe the great books are the ones that help you start to know. Tolstoy writes that kind of book. —Cary Stickney (A75), tutor into the past, scarcely holding in check the frailties and tensions in their lives and those of their several guests. And yet the revealing, unsettling power of the past is made beautifully and clearly present through song and memory, in Joyce’s words. —Pamela Kraus, Annapolis dean I like to think of the four years as starting with adventure stories. In my romantic way of looking at things, the freshman year would be better served by the Odyssey, but you can’t read the Odyssey before the Iliad. The sophomore year used to start with the Aeneid. The junior year begins with Don Quixote. War and Peace ﬁts right in there with that—a large adventure story for every year. One might say that War and Peace shouldn’t be on the Program because it doesn’t ﬁt in so well with the other books. We don’t have a good way of studying Napoleon, and War and Peace is not a good way of studying Napoleon because you just get a caricature of him. —Sam Kutler, (Class of 1954), tutor emeritus Is there a work of ﬁction or storytelling on the Program that you ﬁnd to be especially compelling? James Joyce’s “The Dead” is a story I return to again and again. It is, to my mind, one of the great short stories in the English language. A pensive, gentle, but uncompromising spirit pervades the annual dance and dinner at the Misses Morkan’s. Their small evening is a civilizing force that is slipping ILLUSTRATIONS: HIP, ART RESOURCE, NY “Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War was the ﬁrst thing I had ever read that showed me there was movement toward order in the world (as well as chaos).” —Jim Beall, tutor What story is more compelling than the story of Odysseus’s homecoming? And who can tell a better tale than Odysseus himself? Disguised as a beggar, he responds to Penelope’s insistent questions about his identity by claiming to be a man from Crete who entertained Odysseus on his way to Troy. Penelope melts in tears at the story, but tests him by asking what Odysseus wore and “what sort of man he was.” The beggar describes a purple mantle and a tunic made of exceptionally ﬁne fabric, but pins his reply on the description of a golden brooch that fastened the mantle. So artfully did it depict a hound attacking a fawn that the viewer forgot he was looking at an image and simply saw the fawn struggling convulsively in the hound’s grasp. The beggar’s tale takes Penelope back, vividly and concretely, to that day, some twenty years earlier, when she saw Odysseus off, and “attached the shining pin, to be his adornment.” At the same time, the brooch, on which the story fastens, begins to bind Penelope to her husband in a new way. The object itself is long lost; what remains and makes itself present is their common memory of it. Whoever the stranger now before her is, Penelope must be bound to him by the memory of that marvelous brooch, as she was bound to her departing husband by its tangible presence and the physical act of pinning it on his cloak. By focusing on a work of visual art, Odysseus also binds them in the knowledge that this story never fully reaches its conclusion—the fawn is forever struggling in the hound’s grasp; the hound is forever unable to relax his grip. —Margaret Kirby, tutor The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 23 �CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Mike Lacy (A12); Lee Zlotoff (A74); detail of textile art by Richard Saja (SF00); sketch by Jules Feiffer of himself with Norton Juster in Hannah Jayanti’s (SF07) ﬁlm; detail of animated ﬁlm, Mars, by Geoff Marslett (SF96) 24 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 �Modern Takes Storytellers What makes a story memorable and compelling? When these alumni connect with our deepest emotions, we recognize ourselves in their stories. They use everything from modern digital ﬁlmmaking and editing techniques to traditional, time-honored methods—visualizing a great story, observing character, directing a scene, writing a screenplay, scribbling notes and plot outlines on napkins and whiteboards, dreaming, even embroidering fabric—to reach us. Great Expectations A Film by Hannah Jayanti (sf07) Premiers at the New Yorker Festival Norton Juster’s children’s book The Phantom Tollbooth, with illustrations by cartoonist Jules Feiffer, has inspired love bordering on worship for generations. It’s the story of a boy named Milo “who didn’t know what to do with himself—not just sometimes, but always.” He comes home one day to ﬁnd a mysterious package containing materials for a small purple tollbooth. After putting it together for lack of anything better to do, he idly drives a toy car past it—and ﬁnds himself in the Lands Beyond. There, he explores a world both fantastic and overly literal, and sets forth on a quest to free the princesses Rhyme and Reason, “without whom wisdom withered.” A few years ago, Hannah Jayanti (SF07) felt as aimless as Milo. She left St. John’s not intending to follow in the footsteps of her father, a documentary ﬁlmmaker. Instead, she was torn between “building incredibly hippie eco-houses” and academia. At ﬁrst, the latter won out. Then she moved to New York City to study photo and video at the School of Visual Arts (SVA). She found herself struggling with the visual side of the MFA. Then she made an experimental ﬁlm for a video class that took the opening narration of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and rearranged ELLI CHUNG by Anna Perleberg Andersen (sf02) the dialogue into stream-of-consciousness. This “strange little piece” required extensive editing, and Jayanti “lost herself” in the process, discovering that “this is the way my mind works. Editing is a form of writing in the visual world.” After that, she left SVA to explore forms of ﬁlm that relied heavily on the editing process. Among other freelance projects, she made book trailers for Random House—a strange new genre, “half commercial and half artistic.” While they often resemble movie trailers, book trailers are not excerpts of a previous visual work; a book trailer must ﬁlm scenes that reference an entirely different medium. Jayanti also made documentary-style author videos, which she enjoyed: “Editing is half of directing [a documentary],” she says. “You have no idea what the story will be until you get into the editing room—it’s where the story really comes together.” The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 25 �storytellers Her chance to make a feature-length documentary came in 2011. Janice Kaplan, a communications consultant she had met in Washington, D.C., sought Jayanti out in connection with the 50th anniversary of The Phantom Tollbooth. They intended to make a short video commemorating the anniversary, but after spending a weekend with Juster at his home in Amherst, Massachusetts, they knew there was enough material to sustain a longer ﬁlm. “After that, people came out of the woodwork,” says Jayanti. That project became The Phantom Tollbooth: Beyond Expectations, which premiered at the New Yorker Festival in October 2013. It continues to appear at venues throughout the country: “art institutions, libraries, universities, museums, non-proﬁts.” Jayanti herself was a big fan of the book as a child. She loves “how many levels [the book] works on, how much you can get out of it at any age. The combination of really sharp wit and real, real warmth—that’s a really tricky combination to get for a writer.” She ﬁnds herself thinking often of the Terrible Trivium, a blank-faced monster who delays Milo’s quest by asking him and Tock to do menial tasks such as moving a pile of sand grain by grain—a metaphor that rings painfully true for anyone who has had a day job. When she started ﬁlming, Jayanti was still managing a photography studio in Chelsea. “For the ﬁrst eight months, I just paid for things, worked nights and weekends,” she says. Gradually she went part-time as she realized how much work The documentary showcases interview footage with Juster, Feiffer, Jason Epstein, New Yorker staff writer Adam Gopnik, children’s illustrator Eric Carle, and kids sharing their enthusiasm for the story. the movie would entail, and she is now fully freelance. To raise money for the ﬁlm, she turned twice to Kickstarter, the crowdfunding website. Both times, she raised twice what she was asking for. She liked that “with Kickstarter, people feel they’re part of the process, like a mini shareholder in the ﬁlm.” It’s a way for artists to connect directly with their audience and vice versa—readers for whom The Phantom Tollbooth has “tremendous emotional value” were able to contribute meaningfully to what they loved. Still, Jayanti didn’t want to make just a fan movie. So she explores general themes: the importance of books in shaping our worldview, and the decades-long friendship between Juster and Feiffer, who trade quips and memories on screen together. Through them, she hopes viewers who haven’t read the book will be able to connect to the ﬁlm. “You can love these men, and then fall in love with the book.” The documentary showcases interview footage with Juster, Feiffer, Jason Epstein (the editor at Random House who published the book), New Yorker staff 26 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 Hannah Jayanti (SF07) in the ﬁeld directing. An illustration by Jules Feiffer from The Phantom Tollbooth used in Jayanti’s ﬁlm. writer Adam Gopnik, children’s illustrator Eric Carle, and kids sharing their enthusiasm for the story. To break up the ﬁlm’s inevitable talking-head nature, Jayanti commissioned two sequences from Eleanor Stewart, a Scottish stop-motion animator. During the opening credits, the ﬁrst sequence is accompanied in voiceover by actor David Hyde Pierce, describing the book’s creation: Juster and Feiffer lived up and downstairs in a Brooklyn Heights brownstone, and would climb the stairs to share pictures and chapters. The second sequence brings to life some of Juster’s philosophy, “which is, essentially, that facts aren’t important in and of themselves;” it’s “the connections between them.” Jayanti points out that “everyone in the Lands Beyond is a specialist.” Words are a separate kingdom from math, the borders jealously guarded. Milo’s rescue of Rhyme and Reason unites the kingdoms and brings harmony to the Lands Beyond, which can be read as Juster’s argument for a liberal arts education. “That’s really what life and learning is about,” according to him, “making connections with things, not how much you know or what speciﬁcs you know,” says Jayanti. “Which is quite St. John’s.” The Phantom Tollbooth: Beyond Expectations is available on DVD or live streaming at phantomtollboothdoc.com. More information: www.facebook.com/TollboothDocumentary and hannahjayanti.com. �storytellers Accidental CEO When did you realize that you have a gift for storytelling? Writer, producer, scholar, ﬁlm executive– James Schamus (a81) takes up cycling Interview by Patricia Dempsey “ T here have been a couple of ﬁlm scholars who wrote scripts, but he’s the only person in the business I’ve ever seen who said, ‘I can’t go to Cannes because I’ve got to work on my doctorate,’” notes Variety editor Tim Grey in a New York Times story ( “The Professor of Micropopularity”). It’s a wonderful quote about James Schamus (A81), an Oscar-winning collaborator. Brokeback Mountain, which Schamus produced and Ang Lee directed, won, among other honors, three Academy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, and four BAFTA Awards. This year he stewarded Dallas Buyers Club, which was nominated for six Oscars and won three. Schamus is a delightfully eclectic, passionate professor in Columbia University’s School of the Arts, where he teaches ﬁlm history and theory, an academic whose career as a ﬁlm executive is legendary. Many of the ﬁlms he wrote, produced, and distributed around the world during his 12-year stint as CEO of Focus Features not only won awards, they broke barriers. Films such as Lost in Translation and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon have a captivated a generation of ﬁlmgoers. “Think of all the great ﬁlms you’ve seen in the past 15 years—chances are James Schamus was behind them,” notes The Guardian. On leave for a year from Columbia, the visionary ﬁlm executive has traded in funding frenzies and boardroom politics—everything, it seems, except his bow ties and love of ﬁlm. Schamus lives on the Upper West Side with his wife, novelist Nancy Kricorian. He shares a Manhattan moment with us, taking a break from cycling and the writing life. Probably when I got away with a number of bald-faced lies when I was quite young. Tell us about working with award-winning ﬁlm director Ang Lee. You wrote and produced many of his ﬁlms. Is he a mentor? Ang and I are kind of co-mentors. We have come of age, and have indeed aged, together. We both have a combination of ambition on the one hand, and a kind of childlike interest in new things we’re ignorant about and humbled by, on the other hand. Hence, I suppose, the wide variety of ﬁlms [for example, Brokeback Mountain; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Sense and Sensibility; The Ice Storm] we’ve done together. Is there a favorite ﬁlm, one that “sets the standard” for you? The thing about movies is that your favorites can be less than classics and your most-admired works can be less-than-loved. And often truly imperfect movies have moments of profound sublimity and emotion that more perfectly crafted ﬁlms can’t compete with. PETER BOWEN You are known for your interest in ﬁlms about “outsiders,” such as ﬁlms about the West, the story of America, and immigrants. Is this still true today? Examples include ﬁlms that you stewarded at Focus Features, such as Dallas Buyers Club, Brokeback Mountain, The Pianist, and Milk. Outsider narratives will always draw me in at ﬁrst blush, but sometimes you ﬁnd them by going “inside,” too; The Ice Storm concerns wealthy, privileged suburbanites, but emotionally I ﬁnd them all compellingly outsider-y. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 27 �storytellers Give us a glimpse into a “day in the life.” How do you spend most of your time? I’m on leave from Columbia this year, so my commute is the 1-train to my ofﬁce in Chelsea, supplemented by my current addiction to New York’s bike-share program, an addiction that has resulted in the saving of hundreds of dollars in taxi fares and the burning of thousands of calories. Since October and my departure from my former job running Focus Features, I’ve written two screenplays (and I am working on a third), have set up as a producer of a few movies, and have been doing my usual compulsive movie going and reading. (Current obsession, one embarrassingly shared with much of New York’s hipsterdom, is Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle). How did you come to be CEO of Focus Features? What skills did it take to do this job well? I was an accidental CEO, but found the work very gratifying, though the past few years I found it increasingly difﬁcult to balance my creative work with the business side of things. What makes a good CEO? Like teaching, there are no hard and fast rules—great teachers tend to mold their methods around their own strengths and weaknesses. I’d say my own strengths centered around an attention to creating an environment of trust and support at the company, making sure everyone, from assistants to presidents, felt secure raising their voices and safe knowing they had permission to fail. I made it a point to applaud everyone’s failures, my own included, as well as our successes. If you don’t fail, that means you haven’t risked anything. At Focus, how did you know which ﬁlms—many were “indies”—would be popular at the box ofﬁce? “Outsider narratives will always draw me in at ﬁrst blush, but sometimes you ﬁnd them by going ‘inside,’ too; The Ice Storm concerns wealthy, privileged suburbanites.” You have successfully ﬁnanced, produced, distributed, and written many major, awardwinning ﬁlms. Did you ever consider directing? No—when you have a choice between yourself and Ang Lee to direct your screenplay, whom would you choose? In a Guardian (January 2014) interview, you say that being a “boy wonder screenwriter” would not have been a good thing for you. If not writing, what aspect of ﬁlmmaking is your passion? Producing—making things possible for creative people to do their best work. Is there a ﬁlm you saw in your youth that moved you, inspired you to write and produce movies? No. I loved all ﬁlms and all kinds of ﬁlms—from the trashiest to the most artsy. As a kid, I was odd enough to enjoy watching the Friday night classics line-ups on my local public television station. Hard to imagine PBS actually running D. W. Grifﬁth’s Intolerance for its full duration! If you could take one book and one ﬁlm with you, marooned on a deserted island, what would they be? A handbook and video on boat making. It has been said that ﬁlms rather than books are the dominant storytelling medium of our century. Do you agree? Do you enjoy going to the movies alone? Or is it always a social occasion? Favorite theater? Neither is the dominant form. The dominant forms of storytelling of our time are the result of the algorithms which track and construct our digital identities and experiences. Every day, some 300 pieces of data you generate through your phone, computer, car, etc., are sold or bartered, and that data is constantly reconﬁgured and repackaged to shape what you see, hear, and interact with. The story of your life has become a function of this constant feedback loop between the data you produce and the data ﬁeld constructed for you as the space you have to signify and produce more data. I make it a point to head to the multiplex at least once a week, usually by myself, to check out the latest on offer from the studios, as well as the trailers and pre-roll. New York has still, thankfully, a great range of arthouse screens; I’ll bike to any of them for the right ﬁlm. I didn’t. 28 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 At the Cannes Film Festival, did you take to the red carpet? No. I’m not much of a tuxedo fan. What, if anything, has changed in the ﬁlm business since you got into ﬁlmmaking and producing? The complexity of the business and the corporatization of the culture. Any essential differences in the ﬁlm industry in Hollywood as compared to New York? Yes, there really isn’t a New York ﬁlm industry—though there are very good crews, producers, and ﬁlmmakers who live in New York. How do you “teach” ﬁlm? Are you a ﬁlm critic as well as a teacher? I actually don’t teach ﬁlm—I teach ﬁlm history and theory, and often teach philosophy and aesthetics. My undergrad lectures are not Johnnie-style, but my graduate seminars—in which we often read folks such as Plato and Kant—are run “revolving-chair” style, so the last person to speak chooses the next, a habit difﬁcult for nonJohnnies to form. But they get there after a few weeks. Any changes with this generation of students—are they more sophisticated readers or ﬁlmgoers than previous generations? Are they better storytellers? Students today are much more at home thinking of audiovisual media as forms of communication rather than as forms of mystifying entertainment. For them it’s another language they can learn. Any up and coming ﬁlmmakers whose work excites you? Happily, way too many to list here. There is an ocean of great work being done in so many different genres today. It’s dizzying. Do you wear signature bow ties in the classroom? Or was that more as a ﬁlm executive, and for black-tie affairs? Somehow, the whole bow-tie thing became a schtick, but yes, I do wear them often when I teach, too. Tell us something about yourself that readers may be surprised to know. I’m a VERY slow reader. �storytellers Love Story Jeremy Leven (a64): Writing the Subtext of Our Lives by Paula Novash I n the romantic comedy Don Juan DeMarco, written and directed by Jeremy Leven (A64), the title character declares, “There are only four questions of value in life. What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? What is worth living for, and what is worth dying for? The answer to each is the same: only love.” It’s a compelling line typical of its author. Leven is a successful Hollywood screenwriter, director, producer, and bestselling novelist who infuses his storytelling with thought-provoking, soulful subtexts. “Everything I do has a spiritual and philosophical underpinning,” he says. “I think that’s true for almost anybody in the creative arts. We experience some energy within us that reconstitutes into inspiration and vision, and where does that come from?” Leven explores this mystery in modern fables, where the stakes—love, fortune, and destiny—loom large. “You try to create dialogue that reveals the truth of the moment, so that what the characters say and do sounds real.” Leven’s career spans ﬁve decades. His ﬁlms, which have taken him to locations across the U.S. and Europe, include The Notebook, Don Juan DeMarco, Alex and Emma, The Legend of Bagger Vance, and My Sister’s Keeper. He is also the author of the novels Creator and Satan: His Psychotherapy and Cure by the Unfortunate Dr. Kassler, J.S.P.S., both of which he adapted for the screen. Leven’s early credits include directing the musical, “The Perils of St. John’s,” for the Johnnie’s Modern Theater Group— which he founded and directed—during his college years. “I always thought I’d begin Jeremy Leven (A64) discusses a scene on the set of Don Juan DeMarco with Johnny Depp. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 29 �storytellers an Oscar speech with ‘I owe my whole professional life to St. John’s College, where I learned how to think, write, and read,’” he says with a smile. Leven began that professional life as a Harvard-and-Yale-afﬁliated clinical psychologist and neuroscientist. After the breakout success of Creator, he took a leave from Yale University Medical School. Leven realized he was at a crossroads. He consulted a Yale mentor who told him, “You will never not write; you are a writer.” Leven began adapting his novels for the screen. “Writing and psychology are both about problem solving, which is what I like to do,” Leven says. Both professions also involve examining the complex behaviors, emotions, motivations, fears, and desires that connect us. On ﬁlm, Leven says, the magical process of creating a believable character is collaborative. “You try to create dialogue that reveals the truth of the moment, so that what the characters say and do sounds real. It’s like a blueprint, and hopefully you’re giving the actor something interesting to work with.” Another powerful layer is the subtle art of subtext, infusing what is felt, but not explicitly stated, into a scene. “In the best acting, the viewer is seeing two emotions from the character. For example, say we’ve set up a story of abuse that reaches back through generations. A man and his elderly father are driving by a playground and they see a child being spanked. The father tears up and the son, who is driving, reaches out and places his hand on his shoulder. This gets that double emotion, as we sense that the father is saddened by what he did to his son but is also feeling vulnerable as he remembers how he was beaten by his own father. And the son is both comforting his father for what the father went through himself, and in doing so, forgiving him.” When writing a screenplay or adapting one from a book, how does Leven show the studio, director, and actors that his script will make a good ﬁlm? He says it’s by tapping into the emotions underlying his characters’ actions. “Emotions are what pull us in—the characters’ vulnerabilities, desires, and fears. We can relate to them even if the “Everything I do has a spiritual and philosophical underpinning. I think that’s true for almost anybody in the creative arts. We experience some energy within us that reconstitutes into inspiration and vision, and where does that come from?” details of our lives are different from what the characters are experiencing.” Leven was reminded of this when he wrote the screenplay for The Notebook, adapting the love story from the book by Nicholas Sparks. “Lots of what’s in my screenplay isn’t in the book. I added events and made the characters much more complex,” he says. “But Nicholas told me the movie was the closest adaptation he’s seen of any of his books.” “Emotions can be conveyed powerfully in ﬁlm, because you can get in so close and really focus on tiny facial movements and gestures,” Leven continues. “It’s completely different on stage, for instance, where gestures have to be larger than life to be appreciated by the audience.” As a Hollywood veteran, Leven has worked with many A-List actors, from whom he has learned subtleties of subtext and dialogue. He tells a story about Marlon Brando, whom he directed in Don Juan DeMarco. “I jokingly said something in an Irish accent and he said, ‘Well, you know, there’s not just one Irish accent.’” Leven says Brando proceeded to perform at least a dozen different roles: “a barkeep, a farmer, a barrister, a judge, an aristocrat. And with every one not just the accent, but his body, muscles, and face changed as he tapped into the emotion, the essence of the character. It was riveting, and every character was someone who will keep me watching a screen for two hours.” As a novelist, work is solitary bliss. As a screenwriter, Leven compromises and collaborates with directors, actors, and other writers, changing characters and plot lines. Even the music, says Leven, is a character in the ﬁlm. “For a movie script, there are speciﬁc rules to follow,” he continues. “One page equals one minute of screen time, and you have to capture the 30 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 audience by the 12-minute mark. There’s a set, three-act structure: You can have a great idea and a great ending, but you have to make sure you have enough story to ﬁll that 60 minutes in the middle.” And, Leven explains, “You’re writing with others in mind. A screenplay needs to show studio executives that the story will appeal to a wide audience. It needs to give the director enough information to see how to make it, and also create characters that actors will want to play. The fun part of this is it becomes a scientiﬁc process, a challenge.” Leven jokes that in Hollywood, studios look for a “high concept” ﬁlm—which refers to a concept so low it can be expressed in one sentence. “It used to be that ﬁlms like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest or The Lion in Winter had more substance dramatically,” he says. “This doesn’t happen anymore. Executives look to invest $100-200 million and make billions of dollars.” Leven’s most recent ﬁlm, 2013’s Girl on a Bicycle, (which the New York Times called a “sweet, often witty romantic comedy”), is set in Paris. The plot revolves around a recently engaged tour-bus driver who dreams about a beautiful woman he encounters on his route. One of the movie’s themes is “the imagined life, the life you might lead,” says Leven. “What is life without dreams? Our dreams keep us going.” His new novel, The Savior and the Singing Machine, is about a young woman who may be a messiah. He’s also working on a stage musical for his love story, Don Juan DeMarco. “Love is the greatest emotion, and arguably the one people identify with most,” he says. “It is probably the most spiritual thing we can experience.” �PHOTOS: THOMAS ALLEMAN storytellers “There is no limit to what is possible,” says Lee Zlotoff (A74). “We need to get out of the way so our creative process can succeed.” Whiteboarding in Malibu Lee Zlotoff (a74) Taps the Narrative Power of the Subconscious W by Patricia Dempsey hat a view. Some 2,500 feet above the legendary surf of Malibu, Lee Zlotoff (A74) is in his living room, scribbling on a whiteboard. It’s an inﬁnite horizon for ideas, a place to dream big. He works in his mountaintop home amid simple inspiration: the folk art he collects, a studio for building models, and the view— when the foggy “June-gloom” lifts—of the blue Paciﬁc. The noted writer, producer, and director often sketches with colored markers to visualize plot outlines and character and screenplay ideas. “I do most of my creating on the whiteboard— not the keyboard. By the time I sit down to write on the computer, the heavy-duty lifting is done. I turn to the computer to ﬂesh out, say, dialog that I’ve already imagined for the piece.” Zlotoff, known for his hit television series MacGyver (launched in 1985), has a new gig: he is writing a book to share his creative process. It will help everyone—from writers and military ofﬁcers to entrepreneurs and teachers—to be more effective. The book, The MacGyver Method, provides a step-by-step process for tapping into the power of the subconscious to solve problems, discover new ideas, and clear the cobwebs of “conscious interference,” says Zlotoff. “It’s about having an active dialog with your subconscious; that’s the key, so you can, whenever you choose, tap into the most effective part of your mind.” Zlotoff calls the subconscious “the storehouse of our stories. We are a narrative species; each night we dream, and each of our dreams is a story. We need these stories. This is why ﬁlm is so compelling—it connects directly with your subconscious in a way that books do not. Between the visual images, the music, and the dialog of a ﬁlm, your mind is being subtly stimulated on many levels.” Certain stories endure, he says, because they resonate or connect with deep, internal narratives shared by a large population. “Ironically—or should I say paradoxically—the more unique and speciﬁc the details of a given story, the more universally it tends The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 31 �storytellers to be embraced and accepted—as opposed to the frequent homogenizing that is a hallmark of many Hollywood ﬁlms. Some examples are The Graduate, Star Wars, or The Godfather series, which are very speciﬁc visions that tap into the universal narratives of the search for identity, purpose and family.” In fact, the great turns in stories, says Zlotoff, are based on paradox. “What you don’t expect happens, but it still makes perfect sense, like John Nash’s journey in A Beautiful Mind. You follow the story, accepting all that you see, only to realize midway that you’ve been sharing the delusions of the main character.” How does one tap into this power of stories and the subconscious— whether making a ﬁlm, writing a screenplay, or trying to solve a business problem? The steps are simple. To name a few: Write down the problem. Task the subconscious. Incubation. “We need to get out of the way so our creative process can succeed,” says Zlotoff. To let his ideas incubate, Zlotoff builds models, a skill acquired during his high school years at Brooklyn Tech, working with molten metals and other materials. He is currently building a World War I trainer plane. “I like to work with my hands. I started by making paper models of world monuments: the Empire State Building, the Taj Mahal, the Vatican, whatever I could ﬁnd a kit for,” he explains. “I then progressed to wood models of ships and planes, as model building proved the best ‘incubation activity’ for my creative process.” Zlotoff describes how it helped him develop a character’s narrative story in The Spitﬁre Grill feature ﬁlm script. “Whenever I would return from model building, I kept seeing this man hiding behind a tree, watching the main character, who was a young woman. I made a note of it but, having no clue who this man was, I put it aside. He continued to reappear when I worked on the story, so I realized I had to ﬁgure out who this guy was, and why he was there. Eventually he became an who now directs a preschool in Los Angeles. (They are divorced, with four children and four grandchildren). Zlotoff got his start as a screenwriter in the mid-1970s in New York City as a secretary on a soap opera, The Doctors. He told the producer that he could write a better show, and gave him Disasters in the Sun, a sample script. “You have to be gutsy to survive—it’s a rough business,” says Zlotoff. “He liked the script and I became a soap opera writer.” Zlotoff’s speed as a writer was invaluable. “I could create an okay script in 10 days. My speed, in part, fueled my meteoric rise from freelance writer to story editor to being approved to write pilots.” Later came MacGyver. Although CBS/Paramount still retains the rights to the original series, all the “so-called separated rights reverted back to me,” says Zlotoff. But those 139 episodes of the original show continue to run all over the world. In some places, MacGyver is a household word. “In Korea,” Zlotoff notes, “a pocket knife—any kind of knife that one carries—is called a ‘MacGyver.’” Zlotoff sees MacGyver as “Johnnie perfection. He takes a Johnnie approach of thinking across disciplines to solve problems.” The character merges an “ability to think outside the box, as we’re encouraged to do at St. John’s,” with “my technical exposure from Brooklyn Tech.” Zlotoff also attributes a good part of Mac’s character to his father—“certainly the Swiss Army Knife.” Currently Zlotoff is in discussions with several publishers for his book, The MacGyver Method. MacGyver walks its pages, sharing Zlotoff’s step-by-step method for creating—and living. Zlotoff is also developing a feature ﬁlm about MacGyver. “I don’t usually quote Yoda,” says Zlotoff, “but Yoda did say, ‘There is do or do not. There is no try.’ You must believe you can do it, that there is no limit to what is possible.” “Whenever I would return from model building, I kept seeing this man hiding behind a tree, watching the main character, who was a young woman.” integral part of the ﬁnal story. Clearly, something in my subconscious was telling me I needed this ﬁgure.” To give voice to his creative method, Zlotoff draws not only on his ability to visualize on a whiteboard; he uses his well-known character, MacGyver, a pragmatic, can-do Boy Scout of a cop who sports a Swiss Army knife and a blonde mullet. Through “Mac,” Zlotoff has found a voice. The ﬁctional MacGyver is rooted in Zlotoff’s own experiences. “He is non-violent, resourceful. MacGyver’s world,” says Zlotoff, “is ‘you take what you got, turn it into what you think you need, not what you want.’ He has a sense of honor, humor, and humility. MacGyver uses a Swiss Army knife for everything.” Zlotoff , whose name means “gold” in Russian, is as enterprising as MacGyver. His ﬂair for business emerged as an undergraduate, living on Maryland Avenue, and running a contracting company with David Huston (A74). He married Rebecca Ann Soloff (A74), his high school sweetheart, 32 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 More information: www.macgyvermethod. com and www.macgyverglobal.com. �storytellers Toile Tales Richard Saja’s (sf93) Whimsical Threads A by Paula Novash JOHN EMERSON PHOTOGRAPHY t ﬁrst glance, the textile art in a wooden frame appears to portray a scene from classical mythology. A cupid sits atop a rearing steed, and a young maiden in a long gown makes an offering to a reclining ﬁgure wearing a crown. The group is surrounded by colorful bunches of grapes, lush foliage, and stylized birds, embroidered on a background of pale linen. When you look closer, another layer of complexity appears: the ﬁgures are stitched in metallic and glow-in-the-dark threads. The crown is actually a blackand-blue Mohawk, the witnesses include a rabbit, and the ﬂuffy-haired maiden is holding not wine or sacred fruit, but a box that looks a little like a birthday cake, emanating spiky rays. Its title? “Behold: ELECTRICITY!” Richard Saja (SF93) savors irreverent twists in a modern retelling of traditional stories. This creation is typical of textile artist Richard Saja (SF93), who gives centuriesold fabric patterns a modern sensibility by infusing them with fanciful style, a touch of mystery, and most of all, a sense of humor. Saja embellishes traditional toile fabrics (think Colonial Williamsburg) with whimsical embroidery, creating delightfully offbeat stories that celebrate the quirkiness of everyday living while exploring themes such as tolerance and acceptance. “Toile is similar to a coloring book in that it’s begging to be enhanced,” Saja explains. “What I do is draw out a story with my embroidery, embellishing so you can see yet another narrative.” It’s reminiscent of what a fool or joker in medieval times might do, revealing a greater truth within a cheeky, irreverent presentation. The word “toile” means cloth, and the fabric most often replicates traditional French designs that depict pastoral scenes in a repeating pattern, using a single color on a light background. What Saja does with his needle, he says, is create a sort of “playful subversion to toile’s traditional role, where everything blends and has equal weight. By giving attention to some element and making it special and individual, I’m taking something old and making it relevant again.” Saja grew up in the Jersey Shore town of Point Pleasant, where he felt out of step with many of his peers. Navigating “summer crowds and deserted boardwalk in winter,” he was “kind of a weird and imaginative kid,” Saja says. “I was constantly making things, like dioramas of haunted houses and superhero costumes.” He was also an avid reader, whose favorite books featured kids who had “to fend for themselves, like My Side of the Mountain or From The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.” The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 33 �storytellers COURTESY RICHARD SAJA “It’s not my intention to tell someone what to think about it. People see my art all at once, like a painting, but then it can unfold more like a book or ﬁlm, depending on the viewer. My work appeals to many types of people because it can be interpreted on many different levels.” At that time, there was little “awareness about tolerance and acceptance, or the impact of bullying,” he continues. “So I came to identify with the marginalized, misunderstood monster types from old movies and comic books.” In Saja’s works, unusual characters often interact seamlessly with conventional ones; in “Scenes from a Marriage,” for example, an alluring masked woman in a ball gown holds the hand of a gentle green, fur-covered creature as they dance the minuet. “A monstrosity is added to something bucolic, and it can co-exist and be accepted within that framework,” Saja explains. “It celebrates difference; the freaks are recognized, accepted, and afﬁrmed.” Saja moved to New Mexico after high school and created ceramic art before enrolling at St. John’s Santa Fe campus. After completing his degree, he worked as an art director in a Madison Avenue advertising agency. Then, laid off during the dot-com bust, he started a decorative arts business with fellow Johnnie Martha Alexander. While working on a design project for cushions, Saja recalls, he woke from a dream picturing Maori facial tattoos embroidered onto ﬁgures in toile. A self-taught artist, he soon realized that embroidery was “a natural outlet for my overall fastidiousness, and I fortunately have some innate talent for it.” Saja says an endless number of tales exist within every toile; his interpretation is only one among many. “I usually have some general idea in mind when I begin a piece. For example, I liked the idea of using candy colors, which then became “Dionysos in Candyland.” 34 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 (See it at http://historically-inaccurate. blogspot.com.) “But then it evolves organically,” he continues, “It’s not my intention to tell someone what to think about it. People see my art all at once, like a painting, but then it can unfold more like a book or ﬁlm, depending on the viewer. My work appeals to many types of people because it can be interpreted on many different levels.” In a hard-edged, high-tech world, people seem to appreciate the time and energy that goes into his creations. “There are no shortcuts; these are labor-intensive projects that need care and love to bring them to life,” Saja says. “I will probably never have copycats because it takes too long to do this kind of work well.” Creating his art is contemplative, even meditative, says Saja. He often embroiders to documentaries, which serve as a sort of “white noise” to his creative process. “I’ll turn on something about apes or Egypt— it’s learning while doing.” Saja’s art constantly surprises him. “There’s a magic that comes through in some pieces that I couldn’t possibly plan for, where the stitching is imbued with emotion,” he explains. “When I was young, I was different. That was oppressive. Now being different has become a positive for me, with external afﬁrmation coming from many quarters. My design vocabulary is conveying a message of acceptance and hope, and I love that emotion can be conveyed through my embroidery and shared and felt by the viewer.” Saja’s art has been featured in outlets such as the New York Times and Vogue. It is displayed in museum and private collections around the world. He has partnered with designers that include Mother of Pearl, Opening Ceremony, Keds, and Christian Lacroix. Examples of his art are currently on display at the SnydermanWorks Gallery in Philadelphia. SEEKING WOMEN IN FILM If you are a Johnnie, a female, and working in the ﬁlm industry, please share your stories with The College. �storytellers Swerve: Walk on the Wild Side From Sci-ﬁ Animation to Live-action Drama and a Rocker Documentary, Geoff Marslett (sf96) Hops By Anna Perleberg Andersen (SF02) I LAUREN MODERY, SWERVE PICTURES “ like delving into things, at least for a little while, and storing them for later on,” says indie ﬁlmmaker Geoff Marslett (SF96). This intellectual restlessness drives his art: he has written, produced, and directed short ﬁlms both animated and liveaction, including the ﬁrst video for cartoonist/musician James Kochalka’s epic ditty, “Monkey vs. Robot” (sadly, no longer available to watch online). His production company, Swerve Pictures (yes, it’s a Lucretius reference), has made two very different feature ﬁlms, Mars (2010) and Loves Her Gun (2013). Lately, he has directed trailers and even acted in a few ﬁlms—he enjoys providing just a little of other people’s stories. Off-camera, he teaches at the University of Texas at Austin, having earned an MFA in ﬁlm production there in December 2000. Mars is an animated sci-ﬁ romantic comedy that Marslett wrote and directed. He also had a hand in editing and producing, as well as leading the arduous process of animation. For the ﬁlm’s unique look, Marslett wrote a computer program that reduced images of actors in front of a green screen to between 16 and 64 colors, then into vectors—scalable graphics deﬁned not by the position of pixels but by the mathematical curves that make up the image. Marslett’s math background came in handy; while at St. John’s, he studied theoretical physics and differential equations on the side, and pursued an associate’s degree in math during a few summers. Processed through this program, Marslett explains, footage acquires “weird, drifty color palettes” similar to traditional rotoscoping, where an animator draws over ﬁlm footage. Marslett and his team used this technique for features like eyes and mouths that they wanted to look more polished. All the backgrounds were CGI-generated. Creating these composite images took years to accomplish, with ﬁve animators working nearly nonstop in a kind of artistic delirium. In 2007 and 2008, the terabytes of space required to store the images were “expensive and ridiculous,” says Marslett. Now a four-terabyte drive is $150 on Amazon. Techne moves ever more rapidly. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 35 �storytellers LAUREN MODERY, SWERVE PICTURES Independent Film Festival, along with many others. Loves Her Gun has won accolades from the Los Angeles Review of Books and Indiewire. Marslett thinks Mars will have more longevity, despite the ﬁlm world’s snobbery about animated ﬁlms. Marslett estimates that making an animated ﬁlm takes roughly ten times as much work as a live-action movie, yet the festival circuit often takes an “aw, it’s almost like you made a real ﬁlm” attitude toward them. As a ﬁlmmaker outside the New York-Los Angeles axis, he’s happy with modest success, with “doing something because I like doing it,” even if it doesn’t pay well—yet. Marslett’s new feature project is, as one would expect, entirely different from those that preceded it: a documentary on “costume rockers,” bands with a shtick to their outﬁts or songs that occupy a “strange place between music and theater.” The ﬁnal result of all this labor is stunning. Part dream, part comic book, part solid reality, it’s a perfect visual complement to a story of space exploration and romance, two human endeavors that Marslett feels have much in common. “As soon as you talk to [a person who catches your eye], you change her, she changes you—neither of you is really the same as what you saw across the room. That’s always completely unattainable.” Exploring a new country is the same, he says: “The minute you get there, you’re slightly different, the country’s slightly different. Going to Mars is the same way.” Marslett is always looking for different ways to tell stories. “I’m gonna call it a strength,” he asserts. “Some people call it a problem.” So where Mars was “very much about construct, very controlled,” Loves Her Gun takes a nearly opposite approach. A liveaction drama shot on location in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and Austin, it’s the story of a woman who ﬂees the city after being mugged and ﬁnds herself caught up in Texas gun culture, struggling to ﬁnd an emotional middle ground between safety and paranoia. Marslett and his co-writers, Laura Modery and Geoff Lerer, 36 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 above left: Geoff Marslett (SF96) talks barbeque and ﬁlm at an Austin eatery. above: Frames from Marslett’s animated ﬁlm, Mars. scripted the action of every scene tightly, but wrote no dialogue. The actors improvised every word, which was “probably terrifying,” says Marslett, but results in a naturalistic rhythm not often found in ﬁlm. Hesitations, misspoken words, and ﬁller syllables are all intact. This approach to storytelling—obviously far from the constraint of the multi-step animation in Mars—adds to the tale’s gritty, bleak nature. Even in the trailer, it’s eerie and effective. Both movies have had some success at ﬁlm festivals like Austin’s own SXSW. Loves Her Gun won the Louis Black Lone Star award in 2013, an unexpected achievement. (Marslett almost skipped the award ceremony.) In addition, Mars has shown at BAMCinemaFest in Brooklyn, the BFI London Film Festival, and the San Francisco Marslett’s new feature project is, as one would expect, entirely different from those that preceded it: a documentary on “costume rockers,” bands with a shtick to their outﬁts or songs that occupy a “strange place between music and theater.” He knows that place well, since he plays accordion in a band that performs songs inspired by The Karate Kid, while wearing prosthetic arms and legs frozen in permanent crane-kick position. (One of the bands on his radar is The Pizza Underground, a Velvet Underground cover band that sings songs like “I’m Beginning to Eat the Slice” and “Papa John Says”; it consists of four of his friends and Macaulay Culkin. Really.) There is no ﬁrm date for the documentary’s completion, but it’s sure to be quirky and thoughtful, like Marslett himself. Learn more about Geoff Marslett’s (SF96) ﬁlmmaking: www.swervepictures.com �storytellers Pursuing a Dream Nashville’s Music Row Sets the Stage for Mike Lacy (a12) B by Gregory Shook It’s such a moment that motivates Lacy to pursue his longtime dream of a career in ﬁlm. After graduating from St. John’s in 2012, he moved to Nashville to be part of what he calls the city’s “developing industry with a thriving freelance community.” A year later, he launched his own freelance company, Prometheoid Films, creating music videos, short ﬁlms, and multi-media projects. At age 24, he can practically do it all—act, direct, produce, and edit. Lacy’s industrious nature is the main ingredient for his success. “I spent a lot of last week uploading 160 hours of footage for a Jimi Hendrix documentary,” he says. “On the weekend, I was second camera on a music video shoot. We shot overnight in this motorcycle shop from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. It’s nerve-wracking to think about making a creative life for myself, but it’s something I’ve been passionate about since I was about 12 years old.” Lacy’s ﬁrst music video with his company is for the 2013 single “Not So Much Anymore” by David Berg, an acclaimed songwriter who has worked with country music luminaries Kenny Chesney, Carrie Underwood, and Keith Urban, and has penned chart-topping hit songs for Reba McEntire and others. The video centers on a young woman in anguish over a troubled romantic relationship, who ﬁnds comfort in her circle of friends. “I had a vision for the video, but I wasn’t making a good elevator pitch,” says Lacy, who says that the project almost didn’t happen. “I ﬁnally “A hard thing for me, as someone who likes storytelling, is that music videos are not about telling a story as such.” said [to Berg], ‘Look, I don’t know how to explain my [idea], but this [video] is something that is really important to me.’” Music has always been close to Lacy’s heart. In high school, he played guitar and keyboards with his band, The Shel Silversteins, and absorbed a steady diet of MTV and VH1. Today, he admits that making a music video is among his greatest challenges. “A hard thing for me, as someone who likes storytelling, is that music videos are not about telling a story as such,” says Lacy. “There may be a beginning, middle, and end, but it’s not always clear whether there’s a protagonist and a clearly stated conﬂict.” Being a Johnnie, Lacy views ambiguity as an opportunity to explore, learn, and be creative. In a music video, he wants to elevate the song, using images to elicit emotion and bring out fresh, sometimes unexpected elements of the music. “A good video conveys something that cannot, or maybe should not, be put into words,” says Lacy, who typically avoids literal visual interpretations of a song. “If the lyrics are about the Los Angeles skyline, you don’t want to show images of JOSH ANDERSON arely a decade after making his ﬁrst ﬁlm, Mike Lacy’s (A12) work appeared on the silver screen—and took him by surprise. Alone at the movies, Lacy watched in amazement as the 2011 PSA for the Tennessee Department of Mental Health, in which he had acted and helped to produce, rolled with the commercials. He announced to everyone in the theater, “I made that. That was me playing the drug dealer.” the L.A. skyline.” During his sophomore year at St. John’s, Lacy experienced an existential dilemma that ultimately led to a fateful discovery. “I was conﬂicted because here I was learning ancient Greek and astronomy,” says Lacy. “I thought, ‘What am I doing with my life? Is this really my passion?’” He found his answer in books by renowned ﬁlm editor Walter Murch, whose résumé includes The Godfather, The English Patient, Cold Mountain, and The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Lacy discovered that classical literature is woven into Murch’s work; he once edited a ﬁlm scene inspired by a canto from Dante and used Kepler’s harmonic theory to ﬁgure out how to interplay music with edits. The summer before his junior year, Lacy sought out the ﬁlm editor at his San Francisco home. “I looked him up on the Internet and wrote him an e-mail,” says Lacy. A few weeks later, he was in Murch’s kitchen, where the like-minded souls talked for hours about the role of music in the lives of human beings and the ways that classical thought can be applied in modern ﬁlms. “We sometimes draw a line between classical learning and modern day, making them seem at odds,” says Lacy. “But there are people like Murch, who are in love with creating things for modern audiences and don’t think it’s such a harsh dichotomy. I ﬁnd that inspiring.” Learn more about Mike Lacy (A12): prometheoidspeaks.wordpress.com The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 37 �A Vision Becomes a View by Sus3an Borden (A87) 38 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 �For 50 years, students and tutors in Santa Fe have been inspired by the view of neighboring mountain Atalaya and the tantalizing snow on the Santa Fe Ski Basin as they read, write, meet, study, and socialize in the campus coffee shop. This vista, it turns out, is not a lucky accident, according to Charles “Chuck” Nelson (Class of 1945), a former member of the Board of Visitors and Governors. It is part of the earliest vision of the campus. Nelson recalls a day in 1962 when John Gaw Meem drove him and other board members to the site of what would be the Santa Fe campus: The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 39 �“He showed us where he thought the main buildings would be put and I remember him describing to us where the dining hall would be [and saying that] there would be large windows with panoramic views of the mountains while you’re sitting there having your lunch.... That, of course, all came out as he indicated it would.” This experience of a vision realized is a theme often repeated when people talk about the founding and history of the Santa Fe campus. It’s a theme that tutor Claudia Hauer is capturing and preserving as she works on an oral history project in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Santa Fe campus. Hauer had just returned from a leave of absence in October 2012 when Santa Fe Vice President Victoria Mora mentioned that she was planWilliam Darkey (Class of 1942) ning to start an oral history project interviewing Santa Fe’s founders. Hauer, who has a long-standing “He [Weigle] was passionate about interest in creative nonﬁction, told Mora to sign her liberal education in the St. John’s up for the project. way and he just thought it should Hauer began the project that December with interbe offered to more people. When views of the people who we couldn’t accommodate as many were present at the founding, including Nelson and students as wanted to come in [Annapolis], that’s when he wanted to former board member Bud Kelly (H02). She then spoke come out and start this new college.” with all of the living former deans and presidents, — Tom Slakey, tutor emeritus and former dean, Annapolis along with tutors who were either present at the campus’s opening in 1964 or came to the campus in the following three years. She expanded the project to include board members, campus benefactors, the current dean and president, and a few alumni. “What we’ve got is a treasure trove of memories and reﬂections,” says Hauer. “The goal for the 50th anniversary is to disseminate these recordings as much as we can. But the database will stay with the college after the celebration as an archive we can use to remember our history.” The treasures she has collected include tutor Clementine Peterson (H88) Roger Peterson (H94) and former buildings and grounds journeyman Johnny Zamora reﬂecting on the campus’s early culture of pranks, tutor Ray Davis discussing the summer senior program, 40 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 and tutor and former assistant dean Don Cook (H97) talking about riding his horse to and from the campus: “I can remember times I would ride home after seminar. It was a nine-mile ride each way, and I would go out and saddle my horse and go home in the complete dark down the arroyo behind school. That was before any houses were back there. I remember the sense of solitude, and it made me think about the west and how people were alone for long periods of time. I remember the ice cracking under the horse’s hooves, just that one sound going down the arroyo. I remember feeling the isolation and how welcoming it was to come up over the hill about three or four miles down and see lights and [thinking about] what that must have meant to people who were out here in places like Arizona and New Mexico, to be weeks by themselves and then to come upon a campﬁre or some other sign of human life. I got quite a bit out of those rides back and forth to school.” Richard Weigle’s vision is another common theme in the oral histories. It reveals itself in the campus’s history through the visionary endeavors of those who sought not to recreate the Annapolis campus out west, but to create a St. John’s College of their own. Hauer describes the work of the founders and early tutors: “That core group brought incredible passion to building this campus. They felt that the more they put into it, the more they could get out of it. The founding faculty in Santa Fe drew their inspiration from Dick Weigle’s vision of multiple campuses of St. John’s.” Tom Slakey (H94), tutor emeritus and former dean of the Annapolis campus, recalls Weigle’s commitment to the Program: “He was passionate about liberal education in the St. John’s way, and he just thought it should be offered to more people. When we couldn’t accommodate as many students as wanted to come in [Annapolis], that’s when he wanted to come out and start this new college.” �Hauer’s interviews capture this passion and include stories of how Santa Fe tutors reworked junior math, developed the biology and chemistry sequences in lab, and had the Evans Science Laboratory built with private lab spaces for students to pursue independent research. Stories from later years show how the Santa Fe faculty continued to innovate, creating the Graduate Institute and later its Eastern Classics program, Summer Classics for the community, and the art program that was on the curriculum from 1990 to 2003. In his interview, Warren Winiarski (Class of 1952) and founder of Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars, draws Hauer’s attention to the carvings in the beams in the new Winiarski Center, which “I can remember times I would ride home after seminar. It was a nine-mile ride each way and I would go out and saddle my horse and go home in the complete dark down the arroyo behind school….I remember the ice cracking under the horse’s hooves....the sense of solitude...and how welcoming it was to come up over the hill about three or four miles down and see the lights….” — Don Cook (H97), tutor and former assistant dean CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: Richard Weigle, president and founder of the Santa Fe campus, realizes his vision (photo circa 1961). The ﬁnial, detailed with books, placed atop Weigle Hall (opened in 1971 and named for Weigle in 1973). In the early years of the campus, some students rode horses to seminar. depict animals that undergo a metamorphosis: frogs from tadpoles, butterﬂies from moths, dragonﬂies from larvae. While the carvings reﬂect the transformative effects of a St. John’s education, Hauer notes that the view from the Center, like the view from the dining hall, also matches the transformative spirit of the Santa Fe founders. “The view is meant to show the skyline and the hills behind, which is an aspirational vision that you see with that background of hills reaching up and pointing toward heaven,” Warren explains. “It’s a kind of American Indian vision, which I believe is meant to suggest reaching upward beyond yourself to what is above and beyond.” Alumni are invited to participate in the oral history project; please contact: SantaFe.alumni@sjc.edu). The College magazine will celebrate Santa Fe’s 50th in the next issue; if you are from one of the early classes (1960s-70s) and wish to share a story please email: TheCollegeMagazine@sjc.edu. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 41 �bibliofile Johanna Omelia (SFGI03) Michael Waldock (SFGI03): Come Fly With Us! Celebrating a decade since its original date of publication, Come Fly With Us! A Global History of the Airline Hostess: Tenth Anniversary Edition (Ailemo Books, 2013) provides a colorful history of the airline hostess in “an industry started by a woman for women,” according to its authors Johanna Omelia (SFGI03) and Michael Waldock (SFGI03). Beautifully illustrated with more than 200 images of commercial airline advertisements and archival photos, this expanded edition documents the industry’s 83-year history, during which ﬂight attendants have been the face of the airline companies. The book explores the social, economic, and political trends that have affected the role of the airline hostess as well as the public’s ever changing perception of sky travel. In addition, the book features ﬂight attendants’ stories about the early days of aviation. Come Fly With Us! traces the profession’s origin to 1930, when a young Iowan named Ellen Church convinced an airline executive to hire her, thus becoming the world’s ﬁrst airline hostess. In the 1930s, Church and seven other stewardesses—known as the Original Eight— represented United Airlines and established the foundation of passenger care and safety standards. They were registered nurses whose duties included repairing loose seats, loading baggage, soothing nervous passengers, and even touching up paint on planes. For the next two decades, ﬂight attendants were cabin safety professionals, thoroughly trained in safety procedures. In the 1950s, they were viewed as the “perfect wife,” celebrated in the media for being “as adept at warming a baby’s bottle as mixing a martini.” The Swinging Sixties and Groovy Seventies saw ﬂight attendants as sex symbols, marketed to lure passengers aloft. Come Fly With 42 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 Us! shows how uniforms played an integral part in this image, incorporating stylish and innovative elements that reﬂected high fashion as well as evolving social mores. This expanded edition highlights “even more coverage of the 1960s, when, astoundingly, women wore hot pants and short (ﬂammable) paper dresses,” says Omelia. Waldock’s interest in ﬂight attendants began in this decade, when he ﬁrst came to California from England. “When he changed planes, the stewardess kissed him,” says Omelia. “I was never kissed by a ﬂight attendant, but I think the history of working women around the Boeing’s 747 elevated the status of air travel; passengers could book tables for dinner, view in-ﬂight movies, and gather around a piano for a song or two—in Coach! world over the decades is fascinating.” As the book points out, the advent of the ﬁrst “jumbo jet,” Boeing’s 747, elevated the status of air travel; passengers could book tables for dinner, view in-ﬂight movies, and gather around a piano for a song or two—in Coach! However, in 1978 the airline industry was deregulated, resulting in an inﬂux of new carriers, furious competition, the collapse of some established companies, and, ultimately, decreased legroom and in-ﬂight amenities that remains the standard today. In January 2014, Omelia and Waldock launched the online publication, Come Fly With Us Magazine. The premier issue features articles on 1970s Hawaiian Airlines fashion, travel in Iceland, and more. Read the magazine at www.comeﬂywithusmagazine.com. —Gregory Shook �bibliofile Anne Leonard (A89) and John C. Wright (A84): Storytelling and Sensawunda When it comes to storytelling that involves princes, dragons, and sorcery, “avoiding stereotypes is a challenge,” says Anne Leonard (A89), a lawyer-turned-writer who lives in Northern California. To keep it fresh, Leonard infuses her debut novel Moth and Spark (Viking Books, 2014), with colorful details from her life. “The book has an entire chapter that takes place at a ball, which is inﬂuenced by St. John’s waltz parties in Annapolis,” says Leonard. Fantasy devotees and readers beyond her intended demographic can appreciate the novel’s nuanced characters and panoramic prose. “[Moth and Spark] was written as a love story for a niche audience: teenage girls and young women,” says Leonard. “But I’ve been thrilled and amazed by the response from middle-aged guys!” In her book, a young prince, Corin, and Tam, a doctor’s daughter, are torn between Corin’s quest to free dragons from an evil “I get my ideas from the subconscious mind, the persistence, the work—and the muse Sensawunda.” Science ﬁction author John C. Wright’s (A84) highly-anticipated Judge of Ages (Tor Books, 2014) is a space opera for the ages. In this third volume in his Count to the Eschaton Sequence, Wright says that science ﬁction’s hallmarks of “the gigantic, the over-the-top, with extreme villains and lots of action” are abundant. “The term space opera is a little tongue-in-cheek. Being a St. John’s graduate, I write philosophy, deep thought, and other abstract theory into my stories. But entertainment is the ﬁrst priority. I want to beguile on an idle afternoon.” Set in the year AD 10,515, the novel centers on two adversaries who endeavor—each in their own different ways—to thwart an alien threat, the Hyadas Armada, headed to Earth to assess humanity’s value as slaves. In Judge of Ages, opposing leaders Ximen del Azarchel and Menelaus Montrose ultimately converge in a climactic battle, replete with hi-tech weaponry and cliometric calculus, for the Empire and their mission to save their country on the brink of battle. Leonard embraces fantasy’s most compelling elements: intrigue, magic, war, and forbidden romance. “Conventions put a [story] structure in place,” says Leonard, an avid reader of fantasy ﬁction. She also looks beyond fantasy for inspiration, observing authors such as Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, and W. B. Yeats to create archetypal and distinctive characters. “I try to put my own twist on the fantasy genre,” says Leonard, who models her novel’s heroine on Elizabeth Bennet, the protagonist of Pride and Prejudice. Leonard also gives a nod to contemporary best-selling works such as The Hunger Games and the Twilight saga; there is a heated romantic tension between Prince Corin and Tam, Moth and Spark’s dual protagonists. “I wrote this book for my 15-year-old self,” says Leonard. “I always liked making up characters.” fate of the planet and its human inhabitants. At its core, the story is conventional science ﬁction, rifﬁng from legendary authors such as Isaac Asimov, widely regarded as a master of science-ﬁction storytelling. “On some level, though, my attitude and personality come through,” says Wright. “I get my ideas from the subconscious mind, the persistence, the work—and the muse Sensawunda.” Sensawunda, or “sense of wonder,” is one of science ﬁction’s deﬁning characteristics. “The sense of wonder of science ﬁction differs from other natural wonders or personal miracles in a man’s life— the wonders of ﬁrst love, or childbirth, and so on,” says Wright. “Science ﬁction concerns only those speciﬁc wonders that are not eternal and not known to all men.” —Gregory Shook The College || st.john’s college || spring 2014 | The College st. john’s college summer 2013 43 �bibliofile Bliss By Hilary Fields (SF97) Redhook Orbit (Hachette Book Group), 2013 Santa Fe-based writer Hilary Fields (SF97) wrote her ﬁrst novel at age 16 and later penned three historical romances under another name; today she continues the bliss of reading and wordplay. A voracious reader since childhood, Fields cites Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy as her all-time favorites. Set in the City Different, her new novel, Bliss, centers on Moonlight Sonata at the Mayo Clinic By Nora Gallagher (SF70) Alfred A. Knopf, 2013 Anyone who has experienced a bafﬂing illness or struggled to have a health condition diagnosed may well empathize with Nora Gallagher’s (SF70) journey recounted in her new memoir, Moonlight Sonata at the Mayo Clinic. A preacher-in-residence at Trinity Episcopal Church in her hometown of Santa Barbara, California, Gallagher begins her quest in 2009, when a routine eye exam reveals an inﬂamed optic nerve, a mysterious condition called optic neuritis. The cause is unknown, and if left untreated, it can lead to total vision loss. Plato’s Laws: Force and Truth in Politics Edited by Gregory Recco and Eric Sanday Indiana University Press, 2013 For this collection of 14 interpretive essays by as many authors, editors Gregory Recco, an Annapolis tutor, and Eric Sanday, an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Kentucky, organized a team of scholars. Due to its length and density, this work of Plato’s is not as well studied as the others. This volume looks at all the individual books of the dialogue and reﬂects on the work as a whole. Rather than provide interpretation of every 44 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 Seraﬁna Wilde, a pastry chef whose seemingly perfect life begins to unravel. Her eccentric Aunt Pauline comes to the rescue when she offers to let her take over the family business, “Pauline’s House of Passion,” and turn it into a bakery, so long as she retains the shop’s “adult store” in the back room. Throughout the novel, Fields makes clear her love of baking; the book is chock-full of sumptuous descriptions of gooey pastries and other delectable baked goods. But food is secondary to the novel’s exploration into matters of the heart: ﬁnding courage, friendship, family, and self-discovery. Gallagher set off on a yearlong search to ﬁnd a diagnosis and treatment for her mysterious condition. A meditation on faith, spirituality, and vulnerability, the memoir is structured in three sections—“Drowning,” “Limbo,” and “Recalled to Life”—each chronicling signiﬁcant phases of her pilgrimage. Devoid of sentimentality, she candidly describes her encounters with the marvels and madness of the modern medical system and illuminates the sometimes dark path that ultimately leads her to the renowned Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, a place built for those seeking answers and cures. “It’s the nature of things to be vulnerable,” says Gallagher. “The disorder is imagining we are not.” detail, the contributing authors explore the facets of the text that they found to be most interesting and rich. In addition, they read drafts of each other’s essays and, in some cases, included responses to other essays within their own compositions. Although its contributors come from different backgrounds and concentrations, this collection has a sense of connectedness throughout. Both newcomers and veterans of the Laws can discover fresh and valuable insight into Plato’s work, reminding us of its relevance today. —Erin Fitzpatrick (A14) �alumni notes 1946 Peter J. Davies, Class of 1948, writes, “Peter Weiss (A) was honored on April 2, 2014, at a reception following a forum on Law’s Imperative: A World Free of Nuclear Weapons, which examined the current state of the law on nuclear weapons and what needs to be done to bring the obligation to fruition. The event recognized Weiss’s contribution to nuclear disarmament and the rule of law, and raised funds for the future work of the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy (LCNP), which he co-founded in 1981. He retired in 2013 as president, having served in that position since its founding. Weiss and LCNP played a key role in the 1996 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice at the Hague, which held unanimously that ‘there exists an obligation to negotiate in good faith for the total abolition of nuclear weapons.’” 1952 A Contemplative Life Pierre Grimes (A) reﬂects: “In 1948, my freshman year, I discovered in Plato’s Parmenides the roots of a profound metaphysics. In his Republic, I found the primary role of dreams, dialectic, and contemplation. Clearly, with the Dark Ages we lost that legacy.” In 1961, while earning his PhD from the University of the Paciﬁc’s graduate school, the American Academy of Asian Studies, Grimes studied the Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna, and, with Zen, contemplation. The publication of Grimes’s 1961 study of the Alcibiades dialogue in Yale Journal, QJSA, marked the beginning of his “philosophical counseling,” says Grimes, “as philosophical midwifery. Later, as the founder of the international philosophical movement, American Philosophical Practitioners Association, I have given more than 20 demonstrations and papers at international conferences held at the University of Liverpool, Oxford University, the University of Athens, the University of Vancouver, and the University of Ontario. In 1978, I founded the Noetic Society, Inc., for the Study of Dialogue and Dialectic, and directed its Philosophical Midwifery Program, which included dream study. In 1983, I joined with Chong-An S’nim of the Korean Chogye Ch’an Sect to form the Opening Mind Academy, which joined the Platonic tradition with Buddhism. Chong-An sealed me as Hui-An, his Dharma Successor and master dharma teacher. In his autobiography, In My Own Way, Alan Watts described me as a Jnana Yogi who ‘comes to an authentic realization, or satori, by an intellectual rather than an emotional or physical discipline.’” 1966 1967 Julia du Prey (née Busser) (A) writes, “I now have four grandchildren who keep me feeling young. Last October, I was in Bhutan on a special tour, hiking to remote monasteries and temples in this very Buddhist country. My cousin, Ian Baker, was the tour leader, a Buddhist scholar and mountaineer. Otherwise, my life has continued more or less predictably. I still sing and play the ﬂute, do some writing, and participate in a philosophy study group.” Sandra Hoben’s (A) volume of poetry, The Letter C, will be published by the Ash Tree Poetry Series in 2014. 1969 Lee McKusick (SF) writes, “My partial (three years) St. John’s education continues to ﬁercely interact with my Cal State Los Angeles American Studies education. I am in my third career as a paraeducator working with children. One of the language problems I have run into (with a nod to Wittgenstein) is how to describe a young person without The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 45 �alumni notes 1975 Class of 1969 Memory Book Celebrates 45 Years To celebrate their 45th class reunion, members of the Class of 1969 are invited to share their memories for an online memory book. Joseph Baratta (A) will assemble the book, which will be shared with alumni at Homecoming 2014 in Annapolis from September 12 to 14. Alumni may submit text as well as a photo or two. He suggests you answer questions such as: How has the college inﬂuenced your life? What memories of the years in college particularly stand out in your mind? Where have your travels taken you? Send your responses to: Joseph P. Baratta 32 Hilltop Circle Worcester, MA 01609 508-756-6015 josephbaratta@mac.com using the painfully closed phrase, ‘severely mentally disabled.’ Every day I bring both a scientiﬁc and emotional attentiveness to my work with individual special-education children. I am often puzzling over the learning pathways. For these children, learning is a physical process. While most of what I do is simply caring for kids and keeping them safe, I get to see learning as an interaction between brain, memory, senses, and muscles. I have been studying human motor-skill development to provide words and ideas to clarify what I observe in my students. A side puzzle: Where and how do disabled and slightly disabled children show up in the great books and other classical literature? Where are portrayals of children with cerebral palsy, non-verbal conditions, and autistic behaviors? What are some of the books that explore how the classical Athenian Greek culture reckoned with the Spartan Greek infant practices? Separately, I recently ran for a local elected ofﬁce [in San Mateo County, Calif.], and had the fascinating experience of knocking on doors and establishing face-to-face political understanding with hundreds of voters. Others running for the same position outspent me by an enormous margin. While I did not win, I drew a fair number of community votes.” 1971 Victoria Manchester Garrison (SF) completed reading All On Fire, the inspiring biography of the abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison, her ancestor by marriage. She is frequently in Taos doing grandmother volunteering at the Waldorf School. 46 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 “Stone Boat’s” Personal Best Annapolis Alumni Director Leo Pickens (A78) writes, “Kudos to Mike ‘Stone Boat’ Van Beuren (A) on his personal best performance at the Head of the Charles Regatta held on October 19, 2013. Stone Boat ﬁnished sixth in a ﬁeld of more than 50 competitors in the Men’s Veteran I & II Single Sculls with a P.R. [Personal Record] of 20 minutes and 5 seconds.” Commenting on the photo from the race, Van Beuren says, “I had just made a move to the inside of the long turn at mile two here. The wake of the boat in front is visible to the right. I was by him 300 meters later.” 1973 1978 Since June 2013, Constance McClellan (SF) has been serving a two-year term in Moldova with the Peace Corps. She is working with Moldovan teacher partners as an English teacher for grades 5 - 12 in a village of 7,000 outside of the capitol city of Chi in u. Although Moldova may be Europe’s poorest country, Connie enjoys the Internet, hot water, Western toilets, and excellent Eastern European food, including homemade wine. After almost a year and much language training, she is ﬁnally beginning to understand conversations in Romanian, and to be more or less understood when speaking about concrete things (or about matters with lots of English cognates). Read her blog at cdmcclellan. wordpress.com. The 35th class reunion also capped off 30 years of international living and banking work for Chris Olson (A), and 12 years of evaluation work at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in London, England. (The curious can read his study of “EBRD’s Response to the 2008-09 Financial Crisis” at www.ebrd.com/downloads/ about/evaluation/1011.pdf.) In the evenings, he practices as a trainee psychotherapist with the Independent Group of Analytical Psychologists (IGAP.org), in the classical tradition of Carl Gustav Jung, who discovered psychological types (familiar as Myers-Briggs typology) and the collective unconscious. He hopes to complete the training within four years and to practice analytical psychology at his home in Rotherhithe, London. �alumni notes 1982 Rob Crutchﬁeld (A) has started an online fundraising effort to help Ruth Johnston (A85), who has a debilitating illness. For more information, visit www.gofundme.com/ help-ruth-johnston. 1988 1983 Désirée Zamorano (SF) writes that her novel, The Amado Women, a family drama, will be published in summer 2014. 1984 1979 To Greece and Back Karen Bohrer (Anderson) (A) writes, “After 12 years living and working in Greece, ﬁrst at the American College of Thessaloniki and then at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, I have repatriated. I am now the collections assessment and development librarian at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts. It’s a big change in ever so many respects, but I’m jumping in with both feet, knowing it’s never the same river. Before I left Greece, I had a wonderful experience related to the college. A friend in the U.S. had advised a young acquaintance who was traveling through Europe to look me up when she got to Athens, and she came to see me at the library of ASCSA, expressing a particular interest in the ancient authors. When I asked why, Zara Amdur (SF11) revealed the name of her alma mater. Neither of us was aware until that moment that we were both alumnae. Despite our circumstantial differences, age being not the least among them, the shared experience of St. John’s enabled us to immediately connect on the human and intellectual levels that matter. E-mail is probably the best way to reach me for anyone who’d like to. My addresses are karenbohrer@ yahoo.com or kmbohrer@wpi.edu.” Bryan Cave, focusing on international and domestic litigation, arbitration, and regulatory disputes. Ryan will serve as the Miami ofﬁce’s managing and hiring partner, and I will serve as co-leader of the ﬁrm’s international dispute resolution practice (together with Rod Page).” Pedro J. Martinez-Fraga (A) writes, “I am pleased to announce that, effective March 17, 2014, C. Ryan Reetz and I have opened a Miami ofﬁce for the law ﬁrm of Bryan Cave LLP, a leading international law ﬁrm with ofﬁces across the United States, as well as in Europe and Asia. The ﬁrm’s commitment to its ‘one ﬁrm’ culture has resulted in a strong track record of collaboration and cooperation across the ﬁrm, with obvious beneﬁts for clients that have endured since its founding 141 years ago. We will be continuing our existing practice at Tobias Maxwell’s (A) ﬁfth book, 1977: The Year of Leaving Monsieur, was published in March 2014. 1993 Inspired from her own experience, Rachel Blistein (A) launched her hair-care business, Original Moxie, in 2009. She credits her ability to teach herself basic chemistry and to formulate complex hair-care products to her St. John’s education. “The process of reading original texts on subjects from ancient Greek to advanced physics gives you the tools to learn anything,” says Blistein. “It also breaks down the fear of tackling a totally foreign subject from scratch and without intermediaries. Once you get over that fear, it opens up a whole new world of possibilities.” Visit the company’s online store at www.originalmoxie.com. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 47 �alumni notes Correction: Richard Field (SFGI) writes, “I received my PhD in 1993 from the University of New Mexico in health, physical education, and recreation, not history and philosophy as stated in the fall 2006 issue of The College.” 1999 1997 1998 In addition to running her bee farm (www.ziaqueenbees.com) and having her second child a couple of years ago, Melanie Kirby (SF) served as the president of the Western Apicultural Society of North America in 2013. Currently she is the editor for an online beekeeping newsletter with more than 30,000 subscribers (www.kelleybees.com). She started the Rocky Mountain Survivor Queenbee Cooperative, which is an educational service organization helping to build capacity for local pollinator preservation, promotion, and production. She shared their efforts at the 2013 Apimondia World Beekeeping Conference in Kiev, Ukraine. This spring she organized the 2014 North to South New Mexico Pollinator Beneﬁt Lecture series, bringing pollinator scholars to the Land of Enchantment. St. John’s hosted a lecture by Dr. Thomas Seeley, a worldrenowned conservation biologist from Cornell, on May 3, 2014. More information: www.survivorqueenbees.org. Kirby is buzzed to be sharing her apicultural academia with her beloved alma mater. In fall 2013, Santa Fe Advancement Services Director Nick Giacona (SFGI) returned as guest lecturer to a Native American music class at the University of Oklahoma. He discussed the mythology behind some of the ceremonial music and dance the class was studying. He led the class in a comparative mythology exercise by examining the local differences and universal similarities between the Native American Corn Maiden myths and the Classical Greek myths of Demeter and Persephone. On the home front, Nick’s daughter, Sarah, graduated from New Mexico State University last spring with a degree in fashion design. She begins an internship with the Walt Disney Company in January. His son, Kyle, has been accepted to the University of Hawaii for the spring semester; he plans to major in food science and human nutrition, with an emphasis in sports and wellness. Nick and his wife, Keiko, are looking forward to becoming “empty-nesters.” (Don’t tell Sarah and Kyle.) 48 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 On October 1, 2013, at Camp Pendleton, Major Benjamin I. Closs, USMC (A) received a medal for outstanding meritorious service while serving as the Executive Senior Briefer, Intelligence Department, Headquarters Marine Corps, Washington, D.C., from July 1, 2010 to June 30, 2013. Mike Soejoto (A) and Abby Soejoto (A) write, “We had another baby—Peter Dominic, born March 6—who slots in at the bottom of the totem pole after Lucy (10), John (8), Cecilia (6), James (4), and Beatrice (2), but ahead of McDuff the dog. Abby continues to homeschool the kids. Mike is partner at Pircher, Nichols, & Meeks in Century City and is head of the ﬁrm’s tax department. The older kids are playing club soccer, which keeps us busy and on the road most weekends. We are excited to celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary this summer. Feel free to drop us a line, especially if you will be in Los Angeles: asoejoto@gmail.com and msoejoto@gmail.com.” Dana (Ostrander) Warford (A) and her husband, Mark, welcomed their daughter, Peyton Avery, into the world on July 30, 2013. 2001 Paige Maguire (A), who still lives in Austin, Texas, has remarried. In December 2012, she and Kevin M. Schneider, a composer and producer, welcomed a son, Asa Wilder, who joins his older brother, Daschel Auden Maguire, now 11. Paige is senior strategist at Springbox Digital Partners in downtown Austin. She is also @ﬂuxistrad on Twitter. Cosmina Popa (A) is managing director at Conscious Venture Lab (CVLab), a new impact-focused Mike and Abby Soejoto (A99) are homeschooling their family. �alumni notes business accelerator being created in conjunction with the Howard County Economic Development Authority and the Maryland Center for Entrepreneurship. Their goal is to create new businesses that operate at the intersection of proﬁt and purpose, using the power of capitalism to create a more joyful, just, and equitable society. For more information, visit www.consciousventurelab.com. 2002 Ronald Osborn’s (AGI) new book, Death Before the Fall: Biblical Literalism and the Problem of Animal Suffering, was published in February. Shelley Saxen (née Walker, SFGI, EC03) and her husband, Doug Saxen (EC03), are starting their third and ﬁnal year living in Peru. Shelley covers human rights and social conﬂicts as a diplomat with the U.S. Department of State. Doug continues his love of writing and has been dedicated to his new digital illuminated manuscript project. They hope to be back in Santa Fe later this year for a visit and always joyfully welcome Johnnie visitors to Peru. Thanks to that fateful debut in Rigoletto, she fell into the arms of a British baritone. His role in Act I was to grab her as she was about to deck the reprobate Duke across the face with a right hook—and drag her, kicking and ﬂailing, off stage right. Helluva ﬁrst meeting. The baritone, an Oxford man, is a chorister and a Catholic. Ms. Buker would like to take a moment to thank Mr. Tomarchio for his Thomas Aquinas preceptorial, since the sacred, the profane, and the reason lying underneath come up quite a bit with her fancy man. Who knows, she may have to move to London yet .. . and nay, even confess? Next up, Santa Fe tutor Jacques Duvoisin and she have been compiling an anthology about St. John’s College, with a working title, The Selected Life. It’ll be chock full of essays from tutors, alums, current students, and others with an abiding relationship with St. John’s. The project was the positive outcome of various Facebook interactions in which dissatisﬁed alums were offering no active solutions to telling the “story” of SJC. “If there’s one thing I learned CELEBRATE Homecoming 2014 Annapolis September 12–14 410-626-2531 Santa Fe September 19–21 505-984-6103 alumni.stjohnscollege.edu Lauren Shofer (A) is living in Aalst, Belgium, where she is a chiropractic physician and mother of four: Amelie (5), Julien (4), Emile (2), and Celestine (7 months). Her husband, Baldwyn Bourgois, is also a chiropractic physician. 2005 On February 18, Samantha Buker (A) got a request from the director of Lyric Opera Baltimore: “Are you interested in being a lissome Hebrew maiden in Nabucco?” Given her wonderful ﬁrst time onstage last year in the Belle Époque house, how could she resist a reprise? left: Samantha Buker (A05) shines in the 2013 production of Rigoletto at Baltimore’s Lyric Opera. above: Celebrating at the Nabucco cast party. from seminar, it’s that saying what something is NOT, is not the same as saying positively what it IS,” says Buker. Incidentally, her nine-to- ﬁve ﬁnancial publishing gig still goes gangbusters, and she’s on the board of PostClassical Ensemble, the D.C.-based orchestra, which is enjoying its 10th-anniversary season. She’s pleased to announce her involvement in the newest thing in so-called “classical” music: Future Symphony Institute. This “think tank” for music provides innovative research and new initiatives whose impact reverberates from her Mt. Vernon neighborhood around the world. Au fond de l’Inconnu pour trouver du nouveau.... In what time might be called spare, Samantha runs a portrait studio (photography, drawings, paintings) and can be reached for sittings via 7veilsstudio@gmail.com. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 49 �alumni profile Generous Leadership by Chelsea Batten (A07) Jamaal Barnes (A10) shines as mentor, musician, and advocate Those who graduated with Jamaal “THE THING THAT CONNECTS MY LIFE’S ACTIVITIES IS A FIRM COMMITMENT TO SUPPORTING THE HOLISTIC DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDREN AND YOUTH FROM ALL ENVIRONMENTS.” Barnes (A10) will remember a highlight of his junior year: he was summoned to the ofﬁce of President Nelson and informed that he had won the Harry S. Truman Scholarship, commonly viewed as the Rhodes of public service. “It was funny,” he chuckles, remembering the “hurrahing” of his friends when they found out about it. Looking back, he imparts credit for this accomplishment to those who celebrated with him. “The community at St. John’s is a huge part of why I’m passionate about public service.” Barnes’s passion for public service has taken him to various parts of the world, as well as deeper into the relationships he has been cultivating since high school. He made progress on his longterm goals by earning an EdM degree 50 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 2014 in 2011 at Harvard; he is currently an admissions ofﬁcer at Harvard Graduate School of Education and proctor at Harvard College. In addition, he serves on the Alumni Advisory Board for the Coca-Cola Scholars Foundation, and as a trustee of the Touchstones Discussion Project (founded by tutors Howard Zeiderman and Nicholas Maistrellis). “I’d say that the thing that connects my life’s activities is a ﬁrm commitment to supporting the holistic development of children and youth from all environments,” Barnes reﬂects. That key word— environment—gives Barnes’s work in public service a character unique to his ﬁeld. His insight that personal development is heightened by responding to a given environment’s opportunities and challenges was fostered by his experience with St. John’s College. The setup for Barnes’s story reads like the opening act of a highbrow comedy. You take a ﬁrst-generation college applicant with energy, vision, and a 12year plan to pilot his life. You give him one of the country’s most competitive scholarships, and send him off to an “East Coast” school, launching him on his promising future. What happens then? This goaloriented, energetic activist ﬁnds himself in the midst of about 500 philosopherpoets who spend hours pondering the question, “What is virtue?” Of course, Barnes’s story is not extreme. But his choice to attend St. John’s, and the day-to-day experience of life and study at the college, was somewhat lost in translation when he described it to family and friends. “It’s one thing to be a ﬁrst-generation college student in a traditional sense; it’s a completely different thing to be a ﬁrst-generation college student and go to St. John’s,” he says. �Despite the challenges and his expectations of how he would function in the college community, Barnes quickly came to appreciate the opportunity presented by the contemplative framework of learning. “The ability to listen to each other carefully, to take what we’ve learned and cooperate effectively, was something I learned to reﬁne over the next few years. The most wonderful deliverable that came out of it was the Epigenesis project.” In December 2007, Barnes joined forces with three other Johnnies in creating a leadership and mentoring program for low-income youth in Annapolis. For 10 weeks the following summer, Epigenesis led workshops based on the cornerstone texts of the St. John’s Program, to help participants identify their community’s most urgent needs, and consider what it meant for them to be good citizens. “It’s hard for me to talk about justice and equality,” Barnes says, “and not think about what goes on at Clay Street. I tried to play that out by being actively engaged in the St. John’s community, as well as being actively engaged in the Annapolis communities.” Following the success of Epigenesis, Barnes devoted his energies to Crossroads for Kids. As the director of their outdoor youth leadership program, Barnes was repeatedly confronted with a gadﬂy-like question: “How do you measure growth in leadership behaviors?” In the midst of the rigors of junior year, he was led to answers through several formative inﬂuences. One was Michel de Montaigne, whom Barnes calls—laughing but with perfect sincerity—his “self-help guide” in what it means to be socially responsible. Another was tutor Chester Burke, who offered to reread several Platonic dialogues with Barnes as graduation approached. “We read the Apology, the Crito, and three or four other texts, and really struggled with what does it mean to be a person of society? To be good, both to yourself and to others?” Those discussions, Barnes says, exempliﬁed for him the kind of generous leadership he was striving to grasp. He also cites former staff members Maggie Melson and Bronte Jones as profound inﬂuences. “It’s one thing to be a ﬁrstgeneration college student in a traditional sense; it’s a completely different thing to be a ﬁrst-generation college student and go to St. John’s.” Barnes says that singing with the college choral group, Primum Mobile, brought him back to the human element of living in community. “One of the most beautiful things about music—in particular, when there are multiple people singing in polyphony—is a moment of unity that’s created. Music can create the ideal community.” He brings up the example of singing “Sicut Cervus” in Freshman Chorus. “These voices coming together, weaving their ways. You take any line by itself and it’s an individual, but when you tie it all together, it’s this beautiful community, and the remarkable thing is that you don’t have to be great singers. Freshman chorus singing ‘Sicut Cervus’ is just as beautiful as Primum Mobile.” He pauses and adds this amendment: “The tenors can be a little iffy sometimes.” He pauses again, and when he continues speaking, his voice is choked with emotion. “The fact that music can make me feel like I’m in community with someone, that it can bring about emotions that I can’t articulate in words...I don’t get that sensation with anything else. My hands are actually shaking right now.” Barnes was also struck by the impact of, as he puts it, “that quiet person in class, [who] opens their mouth one time, and really changes the way thoughts are built in seminar.” It showed him that everyone is able to play a valuable role in shaping a community, whether their strengths are in speaking, doing, listening, or simply waiting for the right moment. To those students who, like himself, are burning to take their education beyond the conversation and into the greater community, Barnes says that St. John’s provides an important opportunity to generate self-momentum. “If I didn’t go to St. John’s, I wouldn’t have won the Truman, I wouldn’t have won the Reynolds Fellowship in Social Entrepreneurship from Harvard University. If you learn through taking action, the ability to be independent and entrepreneurial in terms of creating opportunities to be active in your community is powerful.” The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 2013 51 �alumni notes 2008 AMANDA RITTER Aerospace Award Wint Huskey (SFGI10) is a writer based in Philadelphia. Toby Burress (A) and Alena Sinacola (A) welcomed their daughter, Jane Woolf Burress, on December 4, 2013, in Cambridge, Mass. Named in honor of Jane Goodall and Virginia Woolf, baby Jane is a delight. Their dogs Charlie and Maggie have accepted the new human into their pack with grace and understanding. In other news, after seven years in the Boston area, they have recently moved to Brooklyn, N.Y. Toby is enjoying his new job as a systems administrator with Google in Manhattan, and both Jane and Alena are having a wonderful time being a baby and a mama, respectively. They’d love to meet up with other Johnnies in the area: alenasinacola@gmail.com. 2006 Aran Donovan (SF) was featured in the annual anthology, Best New Poets 2013: 50 Poems from Emerging Writers, edited by Brenda Shaughnessy. Equally exciting, she is now living in New Orleans, where several other ’06 and ’07 Johnnies have also congregated. Let her know if you’re passing through the Big Easy! 2007 Maia (Huff-Owen) Nahele (SF) writes, “I now live in Paris, where I have a research and teaching position in the Department of Philosophy at the Sorbonne (Paris IV). In the whirlwind of the last few years, I’ve regrettably lost touch with many of you, and welcome the chance to reconnect. I also welcome visitors and passersthrough! I am looking to sublet my lovely, quiet, light-ﬁlled, onebedroom apartment in the fourth arrondissement for July and/or August of this year. If there are any Johnnies (students, alumni, faculty, or staff) who would be interested in landing in Paris for the summer and need a fantastic home-base, please drop me a line at mnahele@gmail.com, and I’ll send more information.” 2010 Wint Huskey’s (SFGI) ﬁrst novel, Blowin’ It, is scheduled to be published in August. 52 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 Trystan Popish (SF08) and Carol Mohling at the 2014 NSTA Teacher Awards Gala in Boston, Mass. Trystan Popish (SF) was selected by the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) Awards and Recognitions Committee as the recipient for the 2014 Wendell G. Mohling Outstanding Aerospace Award for her exemplary work with informal aerospace science. Popish, an Aviation Learning Center educator at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, Wash., was presented with the award at the NSTA Teacher Awards Gala during the association’s national conference held in Boston, Mass., from April 3 to 6. 2012 A New Course Alexander Schmid (AGI) has joined the faculty at Escondido Charter High School (ECHS), one of the American Heritage family of charter schools based in Escondido, Calif. Schmid teaches freshman logic and rhetoric—a new course that he developed—and a law and debate elective for juniors and seniors. Shawn Roner, the ECHS Traditional Classroom program director, says that Schmid is a valuable addition to the faculty “because we are focusing more attention on developing student thinking skills in the freshman year.” Schmid says, “I was delighted to have the opportunity to teach a subject which I both love and live. When I was offered the position, I knew I had to take it.” �alumni profile Mentoring Women in Business by Gregory Shook Elizabeth Powers (A89) Reveals Hidden Bias in the Workplace As a senior principal at the New Yorkbased IMS Consulting Group (IMSCG), serving clients that include four of the top 15 pharmaceutical companies, Elizabeth Powers (A89) has followed a career trajectory full of twists and bends. At one point, her plans were nearly derailed altogether. “I had a daughter early in my career at Booz & Company (formerly Booz Allen Hamilton),” says Powers, who spent nearly 13 years with the company, working her way up from associate to vice president and partner. “When I came back [to work], there weren’t that many options for alternative schedules.” Powers soon learned how hidden biases, or unconscious bias—an implicit preference for certain types of people based on their upbringing, gender, race, experience, and values—can inﬂuence important decisions, such as hiring, promotions, assignments, performance reviews, and dismissals. For the next six months, Powers shuttled back and forth between New York and Chicago “on a team that wasn’t particularly family friendly.” With the pressure to succeed at her job at the expense of spending considerable time apart from her husband and newborn daughter, Powers says that she nearly imploded. When she was on the brink of leaving the company, a colleague came to her support as both a mentor and a champion. Recognizing that Powers had been put in an unfair situation based on her circumstances as a new mother rather than her talent and ability, “he convinced the ﬁrm to keep me and for me to stay on parttime,” says Powers, who continued to work part-time with the company for the next ﬁve years. “That never would’ve happened without that particular champion.” That experience helped Powers become aware of hidden biases and their potential impact on a person’s career. “Integrity and equality are always at the forefront of my mind,” says Powers. “Both men and women carry around unconscious bias which says that women don’t belong in the workplace. It’s quite acceptable now to be a woman as an entry-level associate or a mid-level manager, but it’s still very hard [for women] to rise to the top ranks.” To thwart the trend, Powers is coordinating a women’s initiative at IMSCG to empower future business leaders to become champions of their own careers and to raise awareness of unconscious bias in the workplace. “I’m in a client service ﬁeld, and I love what I do,” says Powers, whose work on unconscious bias is a topic at the forefront of many large businesses today. A Wall Street Journal article (January 9, 2014) reports that as many as 20 percent of large U.S. employers who offer diversity training programs now provide unconscious-bias training. Powers looks at what “Integrity and equality other companies are doing in terms of are always at the shedding light on hidden biases in the forefront of my mind.” workplace—in particular, understanding communication style. “It can be challenging to coach others to hit the right level of assertiveness without being too assertive,” she says. “There’s a different solution for everybody.” Inspired by Robert Greenleaf’s book, Servant Leadership, Powers advocates mentorship and the idea of a servant actually being a leader. “That’s at the core of how I operate,” she says. “I wish I could do that a lot better with my family, but when I manage to do it, I’m always successful.” A graduate of the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, she mentors Wharton students and alumnae but is “even happier to mentor Johnnies. [Mentoring] is absolutely a way of paying back into the karma bank,” says Powers. “And it’s just fun.” Whether with her family, at the workplace, or at her Brooklyn dojang (Powers is a red belt in hapkido), Powers says that being successful means “living up to my commitments. I was given many gifts, both in terms of talent and in terms of people who have cared for me. It’s all about how I can live up to those gifts.” The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 53 �transitions A Good Conversation Is Hard to Find LAUREL FISCHER (A11) By Chelsea Batten (A07) “It’s hard to ﬁnd a good conversation, after St. John’s.” This was the warning delivered by Dr. Bernard Davidoff (A69)— or, as classmates of his daughter knew him, Bernie. He would say it while casting a long glance around the perimeter of the quad, part resigned, part wistful, and part something else that I never could deﬁne. It’s only now, seven years out from the college, that I realize what he meant. First, there’s the deﬂated anticipation that follows most Johnnies after attending their ﬁrst Homecoming or croquet match as alumni. There are new kids sitting on your bench, living in your dorm room, occupying your spot on the basketball court or the FSK stage. The tutors will talk to you, of course, but even that’s not the same. Much as you love their appreciation of your life, their undying enthusiasm for whatever you’ve chosen to do (or your efforts to make a choice), what you really want to talk about with them is what you used to talk about: Great Books. Many Johnnies experience this, postgraduation. If you don’t live within proximity of an alumni group, or can’t make it back to your campus for alumni events, you’re stuck in that wistful malaise that Bernie was talking about: A good conversation is hard to ﬁnd. Two years ago, two alumni, Harry Zolkower (A82) and Nicole Levy (SF92) decided to do something about this. In collaboration with Annapolis Alumni Director Leo Pickens (A78), they created a virtual format for homesick Johnnies to engage with tutors and with each other. An online seminar? According to Mr. Pickens, it was a hard sell to many tutors. It’s difﬁcult to recreate the magic of seminar by dint of screenshots and earbuds. In addition, says Mr. Pickens, some members of the faculty feel that having different groups of alumni, led each time by different tutors, isn’t as pure as the undergraduate experience, the thematic unity achieved by one group that spends a year in discussion together. But perhaps alumni hunger for a good conversation merits a leap into the digital age. Many ﬁrst-time participants came to the online seminar I attended with skepticism. “It doesn’t surprise me anymore,” says Mr. Pickens, chuckling. “But every online seminar I’ve participated in has that feeling of a genuine St. John’s seminar!” “If you can’t get out of the house and cross an easy distance to a room where people are gathered, this is the next best thing. There’s a hunger out there for this kind of conversation.” One tutor, Michael Dink (A75), who gave a seminar in March, reported to other faculty members that the reason it felt genuine to him was “because everybody in the seminar is seasoned in this form of conversation.” Admittedly, Mr. Pickens says, nothing can equal the synergy of 12 to 20 minds in a room—despite the technical hiccups: broken audio feeds, the tendency for participants to look at their own faces while talking. (Mr. Pickens chuckles again as he recounts these hiccups.) 54 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 “That said,” he continues, “folks are getting together and having a St. John’sstyle conversation—a serious conversation about a difﬁcult reading—in a way that feels genuine to what we try to do in our community. If you can’t get out of the house and cross an easy distance to a room where people are gathered, this is the next best thing. There’s a hunger out there for this kind of conversation.” The online seminars have attracted alumni as far apart as Karen Immler (AGI07), who lives in Slovenia, and Sunny Hills (SF78), who lives in Maui. In the online seminar I attended from Phoenix, Arizona, nine other participants from around the U.S. gathered together with Mr. Pickens and tutor Michael Dink. Mr. Dink chose the book of Jonah as the reading. It was, I thought, a perfect selection—short enough that it was easy to read at the last minute (which, it turns out, is even easier to do when you’re not a full-time student), but full of opportunities for contention, thoughtful silence, and questions following upon the one with which Mr. Dink opened: “Why is Jonah angry?” What followed was, in fact, a powerful rewind to freshman seminar, with all its exaggerated tropes. There were the stock participants: the over-talker, the chronically silent one, the one who consistently brings everyone back to the opening question. There were the outside references, the stalled silences, the odd autobiographical analogy, and the followup question that starts as a statement, devolves into a ramble, and ends with a confession that the asker has forgotten the question he intended to ask. Also true to freshman seminar fashion is the kindly tolerance with which the tutor views the seminar’s foibles. Mr. Dink seemed satisﬁed, even mildly surprised, by the discussion. The online format, he allowed, did lend itself to serial speechmaking. “I believe it’s important that people be able to interrupt one another in seminar.” But, he adds, he’s sanguine that online conversations have all the potential �in memoriam provided opening and closing remarks. Santa Fe tutors Janet Dougherty, Philip LeCuyer, Michael Ehrmantraut, and Gregory Schneider, along with alumnus Adam Visher (SF11), shared testimonials in honor of their colleague and friend. The following are some remembrances and excerpts from remarks at the service: “Laurence taught me many things as a teacher, but one thing stands out. He always tried to ﬁgure out what made a student care and what things a student cared about. Laurence could also make you laugh, a gift that I appreciate more and more every day. His skill with the quick remark and the friendly jab were to be envied. In some ways, he was one of the best conversationalists that I have ever met.” – Gregory Schneider, Santa Fe tutor Laurence Nee August 5, 2013 Tutor, Santa Fe In 2005, Laurence Nee (1970-2013) joined the faculty in Santa Fe, where he was treasured for his sense of humor, thoughtful insights, and gift for conversation. The community gathered for a memorial held on November 2, 2013, in the Junior Common Room. Santa Fe President Mike Peters “Through his efforts as a tutor, my appreciation for a much beloved novel awakened, and my understanding and appreciation continually grows. I will never re-read Pride and Prejudice without reﬂecting upon Mr. Nee’s love and respect for the work. I am eternally grateful.” – Lealia Nelson (SFGI11) “I had the great pleasure of having freshman summer seminar with Mr. Nee. His presence was felt strongly at every session and his sense of humor—especially his tolerance of what I tried to pass as humor—is something I shall never forget.” – Nareg Seferian (SF11) During the ﬁve years that he taught at the college and the years that followed, Nee made a remarkable impact on the community as a teacher, colleague, and friend. He is remembered for his extraordinary character and service to the college. “Personally, I have seen in him a kind of answer to a question I consider signiﬁcant, that I ﬁrst heard posed several decades ago: ‘Can a Christian be a great-souled man?’ says Santa Fe Dean J. Walter Sterling. “Laurence’s character is, for me, evidence in favor of such a possibility. Be that as it may, what one heard from his colleagues at the memorial was that he possessed an extraordinary range of virtues of character, as well as of intellect, a combination as beautiful as it is rare. He made us a better college.” The College magazine is grateful to Laurence Nee for his article, “The Greatness of Shakespeare’s Plays,” in the summer 2012 issue. www.sjc.edu/news-and-media A Good Conversation (continued from p. 50) of those that take place in the classroom, if cultivated the same way: “I thought with practice, and experience, participants could get pretty good at it.” It’s still a young endeavor, and alumni are still being attracted to it. I imagine that as these seminars go on, they will be like the learning curve within a St. John’s class, in which students become stronger, more generous, and honest conversants with each other. I recognize now that the look on my friend’s father’s face was determination. I’ve found that life after St. John’s requires such resolve, if you’re not going to spend it in perpetual mourning for four irrecoverable years of community and culture, all intense and endearingly weird, threaded together by a love of deep conversation. In some ways, I’m loath to rejoin the online seminar. Like going back for Croquet or Homecoming, it was hard to revisit that environment without it being exactly the same as I remember. On the other hand, I’m not ready to resign conversation to the past. Like the books themselves, great conversation is a daunting endeavor, especially when displaced by culture and time; nevertheless, it’s worth pursuing. The next virtual seminar will be in September. For more information: leopickens@sjc.edu CONNECT TO THE COLLEGE Alumni online community: http://alumni.stjohnscollege.edu Agora career mentoring network: http://alumni.stjohnscollege.edu Click on “Career Services” Alumni ofﬁces: annapolis.alumni@sjc.edu santafe.alumni@sjc.edu Facebook: facebook.com/stjohnscollege The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 55 �in memorium John Dendahl (H87) November 9, 2013 Martha B. Jordan (SFGI86) October 24, 2013 Martha Black Jordan (1932-2013), alumna and member of the Board of Visitors and Governors, died at her son’s home in Coronado, Calif. She was 80. Jordan was born in Mexico City and educated in the United States. She ﬁrst visited Santa Fe in the summer of 1980 and fell in love with the city. As a student at St. John’s, her favorite readings were the Russians, especially Dostoevsky. “I like Dostoevsky’s view of how the world could be changed, and not necessarily through revolution,” she recalled. Known for her generosity, quiet grace, and inquisitive mind, Jordan was also a gifted poet and translator. She was a founder of the Tramontane Poets of Mexico City, a collective dedicated to being a bridge between the poetry worlds of Mexico and North America. Jordan read her own work, as well as translations, on The Poet and the Poem, National Public Radio in Washington, D.C.; at the Society of the Americas and the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church in New York City; in Mexico City at La Casa del Poeta and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; in San Miguel de Allende at the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes; and at St. John’s in Santa Fe. Jordan committed herself to a long but fulﬁlling journey when she decided to pursue ordination in the Episcopal Church of Mexico. She enrolled in a graduate pastoral theology program at St. Mary of the Woods College in Indiana. In John Dendahl (1938-2013), former Board of Visitors and Governors chair, former Santa Fe treasurer, and one of the founders of the St. John’s College, Santa Fe campus, passed away in Colorado. He was 75. Born in Santa Fe, Dendahl attended the University of Colorado in Boulder, where he earned degrees in electrical engineering and business administration. During that time, he won two NCAA titles with the university’s ski team and was a member of the 1960 U.S. Olympic ski team. He was inducted into the University of Colorado Athletic Hall of Fame and the New Mexico Ski Hall of Fame. In the 1960s, Dendahl worked as an engineer for the Eberline Instrument Corporation (now a subsidiary of the Thermo Electron Corporation) and later became CEO. Later that decade, during an extended absence from the company, he served as chief ﬁnancial ofﬁcer for the new St. John’s College, Santa Fe campus. From 1985 to 1987, Dendahl served as chair of the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors. Transitioning to a career in politics, Dendahl was appointed to the State Investment Council and later served as secretary of New Mexico’s Economic Development and Tourism Department. In 1994, he ran unsuccessfully for governor. However, that same year he was elected as state Republican Party chairman, a position he held until 2003. Several years later, Dendahl and his wife moved to Colorado, where he continued his interest in politics and wrote columns and letters to the editor of The New Mexican. He is survived by his wife, Jackie, and his ﬁve daughters: Debra Hadley, Ellie Thurston, Katherine, Karen, and Lisa West. 2006 she was ordained a priest at Christ Church in Mexico City, the church where she was baptized and married. That same year, Jordan and her husband established the Jordan Tutorship on the Santa Fe campus, which has been used to support the director of the Graduate Institute. She is survived by her husband of more than 50 years, Purdy; three children, Stephanie, Colebrooke, and Robert; and four grandchildren, Cecelia, Daniel, Nicholas, and David. 56 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 Jules O. Pagano Class of 1948 July 14, 2013 Jules Pagano (1925-2013), who helped launch President John F. Kennedy’s Peace Corps program, passed away at his home in Jamesville, N.Y., surrounded by family members. He was two days shy of his 88th birthday. Pagano helped to formulate Peace Corps policies in training and education of volunteers for overseas assignments, and established the ﬁrst Peace Corps Training Centers. After the passage of the Higher Education Act in 1965, he was named the ﬁrst director of the Adult Education Division at the U.S. Ofﬁce of Education, and began a long career in higher education. Pagano served as dean and associate vice president of Florida International University, during which time he earned his MPA and DPA from Nova University. In 1979, he was recruited by Bard College to serve as vice president and provost of Simon’s Rock. He later served as president of the Saybrook Institute, a graduate school and research center. Pagano and his elder brother, Lee, attended St. John’s College in Annapolis, where Pagano’s lifelong love affair with education was cemented. He authored dozens of articles on higher education, as well as vocational and adult education. Pagano served as director of the St. John’s College Alumni Board from 1984-1988. He is survived by his wife, Kathy; brother Mo; son Ed; daughters Debbie and Penny; grandchildren Joy, Erin, Elise, Tiffany, and Jack; great-granddaughters Rylee, Ellie, and Arianna; and stepchildren Angela, Jimmy, and Karen. Robert Stewart (A09) December 5, 2013 Born in Winston-Salem, N.C., Robert Stewart (1977-2013) found his home at St. John’s, where he explored his many interests and met others who shared and appreciated those interests. “His dream job was to be a tutor at St. John’s,” says his mother, Brenda Stewart. The community gathered for a memorial held on March 15, 2014, in the Great Hall. “The room was full of laughter and joy, as we all remembered the sting of his wit, the depths of his wisdom, and the warm, all encompassing feeling �in memorium Also Deceased: Ernest Dominguez, SF95 August 24, 2013 Harry O’Neill, SFGI79 December 10, 2013 Joseph Ablow, Class of 1950 November 14, 2012 Paul Ehrlich, Class of 1942 October 26, 2013 LeRoy Pagano, Class of 1948 February 6, 2013 Rachel Abrams, A72 June 7, 2013 Arthur Fort IV, SF91 December 20, 2012 Milton Perlman, Class of 1943 February 18, 2014 George Ackerman, A74 January 3, 2014 Douglas Fraser, AGI90 February 15, 2014 Emanuel Pushkin, Class of 1940 October 24, 2013 Lewis Alexander, Class of 1941 May 9, 2013 Charles Gentile, Class of 1950 July 24, 2013 Richard Rickard, SFGI72 October 24, 2013 Rodney Arthur, AGI88 November 7, 2013 Josef Gilboa, Class of 1962 December 4, 2013 Caroline Saddy, SF81 March 31, 2013 Lydia Aston, Class of 1955 December 26, 2013 Raymond Haas, Class of 1958 September 1, 2012 Roberto Salinas-Price, Class of 1959 August 13, 2012 Roland Bailey, Class of 1935 April 22, 2014 Darrell Henry, Class of 1961 August 16, 2013 Louis Shuman, Class of 1938 August 3, 2013 Eugene Blank, Class of 1945 July 15, 2013 Joseph D. Hines, SFGI70 December 27, 2013 John E. Siemens, Class of 1956 November 5, 2013 February 19, 2014 Rosalie Levine Boosin, Class of 1960 November 1, 2013 Constance “Connie” Weigle Mann, (1947-2014), daughter of Richard D. Weigle—president of St. John’s College in Annapolis for 31 years, and founder and president of the Santa Fe campus—died at age 67 in Winston-Salem, N.C. A graduate of St. John’s College in Santa Fe, she had an afﬁnity for the “Land of Enchantment” and cherished her time and the many friends she made there. After graduating, she attended Yale Divinity School, where she met her husband, Tom. She also held a master’s degree from Rutgers University and worked as a sales representative for an organizational management company. Known for her kindness, generosity, and loving spirit, Connie had a special concern for hunger, and served as a volunteer at the Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest North Carolina, where she was a Volunteer of the Year in 2013. She is survived by her husband of 45 years, Tom; her daughter, Mary Liz; her sister, Marta; and countless other family members and friends. Henry DeMuth Jawish, Class of 1952 October 21, 2013 Warren Skidmore, Class of 1947 December 21, 2013 William S. Bradﬁeld, SFGI79 January 16, 1998 George W. John, Class of 1949 March 27, 2014 Robert Snower, Class of 1944 July 2, 2013 Wayne Brandow, Class of 1966 September 14, 2013 Beverly Kincaid, SFGI72 February 11, 2014 John M. Sommer, SFGI90 May 18, 2013 Gerald Buchen, SF72 July 31, 2013 Thomas D. Lyne, Class of 1946 May 20, 2008 Edward Paul Thomson, A80 October 10, 2013 Catherine Ann Caffrey, A69 February 12, 2014 Patrick Ramsey Magee, SF16 July 12, 2013 Judith S. White, Class of 1964 May 23, 2013 Richard B. Carter, Class of 1954 October 19, 2013 Stephen Mainella, Class of 1954 March 4, 2014 Cary Wilcomb, SF79 March 17, 1987 Lindsay Clendaniel, Class of 1944 March 10, 2014 Richard T. Mallon, Class of 1943 June 9, 2013 Peter Clogher, Class of 1947 June 28, 2013 John Mark Mason, A75 April 10, 2014 Norma Eleanor Williams, Class of 1967 March 19, 2014 Cornelia Corson-Reese, Class of 1957 August 9, 2013 Richard Matteson, Class of 1948 February 13, 2014 Paul G. Cree, Jr., Class of 1952 April 8, 2014 Wilbur Matz, Class of 1940 March 29, 2014 Cyril K. Crume, SF81 September 28, 2013 David McMorran, SF75 February 24, 2014 Ellen Nancy Davis, Class of 1960 July 15, 2013 Grace McNeley, SFGI75 July 25, 2013 Anna Dietz, AGI80 February 20, 2013 Harry Neumann, Class of 1952 March 31, 2014 of his friendship,” says Elizabeth Burlington (A08). To read remembrances about Robert Stewart, visit www.sjc.edu/ news-and-media Constance Weigle Mann (SF68) Everett Wilson, Class of 1956 October 22, 2013 Bernard E. Wolsky, AGI91 November 8, 2013 Kevin C. Young, A78 June 5, 2013 The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 57 �philanthropy The Philanthropy of Memory by Sus3an Borden (A87) James McClintock was a member of the Class of 1965 who excelled in mathematics. William O’Grady was a tutor with a strong commitment to helping students in times of need. Kitty Kinzer was a library director on the Annapolis campus who cared for the college community as much as she cared about its collection of books. Tom McDonald was a tutor who enthralled students with his enigmatic but brilliant analyses of poetry. All four were beloved while they lived and all share something in common after their deaths: Each was honored by a memorial endowment fund established by loved ones, contributed to by friends and family, and appropriate to preserve the memory of the way they lived. Endowment funds are perpetual; they serve as a solid foundation for the college, which spends about ﬁve percent annually on the purposes set out by those who establish each fund. The principal remains intact and can grow through market performance or additional gifts to the fund. For McClintock, who had won both the geometry and the analytical mathematics prizes as a student, the James R. McClintock (1965) Memorial Prize Fund was established to permanently endow the prize for analytical mathematics. For Kinzer, the Kitty Kinzer Library Fund was established to support all aspects of the library’s mission. For O’Grady, the William O’Grady Fund was established to continue his work helping students stay in school when ﬁnancial concerns put their continued attendance in jeopardy. And for Tom McDonald, a scholarship endowment established in his name means need-based aid for students who could not otherwise afford tuition. These are just four of more than 400 funds that make up the college’s endowment, and they are among the roughly 10 percent that are memorial funds. These funds serve both as tributes to the people they memorialize and a way for their survivors to channel their grief and ensure that a silver lining accompanies what is usually a very dark cloud. Dinesh and Jyotsna Pai chose to create such a fund when their daughter Anjali (SFGI08) died in a trafﬁc accident “Anjali believed in paying it forward. She felt that knowledge was to be shared, love was to be shared, affection was to be shared.” in March 2008, just a few months after she ﬁnished her studies at the Graduate Institute. Anjali was teaching in the AVID program with the Santa Fe Public Schools and preparing to move to Japan to teach English. Her parents decided that the fund should be used to support ﬁnancial aid for Graduate Institute students who plan to become teachers. Her mother explains the decision: “It’s not a profession that will make anybody rich, it’s a profession of the heart. And Anjali was all about heart.” Lisa Boughter Saporta also chose to create an endowment fund to honor her husband, Larry Saporta (A91), a professor of art history at Rosemont College in Pennsylvania. A few months after Larry’s death in September 2011, Bryan Dorland (A92) contacted her to suggest that they create an endowment fund in Larry’s memory. “I responded without hesitation that it was a great idea,” she recalls. “It was a concrete way to keep Larry’s spirit alive at an institution he cared deeply about. I knew it was 58 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 one of the things we could do for Larry that would be truly meaningful for him.” It turned out to be truly meaningful for Lisa as well, playing what she describes as a tremendous role in processing her grief. She decided that the fund would support scholarships for students who, like Larry, intend to pursue a PhD after graduating from St. John’s. After establishing the fund, Lisa created a website for it (www. lawrencelsaportaphd.org/memorial_ scholarship.php). The Pais have also found that establishing the fund has helped them in their sorrow. “Grieving is one thing, but keeping Anjali’s memory alive is even more important,” says Dinesh. Thanks to the permanence of endowment funds, every year, in perpetuity, one student in Annapolis will be named the Lawrence Saporta Scholar, and one student in Santa Fe will be named the Anjali Pai Scholar. Lisa hopes that future Saporta scholars will share Larry’s enthusiasm for St. John’s College and his love of learning: The Pais hope that Anjali’s values will be transmitted along with the scholarship that bears her name: “Anjali believed in paying it forward. She felt that knowledge was to be shared, love was to be shared, affection was to be shared.” �Lecture Fund in Memory of Lieutenant Commander Erik S. Kristensen (AGI00) Erik S. Kristensen (AGI00) June 28, 2005 An alumnus of the St. John’s College Graduate Institute in Liberal Education and the United States Naval Academy, Lieutenant Commander Erik S. Kristensen died on June 28, 2005, while he led a daring mission in Afghanistan to rescue a four-man SEAL reconnaissance squad engaged in a ﬁreﬁght with Taliban forces. LCDR Kristensen, seven other SEALs, and eight Army aviators were killed when their helicopter was shot down. Four soldiers fought courageously, though only one survived. The 2007 book and 2013 ﬁlm Lone Survivor tell the story. In 2013, Michael A. Zampella (A92), a Navy Reserve Lieutenant, founded a lecture series, jointly sponsored by St. John’s College and the U.S. Naval Academy, to be held annually at St. John’s in Annapolis to honor LCDR Class of 1963 Honors Curtis A. Wilson with Endowment Fund traditional for the 50th anniversary of a class to make some contribution to the college to mark our passage there,” note Class of 1963 alumni Robert Thomas and Miriam Duhan in a letter to their classmates. “One that everyone felt we could rally around would be some memorial or tribute to [Curtis], whom almost all of us knew and respected.” Curtis A. Wilson August 24, 2012 Tutor and dean, Annapolis Inspired by his many contributions to St. John’s, and to scholarship in the history of science, members of the Class of 1963 established a fund to honor the memory of Curtis Alan Wilson. Wilson was a world-renowned historian of astronomy who twice served as dean of St. John’s College in Annapolis. “It has been The endowment will provide funding for the prize awarded at Kristensen’s memory. Known for his great love of the arts and literature, Kristensen spoke French and was selected as an Olmsted Foundation Scholar. He planned to attend the Institute of Political Studies in Paris after his tour in Afghanistan. Kristensen is survived by his father, Edward K. Kristensen, RADM, USN (Ret.), and his mother, Suzanne Carrico Samsel Kristensen, of Washington, D.C. To make a gift to the Kristensen Lecture Fund, send a check to the college, or use the online giving form for the Annapolis campus at www.sjc.edu. (Select “other” and designate the Kristensen Lecture Fund.) Commencement to the student who carries out a ﬁne laboratory project. Members of the Class of 1963 thought offering the prize would recognize Wilson’s devotion to the college and his example of scholarship in the sciences. To read more about Curtis Wilson, visit www.sjc.edu/news/ memoriam-wilson.shtml. To make a gift to the Curtis Wilson Scholarship Fund, send a check to the college, or use the online giving form for the Annapolis campus at www.sjc.edu. (Select “other” and designate the Curtis Wilson Endowment Fund.) About the St. John’s College Endowments The college has three separate endowments that are composed of more than 400 individual funds: one that beneﬁts the Annapolis campus, one that beneﬁts the Santa Fe campus, and a common endowment that beneﬁts both. The total value of the funds as of June 30, 2013, was about $145 million. Managed by the Board’s Investment Committee, the endowment is invested in diversiﬁed products, from equities to bonds to real estate; some alternative and hedge fund investments are also included in the mix. For more information on the funds, please contact Barbara Goyette (A73) at barbara.goyette@sjc.edu in Annapolis and Victoria Mora at victoria.mora@sjc.edu in Santa Fe. Milestone Senior Gifts The 2014 senior classes in Annapolis and Santa Fe are each leaving behind recordhigh class gifts, thanks to their strong philanthropic spirit and support from college staff and alumni. The Class of 1984 offered a $2,014 tribute gift when senior classes from both campuses as a whole reached 84% participation. Board of Visitors and Governors member Claiborne Booker (A84) says, “When students both in Annapolis and Santa Fe said they wanted to raise money for student scholarships, [several of us from the Class of 1984] had a thought: What if we could do a little something in tribute to them, some of whom are, in fact, our progeny? At the very least, we share that ﬁnal digit ‘4’ with them, which means we’ll see them at Homecomings to come.” Annapolis seniors raised $13,792, which will be used to create the Class of 2014 Scholarship Endowment Fund. Santa Fe seniors raised more than $7,100 for ﬁnancial aid and scholarships. Although 100% participation has been reached before in Santa Fe (Class of 2002), this was the ﬁrst time that 100% participation was reached without a single caution deposit gift or pledge. Staff on both campuses also offered generous matching gifts. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 59 �alumni news s av e t h e d a t e Homecoming 2014 Annapolis September 12-14 Santa Fe September 19-21 Alumni Mentors Change Lives Annapolis Career Services Director Jaime Dunn with Hodson interns. Homecoming 2014 is gearing up to be a fantastic weekend for alumni. In addition to the annual Homecoming festivities— seminars, banquets, dancing, student/alumni networking events, and more—both campuses are commemorating special occasions this year that will make your return to St. John’s even more fun and memorable. Be a part of celebrating 200 years of the “Star-Spangled Banner” in Annapolis and 50 years of great books in Santa Fe! Please join us and your classmates as we celebrate and support St. John’s College. Online registration will open in early June. A special rate is offered to recent alumni. Reserve your lodging accommodations early. Sarah Palacios and Leo Pickens, directors of Alumni Relations For more information: http://alumni.stjohnscollege.edu. Click on “Homecoming” Annapolis Alumni Ofﬁce 410-626-2531 Annapolis.Alumni@sjc.edu Santa Fe Alumni Ofﬁce 505-984-6103 SantaFe.Alumni@sjc.edu 60 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 Many alumni who provide internships for St. John’s students ﬁnd the experience so rewarding that it becomes a lifelong mentorship opportunity. The Hodson Internship Program in Annapolis and the Ariel Internship Program in Santa Fe provide alumni with such opportunities. Each program offers stipends ranging from $2,000 to $4,000 and encourages students to gain practical experience while exploring potential career ﬁelds. Alumni-sponsored Ariel opportunities include working with Adam Braus (SF08) at his new computer entrepreneurial venture, 100State, in Madison, Wisconsin and establishing a self-sustaining community garden at Fresno State University with Christina Raines (A12). Thirty-seven Hodson Internship Program grants were awarded for summer 2014, the most in the Hodson program’s 14-year history; students accepted 31 of the awards. Hodson sites include the National Prison Project with the ACLU in Washington, D.C.; the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience in Philadelphia; the Hainan Provincial Cultural Heritage Research Association in China; and Center Stage in Baltimore. This summer, four Hodson interns will work with two alumnae: Dr. Rachel Dudik (A02) at the U.S. Naval Observatory and Elisabeth McClure (A08) at Georgetown University’s Department of Psychology in its Culture and Emotions lab. Dudik, who has hosted four Hodson interns over the last few years, and McClure, who has hosted three, still keep in touch with past interns. McClure meets every few weeks with Robert Malka (A15) via Skype to analyze data for the survey study he designed while in her lab; they are hoping to present the data as a conference poster sometime in the next year. McClure says that another former Hodson intern, Liyu Jiang (A12), stayed in her lab for nearly a full year as a volunteer before returning to China. “She remains the standard by which we judge research assistants,” says McClure. “We often say, ‘For this task, we would need a Liyu!’” TEXAS SUPPORTS SUMMER ACADEMY The Austin/San Antonio alumni chapter, in an initiative led by Kelly Bradford (SF79), Larry Davis (SFGI87), and Paul Martin (SF80), raised scholarship funds for six high school students from the East Central Independent School District to attend this year’s Summer Academy at St. John’s. The chapter also plans to present a complete 54-volume set of the Encyclopedia Britannica’s Great Books of the Western World to one or more underclassmen from the Austin/San Antonio area. Does your alumni chapter have a story to share? Please send your stories to: thecollegemagazine@sjc.edu �alumni news Alumni Association Board President Phelosha Collaros (SF00) Truth by the Glass “Alumni are passionate about making sure current students have advantages they didn’t have in the past by providing networking and mentorship opportunities. Alumni volunteers also beneﬁt by building their leadership and coaching skills, the ability to recruit for their organization or industry, and the satisfaction of helping someone achieve their goals.” Piraeus 2014 Piraeus is offered several times each year on each campus. In Santa Fe on August 3-8, Santa Fe tutors Jim Carey (Class of 1967) and Marsaura Shukla (A93) will lead ﬁve seminars on selected Greek and Roman Lives by Plutarch. Tuition: $575 for seminars; $250 for on-campus housing and meals. Recent alumni (graduates of the classes of 2003 and later) receive a 50% discount on tuition. Register online: https:// community.stjohnscollege.edu/ piraeus2014-august CROQUET GOES GREEN Kudos to the Annapolis Alumni Ofﬁce, the student Environmental Club, and Ted Canto, general manager of Bon Appétit Dining Services in Annapolis! They took the initiative to make the annual Croquet match an example of sustainability. “Our event sponsor, Waste Neutral, set up several recycle stations around the front campus,” says Canto. “By the end of the day, we recycled 4,000 pounds, about two tons, of products.” During Homecoming 2013 in Annapolis, Ruth A. Johnston (A85), Michael Berger (A78), and Jan Lisa Huttner (A73) signed copies of their recent publications. Berger’s Writing Well in School and Beyond and Thoreau’s Late Career and the Dispersion of Seeds; Huttner’s Penny’s Picks: 50 Movies by Women Filmmakers 2002-2011; and Johnston’s A Companion to Beowulf and Excavating English, are available at the Bookstore. GARY PIERPOINT HOMECOMING BOOK SIGNING “Red wine is in the realm of Apollo, white wine is in the realm of Dionysus,” says August Deimel (SF04) of Keuka Spring Vineyard, New York, one of several alumni winemakers at the second annual Judgment of Annapolis at In Vino Veritas on April 25. Representing wineries from California to New York, the event also featured former tutor Abe Schoener (A82) of The Scholium Project; Dan Speck (A96) and Paul Speck (A89) of Henry of Pelham; Christina Turley, daughter of Helen Turley, Class of 1967, and John Wetlaufer, Class of 1967, of Turley Wine Cellars; Rory Williams (A07) of Calder Wine Company; and Zach Rasmuson (A95) of Goldeneye. The group joined a discussion on “Transparency, Truth, and Terroir” and explored the virtue of various grapes, soils, and vines, as participants tasted their wines. “A good wine translates time and space,” says David White, founder and editor of the website, Terroirist.com; he moderated the discussion. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 61 �johnnie traditions History-Making Match by Gregory Shook For all its beloved nostalgia, the annual St. John’sU.S. Naval Academy Croquet Match on April 12 broke a few barriers this year: Navy walked off with the Annapolis Cup for the second year in a row. Spectators donned hats as large and colorful as parade ﬂoats. Leader of Togas “As I thought about competition and what it means at St. John’s, I became more concerned with making sure that everyone just has a good time,” says Imperial Wicket Sam Collins (A15) a junior from Fallsington, Pennsylvania. He admits that “it was “intense to play such a close match again this year.” Collins and Hector Mendoza (SF14) wowed the crowd with a comeback shot that won the only match in the Johnnies favor. Secret Weapon from Santa Fe Certain Johnnie traditions still reigned: alumni reunited with friends and faculty, alumni from the Class of 1984 and Class of 2009 hosted friends in courtside tents, the Freshmen Chorus sang a spirited rendition of “St. John’s Forever,” and the crowd of more than 4,000 spectators in festive attire—top hats, seersucker, feathers, and pearls— gathered for champagne picnics and swing dancing. Imperial Wicket and St. John’s junior Samuel Collins (A15) led the charge against Navy after the Johnnies revealed their uniforms: Greek togas. Bursting through the doors of Barr Buchanan, with mallets hoisted in the air, the Johnnies greeted the cheering crowd. “I wanted something that would make a statement,” says Collins. “The togas are a return to our roots.” For nearly eight hours, the Johnnies and Midshipmen jousted for the Annapolis Cup, the longest match since the rivalry ﬁrst began. As the sun set, the Johnnies lost 4-1, though conviviality won the day. Photos by Anyi Guo (A14) 62 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 “Let’s make history!” says Hector Mendoza (SF14), a senior from Tucson, Arizona, who ﬂew more than 1,600 miles to play with the St. John’s croquet team. He played an amazing game (he calls it “risky”) and helped win the ﬁrst match of the day. “During my junior year in Annapolis, I joined the team, along with this year’s Imperial Wicket Sam Collins (A15), and fell in love with the sport. I ﬂew in the night before, so I could help prepare the lawn on the morning of the match. Croquet is the best event at St. John’s.” �Know Thy Neighbor Navy Team Captain Midshipmen 1st Class Ryan Lluy and Imperial Wicket Sam Collins (A15) are comrades. “We played a match or two against each other last year, so we’re friendly,” says Collins. “He is a great competitor and a good guy.” Freshmen Have Spirit, Too! A newcomer to the team, Stephanie Hurn (A17) (left) from Darien, Connecticut, made the spirit-spot video for this year’s croquet match. “It was a really great collaboration and a lot of fun to make,” says Hurn. “We were a bit nervous because we were doing it a week before croquet, but we pulled it together.” Visit: www.youtube.com/ watch?v=QlcVVQKiBc8 Design Champion Daniela Lobo Dias (A13) was this year’s winner of the annual 2014 Croquet postcard/t-shirt design contest. “I wanted to include the platypus, the unofﬁcial mascot at the Annapolis campus, as its uniqueness and combination of many species suits St. John’s students quite well,” says Lobo Dias, who plans to attend the New York Film Academy this fall. Lt. Bobby Schmidt, 28th Company ofﬁcer, happily accepts a t-shirt gift. Navy’s Secret Weapon Surprise! Navy alumnus, Dr. Ed O’Loughlin from Hunt Valley, Maryland, has recently begun mentoring both the Navy and the St. John’s croquet teams. “St. John’s students are a phenomenal group of men and women who really get the idea of the sport—the style, tactics, and play,” says O’Laughlin, who invites the Johnnies several times a year to play at his home croquet court. “It’s been a wonderful thing to be involved with them.” Feminine Touch “Croquet is such a unique aspect of the St. John’s life,” says Catherine Moon (A14) a senior from Wolcott, Connecticut and one of three women on the team of twelve. “We just had a wonderful team dynamic this year. We’re all close friends and like doing things together outside of croquet.” Mallet Man Gary Dunkelberger, laboratory technician in Annapolis and this year’s Prime Mover (who has the honor of opening the game with the ﬁrst shot), handcrafts the St. John’s team’s mallets. “I built nine mallets last year and eight this year,” says Dunkelberger. “I give the students their choice of woods, weights, and sizes, although all of the handles are made of one wood (ash) and of a standard pattern. A couple of players provided wood from home, of familial/sentimental nature. Those who purchase them treat them as souvenirs of their St. John’s experience, as much as sporting implements.” The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 63 �st. john’s forever Simian Souls What are Annapolis tutors Peter Kalkavage, Eva Brann (H89), and Eric Salem (A77) telling us? “The occasion was the publication of our very ﬁrst Plato translation, the Sophist, in 1996 by Focus [Philosophical Library],” says Kalkavage. “We were supposed to do a ‘straight’ photo op by the [original] Liberty Tree, but decided to ham it up instead. There are three pictures, with each of us taking turns being one of the monkeys. Several years ago, I had them framed for us.” 64 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 The trio of tutors collaborated on translations of two of Plato’s other masterpieces, each of which was published by Focus Philosophical Library. In 2003, Brann, Kalkavage, and Salem translated Phaedo, the great dialogue of Socrates talking about death, dying, and the soul due to his impending execution. In 2012, they translated Plato’s Statesman, including an introduction, glossary of key terms, and essay. �eidos “I never had a plan to be a photographer. I am just an amateur. My punk friend in middle school was into ﬁlming skateboarding and encouraged me to get a ﬁlm camera because they were better cameras for less money. I liked the feel of ﬁlm and stuck with it. I learned from the books of Ansel Adams. I have photography to thank for nourishing my love of science and laboratories. I developed a deep connection with the darkroom at the college and actually cried pretty hard when I left it. I think its presence in my life is evident in my work—the strange loneliness I felt while reading those difﬁcult books, and the real struggle to seek after things beautiful . . . . I am a photographer rather than a painter or a sculptor because I love light and chemistry....Photographers are, at least in some way, operators of machinery. I think photographers push the boundaries of tools just like other artists. For a photographer like me, luck is a big part of the task: you cannot plan to stumble upon something odd or intriguing. Since reading War and Peace and some of the senior laboratory readings, I have come to appreciate things that are beyond my own control.” PHOTOS: From Etude for Freedom by Adam Maraschky (A13). He developed them in the college darkroom, then self-published the digital scans as a book. To raise funds, Maraschky “jumped on the Kickstarter bandwagon” and is “grateful to all those who donated to or encouraged the project and hope they ﬁnd joy in the images.” In the Annapolis Admissions ofﬁce, there is a copy of the book inscribed by Maraschky: “To the prospective students of St. John’s, may this book excite your imaginations about the College.” www.maraschkyphoto.com/ st-johns-college.html �Non-Proﬁt Org. U.S. Postage PAID Annapolis, md Permit N0. 120 Communications Ofﬁce 60 College Avenue Annapolis, MD 21401 ANYI GUO (A14) ad d r ess se rv i c e r e qu est e d � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The College (2001-2017) Description An account of the resource The St. John's College Communications Office published The College magazine for alumni. It began publication in 2001, continuing the St. John's Reporter, and ceased with the Fall 2017 issue. Click on <a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=56">Items in The College (2001-2017) Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, Md. Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context thecollege2001 Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 64 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Title A name given to the resource The College, Summer 2014 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2014 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf 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 Type The nature or genre of the resource text Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context The_College_Magazine_Summer_2014 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Description An account of the resource Volume 39, Issue 1 of the The College Magazine. Published in Summer 2014. The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/e01bf5bd1684cd2826bd3633922a00ff.pdf 7bc0efbba66f77cd5c863ff3aa67334d PDF Text Text WINTER 2015 • S T. J O H N ’ S ANNAPOLIS • S A N TA F E Miguel de Cervantes A Bold Vision �ii | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 �from the editor The College is published by St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD, and Santa Fe, NM thecollegemagazine@sjc.edu Known office of publication: Communications Office St. John’s College 60 College Avenue Annapolis, MD 21401 Periodicals postage paid at Annapolis, MD Postmaster: Send address changes to The College Magazine, Communications Office, St. John’s College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401. Editor Gregory Shook gregory.shook@sjc.edu Contributing Editor Gabe Gomez Contributors Laura Bartram (A15) Nutchapol Boonparlit (A14) Sus3an Borden (A87) Jacques Duvoisin (A80) Jaime Dunn Claudia Hauer Susan Kaplan Eunji Kim (A15) Jennifer Levin Paula Novash J. Walter Sterling (A93) Cem Turkoz (A16) Babak Zarin (A11) Design Skelton Design Contributing Designer Jennifer Behrens The College welcomes letters on issues of interest to readers. Letters can be sent via e-mail to the editor or mailed to the address above. Annapolis: 410-626-2539 Santa Fe: 505-984-6104 LEFT: INSIGHT FOTO, SANTA FE, NM Shared Ideals “�When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams — this may be madness. Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!” Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes’ (1547–1616) novel Don Quixote is among the most enduring contributions to the literary world for good reason. The tale’s idealistic yet flawed hero embodies shades of the very human elements that each of us see within ourselves. Furthermore, the story reminds us of our instinctual yearning to strive for something bigger, and greater, than us. Most of all, Don Quixote is beloved as a celebration of bold vision, spirit of adventure, and pursuit of virtue. This issue of The College magazine is devoted to the recognition of a vision fulfilled – the founding of the Santa Fe campus – now marking its 50th anniversary. More than 1,600 miles from where Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan realized an earlier vision for St. John’s by establishing the New Program, then-president Richard Weigle and a band of hopeful Santa Feans set out to expand the reach of St. John’s. “This new founding has brought aspects of our shared enterprise to the fore that might not have been quite so visible before,” notes Santa Fe tutor and Annapolis alumnus Jacques Duvoisin (A80). Santa Fe tutor Claudia Hauer brings the founding of the Santa Fe campus to life through an oral history project that captures the various “perspectives and tales that make up our story.” With more than an entire day’s worth of recorded interviews with former officers, tutors from the earliest years, and many others from the college’s community, the project casts light on “a triumph of one man’s will, a fellowship of new learning, and the start of a quixotic journey of self-definition for an institution that was not new in conception, but new to the world,” observes Hauer. As the stories in this issue attest, the Johnnie ecosystem contains many voices and viewpoints, but at its core, shared ideals. Warren Winiarski (Class of 1952) contributes his own visionary tale—to pursue his passion for great wine. Voices of current Johnnies are also heard, from destinations far and near. Eunji Kim (A15), whose journey begins in Korea, ruminates on her nearly four years at St. John’s and how the experience has shaped her ability “to examine questions and issues from infinite perspectives…” Laura Bartram (A15) travels to the western coast of Ireland, joined by a group of architecture students led by Washington, D.C.-based architect Travis Price (A71), to “architecturally reinterpret the myth and history of a remote culture.” As we reflect on the Santa Fe campus’ seminal moments, we also look to the horizon where the conversation continues. In this issue, we meet Johnnies who are making history and shaping the future in the fields of education, health, and medicine. Aided by the college’s Ariel Internship Program, Rachel Reid (SF14) breaks new ground in cancer research at California’s City of Hope, where she learned that “the days of the lone genius in the lab are gone.” Susan Vorkoper (SF04), a global researcher and policy analyst, discovers that collaboration, “partnership, and coalition-building between people,” is the secret to progress. In the classroom, James Myers (SF09) shares his passion for classical languages and great books with the next generation of visionaries. And Greg Toppo (SF85), the national education reporter for USA Today, explores how gaming and digital technology can make students smarter. On a final note, I wish to express my gratitude to Patricia Dempsey, director of Communications in Annapolis and editor of The College magazine, who recently left the college to establish a consulting practice. The pages of this publication for the past decade, as well as in this issue, reflect her affection for and dedication to the college and all that it represents. —GS The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 1 �w i n t e r 2 015 volume 40, issue 1 Quixote’s transition from his naiveté to his selfreferential and self-conscious anxiety creates an analogy for the Santa Fe campus’s progress, from its ardent youth to the more mature institution of today. —Claudia Hauer, tutor F E AT U R E S page 16�� p a ge 2 0�� page 28 Two Campuses. Many Viewpoints. Authors of Our Own Story Shaping the Future With a country between them, the college’s two distinctive campuses share a profound sameness — and celebrate a major milestone in Santa Fe. Through a collection of recordings and written contributions, voices from early faculty members, college friends and officers, among others illustrate the journey of Johnnie expansion out West. Three alumni lend their talents to make positive societal change, from examining gaming technology in education to impacting health research and policy to exploring the great books with the next generation of leaders. on the cover: Cervantes illustration by Scott McKowen 2 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 �JAMES KEGLEY D E PA R T M E N T S From Our Readers �� Bibliofile Alumni 4 34 �Tutor Peter Pesic explores the 36 � U � nder the Kudzu From the Bell Towers 6 W � estward Vision: Warren Winiarski (Class of 1952) 8 � Ariel Intern: Rachel Reid (SF14) 9 On Liberal Education 10 New Directors of Admissions 11 Future Johnnies 12 � For Learning’s Sake: Eunji Kim (A15) 13 � Born to Write: Nathaniel Goldman (A14) 14 � Continuing the Conversation � 15 �The Prison Project: Andy Blanco (A15) intersection of science and art in Music and the Making of Modern Science. 35 �Désirée Zamorano (SF83) sheds light on the Latina experience in her novel The Amado Women. �Deborah Achtenberg (A73) pairs ancient and modern philosophy in Essential Vulnerabilities: Plato and Levinas on Relations to the Other. Alumni Notes 39 �Profile: Gay Hall (AGI99) is a leader in military midwifery 43 � In Memoriam 46 � Philanthropy: Santa Fe 50th, Memorial Trees, Gift from the Elders, Gregory Riley (A93), and Hallie Leighton (SF92) 48 � Student Voices: Laura Bartram (A15) �Darrel Moellendorf (A83) brings a philosophical perspective to key global issues in The Moral Challenge of Dangerous Climate Change: Values, Poverty, and Policy. reflects on the spirit of place. 50 � Almuni News: Homecoming 2015 Johnnie Traditions 52 � St. John’s Forever Eidos 53 Eleanor Peters above: Susan Vorkoper (SF04), global health researcher and policy analyst for the Fogarty International Center at NIH, Bethesda, Md. The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 3 �from our readers Johnnie Women in Film In response to a notice in the summer 2014 issue of The College, these Johnnies share stories about their projects in the film industry. Carrie Mae Sharpless Newkirk Claudia (Probst) Stack (A88) is an educator and filmmaker whose previous film about historic African American schools, Under the Kudzu, won the 2012 Direc- tor’s Choice Award from the Cape Fear Independent Film Festival. Her newest film, Carrie Mae: An American Life, is the story of Carrie Mae Sharpless Newkirk, one of 15 children born into a sharecropping family in Duplin County, North Carolina, in 1923. After her father’s death when she was in high school, she thought her dream of becoming a teacher had died, too. However, with the help from her principal, she obtained a work scholarship to attend Kittrell College and went on to earn her degree from Elizabeth City State Teachers’ College. Stack has worked in freshmen programming and taught seminars for 17 years at the college level (Boston University and University of North Carolina, Wilmington). She is currently in her fourth year of teaching special education at D.C. Virgo Preparatory Academy, a Title 1 middle school in Wilmington, North Carolina. Jan Lisa Huttner (A73) is an internationally known film critic who has been working for more than a decade to help women filmmakers break through what she calls “the celluloid ceiling.” Jan Lisa Huttner (A73) 4 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 “Since I first started the WITASWA Project (Women in the Audience Supporting Women Artists Now) in 2004, there have been over 1,200 International SWAN Day events all around the world,” notes Huttner. “And these are just the ones we know about. We find out about more all the time.” Huttner is the author of Penny’s Picks: 50 Movies by Women Filmmakers 2002-2011. �from our readers Letters A Time for Tolstoy In the fall of 1976, during my junior year, Mr. Robert Bart led a preceptorial on Anna Karenina. The question of what I would be when I grew up weighed heavily on me that fall. My mother also had died a few weeks before the preceptorial began. As we read and discussed the novel, I found myself identifying deeply with the character Levin. His struggles with questions of meaning, identity, vocation, and love helped me to wrestle with my own questions. The story gave me hope that I would find a sense of purpose and vocation for my own life. Anna Karenina was the book I needed to read that season, and that preceptorial was the class I needed to be in. —Michael Ciba (A78) Young Doctors in Scrubs During the summer before senior year I worked as a uniformed security guard at various locations. One assignment was a hospital entry where my job consisted of telling people they couldn’t park there. I did my St. John’s summer reading to fill the time. Young doctors in scrubs would rush past me. One called out, ‘what are you reading there, War and Peace?’ I held it up since, of course, it was. —Alan McVay (SF76) Kudos from the Pacific Northwest Greetings from the Pacific Northwest! Kudos on a wonderful edition of The College magazine [Summer 2014]. Perhaps it’s having recently spent a week on the Santa Fe campus for my sixth consecutive summer Piraeus and having been an active member of the greater SJC community for 25 years now, but I got a lot of pleasure out of reading the current issue of The College from cover to cover. —Greg Rhoades (SFGI89) “�Where is the St. John’s College story told now, in ways that grip the heart and soul of a generation, a people, and a public audience, and that reach both popular media and educated elite; most of all, in ways that get to the aspiring, ambitious, thoughtful young person?” life magazine, February 5, 1940. The St. John’s Story I first learned about St. John’s from a LIFE magazine story that was written in 1940. I discovered it while scrounging through the musty basement of the Boston Public Library in Copley Square. It was a story with no age—and corny as it may sound, a story that rang as strong and true as a liberty bell. The story led me to apply (and just barely get accepted) to the Annapolis campus, where I managed to make it through four exhilarating years with a tight, tough graduating class of more than 40 students. Where is the St. John’s College story told now, in ways that grip the heart and soul of a generation, a people, and a public audience, and that reach both popular media and educated elite; most of all, in ways that get to the aspiring, ambitious, thoughtful young person? —John Dean (A70) Future Reading After St. John’s, I aimed to show that our liberal education could lead to the advancement of modern knowledge. I could see that hopes for an “American renaissance in higher education” were disappointed. Experience in the armed forces and travel abroad convinced me that the work that needed doing and that was within my power was to make an intellectual contribution to peace. I discovered the old-world federalist movement, which aimed to replace the international anarchy with the rule of world law. I determined to write a history of it. But first I had to meet the challenge of Aristotle’s dictum that poetry is more philosophical than history (Poetics, 9:1451b5-7). Now, only particulars actually exist; Joseph Baratta (A69) genera are abstract classes. Soon I discovered Common Cause, the old journal of the University of Chicago’s Committee to Frame a World Constitution, which was the perfect place for a Johnnie to begin. I delved deep into the drafting of the Charter of the United Nations, the representation of diverse humanity, the powers to establish universal justice. I picked a universal theme and aimed to write a great book that would still be readable in a hundred years, The Politics of World Federation. —Joseph Preston Baratta (A69) Homecoming 2014 set record attendance at both Annapolis and Santa Fe. The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 5 �Westward Vision Warren Winiarski (Class of 1952) is the founder of Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars and known internationally for producing the Cabernet Sauvignon that bested the finest French wines at the historic “Judgment of Paris” wine-tasting in 1976. That win brought global attention to the Napa Valley and California wines. He went on to craft consistently high-quality wines throughout his long career as a vintner. In 1964 Winiarski was at the University of Chicago, teaching in the Basic Program of the University College and studying with the Committee on Social Thought, when he decided to move to California with his wife and young children to pursue his passion for wine. His close allegiance to St. John’s leads him to enjoy the synchronicity of his heading west the same year the college’s western campus opened. In a recent interview, Winiarski looked back at this bold move, his work as a vintner, and the role that vision has played in his life. What made you want to become a vintner and a wine grower? I’ve always been interested in growing plants. I was in charge of growing food during the Second World War in my family’s victory garden. Later I took summer jobs as a gardening assistant and became interested in growing things in a horticultural way. It’s not agriculture because ‘agri’ means field and field crops are treated differently than horticultural crops. ‘Hortus’ means garden. In a garden you treat plants as individuals. No one singles out a cornstalk for special attention. But you have to grow horticultural plants individually. There is also the fact that my name, Winiarski, is derived from the word for wine. It means a winemaker’s son. And my father did make wine. During Prohibition a head of a household could legally make up to 200 gallons of wine annually for family purposes. I remember hearing the fermentation in the barrels he used, hearing the bubbling of this wonderful mysterious thing. Later I spent time doing graduate studies in Italy, where wine was more than a ceremonial and a celebratory beverage. I was introduced to the practice of a glass of wine to accompany a meal, but that was forgotten when I returned to the Midwest and its sober ways. One day a friend brought a bottle of wine for lunch and it all came back with a rush — all the pleasure that wine could bring to a meal — it was an epiphany. Wine revealed itself as something very special and I began to read about it, talk to people about different kinds of wine and how they got to be the way they were. What enabled you, a new father with a family to support, to decide to pursue this career? It dawned on me that a way of life could be built around this interest and my family could be engaged in growing grapes and making wine. I found a place in a two-man winery in Napa, about the size that I hoped to have someday. I was the number two man, which gave me the opportunity to go through the winemaking cycle from grape growing to wine bottling. My wife Barbara (Class of 1955) also wanted a rural way of life. It had risk but 6 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 it appeared to offer a fulfilling life. It was going to take full dedication to make it work. At some point she said that she felt we were going over Niagara Falls in a barrel; there was no turning back. What was your vision for yourself as a vintner at the time you made this decision? In my mind I had a model from Philip Wagner, an editor of the Baltimore Sun. He had a small winery in the outskirts of Baltimore where he produced charming wines. He had written a book called American Wines and How to Make Them, which was a powerful influence on my thinking. He wrote about the inwardness of winemaking, the human element as much as technical things. His writing was part of a transformation in my own heart. At what point did you decide to work your own vineyard? While I was working as an apprentice I purchased a small piece of land where I put in about four acres of grapes. My grafting process was not successful, and it had to be done over because I wasn’t giving the root stock adequate water. But �I learned from that effort, and in 1970 I planted a second vineyard on land that had been used as a prune orchard for 40 years and it was very successful. In 1973 we had our first commercial crop. That was the wine that went to Paris in 1976 and was preferred over some of the greatest wines in Bordeaux in a blind tasting by French experts. A bottle of that wine is now in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution and was chosen by the Smithsonian magazine as one of “101 objects that made America.” It fulfilled a prophecy made by Thomas Jefferson about 200 years before when he said that American wines would be different from those of Europe but “doubtless as good.” The moral of that story: never underestimate what you can do with a prune orchard when you have a vision. What role did your St. John’s education play in your work as a winemaker? I want to express my indebtedness and my gratitude to that education because it was through the St. John’s method of inviting learning by questioning and by the close following of the reasoning embedded in the works that we studied that I developed the skills I applied to learning grape growing and winemaking. I called it “Books and Balances in the vineyard and winery.” “�Grapes die but wine emerges; LEGACY OF having the skills to guide WINEMAKING it appropriately is critical. Like a great book, there is truth in That is all determined by a great wine. The fifth annual In Vino Veritas, held February 27-28 at the Annapwinemaker’s vision: will it olis campus, celebrates alumni vintners be an epic or a short story and a legacy of the finest American winemaking. The fundraiser features or a poem?” special guest Warren Winiarski (Class of 1952), founder of Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars. Winiarski has influenced generations of winemakers, especially St. John’s alumni who learned their craft under his tutelage. The event also features renowned Napa winemakers Larry Turley (SF69), founder of Turley Wine Cellars; Abe Schoener (A82), founder of The Scholium Project; Zach Rasmuson (A95), chief operating officer of Duckhorn Wine Company; and Rory Williams (A07), founder of Calder Wine Company. For more information, visit invinoveritasannapolis.com. What is the role of vision in winemaking? Wine is made from grapes, but grapes are only the material. What wine becomes is guided by a vision of what it should be. How you plant, when you harvest, and what you do to the grapes — each step in the process of the wine’s coming to be is guided by the vision of what you want it to become. You must know at a high degree of detail what the natural process is, what the dangers are, where to intervene and where to stay out. Grapes die but wine emerges; having the skills to guide it appropriately is critical. That is all determined by a winemaker’s vision. — Sus3an Borden (A87) The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 7 �from the bell towers 2014-2015 NEW BOARD MEMBERS The Board of Visitors and Governors welcomes these new members: Bryan Dorland (A92), a former Marine, was an intern at the Naval Research Laboratory’s Space Science Division while attending St. John’s. He received his MSc and PhD in physics from the University of Maryland. In 2001, he joined the Astrometry Department at the U.S. Naval Observatory to work on astronomical satellites; he is now the head of the department. In 2012, he was awarded the Alumni Award of Merit to recognize his professional accomplishments and work in support of St. John’s and its students. Ariel Intern Makes History in Cancer Research Rachel Reid (SF14) spent last summer in a lab at the City of Hope Cancer Research Center in Duarte, California, researching the effects of PP2A activation on Acute Myelogenous Leukemia (AML) cells. She received an Ariel Internship, a funded opportunity to explore a possible career choice. Stephen Forman (A70), the Francis and Kathleen McNamara Distinguished Chair in Hematology and Hematopoetic Cell Transplantation at City of Hope, facilitates biomedical internships for Johnnies and spent time with Reid describing his own transition from St. John’s to medical school. “I learned that the days of the lone genius in the lab are gone,” says Reid. “Modern science is largely a collaborative exercise, and St. John’s provides a great background in learning and inquiring with other people.” Under the direction of mentor Dr. Amy Cook, Reid began by reading research on the PP2A gene, which she likens to translating ancient Greek. At first, she says, it was “about as excruciatingly slow as translating the first few pages of the Meno. But the more I read, the faster I became. I looked up each unfamiliar word and built my scientific vocabulary slowly.” Rachel Reid (SF 14) Next she ran assays to test which cellular pathways a PP2A activator, FTY720, worked through. PP2A is the gene that controls cell growth and proliferation. Up to 70 percent of AML cases show evidence of PP2A hyper-phosphorylation, “a fancy way of saying that the gene is underexpressed in cancer cells,” says Reid. “This is bad, because the role of PP2A is to ensure that cell growth does not get out of hand, which would certainly be useful as a way to control or prevent cancer.” Dr. Cook, Reid’s mentor, had been having some success in treating cancer cells in vitro with FTY720. The task Reid took up was to further the understanding of exactly how FTY720 was able to inhibit the growth of cancer cells. The two main assays she conducted were Quantitative Real Time Polymerase Chain Reactions (rt qPCRZ) and Western Blots. “What this boils down to is that I did a lot of moving very small amounts of liquids into different tubes and then cooking them,” says Reid. “Toward the end of my internship I was able to prove that FTY720 can affect an oncogene cluster to the GSK36 pathway – and I was the first person in the history of the human race to know that.” —Jennifer Levin 8 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 John L. Gray (EC12) was named the director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in May 2012. Previously, he was the founding president of the Autry National Center of the American West and created the Institute for the Study of the American West. During his prior career in commercial banking, he served as executive vice president of First Interstate Bank of California in Los Angeles (1987-1996). He is a member of the Presidents’ Council. Wilfred M. (Bill) McClay (A73) is the G.T. and Libby Blankenship Chair in the History of Liberty and director of the Center for the History of Liberty at the University of Oklahoma. An award-winning author, he has taught at numerous universities and served on the National Council on the Humanities (2002-2008). He and his wife, Julie Holt McClay, are members of the Presidents’ Council and the parents of two alumni, Barbara (A12) and Mark (A09). Joshua Rogers (A98) founded Arete Wealth Management, LLC in 2007 and currently serves as the CEO, president, and wealth advisor. Previously, he spent eight years at American Express Financial Advisors/Ameriprise Financial, ultimately serving as field vice president in the Chicago market group. As an entrepreneur with Walker Digital, he was a co-inventor of a number of patents, including the “name your own price” e-commerce concept, which today is the backbone of Priceline.com. He serves on various literary, art, and business boards in Chicago. �from the bell towers Preserving Our Socratic Inheritance In honor of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Santa Fe campus, St. John’s hosted a national conference on liberal education in October. More than two years in the making, emanating from concerns of the college’s faculty regarding questions central to today’s debates around higher education, the event on the Santa Fe campus was at once substantive and celebratory—and noteworthy to a wide audience. We hosted more than 200 participants, including over 70 paper presenters. Under the rubric “What is Liberal Education For?” the St. John’s way was often thematic: tutor David Levine (Class of 1967) and Annapolis President Chris Nelson (SF70) addressed the purposes of the Program; tutors Eva Brann (H89) and Peter Pesic explored the “immediacy” and “wonder” that animate what we do; tutors Chester Burke (A74) and Cary Stickney (A75) chaired a roundtable discussion exemplifying our study of “scientific” texts by discussing a selection from Maxwell. What was most visible from the outside was the permanent (and presently acute) debate regarding whether the liberal arts stand as ends in themselves or whether they must serve the practical and political ends of career and citizenship—and whether this question has a different character now than it has before. There were speakers from Zaytuna College and Dharma Realm Buddhist University – the first Islamic liberal arts college in America and a Buddhist great books college, respectively – who have looked to St. John’s for inspiration and who renew the courageous spirit of “founders” so characteristic of what brought our Program into existence. Dean GAN Yang of Boya College (the flagship experiment Many participants commented on what we at St. John’s take for granted: the unafraid, unapologetic, and direct questions of our students—that great Socratic inheritance that our college has passed on to every generation of Johnnies. part of the antidote to the creeping invasion of attention-stealing marketing and proliferating screens. Many participants commented on what we at St. John’s take for granted: the unafraid, unapologetic, and direct questions of our students— that great Socratic inheritance that our college has passed on to every generation of Johnnies. Many academics reminded us that St. John’s is still looked to as a model of what they try to do in their home institutions. At the same time, many legitimate challenges were raised to the complacency, self-regard, or homeostasis of the liberal arts. In hindsight it seems to me that the tacit thesis of the conference was that liberal education is for the sake of our humanity. The common thread was a defense of humanism, in a broad and contested, but rigorous, sense. This connected the talks of all our featured speakers and many if not all of the panels. It is through liberal education, in all its dimensions, that we become and preserve what we are. The conference confirmed that, after 50 years in Santa Fe and 77 in Annapolis, the St. John’s Program remains one of the most important living examples of the uncompromising pursuit of the true ends of a liberal education. There could be no better reason to celebrate our past and our bright future. —J. Walter Sterling (A93), tutor in a western-style liberal arts education in China today, anchored in the reading of great books of the East and West) reminded us that we in the West must excel not just for ourselves but in order to support the future of liberal education in China. Matthew Crawford, author of Shop Class as Soulcraft, argued eloquently that philosophy’s present imperative to keep us close to a world of real things will be An archive of the conference schedule, video-recorded sessions, and articles on the conference can be found at www.sjc.edu/ programs-and-events/santa-fe/50th-anniversary-conference. The college is preparing an audio archive and digital archive of nearly all the papers delivered. The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 9 �from the bell towers A Conversation with New Directors of Admissions St. John’s welcomes two new admissions directors: Thomas Weede, who is serving as interim director in Annapolis, and Yvette Sobky Shaffer in Santa Fe. Weede has served at several liberal arts schools, including Carroll College, Warren Wilson College, Iona College, and Butler University. Shaffer was dean of Admissions and Financial Aid at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles. They share their thoughts on admissions marketing and how alumni can support their efforts. What skills and qualities does a college admissions director need? What is most on the minds of prospective students? YS: They are terrified of the college search process. Some of the top schools only accept 4 percent of applications, and students are urged to write their college essays earlier. For this high-pressure decision, they seek professional guidance from counselors. Students often ask how to make that transition from high school student to adult. We shouldn’t discount those very human, very necessary growth opportunities. How does the admissions staff reach prospective students? TW: We make sure that our website is current, with new [elements] that entice people to visit. Direct mail and advertising on the internet are other ways. And we visit schools. doctors, lawyers, scientists, and entrepreneurs St. John’s has produced. This is a very relevant education, and our alumni outcomes are amazing. We should share that with the world. How has the Summer Academy impacted enrollment? YS: It has been hugely influential. Our classroom methods are transformational for some of these students, who are especially surprised by the math and science components. Many students who weren’t considering St. John’s changed their minds after attending the Summer Academy. About 25 percent of its participants become St. John’s students, but the 75 percent who didn’t go to the Summer Academy also speak lovingly about their time here. TW: Be open to new ideas and to what data suggests, but not ignorant about what your gut tells you. The best schools compete for the best students, embracing marketing to build their brand. This new language for higher education is used at every level, from top colleges to community colleges. YS: In the last 10 to 15 years, schools have more marketing savvy. The internet has changed the “gate keeper” admissions model in which students apply to an administrator processing papers. You have to keep up with what is happening in the private sector, too, because the most successful schools are doing so. How is St. John’s addressing those changes? YS: The new website is a big step, optimizing search engines to help students find St. John’s College. That is really important. St. John’s should own that we are the great books school, and our website is a key component. Marketing is not about changing St. John’s. It’s about being authentic and finding the people who are interested in who we are and what we have to offer. TW: Admissions has always been about relationships, and we encourage our admissions teams to get to know the students and to be trusted advisors. Through discussion, we draw an accurate picture of the institution and the staff helps to end [possible] misperceptions. It’s a tried and true St. John’s way. YS: Word of mouth really helps. Our amazing alumni base speaks highly of their education. I’m delighted by the One Alum|One Referral program. That kind of personal attention from alumni is key to leading students to the college. How else can alumni support Admissions efforts? TW: The most important way is by helping the right students find out about St. John’s. Alumni can call or meet with students, usually after acceptance, to talk about their St. John’s experience and life after St. John’s. We are always looking for volunteers to help with college fairs. YS: Every time you give a lecture or talk to business contacts, mention your alma mater. People are shocked at how many 10 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 Yvette Sobky Shaffer and Thomas Weede, directors of Admissions How would you describe the student who belongs at St. John’s? TW: Most importantly, someone decides that he or she belongs. Our students come from all over, with different backgrounds and beliefs. There is little to stereotype, so it’s difficult to target a specific kind of student. Our alumni play an important role in finding new students who have a passion for reading and asking questions. Alumni can tap them on the shoulder and say that there is a place where you can have these discussions, and you’re going to love every minute of it. —Interview by Gregory Shook �from the bell towers ALUMNI AMBASSADORS: RECRUITING FUTURE JOHNNIES Alumni in all career fields are encouraged to talk about St. John’s to college-bound students. Mentors are adults with whom “young people have an affinity or connection,” says James Mikkelson (SFGI86), an English teacher at the Shanghai American School in China, where he has worked for the last 10 years. Students “want to hear when someone thinks a school would be right for them.” One Alum|One Referral is a new program that helps alumni connect relatives, family friends, or anyone they think will thrive at St. John’s with the college’s admissions offices. James Mikkelson (SFGI86) “�When I see intelligent students who want to read outside the curriculum, I suggest they look into St. John’s. These students are sincere in their efforts to get the most out of their education, [and] willing to take risks orally and verbally to get that education.” Word of mouth is also a valuable resource for the college’s admissions efforts. “When I see intelligent students who want to read outside the curriculum, I suggest they look into St. John’s,” says Mikkelson. “These students are sincere in their efforts to get the most out of their education, [and] willing to take risks orally and verbally to get that education.” Mikkelson, who keeps a St. John’s poster on his classroom door, emphasizes how crucial the liberal arts are. One of his first students, Dohee Kang (SF14), was a member of the Socratic Club that Mikkelson founded at the Shanghai American School; they read and discussed Plato’s Republic. “People in my high school were really competitive, trying to get into prestigious universities,” says Kang. “Everything was geared toward résumés, and I wanted something different.” Kang had to convince her parents that St. John’s was right for her. “I got into the University of Chicago, where they wanted me to go,” she says. “Mr. Mikkelson helped give me the courage to make my own decision.” After graduating from St. John’s, Kang attended the college’s Summer Film Institute in Santa Fe and is now earning her master’s in Eastern Classics at the Graduate Institute. Cynthia Ma (SF16) attended the Shanghai American School but was not in Mikkelson’s class. Her guidance counselor suggested that she talk to Mikkelson about choosing a college. They wound up reading Crime and Punishment together. “I was really nervous about coming to St. John’s,” says Ma. “But Mr. Mikkelson made me feel comfortable with the learning style. Talking to St. John’s alumni, I got an accurate picture of what [my experience] would be like.” ONE ALUM | ONE REFERRAL www.sjc.edu/1alum1referral Do you know a student who belongs at St. John’s? Alumni referrals are one of the most effective sources for prospective applicants. The Alumni Association is calling upon all Johnnies to refer promising high school students to the admissions offices through the One Alum| One Referral campaign. It’s not too late to refer applicants for the 2015 admissions cycle. Participate today and help the college discover the next generation of Johnnies. For more information about the One Alum|One Referral program: www.sjc.edu/alumni/1alum1referral —Jennifer Levin The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 11 �from the bell towers Learning for Learning’s Sake During the past three years as a St. John’s student in Annapolis, I have visited most of the monuments in Washington, D.C. In the fall of my senior year, I finally had the opportunity to visit the Supreme Court during a field trip arranged by the Career Services Office, with more than a dozen Johnnies. Stepping into the U.S. Supreme Court’s Great Hall, I was surprised by the vast, empty space, wondering if the Supreme Court of Korea looked the same. I kept thinking back to Korea and my decision to withdraw from the university there to come to St. John’s. Leading us into a courtroom that was much smaller than I had imagined, our guide explained that people sometimes camp outside in order to claim a seat for important cases. I was shocked; I could not imagine people camping outside the Supreme Court of Korea. The guide said that justices have already read the case documents, so they ask the lawyers questions during the oral argument. Then the justices meet privately to discuss the case. This process reminds me of seminar at St. John’s; we each bring our own thoughts and opinions to the table and work together to get closer to the truth and gain a deeper understanding of important questions. The judicial process implies a certain trust that rightful decisions will be made, based on the facts of a case, the arguments of the lawyers, and the wisdom of the justices. We at St. John’s have the freedom to examine questions and issues from infinite perspectives, whereas justices must make decisions within a given time frame. Whether in court or in seminar, we trust human reason and our capacity to work together. When I studied U.S. and international law at my university in Korea, I learned about famous Supreme Court cases, but it was through my experience at St. John’s that I was able to think about the cases ANYI GUO (A14) By Eunji Kim (A15) Whether in court or in seminar, we trust human reason and our capacity to work together. beyond their summaries. I look forward to reading actual cases and opinions during my final semester; I can sense how much deeper understanding I will have. At my previous university, I memorized facts for exams—and then forgot most of them. I questioned what I was actually learning. In Korea, many students study for the sole purpose of doing well on tests, in order to get into a good college, where the focus shifts to boosting their résumés to land a good job. Consequently, education becomes less about learning and more about competition. At St. John’s, classes are a collaborative environment where we learn together. It’s not about efficiency; discussion is part of the learning process. We are willing to take “wrong turns” because sometimes that is how we get further along the path of considering the question at hand. 12 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 While watching tutors lead classes, I’ve learned to value patience and listen to every voice. Each of us brings something unique to the table. Our classes have shown me a way in which education can happen without being about rankings. Everyone contributes and everyone wins. As someone interested in working in the education field, I can recall my experience at St. John’s to figure out what education should be like. What I read and learn here becomes part of me, remaining with me in a way that memorized facts do not. I have gotten what I expected and more from my St. John’s experience. I have confronted texts that I would never have encountered on my own. The curriculum has a richness that you don’t get anywhere else. It can be subtle, but it has changed how I view myself and the world. Senior year speaks well to this transition. It has made me question what I know and be open to a larger world of possibilities. Looking at what I’m reading this year, I realize how different it would be if I had read it as a freshman. It makes me want to reread everything from freshman year. I have grown and learned so much at St. John’s and I am very thankful. �from the bell towers p a t h way s “�I plan to pursue a career as a professor of literature and WRITING FROM creative writing. This path THE START will allow me to write, to Nathaniel Goldman’s (A14) fascination with continue to question what writing fiction began around the time he learned to walk. “Reading and writing ficit means to write and why it tion was always a big part of my childhood,” says Goldman. By high school, he was ready matters, and to cultivate new to attend the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio, voices and join with them in where he was exposed to a breadth of literary works and developed an affinity for studying great voices of the science fiction. He also wrote flash fiction, past and present.” penning a 50,000-word story in a month. ANYI GUO (A14) Now he realizes that he prefers writing short, complete works instead of novels. Nathaniel Goldman (A14) At St. John’s, Goldman was co-editor of The Gadfly and Energeia, edited the admissions blog “Johnnie Talk,” and assisted students with their essays. “It was interesting, as I had mostly written fiction before I came here,” says Goldman. “I hadn’t done a lot of journalistic, essay, or expository writing outside of class. The first thing I wrote [at St. John’s] was a profile of Ms. Kraus during her first year as dean.” In 2013, he received a Pathways Fellowship to attend the Yale Writers’ Conference in New Haven; the summer program’s workshops covered general fiction and short fiction. In 2014, Goldman developed his portfolio at the Tin House writers’ work- shop at Reed College. During his “Choosing St. John’s” speech for the Caritas Society, Goldman said, “I plan to pursue a career as a professor of literature and creative writing. This path will allow me to write, to continue to question what it means to write and why it matters, and to cultivate new voices and join with them in studying great voices of the past and present.” Currently based in Madison, Wisconsin, Goldman is a technical writer for Epic, an electronic medical record company, and continues to write fiction. —Nutchapol Boonparlit (A14) Princeton in Africa On October 23, at its annual gala in New York City, Princeton in Africa presented The Princeton in Africa Medal to Paul Tierney, his wife, Susan, and their children, Michael, Trish, and Matt. Tierney is a former member of the St. John’s College Board of Visitors and Governors, who serves on the Presidents’ Council. The family received the award for their volunteer and philanthropic work encouraging innovative, sustainable solutions across Africa, their expansion of opportunities for African women, and their company’s efforts to bring investment funding and much-needed attention to companies and communities in sub-Saharan Africa. Princeton in Africa is an independent nonprofit organization based in Princeton, New Jersey, which develops young leaders committed to Africa’s advancement. Since its founding in 1999, Princeton in Africa has sent nearly 400 Fellows to 35 countries to support dozens of inspiring host organizations. “Each of the Tierneys spent a formative period of time in Africa or Latin America and demonstrates how a year of service as a young adult, such as the fellowships offered by Princeton in Africa, can be life-changing,” said Jim Robinson, president of the Princeton in Africa Board of Directors and father of a former Princeton in Africa Fellow. “We are honored to be able to recognize the Tierneys’ individual achievements and their remarkable commitment as a family to Africa.” The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 13 �from the bell towers Virtually Socratic Johnnies yearning to gather around the seminar table for good conversation may look no further than their computers, tablets, or smart phones. The Graduate Institute Leadership Series, an initiative launched in January 2013 by Associate Deans Jeff Black and David Carl, Santa Fe tutor Lise van Boxel, and former Marine Brian Wilson (AGI13), is one of the latest offerings for engaging online dialogue. St. John’s tutors and graduate students with active military experience host two-hour seminars online (and in person) on classic works of military history, as well as leadership and persuasion. Primarily aimed at active-duty military service members and alumni with a military background, seminar readings have included Plutarch’s Life of Lycurgus, the “Melian Dialogue” from Thucydides’s The History of the Peloponnesian War, and Sophocles’s Ajax, among others. Black and van Boxel have co-led several seminars, including Machiavelli’s The Prince and Book I of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia. Wilson, who describes his previous academic background at the U.S. Naval SANTA FE WELCOMES MARGARET MERTZ (SF83) BACK TO CAMPUS The Santa Fe campus has welcomed Margaret Mertz (SF83) as its new director of Development. Before taking this position, Mertz served as the associate dean for Research, Technology, and Administrative Affairs in the College of Fine Arts at the University of Florida. She also held the positions of executive director of the Thomas S. Kenan Institute of the Arts, and dean of the Division of General Studies at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. Earlier in her career, Mertz held many teaching and administrative posts at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, the United World College of the American West (UWC-USA), and New Mexico Highlands University. Mertz recently stepped down as chair of the Board of Directors for South Arts, the regional arts organization serving the nine southern states of Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. She received her bachelor’s Academy as “an English major trapped in a mechanical engineer’s body,” says that having military and civilian alumni participants “helps shape the conversation. The seminars really speak to young leaders.” A group of entrepreneurial young alumni based in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. are also contributing to the online revolution. Adam Braus (SF08), along with Micah Davis (SF10) and Zhenya Ogorodova (SF08), share their love of great books and conversation through Conversera.com, their new online learning company. Braus describes it as “the next step in a tradition that goes back to Stringfellow Barr and Mortimer Adler.” The curriculum includes seminars on a variety of short stories, science, degree from St. John’s in Santa Fe, and her master’s and doctoral degrees in music from Harvard University. “I am thrilled to be ‘coming home’ to St. John’s College and Santa Fe. This opportunity to work on behalf of the college is the fulfillment of a lifelong dream,” says Mertz. “I believe deeply in the St. John’s Program and the students and faculty who embody its extraordinary vision and relevance.” — Susan Kaplan ANNAPOLIS WELCOMES NEW DIRECTOR IN ADVANCEMENT Ellen Wise joins the Annapolis advancement staff as director of Major and Planned Gifts with more than 15 years of advancement experience. She previously served as director of Development for the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Delaware and as director of Individual Giving for Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland. She earned a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth 14 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 and novellas. Many of the seminar facilitators are Johnnies – Elaine Bomford (SF79), Aric Doak (SF08), Steven Ellerd (AGI13), and Alexander Kast (A06) – who take joy in introducing other lifelong students to the St. John’s approach to understanding the classics. “We do not see ourselves as competition for St. John’s but rather a complementary service,” notes Braus. “We hope that people who can’t come to St. John’s can use Conversera to get a similar experience.” Alumni everywhere can also continue the conversation through the St. John’s All Alumni Virtual Chapter. Since October 2013, alumni and tutors have met online on the first Sunday of each month for 90-minute seminars on great works drawn from the college’s curriculum and beyond. Recent seminars have included the first two books of the Iliad, Plato’s Meno, and Aristophanes’s The Clouds, among others. To see upcoming Virtual Chapter seminar offerings, visit bit.ly/1ySc6fs. —Gregory Shook Read more about the St. John’s College Graduate Institute Leadership Series at www.facebook.com/SJCLeadershipSegment. University and an MA in English literature from Washington College. Wise describes herself as “the world’s oldest emerging poet,” due to her late start as a writer and the slow pace of her work. In 2002 five of her poems were set to music by American contemporary composer Adolphus Hailstork. The resulting song cycle has been performed in the United States and abroad; she was in attendance at a particularly memorable performance in Auvillar, France. Wise’s poems have been published in numerous small journals and online. She is the recipient of a Maryland Arts Council Individual Artist Award and a Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation Creative Fellowship, and she serves on the board of Perugia Press, a prize-winning publisher of emerging women poets. Wise and her husband Fred are avid sailors who live on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Wise says she is looking forward to meeting with alumni and friends of St. John’s, but has a lot to learn before she begins visiting donors. “I’ll be spending the first six weeks with the college immersing myself in what I now know is ‘Johnnie culture,’ ” she says. “I’ve worked for many years in higher education, but the experience that St. John’s alumni share is completely different from anything I’ve seen before.” �from the bell towers A National Prison Project Internship Sheds Light on Law Andy Blanco (A15) finished reading a letter from a prisoner in Arizona about inmates who got into trouble because they did CPR on another inmate who was having a heart attack while the guards were just watching. This letter was one of hundreds waiting for him on his desk last summer when he interned for the National Prison Project in Washington, D.C. “It was a state-wide case, where we were assisting all the prisoners in Arizona to sue the Arizona prison system over conditions,” says Blanco. “One of my jobs was to read all the prisoner mail that came in from Andy Blanco (A15) “�In this job, you can actually change how the law works in this country. All the cases are huge cases. The Arizona case will affect every prisoner in Arizona, and everybody who goes to prison in Arizona forever.” Arizona.” With 30,000 people in Arizona prisons, “that’s obviously a lot of mail.” Having dealt with murder cases during his previous internship at a criminal law office, Blanco knew that his Hodson internship at the Prison Project would not be easy. But he was shocked by the brutality of some aspects of prison life. He had to learn to respond to these letters and to pick prisoners who might be good witnesses. “At least the office environment was very positive and stress free,” he says. “It helped me deal with all the difficult subject matter, and reminded me that the work was meaningful.” Until Blanco heard about the Prison Project, working with prisons had never crossed his mind. He was planning to apply to law school. When he read an article in the Gadfly about Margaret Winter (Class of 1966), the associate director of the Prison Project, he realized that he wanted “to do something related to criminal defense or civil rights. I don’t want to be a prosecutor. I want to be the kind of lawyer that helps people.” Blanco finds it exciting that in this job, “you can actually change how the law works in this country. All the cases are huge cases. The Arizona case will affect every prisoner in Arizona, and everybody who goes to prison in Arizona forever. You can’t be a zealot and do that kind of work because it will crush you. But you have to care a lot. The people here are pushing the needle; a lot of the stuff they are advocating for is probably a few decades from happening. But it might become the norm one day. So they do a huge service to society.” Blanco is the first in his nuclear family to attend college; although both his grandfathers went to college, his parents chose not to go. He spent a few years as a manager at Papa John’s Pizza before he chose St. John’s. “I was making a lot of money and I was pretty successful, but I knew it was a short-term thing.” He had taken AP courses in high school and some community college classes, which he found “dissatisfying.” When he heard about St. John’s through a friend, he knew it was exactly what he wanted—the “most superior education that I could find.” He feels that St. John’s has “opened a lot of doors for me.” Before coming to St. John’s, law was one of several careers that interested Blanco. He settled on law during his sophomore year; the internships that followed have confirmed his choice. St. John’s also led him to appreciate more aspects of life. “When I was in high school, I just loathed math and science. I’ve come to enjoy and appreciate [them] here at St. John’s, so that’s been a huge gift.” In addition, “St. John’s has opened up the whole world of literature and music for me to investigate on my own.” Although Blanco has kept his original plan to go to law school, he says that his internship has “opened my eyes to impact litigation, and the possibility of a career as a lawyer who’s not only defending people in court for a particular crime.” As part of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the National Prison Project is “a big organization. I could see myself going back there one day.” —Eunji Kim (A15) Summer Academy 2015 at St. John’s College AN INTELLECTUAL ADVENTURE for High School Students Students from around the world immersed themselves in Summer Academy 2014 in Santa Fe and Annapolis. Learn more: www.sjc.edu The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 15 �tutor view Two Campuses 16 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 Two campuses, one in Santa Fe and one in Annapolis, 1,628 miles apart horizontally and a little over 7,000 feet vertically, have the same Program. It is a bit of a conundrum when you think about it. �Of course, the metaphysicians among us might supply the reassuring information that for any two things to be the same, they must be different. As puzzling as this may seem at first glance, it probably points the way to understanding the profound sameness that constitutes St. John’s College. Many Viewpoints By Jacques Duvoisin (A80) The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 17 �tutor view “�In relation to the program of study, all of us strive for the same ideal, to guide students to the discovery of their own insights, holding our opinions at bay, working to provoke them to fine-tune whatever articulations of their thought they happen to be working on.” What’s the same? The program of study is the same in spirit and implementation. Naturally, as you might expect, there are differences—a few small variations in the selection and sequence of the readings on the seminar list, as well as more substantial variations in the design of some tutorials. But the core practice of the college does not differ. On each campus, students sit around a table and discuss great books together. They go to the board in math classes and demonstrate difficult propositions from memory while classmates look on, ask questions, offer assistance, and so on. They struggle to teach themselves ancient Greek so that they can discuss the meaning of a Sappho poem, or a passage in Sophocles, or a dialectical argument in Plato’s Meno, again around a big table in the language class. In the labs, they work toward a meaningful encounter with the natural world, at first gropingly, and then with ever greater sophistication. The faculty, too, is the same, as much as it is possible for two groups of individuals, selected seemingly by chance, to be the same. In relation to the program of study, all of us strive for the same ideal, to guide students to the discovery of their own insights, holding our opinions at bay, working to provoke them to fine-tune whatever articulations of their thought they happen to be working on. We share our meager wisdom with them, but we do not substitute it for their own examination of life. The Santa Fe campus was founded 50 years ago, in a climate and culture that could not be 18 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 more different from Annapolis. This new founding has brought aspects of our shared enterprise to the fore that might not have been quite so visible before. In the shadow of a different state house, the challenge to study the great books of human civilization is influenced by the culture of New Mexico, among a local populace that speaks English with a Spanish lilt, with all the marks of Pueblo culture lovingly preserved in the city’s architecture. The expanse of the sky is vast, blue, and inviting, and nearby mountains allow one to approach it in solitude. In such a setting, away from the bustle of ambitions that inevitably gather around the capital of a great nation, it is only natural that the pace would be slower, and students would find a use for more leisurely reflection. Classes are longer, and discussions often follow a less direct path in the pursuit of insight. Although students at both campuses have organized many clubs, the outdoor settings have played a role in the development of intramural sports programs and activities. The glorious, lush lawns of Annapolis are ideal for soccer, handball, Ultimate Frisbee, and croquet. In the sprawling mountains of Santa Fe, students and faculty enjoy access to unparalleled hiking trails and several world-class ski resorts within easy driving distance. One notable difference between the campuses can be found in the Graduate Institute. In addition to the traditional program that finds a parallel in Annapolis, the Santa Fe campus also offers a program in Eastern Classics, which has proved a boon to many alumni, who apply their curiosity and formidable conversation skills to a broader canvas of human thought. It also provides an opportunity for the faculty to find intellectual renewal in the Eastern Classics program, at those moments when their experience in the undergraduate program begins to feel constricting, as can happen after a decade or two of work. It is probably a coincidence, since both campuses have experienced a new influx of interna- PREVIOUS PAGE: INSIGHT FOTO, SANTA FE, NM �FRANK OOMS tutor view With the influx of international students, “freshman seminars have to find even more fundamental shared experiences from which to start.” tional students, including many from Southeast Asia, but one cannot help wondering if our experience with the Eastern Classics program has not helped us make Santa Fe a more welcoming destination for some of these students. For the many students who come to us from the mountains of Nepal, it is hard not to suspect that living among the Sangre de Cristo mountains makes them feel a little bit more at home. Speaking of international students, one other trait both campuses share is the wonderful expansion of class discussion they bring “to the table.” Before these students arrived, seminars could count on a stratum of shared experiences as a starting point. But now, with students from former Eastern Bloc nations like Bulgaria and the Czech Republic, from Kenya, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe, or from India, Nepal, China, Vietnam, South Korea, Sri Lanka, and Singapore, fresh- man seminars have to find even more fundamental shared experiences from which to start. In other words, much more of our shared humanity can be brought into view in our conversations. Moreover, it certainly does not hurt to have students in a language tutorial who have already had to learn to speak English, or who perhaps already know how to read Sanskrit, to bring a new sense of courage and adventure to the task of learning ancient Greek. In the face of widespread fears of a decline of liberal arts education in this country, we find that their relevance and importance has only been enlivened by sharing these arts with our international students. Any provincial notion of the liberal arts as being somehow “western” is hardly credible after working with students from the other side of the world, and the depth of our own commitment is enhanced by the experience. The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 19 �20 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 �1964 — 2014 Santa Fe at 50 A Triumph of Will. A Fellowship of Learning. A Quixotic Journey. OPPOSITE: Don Quixote ABOVE: Early construction and Sancho Panza, 1935, by Ferdinand Desnos. included Peterson Student Center, Evans Science Lab, Santa Fe Hall, and the upper dormitories. The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 21 �1964 — 2014 Authors of Our Own Story The Santa Fe Oral History Project by Claudia Hauer In Part II of Cervantes’ delightful novel, the characters Don Quixote and Sancho discuss the choices made by the author of their story in Part I. The Santa Fe campus’s oral history project has likewise gone forward without the conventional boundary between author and character, for the story continues, and the main characters continue to reflect on how best to tell it. At St. John’s, we treasure each voice, and each adds something to the story. A seminar conversation and the people who participate in it are one. When I began the oral history interviews in the spring of 2013, my goal was to create a venue for our community to listen to the voices of those who remembered the founding and seminal moments of the Santa Fe campus, and to build appreciation for the different perspectives and tales that make up our story. My contribution to the project consists of more than 25 hours of recorded interviews with all living former officers of the Santa Fe campus, many tutors from the earliest years, illustrious friends of the college, board members, and current officers. Santa Fe Library Director Jennifer Sprague (SFGI04, EC09) has taken up the project now; she is conducting alumni interviews and working with the librarians and Melissa Stevens, art director/ senior graphic designer, to build an archive for the history displays. In addition to the voices on tape, Brian Connolly (SFGI10, EC11) assistant director, Advancement Services, is preparing transcripts of the interviews. Sarah Palacios, director of the Alumni Office, has created a venue for alumni to submit written contributions. What have we learned? The opening of the Santa Fe campus of St. John’s College in September 1964 was simultaneously a triumph of one man’s will, a 12 St. John’s Moves West In a bold step in 1961, the Board of Visitors and Governors of the College voted to establish a second campus in the western half of the United States. The new campus was to be a duplicate of that in Annapolis in facilities, curriculum, and enrollment: by this unique plan of colonization St. John’s answered the need for expansion while retaining the fundamental educational precepts to which it was committed. The College thus embarked on a plan of growth never before attempted in this country. “�Dick Weigle always wanted the Annapolis faculty to add to the reading list Eastern classics. He was just passionately interested in that.” — Tom Slakey, retired tutor Original Tutors $2,750 Cost of Tuition, Room, and Board 260 Acres 42 Santa Fe, New Mexico, was chosen from 40 possible sites as the location for the new campus. In reaching this decision, the Board and the Faculty were impressed by the need for a good liberal arts college in the Southwest, independent of the government or the church. They were encouraged by a group of Santa Feans who were deeply interested in establishing such a college in their city. The cultural orientation of Santa Fe, with its museums, its nationally famous summer opera, and its colony of artists and writers, was a strong attraction. Proximity to the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, with its superb library and 22 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 wealth of scientific talent, promised helpful cooperation from both Laboratory officials and individual scientists. The 7,000 foot elevation of the city of Santa Fe offered a fine year-round climate. The campus, donated by residents of Santa Fe, consists of 260 acres of rolling land in the southeast corner of the city…A comprehensive master plan has been designed for a complete campus for 300-350 students. On April 22, 1963, ground was broken for the first buildings. Since only a freshman class will enter when the campus opens in September 1964, Readings from Great Books for Incoming Freshmen – SF Founding Program Readings 81 Students in the First Freshman Class “�I was interested in the cultural approach that St. John’s offered … I thought it was good for the community because it was a prestigious college … ” — Bud Kelly �santa fe at 50 fellowship of new learning, and the start of a quixotic journey of self-definition for an institution that was not new in conception, but new to the world. The one man was Richard (“Dick”) Weigle. Founding tutor Tom Slakey recalls Weigle’s role in bringing the new campus into being: “[Dick Weigle] originated it and he was its principal promoter from the very beginning. He was passionate about liberal education in the St. John’s way, and he just thought it should be offered to more people. And when we [in Annapolis] couldn’t accommodate as many students as wanted to come, he wanted to come out and start this new college. In fact, his ambition extended further. His idea was actually to have a string of six of these small colleges.” The setting in the foothills on the east side of Santa Fe was chosen as the site for the second campus due in part to Robert McKinney, owner of the Santa Fe New Mexican. He diverted the initial search party, composed of Weigle, board member Charles (“Chuck”) Nelson (Class of 1945), and others, from their visit to view land in California, and introduced the group to John Gaw Meem, a notable Santa Fe architect and landowner. Meem and other local entrepreneurs were eager to bring a college to Santa Fe, having unsuccessfully attempted to get a small Presbyterian college to open a campus there. Meem drove the group in his jeep to a ridge along the foothills. “Dr. Weigle,” he asked, “if you had a college here, about how much land would you need?” Weigle did a quick calculation. He thought Annapolis had 35 acres. “So I doubled it,” he told tutor emeritus Elliott Skinner later. “Seventy acres,” he told Meem. “�The transfer of the soul of the college was very successful, partly because there were good tutors who were quite willing to move to Santa Fe and to take on responsibility for training new people who would need to get inducted into the spirit and the academic aspects of the college that are most important.” —Charles Nelson, Class of 1945, visitor emeritus construction has been planned in several phases to keep pace with the growing student body. The first phase provides the classroom and laboratory buildings, the student center, and dormitories for 106 students. Basically the facilities in Santa Fe will parallel those on the Annapolis campus, but will have the advantage of being designed as an integrated, functional whole. The two campuses will be an interesting study in similarities and contrasts. Whereas the older buildings in Annapolis are reminders of the English colonial heritage of Maryland’s capital city, those of the western St. John’s will reflect the Spanish-Indian origins of the New Mexican capital. The new buildings have been designed in a modified “Territorial,” a regional style easily adapted for contemporary use. Their flat-roofed masses will recall their aboriginal American origin; the balconies, portales and patios hearken back to Spain; and the stuccoed walls and brick cornices recall the period when New Mexico was a territory rather than a state. below: The first commencement on June 2, 1968 had to be moved indoors due to rain. —Bulletin of St. John’s College, June 1963 – May 1964 The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 23 �1964 — 2014 “You see that tree over there?” Meem asked, and pointed up to the north. Weigle was looking around down at his feet, and Meem said, “No, over there, over on that ridge. If you’d be interested in coming out here, I’d be interested in giving you this little piece of land here.” It turned out to be about 200 acres. Meem and his fellow townies who supported the new college took a crash course in the great books concept. “We all got indoctrinated into the concept of the great books,” recalls Daniel T. (“Bud”) Kelly, reminiscing on the orientation seminars. “I was frustrated by the seminar,” he says. “I was in the army, where you study the problem and come up with a solution. At St. John’s, you never get a solution.” Chuck Nelson recalls an early crisis precipitated by Weigle’s borrowing from the Annapolis endow- ment to fund the building project. This loan temporarily severed the college’s relationship with benefactor Paul Mellon and his Old Dominion Foundation. In his book, Reflections in a Silver Spoon (William Morrow, 1992), Paul Mellon wrote: “In 1963, Dick, finding the Santa Fe campus desperately short of money, ‘lent it’ $2 million from the Annapolis endowment, contrary to his understanding with the [Old Dominion] foundation. As a result, the foundation temporarily suspended matching gifts for endowment to Annapolis.... I had a very high regard for Dick, and for all that he had done, so I personally made a gift to the Santa Fe undertaking in 1970.” The coming-into-being of the new campus presented new adventures, not just of mind, but of body as well. George Bingham (SF68) recalls visiting his parents (Clarence Cramer, the first dean, 45 The Campus Expands Asserting a modern interpretation of the Territorial style popularized by John Gaw Meem, one of New Mexico’s most influential architects, Levan Hall suggests a kinship with the architectural features of the college’s other building and dormitories and offers a fresh outlook for the campus… Just as the graduate programs in Santa Fe span the classics of Western and Eastern civilizations, Levan Hall synthesizes Western or perhaps more accurately, Southwestern and “� ow with the addition N of a central library to our campus, we have a fitting and appropriate place to house the books that are at the heart of the St. John’s educational mission.” — John Agresto, former President Students housed in Winiarski Student Center 700 lbs. Weight of the bell in Weigle Hall 25,780 Square footage of Meem Library left: The construction of Weigle Hall. Eastern perspectives. The tall, stuccoed building is nearly two and three-fourths floors bottom to top, yet it is impressive without being imposing. Inside, plastered walls soar to meet wood-slat ceilings that simultaneously suggest traditional vigas and the simplicity of Japanese styling. An open and inviting quality—evident with the benches, sofas, and chairs on landings, in the graduate commons room, and in offices—welcomes students and faculty alike.” Completed in 2008, the Winiarski Student Center was principally funded through a gift from alumni 24 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 Warren and Barabara Winiarski. The Winiarskis said their gift was prompted by an enduring love for the St. John’s Program, a desire to support the community of learning and a special interest in enhancing the campus their two daughters (Kasia, SF83, and Julia, SF92) attended. The 26,000 square-foot Student Activities Center is home to an array of personal fitness equipment and athletic facilities including a fullsize gymnasium, weight room, two racquetball/squash courts, as well as shower and locker rooms. In addition, three tennis courts, a soccer above: The installation of the finial on top of Weigle Hall. �santa fe at 50 and his wife) over Labor Day weekend, 1964: “I was, frankly, skeptical about the prospect of opening for classes two weeks later. You could pretty much predict a three o’clock rain in the month of August and there was a lot of plywood . . . . Moving around on the campus required a certain agility at that time.” Although the new campus initially imported its program of instruction from Annapolis, faculty and officers began to make changes consistent with their own spirit and the unique character of the new institution. Tutor emeritus Roger Peterson recalled the passionate devotion that the new faculty had “to inquiry as opposed to knowledge. The important thing is to ask questions and delve strongly into them—it’s the delving that counts.” Peterson led a group of faculty who changed the sophomore year of laboratory to “a completely new evolutionoriented sequence.” Tutors Ray Davis, Don Cook, and Elliott Skinner all recalled the faculty’s delight in this new laboratory. As music grew from an add-on into a full-time course, the laboratory was eventually edged out; its curriculum was divided between the freshman and senior years. Tom Slakey recalls that the mathematics tutorial also changed, as an early group of tutors “didn’t like that we were using an ordinary textbook for calculus. They wanted to do calculus from original texts.” Much like the early settlers of the Southwest, the new campus acquired its own character from the challenges it faced, and the open landscape that housed it. John Agresto (President 1989-1999) recalls a line from John Adams’s letters: “Once a great idea is started, nobody, not even the smartest person, knows where that idea will lead.” The Graduate Institute was founded as a summer program for inner city schoolteachers in Santa “�It [Winiarski Student Center] qualifies as a LEED Silver building — Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, a national standard. The complex currently uses energy gathered from photovoltaics on the roof of a neighboring dorm, and has new and efficient boilers and passive solar windows, which means it will receive a lot of natural light.” field, a 1/8th-mile track, and a ninehole disc golf course are located next to the Student Activities Center. The library, which opened in November 1990, is named after Faith and John Meem, generous benefactors to the Santa Fe campus. About 250 volunteers moved more than 50,000 books into Meem Library in six hours using book bags, carts, and trucks. — Mary-Charlotte Domandi (SFGI91) above: The Faith and John Gaw Meem Library left: Library groundbreaking The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 25 �1964 — 2014 Fe in 1967 (and followed in Annapolis in 1977). Dean and tutor Jim Carey added the Eastern Classics program, which officially joined the Graduate Institute in Santa Fe in 1994. Agresto began the now widely popular Summer Classics program in 1991 as a single seminar on Thucydides, led by him and tutor David Bolotin. Agresto recalls some of the vision and force of will that went into bringing about these new programs. “We were being interviewed for The Chronicle of Higher Education, Jim Carey and I, and the woman who was interviewing us said, ‘You have all these people who think what you’re doing is wrong, who are opposed to what you’re doing,’” meaning here at the college, in terms of the Eastern Classics program. ‘Have you ever learned anything from your enemies?’ Jim Carey looked at her and said, “Nope, not one d—n thing.” She said, “Can I write that down?” He said, “It’s true.” At the opening of Part II of Cervantes’ visionary novel, Don Quixote anxiously awaits news about how he himself had been put into a book. The oral history project has a similar aspect—with so many memories and tales collected, there are many ways to tell our story. As we go forward, we can take a lesson from Cervantes’ creativity in breaking down the boundaries between author and character. Quixote’s transition from his naiveté to his selfreferential and self-conscious anxiety creates an analogy for the Santa Fe campus’s progress, from its ardent youth to the more mature institution of today, which must reflect not just on its own modern 3 Faculty— Stewards of the Program In addition to acquiring competence across the program, tutors are responsible for deepening their understanding of its various parts; they are responsible for increasing their understanding of the fundamental questions raised by the books; they are responsible for leading classes not from a position of expertise, but from a position of active inquiry through spontaneous collaboration centered on the books and on where the class is with respect to the books. For all of these responsibilities, there is, to be sure, a private component. All of us must spend a good deal of time learning new and difficult things in the privacy of our offices or studies. But all of our learning and preparation culminates in shared activities: classes with our colleagues, study groups, and lectures followed promptly by a question period. Classes taught by full-time faculty 7 years of full-time teaching required to earn tenure 53 Tenured faculty 3 years “�I used to drive my professors in graduate school nuts because I’d go take these courses in mathematics and whatever interested me, and my research would be kind of secondary. I didn’t fit in too well in graduate school, but I fit in very well at St. John’s.” — Don Cook, founding tutor at the Santa Fe campus 26 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 Faculty study groups have been a part of sustaining the intellectual life of St. Johns tutors since the New Program was established in 1937. Groups of 4-12 tutors meet under a variety of circumstances, reading and working through a variety of texts, both Program and non-Program. This kind of study is important to tutors: it enables them to think in-depth about a certain subject or book, when their normal teaching schedule calls them to cover material more quickly; it helps them consider proposed changes to the Program; and it helps them prepare to teach in areas of curriculum where they may not have much experience. of service for the Assistant Dean, who is chosen from among the tenured faculty 1:8 Faculty to student ratio 5 years of service for each Dean, who is chosen from among the tenured faculty �santa fe at 50 identity relative to its past, but about a broader context of decline in liberal arts enrollment across the United States. As Santa Fe President Mike Peters said with respect to the 50th anniversary: “It’s really important that we recognize the pioneers that brought the college here, and we celebrate what the college has accomplished. But it’s also important to commit ourselves to its being around for another fifty years, and do everything we can—as individuals and as a group—to makes sure that it not only survives but that it thrives in the future.” In this spirit, we hope you enjoy the oral history project, for it is simultaneously a rich and wonderful story, and also an opportunity to reflect and dedicate ourselves anew as the characters who will usher St. John’s College Santa Fe into its second 50 years. Michael Peters, president, Santa Fe Claudia Hauer is a tutor in Santa Fe. “�In my first freshman seminar, my co-tutor was Sam Brown. He was a musician who’d gone to Black Mountain College. In seminar he’d be really low-key; the discussion would be going on, and [after a while] he would ask [students to repeat what they’d said earlier], and then it was like all of a sudden everything would come together with a great sense of excitement. Eventually I realized he was like a conductor. But it was so subtle that nobody, I think, realized it was going on. We thought we were just doing it ourselves. That was a great lesson in teaching. — Elliot Skinner, founding tutor at the Santa Fe campus David Levine, tutor “�We, the tutors, are not content with imparting bare skills and empty generalizations, not sastified with conveying the results of our own or others’ thinking without requiring that you develop your own capacities for such thoughtfulness.” — David Levine, tutor “�The kinds of things our students study provide them the opportunity not only to be well educated and make a life for themselves, but also to be great citizens because they’ve grappled with the challenges that have faced mankind since the beginning of recorded time, and they’ve been exposed to the ideas and documents that underpin the American democratic republic.” — Michael Peters, president, Santa Fe below: SuSu Knight, the first tenured female tutor. The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 27 �28 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 �three johnnies today S H A P I N G T H E FUTURE Greek philosopher Heraclitus is often quoted as saying, “Change is the only constant in life.” These three Johnnies are proponents of change – impacting contemporary society as well as the next generation of learners – by illuminating the evolution of gaming technology in education, exploring the great books and their timeless questions of human existence, and helping federal agencies to link health research and policy to practice. Gaming in the Classroom Greg Toppo (sf 85) Engages Students through Technology I PHOTO: LISA MELONI RAGUSA by Paula Novash n the introduction to Greg Toppo’s (SF85), forthcoming book, The Game Believes in You: How Digital Play Can Make Our Kids Smarter, there is a line that might cause the reader to think about what has been considered “new technology” through the ages (especially if you’re a Johnnie). Toppo, the national education reporter for USA Today, writes: “Asking if schools can accommodate games, according to University of Wisconsin scholar Kurt Squire, is like asking 500 years ago if universities could accommodate books.” Toppo’s fascinating account of the evolution of gaming in education and the visionaries who develop these new technologies will be published by Palgrave Macmillan in April. His research reveals that games make school more rigorous and interesting by giving kids engaging systems for learning new material. Gaming technology has come a long way since elementary students in the ’80s played “The Oregon Trail” on bulky PCs. The Game Believes in You features innovators who are creating a video game version of “Walden Pond,” an app called “Stride and Prejudice” that features a pixilated Elizabeth Bennet jumping over the entire 121,873 words of unabridged Austen text, and an original opera staged entirely in the online game “Minecraft,” among many other futuristic products. “The idea is, let’s make school harder and more fun,” Toppo explains. Toppo grew up in Port Chester, New York. “I had a preoccupation with books and reading, though I wouldn’t say I was well-read,” he says. He applied to The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 29 �three johnnies today St. John’s after seeing a flyer in his English class that referred to Plato and similar luminaries as returning professors. “It also inspired a lot of my contemporaries to attend,” he says. Because he had never been west of Philadelphia, Toppo decided to study in Santa Fe after his freshman year. “I spent a lot of time reading in the French pastry shop off the Plaza,” he recalls. He also met Julie Neidorf (SF85), his wife and fellow Johnnie, the daughter of Robert Neidorf (H83), longtime dean of the Santa Fe campus. The two began dating four years after graduation, having become friends during a teaching internship. Toppo taught for eight years in both public and private schools before pursu- “�Ten years ago, teachers who were using games were outliers. Now teachers who don’t use games are the outliers.” ing a writing career. He began freelancing for the Santa Fe daily, The New Mexican, and was hired in 1995. His story about a “resplendent day” at the paper highlights the differences between news reporting then and now. “We had an ongoing rivalry with the other paper in Santa Fe, the Albuquerque Journal North,” he recalls. “There was a new injunction forbidding skateboarding on the Plaza, near where our offices were located, and one day some police officers arrested a kid on a skateboard. The crowd got a little rowdy and an almost-riot on the Plaza broke out. Our newsroom emptied out to cover it! The other paper never heard a thing about it so it was a big scoop—our front-page story the next day.” “Now,” he continues, “Kids and onlookers would be tweeting and texting, and so would the paper.” As an early adopter of Twitter – he has almost 19,000 followers – Toppo sees mostly positives in using social media. “I think it’s great to have many platforms to put more news out there,” he says. “Twitter has been really helpful for finding sources who are willing to talk to me, especially kids. I’ve done entire interviews with kids via text messaging.” It was in Santa Fe that Toppo began doing more reporting on educational topics. “When our official education reporter was busy, people would say, ‘Hey, didn’t Greg teach?’” Toppo recalls. Toppo and his family, which includes two daughters, moved back east in 1998 when he took a job with The Associated Press, working in the Baltimore and Washington, D.C. bureaus before joining USA Today in 2002. Toppo began researching The Game Believes in You during a 2010 Spencer Fellowship at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. The title refers to experts’ findings that for many students, games provide a reassuring environment with opportunities to learn at their own pace, take risks, and try again. “A game is a designed system,” Toppo explains. “School is a designed system too, just not as well designed as it once was.” Just as some people used to be suspicious of the corrupting effects of books, today there is a lively debate about the role of technology in education. Toppo can appreciate opposing views, but from his research, he says, games in the classroom are here to stay. “Ten years ago, teachers who were using games were outliers,” he points out. “Now teachers who don’t use games are the outliers.” “For many kids, especially those who don’t fit the profile of that student in a perfect middle, school may be just awful—boring and disheartening,” Toppo continues. “So shouldn’t we be looking at what kids are paying attention to and what’s working for them, and go down that path?” 30 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 Naturally Gifted James Myers (sf 09) Gets Paid to Learn Latin by Gregory Shook J ames Myers (SF09) calls several places “home.” A native of Charlotte, North Carolina, Myers attended Woodberry Forest School, a private boarding school in Madison County, Virginia. After two years at St. John’s in Annapolis, he packed up his road-worn 1999 Ford Expedition and drove west to Santa Fe, where he graduated in 2009. Five years later, Myers has a new home at Chandler Preparatory Academy in Chandler, Arizona, a member of the Great Hearts Academy network of schools in the Phoenix metropolitan area. At Chandler Prep, where Myers is considered a “master teacher of classical languages,” he instructs middle and high school Greek and Latin, as well as Humane Letters—seminars on great works of Western civilization, similar to the St. John’s Program. “I really want to teach 10th grade Humane Letters next year,” he says. “Then I’ll be able to say that I have taught all the seminars on the school’s curriculum before I’m thirty.” Myers has a natural aptitude for teaching, though he admits that he fell into his profession largely by chance. “I had no idea what I wanted to do,” he �three johnnies today says. “I got really lucky.” On the precipice of graduation, he met a recruiter from Great Hearts; he flew to Phoenix for a round of interviews and soon fielded offers from two different schools. Self-confidence plays an important role in Myers’ accomplishments as a teacher. “I learned Latin in order to pretend that I could teach it,” explains Myers, who says that his first day at the head of the classroom “felt like something that I was destined to do.” As a student, Myers did not enjoy reading until he came to St. John’s, where discussing books and ideas in seminar brought the pages to life. “I still don’t read much unless I’m going to talk about a book,” says Myers, who has led seminars this year on Augustine’s Confessions, Dante’s Inferno, and Aquinas’ Treatise on Law, among others. In seminar, Myers says he is playfully serious with his own inquiry into the text. In his language classes, his secret to success is simple: keep the pace moving. “You cannot just sit silently in a class waiting for a student to figure out an answer to a question,” he says. “If they don’t know it, you move on quickly.” Above all, though, Myers wants his students to be fearless of making mistakes for the sake of learning. Myers was first bitten by the Latin bug after his sophomore Greek language tutorial at St. John’s. During the summer before his junior year, when most of his classmates took a reprieve from the rigors of academic life, Myers enrolled in an intensive Latin course at the University of South Carolina. The experience both deepened his love of classical languages and set the stage for his future. “My first year [at Chandler Prep], I taught intro to Latin to sixth graders,” says Myers. “I was successful with teaching as well as classroom management, so the school asked me to teach Latin 3 the next year to freshmen.” Once again, Myers dedicated his summer to honing his Latin language skills, which he continues to enhance on “�I had no idea what I wanted to do. I got really lucky.” the job. “At the end of my second year I could read Virgil pretty well,” he says. “I feel like I have literally gotten paid to learn Latin.” Having planted roots more than 2,000 miles from his hometown, Myers has created a good life, blanketed by big sky and bold sunsets—his favorite attributes of the Southwest. An avid hiker and Ultimate Frisbee player, Myers takes full advantage of his rugged environs, which have slowly but steadily transformed him. “I have opened up a little bit [as a person],” he says. “But that could just be me growing up and being comfortable with myself.” James Myers (SF09), right, and his fellow teachers celebrate his student’s senior thesis defense. The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 31 �three johnnies today Breaking Down Silos Susan Vorkoper (sf 04) Helps Research Become Policy A By Jennifer Levin s a global health researcher and policy analyst for the Fogarty International Center at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, Susan Vorkoper (SF04) attempts to speed up the time between when something is proven with research and when it becomes public policy—when the people on the ground can incorporate it into programs. Lead poisoning, for example, has devastating neurological effects that can lead to comas, convulsions, and even death, especially among children. Starting as early as 1904, researchers and physicians identified the link between lead-based paints and lead poisoning in children. However, despite continued research and mounting evidence, it was not until 1978 that the EPA banned the manufacture and use of lead-based paint. “The average time it takes for research to enter day-to-day practice and even become policy is 17 years,” says Vorkoper. “Sometimes, like with lead poisoning, this is due to industry resistance, and sometimes, it’s a matter of establishing effective communication between relevant parties.” In 2012, while earning master’s degrees in public policy and social work from Washington University in St. Louis, Vorkoper traveled to Haiti with the nonprofit organization Meds & Food for Kids and wrote a $1 million grant for funding from the usda to develop a new Ready-toUse Supplemental Food for school children, similar to nutrient-fortified peanut butter. Today, one of her biggest projects is with the President’s Emergency Plan for aids Relief (pepfar). Working with federal agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the State Department, and the U.S. Agency for International Development, as well as researchers in the field, July 2014. Before graduate school, she spent two years in the Peace Corps with her husband, Stephen Vorkoper (SF04), stationed in Cameroon, which was where she developed an interest in nutrition and public health. Before that, she worked with AmeriCorps Vista, running a youth literacy program in Salt Lake City, Utah. She plans to stay at the Fogarty International Center for some time, but predicts that in the future she will continue to link research and policy to practice. In addition, she plans to increase the rigor of program assessments so that the aid they offer provides maximum benefit. Vorkoper assesses how best to leverage I pepfar’s hiv/aids platforms to diagnose, “� t’s important to know treat, and care for non-communicable diseases, such as hypertension, diabetes, and cervical cancer. “A lot of what I do is partnership- and coalition-building between people who are working in the same area but may not be talking to each other,” she says. “Everything I do is about breaking down silos, so I do almost nothing alone.” At particularly difficult meetings, she wonders if it would be appropriate to hand out Stringfellow Barr’s “Notes on Dialogue.” “I use what we learned [in seminar] every day,” she says. “It’s important to know how to lead and guide a discussion, to make sure everyone is on the same track and headed in the same direction.” Vorkoper secured her current position thanks to a Presidential Management Fellowship, a two-year program open to people who have recently earned advanced degrees and are interested in government work. She spent six months at the Fogarty International Center during the fellowship and has been on staff since 32 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 how to lead and guide a discussion, to make sure everyone is on the same track and headed in the same direction.” “We talked a lot about what it means to be a good citizen at St. John’s, and I really took that to heart,” she says. “It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do. I kept asking myself where the intersection was of something I’m good at, something I’m passionate about, and something that’s needed. It goes back to the Agora. How are you a participant? How are you involved in the dialogue? I realized that this is how I wanted to be a citizen.” Right: Susan Vorkoper (SF04) at NIH �JAMES KEGLEY three johnnies today The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 33 �bibliofile Peter Pesic: Seeing and Touching Sound “Music is the hinge between what is felt and what is thought; it connects both worlds.” For many, music is a pleasant diversion, an ornament to living. For scientists, whose work does not depend on feelings, music can be an important emotional outlet, though often considered inherently derivative because it seems disconnected from scientific discovery. Peter Pesic, tutor emeritus and musicianin-residence at the Santa Fe campus, resisted this train of thought for many years. Though playing the piano was an essential part of his life even as he completed his doctorate in physics, he gradually realized that sometimes music has preceded and influenced discovery in science and mathematics. He began to notice evidence supporting this view about 15 years ago through his teaching at St. John’s. He came to think that what he had found might change our understanding of the connections between music, the natural sciences, and math. He compiled his examples, researched to fill in gaps in his knowledge. His fourth book, Music and the Making of Modern Science (MIT Press, 2014), is a challenging scholarly work with multimedia components that Pesic hopes will find an audience curious about the place where science and art meet. According to Pesic, music, entwined at its essence with numbers, is that place. Max Planck, the theoretical physicist known for discovering quantum theory, was a committed musician who worked with a new harmonium that could divide the octave into 104 steps. Interested in this harmonium’s tuning possibilities and its relation to how people sang, he began making experiments with choruses. “These experiments have a very interesting connection to what he went on to do in quantum theory, which one might describe as a new way of tuning the world,” says Pesic. His book features other scientists and mathematicians with musical research interests, including Kepler, Newton, Euler, Young, Helmholtz, and Riemann. 34 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 In his book, Pesic explains that 18th-century experiments with electricity and magnetism were influenced by experiments with sound and pitch. “When you take a metal plate, sprinkle sand on it, and stroke it with a violin bow, you see amazing patterns,” he says. “Oersted, Wheatstone, and Faraday began studying how those sound patterns might be connected to similar patterns generated by electricity or magnetism. These developments in the idea that you could see sound helped people understand how electricity and magnetism interact with each other.” Pesic’s book may also be downloaded as an iBook with sound examples at http://mitpress. mit.edu/books/music-and-making-modernscience. Activated by touching the iPad screen, the sound examples span the fundamental elements of musical sound, Kepler’s music of the spheres, and what Pythagoras may have heard in a blacksmith’s shop. Pesic plays and sings many of the examples; more than 50 recordings and animations also include Gregorian chants, choral music, and recreations of Planck’s experiments with choruses. The book has “different levels of depth,” says Pesic. Readers who “just want to know the argument can read for that. Or they can go into the musical examples. There are many paths of access.” Thanks to support from the Guggenheim Foundation, he hopes this book will begin a new phase in his work, including more books about music. “Science tends to be dispassionate,” says Pesic, who has played numerous piano recitals in Santa Fe and elsewhere in the United States and Europe. “I can’t decide to make a scientific discovery just because I feel a certain way, in the way you can paint and express a feeling. But music is the hinge between what is felt and what is thought; it connects both worlds. A sound is both a physical sensation and something that has a mental identity. Music combines feeling and order, joined mentally but also with a physical thrill.” —Jennifer Levin �bibliofile The Amado Women By Désirée Zamorano (SF83) Cinco Punto Press, 2014 In her latest novel, The Amado Women—set primarily in Los Angeles—Désirée Zamorano (SF83) aims to debunk popular stereotypes of Latinas and the Latina experience. She eschews cardboard constructs such as fiery temptresses and victimized immigrants to tell the story of a middle-class mother and her three wildly divergent daughters: a teacher, a financial advisor, and an artist. The women are bound together by family, but grapple with personal struggles, Essential Vulnerabilities: Plato and Levinas on Relations to the Other By Deborah Achtenberg (A73) Northwestern University Press, 2014 What meaning does the presence of the other hold for us? Is the presence of the self fundamentally in relation to the other? Deborah Achtenberg (A73), a philosophy professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, explores these questions in her new book, Essential Vulnerabilities (Northwestern University Press, 2014). Modern philosopher Emmanuel Levinas confronted these questions. Achtenberg argues that Plato, like Levinas, is a philosopher of the other, but the two philosophers conceive The Moral Challenge of Dangerous Climate Change: Values, Poverty, and Policy By Darrel Moellendorf (A83) Cambridge University Press, 2014 “Our world is beset with several pressing problems, including war, intolerance, poverty, and climate change,” writes Darrel Moellendorf (A83) in the introduction of his new book, The Moral Challenge of Dangerous Climate Change (Cambridge University Press, 2014). With a growing concern that Frankenstorms such as Hurricane Sandy and typhoon Haiyan may be the new normal, he illuminates the importance of our initiatives to exit the fossil-fuel triumphs, and secrets as they strive for upward mobility and a piece of the American Dream. Zamorano, director of Occidental College’s Community Learning Center in Los Angeles, California, is committed to raising awareness of Latinas in the fictional worlds found in mainstream books, films, and television. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and an award-winning short story author whose previous novels, Modern Cons (Lucky Bat Books, 2013) and Human Cargo (Lucky Bat Books, 2011), as well as her numerous short stories, explore contemporary issues of injustice, inequity, and the invisibility of Latinas. human vulnerability and responsiveness differently. In her book, she carefully delineates these and other similarities and differences between Plato’s and Levinas’s philosophies, aiming to “resituate Levinas’s work, in order to grasp what is most unique about Levinas.” By pairing Plato and Levinas, the book sheds light on how we consider questions such as “What is knowledge?” “What is virtue?” “What is goodness?” Through extended textual analysis of the works of both Plato and Levinas, enriched by the author’s own translations of Plato’s works, Achtenberg provides an alternate way of interpreting Levinasian epistemology and its true origins in the Western philosophical tradition. —Cem Turkoz (A15) regime; he advances the literature on climate change by bringing a unique philosophical perspective to the issue. Moellendorf, professor at Goethe University Frankfurt/Main, is an internationally known political philosopher with an interest in questions of global justice. He argues that climate change policy is a public problem to which normative philosophy can offer a solution. In his book, he combines discussions of poverty and justice with exploration of the importance of biodiversity preservation and the aesthetics of nature. For Moellendorf, the debate about international climate negotiations is not only about climate change but also a just framework for energy consumption, the key, he says, to wiping out poverty. —Cem Turkoz (A15) The College | st. john’s college | winter 2013 | The College | st. john’s college | spring 2015 35 �alumni notes 1948 Raphael Ben-Yosef (A) writes from Israel, “In 1951, I was working on making a seawall into the Red Sea in Eilat. This involved directing a crane where to put large granite rocks we had blasted out of the mountains (using an instrument I made from a wooden board and nails according to a recipe from Euclid). In the midst of waving my hands to the crane operator, I heard a shout and looked around. Emerging from the back of a Jeep pick-up (there was such a vehicle then) was Winkie Barr. In those days, to get to Eilat from Tel Aviv was a 12-hour ride each way, over rock roadbed for part of the way. There was this Jeep which took tourists every two weeks or so. We talked and then he was gone, perhaps to the Dead Sea. As you know, Winkie was a man with much fire under his red hair.” 1960 Katherine Hsu Haas (A) writes, “Many of you heard that my beloved Ray (Class of 1958) died two years ago. I thought I would not find one moment of happiness without him, not after 54 years of marriage. But life is full of surprises; I became reacquainted with Bob Feldmann, who taught English with Ray, and Walter (Class of 1961) and Cynthia Voigt, at the Key School 30 years ago. Long story short, Bob and I married this August. Mary Gallagher (A) came from N.Y. to join many relatives and friends for this happy occasion. Last year, I visited Rosalie Levine Boosin (A) and her Joel in NYC. We spent a most wonderful afternoon in the Metropolitan Museum dining room together. I will remember that day forever; I miss Rosalie, who had the most positive outlook on life.” 1960 Supporting the Opposition Mary Campbell Gallagher’s (A) new organization, Americans for the Preservation of Paris (APP), is sponsoring a petition opposing plans for skyscrapers in Paris. She invites other St. John’s alumni to sign it and send it to their friends. The letter that accompanies the petition explains the issues: http://bit.ly/NoParisSkyscrapers. She has written and spoken widely on this subject, most recently, on ‘The Destruction of Paris’ on October 8 at the School of Architecture of the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. Her other company, BarWrite®, won the 2014 Global Legal Skills Award for its recognition of the special bar exam preparation needs of lawyers and law students from other countries. 1964 Cecily Sharp-Whitehill (A) writes, “Greetings from Osprey, Fla. In November 2013 I returned to school— again; this time to a yearlong course on the ‘hows’ of being a life coach. For decades I’ve been informally encouraging, supporting family, friends, and near-strangers as they aim to shed confining roles, their grim predictions for the future based on grim pasts, and opening people to their choices of how they view everything—how not to be victims of their ‘lot in life.’ Now, with a pack of tools, unceasing curiosity combined with learning and an increasing clientele roster, Alliance4DiscoveryCoaching is joyfully moving forward.” 36 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 Judith Wood (A) writes, “I chose St. John’s because it was the perfect college to get my first degree before I went to get my master’s in library science. However, for various reasons I left the college after two years. I married my husband in 1963, and we ended up in California, where I went to a junior college and became an accountant. I worked for several companies into my ’50s, and then decided to see if I could get accepted at a library school in California. Of course, I still needed to get my bachelor’s degree, so I went to California State University, San Bernardino, and graduated after three years. There, I worked in the library, graduated Phi Kappa Phi, and was the top student in my business classes. I later received my master’s in library science from San Jose State University in 1998 and started working as a reference librarian at the main library of Tulare County Library, where I worked for 12 years. In fall 2010, a biopsy came back positive for cancer. I went to see a special surgeon at UCLA, and he arranged for a surgery of my mouth. I retired at age 69, just had my 70th birthday, and have been cancer-free for almost two years.” 1969 Having retired from the practice of law, Deborah Moll (A) is concentrating on her longtime pursuit of photography. In 2013, she was chosen as the featured artist at the 2013 New Mexico Bar Association Annual Convention. For the past three years, she has served as a panelist for the review and selection of applicants for grants awarded by the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, Arts Division, to organizations supporting the arts. In 2013/14 she has shown photographs in Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and Los Alamos, N.M., as well as in the Santa Fe New Mexican. She can be reached at deborahmollphoto@aol.com. 1970 E.M. Macierowski (A) writes, “I have just received word that my essay, ‘Geopolitics and the Persian Gulf: Some Philosophical Reflections,’ should be appearing in mid-March in the Festschrift for Henryk Kiere, professor at the Catholic University of Lublin. And I have been selected a fellow of the Adler-Aquinas Institute.” John Dean (A) writes, “Time rolls on and I am now a professor at Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu Wydział Anglistyki Collegium Novum (Adam Mickiewicz University in Pozna, Poland). In some ways, it’s a long way from Paris and the University of Versailles, �alumni notes 1980 Head of the Rock Jamie Whalen (A) finished second in the Men’s Masters 48+ Single at the Head of the Rock Regatta on October 12 in Rockford, Ill. He writes, “The fellow on the left is Paul Harrington from the Quad Cities. I started just ahead of him and stayed there during the first half of the race. We rowed side-by-side for much of the second half. He got ahead of me, and then I put on a sprint at the end. Unfortunately I didn’t choose my line well and had to stop rowing when I came up on his stern. He still would have won on time, but I would have at least passed him back. I felt good afterwards and had more in the tank that I should have used earlier in the race.” and, in some ways, not. This place is in the shadow and aftermath of a whole different history. But I’m still professing cultural history, as ever, though with text in context of a whole different kind. Where I’m at is on a road that the great books helped make possible. So far, at Adam Mickiewicz University in Pozna, I’ve found the students wonderful—intellectually mature, lively and engaging, enthusiastic and involved, polite, and ambitious.” 1971 Vicky Manchester Garrison (SF) is in Taos for the winter on a personal writing retreat to complete publication of The Crying Boy, a utopian young adult novel. Anne Farrell (A69) is illustrating. 1979 Meg Rosenberg Wilde (A) writes, “I am working in the Bronx as a family physician with the Montefiore Residency Program in Social Medicine, training family docs and seeing patients. Love the work and the Bronx, where I have lived for the past 25 years. My daughter, Emma, is a sophomore at Green Mountain College in Vermont, close enough to visit and far enough to build independence. My son, Nathaniel, is a junior at Bronx Science and concocting various plans to take over the world. We are all thankful to be well and engaged with our work and family.” Peter Grubb (A) is president of ROW Adventures (www. rowadventures.com), a travel company that leads vacation tours in more than 25 countries around the world, including African safaris, sea kayaking destinations, and more. He and his wife of 30 years, Betsy Bowen, have two children ages 21 and 23. 1982 Gail Donohue Storey’s (SFGI) third book, I Promise Not to Suffer: A Fool for Love Hikes the Pacific Crest Trail, was published in 2013 by Mountaineers Books. A second printing—with a Readers Guide, including an interview between her and the editor, and Questions and Topics for Group Discussion—was published in 2014. The memoir, which won the National Outdoor Book Award, Foreword IndieFab Book of the Year, Colorado Book Award, Nautilus Silver Award, and Barbara Savage Award, is her hilariously harrowing story of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail with her husband, Porter, a hospice physician, in a career crisis. Her first book, the novel The Lord’s Motel, was praised by the New York Times Book Review as “a tale of unwise judgments and wise humor.” Her second novel, God’s Country Club, was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection. For more information: www.gailstorey.com. 1985 The Raven, the Elf, and Rachel, L. Jagi Lamplighter Wright’s (A) second book in her young adult fantasy series, was published by Dark Quest in 2014. The book features a magic school that is loosely based on St. John’s. It briefly made it to #1 on an Amazon bestseller list. 1984 Head of the Charles 1980 Dory Eisenbeis Culver (SF) is retiring after the mid-term elections as the managing editor of KCBS Radio, her job for the past 30 years. She will continue to live in San Francisco with her husband, Walter Nirenberg. She plans to do some recruitment work for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and hopes to do some writing. Her email is dory.culver@gmail.com. Damon Ellingston (A84) participated in a race on the Charles River. He writes, “What a fun race that was! I accomplished all my goals: broke 21 minutes, finished in the top half of the field (sort of) and made the 15% cut for qualification next year.” The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 37 �alumni notes 1986 Kristen Caven (SF) writes, “Recently, I had tea with the wife of Chav Doherty (SF), I edited a story for Kilian Melloy (SF), and had mac and cheese for lunch with Jennifer Flynn Israel (A). Meanwhile my son, Donald, is shopping for colleges (St. John’s has the best mascot: the Book) and trying to balance between the tasks of life and the tasks of the imagination. Follow the creative struggle at www.kristencaven.com.” 1987 Michael R. Brown (A) (formerly under step-dad’s surname Vitakis) writes: “Greetings! I’m living in Austin, Texas. I was just filmed by Montana PBS for a documentary on Mary MacLane (1881-1929), a sui generis writer from Butte, which I’ve been working to document and publicize since my SJC days. I just published a 600-page anthology of her writing, Human Days: A Mary MacLane Reader, and in 2015 I will publish a 1,200-page collection of primary sources in two volumes: Mary in The Press: Miss MacLane and Her Fame. I continue to break piano strings just like I used to!” 1988 David Blankenbaker (SF) finally read The Wind in the Willows. He is indebted and grateful to David Johnston (SF97) for his guidance and contributions. Rena Ferguson (née Kuntavanish) (A) is working in private practice as a psychiatrist, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) provider, and adjunct professor at SUNY, Stony Brook. She started out using TMS as a non-invasive, pain and medication-free treatment for de- pression, but has expanded its uses to other psychiatric disorders. She can be contacted at www.tmshopecenteroflongisland.com. Barbara Hahn (A) writes, “I’m an associate professor of history at Texas Tech University and the associate editor of the journal Technology and Culture. For the next two years, I’m on leave and serving as a Marie Curie International Incoming Fellow to the EU. I’m working at the University of Leeds in the north of England, where I’m writing a new history-of-technology treatment of the Industrial Revolution for the classroom and with industrial heritage museums. I’d love to hear from old friends at b.hahn@alumni.unc.edu.” Kim Paffenroth (A) became interim director of the Iona College Honors Program. He is a full professor in the college’s Religious Studies Department. 1989 Nathaniel Herz (A) writes, “We moved to Peoria, Ill. from Brooklyn, N.Y. in 2013. It wasn’t for work or any obvious reason. Basically, we moved on a whim; so far, a very pleasant one. We look forward to seeing Johnnies passing through or living in Central Illinois.” 1990 Kevin Graham (A) has been appointed to serve as the inaugural Timms Magis Core Curriculum Professor at Creighton University, the Jesuit and Catholic university of Omaha, Neb. In this role, he is responsible for directing the Magis Core Curriculum that provides general education to undergraduate students in four colleges of the university. He continues to teach philosophy at Creighton University, as he has done for 18 years. Graham Harman (A) has been named the #68 most powerful force in the international art world, along with his three colleagues in the Speculative Realism philosophy movement, by the London-based ArtReview magazine’s 2014 Power 100. The group first appeared on the list last year, ranked #81. The entire list can be found at http:// artreview.com/power_100. 1991 1992 On Broadway Alec Berlin (SF) writes, “I’ve just completed a two-month sojourn in San Diego as guitarist for the Old Globe’s production of Bright Star, the new musical by Steve Martin and Edie Brickell. It was a fantastic experience, filled with authentically joyous music. My non-working hours were spent marveling at the landscape in the deserts of Joshua Tree and Anza-Borrego. Now I’m back to NYC to pick up back at my other job, as guitarist for the Broadway musical If/Then. Plans for 2015 include original music as a follow-up to my 2012 CD, Innocent Explanations.” 38 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 Andrew M. Schwartz (A) is still happily married to Marie with three beautiful daughters, Amelia (10), Sarah (9), and Emily (5), and living in the suburbs in the far northeast of Philadelphia. He was recently appointed a department chair at his large law firm, Marshall Dennehey Warner Coleman and Goggin, heading up the financial services litigation group. Ramona Denk Webb (A) writes, “I married Thomas Webb (a fair dinkum Australian bloke) in 2012, and we are living in Colorado Springs. His two children live in the U.K. I have a home birth midwifery practice that is going well. I spent five years in Sudan (four in Darfur) doing safe motherhood projects from 2007-2012.” �alumni profile Military Midwifery by Gregory Shook Gay Hall (AGI99) is an independant practitioner rest of the semester at home in Pennsylvania. While in recovery, she was dissuaded from returning to St. John’s. “My family said to me that I was never going to make a living with that degree,” she says. “So I thought I’d try something else; nursing seemed like something I could do anywhere.” She enrolled in Columbia University’s A sudden shift in acanursing program, where she graduated in 1961, but never abandemic plans ultimately doned her love of the great books or St. John’s College. led to a life of dedicated After earning a master’s degree in nurse-midwifery from the service—and the births of Catholic University of America, Hall joined the Air Force as a public health nurse in 1975. “The military was actually looking for me more than 1,000 healthy because they needed more midwives,” says Hall, who by then had a babies during a 20-year child of her own. Over the years, she saw a change in midwifery phicareer. From 1975 to losophy. “When I started in the military, things were really rigid,” says Hall, a proponent of alternative birthing environments. “I had 1995, as a public health nurse and a staff midwife to deliver babies in the delivery room, and that sterile environment wasn’t comfortable,” she says. “By the time I finished, we stopped in the United States Air that nonsense of dragging everyone into the delivery room.” MidForce, Gay Hall (AGI99) wifery, she says, is about creating a soothing, comfortable environment for both mother and child, which is “wonderful because the cared for female Airmen mother says what she wants and you work with that.” and spouses of male Airmen during pregnancy, Throughout her career, Hall was fortunate to receive several labor, delivery, and the postpartum period. She also plum assignments, includtaught midwifery to new recruits. While many births ing England, Las Vegas, “You have to make and the Florida Panhantook place within the safe confines of hospital madle. She rose to the rank of ternity wards, Hall sometimes had to assist mothers, your own diagnoses... colonel before her retirequite literally, on the fly. “I was in several situations because you’ll be judged ment in 1995. During her where I had to take laboring women by helicopter by your own actions.” last military assignment in Washington, D.C., Hall to a larger Air Force hospital because either the served as director of the mother or the baby was in trouble,” says Hall, whose U.S. Air Force School of academic and military training prepared her for the Nurse-Midwifery, which works in collaboration with the Georgefield’s inevitable emergency situations. town University Nurse-Midwifery Program. In this capacity, she trained her midwives to go above the call of duty, if needed, to do “Being a midwife is being an independent practitioner,” she surgical first assisting and navigate adverse situations. “If placed says, “meaning that you have to make your own diagnoses and out in the battlefield, midwives need to know how to deliver a baby know what you’re doing because you’ll be judged by your own in the field as well as in a clean hospital.” actions and not anyone else’s.” At the 2014 Homecoming in AnWhile teaching midwifery in D.C. in the ’90s, the lure of great napolis, Hall received the Alumni Association’s Award of Merit in books and engaging conversation pulled Hall back to the St. recognition of her achievements. Before coming to St. John’s the first time in 1955, Hall fell in love John’s Annapolis campus, where she completed two segments at the Graduate Institute. After retiring in 1995, she finished the last with the college during a visit to Annapolis, where her father was a two sections of the program, earning her Master of Arts in Liberal Class of 1919 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy. A conversation Arts degree in 1999. Currently working part-time as a commuwith James Tolbert, director of Admissions, sealed her decision, nity health nurse and full-time founding an Orthodox Mission in and she enrolled in the college’s fourth class of women. “I was an intense student,” says Hall. “And I found [the Program] the small town of Big Pine, a couple miles from her home in the Florida Keys, Hall continues to take on new challenges. “You just incredible—the amazing books that we read and [discussed] in such say, ‘I can do anything. Just tell me what the parameters are and let a short period of time.” In 1958, during the second semester of her me work on them.’ This is what St. John’s represents.” junior year, Hall was stricken with influenza and had to spend the The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 39 The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 39 The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 39 �alumni notes Lake James H. Perriguey (SF) recently led the legal effort that brought marriage equality to Oregon and saved the citizens of the state $12,000,000 in a proposed ballot initiative on the civil rights of a minority. On May 19, 2014, gay and lesbian Oregonians were equal under the law for the first time in State history. While at St. John’s, he founded the first recognized GLBTQ student group on campus in Annapolis and advocated that the board of governors adopt a school non-discrimination statement that included gay and lesbian students. 1993 Laura Anne Haave (formerly Stuart) (A) writes, “In August, I accepted the position of director of the Gender and Sexuality Center at Carleton College and moved to Northfield, Minn., a small town about 45 minutes south of the Twin Cities. My partner and I bought a tiny 1961 Usonian house designed by an apprentice of Frank Lloyd Wright, known to most people in Northfield as “that weird little modern house.” After the death of our beloved Himalayan cat, Mudpie, we adopted a Kurilian bobtail, Agent Natasha Meowmanoff. I also took this opportunity to change my last name to Haave. This was my greatgrandparents’ last name when they emigrated from Norway to Chicago. My mom and I went to Norway last summer and visited Stavanger, our family’s former hometown. I already have my great-grandmother’s first name and have wanted to change my last name since high school, and our trip finally inspired me to do it. We hope to go back to Norway again next year.” 1995 Janet Sunderland (SFGI) writes, “My husband, Cliff Kroski, and I went to visit St. John’s Annapolis while visiting Baltimore in early October. Our first stop was in the Alumni Office where we met Leo Pickens, director of Alumni Relations, Annapolis. He was gracious enough to lead us on a wonderful tour of the grounds, over to the river, back through buildings, and into classrooms. It made me homesick. One of the upstairs rooms was furnished with soft easy chairs and a fireplace. I know where I would have spent winter afternoons! And walking across the old wooden floor of the ballroom brought back wonderful memories of waltz parties during my time in Santa Fe. There was a nice sense of belonging, even as a GI graduate, to traditions and a quest for excellence that transcends us all.” 1996 Douglis Beck (AGI) is now the graphics coordinator at Jaffe Book Solutions, a bindery and print-ondemand publisher in St. Louis, Mo. He continues to maintain a micropractice called Documodern : : Design Writing Research, focused on architecture and design. He was also recently invited by Poetry Scores to be the visual curator of the Tractatus project, a new, openended, international translation of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) into other media, starting immediately with music and later including visual art and performance components. U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell has named Brian McGuire (A), longtime chief speechwriter and senior advisor in his Capitol Leadership Office, as the next chief of staff in 40 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 1998 Great Books for Kids Juliana (Martonffy) Laumakis (A) writes, “Anyone out there looking to indoctrinate the next generation should check out the Junior Great Books program that’s run through the Great Books Foundation. The Foundation was started in 1947 by some of the bigwigs (Adler, Hutchins, etc.) to promote seminarstyle discussions among adults, and in 1962 the concept was extended to kids. Examples of readings include The Buffalo Storm by Katherine Applegate and Luba and the Wren, a Ukrainian folktale as told by Patricia Polacco. We’ve been doing the JGB program at our eldest daughter’s school with 2nd-5th graders during lunchtime with parent volunteers. The kids come having twice read a short story from the JGB anthology—really rich, intentionally unknown selections from around the world—and then parents lead the seminars as the kids eat. If anyone wants more information about the JGB program, check out www.greatbooks.org or feel free to contact me at jlaumakis@gmail.com. It’s really amazing how much the kids have gotten out of it!” his personal office. In the new role, McGuire will assume the duties of a traditional chief of staff responsible for home-state priorities while retaining some of his current responsibilities advising on strategic communications and policy. some writing while I’m home. I just submitted my first piece and am looking into self-publishing a novella. I’m starting to post some short fiction and writing samples on my classics reading blog: http://hjhreader.blogspot.com.” 1997 1998 Heidi Jacot Hewett (A) writes, “We had our second child this summer, a little girl named Cordelia. My eldest, Ariadne, is three and loves being read to, so we’re off to a great start! I’m working on Sara Barker (A) celebrated her daughter Fiona’s first birthday in June. The family flew to Stuttgart, Germany, in July with Matthew Corcoran (A97) to attend Whit Peterson’s (A) wedding. �alumni notes Can Atacik (A00) also attended. When not working in communications for a government contractor, she continues to tread the boards in D.C. Her acting schedule is available on her website: www. sarabarker.com/acting. David O’Hara (SFGI) teaches classics and environmental philosophy at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, S.D. His third book, Downstream: Reflections on Brook Trout, FlyFishing, and the Waters of Appalachia, was published in 2014. The citizens of Alaska’s Fairbanks Northstar Borough elected Michael O’Brien (SFGI) to a three-year term on the borough’s school board. He continues to work as an associate general counsel for the University of Alaska, primarily handling Title IX compliance, NCAA issues, and labor and employment law. He and his wife, Jill, have an eight-year-old son. 2001 2000 In July, Tim Carney (A) and his wife, Katie, welcomed their fifth child, Sean. They live in Silver Spring, Md., and are parishioners at St. Andrew Apostle Catholic Church. Tim is the senior political columnist at the Washington Examiner and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Blythe Davenport’s (SF) book of poetry, Second Oldest: A Poetic History of Philadelphia, was published by PS Books in 2013. Sylvaine (Rameckers) Hughson (A) is an Executive Health & Lifestyle Coach™ and has recently launched a new website www.sylvainehughson.com. She is the founder and director of SNH —The Art & Science of Optimized Living™ and works with high-level executives helping them realize the fundamental role that health, wellness, and lifestyle play in achieving their personal and professional goals. Her focus is Peak Performance, Personal Excellence, and Optimized Living™. She was recently awarded “Woman of the Year” by the National Association of Professional Women. finally come home, but now I am, of course, finding myself missing the people and a few aspects of the culture. I’ve landed a job with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Ventura, Calif., permitting work in waters of the U.S. under the Clean Water Act. I am still getting used to SoCal and would be glad to catch up with any Johnnies in the area.” 2004 Michael Looft’s (AGI) book, Inspired Finance: The Role of Faith in Microfinance and International Economic Development, was published in 2014. 2005 Jacob Thomas (A) is married to his wife of five years, Phoebe, and continues to work in the Special Education Department of the Berkeley Unified School District. In his free time, he runs two small record labels out of his living room. So far this year he has released seven albums, all on cassette. He 2007 Aiding Afghanistan 2002 John Rogove (A) is teaching and finishing his Ph.D. in philosophy at the Sorbonne, on Husserl’s phenomenology, and also teaching at NYU’s Liberal Studies Program. 2003 Sean McLain (A) and his wife, Suryatapa Bhattacharya, welcomed their son, Amartya Christopher McLain, on August 26. He still lives in New Delhi, India, where he and his wife work for the Wall Street Journal. Erin Hanlon (SF) writes, “I’m back from my two years in Moscow, where I taught English at a parochial school. It was quite the adventure. I was very glad to Felicitas Steinhoff (SF) writes, “I am currently working in rural Afghanistan for a humanitarian aid organization (Help - INGO from Germany) as the senior project advisor for vocational training and institutional capacity building. My husband and I live in the high-altitude mountain valley called Bamiyan, site of the world heritage Buddha Statues that were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. With the withdrawal of the international forces and the new government, the coming year will be very important for development in the country, and as you can read pretty much daily now, the security situation in some regions already points to a difficult year ahead. What I have experienced beyond that, however, is a country full of complex history, intriguing social codes, a wealth of contradictions, and, above all, people who are amazing storytellers, optimists, hosts, and colleagues. Therefore, in the spirit of the independent inquiry that we learned at St. John’s, I want to encourage alumni, current students, and faculty to look beyond the headlines and news coverage, when thinking about Afghanistan.” The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 41 �alumni notes also participates in a number of local music projects (most of which release music exclusively on archaic technology), which include leading a black metal band that features frequent contributions from Aidan O’Flynn (A). The Atlantic favorably described them as “lo-fi shoegazebeing-eaten-by-demons.” Tom Jacobs (A) and Brianne Jacobs (nee Bell) (A06) had their first son, David Jacobs, on January 23, 2014. Scott Dunbar (SF) graduated from the University of Colorado Law School in 2011 and landed his dream job as an assistant attorney general at the Colorado Attorney General’s Office. He represents the staff of the Public Utilities Commission on cases involving electric and natural gas rate cases, electric resource plans, and energy efficiency and renewable energy matters. “Ray Gifford (A89), a former chairman of the PUC, was an informal mentor to me during law school and a great help in guiding me along this path,” says Dunbar. In August 2014, he married his best friend, Meghan, in Breckenridge, Colo. John Gorczynski (SF04) was a groomsman. “We live in Boulder with our dog and spend our free time hiking, snowboarding, biking, and brewing beer,” says Dunbar. “I feel fortunate to have a small but good contingent of Johnnies in the area.” 2006 Aran Donovan (SF) was erroneously identified as male in the summer 2014 issue of The College. We regret the error. 2007 Chelsea Ihnacik (A) writes, “I ran the Zooma Annapolis Half Marathon (my first). It was fun and challenging! I chose to run a race in Annapolis because it has been my surrogate hometown since I graduated from St. John’s College. I worked as a retail manager until my husband and I took an ‘extended vacation’ in the U.S. Virgin Islands for two years. When we returned to the mainland, I took up my current job of full-time mom, which I love. I am the author of the blog, Whole Food Vegan (www.wholefoodvegan.com), and a contributor to the vegan lifestyle blog, Peaceful Dumpling (www.peacefuldumpling.com). My passion is plants: I’m an advocate for a whole foods plant-based diet, and I lead workshops for adults in southern Maryland who want to follow mom’s advice and ‘eat your fruits and veggies!’ My current pursuit is to get as much of our food at low cost and from local organic sources as possible, which I achieve by working for trade as a food photographer in the community.” Adam Braus (SF) writes, “For the past few months, Micah Davis (SF10), Zhenya Ogorodova (SF), and I have started Conversera. com, an online great conversation school. Based in San Francisco and Washington, D.C., we have a small curriculum of singleton seminars on a variety of short stories, science, and novellas. We have more than 350 students and 12 facilitators and 15 classes in the works, with participants from across the United States, Guatemala, and China. We plan to double every month, so by Christmas we should have more than 1,000 students. Early next year, we are planning to do an equity crowdfunding raise of $250k. You can learn more and/ or contact us at hello@conversera. com or Facebook.com/conversera.” Will Hollingsworth’s (SF) new bar, the Spotted Owl Bar, opened in Cleveland, Ohio, in October 2014. The bar is located in a circa-1850s building that once housed a Bible factory. 2013 In October 2014, Amy Stewart (A) was inducted into a 10-month term of service in the National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC), an AmeriCorps program. As a corps member, she will be responsible for completing a series of six- to eightweek-long service projects as part of a small team. Kurt Strom (A) and Audra Zook (A) were married on October 11, 2014, in Glendale, Ariz. Zachary Wells (A) and Margaret Reitz (A14) were married in summer 2014. Mr. Reitz-Wells is now reading in Eastern Classics in Santa Fe, where Mrs. Reitz-Wells is employed by the college. 2014 Micaela MacDougall (A) is currently fundraising for her graduate studies at St. Andrews, Scotland. To learn more, please visit www.youcaring.com/SendMKtoStAndrews. Read the June 10, 2014 article in the Capital: http://bit.ly/1uRVGnh 2008 Brian Becker (AGI) and his wife, Melanie, welcomed their second child, Finn William Becker, in October. He is currently the assistant headmaster at Washington Jesuit Academy in D.C. 42 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 Micaela MaDougall (A14) and her mother, Lynn, at Homecoming 2014 in Annapolis. �in memoriam Chaninah Maschler (H98) August 7, 2014 Tutor, Annapolis Chaninah Maschler (1931-2014), formerly Chaninah Marienthal-Lowenthal, was born in Berlin, and then moved to Amsterdam. She was hidden from the Nazis during World War II, saved by a Christian family named the Mooks in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Her mother and brother were active with the Dutch underground resistance and were captured by the Nazis and sent to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany, where her brother died. After the war, Maschler was reunited with her mother, who had survived Bergen-Belsen, and they immigrated to the United States. Maschler graduated from City College of New York in 1953. She won a full scholarship for graduate study at Yale University. She taught philosophy, religion, and other subjects at Bryn Mawr, Penn State, and Queens College. Maschler joined the St. John’s faculty as a tutor in 1976, first at the Graduate Institute in Santa Fe and then at the Annapolis campus, until 1998. She is remembered for her many contributions to the intellectual life of the college and remained an enthusiastic member of the college community after her retirement. Dozens of former students have remained her devoted friends over the years. The community gathered for a memorial held on September 14, 2014, in the Great Hall. Colleagues remember Maschler for her abiding curiosity and interest in wide-ranging subjects, authors, and people. Among her many interests were the works of Darwin, Simon Stevin, Charles Sanders Pearce, and Spinoza, as well as mathematics, the Hebrew Bible, African American poetry, child development, gardening, and anything to do with the Netherlands. She was a founding member of Kol Ami synagogue (now Kol Shalom) in Annapolis, Maryland. István Fehérváry (H89) October 30, 2014 István Fehérváry (1925-2014) was a beloved member of the St. John’s community. An accomplished athlete and scholar, he was a bold figure in his native Hungary, fighting in the resistance movement against the Soviets and eventually spending eight years in the gulag. He came to St. John’s, Santa Fe in 1969, establishing the Student Activities Office and serving as its director for 20 years. He was instrumental in founding the St. John’s Fencing Club, Maschler’s husband, Henry Maschler, preceded her in death in 2004. She is survived by her daughters, Rina Maschler of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Toni Maschler of Alexandria, Virginia; and her granddaughter, Josie Silver. the Search and Rescue team, and countless other activities that benefited generations of Johnnies. When he became an honorary member of the Alumni Association in 1989, his certificate read, in part: “with gratitude for the exuberance and devotion with which he has dealt with students of the Santa Fe campus over the years as Director of Student Activities; and with respect for the talent and discipline he has shown in his endeavors.” Fehérváry is remembered fondly for his warmth, courage, generosity, and love for learn- ing; he wrote several books. In the words of the plaque that hangs in the lobby of Santa Fe’s Student Activities Center, he was “a courageous and extraordinary man whose sacrifice, passion, and wisdom turned our thoughtfulness into activity.” He is survived by his son, István Andras Fehérváry, director of Government and Public Affairs for Novartis, and his daughter, Krisztina Fehérváry (SFGI89), a member of the anthropology faculty at the University of Michigan and associate director of its Center for Russian and East European Studies. The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 43 �in memorium George Anastaplo (H90) February 14, 2014 Norman Levan (SFGI74) May 25, 2014 Norman Levan (1916-2014) was quick to say that the St. John’s College Graduate Institute changed his life. In the middle of his thriving medical career, he found a learning community in Santa Fe united by a common love of books and ideas, one that welcomed students of all ages. “It was a turning point in my life: being able to read the original texts, being part of a community, experiencing a faculty so different [from medical school].” Levan generously demonstrated his appreciation when he made a $5 million gift to the college to build Levan Hall, home of the Graduate Institute in Santa Fe, which was dedicated in 2010. Levan was born in Shaker Heights, Ohio. After receiving his bachelor’s degree with a major in literature from the University of Southern California (USC), he earned his medical degree there in 1939. He served in the Army Medical Corps during World War II for nearly five years, three and a half of which were in the Central Pacific, where he experienced the full fury of the battle of Okinawa. Levan then embarked upon a long and distinguished career in medicine, beginning with a private practice in dermatology. He was also a faculty member of the USC School of Medicine, serving as chair of the Department of Dermatology from 1961 to 1981 at its Keck School of Medicine. In 1962, he established the Hansen’s Disease Clinic for lep- Known as the “Socrates of Chicago,” George Anastaplo, Sr. (1925-2014) was widely considered a living institution and one of the pillars of the University of Chicago’s Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults. He was nominated 13 times for the Nobel Peace Prize, according to Loyola University. After serving in the Air Force during World War II, Anastaplo studied law at the University of Chicago, where he rose to be a top student in his class. His bright legal future ended abruptly in 1950, when he refused to answer questions from the Illinois Supreme Court Committee on Character and Fitness on whether he was a member of the Communist Party. This act of principled defiance led to the committee’s refusal to admit him to the bar. Anastaplo challenged the ban, ultimately arguing his case before the U.S. Supreme Court. He lost by a vote of 5-4, but not before Justice Hugo Black issued a famed, ringing dissent that said, “We must not be afraid to be free.” In his academic life, Anastaplo threaded law with the work of Greek scholars, Dante, Shakespeare, and Alfred Lord Tennyson. He enjoyed engaging with his students at Rosary College (now Dominican University), the Loyola University Chicago School of Law, and the University of Chicago’s Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults. He is survived by his wife, Sara Prince Anastaplo; son, George Anastaplo, Jr. (A75); daughters, Sara Anastaplo (A78) (now Miriam Redleaf), Theodora Anastaplo, and Helen Newlin; and eight grandchildren. rosy at the Los Angeles County/ USC Medical Center. During this period, he married Betty; the couple spent their early years in Los Angeles before moving to Bakersfield. Betty died in 2005. Levan also will be remembered as an extraordinary philanthropist. He made significant gifts to Bakersfield College, USC, and a hospital in Jerusalem. With a combination of gifts and pledges totaling $17 million, Levan became the 44 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 single greatest benefactor in the history of St. John’s College in Santa Fe. His munificence supports the Graduate Institute, student financial aid, and the Levan Faculty Chair. “He has given so generously to ensure financial considerations would not preclude any student from obtaining the education he felt was so important,” said Victoria Mora, vice president for Advancement in Santa Fe. “Norm Levan was a great believer in the value of education and especially of liberal education, and he exemplified that in his life,” remarked President Mike Peters. “St. John’s was honored to have him as an alumnus.” Charles W. (Chuck) Robinson (H93) May 20, 2014 Charles W. Robinson (19192014) led an extraordinary life. He earned a cum laude degree in international relations from the University of California at Berkeley. He served as a naval engineer in World War II on the USS Tuscaloosa and saw action at the D-Day landing in France and at Iwo Jima and Okinawa. After the war, he earned a master’s degree in business administration from Stanford University. Robinson’s wide-ranging, audacious business career began in a dairy. He became a consultant. Then a construction company sent him to Panama to develop a timber operation. In 1950, he founded the Marcona Mining Company, shipping iron ore from Peru around the world. Shipbuilding was next, increasingly emphasizing large vessels that handled both ore and oil. During this time, Robinson met Mara, an opera singer who had founded the Opera-West Company in San Francisco. Two months later, they married. Their full lives were enriched with daughters Lisa, Wendy, and Heather. �in memorium In 1961, Robinson built the first Panamax, the largest vessel to traverse the Panama Canal. His involvement with port development in Brazil, Saudi Arabia, New Zealand, Australia, India, and Chile helped him establish a network of governmental agencies and officials. They proved valuable when he was appointed undersecretary of state for Economic Affairs during the Ford administration, and U.S. deputy secretary of state under Henry Kissinger. Throughout his accomplished business career that followed, Robinson also developed marine design projects including the M-Ship concept—a boat crafted to reduce bow waves and ameliorate erosion in the canals of Venice, Italy, where he and Mara lived for many years. Well into his eighties, he pursued his passion for tennis, hiking, and running. The Robinsons relocated to Santa Fe in 1978, where Mara received her master’s degree from St. John’s in 1983. She served on the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors from 1984 to 1990. Chuck and Mara generously gave their resources and energy to many worthy organizations, including The Santa Fe Opera, New Mexico School for the Arts, and St. John’s College. In 2009, the state House of Representatives recognized the Robinsons as New Mexico Living Treasures. Robinson is survived by his beloved wife, Mara, three daughters, two sons-in-law, and six grandchildren. Margaret Robson Olivia Delgado de Torres Also Deceased: August 24, 2014 April 18, 2014 Tutor, Santa Fe Roland J. Bailey, Class of 1935 Margaret Robson (1932-2014) was the widow of John E. Robson, an honorary alumnus and St. John’s College Board member who served three separate terms between 1973 and 2002. Born and raised in St. Cloud, Minnesota, Robson received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Minnesota. She left a pioneering career in Chicago as one of the first female officers at Continental Bank of Illinois to work for John F. Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign. After she married John in Chicago, his career in government, business, and academia took them to Washington, D.C.; Atlanta; San Francisco; and Santa Fe. They spent 41 years together; John passed away in 2002. Robson devoted herself to public service as a member of many boards and commissions, from Northwestern Memorial Hospital Foundation in Chicago to the Santa Fe Art Institute, the President’s Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, the Defense Advisory Commission on Women in the Military, the President’s Committee on Arts and Humanities, and more. She is survived by her son, Douglas Robson of San Francisco; a sister and brother; and several nieces and nephews. Robson will be remembered for her devotion to family, kindness to friends, and service to her community. April 22, 2014 Olivia Balfour Maldonado Delgado de Torres (1944–2014), a tutor at the Santa Fe campus from 1992 to 1996, died at age 70. Born and raised in the Bronx, New York, she attended Vassar College and studied at the Sorbonne in Paris. She married Juan Delgado de Torres, an economist, in 1963. She became a reporter for LIFE magazine’s Spanish-language edition. After earning her doctorate from the New School for Social Research, she taught philosophy at Baruch College of the City University of New York and at Long Island University in Brooklyn. After St. John’s, she continued teaching at Adelphi University and the College of Santa Fe. With her Caribbean roots, she felt out of place in Santa Fe’s high desert, but loved working in her garden. She told people she was a tropical flower. Preceded in death by her husband, Juan, and her sister, Millicent Maldonado de Jesus, she is survived by her daughter, Lena; her grandson, Lucas; and her companion of almost 28 years, Kenny Pin. Mary L. Batteen, A73 September 17, 2014 George Brunn, Class of 1945 June 30, 2014 Paul G. Cree, Class of 1952 April 8, 2014 Terrance N. Dilley, SFGI74 April 25, 2014 Suzanne Fielding, SFGI77 May 14, 2014 Egle T. Germanas, SFGI83 April 11, 2014 Paul Heineman, Class of 1953 July 28, 2014 Jeffrey A. Hockersmith, SF69 August 1, 2014 Joel D. Lehman, Class of 1961 June 24, 2014 Jacob D. Martinez, SFGI70 June 9, 2014 John M. Mason, A75 April 10, 2014 E. Leslie Medford, Class of 1939 June 21, 2014 Zoe M. Pantelides, A81 September 1, 2014 Thomas Phelan, AGI93 June 13, 2014 Jerome C. Smith, SFGI74 September 22, 2014 Joseph J. Wase, Class of 1956 September 30, 2014 The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 45 �philanthropy Alumni Support Santa Fe 50th Anniversary by Susan Kaplan Because of the generosity of alumni, friends, board members, and foundations, the Santa Fe campus has already exceeded its 50th anniversary campaign goal of $20 million. With five months still left of the celebration, $23.5 million in cash and pledges has been raised and a new $30 million goal set. “The vision of the 50th anniversary campaign is to strengthen the college by strengthening Santa Fe,” says Victoria Mora, vice president for Advancement in Santa Fe. “I mean, if you’re not looking forward on the occasion of a milestone anniversary, in addition to celebrating and reflecting on the past, you’re missing out on a watershed moment! Concretely this means raising money to increase the Santa Fe portion of the college endowment as well as supporting our three-year investment plan and current operations. The $23.5 million raised to date encompasses a 53% increase in the Santa Fe endowment, which promises to strengthen the whole college as we look forward to the future.” The success of these efforts is due in large measure to the generosity of alumni, friends, foundations, and Board members who have recognized that a gift in honor of this 50-year milestone makes Santa Fe a stronger partner in the one-college, twocampus structure. Alumni, in particular, have really stepped up to support this effort. For the first time in the college’s history, a Santa Fe undergraduate alumnus has made a seven-figure gift. Dan Raizen (SF79) presented this gift in memory of his wife, Teresa (SF78), who died two years ago. Dan and Teresa met when they were students at St. John’s. Two of their three children, Nathaniel and Benjamin, are also alums. “The impulse of philanthropy ran deep in Teresa. I wanted to do something in her memory that would have a big impact now,” says Raizen. “Since four members of our family went to St. John’s College, it made sense to give to an organization that I was familiar with. More importantly, St. John’s is a place that I strongly believe in.” These fundraising activities also have brought into focus a number of ongoing endeavors by groups of alumni, efforts that have been folded into the 50th celebration. One of these is the brainchild of the Santa Fe Class of 2004, which has been working to purchase and install an operational armillary sphere on the Santa Fe campus. Inspired by the designs of the great 16th-century astronomer Tycho Brahe, the sphere will be designed and assembled by noted artist David Harber. He was selected for his aesthetic vision and his experience creating scientifically precise armillary spheres. The Class of 2004 has more than doubled the funds originally raised in support of this project and is approaching the initial goal of $100,000. Since the class contained about 100 students, many of whom are in the nascent stages of their careers, this accomplishment is impressive and shows the power of participation. This operational work of art serves a number of purposes. It will enable hands- 46 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 on lab work by freshman and sophomore students as they study the works of Ptolemy, Kepler, and other astronomers. It will symbolize the unity of the humanities with the sciences and enhance the beauty of the campus environment. As an icon for both the campus and the college, it will raise the campus’s visibility and underscore the enduring value of a St. John’s education. The same features that make an armillary sphere useful for our study of astronomy also make it a valuable aid in introducing primary and secondary school students to the most general appearances of the heavens. Once the armillary sphere is installed, the college plans to engage the services of one of its own work-study students to elicit participation from local schools to bring their students to campus. “What better image for the work of the college than the armillary sphere?” adds Vice President Mora. “An object of beauty and utility that represents the audacity to imagine that we might actually understand the universe we inhabit, and our place within it.” �Two Trees Two trees were planted at St. John’s College this year: a dawn redwood by College Creek in Annapolis and a golden honey locust in front of and between Terpsichore and Polyhymnia in Santa Fe. Both were gifts of love and regard, reminding us of the value of life even as we experience tragic loss. The tree in Santa Fe was planted in honor of Martha Post (SF79) by her friends and classmates. Post, a dermatologist, was married to Robert Truitt and was the mother of Erin, Caitlin, and Kathryn Truitt. She was killed September 1, 2011, in Lexington, Kentucky. Classmate Suzanne Gill remem- bers Post as “quietly cheerful, thoughtful, levelheaded, and gracious.” Laird Durley (SF79) chose a verse from Philippians for the plaque that accompanies the tree. By all accounts, this verse speaks to Post’s spirit: “Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.” The tree in Annapolis is a memorial to Helen Higuera, daughter of tutors Marilyn and Henry Higuera, who died May 26 at the age of A Gift from the Geezers They started out as the Geezers: a group of Graduate Institute classmates a few decades older than the typical student, who gathered to share a meal from time to time. Jeff Black, associate dean for Graduate Programs in Annapolis, renamed them the Elders; they appear to like both names. Black says that the Elders made important contributions to the Graduate Institute. “Folks who are mid-career or late-career who come to the Graduate Institute make a very important contribution to the intellectual life of the program. When the younger students are in class with people at their point in life, it sheds the light of experience on the books we read.” Don Leopold, a charter member of the Elders, recalls that as graduation was approaching, the group started thinking about what they might do to express their appreciation for the Graduate Institute in general and for their tutors in particular. “Being older, we appreciated a lot of what goes into being a tutor, all the good they do and all the sacrifices they make. We understand the value of the dedication they bring to creating this remarkable learning community.” Leopold challenged his colleagues to raise money for a graduation gift to the Institute and pledged to match each dollar they gave. After consulting with Black, the Elders decided to start an endow- 24. The class of 1984 arranged for the memorial. In a letter to the Higueras, the class explained that the tree was planted to represent the deep regard in which we, their students and friends, hold Marilyn and Henry, and symbolizes our profound sorrow at their loss. Higuera held a BA in history from Stanford University and an MBA from the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. At the time of her death, she was a student at Georgetown University Law School and taught ESL classes in Annapolis. She was known and loved for her intelligence, kindness, beauty, creativity, and sense of adventure. —Sus3an Borden (A87) ment fund for faculty study that would support the Graduate Institute and its curriculum and also have benefits for the undergraduate program. They chose to call it the Nestor Fund—after Agamemnon’s venerable advisor—although an alternative name was floated. Referring to the foolish counselor to King Claudius in Hamlet, Leopold says, “We did joke about calling it the Polonius Fund.” —Sus3an Borden (A87) Hallie Leighton Memorial Fund Update In 2013, the Hallie Leighton Memorial Fund for Health and Wellness was established to raise $50,000 to name the student health office on the Santa Fe campus in Leighton’s memory. The fund currently stands at $20,000 with 68 donors to the fund. Proceeds from this endowment fund will support the development of education, outreach, advocacy, and delivery of services directed towards women’s wellness, breast care for women, wellness exams, stress reduction, substance abuse prevention, and safety in relationships. Specific activities, programs, and services will be developed each year in response to students’ particular needs and issues. Class of 1993 Honors Gregory Riley with Scholarship Fund The Annapolis Class of 1993 lost a lot when it lost Greg Riley, who died on August 1, 2004. The class lost the leader of a study group on the German language, a striker for the Greenwaves, the coordinator of the “Miss Randall Hall” beauty contest and, as Chris Denny (A93) says, “one of the most wellmannered and forthright people to come through St. John’s.” Many in the class also lost a close friend. Matt Wright (A93) met Riley the day before they entered St. John’s as freshmen and remained close to him until his death. “He was an extremely charismatic person, extremely generous, and interested in other people being successful in what they were doing,” recalls Wright. “He was also very curious about off-program ideas; for him, being at St. John’s was an expression of his general interest in everything.” As a tribute to Riley, the class recently established the Gregory Riley Class of 1993 Memorial Scholarship Fund. “We received the support of alumni and mentors on our journey at the College,” Denny explains. “Now we have a chance to continue that tradition of philanthropy on behalf of current Johnnies in Greg’s memory.” To make a gift to the Hallie Leighton Fund for Health and Wellness, send a check to the college, or visit www.sjc.edu/giving. The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 47 �student voices The Structure of Spirit MICHAEL McLAUGHLIN by Laura Bartram (A15) What is the spirit of place? I started thinking about this as a freshman at St. John’s College. The spirit of the freshman year is unmistakably Greek, yet when I looked up from my volume of Aristophanes while sitting on a bench near the quad, I did not see a circular theater, or glistening marble. I saw McDowell and Mellon halls— the former, a charmingly brickish and big Georgian mansion-to-be, and the latter, a modernist palace filled with glass and trees and a glorious pendulum. In the distance, I see the skyline of Annapolis, precise and toy-like, reflecting a maritime and Colonial past to which neither I nor these books are directly linked (although surely the influence of the books helped build this city). I have been immersed in this world for three years, and it starts to make sense to me as a unified place. The peculiar sense of St. John’s in this particular city, Annapolis, will forever be wound up in my mind with the task of liberal education. The spirit of place at St. John’s—bifurcated between colonial and modernist in architecture, ancient and modern in books—inspired me to think about architecture as a career after St. John’s. Luckily for me, our own Greenfield Library was designed by a Johnnie, Travis Price (SF71). I got in touch with him about a possible internship at his practice in Washington, D.C., but also was invited to work on his incredible project, Spirit of Place/Spirit of Design at Catholic University. Each year, Price and a group of architecture students research and architecturally reinterpret the myth and history of a remote culture. Before I knew it, during the summer after my sopho- 48 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 more year, I was helping to define and reinterpret spirit of place on an expedition to Inishturk Island in County Mayo, Ireland. A look at a satellite image of Inishturk Island exposes its birth as a single geological moment, a violent springing forth from the sea. Located off the western coast of Ireland, Inishturk is green and fierce, with cliffs as sharp and craggy as the meanest thing someone ever said to you. The bedrock of the island mostly runs in a single direction. It is a treacherous and magnificent landscape. Only about 40 brave souls live on the island. They are proud, stalwart, and above all, mischievous and loving. The monument was inspired by a story told by the Inishturkers, the tale of the tongs. When someone left the island for a long time on a treacherous coffin boat, �TRAVIS PRICE (SF71) Laura Bartram (A15), right, ponders spirit of place. Other than the one pub, it is the natural place to gather. The center structure is a rectangular building made of steel, glass, and local limestone, which protects the firepit within. The glass walls allow for protection from the biting wind without compromising the look of the hillside, but the engineered steel roof allows the smoke from the fire to exit the room. The steel columns that support the building curve like a pair of tongs. Surrounding the building are a number of stone and glass walls, which appear to be drawn toward the center structure. These TRAVIS PRICE (SF71) uncertain of any future return, he would leave his tongs with a bit of burning peat from his abandoned hearth at the fireplace of a family member who remained on the island. If the person ever returned, he would go to the family’s hearth and grab a coal with the tongs to take back to his fire. In this way, their fires never stopped burning; their spirits never left the island. Our building—designed by Price and his students—made the invisible parts of this story visible. First of all, the monument sits above The Common, a particularly sacred place on the island that has been variously inhabited since 5000 BCE. The monument on Inishturk Island, Ireland was built in nine days. walls represent the clans of the island and their yearning to return. The glass walls are engraved with the names of the families—Heanue, O’Toole, Faherty, and more. All the walls fall along the natural bedrock striation of the site and are made from local stone; to the eye from a distance, they blend in with the natural color palette, yet create a definite contrast between the craggy bedrock and their squareness. The built world and the natural landscape weave in and out of each other in this creation. We built the monument in nine blustery, wet, sometimes muggy days. Much of the material was prefabricated, such as the steel, glass, and wall supports. But to build the stone walls, expert Inishturkbred stonemasons came to the tutelage of us inexperienced masons: the other student architects-in-training and I, a Johnnie, trying to mentally consult the Archimedean center of weight to build my best wall. We all paled before their skill, their way of pulling metamorphic shrapnel from a hillside mine and forming with their hammers something akin to the perfect brick. This interaction with brilliant craftsmen was half of our living education in the spirit of place. Our oldest and most precious stories need the support of a place. When I struggle, for instance, in reading and understanding the papers of Maxwell that we study in junior laboratory, in imagining a field, I look around. The hatched grain of a wood floor in McDowell aids my mind in imagining the lines of force curling through space. The bare steel beams in the fishbowl in Mellon contain a space. I might superimpose a wood grain through the emptiness of the ceiling and be able to imagine a field filling space. I have spent time in new buildings thinking old thoughts. And I have spent time thinking new thoughts in buildings older than the United States. I have found that each supports the other. At St. John’s, I have felt lucky to be habituated to a way of seeing and thinking that does not preclude seeing an old idea in a new place. Our two beautiful examples of old and new architecture have helped me to become a more versatile thinker and careful looker. As buildings begin to look more and more the same around the world, however, some old ideas get swallowed up. As building materials and practices become more homogenized worldwide, the past’s appearance risks dissolution. Do our stories fit in modern design? In monuments like Price’s, or here at St. John’s, we see the spirit of our stories, our past, and our landscape embodied without excess. The elegance of the form and the elegance of the story mutually strengthen each other, creating architecture with no age. The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 49 �alumni news s av e t h e d a t e Homecoming 2015 Santa Fe September 18-20 Annapolis September 25-27 Johnnie Women in Science On a crisp November afternoon, 23 Annapolis students —freshmen through seniors—gathered together in the private dining room in Randall Hall for a panel discussion with four St. John’s alumni who work in science. Sponsored by the Career Services Office, the “Women in Science” panel featured these scientists: Homecoming is a time to reunite and reconnect with friends, classmates, and the college community. Both campuses will offer a wide variety of activities, including seminars, dancing, career networking events, and the Alumni Association Awards Banquet that will make your return to St. John’s fun and memorable. And remember: Homecoming is family friendly with fun activities offered for all of our future Johnnies, too. So bring the whole family. Please join us and your classmates as we celebrate St. John’s College. Sarah Palacios and Leo Pickens, directors of Alumni Relations For more information: http://alumni.stjohnscollege.edu. Click on “Homecoming” Annapolis Alumni Office 410-626-2531 Annapolis.Alumni@sjc.edu Santa Fe Alumni Office 505-984-6103 SantaFe.Alumni@sjc.edu 50 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 Meredith Bohannon (A03), who recently completed her PhD in the marine, estuarine, and environmental sciences graduate program at the University of Maryland. Rachel Dudik (A02), an astrophysicist at the United States Naval Observatory who earned her master’s in applied and engineering physics and her PhD in astrophysics at George Mason University. Cara Gormally (A02), an assistant professor in biology at Gallaudet University who earned her doctorate in plant biology from the University of Georgia. Elisabeth McClure (A08), a PhD candidate in Georgetown University’s Department of Psychology, where her current research examines the emotional engagement of very young children during screenmediated social interactions. The Career Services Office hosts alumni panels throughout the year, but this was the first time the group was exclusively comprised of women. “You always hear that Johnnies can do anything after St. John’s, but it’s different to actually see it,” says Jenna Alton (A16). “It was inspiring to meet so many Johnnie women in science, who exhibit such passion about what they do.” In addition to sharing knowledge about their respective fields, the alumnae discussed the process of applying to graduate school and the value of internships. Three of the panelists have sponsored Hodson Interns; they know what a great resource Johnnies can be in their labs. “I continue to be impressed with the opportunities that are available for Johnnies, especially the Hodson Internship,” says Gormally. “Taking the time to do an internship is critical, and the Hodson really lets students follow their interests.” —Jaime Dunn, director of Career Services, Annapolis �alumni news Alumni Association Board President Phelosha Collaros (SF00) “�During my time as the Alumni Association president, I’ve met many alumni who are passionate about their education at St. John’s and want to make sure it continues to survive and thrive—but they don’t always know how to help make this happen. The Alumni Leadership Forum is a great place to plug into a community that is moving the college forward and a great event for alumni to network with each other. Over the first five years, I’ve seen ALF start to come into its own. If you’ve been before, it’s time to come back and see how it’s matured. If you’ve never been, we’d love you to join us.” Sharing the “St. John’s Approach” Unlike many graduates who wait for years to get involved in their colleges, Johnnies can become engaged in alumni concerns within a month of graduating, at the Alumni Leadership Forum (ALF). Offering two days filled with seminars and sessions for alumni of all years, ALF has become a signature event of the St. John’s College Alumni Association. It’s a welcome way for alumni to stay connected with the college at a time when many question the value of the liberal arts and the method of learning at St. John’s. “As a professor teaching at another university, I found that the work done in one class seemed an isolated endeavor, and the lessons learned by students were often quickly forgotten,” says Brenna Strauss (SF04), a post-doctoral fellow at Boston College’s Department of Political Science who is one of two co-chairs for the ALF Working Group. “The education at St. John’s, in contrast, is a whole; the questions raised in one class are addressed and reframed in many others. By helping organize ALF, I hope to remind us of the unique worth of the St. John’s approach and to help alumni use their talents and resources to ensure its longevity and health.” Beyond the workshops and seminars, ALF participants have plenty of opportunities to catch up with each other and meet alumni from other classes. A highlight of the event is the Alumni Awards Banquet, held on the second evening, when the Association presents the ALFie—or Volunteer Service Award—in recognition of leadership in the alumni community. The 2014 ALFie recipients made innovative improvements. Christopher Denny (A93) of Fresh Meadows, New York, helped to develop a model for alumni chapters’ high school seminar programs. Michael Sullivan (A07) of Indianapolis established the St. John’s College Alumni Association Internet Chapter. Gloria McGillen (SF12) of Boston, Massachusetts, helped to create the Class Agent Program handbook and the first networking groups for class chairs. Many other alumni were nominated for their work as class chairs or with Career Services and Admissions. To acknowledge the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Santa Fe campus, seminar readings and tutorials at the 2015 ALF will be selected from the Chinese and Indian traditions of the Eastern Classics Program. “We [tried] to choose readings that draw out the themes of service, devotion, integrity, and education,” said Briana Saussy (A03, EC05), of San Antonio, Texas, who volunteers in the ALF Working Group. “It turns out that the Gita is an excellent piece to read when thinking about service in particular, and Confucius was very concerned with education.” The next Alumni Leadership Forum occurs from June 5-7, 2015, on the Santa Fe campus. —Babak Zarin (A11) Thirsting to return to the seminar table? Piraeus, a continuing education program just for alumni, is offered several times each year on each campus. In Annapolis on May 28-31, tutors Tom May and David Townsend will lead seminars on Thoreau’s Walden and Civil Disobedience. Tutors Eva Brann (H89) and Lise van Boxel will lead seminars on selections from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and a recent book by Sherry Turkle, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. In Santa Fe on June 7-12, tutors Michael Wolfe and Patricia Greer will lead seminars on the poetry of Rumi. Recent alumni (2004-2014) receive a 50% discount on tuition. On-campus housing is available. Register online: http:// community.stjohnscollege.edu/ piraeus?chid=32 Who are your Alumni Association leaders? To see the current list of the St. John’s College Alumni Association officers, directors, and representatives as well as the volunteer Alumni Association working groups, visit: http://community.stjohnscollege.edu/page.aspx?pid=403h The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 51 �st. john’s forever Bringing Santa Fe History to Life Like the oral history project led by Santa Fe tutor Claudia Hauer, the display project highlights the people and events that have helped to define the founding and development of the Santa Fe campus. Created by Meem Library and Communications staff, the display project consists of a series of selfstanding storyboards that illustrate aspects of the Santa Fe campus’s history. The storyboards are located in a number of buildings throughout the campus. “All of us have seen photos of the early years hanging in various places around campus, but we don’t really know the stories behind those photos,” says Meem Library Director Jennifer Sprague. “These projects are bringing those stories to life, honoring the people who had the courage and vision to participate in the founding of the Santa Fe campus, while also capturing the personalities that have made this such a vibrant community throughout our fifty years. And just as importantly, these projects serve as a way to spark a conversation about what we have been doing and will continue to do at the college.” —Susan Kaplan 52 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 Architect John Gaw Meem (left) and Richard Weigle survey the land donated by the Meem family to establish the Santa Fe campus, 1963. �eidos “To my mind, potters fall into two main categories: those who are fascinated by the fire and those who love to have their hands in the mud. I always loved playing in the mud, from the time I was a little girl. My mother, who was a painter, told a story of when I was about three years old, playing outside in the sun after a rainstorm. As she watched me standing in a mud puddle with the sleeves of my sweater hanging out of my jacket, I dipped my sleeves in the muddy water and swung my arms in an arc, watching the sun sparkling on the flying droplets. Mud was always an attraction! I am inspired by the creativity of others, shapes I see in nature, and ideas of how things might be used to make day-to-day experiences more beautiful—your morning bowl of cereal or cup of coffee, a vessel for flowers on your table, or a colander for washing fresh berries. For colors, I tend to choose shades of blue and green with occasional red and black or even honey, depending on the purpose of the piece.” —Eleanor Peters Eleanor Peters, wife of Michael Peters, president, St. John’s College, Santa Fe, is a potter in Santa Fe. She works in the St. John’s College ceramics studio. “I started taking classes in the early 1970s, when my husband was in graduate school in Seattle. One class a week at the local rec center turned into two, and soon my husband bought me a wheel of my own.” Peters has worked in a variety of studios over the years, with different types of clay, mainly stoneware and porcelain. She usually throws on a wheel but enjoys hand-building as well. Peters creates mostly functional ware, including platters and coasters. She glazes by dipping, often applying a second color along one side of the vessel. �Non-Profit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Annapolis, md Permit N0. 120 Communications Office 60 College Avenue Annapolis, MD 21401 ad d r ess se rv i c e r e qu est e d � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The College (2001-2017) Description An account of the resource The St. John's College Communications Office published The College magazine for alumni. It began publication in 2001, continuing the St. John's Reporter, and ceased with the Fall 2017 issue. Click on <a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=56">Items in The College (2001-2017) Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, Md. Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context thecollege2001 Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 52 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Title A name given to the resource The College, Winter 2015 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf 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 Type The nature or genre of the resource text Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context The_College_Magazine_Winter_2015 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Description An account of the resource Volume 40, Issue 1 of the The College Magazine. Published in Winter 2015. The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/0476fb3dc3134bcad6d1bd9177d5b105.pdf 650d8ab8b2dbd0f401b260c62bc02778 PDF Text Text College The FA L L 2 0 1 5 • S T. J O H N ’ S C O L L E G E • ANNAPOLIS • S A N TA F E Henry David Thoreau Early Environmentalist THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2015 i �ii THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FA L L 2 015 �OPENING NOTE Who among us has ever yearned to shut down the computer, turn off the cell phone, and be immersed in solitude, where nothing but the sounds of the wind and rustling leaves fill our ears— a peaceful retreat in nature to restore our spirit and make us feel human again? Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), poet, philosopher, historian, and early environmentalist, understood the importance of connecting with nature. In the woods along Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts, the muse of Thoreau’s Walden, he makes a case for simple living and self-sufficiency. The book is also an invitation to be daring, cast aside convention, and live life to the fullest. In this issue of The College, we will hear from Johnnies who have found a Walden of their own: a backyard oasis, filled with vibrant flowers, treetop canopies, and assorted creatures; a once abandoned building, smack-dab in the heart of America’s Rust Belt, brought back to life; and a farm nestled in a Southwest corner among “winged angels of agriculture.” As summer breezes give way to crisp autumn air, now is an ideal time to pick up a copy of Walden. In the words of tutor David Townsend, “You may find yourself thrilled with unanticipated wonder.” Gregory Shook, editor THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2015 1 �FALL 2015 VOLUME 40, ISSUE 2 If transcending time and keeping your soul forever young attracts you, then Walden is your text. And Thoreau is a man you can go to school on. —David Townsend, tutor FEATUR E S P A G E 1 6�� P A G E 2 0�� PA G E 2 6 FREEDOM UPON AN ACHILLEAN SHORE HALCYON HAVEN BIRTH OF A BEEKEEPER Walden, Henry David Thoreau’s experiment in simple living among nature, continues to challenge American pragmatism and beckons us to experience life to the fullest. Thanks to a visionary alumnus who transformed an abandoned historic building into a cozy neighborhood pub, good conversation just got easier to find in downtown Cleveland. Raising queen bees is about much more than harvesting honey—the tiny creatures are profoundly important for sustaining the planet’s plant species. ON THE COVER: Thoreau illustration by Brett Ryder PREVIOUS PAGE: TONY J PHTOGRAPHY 2 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FA L L 2 015 �TONY J PHOTOGRAPHY D E PAR T ME N T S ��FROM THE BELL TOWERS BIBLIOFILE FOR & ABOUT ALUMNI 4 � Toward a Greener Future: Robert Bienenfeld (SF80) 30 �Tutor Eva Brann (H89) comprehends imaginative conservatism in Then and Now. 32 �lmuni News: Alumni Leadership A Forum 2015 5 Club with a Cause 6 � Hodson Trust Intern: Xiaoqian (Lara) Hu (A16) 7 New Annapolis Treasurer 8 A Decade of Leadership in Santa Fe 10 Commencement 2015 12 �erdurous Acres V 34 �lumni Notes A 31 �liza Pennypacker (A79) breaks E convention in Artful Rainwater Design: Creative Ways to Manage Stormwater. 37 � rofile: Cara Gormally (A02) P advocates science literacy. 42 �In Memoriam � O’Hara (SFGI00) shares David meditative essays in Downstream: Reflections on Brook Trout, Fly Fishing, and Waters of Appalachia. 45 �tudent Voices: Kevin Lam (A18) S discovers intellectual freedom. � Brock (A94) explores a slice Emily of Pacific Northwest history in Money Trees: The Douglas Fir and American Forestry, 1900-1944. 46 �roquet: Johnnies Break the Streak C . JOHNNIE TRADITIONS 48 �t. John’s Forever S EIDOS 49 Anastasia Egeli (A92) ABOVE: Annapolis President Christoper Nelson (SF70) enjoys the labor of garden work. THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2015 3 �From the BELL TOWERS FIRST PERSON Toward a Greener Future Robert Bienenfeld (SF80) Helps Steer the Transportation Revolution Robert Bienenfeld, (SF80) assistant vice president, Environment and Energy Strategy at American Honda Motor Company, Inc., discusses his longstanding passion for exploring environmentally friendly technology and reducing the auto industry’s carbon footprint. Why did you choose to work at Honda? I knew after leaving St. John’s that I wanted to work in industry. People told me throughout my four years that St. John’s was a great education. I thought: if that’s true I ought to be able to go to work without going to graduate school. I also knew I wanted to build something, and that turned out to be a great idea. It’s an amazing thing, to be part of a team. No individual can bring a car to market. It takes untold numbers of people, not just the engineers and the marketers but the people in the factory, hundreds of suppliers, all of their R and D people. It’s very collaborative, and the essence of the St. John’s education is very collaborative. If it weren’t collaborative you would just go to the library, read the books, and you’d be done. But what you do is read the books and have your own ideas, then you come to class and test them and they’re challenged in that crucible of seminar or tutorial. Invariably you’re left with better ideas, a deeper understanding, more questions. Sometimes a book you didn’t like is revealed to be more beautiful than you could have ever imagined. That’s what I have enjoyed when I’ve worked on teams. It can be difficult, you have to listen to other people’s ideas, and people don’t always do what you want them to do, but through that collaborative approach you can shape the direction of the company, bring better products to market, and provide valuable benefits to society that might never otherwise have come about. To the outside we’re trying to provide the best information we can to regulators on the theory that good information will make good regulations. We work as cooperatively and positively as we can to look for ways to advance the environmental agenda. That being said, we try to make sure that the proposed regulations or laws are fair and equitable, that they’re feasible, and that they’re going to accomplish their intended goals. What is your role at Honda? We’re trying to have a smooth, bloodless revolution from an older generation of transportation to a much less carbon-intensive model. That’s being done through advances in technology and through regulation and it’s a very interesting challenge. Both the regulators and the car companies have to be mindful of consumers. If the regulations are too demanding then the products could be too expensive and consumers might reject them. The question is: are the regulations aggressive enough, and reasonable enough, and can industry accomplish those regulations in a way that will be acceptable to consumers? Externally, I represent Honda to the EPA and California EPA and internally, I represent the EPA and California EPA to Honda. Inside the company I think about what society (writ large) is trying to accomplish and promote those values within the company. It’s not that the values inside the company aren’t the same as those of society, but they don’t always have the same intensity, the same timeline, the same power. Right now we’re in the middle of a revolution in transportation. And revolutions are inherently terrifying: they’re unstable, there are new forces at work, [and] things change quickly. 4 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FA L L 2 015 How did you end up working in environment and energy strategy? I’ve had a varied career. I’ve been here since I left college, and I’ve worked in nearly a dozen areas in Japan and the U.S., in sales and marketing and product development and strategy. In 2008 a friend of mine was running this area and saw an opportunity to bring me in. I’d worked in related areas before that. I’ve worked on alternative fuels since 1993: on electric, natural gas, and hybrid cars. That first brought me into contact with public policy— an interesting and important part of the business. Vehicles have unintended consequences: you buy a car and there’re all kinds of unseen impacts. A lot of people don’t really think about where their gasoline comes from, what it takes to manage those resources, and the impact of the car’s exhaust. Of course, cars have an enormous benefit to society as well. But there are social costs, or externalities, and we seek to minimize those costs. Sixteen years ago I started working on car sharing, and just in the last half dozen years it’s �“� e’re facing an extraordinary challenge W with respect to climate change, and dramatic action is needed. It won’t help anybody if car companies go out of business trying to make this transition.” started to become a commercial success. But in the twenty-two years I’ve been in alternative fuels it’s been very difficult to achieve success. In some respects it’s been twenty-two years of failure. Why is it so difficult to find success with alternative fuels? Because the incumbent technology is pretty good. In the last forty years, smog-forming pollutants that come out of the tailpipe of the car have been reduced to almost 1/1000 of what their pre-regulated emissions were—an incredible accomplishment. Although you might think we absolutely need electric cars for clean air, it turns out that we can do quite well with internal combustion vehicles. One of the fascinating things about this work is how, holistically, you have to think about a transportation system. For example, in China, because their electric grid is seventy percent coal-generated, an electric car is not nearly as clean as a good hybrid car. You have to think in a holistic manner to understand all the impacts of a transportation system. What’s the focus of your work right now? Between 2015 and 2025 we are tasked with doubling fuel economy which means that we will be able to go twice as far on a gallon of gas and cut the carbon intensity of automobile use almost in half. The rules through 2025 are pretty clear, but how to get there will involve very important choices with respect to technology. Right now we’re trying to make some critical decisions about advanced internal combustion engines vs. increased hybridization, and plug-in vehicles, how much to invest in fuel cell vehicles, those kinds of things. We’re facing an extraordinary challenge with respect to climate change, and dramatic action is needed. It won’t help anybody if car companies go out of business trying to make this transition, so it’s really important that we help guide the regulators to understand what’s possible, what we think consumers will accept, where the technology is, and what is cost-effective. CLUB WITH A CAUSE “I believe that wherever there is a college or a community, there needs to be an environmental club,” says Jon Shrestha (A17), archon of the Environmental Club at the Annapolis campus. Under Shrestha’s leadership, the club’s activities this past year included a bike lending program and recycling initiatives at Croquet; students worked with the company Waste Neutral to collect 1.19 tons of commingled recyclables at the event as well as 200 pounds of reusable plastic pallets. The club also joined forces with the Food Recovery Network to donate unopened leftover canned goods from the dining hall to a local shelter. Most recently the club organized a seminar on “Higher Laws” from Thoreau’s Walden. “I thought that ‘Higher Laws’ appealed to our philosophical nature in terms of driving us to examine the question ‘What is the right way to live?’” says Bonnie Scott (A17), the Environmental Club’s vice archon. Led by tutor Brendan Boyle, the seminar discussion explored people’s relationship with nature, something that many of us may not consider as we go about our daily lives. “One of the most important things you can do to better the world is to make sure that you’re in touch with the ways that you affect everything around you, whether that is how you speak to other people or what you throw away in the trash or the recycling,” says Scott. “It’s all interconnected.” — Eunji Kim (A15) What did you learn at St. John’s that is most helpful in your work at Honda? What I appreciate the most about my St. John’s education is that it’s four years of teaching you how to fall in love—how to pick up a subject you never thought you’d be interested in and have it open your thinking and your mind and your heart; to find it interesting and collaborate with people and throw yourself into it. It was kind of random that I found myself at Honda, but I’ve been able to throw myself into this work and be part of some amazing projects, and we’ve made history. That’s a really valuable lesson. — Sus3an Borden (A87) THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2015 5 �F R OM T H E B E L L T OW E R S DAVID BROOKS HELPS CELEBRATE SANTA FE’S 50TH ANYI GUO (A14) David Brooks, the New York Times columnist, author, and pundit, helped close out the yearlong celebration of Santa Fe’s 50th anniversary as the featured speaker at a gala benefit dinner on June 26 at the Santa Fe campus. In his remarks, Brooks cited two authors from the Program—St. Augustine and George Eliot—to illustrate the practical virtue of studying the lives and works of great authors. Brooks noted that the gala was a singular experience for him. At no other event, he said, had Rousseau been quoted twice during dinner-table conversation. Proceeds from the evening’s events will support scholarships for students from New Mexico. The 50th anniversary campaign raised more than $30 million for the campus’s endowment and operations. HODSON TRUST INTERN Learning Through Inquiry Xiaoqian (Lara) Hu (A16) has long been interested in education. Through the Hodson Trust Internship Program in summer 2013, she interned at Shenzhen High School in the Guangdong Province of southeast China. Fascinated by classroom dynamics, Hu observes the importance of the relationship between teachers and students and understands the politics involved in education. “I want to be a professor in college or graduate school,” she says, “not doing research, but working with students on a personal level.” Hu notes that Shenzhen “is one of the most open-minded high schools in China. It is dedicated to the preparation of students for the highest scholarships in the U.S.” One of Hu’s responsibilities as a teacher’s assistant was to organize workshops about American colleges. “It was very informal,” she says. “I would make and present a PowerPoint. Then I would let the students ask questions and have discussions.” Her presentations described her academic experience as well as cultural differences that surprised her. “When I first got here, I made so many mistakes. Nobody told me I could drink the tap water or how to use a dryer.” Xiaoqian (Lara) Hu (A16) “� hen I first got here, I W made so many mistakes. Nobody told me I could drink the tap water or how to use a dryer.” Many of Hu’s students were interested in St. John’s discussion model of learning. “They felt that they could participate in the sessions rather than just listen to the lectures,” says Hu. “They loved talking to me, and that was a real surprise. They thought I knew how to listen to what they were really talking about.” The classes at St. John’s encouraged her to seriously consider the principles that others had, even those with whom she initially disagreed. “Returning to my high school gave me a new perspective,” she says. “I realized how important inquiries are. Asking questions is a more effective way of learning than just answering questions.” —Nutchapol Boonparlit (A14) 6 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FA L L 2 015 The College is published by St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD, and Santa Fe, NM thecollegemagazine@ sjc.edu Known office of publication: Communications Office St. John’s College 60 College Avenue Annapolis, MD 21401 Periodicals postage paid at Annapolis, MD Postmaster: Send address changes to The College Magazine, Communications Office, St. John’s College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401. Editor Gregory Shook gregory.shook@sjc.edu Contributors Nutchapol Boonparlit (A14) Sus3an Borden (A87) Brendan Boyle Anastasia Egeli (A92) Gabe Gomez Susan Kaplan Eunji Kim (A15) Melanie Kirby (SF97) Kevin Lam (A18) Jennifer Levin Lisa Neal Christopher Nelson (SF70) Paula Novash David Townsend Robin Weiss Babak Zarin (A11) Design Skelton Design Contributing Designer Jennifer Behrens �TA L K O F T H E T O W E R S In Annapolis, five new tutors have joined the faculty. Erica Beall (A07) is from the University of Southern California, where she is working on completing her Ph.D. in social psychology. Ronald Haflidson joined the college from the New College, University of Edinburgh, Scotland, where he received his Ph.D. in Christian ethics and practical theology. Zena Hitz (A95) earned her Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton University. Marius Kempe comes from the University of Durham, England, where he earned his Ph.D. in anthropology. Bryan Luther received his Ph.D. in nuclear physics from The Ohio State University. In Santa Fe, two new tutors have joined the faculty. Allison D’Orazio Levy is from Boston In Santa Fe, Victoria Mora is the college-wide senior vice president for Development and Alumni Relations. Renee White is the new director of Conference Services. In Annapolis, three new directors have joined the college: Benjamin Baum is the new director of Admissions; Susan Jenkins is director of Web Initiatives and Social Media; Joe Smolskis is the new treasurer; and Melissa Steiner is the new registrar. “� get my feet into a lot of I different areas, including non-financial duties, which is part of what makes my position interesting.” IN ANNAPOLIS Thinking Outside the Numbers New Treasurer in Annapolis Though he has held numerous high-powered positions throughout his career, Joe Smolskis, the new treasurer in Annapolis, is still a kid at heart. On a breezy July afternoon, while the campus was buzzing with Summer Academy students, Smolskis grabbed a quick lunch before popping over to the local comic book shop to pick up the new issue of Archie. “I read them when I was a kid but haven’t read them in years,” he says, adding that he was “always a superhero guy. I probably have three-quarters of the entire history of Daredevil.” Being fiscally-minded, he estimates his most prized comic book, the debut issue of Daredevil, at around $35. “It’s not a great copy, but what’s really cool is that it came out in 1963, the year I was born, and was printed in my hometown of Waterbury, Connecticut.” When Smolskis came to St. John’s in August 2014, he was familiar with the college’s reputation as “the great books school.” What he was surprised to learn, though, was that the curriculum is conversation-based and that this core aspect of academic life influences the college community as a whole. “I’ve noticed that students and tutors are talking all the time— and not just about great books,” says Smolskis. College, where she received her Ph.D. in political science. Maggie Evans McGuinness received her Ph.D. in American literature/ poetics at the University of Oregon, where she taught literature and composition. “At every level, you can feel that at the college, in conversations with staff and faculty, in board meetings. It’s very different from any other place where I’ve worked. This makes a difference when you can have a real conversation about, say, the budget, IT, or facilities. Rather than a debate about resources, it’s a productive discussion about supporting the departments.” Smolskis’s role at the college includes oversight of the budgeting process, the college investments, short-term and long-term financial forecasting, and working with the board and the management committee to make sure the college remains in sound shape fiscally. He has been designated the CFO across both the Santa Fe and Annapolis campuses and is working with Santa Fe Treasurer Bryan Valentine to unify accounting procedures and other business practices. Before coming to St. John’s, Smolskis served in executive leadership roles at Trinity Washington University and the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral Foundation in Washington, D.C., among other organizations. Returning to higher education, “I get my feet into a lot of different areas, including non-financial duties, which is part of what makes my position interesting,” he says. “And I do things that are outside the numbers, like moving forward on deferred maintenance and plans to spruce up the campus. We want to make sure that St. John’s is a great place for students to live and feel comfortable. The campus should sparkle, so that visitors’ first impressions are good ones.” He also oversees the information technology needs of the campus and handles compliance and personnel issues. Just as he eagerly awaits the next issue of his favorite comic book, Smolskis looks forward to the future of St. John’s, doing his part to make the college a vibrant place of learning both inside and out. “As we make long-term strategic plans, we have to realize that we’re going to face challenges for some time,” he says. “But that’s part of what’s fascinating—how we manage our resources in order to get the best bang for our buck.” —Gregory Shook THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2015 7 �F R OM T H E B E L L T OW E R S C O N V E R S AT I O N “We’re In This Together” As Michael Peters, the sixth president of St. John’s College, Santa Fe, prepares to depart the college in December 2015 – after 10 years of dedicated service – he reflects on the Program’s influence on his life, how St. John’s has changed over the last decade, and a college community whose passion and commitment to the Program are rooted in love. New Santa Fe President Mark Roosevelt will be profiled in the next issue of The College. What stands out most as you look back at your time as president? We’ve got to acknowledge that the college is facing challenges. It’s troubling to me to leave with some of the challenges unresolved. However, I hope after having been here for ten years that I’ve left the college a little more stable than when I found it. I’ve worked to create a healthy, collaborative relationship among the president, the dean, the faculty, and our colleagues on the Annapolis campus to preserve our distinctive identity, and to ensure we have the wherewithal to continue to offer this education to future generations of students. To what do you attribute this evolution? Your favorite book is War and Peace, and you’ve led seminars on it. Has your reading of the book changed because of that? I’d first read the novel while studying Russian, so I read it first in its original language. I’d say I had a more general, almost superficial appreciation for it. But my study of the novel became much deeper when I encountered it at St. John’s. I’ve truly come to appreciate the depth of the work and the nuance that came through discussion in seminar. You’ve led seminars all over the country and in the Summer Classics program. Can you talk about your engagement with students in seminar? One of the first things I did as president was participate in seminar with the January Freshman class of 2008. As someone who didn’t graduate from St. John’s, it was beneficial to sit in on seminars during my first years here. Around that time, several students knew about my background in international affairs and One thing that is impossible to appreciate from the outside, until you’ve been in the midst of what we do here, is the love—which is really the best word for it—this community has for the St. John’s Program. You can read about it, but until you’re here and really see on a day-to-day basis, the intense level of commitment and passion, the sacrifices that members of this community are willing to make to preserve and nurture the Program, it is impossible to appreciate it fully. When people think about your time here, what would you like them to remember? One of the most significant changes has been the movement and evolution of the college’s relationship with its alumni. The alumni are our greatest advocates and are a natural source of support if we’re going to continue to thrive in a turbulent world. There have been changes in the way the Alumni Association operates, the way they choose their leaders and rotate leadership, and together we’ve created the Alumni Leadership Forum. We’ve made it possible for alumni to focus their efforts on behalf of admissions, career services, and, of course, on fundraising. The great leadership shown by the alumni in recent years really proves that we’re in this together. How has your impression of St. John’s College changed in the last ten years? What will you miss about St. John’s? “� ne thing that is impossible O to appreciate from the outside, until you’ve been in the midst of what we do here, is the love—which is really the best word for it— this community has for the St. John’s Program.” approached me about starting an international affairs study group. The study group would revolve around a contemporary news article on an issue in international affairs or U.S. foreign policy. Similar to the St. John’s seminar approach, I would ask a question to get things started. It’s been one of the most rewarding things I’ve done at St. John’s, because it has given me a chance to get to know our students more personally than I would otherwise. It was a combination of my background and the individual students that kept it alive. 8 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FA L L 2 015 Definitely all the people I’ve gotten to know and become very close to over the years. In any organization, the people are the most important and the folks here—staff, faculty, alumni, and friends—have an astounding dedication to this very singular education. Eleanor and I will also miss Santa Fe. We’ve become very fond of this area, and we’ll spend as much time here as we can after we step down. Do you have any advice for the new president? The best advice is pretty straightforward: Listen and take the time to get to know the place. Sitting in on seminars gave me an opportunity to get a sense of the students and faculty and all the wonderful attributes they exhibit in the classroom. There are a lot of other things on a new president’s plate, but taking the time to listen and really get an understanding of the college is important. It’s also important to get to know the place where the college is located— the history, culture, and ethos of Santa Fe and northern New Mexico. �What’s next for you? Initially, Eleanor and I will go back to New York City, where we have a home, and then we’ll see. I don’t have any immediate plans professionally, and I would like to take some time to regroup and see where we go. We’ll do some travel because our son and his family have just moved to Turkey and we’ll be going over there to make sure they raise our grandsons properly [laughs]. One of the things I said in the Commencement address I was honored to give this year’s senior class is that when you go through life you have to be willing to be open to serendipity or providence, whichever term you prefer. I’m going to try to follow my own advice and see where that takes me. —Gabe Gomez Levan Hall, completed in 2010 to house St. John’s Santa Fe’s Graduate Institute, is among the key legacies of Peters’s presidency. He and his team expanded the college’s facilities and improved the existing physical plant to provide an excellent learning environment for students and faculty. FRANK OOMS PHOTOS, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM) with Peters at an inauguration reception, October 2005. Peters came to St. John’s after a distinguished military career and service as executive vice president of the Council on Foreign Relations. Mike and Eleanor Peters celebrate the groundbreaking of Levan Hall on the Santa Fe campus. Peters presides over the groundbreaking ceremony for Winiarski Hall, a multi-use building with housing for students, tutors’ offices, and classrooms. From left: former BVG Chair Mike Uremovich, then-Santa Fe Mayor David Coss, tutor David McDonald, who chaired the campus planning committee, and Warren Winiarski (Class of 1952), who donated the building with his wife, Barbara (Class of 1955). The building was completed in 2012. Mike Peters’s family applauds during his inaugural address on October 28, 2005. Peters began his presidency in January of that year. From left: Peters’s wife, Eleanor; son, Michael; daughter, Rebecca; and father, Max. THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2015 9 �F R OM T H E B E L L T OW E R S COMMENCEMENT 2015 Barely two years into his retirement, tutor emeritus Jonathan Tuck (H14) returned to the Annapolis campus to deliver this year’s commencement address. The 111 seniors in the Class of 2015 “wanted our experience in the classroom and in this community to be represented to our families sitting in the audience by someone who has experienced it firsthand,” explained Alexandra Wick (A15) in a letter to the selection committee. “Our education has been an exercise in community and vulnerability, and we chose Mr. Tuck to be the speaker for his embodiment of those virtues.” With characteristic humor and a knack “� f we are wise in no other I way, we are wise enough to reflect on this experience and to value it as it deserves.” TONY J PHOTOGRAPHY Words on Wisdom in Annapolis PHOTO, TOP LEFT: Tutor emeritus Jonathan Tuck (H14) in Annapolis. TOP RIGHT: Santa Fe President Mike Peters. TONY J PHOTOGRAPHY for getting straight to the heart of things, Tuck addressed the graduating seniors and 19 Graduate Institute students assembled on the campus front lawn seminar-style—with an opening question: “How is this choice [to come to St. John’s] working out for us? Did we get what we came for?” Tuck, who joined the faculty at 31 and retired in 2013 after nearly 35 years at St. John’s, let these questions linger while he reflected on the “immersive experience of being a part of this community” as well as “the program we have in common, our common objects, the books we read, our common understanding of our undertaking, [and] the community within which we live and grow—all these [which] bind us more closely in virtuous friendship.” In his concluding remarks, Tuck, with an ancient Greek virtue in mind, shared this parting thought: “If we are wise in no other way, we are wise enough to reflect on this experience and to value it as it deserves.” BRADY LEE (AGI14) Jonathan Tuck (H14) 10 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 015 �COMMENCEMENT 2015 Santa Fe’s Presidential Speaker President Michael P. Peters presided over the 48th commencement on the Santa Fe campus. By special request of the Class of 2015, Peters also delivered the commencement address, encouraging the class to “find something—an idea, a passion or a role—that brings meaning or purpose to your life” and also to “look for an opportunity to contribute to or serve others.” Peters, who retires at the end of 2015 and who has led some of the college’s major milestones during his 10-year term as president, said he was humbled by this opportunity to speak to Santa Fe’s 84 graduating seniors and 10 masters candidates. The graduates and “� erhaps most importantly, P find ways to feed your soul as well as your mind and body.” Santa Fe President Michael Peters their families and friends came together to celebrate this singular moment in their lives and to hear Peters praise them for the courage they had demonstrated in coming to and graduating from St. John’s when conventional wisdom is increasingly questioning the value of a liberal education. “You enrolled at St. John’s, persevered, learned, grew and arrive at this ceremony today,” Peters said. “You stood out from the crowd by taking on the challenges and seizing the opportunities St. John’s affords. And I am sure you will stand out from the crowd wherever you go.” He concluded by saying, “Your time here was only the beginning–a prelude. After all, this ceremony is known as commencement. If you are going to find meaning for yourself and contribute to others you must continue to grow intellectually, to foster your curiosity and imagination, and to call upon your courage and self-discipline. I also encourage you to continue to challenge your assumptions, and move beyond observation and description to thought and action. And, perhaps most importantly, find ways to feed your soul as well as your mind and body.” THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2015 11 �F R OM T H E B E L L T OW E R S S PA R E T I M E Gardener’s Delight When not tending to executive duties at the college, leading a seminar on Plutarch, or speaking out on the value of the liberal arts, Annapolis President Chris Nelson (SF70) is often found working in his garden, a lush sanctuary that he calls home. Pausing from his presidential duties, Nelson talks with The College about what makes gardening more than just a hobby. I understand that when you have time to spare from your presidential duties, you like to garden. Can you tell us what you do? Well, let us get our terms straight first. My wife, Joyce, is the gardener. I am heavy labor. We have a dear gardening friend who calls me the under-gardener. I limb trees, edge and mulch the gardens, lay woodchip paths through the woodland areas and stone paths among the flower beds, gather the slash and cuttings to be hauled away or composted for use a year later to enrich the soil throughout the property. I love working with my pruning shears, tree loppers, chain saw, and eight-pound splitting maul, splitting and stacking wood for our indoor and outdoor fireplaces, for the college, and for friends. If I am about shape, form, and a path through, then Joyce is about beauty, color, and content. She decides what is to be planted and where—and then goes about doing almost all the planting and tending of the flower and shrub gardens. And she studies gardens and reads voraciously about an extraordinary variety of plants and trees, and then she brings her learning to bear in her selection of plantings for the garden at home. TONY J PHOTOGRAPHY What do you like best about gardening? Annapolis President Chris Nelson (SF70) helps care for more than four acres of ground. 12 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 015 There are so many things! I love the quiet concentration and focus required. I am free of distractions and only thinking about how to bring a pleasing shape to a tree or a walking path. I love walking through the garden at the end of the day with Joyce, seeing with some satisfaction the results of the day’s work and laying out what the next day’s tasks will be. Then, there is the exercise out-of-doors. After spending most days in the office, car, or airport, I enjoy the fresh air. Joyce, too, has been a busy professional, working as an attorney at the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington. The garden is our common space, where we engage in our parallel play, usually in different parts of the garden. At the end of the day, we can each share with the other what little bit of improvement we have made, usually with a glass of wine in hand when we take our stroll. And of course, gardening is endless; it is never finished. So, as we get pleasure in both the doing and the viewing, it means we can continue such enjoyment endlessly. Then again, we are happy to be of service to the college, which has done so much to enrich our lives. We entertain a lot, and the garden gives us a beautiful venue for the purpose. �You mention the paths you have made through the garden. Why are these important? We have a gorgeous piece of land to care for. It is more than four acres of rolling, hilly ground. Great big oaks, tulip poplars, magnolias, maples, white pine, hollies, river birch, cryptomerias, yoshino cherries, and rows of boxwood give it structure. And there are beautiful visual destination points in many different places, from the Severn River and the students sailing off the pier to the quiet waters of Shady Lake where the Great Blue and Green Herons do their fishing; from the fountain with the cardinals and goldfinches taking their afternoon baths to the terrace flower beds attracting varieties of pollinating bees, Eastern Swallow Tails, and many colorful butterflies; from the several sculptures we have placed around the property to Joyce’s small garden house and library down by the water. In my view, if you have the space, a garden should not just be taken in through a single lens; it should be laid out to take you on many little journeys to see what is around the next corner. We have laid out the garden so that we can walk around the property in several rings without repeating our steps. Always something up ahead to look forward to. And then we have benches and viewing areas to see the osprey and their young learning to fly each July, the family of fox tripping across the lawn, the fat groundhogs eating the grass, the small herd of deer limbing up the Yoshinos, and the thousands of fireflies lighting up the garden in the early June evenings. “� garden should not just A be taken in through a single lens; it should be laid out to take you on many little journeys to see what is around the next corner.” Commencement. We also have a special friend and neighbor who has been of extraordinary assistance to us this past year and a half. She has made the garden more beautiful than ever. And after twenty-four years developing the garden we have today, we have employed a friend and professional photographer, Don Dement, to document the garden over a twelve-month cycle, with the plan of making a book to leave with the college, showcasing our favorite photographs from the thousands he has taken. Does the garden serve as an escape when you need it from the pressures of the day? What pressures? Is there any one thing that gives you special satisfaction? Pulling the long trails of porcelain berry vines out of the trees. It takes weeding to a high level. Oh my, yes! We could not manage the half of it without the college’s Buildings and Grounds crew mowing the lawn each week and feeding the special trees, delivering the truckloads of mulch and woodchips, hauling away the slash from a pile we build each weekend, and repairing the big equipment when it breaks down. Then there has been a student helping us each year over the past decade, which gives us the added pleasure of getting to know better some of those students I otherwise only see passing across the platform at Convocation and PHOTOS: DON DEMENT It’s an awfully big property. Do you get any help in managing it all? ABOVE: A woodchip path through the garden’s woodland areas. FOLLOWING PAGE: View from the terrace down to the Severn River at the president’s house in West Annapolis. THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2015 13 �DON DEMENT 14 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 015 �THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2015 15 �Take your book out to the edge of whatever town or city you inhabit as Thoreau took the Iliad to Walden Pond. Read with “alert and heroic” character. There is no Concord—no peace—unless you are prepared to fight for it. 16 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 015 �TUTOR VIEW FREEDOM upon an Achillean Shore by David Townsend When you encounter a truly great book, you feel it in your mind, heart, and gut as your soul expands and rises. So Henry David Thoreau’s transcendental Walden hit me at 19, when I was fortunate to read it in Charles Hands’ brilliant American Literature class at Loyola, Baltimore. I had previously studied Thoreau’s essay “Civil Disobedience,” a seminal guide to non-violent resistance to the cruelties of government and social tyranny, and a foundation for Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day at the Catholic Worker, and Father Phil Berrigan, pastor of St. Gregory’s in Baltimore, where I volunteered as a young man, eager to learn how best to live. Thoreau’s message is a wake-up call: live your own life, not somebody else’s. You can become an army of one and be your own minuteman. Answer for yourself the essential questions, “How to Live?” and “What to Do?” Start where you are. Don’t be afraid to say “I.” Make your life an experiment. If you break molds or “march to the beat of a different drummer,” so be it.1 By centering upon a single “point d’appui,” 2 you can become free, like Sadi’s azad,3 or become an original, free, independent American citizen of the “true America.”4 The horizons extending from your center point lie beyond your circumferences of “expectation.” 5 You may find yourself thrilled with unanticipated wonder. LEFT: Photo of Walden Pond circa 1900. Thoreau’s manuscript journals from 1837-61. ART RESOURCE, NY ABOVE: THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2015 17 �TUTOR VIEW Walden is an educational manual and method for living life fully. Thoreau teaches every reader to pursue a liberal education by living their own lifelong experiment: I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.6 Thoreau writes his book as an “honest man,” in the first person. All books are so written, but many pretend not to be: I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience.7 Walden Pond is the “earth’s eye,”8 “sacred as the Ganges.”9 Make its deep center, which Thoreau locates by surveying diameters crossing, a symbol of your own deep foundation. You may be leading a Thoreau’s message is a wake-up call: live your own life, not somebody else’s. desperate life and have to steal time from your creditors to read this essay. If so, fear not. Freedom is at hand. You can “start now” and proceed “instantly,”10 without waiting for permission from any authority. Like the artist of Kouroo in the ancient Vedic tale that Thoreau recounts, you can set out at once on your sojourn with your own “pure and perfect” walking stick. Resist giving away your life to those who would dominate and master you, and your rewards will be great. In Thoreau’s parable, the artist’s “Singleness of purpose and resolution, and his elevated piety endowed him, without his knowledge, with perennial youth.”11 If transcending time and keeping your soul forever young attracts you, then Walden is your text. And Thoreau is a man you can go to school on. But you are no one’s disciple. Not even Thoreau’s. Never, never, never surrender your own life in order to live someone else’s. A philosopher might interpret Walden as a phenomenological description of finding the self. Thoreau calls it the way of love. “Nothing can deter a poet for he is actuated by pure love.”12 How shall we 18 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 015 love? There are three methods in Walden: Nature, America, and Reading. Begin with nature. “I love the wild not less than the good.”13 Live “as deliberately as Nature.”14 We can learn much from Thoreau’s radical ecology, face our environmental crisis, and address the daily extinction of species. Throughout Walden, Thoreau melds his mind with many creatures—owls, mice, insects, birds, and most especially a loon.15 He confronts false clarity, challenging philosophers and economists who would only interpret the world to change it. If we fail to change, Nature may take revenge on those who blaspheme her. Walden Pond herself “whoops”16 unexpectedly as the ice speaks. Is “whoop” the cry of the original Native American for whom the pond is named,17 who may be “the grandmother of Adam”? The indigenous spirit of Nature rebounds. [L]et wild Nature reign once more and the tender and luxurious English grains will probably disappear before… the great corn-field of the Indian’s God … prove itself indigenous, and resume its ancient importance and dignity.18 The second method of Walden is to establish “true America.”19 True Americans, who live self-reliant lives of practical courage and economy, crow “as lustily as Chanticleer”20 to awaken us from “quiet desperation.”21 Consider how emerging wild, courageous, and indigenous Americans will invigorate a weakened “tender and luxurious” America and liberate us from tyrannies of fashion22 and conformity. The only true America is the country where you are at liberty… where the state does not endeavor to compel you to sustain slavery and war and other superfluous expenses.23 This “true America” is possible only when individual true Americans rise up one by one to claim “their own.”24 Like Socrates in Plato’s Republic, Thoreau knows that the “power and capacity exist in the soul already.”25 Thus Thoreau talks “purposefully” to the poor immigrant John Field “as if he were a philosopher.”26 What is the true cost of “superfluous expenses”?… “the cost of a thing is the amount of… life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.”27 This is true “full cost accounting.” A simple dwelling costs “ten to fifteen years of a laborer’s life.” Learn from Native Americans rather than old Europe: “In the savage state every family owns a shelter as good as the best” but not in the economy �to which we surrender, “in modern civilized society not more than one half the families own a shelter.”28 Such inequality is unacceptable. Will you trust Fannie Mae or yourself to address this problem? Thoreau describes in detail his experiment of building a simple cabin to live as a squatter on the banks of Walden Pond in the woods a mile outside of Concord, beginning on July 4. Counting costs to the half-penny, he demonstrates how to live economically by working only six weeks a year. It is possible to achieve home ownership and resist war, slavery, and superfluities. Thoreau builds his own low-cost housing and starts a movement of non-violent resistance by going to jail. He refuses to pay taxes to finance wars required to preserve vicious inequalities, whether against Mexico or others. Learning to read is Thoreau’s third and final method. He prophesies a “reign of poetry.”29 The paradox of Walden is that its clarion call to change America and the global polity comes in the solitary reading of a great text. It is a book as challenging as the poetry of the Hebrew prophets and the ancient texts of Homer, the Vedas, Zoroaster, and Confucius. Walden resounds with prophets and poets from Ezekiel and Pindar to Sadi and Coleridge. Reading is not equivalent to living. Nevertheless, to live free, you must learn to read as you have never read before: Those who have not learned to read the ancient classics in the language in which they are written must have a very imperfect knowledge of the history of the human race; for it is remarkable that no transcript has ever been made of them in any modern tongue, unless our civilization itself may be regarded as such a transcript.30 Walden summons us to “our” true citizenship one reader at a time. What if each American took personal responsibility to read “the transcript” of “our civilization”? What if the truth of this logos lay alertly and heroically upon every American tongue, speaking to the questions, “How to live and What to do?” Consider how the indigenous “reign of poetry”31—a way of understanding all three methods—will invigorate a weakened “tender and luxurious” people. Take your book out to the edge of whatever town or city you inhabit as Thoreau took the Iliad to Walden Pond. Read with “alert and heroic”32 character. There is no Concord—no peace—unless you are prepared to fight for it. As Krishna leads Arjuna to recognize in the Bhagavad-Gita,33 Thoreau’s guiding text Take up Thoreau’s American pragmatism. Start now and confront subjectivity, nature, animals, land, village, and visitors face-to-face. for Walden, you cannot withdraw from the battle.” Start now. You are an army and majority of one.34 Step out as Achilles35 does in the Iliad. Defy the injustice of Agamemnon. Give your armor over to love. Don’t worry about what you will put on. The gods will provide. Unfurl your own free flag to April’s breeze and you may find yourself suddenly at Concord Bridge with a cohort of minutemen able to fire “the shot heard round the world.”36 Thoreau found freedom at Walden upon “an Achillean shore.”37 Liberation requires a new birth of freedom in self, society, and economy. Radical ecology begins as locally as a 17-year locust emerging from apparently dead wood.38 Imagine a 240-year locust. Take up Thoreau’s American pragmatism. Start now and confront subjectivity, nature, animals, land, village, and visitors face-to-face. Thoreau invites us to “travel a great deal in Concord.” Do take up Walden. The life and the planet you save are certainly your own. Walden – Norton Critical Edition, third edition, p. 219; cited hereafter as Walden and page number. 1� � Walden, p. 70 Walden, p. 57 4 Walden, p. 140 5 Walden, p. 143 6 Walden, p. 217 7 Walden, p. 5 8 Walden, p. 128 9 Walden, p. 132 10 Walden, p. 219 11 Walden, p. 219 12 Walden, p. 180 13 Walden, p. 143 14 Walden, p. 69 15 � Walden, pp. 95, 159 16 Walden, p. 183 17 Walden, p. 125 18 Walden, p. 162 19 Walden, p. 140 20 � Walden, pp. 5, 60 21 Walden, p. 8 22 Walden, p. 21 23 Walden, p. 140 2 3 Walden, pp. 14, 17, 52, 83 25 � Plato’s Republic, 518c 26 Walden, p. 140 27 Walden, p. 24 28 Walden, p. 24 29 Walden, p. 162 30 � Walden, pp. 73-74 31 Walden, p. 162 32 Walden, p. 76 33 � Walden, p. 200 34 � “�Civil Disobedience,” p. 235 35 Walden, p. 156 36 �Emerson, “Concord Hymn” 37 Walden, p. 196 38 Walden, p. 223 24 � THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2015 19 �HALCYON 20 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 015 �HAVEN WILL HOLLINGSWORTH (A08) RECLAIMS A SPACE OF HIS OWN B Y PA U L A N O V A S H On the homepage of the Spotted Owl Bar’s website is a copy of owner Will Hollingsworth’s (A08) favorite poem, “Fern Hill” by Dylan Thomas. Hollingsworth says that the work is “sort of our mission statement. It’s all there, especially in those last two lines, ‘Time held me green and dying, Though I sang in my chains like the sea.’ It’s being young, but at the same time, knowing we’re on our way out.” But while the poet mourns his lost youth, Hollingsworth is embracing his youth now— witness the Spotted Owl, which opened in summer 2014 after three years of planning that included the thoughtful reclaiming of a long-vacant, pre-Civil War complex of buildings in the recently revived Tremont area of downtown Cleveland. PHOTOS BY ANDREW WELLS PORTRAIT OF WILL HOLLINGSWORTH (ABOVE) THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2015 21 BY HEATHER CAMPBELL �“�T BOTHERS ME WHEN PEOPLE I WANT TO ‘REVITALIZE’ AN AREA BY TEARING EVERYTHING DOWN.” A self-confessed “bar nerd”—Harry Brownes in Annapolis is a favorite—Hollingsworth envisioned the Spotted Owl as a neighborhood pub similar to those in Portland, Oregon, his hometown. “There are lots of great restaurants in the area, but there was no cool bar,” Hollingsworth recalls. “I love bars and their history. People come to bars to have fun, fight, fall in love. You can relax and enjoy yourself because the surroundings say, somebody who’s behind this really knows what he’s doing.” Cleveland was a serendipitous choice for Hollingsworth’s foray into business ownership. He was on a cross-country road trip, taking a breather from stints at a nonprofit think tank in Washington, D.C. and campaigning for candidate Barack Obama, when he got off the highway and never left. “There’s an honesty to the culture here that really appealed to me after working in a political atmosphere,” he says. He tended bar at two well-known Cleveland restaurants, becoming more immersed in the city and the people he met. “A bartender can talk about anything with anyone; a Johnnie is particularly well-suited,” he says. “You need to be able to make a really great drink, but also know what’s on today’s sports pages, where an apartment is coming up for rent and what regulars might like to be introduced to each other.” The idea of opening a bar became more tangible after Hollingsworth became friends with one of his regulars. “Bars kept coming up in our conversations, then the conversations turned to meetings. Eventually he said, if you can put numbers to your idea I can help you go out and find the money.” Hollingsworth spent the next 11 months developing a business plan and was fully capitalized by 2012. Finding the perfect location was next, and when he walked into the abandoned mid-19th-century building that had formerly housed the long-defunct Cleveland College, a Civil War hospital, and a publishing house that produced religious tracts, among other tenants, 22 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 015 �he knew it was right. “The last time it was occupied was over seventy-five years ago by an all-female ministry, the Gospel Workers Society,” he recalls. “It had a dirt floor and old brick and a poured-concrete ceiling—great elements to preserve for an old pub feel.” The Spotted Owl now is a dark, intimate haven of tables built of salvaged barn wood and denim-blue concrete floors, softened by some stained glass and toile. Hollingsworth calls the style he was going for “brawny colonial. We used as many of the existing features as we could. It bothers me when people want to ‘revitalize’ an area by tearing everything down.” Although the bar’s been successful since day one, Hollingsworth is still open to tweaks. “In the first week we realized our business was ninety percent specialty cocktails,” he says. “I’m a bar guy, not so much a cocktail guy—but now I’ve got to figure out how to own a cocktail bar.” That means in addition to putting in 16-hour days at the Spotted Owl, Hollingsworth is regularly traveling to New York and other locations to learn the nuances of original cocktail development (the Spotted Owl’s have names like “Done & Undone,” “The Sun Came After,” and “Queen By The Gold On Your Head”). OPPOSITE: The bar’s tables are built of salvaged barn wood. TOP : Hollingsworth finds the perfect location — an abandoned 19thcentury building. LEFT: Beer taps await their first pour. THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2015 23 �“� ROVIDING A PLACE WHERE PEOPLE CAN P ENJOY THEMSELVES AND ENJOY EACH OTHER IS, I THINK, A NOBLE ENDEAVOR.” 24 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 015 �JOHN LAWN PHOTO: EDSEL LITTLE / CREATIVE COMMONS Putting in the work for something you believe in reflects the sensibility of his adopted city, according to Hollingsworth. “People in Cleveland believe, one, you don’t get anything without hard work, and two, you do what you have to do to survive. It’s a wonderful place, but you really have to it experience it to understand,” he continues. He would say the same thing about his years at St. John’s (three in Santa Fe and senior year in Annapolis). “I spent four years doing something that took up all of me,” he explains. “I remember junior year, when there’s literally not enough hours to do all the work, so the professors are interested in what work you choose to do. You decide what you want and pour yourself into it completely. “I needed something that’s like that every day, something that pushes me up against my limits,” he continues. “I wanted to dedicate my twenties to something—and providing a place where people can enjoy themselves and enjoy each other is, I think, a noble endeavor.” A cozy nook provides an ideal setting for good conversation. THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2015 25 �JAMEY STILLINGS Melanie Kirby (SF 97) hugs a jar of bees on her farm in New Mexico. 26 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 015 �JOHNNIE VOICES BIRTH OF A BEEKEEPER One Social Butterfly’s Metamorphosis into a Conscious Nectar Nomad I by Melanie M. Kirby (SF97) ’ve travelled many a road, in the darkest of nights, serving as chauffeur to beings of lightness and sweet, migrating with them as a fellow follower of the bloom. On other starry dappled nights, I ride as passenger, hearing the hum of the motor and the buzz of the bees, smelling the scents of warm beeswax and nectar being fanned to its essential and existential perfection. I hop in and out of the truck opening and closing gates, allowing the navigator to slowly ease over bumpy tracks to the distant land of milk and honey. I latch the gate behind the truck and realize that here in this darkest of night skies I am helping to carry tiny embers of pure starlight to their new fragrant pasture. What am I doing? Transporting queen bees I’ve raised to their new hives, where they will form the foundation for a group of beings that ensure the existence and continuation of plant species, and in the process produce exceptional honey. My business, Zia Queenbees, raises queen bees, provides beekeepers with starter nuclei and assembled hive boxes, produces varietal honeys, and offers pollination services and community education about the wonders of beekeeping. How did I get here? I recall as a five-year-old wanting to be a nurse. I was intrigued with the biology of life and with the science that leads to healing. I wanted to be liked—and I wanted to promote wellness. A few years later, I wanted to be “interesting” and to become a writer of THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2015 27 �JOHNNIE VOICES interesting things. I entertained a career as an anthropologist, so I could learn how people in other cultures live, what they strive to attain in their lives and how they celebrate. It was the celebration and power of music and dancing that I became intrigued with next, while at the same time pursuing the sciences. I had no clue that I would be able to include all of my childhood interests into one career path—that of keeping fuzzy insects for my livelihood. Now, close to two decades after the bees found me, I feel a little more “interesting” —enough to write. After travelling the globe from farms to forest lands, following the bloom from flower to flower and from hive to hive, I recognize the pieces of my life’s puzzle. And, so, today I am a professional apiculturist, one who keeps bees. I am a specialist. I am a queen honeybee breeder. The heart of the hive rests with the queen, and in selecting and following Mother Nature’s lead, I help to nurse hives; by doing so, I immerse myself in their culture and feel their musical vibrations. Keeping bees is very different from “having” bees. In order to keep bees, one has to constantly learn from the natural and manmade forces and their interactions. Synergy is the interaction of individual conditions that yields an effect greater than the sum of the individual effects. The interactions between a bee and its environment, between its colony and their environment, are everchanging. Mother Nature’s dynamic interface requires the ability to adapt and the ability to relate to more than one stimulus. The bees rely on the natural and supplemental forage that surrounds them. They are at the mercy of the elements. Their importance to plants is profound. Also known as the “winged angels of agriculture,” their efforts help to produce more than ninety percent of all food. As Hippocrates claimed, I had no clue that I would be able to include all of my childhood interests into one career path— that of keeping fuzzy insects for my livelihood.” Kirby inspects a hive of honeybees. “Let food be thy medicine, and medicine thy food.” Seventy percent of all cures are derived from plants, and it is this connection between horticulture and medicine that keeps the bees, and man, healthy. This year marks the tenth anniversary of my small bee farm, which is nestled where the Santa Fe, Carson, and Pecos National 28 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 015 Forests “kiss.” The idea for the farm developed out of a love of books. When I met my partner Mark Spitzig (who runs Superior Honey Farms in Michigan now) while working at a bee farm in Florida, we started eating dinner together with a dessert of heated discussions about Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. Books fostered our conversations, and it was �through books that we came to learn about each other and our passion for bees. Books and their musings inspired us to discuss. And books inspired us to plan and to act. Books encouraged us to dream, to become inspired, to visualize and then manifest. How can learning to learn inspire others and inspire a sense of preservation and, thus, sustainability? It is in thinking that we create. Creating is the reflection of what Mother Nature and Father Time have been molding us to do since time immemorial. It is this, and this alone, that moves the cosmos. We see it reflected again and again, in the writings of Plato in the Meno: what is the bee? Is the bee a bee or is it a bee because it is part of a collective hive mind? Can a bee be a bee without his hive mind? And, does the hive exist apart from its bees? What, we daresay, what IS it? And WHO are we? I’ve had a few epiphanies over the years, nothing short of miraculous for me as I am rather high-strung, scarcely slowing down to eat and sleep. It is my creative mind that I struggle to rein in on occasion. It takes me through the honeycombed labyrinths of reality. Yet, I find the calm when I am truly in the honeycombs, kneeling in the apiary. This calm is pervasive. You can hear it humming its maternal frequency. You can smell its sweetness and you can see its majesty. And it beckons you to preserve it. These sensory experiences appeal to my thoughts, allowing me to reconnect with the exquisiteness of life and strive for a glimpse of origin. I did not know that beekeeping would become the professional and personal declaration for me that it has. I attribute that to my experiences as a student at St. John’s, learning to learn and wanting to learn. Wanting to learn has everything to do with manifestation. It is humbling to recognize that what one thinks, one sees—and what one does, one makes real. My beekeeping journey began 19 years ago; it has been exhilarating. My vida loca has me travelling the speed of light in thought between the micro and macrocosmic perspectives as I follow the bloom from season to season. My life as a nectar nomad has fed me both in body and in mind. I see the bee. I AM the bee. I see her working: visiting each blossom, sensing its perfumes, collecting its pollen and starlit nectar, and then returning home to transform these energy particles into more decorated entities of light and sweetness. It is that light, that sweet light, at the core of it all. It emanates from the source, radiating down from the heavens, shining A The scent of nectar wafts from hive boxes. fter travelling the globe from farms to forest lands, following the bloom from flower to flower and from hive to hive, I recognize the pieces of my life’s puzzle.” down on a lonely planet. This lonely planet then absorbs light and is inspired to grow beings of light, beings that transform it into sweet and fragrant nectars. Other beings of light help transfer the glow, serving as midwives and pollinators, helping to deliver fruit full of this light energy, nourishing our minds and our bodies. From stardust to stardust, it is we who help to create the environment in which we exist. About the Author: Melanie Margarita Kirby has followed the bloom with her bees to South America, North America, Eastern Europe, the Pacific Islands and the Caribbean. She will venture to the Mediterranean this fall to visit French queen honeybee breeders in Normandy. She also serves as the editor of Kelley Beekeeping monthly online newsletter, with more than 40,000 subscribers. To learn about her farm, visit www.ziaqueenbees.com. THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2015 29 �BIBLIOFILE EVA BRANN Reading Comprehension “�Comprehension works by circumspection, by looking around a being’s outer limits, its borderlands.” T his slim volume, Then and Now: The World’s Center and the Soul’s Demesne (Paul Dry Book, 2015), comprehends two essays: one on Herodotus and one on “imaginative conservatism.” I use the slightly odd, and possibly ungrammatical, locution “comprehends” because it seems that this idea—“comprehending”—unites the work. “To comprehend” does not, on Annapolis tutor Eva Brann’s (H89) telling, merely mean “to understand.” Comprehenders, as she might dub them, do understand, but, more importantly, these comprehenders demonstrate a particular form of mindedness—the form offered in Herodotus’ History and the form that the “imaginative conservative” would do well to cultivate. The special form of understanding that is comprehension does not work by heading straight to the center of things. Comprehension works by circumspection, by looking around a being’s outer limits, its borderlands. Rather than grasping hold of an inner essence, comprehension “allows what a thing is to coalesce out of what it is not.” That thing, for Herodotus, “Greek being” and that out of which it coalesces, are barbarian mores. And so in pursuit of Greekness, Herodotus, the comprehender, must necessarily visit and delineate the “environing Barbarians, both because they are wonderful in themselves and because it is in opposition to them that the thus pin-pointed Greeks are to be defined.” And here is where comprehension becomes quite a delicate matter. Greek being is not simply the opposite of barbarian being. It rather coalesces out of these others—out of Egyptians who revere for domestic cats, Persians who revere most natural forces, and Scythians who have not much use for the divine. But just what coalesces out of this motley? Herodotus does not always say, leaving the reader a fair bit of work. But I imagine Herodotus would have nodded approvingly at this, Brann’s description of the Greeks’ relationship to the divine: “For all the art their anthropomorphic gods elicit, the Greeks are more natural by far than the Egyptians and indeed than 30 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 015 most barbarians, since it takes worldliness for humans to become natural; hide-bound tribalism tends to be artifice-ridden. The alien veneration of animals, and by contrast, their own beautiful anthropomorphic gods must bring home to Greeks their proper integration into a natural cosmos, a well-ordered world in which humans do not worship lower species, but live in a continuity of appearance and in a great chain of being with the higher orders.” These remarks show what a majestic mode of mindfulness comprehending is. While the fraternal twin, the apprehender, goes straight to the heart of things, what care and attention must the comprehender bring to such a great swath of being! And what nobility does this, in turn, bestow upon barbarian practices? For what glory is there in coalescing out of a stew of savagery and insignificance? But is there reason to think, as the book’s second essay claims, that comprehending is a mode of mindedness that ought specifically appeal to conservatives? Perhaps so, if Brann is right to describe conservatives as “not famous for tolerance.” For if this is the case, “So much the more ought they, in their proper thoughtful mode, gain a reputation for inclusiveness more deeply grounded than in the unreliable vagaries of mere putting up with each other, called ‘tolerance.’” Herodotus did not put up with Egyptians, Persians, or Scythians. He comprehended them. Such comprehending might help conservatives do what they are—etymologically, we might say—called to do: “to keep safe” that which is worthy of safekeeping. This strikes me as persuasive, but I see no reason to limit it to imaginative conservatives. Those who are famous for tolerance might steel their thin, bloodless version with Brann’s reminder that “the confines of what I positively approve are equally the limits of its negative complement: the latter therefore cooperates in the definition of the former and is thus a necessary aspect of all positive being.” Brann identifies other aspects of imaginative conservatism, walking around its borders and recording what she sees: a bias against the future, a disposition to feel awe in the face of faith, a populism based on friendship and difference, a protectiveness of what is of slow growth and has endured. Her borderlands are less wild than Herodotus’, but her little book can honorably stand next to his big one, two authors speaking to one another with deep, and mutual, comprehension. —Brendan Boyle �Artful Rainwater Design: Creative Ways to Manage Stormwater By Stuart Echols and Eliza Pennypacker (A79) Island Press, 2015 In their new book, Artful Rainwater Design: Creative Ways to Manage Stormwater, Stuart Echols and Eliza Pennypacker (A79), faculty members at Penn State’s Department of Landscape Architecture, rethink traditional stormwater treatment systems and offer innovative solutions for managing heavy rainwater and the runoff in ways that are valuable and beautiful. From the book’s opening pages, readers are reminded that rain is a resource, not a waste product. Artful Downstream: Reflections on Brook Trout, Fly Fishing, and the Waters of Appalachia By David L. O’Hara (SFGI00) and Matthew T. Dickerson Cascade Books, 2014 David L. O’Hara (SFGI00), an associate professor of philosophy and the classics at Augustana College in South Dakota, has co-written a collection of meditative narrative essays on fly fishing. His chapters are interspersed with chapters by his friend Matthew Dickerson, a professor at Middlebury College. In each chapter, O’Hara and Dickerson fish—alone, together, Money Trees: The Douglas Fir and American Forestry, 1900–1944 By Emily K. Brock (A94) Oregon State University Press, 2015 This scholarly work is a thorough interdisciplinary history of forestry in the Pacific Northwest and a significant contribution to environmental studies. Foresters did not necessarily consider their work ecological, but they did consider themselves to be scientists. Emily Brock (A94), a research scholar at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, considers Rainwater Design (ARD), a term coined by Echols in 2005, describes an approach to sustainable stormwater management in which the management system is designed as a landscape amenity. Building on a decade of research, this comprehensive guide explores methods to design creative yet practical landscapes that treat on-site rainwater management as an opportunity to enhance site design through education, recreation, safety, public relations, or aesthetic appeal. The book also highlights techniques for ecologically sustainable rainwater management and features diverse case studies that illustrate how landscape designers and engineers throughout the country are implementing principles of ARD. or with friends and family—as well as hike and camp throughout Appalachia. The fishermen seek brook trout, the famous native fish of the rivers and streams in the Appalachian Mountains. The stories they tell are reminiscent of the evocative fishing scenes in Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It but include information about history, geography, water politics, and conservation that is skillfully woven into inviting, voice-driven prose. Downstream features a forward by Nick Lyons, a renowned fly fisherman and founder of Lyons Press, and an afterward by Bill McKibben, a writer and environmentalist who won the 2014 Right Livelihood Award. their work in the context of the biological sciences as well as through the lens of American political and economic processes, including the New Deal, which was a time of turmoil for foresters due to the ravages of the Great Depression and changes in federal land and resource management. Brock also explores how foresters became involved in the lumber industry during the early 1940s, as logging companies started to consider the long-term health of forests—a move that distanced forestry from its origins in nature and turned it into a means for corporations to gain the approval of Americans concerned about deforestation. THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2015 31 �For & About ALUMNI VIRTUAL CHAPTER SEMINARS Hungry for good conversation? Enter the St. John’s Virtual Chapter seminars. Open to alumni in search of a serious discussion about a difficult reading, this fall’s Virtual Chapter seminars, led by St. John’s tutors, will explore such works as Plato’s Gorgias, Dante’s Inferno, and Shakespeare’s The Tempest, among others. Seminars, which use the online conference program ZoomUS, will be held on Sundays at 4 p.m. EST. To participate, all you need is a computer with a webcam (iPads work, too). Honoring Outstanding Alumni At the annual Alumni Leadership Forum (ALF) Awards Banquet, alumni are recognized for leadership and volunteerism with the Alumni Association’s Volunteer Service Awards (or ALFies). In June on the Santa Fe campus, a dozen Johnnies received ALFies. “The Awards Committee received so many nominations this year that it was really hard to select twelve winners,” says Lee Katherine Goldstein (SFGI90), who steps down this year from the Alumni Association Board. Recognized for their work with alumni chapters, Paul Frank (SF82) has organized chapter events and held leadership positions in the Chicago Chapter since the early ’80s, while Harry Zolkower (A82) and Nicole Levy (SF92) developed Virtual Alumni Chapter seminars. For several years, Larry Davis (SFGI87) has helped the Austin/San Antonio Chapter donate a complete set of the Encyclopedia Britannica Great Books of the Western World to a first or second year student from Texas. Rachel Dudik (A02), Juniper Lavato (SFGI13), and Sabina Sulat (A87) received ALFies for their work with Career Services. Dudik established summer internships and participated on Career Services panels, and Lavato established a “Guest Program” at the Santa Fe Institute for current students. Sulat helped coordinate both the first alumni career services webinar and other networking events. Cindy Lutz (A98), Nick Gazzolo (A93), Amy Hoffman Parakkat (A93), and Barbara McClay (A12) received ALFies for their work online. Lutz identified (and engaged others to help identify) significant errors (typos, dead links, etc.) on the college’s new website in the weeks after it was launched. Gazzolo and Parakkat established the Johnnie Quote Facebook page, and McClay conducted an alumni interview series on the student blog Johnnie Chair. 32 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 015 Perhaps the most emotional ALFie of the evening, though, went to Annette Prapasiri (SF04), recognized for her efforts with engaging other members of the Class of 2004 to complete the Armillary Sphere Project. The senior legacy project resulted in one of the highest class giving rates. A tearful Prapasiri thanked her fellow classmates and project leaders, adding that the project demonstrated the impact that St. John’s had on her class and the legacy they wished to leave future Johnnies. Finally, Lee Katharine Goldstein (SFGI90) received her own personalized Johnnie Chair in honor of her years of outstanding service to the Alumni Association. With roaring applause, the award was the perfect way to cap off the alumni celebration. —-Babak Zarin (A11) To reserve your seat at the table for any or all of these seminars, please contact Annapolis Alumni Director Leo Pickens at leo.pickens@sjc.edu. October 4: Genesis 25:19-50:24 (Stories of Jacob and Joseph), led by Sam Kutler November 8: Plato’s Gorgias December 13: Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus January 10: Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics, Book II (1103a-1110a) & Book VI (1138 b-1145a). February 7: Dante’s Inferno, Cantos 32, 33 & 34, led by Joe MacFarland March 13: Descartes’ Discourse on Method April 3: Hegel’s Preface to Phenomenology of Spirit May 1: Shakespeare’s The Tempest �ADRIAN TREVISAN (A84) Alumni Association Board President “� ’m excited to be leading the Alumni Association as we I work with St. John’s staff on both campuses to create new ways to strengthen the Johnnie community and support the college. By developing local events focused on admissions, career services, giving, and whatever else people think of in addition to the traditional alumni seminars, we hope to attract Johnnies of all interests, broaden local alumni leadership, and create a more vibrant alumni community.” Please welcome the new leadership of the Alumni Association, serving in the following capacities: OFFICERS Adrian Trevisan (A84), President Tia Pausic (A86), President-elect, Nominating Committee Phelosha Collaros (SF00), PastPresident, Awards Committee David Pex (SF77), Treasurer Susann Bradford (SF89), Secretary A New Direction for the SJCAA A record-breaking number of alumni joined the Alumni Association Board at the Alumni Leadership Forum held in Santa Fe, June 4-7, to discuss the Association’s progress in engaging alumni and supporting the college. After reviewing the November 2014 Alumni Survey and accomplishments in the 2013-2015 Strategic Plan, the board and alumni concluded that the 2015-2017 strategic planning process should focus on alumni engagement at the local level. Alumni survey results show that while 60% of respondents want their chapter to include seminars among the activities it offers, chapters still need to offer other kinds of activities to attract the remaining 40% of alumni. Other activities receiving high marks were social activities, helping with admissions, and (especially among younger alumni) career services. (The survey report can be found at: http://community.stjohnscollege.edu/aarecords/2014-alumni-survey) With these facts in mind, alumni participants suggested the following ideas for the board and chapters to consider: Local Chapter Activities Chapters/local alumni should put thought and effort into engaging recent graduates by developing a variety of activities to appeal to a wide range of ages and the different interests, and financial capabilities. that these represent. Not all alumni will want to participate in all events, and chapters may want to consider collective leadership to allow multiple meetings each month. Some recent examples of chapter activities include: • � win Cities pop-up or flash T seminar on Obergefell scheduled after the SCOTUS decision on marriage equality • � anta Fe’s fundraising hike for S the Hallie Leighton Fund • � hicago’s picnic in Millennium C Park with the Grant Park Orchestra DIRECTORS AT LARGE (listed by working group) Board Leadership for Local Activities The Association should define clear roles for alumni in the field, both within a chapter and individually; the Association should then develop tools and a guidebook to roll these out to alumni. Fundraising Make clear that small donations are welcomed—fundraising communications to alumni should emphasize that any amount is welcomed, and specifically that a high participation rate is very desirable, regardless of amount. The board will prepare a new strategic plan focused on alumni engagement at the local level. If you would like to contribute ideas to the plan, or volunteer for a working group, contact your local chapter leader. If you don’t know who that is, look them up via IntroMaps or www.sjc.edu. Admissions Anne Fenton (SFGI07) Joao Santa-Rita (A09) Alumni Giving Council Merry Peckham (SF07) Heather Upshaw (SF04) Alumni Leadership Forum Brenna Strauss (SF04) Babak Zarin (A11) Career Services Sabina Sulat (A87) Chapters and Regional Events Elihu Dietz (SF06) Carol Freeman (AGI94) Strategic Communications Aaron MacLean (A03) Student Engagement Briana Henderson Saussy (A03, EC05) Ex-Officio: Sarah Palacios (Director of Alumni Relations, Santa Fe) Director Emeritus: Allan Hoffman (Class of 1949) THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2015 33 �ALUMNI NOTES 1955 After 50 years of conducting, Harold Bauer (A) is mostly retired from the world of music and has taken a keen interest in oil painting. As president of the Evanston Lighthouse Rotary Club, he became active in international service as well as serving his local community. He and his wife, Karen, hope to do some serious traveling in the years ahead. 1982 Inspirational Orchids 1963 William (A) and Jessica Hoffmann Davis (Class of 1965) are retired from Credit Suisse and Harvard, respectively, and are now spending most days along Squam Lake in New Hampshire, where Jessica writes books on the arts in education and plays that are performed at the local theater. The couple celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in Boston. 1965 Allenna Dungan Leonard (A) received the Warren McCulloch Award of the American Society for Cybernetics, given for lifelong contributions to the nurturing of cybernetics, at the ASC 50th Anniversary Conference in August 2014. 1966 Rod Roderick (A) writes that he was a freshman twice, once in 1962, when he left for “unrequited love,” and then again two years later, when he returned at the invitation of admissions director James Tolbert. In the meantime, he had worked for the Hunt Brothers Royal Traveling Circus, worked in New York City as a Julie von Erffa (SF) writes, “I was in the pioneer class that started in 1964. There were 81 of us, though only 18 actually graduated, and I made some lasting friends. St. John’s prepared me for acupuncture school. The slant of the foreign language and concepts made the transition familiar. I have been practicing acupuncture with Chinese herbal remedies since 1995 and facilitate hypnotherapy sessions. I have stayed in New Mexico since graduating from St. John’s and have four daughters, one grandchild, and another one coming.” Rick Wicks (SF) spent 34 adventure-filled days in the Caribbean exploring Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, and Cuba. 1969 1964 Cecily Sharp-Whitehill (A) began her second year as a Purpose Discovery Coach at Alliance4Discovery Coaching in Florida. She can be reached on IntroMaps, Facebook, and LinkedIn, or at 941-350-9626. contains a veiled message for those whom Castiglione describes as “judicious readers.” Don Dennis (SF) is living on a small island off the west coast of Scotland, where his wife is a dairy farmer. He grows and photographs orchids, and makes flower essences with them. “The orchids are giving me a spur to investigate the topography of the (Bohemian) Implicate Order in relation to Consciousness,” he writes. “Discussions of Plato around the SJC tables come to mind in this endeavor. If you are ever near the Isle of Gigha, please stop in to say hello.” delivery boy at Bellevue Hospital, and been a show page at ABC and a copy boy for the Courier Post in New Jersey. He left the college again in 1964, when, he says, “I got a job with an ad agency and became a successful Madman. Life is wonderfully peculiar!” 1967 Lovejoy Reeves Duryea (A) and her husband have bought a condo in West Palm Beach. She plans to spend winters there, away 34 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 015 from NYC. She is also painting and playing croquet and recently competed with a much younger Johnnie at the Merion Cricket Club’s fall tournament. 1968 Randall Albury’s (A) book Castiglione’s Allegory: Veiled Policy in “The Book of the Courtier (1528)” was published by Ashgate in 2014. This new study shows that Baldassare Castiglione’s dialogue about life at a Renaissance court Retired from her job in the Office of Public Affairs at Yale, Dorie Brodie Baker (A) became a certified master gardener and went to Venice for the first time. She is still married to her husband of 44 years and has two grandsons. Barbara Mordes (A) sends her thanks for an outstanding Class of 1969 homecoming in Annapolis. “I will treasure the memory of our 45th homecoming,” she writes. “Every minute was exciting! The campus, though getting more buildings, is still very beautiful, more so with all the memories that fill its corners.” She joined the nominating committee for The Screen Actors Guild and plans to move with her husband, John, from Los Angeles to Palm Coast, Fla. 1970 Benjamin Barney (SF) reports that he is well and living in Lukachukai, Ariz., near Canyon del Chelly, in the heart of the Navajo Nation. He is interested in reconnecting �with his classmates or anyone affiliated with the college. On a recent visit to Greece, John Dean (A) was once again baffled and inspired by the wide, deep, universal range of its first three millennia of communications. “Such a sense of place,” he writes. “It encapsulates Mediterranean light. It occupies a spiritual place that generously includes many gods and not a limited monotheism. It has moral grooming adorned with independence and frankness. Without the engagement which our first year readings at St. John’s gave, I wouldn’t know how to begin to go and get what’s there, for which one remains grateful.” E. M. Macierowski (A) delivered a paper in November 2014 at a conference in Toru, Poland, “Truth in Democracies: A Case Study on Population Policy,” as part of the VIIth International Congress “Catholics and the Truth: Opportunities and Threats” at the College of Social and Media Culture, Catholic University of Culture. A copy of the conference program is available at www. wsksim.edu. In May 2015, he was invited to participate in the Woroniecki Memorial Lecture Series at the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin on the theme of atheism and justice. 1972 Michael Green (A) and his wife, Polly, have retired and left Southern California for Annapolis in order to be near their children and family. He would be glad to hear from fellow Johnnies at michaelkevingreen@gmail.com. 1973 Michael Aaron (SF) reports that he and his partner, Danusha, have become grandparents for the first time. He is still working for IBM and considering retirement. They invite their St. John’s friends to come and visit them in Sydney. Ellen Veden’s (SFGI77) artwork Mapleton Road Bridge was on view at the Trenton City Museum. After working in South America, Asia, Europe, and Africa, Anne Ray (SF) has returned to Santa Fe, where she is teaching full time at Mandela International, a new public IB school. She is still doing ceramics and writing her third book and first work of fiction. Her eldest daughter, Heather Sherwin (SF03), is completing her residency in emergency medicine. Peter Squitieri (A) received his B.A. from St. John’s College at the 2015 commencement exercises. 1974 After graduation, Eva Virginia (McKemie) Greene (A) worked as a copy editor for The Jerusalem Post while learning Hebrew, and then taught at Eilat Conservatory of Music in Israel. She and her future husband, Dr. Bradford Greene, returned to the States in the 1980s and worked in Washing- ton, D.C. for the next two decades. In 2007, she resigned from the Inter-American Development Bank and moved to Vermont, where she and her family have lived for the past eight years. She currently serves as a musician for Brattleboro’s Unitarian Church and works part time as a recreation therapist. recommend it to anyone as a way of getting to know the White Mountains better. My husband, John Jolles (SF75), and I are active members of the local Kiwanis Club, and John continues to work as a contractor. It was great to get together with other members of the Santa Fe Class of ’74 last September.” Mary (Geoghegan) Jolles (SF) writes, “Three years ago I retired from school administration to escape from stress but have continued to work part time for the Colebrook, N.H. School District as an administrative assistant. My tasks include writing grants and organizing school activities and events, as well as publishing the monthly school newsletter. Hiking has been my passion since 2009, and in 2013 I finished hiking the forty-eight four thousand-footers of the White Mountains. This was a great experience and I 1975 Eric Scigliano (SF) writes, “I’m now in my fourth decade in Seattle, and as befits the locale, getting more involved in marine science and environmental work. After cowriting the book Flotsametrics (on, no kidding, flotsam oceanography) and a report evaluating responses to ocean acidification in connection with a Washington State blue-ribbon panel on same, I’m working as the science writer/editor at Washington Sea Grant, a NOAA-funded research and education program THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2015 35 �ALUMNI NOTES at the University of Washington. I’m also writing several chapters for a forthcoming book on Pacific Coast marine protected areas and joining in occasional kayak-borne “Pumpout Pirate” missions to help boaters keep their wastes out of the waters. When I can, I write for Crosscut.com, the public-media regional news site where I was formerly an editor. I still love the hiking as well as paddling here but miss the Sangre de Cristo.” 1977 Walter Featherly (SF) moved to the law firm of Holland & Knight. He would love to hear from any Johnnies living in Anchorage or traveling through. After 10 years at the helm of the American Sleep Apnea Association and nearly a year of “fun-employment,” Edward Grandi (A) was hired in February to be the executive director of the National Genealogical Society. “While I will have a continuing interest in the field of sleep medicine and health in general, I am looking forward to contributing my administrative skills to this one hundred-twelveyear-old organization,” says Grandi, who still lives in D.C. and enjoys alumni chapter events there. Ellen Veden (SFGI) writes, “The Central New Jersey St. John’s Alumni Chapter is off and running thanks to the efforts of Adrian Trevisan (A84) and Jerome Dausman (A11), the new chapter chair. The group was given a tour of the Trenton City Museum’s Ellerslie Open 32 juried exhibit by Brenda Springsted, wife of Eric Springsted (SF73), followed by a picnic at their lovely home in Trenton. What made it special for me was that my artwork was chosen to be exhibited in this juried show.” 1978 After receiving his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from McMaster University, Canada, in 1983, Ossama Abul-Haggag (SFGI) went Ossama Abdul-Haggag (SFGI78) poses with his wife in Egypt. to Egypt, where he is currently a professor of electrical engineering. “The study of the philosophy of science as viewed by the ancient scientists and philosophers has provided me with motivation and insight into my research,” writes Abdul-Haggag, who is married with two children. 1979 Blake Kline (A) became a grandfather for the first time on April 13 with the birth of Gabriela Joyce Pedroza-Kline. Miyoko Schinner’s (A) fourth cookbook, The Homemade Vegan Pantry, the Art of Making Your Own Staples (Random House/ Ten Speed Press), is now available. She is the founder/CEO of Miyoko’s Kitchen, makers of artisan vegan cheese, which was launched in September. Her youngest daughter is a sophomore at the Santa Fe campus. Lisa Simeone (A), writes, “I continue to love living in Charm City, riots or no riots. I participated in several demonstrations in support of Freddie Gray and the many other people in this city brutalized by police violence. At one of those demonstrations, by the way, we marched together 36 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 015 with the police. I’m just enough busy with freelance work (World of Opera, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Style Magazine), in addition to volunteer work with Single Carrot Theatre, Homewood House Museum, and Baltimore Heritage. I’m a volunteer docent with the latter two, so if you’re ever in town, let me know and I’ll give you a tour! I love showing off this beautiful, quirky, one-of-akind city. When I’m not out and about, I’m blissfully sitting on our screened-in porch, reading, writing, and rabble-rousing. I’m in touch with other Johnnies regularly and often see Bruce Babij (A) and family, who live nearby. Looking forward to Alumni Weekend to be with my classmates from the Class of ’80, the one I joined after I took a year off. Last year’s was so much fun, I can’t wait!” 1980 Peter Grubb (A) and his wife, Betsy, built and operate River Dance Lodge, an adventure resort in central Idaho. For the past 16 years he has served on the board of Idaho Rivers United, Idaho’s statewide river conservation organization. He also served four years on the board of Spokane’s Center for Justice, an advocacy organization for those without a voice in the justice system. He still loves reading, particularly about natural and cultural history, and would love to connect with Johnnies via Facebook or in person in northern Idaho. 1981 Andrew White (A) will publish his first book, Performing Orthodox Ritual in Byzantium, with Cambridge University Press. A longtime theatre artist and critic on the Washington, D.C. theatre scene, he received a Ph.D. in theatre history, theory, and criticism from the University of Maryland, College Park. He has become an expert on the performing arts of Byzantium, the Greek-speaking Roman Empire. In addition to translations of key Greek texts from Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, he is developing a repertory translation combining key plays of Euripides with the text of the Christos Paschon. He currently serves as adjunct faculty in humanities with Stratford University in Woodbridge, Va. 1983 Jim Bailey’s (A) new novel The End of Healing (The Healthy City, 2015) chronicles a young physician’s discovery of every level of Dante’s hell in the world of modern medicine. In January he spoke at the University of Memphis on “The End of Healing: Telling the Truth about American Healthcare through Fiction.” Bailey writes, “The End of Healing is already being used for medical sociology and health policy courses at four colleges and universities. Because the book is of particular interest to students interested in the classics and their application to the most pressing social and political problems of today, it should interest Johnnies. My inspiration for writing The End of Healing came from the Divine Comedy in large measure. I followed that inspiration to Florence, Italy—Dante’s hometown—for a sabbatical 10 years ago. That is where I began writing The End of [continued on page 38] �PROFILE BIOLOGICAL PURSUITS By Robin Weiss Cara Gormally (A02) Advocates Science Literacy C ara Gormally (A02), a biology professor at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., relished the importance of intellectual community even as a child. Up to age eleven, while the family frequently moved for her father’s job, she displayed a knack for easing her way into schools and friendships in five states. Back then, science was not her thing. During high school in Milford, Connecticut, calculus, biology, physics, and chemistry “never really captured my attention,” she recalls. Now, acknowledgment of her former negative “science baggage” fuels her enthusiasm for teaching non-science majors, as well as her research in science education. Freshman Lab at St. John’s triggered Gormally’s passion for biology. “Without PowerPoint or giant lecture halls, you’re engaged with the reading, with the works themselves,” she says. The creativity of experimentation, “always asking questions,” inspired a hunger for science that led to a Hodson Internship the summer before senior year. In a neuroscience lab at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences (USUHS) in Bethesda, Maryland, Gormally’s doubts emerged about neuroscience as a career. Staying inside all day, “stuck under a microscope, sacrificing mice,” was hardly an appealing vision of her future. In contrast, during her senior year, engaged in botanical lab and fieldwork with now retired tutor Nick Maistrellis (H14), she suffered from too much fun. “I loved being outside,” she remembers, but she worried that ecology and environmental fieldwork were not serious. Gormally paraphrases Maistrellis’s question from that time: “Why would you want to spend your days doing something that isn’t fun, that you don’t enjoy?” After graduation, Gormally worked part-time in a different lab at USUHS, took classes, and then moved to a plant biology lab at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. “Nick Maistrellis was right,” she decided. “Why wouldn’t I go do something I really enjoy?” Two powerful mentors, Maistrellis and tutor Kathy Blits, raised her search standards as she chose a graduate program in plant biology and ecology. In 2004, beginning a doctorate at the University of Georgia’s plant biology department, she joined an academic community where her growing wonder for plant biology and science education could thrive. Having earned her Ph.D. in 2010, Gormally taught briefly at Georgia Tech. While engaged in ecological fieldwork in botanical gardens, she and her students explored the effects of invasive plant species on a habitat. During her interview for a tenured professorship at Gallaudet, which serves deaf and hard of hearing students, she felt a connection with her future colleagues. Attracted to the collaboration among faculty, she sensed a strong caring about students, which she had also felt during her St. John’s experience. Despite her Ph.D., she “knew virtually nothing” in her first semester, she states. Learning from scratch, Gormally immersed herself in American Sign Language and a new culture. Her colleagues’ patience and encouragement helped enormously with this challenging leap. She continues to be grateful for “people’s willingness to bring me into the community and to teach me.” Of the classroom interpreters, she says, “They’re not there for one person; they’re there for everybody,” acting as a bridge for communication. Instead of lectures, she encourages smallgroup activities; clusters of students work through biological problems. After two years of teaching, she declares, “I’m not fluent. But I feel comfortable signing for myself.” “� hy would you want to spend W your days doing something that isn’t fun, that you don’t enjoy?” Her current research in biology education involves promoting science literacy. She explores strategies that support teaching assistant and faculty development, and researches students’ attitudes toward science to improve learning for non-science majors. Gormally’s fascination with what she calls “perspective shifts” spurs recent collaborative work on mentoring, aiming to increase student participation from underrepresented populations. In her senior essay at St. John’s, Gormally wrote about Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis. “Gregor wakes up one morning and finds out he’s this giant cockroach, or some sort of insect,” she says. Her own surprising transitions have been “all about shifting perspectives.” THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2015 37 �ALUMNI NOTES [continued from page 36] Healing and discovered just how good an allegory The Comedy offers for modern healthcare. So, this story could be a helpful example of how the great books can inspire and guide us in today’s world.” 2002 NAVIGATING THE STARS 1984 Pedro J. Martinez-Fraga (A) coauthored the book Public Purpose in International Law: Rethinking Regulatory Sovereignty in the Global Era (Cambridge University Press, 2015). He notes that the book “explores how the public purpose doctrine reconciles the often conflicting, but equally binding, obligations that states have to engage in regulatory sovereignty while honoring hoststate obligations to protect foreign investment.” Martinez-Fraga has published five books on public and private international law; two of his works have been translated into Mandarin by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. David Prosper (SF) writes, “Several years ago I escaped from working for a sim-racing startup and now work full-time as an astronomy educator at the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. My main projects are in support of the NASA Night Sky Network, a program devoted to helping amateur astronomy clubs show the night skies to the public. I am also the program director for the Eastbay Astronomical Society at the Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland, California, and sometimes I even get paid to give tours of the night sky!” His new co-authored book, The Total Sky-Watcher’s Manual, was published by Weldon-Owen Publishing in 2015. Mark Niedermier (A) moved back to Minnesota where he is now head of school at Many Rivers Montessori in Duluth. He also became a trained civil mediator and is doing alternative dispute resolution in the county court system. 1986 Douglas Gentile’s (A) third book, Media Violence and Children: A Complete Guide for Parents and Professionals (Praeger, 2nd Edition, 2014) is now available on Amazon and at www.abc-clio.com/ Praeger.aspx. Gentile is an associate professor of psychology at Iowa State University. John Newell (A) has discovered a new type of probability that is based on directional similarity. The probabilities provide a way to understand quantum entanglement and violations of Bell’s inequality. Find out more at www. hellos.com/physics. 38 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 015 1987 Charlotte Glover (SF) reports that she survived her first year as a business owner in fine style. Her store, Parnassus Books and Gifts, has thrived in downtown Ketchikan, Alaska for 30 years thanks to supportive locals and loads of cruise ship passengers who want books about all things Alaskan. Visit her store on Facebook as “Parnassus Books in Ketchikan.” Several classmates have called in book orders, which she says is “much appreciated and a welcome blast from the past.” 1988 After teaching for five years at Title One middle schools, Claudia (Probst) Stack (A) is currently working full-time on her new film about sharecropping. �1989 Beth Heinberg (A) is wrapping up her 10th year teaching performing arts at Carolina Day School in Asheville, N.C., where she is suddenly legally married to her wife, Nancy Asch. They are both involved with LGBT and progressive activist causes, among them Girls Rock Asheville, a mentoring program for girls ages 8-16. 1990 Michelle Baker’s (SF) first work of fiction, The Canoe, is now available for Kindle on Amazon as well as in print. Set in 1912, half the book takes place in a small town outside of Annapolis, along the West River. Read more at www. thecanoebymichellebaker.com. Kilian James Garvey (SF) recently won the Research and Scholarship Award at the University of Louisiana for his experimental work in judgment and decision-making in the areas of rationality, political orientation, and religious belief and is working hard to help introduce evolutionary psychology to regions of the United States still somewhat resistant to the idea. 1991 Christopher Peck (SF) writes, “Nate Downey (SF) interviewed me for an article that was published in the Santa Fe New Mexican: http://goo.gl/lEj97o. I am co-author of a book The Resilient Investor: A Plan for Your Life, Not Just Your Money (Berrett Koehler Publishers, 2015). I live in Sonoma County, California, where I’m married with a 20-month old son, and life is good!” 1992 Christopher Hadley (A) finished his Ph.D. in systematic theology at Marquette University. Over the next two summers, he will complete the final phase of his Jesuit formation in Portland, Ore. In between those summers, in 2015-16, he will have a postdoc fellowship at the Lonergan Research Institute at Regis College, University of Toronto, living with the Jesuit seminarians of Regis College. 1995 David M. Friebus (SF) was made a partner in BakerHostetler’s Chicago office. Kira Zielinski (SF) is moving to Iowa City, throwing pottery, and dancing tango. Anyone in the area or passing through can reach her at kirazielinski@gmail.com. 1996 Frank Giuseffi (SFGI), dean of academics at Missouri Military Academy, received the 2015 Lighthouse Award for Excellence from Lindenwood University. 1997 2006 Johnnies in the Big Easy Mac Ward (A) writes, “In April, six Johnnies who started in Annapolis in 2001 stormed New Orleans to mark ten years since we should have graduated St. John’s. From the left: Evelyn Anne (Johnston) Clausen (A07), Mac Ward (A06), John Gerard (A05), Scott Danner (A05), Janae (Decker) Gerard (A05), and Brent Morris (A05). Shani N. Warner (SFGI) was recently re-elected to the City Council in Hyattsville, Md. for a second four-year term. She views her role as a tutor in a community-wide conversation and would love to see more SJC alumni run for office. “Government service, particularly at the local level, is wildly undervalued,” she writes. “But it provides an unparalleled opportunity to put your ideas into practice, make a real difference in your neighbors’ lives, and literally shape your community.” 1998 Liz Trice (SF) owns a co-working space called PelotonLabs in Portland, Maine. She is engaged to David Levi, owner of Vinland restaurant, and trains at Circus Atlantic to stay sane and happy. 2000 Kelsey Bennett’s (SF) book of literary criticism Principle and Propensity: Experience and Religion in the Nineteenth-Century British and American Bildungsroman was published by University of South Carolina Press in 2014. 2001 Chris Barnett’s (AGI01) second book From Despair to Faith: The Spirituality of Søren Kierkegaard was published by Fortress Press in 2014. Jennifer (Westie) Skalla (A) graduated in May with a master’s in nursing from Regis University in Denver. 2002 James Marshall Crotty (SFGI) released two documentaries this year about his experience teaching debate and speech to young men in the South Bronx. The feature doc, Crotty’s Kids, which debuted at SXSW and soon will be in national distribution via Passion River, looks at how adult male mentorship and surrogate family can help turn the tide on our nation’s urban dropout THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2015 39 �ALUMNI NOTES epidemic. The short doc Master Debaters examines how high-speed debate—untethered to perennial moral ideas—can lead to Sophist nihilism. To learn more, visit www. crottyskids.com or contact him at jim@jamescrotty.com. Sally Choate Fox (AGI) is practicing law in Decatur, Ga., with a focus on family law and divorce. She would love to hear from other Johnnies in the Atlanta area at sallyfoxga@gmail.com. Steven Oppenheimer (AGI) graduated in May with a J.D. from American University’s Washington College of Law. He plans to continue in the field of intellectual property (he is currently a licensed patent agent), and seeks to join a state bar and become a patent attorney. He is also developing a technology startup ImagiStar LLC (www.ImagiStar.com). John Rogove (A) is finishing up his Ph.D. in philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris, where he teaches philosophy. He also teaches liberal arts at NYU’s Paris campus. 2003 Paul McLain (SFGI) completed the two-year certificate program in spiritual direction at Southern Methodist University’s Perkins School of Theology. He serves as sub-dean of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Little Rock, Ark., where his wife, Ruthie, is an attorney. “Moralizing Violence?”—a critique of positivism in peace studies and social psychology—on August 8, 2014. He is beginning his third year at the United States Coast Guard Academy, teaching courses in political theory, moral and ethical philosophy, and American government to future officers. 2005 2006 Matthew Gates (A) and Claire Muneza were married on December 5 and 6, 2014 in Kigali, Rwanda, where Matt works in agricultural research and Claire works in advertising. Chris Horne (SF) obtained a Master of City Planning degree from MIT and has been practicing as a researcher, freelance consultant, and for the last three years, as a private planner with Sasaki Associates. A project that he managed this year won the Daniel Burnham Award, the highest award given to an urban planning project by the American Planning Association. Abram Trosky (SFGI) successfully defended his doctoral dissertation Daniel Grimm (SF) graduated with a master’s from the NYU School of Law’s tax program and is headed to Houston to work in Ernst & Young’s Mergers & Acquisitions group. He recommends the study of taxation to anyone who enjoys obscure German authors (Kant, Hegel, etc.), or rolling large boulders uphill for all eternity. He is happy to report that the Internal Revenue Code is replete with Euclidean formulations in the manner of “A is to B as X is to Y.” Jacqueline Kennedy-Dvorak (AGI) is working in civil litigation, doing lots of farm cases, in Middle Georgia. She keeps in regular contact with Everett Reed (AGI07) and Paul Cooper (AGI). She wel- Sally Benson (SF) has been teaching for the last six years—the first three in the Santa Fe Public Schools and the last three years at the Penitentiary of New Mexico. In August 2015, she began the Ph.D. program called Rhetoric, Composition, and the Teaching of English at the University of Arizona in Tucson. 2007 Jessica Dixon (SF) became an ordained pastor in the Presbyterian Church (USA) on July 12 at Fair Oaks Presbyterian Church in Oak Park, Ill. This concludes a process toward becoming a pastor that she began at age 15, which included a Master of Divinity from McCormick Theological Seminary following St. John’s and years of working in churches and churchbased nonprofits. Her work at Fair Oaks is focused on youth ministry, mission, and worship leadership. She writes, “I am grateful for all the ways SJC has been formative in my identity as a pastor and leader as well as the great friends who have supported me in the years at and since St. John’s.” Margaret Rachel Shultz (A) is living and working in the great Johnnie mecca of Chicago, and enjoying the vibrant alumni community there. She married on August 8 and honeymooned in Scotland. Lucas Smith (SF) writes, “In March, I finished filming my documentary, Ghosts of the Aral Sea, produced over four and a half years in western Kazakhstan. It had been a long process, following a group of fishermen over several years and in every season. In May, a feature documentary film for which I was cinematographer, Last Man in Dhaka Central, premiered at the Venice Biennale, and I married my love of six years, Miriam, in a self-sanctified wedding in Iceland.” 2004 Emma Elliott Freire (A) and Lucas Grassi Freire had a daughter, Cecilia Janke, on December 11, 2014 in Exeter, United Kingdom. After a stint in Los Angeles working for the Getty Research Institute, Joshua Machat (SFGI) recently accepted a post as a communications officer at Yale University Press, Department of Art & Architecture. comes a good conversation, so any Johnnies in the area should drop in and chat. 2008 Matthew Gates (A05) ties the knot in Africa. 40 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 015 Ben Hoffman (A) is now living in the San Francisco Bay Area, working for GiveWell, a nonprofit that evaluates charities to find the ones that have the greatest impact per dollar spent. �2010 A Momentous Year 2009 Jake Crabbs (A) and Marianna Brotherton (A10) were married in Killington, Vt. on June 20. They are now residing in Chicago. Katherine Hale (A) was accepted into the 2015 entering class of the Field Naturalist Master’s Program at the University of Vermont. 2010 Ethan Brooks (A) left the Marine Corps as a captain this summer to begin a master’s in computer and information technology at the University of Pennsylvania in the fall. Carolyn Luppens (SF) writes, “This year was a particularly momentous one for me. I graduated from The Alpert Medical School of Brown University on May 24 of this year, and was chosen by my peers to give the commencement address (in which I availed myself of my SJC background and spoke about Achilles and Odysseus, among other things). I was additionally selected by the Rhode Island chapter of The American College of Surgeons to receive the annual award given to the graduating medical student who has excelled in, and demonstrated service to, the surgical community. In June I began my General Surgery residency at The University of Utah in Salt Lake City.” Alysia Johnson (SF) graduated on June 20 from the United States Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, summa cum laude, with a Bachelor of Science degree in marine transportation. She also received a commission as an ensign in the U.S. Navy Reserve and a Third Mate (Unlimited) U.S. Coast Guard license. She writes, “After graduating from St. John’s I took a year off to bum around and sail, and then started the program at USMMA, one of the five federal service academies and seven maritime academies in the country. In my time there, I completed a year of sea time sailing as a cadet, including trips for the Middle East, Asia, and participation in Operation Deep Freeze to refuel McMurdo Base, Antarctica. I was also an active member of the sailing team and served as the regimental waterfront officer for one of my midshipman billets first-class year. I was honored with several awards for leadership, scholar-athlete participation, and academic achievement. Although it means missing our five-year reunion (sorry, Stef!), I have taken a job working with TE Subcom as a mate on a cable-laying ship. I plan on filling my free time with more traditional square-rig sailing, a hobby I took up while at SJC, and couch-surfing with friends and classmates. I welcome e-mails or Facebook messages from everyone!” 2012 Rhett Forman (SF) traveled to Dorf Tirol, Italy in July to present a paper on Ezra Pound and early modern psychology at the 2015 Ezra Pound International Conference held at Brunnenburg Castle, the home of Pound’s daughter. The conference presentation was the result of research he conducted in summer 2014 as a participant of the Ezra Pound Center for literature at the castle. He is currently a Ph.D. student in Literature at the Institute of Philosophic Studies at the University of Dallas. 2013 Shaun Rieley (AGI) has begun working toward a Ph.D. in political theory and American government in the Department of Politics at The Catholic University of America. THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2015 41 �IN MEMORIAM William Dyal (H89) ANASTASIA EGELI (A92) January 29, 2015 President, Annapolis In the mid-1960s, Dyal was invited by the Johnson administration to serve as country director for the Peace Corps in Colombia. Subsequently, he led Peace Corps programs in the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia as one of the program’s four regional directors. 42 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 015 William M. Dyal (1928-2015) served as president of the Annapolis campus from 1986 until 1990, when he stepped down for health reasons. He was admired by faculty, students, alumni, and board members for his wise and even-handed leadership. Before coming to St. John’s, he had a wide-ranging career that encompassed work for the U.S. government and for international volunteer agencies. Dyal met his wife, Edie, while both were studying at Baylor University. He later studied theology and pastoral counseling at Southern Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, and the couple served as Baptist missionaries in Costa Rica and Guatemala; he then worked for several more years throughout South America training other missionaries. Years later when he was at St. John’s, Dyal led a seminar on a new reading: Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” The students did not know, and Dyal did not tell them in advance, that he had met and visited Dr. King in jail while working for the social action agency in the 1960s. In the mid-1960s, Dyal was invited by the Johnson administration to serve as country director for the Peace Corps in Colombia. Subsequently, he led Peace Corps programs in the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia as one of the program’s four regional directors. In the 1970s, he was named head of the Inter American Foundation, a public corporation to fund social and economic grassroots development. The following decade, he served as president of the American Field Service (AFS), one of the best-known world student exchange programs. During his time at St. John’s, Dyal brought his strong and welcome sense of the world beyond St. John’s and his gift for reconciling differences among people. He completed fundraising for the addition to Mellon Hall and for the renovation of the Hodson Boathouse, both in preparation for a planned capital campaign. He is survived by his wife, Edie; daughters Deborah, Kathy, and Lisa; nine grandchildren; and brother, Terry. �IN MEMORIAM Edward Sparrow (H93) April 23, 2015 Tutor and dean, Annapolis Edward Grant Sparrow, Jr. (1929-2015), retired tutor who also served as dean of St. John’s College in Annapolis, died in Barton, Vermont after a brief illness. An alumnus of Harvard College, class of 1951, Sparrow earned a law degree from Harvard Law School. He eschewed a legal career by earning his M.A. from Columbia University Teacher’s College and joining the faculty at St. John’s College in 1957, where over the course of 33 years he taught the entire curriculum. Sparrow was born in Paris, France, on July 28, 1929, the son of Edward Grant Sparrow and Catherine Groth Sparrow. His family returned to the United States when he was 10, and lived in New York City, where he attended Buckley School and, later, St. Mark’s in Southborough, Massachusetts. He married Lydia Huntington in 1953, and then joined the Army, and was sent to West Germany as part of the U.S. occupying forces. Upon returning to the United States, he was hired as a tutor at St. John’s. From 1964 to 1966 he was acting director of the Integrated Liberal Arts Curriculum at St. Mary’s College in California before he returned to Annapolis. In July 1977, Sparrow began a five-year term as dean of the Annapolis campus. He taught his students at St. John’s with a sense of wonder which never left him. He loved literature, poetry, classical and popular music, and old time radio. He could deliver the lyrics to any Gilbert and Sullivan opera with verve and style. His conversion to Catholicism in 1957 was a profoundly important event in his life; he became an oblate of Mt. Savoir Monastery in Elmira, New York. Sparrow is survived by his wife, Margaret; former wife, Lydia; sister, Helen Roosevelt; seven children, Bartholomew, Edward, Elizabeth, Helen, Katherine, Richard, and Sophie; and 12 grandchildren. He was predeceased by his eldest son, Christopher. Grant Wiggins (A72) May 26, 2015 Visionary education reformer and self-professed “educational trouble-maker of longstanding” Grant Wiggins (1950-2015) died at home in Hartford, Connecticut. Wiggins was a writer, thinker, researcher, teacher, and learner. Best known as the co-author of Understanding by Design, he challenged educators to think logically, designing instruction backward from clarity on learning goals. He believed that learning was not signaled by the accumulation of knowledge but, rather, by the power to take action. After St. John’s College he received his Ed.D. from Harvard and went on to work on some of the most significant reform initiatives in the world, including the Coalition of Essential Schools, the AP and IB programs, and many state and national reform efforts. Wiggins admired educators who wanted to make a difference and were willing to challenge themselves as part of that effort. He loved rock and roll, soccer, good food and wine, Paris, the Red Sox, walks, and conversation. His greatest joy, though, was his family. Wiggins is survived by his beloved wife, Denise Wilbur; daughters Alexis and Priscilla; sons, Justin and Ian; parents, Dorothy and Guy; brothers, Guy and Noel; and grandsons, Elios and Amadeo Estrada. Theodore Otteson Class of 1952 May 6, 2015 Theodore (Ted) Otteson (19252015), passed away at his home, surrounded by four generations of loving family. He was 90. Otteson was a teacher, mentor, friend, counselor, and seeker of wisdom and adventure. Born March 9, 1925 in Poona, India, the son of missionary parents, his primary and secondary education was in schools in India and the United States. He served in the U.S. Navy during WWII and was a translator in Japan at the end of the war. Otteson taught for 45 years at the University of MissouriKansas City, in the English Department and in the program for adult continuing education. He was preceded in death by his parents and a sister, Pearl Holbrook. He is survived by his wife of 52 years, Beverley; daughters Malory, Paula and Susan; son, Clovis; and numerous grandchildren. Barbara L. Lauer (SF76) December 19, 2014 Former St. John’s College Alumni Association officer, Board of Visitors and Governors member and Alumni Association Award of Merit recipient, Barbara L. Lauer (1950-2014) died at her home in Laramie, Wyoming. A generous friend and colleague, she lighted the lives of everyone she knew. Born in Sacramento, California to Van and Louise (Keeney) Shepherd, Lauer attended Chapman World College Afloat, better known today as Semester at Sea, before coming to St. John’s. She then studied law at the University of Edinburgh, and completed her law degree at the University of Wyoming. Her love of St. John’s was evident through her exceptional service with the college’s Alumni Association. From 1996 to 2010 she served as the Alumni Association’s director, vice president, secretary, and director emerita. Lauer was preceded in death by husband, Ted. She is survived by her sister, Paula; brother, Doug; and numerous other family members. THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2015 43 �Anne Nelson (H90) May 18, 2015 Anne Higgins Nelson (1925-2015) died at BayWoods, her home in Annapolis. Anne developed a deep love for St. John’s College when she married her husband Charles A. Nelson (Chuck), Class of 1947, that lasted her entire life. Her son, Christopher, is president of St. John’s College in Annapolis. She was born in Savannah, Illinois, to Edith Ballou Higgins and Colin Olney Higgins on March 22, 1925. Anne grew up in Berwyn, Illinois, and graduated from Morton High School, then continued on to obtain her B.A. in economics from Oberlin College in 1946. Following graduation, she married her high school sweetheart, Chuck, her loving and much-loved husband of 69 years. The couple spent their first year of married life in Annapolis, while Chuck completed his B.A. from St. John’s College and Anne was employed as a social worker. Anne and Chuck then returned to Chicago, where Chuck began his career in education. They made a home in the Chicago area, where their four children were born. In 1956, a job change for Chuck brought the family to New York. Settling in White Plains, N.Y., Anne was elected president of the Rochambeau School P.T.A. and led the movement to desegregate the White Plains public school system in the 1960s. Anne was active in the Democratic Party and challenged the Republican status quo in the predominantly Republican city with an (unsuccessful) run for White Plains City Council. As the children grew older, Anne returned to work, first joining her husband’s consulting practice, and later, the faculty of the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations, where she worked until her retirement in 1990. Anne was proud of her work at Cornell, writing and teaching classes for labor union women, administrating programs, and securing grants. She was fiercely committed in every facet of her life to the fight for equal rights and social justice for all. In 2002, Chuck and Anne left their home in Croton-on-Hudson to continue retirement in Annapolis. Anne started the first residents’ newsletter at BayWoods of Annapolis, their retirement home, where she helped form a great books discussion group. She revived the Annapolis chapter of the League of Women Voters, an organization in which she was actively engaged for her entire adult life, and edited the local LWV newsletter for several years. When someone asked about her hobbies recently, she looked puzzled and said, “I guess I don’t have any.” But then amended it to, “Well, I guess politics is my hobby.” She was a proud supporter of Barack Obama’s campaign for president, never missed voting in an election, read (and discussed) the New York Times every day and was always up for a good political debate. She was also captivated by the great women English mystery writers and read hundreds of mysteries, sometimes until the early morning hours to find out “who done it?” She remained feisty but cheerful to the end. Anne loved her family and was much loved in return. She is survived by her husband, Chuck; sons, Christopher, Colin, and Ted; and daughter, Janet Berggren; as well as 11 grandchildren and 19 greatgrandchildren. Also Deceased: Paul Frank, SF82 July 26, 2015 Sarah Macina, SF70 January 23, 2015 Leo L. Simms, Class of 1956 December 13, 2014 Jonathan B. Bredin, SF74 December 31, 2014 Edward Gelblum, Class of 1955 June 12, 2015 Barbara C. Prendergast, SF72 November 24, 2014 Jacquelaine R. Vest, A86 January 26, 2015 George Brunn, Class of 1945 June 30, 2014 Meredith G. Hamilton, SF97 March 22, 2015 Merton E. Rice, Class of 1953 November 10, 2014 William B. Walter, SF85 October 5, 2014 Richard T. Carruthers, Class of 1948 October 22, 2014 Philip Heilig, Class of 1952 May 31, 2015 John H. Rubel, SF90 January 13, 2015 George P. Welch, Class of 1947 March 17, 2015 Alexander E. Clift, A03 November 16, 2014 Marvin J. Hoffenberg, Class of 1947 February 17, 2015 Marilyn L. Schaefer, SF79 March 8, 2015 Amy R. Wood, SF11 January 26, 2015 Samuel F. Dunbar, Class of 1964 April 18, 2015 David E. Johnson, A68 June 21, 2014 44 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 015 Brian D. Shields, A83 January 30, 2015 �STUDENT VOICES SJC: NOT YOUR STANDARD FACTORY FARM By Kevin Lam (A18) W hen I was 12 years old, I reached the lowest point in my life. In the spring of 2009, my mother died of gastric cancer and my father lost his job. My ethnic Chinese parents had emigrated from Vietnam to Fairfax County, Northern Virginia, where I was born and raised. My mother worked full-time in an exhausting job as a housekeeper, while managing all our household chores and being both mother and father to me. My father mostly ignored me, gambling away what little money we had. Because my mother was my most significant human connection, losing her caused much anger, sadness, isolation, and confusion to occupy my mind, to this day. Despite losing the most important person in my life, I experienced a major transition. New life was taking root from the ashes. All these feelings spurred me to ask a fundamental question: “Why?” As I questioned everything around me, I developed an intense curiosity. One of my favorite quotes from a St. John’s seminar book represents my transition. In Plato’s The Republic, Socrates said, “We mustn’t hug the hurt part and spend our time weeping and wailing like children when we trip. Instead, we should always accustom our souls to turn as quickly as possible to healing the disease and putting the disaster right, replacing lamentation with cure.” My mother’s death ignited my desire to know as much as I can about the world and to make it better. My curiosity led me to pursue reading zealously, which helped me develop an important connection with my AP U.S. history teacher, Mr. Evans. Throughout my junior and senior years in a large, academically intensive public high school in Fairfax County, I visited his classroom after school for intellectual conversation. During one such exchange, he caused a paradigm shift in my life. I was expressing disillusionment with the college admissions process. I was spending countless hours filling out forms in order to do the same thing in college and “� have developed an unquenchable I curiosity. With the courage and ability to ask ‘Why,’ I am able to pursue an education that will help me to better understand the world and humanity.” the rest of my life. At a job with no hope of intellectual freedom, I would drown in mind-numbing work. “We’re all just cattle being herded to our eventual intellectual slaughter,” I told Mr. Evans. His response: “Why don’t you go to St. John’s College? They read a lot of books there.” When I learned more about St. John’s, I felt a surge of excitement. There was a place that did not conform to the standard higher-education system that seemed like a factory farm to me. Its people tackled difficult philosophical questions to understand the world and what it means to be human. Students are told what to read, but not what to think. I knew I had found my home for the next four years. Every new reading reaffirms this fact. The Platonic Dialogues make me feel fulfilled and at peace because of the immense concentration necessary to even remotely grasp them. The death of my mother sparked my curiosity and my pursuit to understand the world. In three years, I will graduate from St. John’s College and fully reconnect with the world. Sadly, I will still not have my mother, and will always grieve over her death. Despite this burden, I have developed an unquenchable curiosity. With the courage and ability to ask “Why,” I am able to pursue an education that will help me to better understand the world and humanity. As I follow my dream of bettering the world with my mother always in my heart, St. John’s will prepare me for it. THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2015 45 �CROQUET THREE-PEAT THWARTED Johnnies Reclaim the Annapolis Cup, but Midshipmen Earn a Victory of Their Own W ith a final score of 3-2, Navy’s high hopes for a three-year winning streak were resolutely dashed. At the 33rd annual St. John’sU.S. Naval Academy croquet match held on April 18, the Johnnies performed with vigor and gusto before a crowd of more than 5,000 spectators—the largest in the history of the match—to bring home the Annapolis Cup for the first time since 2012. “It was a wonderful feeling, and not only for the team,” says Imperial Wicket Sam Collins (A15). “Everyone on campus was super excited about it.” Collins is quick to point out that alumni deserve a slice of the proverbial victory cake. A month before the big match, with snow still on the ground, the croquet team huddled in the Chasement, the cozy basement of the Chase-Stone dormitory, with several former Imperial Wickets and players, including Josh Rogers (A98), Hardison Wood (A98), Kit Linton (A97), and John Lawless (A00), among others, for a strategerium, mapping out key strategies on a chalkboard and discussing the game’s finer points. Alumni also paired with student players for a full day of skill training and matches. With added guidance from the croquet elite, “our team felt comfortable with more complex strategies,” says Jennifer Shumpert (A15), a member of this year’s team. On game day the Johnnies adhered to their golden rule: have fun. Decked out in Hawaiian shirts, denim shorts, aviator sunglasses, and fake mustaches, they paid playful tribute to television’s Magnum, P.I. However, detective skills were not required to spot BRADY LEE (AGI14) By Sus3an Borden (A87) and Gregory Shook Tell me, O Muse, the impetuous unrush of wing-footed Johnnies: Whom shall I mainly make butt of my hopelessly talentless singing? Him who ran hardest arriving first sweaty in need of a shower? Or him who sauntered at ease, smiling sweet and as cool as an iced beer? Here is what I will do following prudence, my elderly goddess: I shall bestow my much sought-after hugs on the unsweaty cool one, But on the winner I’ll place undegradably immortal laurel. 46 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 015 �SHAYNA JENKINS (A15) SUSAN JENKINS SHAYNA JENKINS (A15) the outrageous fashions that filled the front campus lawn. Throughout the afternoon, Lisa Simeone (A79) and Didi Schanche (A80) waded through the sea of festive gowns, widebrimmed hats, and bold bowties to select the cream of the crop for their Best Attire awards, a new addition to the day’s events. The alumnae judges relished the opportunity to mingle with the crowd and reconnect with old friends on a picture-perfect Saturday. “The whole idea of a croquet match—a civilized, old-fashioned pursuit—against the Naval Academy is delicious,” says Simeone. “Here you have this bastion of liberal arts up against a highly militarized institution. How could one not love the irony?” Croquet was not the only competition of the day. Weeks before the match, Johnnies began signing up as runners, sponsors, and donors for the 2nd Annual Memorial Fun(d) Run, which took place that morning, to see which intramural athletic team could raise the most money, field the most runners, and clock the best time. Not only was this the first year the intramural teams joined the event, it was also the first year that Midshipmen were invited to compete. They ably countered their losses on the croquet court by taking first and second place in the run. Midshipman Justin Maguire won the race with a time of 15:43. The first female to finish was Elizabeth Fenelon, also a Midshipman. Still, Johnnies made a good show with Annapolis tutor Brendan Boyle finishing third at 18:32. Robin Lancaster (A18) was the first St. John’s student to complete the race, at 19:29. The Memorial Fun(d) Run is hosted by the Friends of the Lawrence L Saporta, Ph.D. Memorial Scholarship Fund and was established to raise money and awareness for the college’s Memorial Endowment Funds. This year the run raised $2,420 for four Memorial Funds. The Hustlers raised the most money, the Spartans fielded the most runners, and the Furies claimed the fastest time. Annapolis tutor Eva Brann (H89) completed the event by crowning the winners with (plastic) laurel wreaths and delivering a fine speech, written in dactylic hexameter, reprinted to the left. Photos, opposite page, top: The Magnum, P.I.inspired Johnnies bask in the glow of their 3-2 win; bottom: Dylan Tyler (A15) takes a shot, concentrating amid the distraction of 5,000 spectators. This page, clockwise from top left: Marta Lively (A78), on the right, joins other fashionistas competing for the most splendiforously attired award; Eva Brann, master of Homeric congratulatory verse, greets a Fun(d) Run finisher; Midshipmen and Johnnies run for the money to benefit — SJC student scholarships. Check the college’s social media and the SJC website to stay tuned for info on the 2016 match, scheduled for April 16. THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2015 47 �BRADY LEE (AGI14) S T. J O H N ’ S F O R E V E R ONCE UPON A WHEN Looking at this memento a concert handbill — that has faithfully adorned the wood-paneled wall in my parent’s basement for the past 25 years—I wonder who else out there might remember this day in St. John’s history. At the time I was a 17-year-old townie and an aspiring drummer who on this occasion sat in on congas with the band Breathing Walker, a motley crew of Annapolis post-punk rockers. Spring showers forced the concert indoors, but spirits were far from dampened. Throughout the afternoon the bands gave it their all, playing to the crowd of mostly students gathered in the dining room in Randall Hall to celebrate Earth Day. As evening crept in, Three Shades of Dirty, a newly formed group featuring Dan Littleton (A93) on guitar/vocals and Colin 48 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 015 Meeder (A93) on his trusty Steinberger bass, delivered a blistering set of music like I’d never heard before. To this day, the band’s only cassette is among the most prized items in my music collection. This concert also served as an introduction to St. John’s. My high school graduation was two months away, and with no imminent plans for college, I recall the uneasy feeling I had chatting with undergrads who hungrily devoured such authors as Hegel, Kant, and Plato. (I was reading Tama Janowitz and Charles Bukowski.) But I also felt an immediate affection for St. John’s and hoped to someday be a part of it. It’s funny, the things we remember. —-Gregory Shook �EIDOS “I grew up in a family of artists, always knowing from a young age that I wanted to paint portraits. One reason for my passion is that I am drawn to people. That fascination was stoked by my classes at St. John’s, which introduced me to so many great minds. People are complex, multi-faceted, and continually changing. Painting gives me the challenge to capture those changes and present a complete sense of someone. I feel as though painting has given me the privilege to come to know people in a truly unique way. I am now working as a portrait artist, living in New York City. I feel as though I have been so blessed. I can go visit countless museums to enjoy the works of Spain’s Sorolla, with his bold colors, or a John Singer Sargent exhibit at the Met. I am constantly studying to improve my use of color and my skill in drawing. My ideal day is sitting with someone, listening to their thoughts, and painting what it is to be with that particular person. Surrounded by inspiring work and people, every year I enjoy an increasing curiosity and a deeper appreciation of being alive.” —Anastasia Egeli (A92) Learn more about Anastasia Egeli (A92) at www.anastasiaegeli.com. THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2015 iii �Non-Profit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Annapolis, MD Permit N0. 120 Communications Office 60 College Avenue Annapolis, MD 21401 Address Service Requested � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The College (2001-2017) Description An account of the resource The St. John's College Communications Office published The College magazine for alumni. It began publication in 2001, continuing the St. John's Reporter, and ceased with the Fall 2017 issue. Click on <a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=56">Items in The College (2001-2017) Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, Md. Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context thecollege2001 Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 48 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Title A name given to the resource The College, Fall 2015 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf 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 Type The nature or genre of the resource text Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context The_College_Magazine_Fall_2015 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Description An account of the resource Volume 40, Issue 2 of the The College Magazine. Published in Fall 2015. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Shook, Gregory (editor) Ryder, Brett Boonparlit, Nutchapol Gomez, Gabe Townsend, David Novash, Paula Kirby, Melanie M. Brann, Eva Weiss, Robin Lam, Kevin Borden, Sus3en The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/f0a78538a87714f81b54f2209ad98093.pdf 88250410c27a954d3b39c44a3a3fd706 PDF Text Text College The SPRING 2016 • S T. J O H N ’ S C O L L E G E • ANNAPOLIS • S A N TA F E Martin Luther King, Jr. On Serving Others �A day of service: alumni, students, faculty, and staff plant daffodil bulbs outside Mellon Hall. ii THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 �OPENING NOTE What can you do with a St. John’s degree? I love this question because the answer is so surprisingly simple: anything. And it’s not hyperbole. With commencement just around the corner, a new crop of Johnnies will bid adieu to the place they called home for the past four years, to the friends and faculty who tirelessly helped them grapple with such great minds as Euclid, Hegel, Aristotle, and Kant, among others, and mold big ideas into imaginative and valuable contributions—often in the spirit of service to others. In his final sermon, “The Drum Major Instinct,” delivered at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia exactly two months before his assassination, Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) called on people to consider the notion of service, saying that it is within everyone’s capacity; the only true requirement needed to serve, he says, is “a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love.” This issue of The College shines a light on just a few among so many alumni who apply their “great books degree” to improve the lives of individuals and communities, both far and near, from advocating human rights to addressing women’s global health issues to transforming young students into powerful storytellers. Suffice to say, not only does such work require passion and dedication, it also takes a special kind of courage. Gregory Shook, editor THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 1 �SPRING 2016 VOLUME 41, ISSUE 1 “� ntelligence plus character— I that is the goal of true education.” —Martin Luther King, Jr. FEATUR E S P A G E 1 6�� P A G E 2 0�� PA G E 2 6 A REFLECTION ON SERVICE ROOSEVELT THE REFORMER A PLACE WHERE EVERYONE MATTERS A thoughtful examination of the meaning and value of service deepens our understanding of what inspires and motivates people to serve. Santa Fe’s new president is ready to show the world what matters most in education—and it’s not the glittery, superficial things. On Maine’s waterfront, an after-school program helps refugees and migrant youth become powerful storytellers and academic achievers. ON THE COVER: Martin Luther King, Jr. illustration by Francesco Francavilla PREVIOUS PAGE: JENNIFER BEHRENS 2 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 �D E PAR T ME N T S ��FROM THE BELL TOWERS BIBLIOFILE FOR & ABOUT ALUMNI 4 � Serving Women Worldwide: Rachel Seay (A02) 30 � John Sifton (A96) investigates war’s devastating effects in Violence All Around. 32 �lmuni News: A SJCAA 2016 Election Notice 6 An Alumni Leader 7 � Project for Peace 8 � Global Pathways: Jiujun Tang (SF16) 10 History on the Hill 11 First Folio! 12 �he Science Behind T 14 � Together in Song 34 �lumni Notes A 31 �Tutor David Lawrence Levine (Class of 1967) examines tyranny in Profound Ignorance: Plato’s Charmides and the Saving of Wisdom. � Silvermintz (AGI01) explores Daniel the ancient Greek sophist in Protagoras: Ancients in Action. � Keyser (SF91) shares a Amber story about healing in The Way Back from Broken. . 37 � rofile: Erinn Woodside (AGI) P leads a life of service. 42 �In Memoriam 45 �hilanthropy: Donald Esselborn (A80) P and Edmond Freeman 46 � Johnnie Voices: Russell Max Simon (SFGI06) discusses his most valuable investment. JOHNNIE TRADITIONS 48 �t. John’s Forever S EIDOS 49 Liz Hyatt (SF85) ABOVE: Rachel Seay (A02) in Sierra Leone with Doctors Without Borders THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 3 �From the BELL TOWERS A JOHNNIE MAKES A DIFFERENCE Serving Women Worldwide Rachel Seay (A02) Works with Women in Africa through Doctors Without Borders A woman dies from pregnancy-related complications every other minute, says Rachel Seay (A02), an OB/GYN and researcher at Johns Hopkins University. “Most of those can be prevented,” she adds ruefully—common causes are postpartum hemorrhage, infection, and unsafe abortion. And it’s women in developing nations who suffer most, as Seay observed firsthand while working under the auspices of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Sierra Leone and South Sudan. Last October in Annapolis, as a featured speaker for the Career Services Office, she gave a presentation on global women’s health challenges in support of MSF’s Because Tomorrow Needs Her project. A 2001 Hodson Trust internship allowed Seay to shadow several doctors and helped cement her interest in medicine. She earned her M.D. from the University of Colorado Denver in 2009, and completed her OB/GYN residency at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. In 2015, she received the American College of Gynecology’s history fellowship, which allowed her to research the management of postpartum hemorrhage in the United States. Her first mission for MSF was in fall 2013, at a maternal and pediatric hospital in Bo, Sierra Leone; in South Sudan, she worked with local midwives at a government-run hospital. At both facilities, she provided emergency obstetric care to women in need. Not all could be saved: she recalls two girls in Bo, both 17 and pregnant for the first time, who had both labored fruitlessly for days at home before coming to the MSF clinic. “By the time one of the girls had arrived,” she said in a 2015 interview, “her baby had died, while the baby of the other was still alive. Both girls delivered by C-section and ended up having really bad pelvic and abdominal infections.” The woman whose child died eventually died as well, while the other recovered along with her baby. “The complications and suffering of both of these girls were happening at the same time—they even shared the same room! To me, this story paints such a stark picture of two different outcomes from a problem that is completely preventable.” Seay emphasizes that the issues facing women’s health are multifactorial; “often the actual medicine or health care piece is a small piece of a much bigger problem that requires political action” or infrastructure improvements. Poorly maintained roads, for example, keep patients from reaching the care they need, and it can also be difficult to find specialized service providers. Lack of access to contraception is a huge concern as well. The largest obstacle, however, is the lack of priority many world governments and health administrations place on women’s health. Because of this, Seay believes it’s not enough to raise awareness among her fellow medical professionals; talks such as the one she gave at St. John’s are part of her outreach to the general public. But Seay also feels that St. John’s students are uniquely placed to make an impact in the medical field. “One of the strengths of the Program is that we learn to consider other perspectives than our own, and I think that very directly relates to cultural competency, and being able to relate to patients who are coming from a very different context than you.” Seay points out that a doctor who doesn’t make 4 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 Rachel Seay (A02) working with women and children at hospitals in Sierra Leone and South Sudan. the effort to connect with patients will likely find those patients less willing to comply with recommended medications or therapies. For Johnnies interested in medical school, Seay urges them to take advantage of the Career Services Office. “[They’ve] been really important to me, both to help guide my own career path and [now] to pay that back, to continue to be involved and offer my own mentoring to current students.” — Anna Perleberg Andersen (SF02) �“� ne of the strengths of the Program is that O we learn to consider other perspectives than our own, and I think that very directly relates to cultural competency, and being able to relate to patients who are coming from a very different context than you.” —Rachel Seay (A02) ALUMNI MAKE A DIFFERENCE THANK YOU to all the alumni volunteers who supported the Career Services Office this past year! Your efforts are appreciated and valued, and we couldn’t accomplish our goals without you. The alumni listed here have generously given their time, energy, talents, and resources to help current St. John’s students and their fellow alumni through information sessions, webinars, panels, networking events, e-mail connections, and much more: Martha Acosta (A92) Matthew Albanese (A02) Robert Ard (A94) Jim Bailey (A83) Shirley Banks (SF88) Jamaal Barnes (A10) Cynthia Barry (AGI05) David Bohannon (A99) Meredith Bohannon (A03) Donald Booth (A68) Matt Calise (A01) Ellen Chavez de Leitner (SF73) Thea Chimento (A09) Jonathan Coppadge (A06) John Cottrell (A02) Jennifer Dalton (A13) Samuel Davidoff (A99) Joshua DeSilva (A12) Mimi Desjardins (A84) Lyn Des Marais (A83) David Dillard (A89) Cole Donovan (AGI13) Kieran Dowdy (A09) Rachel Dudik (A02) Virginia Early (A13) Jeff Edwards (AGI94) Peter Faulhaber (SF78) Megan Field (A10) Gary Gallun (A69) Samuel Garcia (A99) January Hamill Gataza (A75) Lexi Goetz (A12) Cara Gormally (A02) Diane Hanson (A89) Chelsia Hetrick (SF03) Michael Houston (A82) Nathan Humphrey (A94) Maria Ironside (SF80) Bren Jacobson (SF83) Leslie Kay (SF83) Brittany Keehan (A12) Caroline Killian (SF05) Melanie Kirby (SF97) Katie Kolodzie (A12) Amy Kosari (A93) Louis Kovacs (A02) Marielle Kronberg (A70) Nathan Kross (A09) Tambra Leonard (SF85) Alex Leone (A12) Julia Leone (A12) Aaron Lewis (A96) Ronald Long (A91) Chris MacPherson (A14) Samuel Matlack (AGI11) Constance McClellan (SF73) Elisabeth McClure (A08) Brian McGuire (A96) Aaron McLean (A03) Jeremy Melvin (A98) Reynaldo Miranda (A99) Matthew Mokey (A03) Alistair Morrison (SF84) Amie Neff (SF93) William Nooter (A76) Nate Oesch (A09) Roweena Oesch (A10) Sam Ose (SF05) Tia Pausic (A86) Anna Perry (A11) Micah Pharris (A95) Justin Phelps (A07) Allison Pittman (A08) Temple Porter (Class of 1962) Ephrem Reese (A10) Barbara Rogan (A73) Ryan Rylee (A04) Richard Schmechel (A97) Daniel Schoos (A86) Ellen Schwindt (A88) Salvatore Scibona (SF97) Jessie Seiler (A08) Erin Shadowens (A12) Jon Kara Shields (A08) Suzannah Simmons (SF01) Marin Skokandic (A12) Michael Allen Smith (A87) Nancy Solzman (SF88) Elizabeth Spagnoletti (A12) Leonard Sponaugle (A85) Eric Springsted (SF73) Courtney Stange-Treagar (A00) Christopher Stuart (A06) Janet Sunderland (SFGI95) Jennifer Sweeney (A06) Janice Thompson (A95) Elliott Tulloch (SF91) Heather Upshaw (SF04) Austin Volz (SF09) Melissa Warren (A83) Cornelia Weierbach (A77) Scott Williamson (A03) Iva Ziza (A01) Alumni who are interested to volunteer with the college’s Career Services Offices, please contact us at: Jaime Dunn (in Annapolis) jaime.dunn@sjc.edu 410-626-2500 Margaret Odell (in Santa Fe) modell@sjc.edu 505-984-6067 THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 5 �F R OM T H E B E L L T OW E R S JOHNNIES BREAK ALL-MALE TRADITION Carolyn Leeuwenburgh is a member of an elite group—the first class of women to graduate from St. John’s College. Fifty years later, Leeuwenburgh and four other alumnae from the Class of 1955 celebrated this important milestone in the college’s history at Homecoming last fall in Annapolis. She shares the following with The College: In 1950, St. John’s College decided to admit women, for the year of 1951. This was motivated partly for financial reasons as a result of the post-WWII economy, and secondly because women did not have full access to education in America. St. John’s was the first all-male college in Maryland to admit women. Alumni Leader Finds His “Rushmore” Chris Coucheron-Aamot (SF04) has the distinction of being a double dropout. Bright but bored in high school in his hometown of Albuquerque, New Mexico, Aamot placed third in the state’s academic decathlon and yet carried a 1.8 GPA. As a freshman at the University of New Mexico, he earned straight As but got lost in the crowd and ditched higher education for a job as a religious radio news producer for Moody Broadcasting in Chicago. He might still be in the broadcast booth had he not produced a series of pieces about Christian colleges adopting great books programs. Researching the great books naturally led him to St. John’s College where he found a challenge, a calling, a home—and, finally, a diploma. Aamot graduated on a Saturday in 2004, took Sunday off, and started work at the college on Monday. He has never left the place he calls his “Rushmore,” referring to the cult classic Wes Anderson film. Aamot’s official title at the Santa Fe campus is associate director of Alumni Relations, but it is no stretch to call him the college’s most ardent and grateful Johnnie. “St. John’s shaped who I am as a person,” says Aamot. “It is rare now in this world to have a place of such grace and curiosity and whimsy. What we do and Chris Coucheron-Aamot (SF04) at “home” who we are is not common. And so to be able to be part of it for such an extended period is a tremendous privilege. It’s a great gift.” While many people leave their jobs behind at the end of the day, that’s not Aamot’s relationship with St. John’s. “In addition to the [alumni relations] work that I do I have a “� t. John’s shaped who I am S as a person. It is rare now in this world to have a place of such grace and curiosity and whimsy.” deep love for this place, so that leads me to involvement in all kinds of informal ways,” he says. Aamot often takes a seat at lectures and in study groups. He goes to campus parties, sits in on senior orals, chaperones the ski team, and for five years he lived on campus as a senior resident, walking the high desert campus several times a night with his Tibetan terrier, Lucy. “I do what I do because I love the place, and I consider myself a member of this community,” says Aamot. “And that means something special.” —Leslie Linthicum 6 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 MARION WARREN, SJC ARCHIVES I N S A N TA F E The 50th anniversary of our graduation was a good reason to acknowledge this event, but there is yet another reason. There were 19 single women and six married ones that were willing to undertake this experiment. They combatted prejudices from the administration, the staff, the tutors, and the students. The tradition of 255 years had been broken. Unfortunately at that time, the school was not prepared to offer a support system for the problems that arose. Many women left before completing the full four years. Those women who survived the four years did so because the St. John’s Program enhanced their desire to learn and become enlightened. Learning at St. John’s superseded the personal integration problems because it offered a lifetime direction of learning. �PROJECT FOR PEACE Inspiring Young Journalists in Nepal Growing up in Kathmandu, Nepal, Jon Shrestha (A17) remembers being in only one earthquake. It measured 6.8 on the Richter scale and lasted less than a minute. Afterward, he couldn’t sleep for days. Last April an earthquake again struck the city—this time an even more massive 7.8 magnitude shock—a month before Shrestha and his classmate Sagar Aryal (A18), also from Nepal, returned home to lead a three-day conference that summer for aspiring young journalists. Shrestha and Aryal organized the conference, an initiative supported by the Projects for Peace with the Davis United World College Scholars Program, to promote microjournalism in Nepal by bringing together like-minded, socially conscious writers, ages 15 to 24. Plans got delayed for several weeks while the two students joined the post-quake recovery effort, but they were determined that the conference go on, inspired in part by the outpouring of support from the international community to aid Nepal. Shrestha and Aryal invited 75 young journalists from all over the country to join the conference; with much of the city’s infrastructure damaged, including the venue that was originally reserved for the conference, they needed to secure a new location fast. Shrestha and Aryal never lost hope—or their dedication to the cause. “In Nepal, there are many rural areas, and the people and events taking place in these areas are often neglected by the media,” says Shrestha, who is not alone in his desire to promote microjournalism. Ultimately, 64 intrepid souls attended the conference, some taking an arduous 12-hour bus ride to get there. Months prior to the conference, Shrestha and Aryal worked closely with media professionals and sustainable development researchers in Nepal to discuss ideas and create a robust program schedule. “One of the goals of the conference was to meet youths from various districts throughout the country and to help them bring to light new and untold stories,” says Shrestha. They also invited journalism professors, an editor of a national daily, United Nations representatives, a media law expert, and a mediation counselor for plenary presentations and training sessions. Sagar Aryal (A18) and Jon Shrestha (A17) earned funding for the Projects for Peace. “� n Nepal, there are many I rural areas, and the people and events taking place in these areas are often neglected by the media.” During the conference, participants held discussions on a range of topics, from journalism ethics and culture to networking and mediation techniques. The conference concluded with the World Café Discussion, which provided young journalists the opportunity to ask questions, exchange ideas, share experiences, and explore more deeply some of the issues discussed during the conference. “I am hopeful about the future,” says Shrestha. “I am hopeful that Nepal will not be down for long, hopeful that young Nepalese are still excited to serve their communities.” The College is published by St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD, and Santa Fe, NM thecollegemagazine@ sjc.edu Known office of publication: Communications Office St. John’s College 60 College Avenue Annapolis, MD 21401 Periodicals postage paid at Annapolis, MD Postmaster: Send address changes to The College Magazine, Communications Office, St. John’s College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401. Editor Gregory Shook gregory.shook@sjc.edu Contributing Editor Sally Baker Contributors Anna Perleberg Andersen (SF02) Nutchapol Boonparlit (A15) Eva Brann (H89) Barbara Goyette (A73) Charles Green (AGI02) Liza Hyatt (SF85) Bob Keyes Brady Lee (AGI14) Carolyn Leeuwenburgh (Class of 1955) Leslie Linthicum Lisa Neal Jan Schlain Jon Shrestha (A17) Russell Max Simon (SFGI06) Robin Weiss Design Skelton Design Contributing Designer Jennifer Behrens THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 7 �F R OM T H E B E L L T OW E R S G L O B A L P A T H W AY S Jiujun Tang (SF16) Ventures Where the Wild Things Are International student Jiujun Tang’s (SF16) first experience in the United States was when she arrived on the college’s Santa Fe campus in August 2011. Since it was late in the evening, her memory of that moment is less about what she could see and more about what she could smell: the brisk, invigorating scent of pine. For Tang, studying the classics in the mountains of Santa Fe felt like an ideal setting. “Where you learn contributes to the way you learn,” she says. Now the recipient of a Global Pathways Fellowship from St. John’s, Tang will have the opportunity to put her theory into practice in Tanzania, Africa this summer. Global Pathways is the study abroad component of the Pathways Fellowship program that helps Johnnies transition into graduatelevel study or careers that call for prerequisite courses. Funding is available for credit courses in many fields as well as certificate programs and professional conferences. Recipients are chosen by a small committee of tutors and staff. Tang is unique in that she has been awarded both fellowships. With a passion for wildlife medicine, she plans to pursue wildlife research, conservation, and rehabilitation. Currently, she volunteers weekly at the Santa Fe Animal Shelter to gain practical experience. As a Pathways recipient last summer, Tang got started on the academic requirements she will need to apply to vet school. She received the funding to take organic chemistry and statistics courses at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. “I had the luxury of being completely focused on my schoolwork without having to think about finances,” she says. “It also made me feel clearer, not only about what I want to do, but also the path I’ll need to take to get there.” Following graduation in May, her Global Pathways Fellowship will take her to the Tarangire-Manyara ecosystem of northern Tanzania, home to indigenous communities, such as the Maasai, and many wildlife sanctuaries in which elephants, lions, baboons, and other animals roam. “So far I have only been exposed to caring for domestic animals,” says Tang. “Global Pathways will allow me to study wild, African animals in their natural habitat, and also afford me the opportunity to examine changing landuse and resource availability in the region. The focus of the program is safeguarding biodiversity conservation while fostering the wellbeing of local communities. It’s an experience I couldn’t have anywhere else.” —Lisa Neal Jiujun Tang (SF16) pursues her passion for wildlife medicine. 8 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 A R C H E RY I N S A N TA F E Aiming for Gold Move over, croquet, you’ve got company. Johnnies in Santa Fe boast a new game of their own—and their first intercollegiate sport— archery. Started last fall, the college’s archery club is officially registered with USA Archery, the civilian face of the USA Olympic Team and the national governing body of collegiate archery. “It was the number one activity requested by students,” says Mary Anne Burke, facilities and athletics manager at the Santa Fe campus. “Archery gives students a sport they can compete in, not just amongst themselves, but with other colleges on a national level. That was very important to our students.” Coach Richard Dew has the chops to lead the popular club. He set a New Mexico record last year at the sport’s indoor nationals and was a gold medalist at the state’s Senior Olympics. He has more than a decade of archery experience and is classified at level three within the Olympic training system. “The techniques and structures I use to teach St. John’s students are the same ones used to train the Olympic team,” says Dew. “Our students love to see Olympians perform using the same equipment and techniques they do.” In fact, collegiate archery teams are the foundation for Olympic team recruitment, says Dew, who describes this pathway to the Olympics as “very doable for someone who wants to compete at that level.” �DEVELOPMENT NEWS Meet the Veeps “� he crucial elements of T the St. John’s scholastic system carry over into archery. The discipline, honesty, rigor, and focus that students discover through seminar are just as important in archery.” —Archery Coach Richard Dew The club already has 18 student members, a mix of active competitors, beginners, and intermediate-level archers. Devon Ketch (SF18), Zachary Thomas (SF16), and Chris Cullinane (SF16) participated in tournament competition for the first time in early 2016. Students shoot under regulation conditions and are judged and scored by their coach in order to compete digitally. The club goal is to see some students nationally ranked by the end of the year. “Archery is a purely individual sport that both requires and teaches physical and mental discipline,” says Dew, adding that it is a perfect fit for the college. “The crucial elements of the St. John’s scholastic system carry over into archery. The discipline, honesty, rigor, and focus that students discover through seminar are just as important in archery.” —Lisa Neal St. John’s welcomes Phelosha Collaros (SF00) and Laurie Reinhardt as the new vice presidents for Development and Alumni Relations in Santa Fe and Annapolis, respectively. Alumni know Collaros from her previous leadership roles at the college. Reinhardt is a new member of the community. Reinhardt was most recently associate vice chancellor for development and campaign director at North Carolina State University. In that capacity she led university-wide development and campaign efforts in the context of a $1.5-billion comprehensive campaign. Prior to her appointment at North Carolina State, she was associate vice president for development at Rutgers University, managing the fundraising programs for the School of Arts and Sciences, the Graduate School in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and the School of Communication and Information. “Laurie brings a wealth of experience, a warmth of spirit, a firm commitment to our purposes, and a desire to advance the cause of liberal education,” says Annapolis President Christopher Nelson (SF70). “She promises to be a terrific addition to our leadership team.” With more than 20 years of experience in development and development management, Reinhardt also has led development programs at the University of Miami School of Nursing and Health Studies, as well as for nonprofit arts and humanities organizations in Miami and New York. She completed her Ph.D. in musicology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, her M.A. in musicology at the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester, and her B.A. in music (cello performance) at Houghton College. Reinhardt also holds an M.B.A. in management from the University of Miami. Phelosha Collaros (SF00) comes to her new role at St. John’s from the American Society of Radiologic Technologists (ASRT) Foundation, where she served as foundation director/director of development and launched the foundation’s first multi-million-dollar campaign. She led the organization’s strategic planning efforts, daily operations, major and planned gift initiatives, and individual donor Phelosha Collaros (SF00) and Laurie Reinhardt and fundraising engagement. She served in a variety of capacities at ASRT prior to her appointment as foundation director in 2010. Collaros also has served in various leadership positions in the St. John’s College Alumni Association. She was a member of the association’s Executive Committee, association president-elect (VP) from 2011-2013, president from 2013-2015, and, currently, past president. She has been instrumental in implementing structural changes through the introduction of a new mission, a strategic and operations plan, and new board member recruitment and onboarding practices. Especially significant during her tenure, a strong focus on collaboration and trust between the college and the alumni body has resulted in a more effective and supportive volunteer framework for the college. Collaros earned dual master’s degrees in business administration and public administration, with nonprofit management concentration, from Walden University in Minneapolis and was a Robert Wood Johnson Ladder-to-Leadership Fellow. “We are so pleased to welcome these two new vice presidents,” said Senior Vice President for Development and Alumni Relations Victoria Mora. “Each is highly experienced, talented, and brings exceptional skills to our development and alumni relations efforts.” THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 9 �F R OM T H E B E L L T OW E R S S A N TA F E C A M P U S History on the Hill The National Register of Historic Places and the New Mexico Register of Cultural Properties have recognized the St. John’s Santa Fe campus for it historical and cultural importance. The state group honored the campus for its significance in education, architecture, landscape architecture, and art. The national register recognizes as historically significant the Peterson Student Center, Evans Science Laboratory, Santa Fe Hall, and upper dormitories, all built in 1964; the lower dormitories, built in 1967; Weigle Hall, built in 1971; and the Fine Arts Building, built in 1973. Also included are the central landscape plan by modernist landscape architect Garrett Eckbo (1910-2000) and the iconic mural inside Peterson Student Center by artist Alexander Girard (1907-1993). In addition, the Historic Santa Fe Foundation voted to add the campus to its Register of Resources Worthy of Preservation. The buildings at 1160 Camino de Cruz Blanca have the modified adobe look of the Territorial Revival style developed by famed architect John Gaw Meem in the early 1930s: earth-tone walls and flat roofs, but with sharper corners, brick coping along roof lines, and white-painted windows, doors, and portals. Because of the campus’ concentration of historical significance, Clockwise from the top: A scenic view of campus; cover of the New Mexican, 1963; Eckbo’s landscape plans; painting the Girard Mural. 10 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 �the plan and ensemble of buildings were deemed more significant as a group than any one building. As such, the campus is the only college in New Mexico to be listed as a historic district. Meem Library Director Jennifer Sprague began work on the college’s application for these designations in fall 2014 as part of the campus’s 50th anniversary celebration. In the process, she and library staff members Laura Cooley, Heather McClure, and Chris Quinn consulted letters by John Gaw Meem and Richard Weigle, architects Edward O. Holien and William R. Buckley, and other early visionaries, detailing plans to construct the campus. “The process helped us see how important the college is to our Santa Fe community and the effort Santa Feans like John Gaw Meem and Robert McKinney made to bring St. John’s College here,” says Sprague. “Our ties to the local community are very strong.” —Lisa Neal FIRST FOLIO! Shakespeare Takes Center Stage in Annapolis St. John’s and the Annapolis Shakespeare Company Celebrate 400 Years of the “Bard of Avon” Shakespeare will make a special appearance at St. John’s, in the form of a national traveling exhibition titled First Folio! The Book that Gave Us Shakespeare. St. John’s College, Annapolis, was named Maryland’s only site to host an original 1623 First Folio. The Folger Shakespeare Library (www.folger.edu), in partnership with the Cincinnati Museum Center (www.cincymuseum.org) and the American Library Association (www.ala. org), is touring a First Folio throughout 2016 to all 50 states, Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico. This first-ever national tour of one of the world’s most influential books celebrates 400 years of Shakespeare and his legacy. The exhibition will be on view from November 1 through December 4, 2016 at the Mitchell Gallery on the Annapolis campus. To celebrate the First Folio, St. John’s and programming partner, the Annapolis Shakespeare Company, will present a host of exhibit-related programs, including teacher and student workshops, plays, a family fair, lectures, dramatic readings, and more. There will be an online component to the exhibition, too, that will include a calendar of events listing related Shakespeare programming that is going on throughout Maryland during this time. The First Folio includes 36 Shakespeare plays, 18 of which had never been printed before. Without the First Folio, all of those plays—including Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Twelfth Night, The Tempest, As You Like It, and more—might have been lost forever. Compiled by two of his friends and fellow theater colleagues, the First Folio was published seven years after Shakespeare’s death in 1616. “From Shakespeare experts to students studying the Title page with Droeshout engraving of Shakespeare. Shakespeare First Folio, 1623. Folger Shakespeare Library. Bard’s plays for the first time, this exhibit is a rare opportunity for the St. John’s College community and others to experience one of the most influential books in history,” says Cathy Dixon, library director in Annapolis. First Folio! The Book that Gave Us Shakespeare is made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and by the support of Google.org, Vinton and Sigrid Cerf, the British Council, and other generous donors. To learn more about the First Folio! exhibition at St. John’s, visit www.sjc.edu/shakespeare. THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 11 �ILLUSTRA TION: PO LLY BECK ER F R OM T H E B E L L T OW E R S of interns in my lab,” says her project mentor Michael Power, an animal scientist at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, National Zoological Park. “She asked intelligent questions, learned quickly…and was able to understand and appreciate the science behind the research.” During her internship, Hill, who plans to pursue veterinary school after graduation, took advantage of opportunities outside the lab as well. She went on rounds with zoo staff, saw some of the pathology cases, and spent a week in the commissary preparing diets for the animals in the birdhouse. “I got to hand-feed an anteater live mealworms and watch the two Andean bear cubs nurse from their mother,” she says. “I also got to take a private tour of the Great Ape House, where Lucy, a forty-twoyear-old orangutan, continually made raspberry noises at me.” —Brady Lee (AGI14) AT T H E S E M I N A R TA B L E HODSON INTERN SUMMER CLASSICS IN SANTA FE Going Ape at the Smithsonian What will you do this summer? Consider Summer Classics in Santa Fe—a chance to return to the seminar table to explore the perplexing, the rousing, and the compelling. For one, or two, or three weeks in July, join fellow alumni and other curious minds from across the country to read and discuss timeless works, meet new people, and encounter bold ideas. Seminars are led by St. John’s tutors; this summer’s offerings include “The Magic of Macondo: An Exploration of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude,” “Herodotus’s Persian War,” Proust’s The Prisoner and The Fugitive,” “Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon,” and many others. To register and learn more about the 2016 Summer Classics program, visit www.sjc.edu/summer-classics. A lover of great books as well as great apes, Andrea Hill (A16) spent last summer as a Hodson intern at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park’s nutrition lab, where she studied the eating habits of the chimpanzee populations at Tanzania’s Gombe Stream National Park. Working with evolutionary biologists, field researchers, and clinical nutritionists, Hill studied the same chimpanzee populations that renowned primatologist Jane Goodall began studying in 1960. “There was no data about the nutritional content of the foods that these chimps eat,” says Hill, who helped develop a foundational data set for ongoing research. “It was up to me and four other interns to gather that data.” Having a natural curiosity and a desire to dig deep into her work, Hill stood out among her fellow interns. “As a biomedical field, there is more to vet medicine than just the medicine—there’s the science behind the field, which is something that I had yet to experience [and] why I chose to work in a research lab rather than a clinic,” says Hill. She quickly moved up the ranks, training others on procedures and offering guidance on running assays and data interpretation. “Andrea performed at the highest level I expect 12 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 Andrea Hill (A16) at work in the lab “� here was no data about T the nutritional content of the foods that these chimps eat. It was up to me and four other interns to gather that data.” —Andrea Hill (A16) �ON SOCIAL MEDIA ONLY AT ST. JOHN’S... Follow St. John’s College on Instagram: #johnniefaces Instagram.com/sjcannapolis Instagram.com/sjcsantafe THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 13 �F R OM T H E B E L L T OW E R S COLLEGIUM Together in Song In ancient Rome, “collegium” was a term used to describe a political or business group that came together for executive purposes. At St. John’s, Collegium has nothing to do with executive power, or politics for that matter. Instead, Collegium is a widely anticipated “talent show” at the college, held once a semester. Students typically gather with friends to give a performance, which may range anywhere from piano solos, choruses, and small bands to a classical sonata, folk song, or parody. Tutors and staff may join the onstage festivities, too. “It’s a Collegium is open to virtually any type of performance, so adventurous students take the opportunity to show off skills they have never before shared with their friends. Students may perform challenging or unorthodox songs, too, comforted by the encouraging atmosphere. “It’s a time for people to come together and sing and play for each other,” says Stoltzfus. “There is a feeling of amateurism in the spirit of love, the love of music making.” Performances at the most recent Collegium held in the Great Hall in December included Heart of Courage, an original piece by current Annapolis Graduate Institute student Luke Dougherty; Clair de Lune by Debussy, performed on piano by Bennett Wildauer (A18); The 12 Days of Christmas, “� t’s a real celebration. I Students unwind and let off steam—and the audience is incredibly supportive. We are a very musical college, and people value making music with each other.” Top: Maxwell Dakin (A16), Evan Frolov (A16), Marina Weber (A16), and Anna Perry (A12) sing a festive tune. Bottom: The Hamann Hawkins Tortorelli Trio swing. Right: The Singing Sensations Youth Choir captivate the audience. real celebration,” says Eric Stoltzfus, tutor and music librarian in Annapolis. “Students unwind and let off steam—and the audience is incredibly supportive. We are a very musical college, and people value making music with each other.” performed by the acapella group, the Equant; and Don’t Explain, by Billie Holiday, performed by MisterSix, a group of mostly Annapolis tutors. Every year there are a few staple performances that are highlights of the event. Per tradition, tutor Judy Seeger leads the audience in a round of song, and the St. John’s Chorus, led by tutor Peter Kalkavage, closes the event with a piece of classical music, typically Mozart or Bach. Since Collegium takes place before the winter break and again before graduation, students savor the occasion, with the college community together in song. “The divide between audience and performer seems to disappear,” says Stoltzfus. “And people are just simply happy to see their friends on stage.” —Nutchapol Boonparlit (A15) 14 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 TONY J PHOTOGRAPHY PHOTOS: XINYUAN ZHANG (A17) —Eric Stoltzfus, Annapolis tutor & music librarian �LIFT EVERY VOICE Gospel music filled the Francis Scott Key Auditorium at the ninth annual “Lift Every Voice” concert, celebrating the life and legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. Each year in January, the concert draws several hundred people to the Annapolis campus, many for the first time, to share in the uplifting sounds from some of the region’s finest vocalists, choirs, and musical groups. The King Celebration Chorus, led by tutor Judy Seeger, welcomed the audience with a rendition of “Lift Every Voice and Sing”—one of the most cherished songs of the African American Civil Rights Movement and often referred to as the Black National Anthem—and encouraged everyone in the auditorium to lift their voice and sing together. “I lift every voice and sing Till earth and heaven ring, Ring with the harmonies of Liberty; Let our rejoicing rise, High as the listening skies, Let it resound loud as the rolling sea. Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us, Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us, Facing the rising sun of our new day begun, Let us march on till victory is won” THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 15 ��TUTOR VIEW A REFLECTION ON by Eva Brann (H89) There are two ways to go about almost all things that I know of: You can just go at it or you can think about what you’re doing. Which first? Well, “thinking about” can come at either end. “Before” is surely a good time. Students often tell me that they want to “change the world,” “make a difference”— and seem a little nonplussed when I ask “for the better?” Yet nothing is more in need of prudence (= pro-vidence = foresight = imaginative thinking-things-out) than inducing change. But so is “after,” a good time, that self-debriefing when you ask yourself: What did I think I was doing? What unintended consequence have I called down on the beneficiary-victim of my deeds —particularly of the kind of action called service? PHOTO: TOM HOLLYMAN, GETTY IMAGES THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 17 �TUTOR VIEW “ ervice” is a strange word. It’s derived from the Latin servitium, “slavery.” And that makes sense. Our chief service is in “The Service,” the Armed Forces. The primary law of the military is to obey unconditionally1 and immediately. Here’s another word with a hidden meaning: “to obey” is from Latin ob-audire, “to listen to.” (The German word Höriger, literally “one who listens,” means someone subservient to another’s bidding—a slave.) It gets stranger. We have no draft; people enlist—voluntarily. The Service is voluntary. “Voluntary” means “of one’s own free will (voluntas).” Service-men and women freely lay their life on the line—for wages hardly commensurate with the possible sacrifice. I think something similar holds for all serious service. Our peaceful civil life depends largely on service, that is, on a sort of self-enslavement. Being voluntary, it is willingly free, that is, unpaid, and being serviceable it is obedient to, listens to, makes That drum major instinct is the desire to march out front in the parade, to be seen in the lead of doing good, to shine with virtue. King, however, tells his flock to be great by Jesus’s new norm: He “who is greatest among you shall be your servant.” itself subservient to, the needs of others. The actual labor performed may be practically simple, as simple as ladling out soup, but the two notions involved are conceptually complex in their very entanglement. This little essay is supposed to be written under the aegis of the Reverend Martin Luther King’s sermon “The Drum Major Instinct.” This sermon adds a third notion to service, besides those of freely giving up one’s freedom to serve others: That drum major instinct is the desire to march out front in the parade, to be seen in the lead of doing good, to shine with virtue. King, however, tells his flock to be great by Jesus’s new norm: He “who is greatest among you shall be your servant.” The Greek text of the New Testament, I might inject here, always says doulos “slave” and douleuein “to serve as a slave,” to be least. 18 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 Yet King also assures his flock that they need not give up their desire to feel important. He tells them that they don’t have to know Plato, Aristotle or Einstein to be good servants. In the interests of carrying them along, he even suppresses Jesus’s reputation as a learned young rabbi. His point is: Jesus “just went around serving and doing good.” I’m not so sure it works so simply for us; the drum major instinct, the third notion, has its dangers, which vibrate through King’s homily. Before I conclude, here’s a quotation that makes all my points, linguistic and conceptual at once: For brothers, you have been called to freedom; only do not use freedom as a jumping-off place for the flesh, but by caring-love serve (dia tes agapes douleuete) one another (Galatians 5:13). So now I’ll introduce a fourth notion, the one to which I can wholeheartedly subscribe. I found its formulation in a speech quoted by the contemporary American novelist I most admire, Marilynne Robinson: 2 …Love knows no servitude. It is that which gilds with liberty whatever it touches… Service is to people in need from those who have the means. It is, ipso facto, top down, from haves to have-nots, from benefactors to beneficiaries who are not required to say thank you or to return the favor. The service, if individual, is—except when delivered with bumptiously oblivious energy—fraught for the giver with some residual embarrassment about the “Lady Bountiful Syndrome” and with some resentful submission on the part of the beneficiary. And if it issues from a faceless organization, there’s always the regulatory hand in the welfare glove and its complementary effect of entitled dependency—unless…? Unless it’s done as the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher says: with love, which nullifies the servitude in service and transmutes the labor of service into the work of love. This love is not sappily sentimental. It’s anything but unconditional. It has judgment behind it and withdrawal as a possibility. It’s cheerfully impure: ready to rejoice in its own virtue and to revel in its achieved effects—as King says it may. But all that’s on the side. At the center is interest in and liking for the people or the place served. “Interest” is my favorite word: from Latin inter-esse, “to be among, to be there with” the world. “Liking” to me means “Love toned down for permanence, reliable affection.” It �can have its moments of sheer being-in-love, but is more stable than romance. Since I’m a tutor, there’s got to be a little— obliquely administered—lesson. It’s this: One, service is to be done with simplicity and to be reflected on with subtlety. Two, serve only what you can and do love.3 Then listen for and freely obey its demands. Such service may well turn out to be the delight of your life, even if it’s not unimpeachably esthetic. I’ve baby-sat two generations of boys (my oldest friend’s sons and grandsons). Of course, that service included diaper change. While at it, I often reflected on the indubitable fact that something so smelly could be so sweet. It was, of course, the effect of a labor of love. A last point: it is a fair question where there is room for leadership in this view of service as selfsubjection—the leadership not of King’s preening drum major, but of a modest initiator. Well, guessing what is truly wanted, judging what is in fact needed, is surely a part of self-dedicated service, and that is leadership. Students have occasionally asked me how in their first, probably small-scale, environments as alumni they can lead, how they can effectively apply their education to serve their, as-yet-small, world. (My own faith is mostly in small worlds, the best venues for humanly efficacious service.) Here’s a paradigm. Post a notice: “Would anyone like to read some poetry together?” Give time, place, possible poem, and promise cookies (essential). Presto, you’re a founder, the founder of the kind of minuscule community that does actual good. So you’ve led and served by daring to be out front. Now do the same by resolving to be within (interesse), to be within as a mole, so to speak—a mole being both a burrowing animal that digs out underground corridors and an internal spy who prepares clandestine reforms. One, service is to be done with simplicity and to be reflected on with subtlety. Two, serve only what you can and do love. Then listen for and freely obey its demands. There is one exception: If the command breaches a higher law of morality. HIP / ART RESOURCE, NY 1� In her book of essays, The Givenness of Things, p. 170 (2015). The speech is by Henry Ward Beecher, an abolitionist and brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. 2� My colleague, Peter Kalkavage, recalled an episode from The Twilight Zone that features the dangers of a hasty rush to serve, as well as of ambiguous language. Aliens land on earth, bringing a book of which only the title has been translated: To Serve Man. Some eager-beaver do-gooders are preparing to board the spaceship for service in outer space. Other earthlings, who’ve been examining the volume more closely, come running: “Don’t go! It’s a cookbook!” 3� THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 19 �20 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 �I N S A N TA F E ROOSEVELT THE REFORMER SANTA FE’S NEW PRESIDENT HITS THE GROUND RUNNING BY LESLIE LINTHICUM MARK ROOSEVELT HAS ALWAYS BEEN A MAN IN A HURRY. Elected to the Massachusetts legislature in 1986, three years after graduating from law school, he pushed through gay rights legislation that had languished for decades and overhauled the state’s public school system. Not yet 40, he became the Massachusetts Democratic nominee for governor in 1994. After getting outspent by six to one and beaten by the Republican incumbent, William Weld, Roosevelt dived back into public service as an education advocate and with two challenging rehab projects: taking over the Pittsburgh public schools and resurrecting shuttered Antioch College in western Ohio. Roosevelt describes both projects as “really, really rough,” with institutions in immediate crisis and communities in deep dissent. Roosevelt is now 60 and, on the job since January as the president of the St. John’s Santa Fe campus, he says he’s exactly where he wants to be. THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 21 �S itting in his airy Weigle Hall office surrounded by books and overlooking high desert scenery, the lifelong fixer of broken systems is ready to become a salesman for liberal arts education—and especially the rigorous and particular brand that is offered at St. John’s. “Who have I been before in my life? I’ve been a reformer. That’s who I am,” says Roosevelt. “So now I have to be a little bit more of an evangelical. A seller of a gospel. Because that’s really what St. John’s needs. It needs more people to be aware of what it does and how powerful it is.” Coming to an institution that isn’t essentially broken is a refreshing change for Roosevelt, an avid reader and historian who also has a fondness for Santa Fe since eloping there in 2005 and staying for five months. “I never hesitated in wanting the job,” says Roosevelt. “It just felt so completely right for me at this point in my life.” Roosevelt taught at Brandeis while in Massachusetts and at Carnegie-Mellon during his tenure as 22 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 Pittsburgh school superintendent. “So being part of a larger community of learners, of aspiring learners, really appeals to me,” he says. His wife Dorothy and their nine-year-old daughter, Juliana, have joined him in Santa Fe. “I know this sounds trite. It is trite,” he says. “But we do feel like we’re coming home.” Roosevelt will begin to preach the gospel of St. John’s at a time when the liberal arts are being assailed by economic analyses that measure the value of an ever-more-expensive college education against future earnings, by collegiate trends away from core curricula and toward non-academic amenities and by the question of whether college actually teaches much. He is dismissive of the idea that to be more attractive to 18-year-olds, colleges should throw out general education requirements and allow free-range grazing among electives. Or that colleges should lower expectations so students don’t struggle. Roosevelt jumps up from his desk and retrieves a volume from one of the new shelves recently added to the president’s office to house part of his collec- �ROOSEVELT ON READING “� HO HAVE I BEEN W BEFORE IN MY LIFE? I’VE BEEN A REFORMER. THAT’S WHO I AM.” tion of some 4,000 books. It is Academically Adrift, by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, which uses data from the Collegiate Learning Assessment to track the academic gains of students at four-year colleges and universities. The authors concluded that nearly half of students learned nothing in their first two years of college and about one-third had learned nothing after four years. “Not a little,” Roosevelt stresses. “But nothing.” Although he emphasizes that he has a lot to learn about the college, Roosevelt believes St. John’s can find greater success standing in opposition to alarming educational trends. “I think that St. John’s deals “[Reading] plays a huge part in my life. Our own worlds, our own individual lives are almost by definition very limited in their scope. We can only know so many people. We’re limited by our personalities. Reading explodes all of that. I think reading can also make you feel much less alone. I think especially younger people, some of the emotions and thoughts and feelings you have, you wonder, ‘Am I the only one thinking or feeling this?’ And reading should make you feel not alone in that aspect. I wouldn’t know what it would be like not to read. And I actually find myself, like during this move when everything’s been very frenetic, I feel something missing and suddenly I realize I’m not reading. I can feel it like an absence. I also tend to get too preoccupied with my own life if I’m not reading. There’s something about reading that takes you out of your own life and gives you perspective.” THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 23 �ROOSEVELT ON LINCOLN “I’m a Lincoln fanatic,” says Roosevelt, gesturing to shelves crammed with books on the 16th president. “He’s a wonder to me. One, how much he suffered. And how much he tried to do the right thing, I believe, all the time. I find criticism of Lincoln to say much more about the criticizer than about Lincoln. I find no evidence that he didn’t try to move on slavery as aggressively as he could, given the circumstances. And then there’s just the overwhelming decency of the man. He was so unpretentious. I know of no greater writer in America. Totally self-taught. Lincoln’s second inaugural, which I still think are the greatest words ever spoken by an American, is this magnificent, complex theological document.” “� T. JOHN’S DEALS IN DEEP, S DURABLE THINGS IN AN ERA THAT IS ATTRACTED TO MORE GLITTERY, SUPERFICIAL THINGS.” in deep, durable things in an era that is attracted to more glittery, superficial things,” he says. “The fear—a fear I don’t happen to share—is that it’s so against the prevailing winds of the dominant culture that it has lost its relevance. I have exactly the opposite feeling, which is that the dominant culture needs things like St. John’s to remind it of what matters more.” In addition to raising money and being conscious of costs, Roosevelt says his most immediate task is to help attract more applicants and build enrollment on the Santa Fe campus. The college as a whole, he says, can do more to spread the word to high school students, parents, and college counselors so that St. John’s is on the radar of many more students who might find it to be a good fit. “I think there’s a certain frustration here that we haven’t been as successful as we might in telling people who and what we are,” says Roosevelt. “So one of the things that I believe I have been hired to do is be an aggressive proselytizer for what there is here. And that is a very comfortable role.” Maxwell King, the executive director of the Pittsburgh Foundation, who worked with Roosevelt in Pittsburgh, has no doubt Roosevelt is up to the challenges of raising money and aggressively promoting the merits of St. John’s. He once went with Roosevelt to a donor looking for funding to launch The Pittsburgh Promise, a scholarship fund for the Pittsburgh Public Schools graduates that was Roosevelt’s creation. They went in thinking they might get $10 million and came out with $100 million. “He is really persuasive and collaborative,” says King. “Another of Mark’s great attributes is persistence. He does not give up.” 24 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 �ROOSEVELT ON ROOSEVELT Roosevelt is the greatgrandson of President Theodore Roosevelt and, like many descendants of famous people, he has had a complicated relationship with the connection, especially wanting to avoid the appearance of selfaggrandizement. “But yet,” Roosevelt says, “I like the fact that the three famous Roosevelts were mostly people I would want to be associated with and mostly did things of which I am proud. So I guess I’ve come to a point as I’ve aged of being willing to see myself as an inheritor of a tradition that I’m happy to be a part of.” THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 25 �26 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 �SUCCESS STORIES A PLACE WHERE EVERYONE MATTERS by Bob Keyes A fourth grader hones his skills during a writing and photography field trip. Heather Davis (SF01) felt the pull of public service when she first felt the pain of a broken world. A friend suffered a violent assault while studying abroad, and a veil of innocence fell away. avis was studying ancient astronomy at a sheltered campus, nestled in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, while people around the world, including someone very dear to her, suffered as victims of violence, oppression, and prejudice. Shocked and ashamed at her privileged life, she committed herself to doing something to alleviate at least a little of the suffering in the world. Davis learned the ideals of a good, just, and virtuous society at St. John’s, and put those lessons into practice with community-building work at nonprofit organizations in New York City, Austin, Texas, and, now, Portland, Maine. “I’ve always had a bias toward action,” says Davis. “I was always interested in what good and virtue mean in the real world.” PHOTO: MOLLY HALEY THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 27 �Davis is executive director of The Telling Room, a nationally recognized writing center on the Portland waterfront that empowers students and young adults, many of them immigrants and refugees, with communication tools to succeed in school, at work, and in the world. She teaches students to express themselves in their own words, with confidence, conviction, and clarity. She turns shy, quiet kids into storytellers. Last fall, Davis stood beside First Lady Michelle Obama at the White House, where she accepted a National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award, the nation’s highest honor for an after-school arts program. The White House recognized The Telling Room’s Young Writers and Leaders program as a national model for its effectiveness in helping refugees and migrant youth assimilate American life and culture by engaging in the arts and humanities. It serves 45 international, multilingual students, who collectively speak 20 languages. Among its successes is a 100-percent college-acceptance rate. There’s a long wait to get in, and Davis hopes to turn the publicity of the White House award into funding to expand the program. The work is timely. With the backdrop of the ugly national discourse about immigration, The Telling Room personalizes the issue by helping Maine’s newest residents tell their stories in their own words and voices, neighbor to neighbor. “We have the unique opportunity to let people know who these kids are, who their families are, and what they’ve been through,” says Davis. Davis grew up in Easton, Maryland, in a home largely without books, the daughter of parents who were not readers. The school and town library expanded her horizon and imagination, and turned her into a bookworm. “My favorite things were always talking about reading and writing, and talk- MOLLY HALEY SUCCESS STORIES Heather Davis (SF01) works with a young writer during a workshop. “� was always interested in what good I and virtue mean in the real world.” ing about books.” She applied for admission to one college: St. John’s, Annapolis, just 45 minutes from her home. She enrolled in 1997, and transferred after her freshman year to the Santa Fe campus. She thrived in the relaxed lifestyle of the Southwest, while studying Plato, Homer, and Aristotle. Her junior year, she got a job helping other students improve their writing by reviewing their papers and offering tips, ideas, and feedback. “I just loved it,” says Davis. “I couldn’t believe it was a job I got paid for.” After St. John’s, she earned her master’s from Goddard College, a progressive liberal arts college in Vermont, where she specialized in transformative language arts. After 28 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 college, she searched for work with meaning as a tutor and volunteered on a crises hotline. She joined the Peace Corps, but left her assignment in Haiti early because of illness. She cast a wide net, and toyed with environmental education as her path, but nothing stuck until she started teaching writing to kids. She landed at the Harlem Children’s Zone in New York, where something clicked. “It was magic for me, and I knew that teaching, writing, arts education, and nonprofits were where I could make a difference and feel happy and alive doing it,” says Davis. “I was in love with it, and still am.” From there, she moved to Austin, Texas, where she co-founded a youth writing center �SMITH GALTNEY SMITH GALTNEY called Austin Bat Cave and served as senior grant writer for Creative Action, a nonprofit arts education organization. She and her husband moved to Maine in 2008, after the birth of their first child. She volunteered at The Telling Room, was hired as a senior staff member in 2008 and became its director in 2011. In practice, Davis sits side by side and gets to know her students. When they land on a memory, experience, or significant place or person in their lives, she asks them to write a few sentences. “We do it until there’s a framework for a story about something that really matters to them.” This is The Telling Room model: Writers tutoring students one on one, coaxing stories, and building confidence through self-expression. It’s hard when working with kids from different cultures, and harder still when many students are homeless, living in poverty, or suffering from mental health issues. “Though in the moment, when sitting with a kid to talk about their lives and work on the writing process together, it’s pretty much just you and that kid connecting as human beings, which is an incredible experience,” says Davis. It was front-page news in Maine when The Telling Room received its award from the White House. The coverage generated dialogue in the community and commentary on newspaper websites, much of it racist and derogatory. Davis urged her staff to resist answering the commentators directly. Instead, she told them to keep doing their jobs. The best answer is teaching kids to write and publishing their stories. She told them what she learned years ago at St. John’s: “You are participating in the discussion. You are taking a stance, and you are acting on your beliefs, which are that the world should be a just, peaceful place where everyone matters, and everyone has access to what they need.” Clockwise from top left: First Lady Michelle Obama presents a National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award to student Ibrahim Shkara and Executive Director Heather Davis (SF01) for The Telling Room’s Young Writers and Leaders program; Telling Room staff members Heather Davis (SF01) and Andrew Griswold stand with student Ibrahim Shkara and his brother at the Capitol building; Ibrahim Shkara’s mother and younger brother on their way to the National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award ceremony in Washington, D.C. “� e have the unique opportunity W to let people know who these kids are, who their families are, and what they’ve been through.” THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 29 �BIBLIOFILE JOHN SIFTON (A96) Uncovering Abuses of Power The world Sifton works in is permeated by a new kind of violence—its two sides are terrorism and the so-called war on terror. W hy do humans engage in violence? Why do people find it difficult to kill other people? What is terrorism? Why are we so fascinated by war? These are some of the questions that John Sifton (A96) strives to answer in Violence All Around (Harvard University Press, 2015). Working with Human Rights Watch, he has spent time in troubled spots throughout the world: Afghanistan during the American invasion, Egypt shortly before the Arab Spring, and around Africa and Europe searching for the CIA’s secret detention centers. He combines his personal observations and experiences with philosophical reflections and historical analysis in this exploration of violence. Sifton’s book is filled with heart-piercing descriptions of war’s devastating effects on families, cultures, parents and children, cities and villages—those we know as victims of violence as well as those who perpetrate violence. His accounts of visiting sites in war-ravaged Afghanistan, before September 11 and the subsequent attacks on Afghanistan by the U.S., open the book and set the very personal tone. Violence is pervasive, from our creation myths (Cain and Abel, Osiris and Set) to symbols like the Christian cross, and even our white-picket fences (which come from the French word piquet, “to prick”). The world Sifton works in is permeated by a new kind of violence—its two sides are terrorism and the so-called war on terror. While this battle follows traditional patterns of military advance and retreat, of political persuasion and strategic uses of power, of religious fervor and the justification of certainty, it also embraces new kinds of alliances, intelligence activity of previously unknown ferocity, new technology, and weapons that take war to a new level of impersonality. As Sifton observes, opportunities for abuses of power are abundant. A fascinating focus of this book is Sifton’s long investigation into the treatment of prisoners on all sides of the terrorism conflicts. It’s important, he notes, for humanitarian aid work to be understood as neutral politically; the aim is to uncover abuses and recommend actions to rectify them. In 2004 and 2005, Sifton tried to find out what was happening with missing CIA detainees; in addition to Guantanamo, there were a number of locations where terrorism suspects and other persons of interest were held and, presumably, questioned. He concludes that there were probably CIA detention centers in Poland and Bulgaria, at least, but is 30 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 unable to prove it conclusively. He picks up the threads several years later while working as a consultant for an international law group. His research rivals that of the journalists he often meets with from the New York Times and other major media outlets, and his account is cinematic in its detail—meetings in smoky cafes in Kabul and in tiny, cold police offices in Warsaw. In any discussion of violence, one must confront the idea of nonviolence. Sifton traces back the history of nonviolence, from Gandhi to Jesus, Vardhamana (founder of the Jainist religion), and the Buddha; he observes that while these leaders all promoted nonviolence (indeed, devout Jainists today wear masks to avoid inhaling germs or insects), these teachings seem to find little staying power in the real world. For instance, while many early Christians were pacifists and mystics who tended to withdrawal from the greater world, those of the later Roman Empire, when Christianity became the official religion, were deeply engaged in politics. The Catholic Church was an incredibly powerful political entity, which required using force to achieve its ends. When religion enters the political realm, it seems the ideals get re-directed and pragmatism takes hold. Sifton is astute in his analysis of the paradox, calling on philosophers from Plato to Descartes to Wittgenstein (and Reinhold Niebuhr, his own grandfather). In a world permeated with violence, what role do human rights organizations play? The book summarizes the discussion within Human Rights Watch about the possible effect of the group’s support of or opposition to the invasion of Iraq; human rights groups hold to the tenet that they must remain neutral, judging only whether a war is fought justly, not whether the conflict itself is just. Sifton’s ideas on this point and on his mission are nuanced. While it’s possible to see the work as invoking “sentimentality,” he also suggests that in documenting and publicizing abuses, these groups can “wake the giant” and probe the consciences of nations into rectifying them. He recognizes, though, the limits and ironies of such work. —Charles Green (AGI02) �Profound Ignorance: Plato’s Charmides and the Saving of Wisdom By David Lawrence Levine (Class of 1967) Lexington Books, 2016 In his new book, Profound Ignorance: Plato’s Charmides and the Saving of Wisdom, Santa Fe tutor and former dean David Levine (Class of 1967) examines Plato’s dialogue and its exploration of tyranny and Socratic ignorance. Charmides begins paradoxically; it seeks to have a conversation about sophrosyne (moderation) with two of Athens’ most notorious men, Charmides and Critias, who in the dialogic future are associated with the Thirty Tyrants. Protagoras: Ancients in Action By Daniel Silvermintz (AGI01) Bloomsbury, 2016 The ancient Greek sophist Protagoras (c. 490-420 BC) remains one of the most elusive figures in the history of philosophy. In the lengthiest surviving fragment known as the “Great Speech,” Protagoras argues that virtue is a teachable trait that is common to all mankind. Despite his upright appearance, his contemporaries condemned him for having corrupted his students rather than educating them in virtue. In his new book, Protagoras: Ancients in Action, Daniel Silvermintz (AGI01), associate professor and The Way Back from Broken By Amber Keyser (SF91) Carolrhoda Lab, 2015 Amber Keyser’s (SF91) debut young adult novel, The Way Back from Broken, is the story of 15-year-old Rakmen and 10-year-old Jacey, who are brought together by separate traumatic events in their lives. While spending a summer in the Canadian wilderness, the two are forced to confront the difficult topic of death and dying. The book is a slow burn that builds in intensity as Rakmen and Jacey each struggle to come to terms with being a survivor and the complex The dialogue was written after the two became notorious. The young Charmides, praised as already possessing all the Athenian virtues, and his guardian Critias, widely thought “wise,” show their reputations to be ill-deserved. In addition, Critias thinks himself a student of Socrates, but, closely examined, his “Socratic opinions” only show how Socrates’s “beautiful speeches” can be perverted. Indeed Socrates’s association with Critias and Charmides was held against him at his trial. The dialogue can thus be seen as a defense of Socrates against the corruption charge, further explicated in the Republic, that Levine calls “the best commentary on the dialogue.” director of humanities at the University of HoustonClear Lake, accounts for the conflicted views that surround Protagoras by showing how a subversive secret teaching is conveyed between the lines of his moralistic public teaching. Silvermintz also advances a provocative argument concerning Protagoras’s influence on Pericles—the architect of Athenian democracy—that helps to explain the aristocratic statesman’s abrupt shift in political allegiance in support of the poor masses. emotions—guilt, fear, anger, sadness—that brings. Can they find healing in the great outdoors? Keyser’s own personal loss is at the core of the story, as is her deep connection to the backcountry of northern Ontario. “Writing this book was part of my own ‘way back from broken,’” says Keyser. “And although I’ve been told it’s a tear-jerker, the book’s pages also contain more than a small portion of hope.” THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 31 �For & About ALUMNI Homecoming 2016 Homecoming is a time to reunite, reconnect, and reminisce with friends, classmates, and the college community. It is also a time to make new memories, meet new friends, and share SJC with the special people in your life. We invite you and your friends and family to celebrate Homecoming 2016 in Santa Fe or Annapolis (or both!) this September! Both campuses offer child-friendly activities and childcare options. Don’t forget to make your hotel reservations early. Santa Fe accommodations: SJC rates offered at Sage Inn, La Posada, Hotel Santa Fe, and Drury Inn on the Plaza. www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/ santa-fe/santa-fe-business-friends Annapolis accommodations: SJC rates offered at Historic Inns of Annapolis and Sheraton Annapolis Hotel. www.sjc.edu/friends/businessfriends/#accommodations CAST YOUR VOTE in the 2016 SJC Alumni Association Election: May 16–June 3 This June, alumni will elect the treasurer, secretary, and six at-large members of the Alumni Association Board of Directors, as well as one alumni-elected member of the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors. Save the Date Homecoming 2016 September 16-18 in Santa Fe September 23-25 in Annapolis St. John’s College Alumni Office Annapolis 410-626-2531 annapolis.alumni@sjc.edu Santa Fe 505-984-6114 santafe.alumni@sjc.edu Alumni are encouraged to cast your vote using the online or paper ballots between May 16 and June 3. Or cast your vote at the All Alumni Meeting during the Alumni Leadership Forum on June 5 in Annapolis (see next page for ALF details). HOW TO VOTE In Person: Alumni Leadership Forum 2016 The Association’s Annual Meeting will be held during ALF weekend on Sunday, June 5, from 9 to 10:30 a.m. on the Annapolis campus. 32 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 Online: community.stjohnscollege.edu For an online ballot, login and click the link under Notice of Elections and Annual Meeting. By Mail or Fax: Request a Paper Ballot Contact Leo Pickens, Annapolis director of Alumni Relations, at 410-295-6926 or leo.pickens@sjc.edu. Online and paper ballots must be received by June 3, 2016. Alumni Association Mission To strive for the continued excellence of our college and fellow alumni by celebrating our distinctive educational experience, connecting our community in efforts toward shared support and benefit, and fostering a culture of intellect, generosity, and service. �7TH ANNUAL ALUMNI LEADERSHIP FORUM “To Kindle a Light” June 3-5, 2016 | Annapolis The Alumni Leadership Forum (ALF) is an annual, three-day event that rotates each year between the Annapolis and Santa Fe campuses. Since its founding in 2010, ALF’s seminars and sessions have brought together St. John’s alumni to learn about the current state of the college and how alumni can engage with and support the St. John’s College community, whether through alumni chapters, as a Class Chair, or as part of one of the Alumni Association’s working groups. Through seminars and workshops, participants of the 2016 ALF will have the opportunity to: • � evelop tools to support and D improve career services • � iscuss and develop admisD sions strategies with admissions professionals • � eceive training in and help R formulate social media strategies to build community and support for the college And much more ALF attendees also enjoy a multitude of social gatherings, seminars, and other opportunities to catch up with one another and meet alumni from other classes. The most notable of these is the Awards Banquet held the evening of the second day of ALF, where the Association presents the Volunteer Service Awards (or “ALFies”) to alumni in recognition of their leadership and volunteerism in the Alumni Community. To register and for more information, visit sjc.edu/alumni. Below: Alumni participate in a workshop at the annual Alumni Leadership Forum. PIRAEUS 2016 Thirsting for good conversation? At Piraeus, St. John’s College welcomes Johnnies back to the seminar table. Held on both campuses and led by tutors, Piraeus seminars provide an opportunity to relive the rigorous classroom experience over the course of a leisurely weekend. Named for the port city that served Athens, Piraeus brings alumni from all career paths and geographical areas back to their educational roots. Said Thucydides of ancient Piraeus, “From all the lands, everything enters.” In that spirit, we invite you to bring your voice back to the seminar table and share in the reflection, discussion, and community that Piraeus offers. Upcoming Piraeus offerings include: In Annapolis on June 9-12, tutors Eva Brann (H89) and Lise van Boxel will lead seminars on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel Tender Is the Night and the John Keats poem “Ode to a Nightingale.” Tutors Tom May and David Townsend will lead seminars on Leo Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina. In Santa Fe on August 5-7, tutor Grant Franks (A77) will lead a seminar on James Joyce’s Dubliners, a collection of 15 short stories that form a sparse and detailed, yet deeply moving, tableau of middle-class life in early 20th-century Ireland. Recent alumni (2006-2016) receive a special tuition rate. On-campus housing is available. To register online and read more information, visit sjc.edu/piraeus. THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 33 �ALUMNI NOTES 1964 Julie Wiggenhorn Winslett (A) writes, “I’m still teaching English at the University of North Georgia and enjoying life in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. I feel lucky to be part of several lively groups of writers and poets who have inspired me in my writing. I’ve finally finished my mystery novel set in Taos and am now trying to navigate the intricacies of social media marketing. If anyone knows of an agent or publisher in New Mexico who specializes in mysteries set in the Southwest, e-mail me at juliewinslett@windstream.net.” 1969 Mark Bernstein (A) published an article in the Drexel Law Review, Thomas R. Kline School of Law, Volume 7, Number 2, titled “Jury Evaluation of Expert Testimony under the Federal Rules.” In the article he explains how the Federal Rules of Evidence have detrimentally affected the ability of the jury to find the facts and created a highly paid cadre of professional witnesses. 1972 Washington, D.C. The trio caught up on family, friends, and the infamous McDowell Hall Bell Clapper Napper Mystery dating from 1970, among other things. This spring, Williams will retire from his college teaching job to temporarily relocate to D.C. to be closer to his new grandson and family. 1966 Constance (Bell) Lindgreen (A) sends a note from France to say that one of her short stories was published last year by the International Club of Bordeaux and a second will appear in May, published by the Gascony Writers Association. 1967 Rebecca Tendler (A) lives in Philadelphia, where she loves her work as a psychologist in a private practice. 1968 Thomas Keens (SF) received the Robert M. McAllister Faculty Mentoring Award from the Department of Pediatrics at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California. This prestigious award is given most years to a faculty member who “demonstrates the most effective mentoring through guiding and nurturing the collegial and professional development of junior faculty.” Bob Shimizu (SF) released his second jazz album, titled “Let’s Get Together.” The album garnered four stars in Downbeat Magazine and held a place on the JazzWeek charts for 10 weeks. More information can be found at www.bobshimizu.com. After 42 years, Irv Williams (A) reconnected with fellow Johnnies Christel Stevens (A) and Steve Hanft (A70) for an afternoon in Irv Williams (A72), Christel Stevens (A72), and Steve Hanft (A70) enjoy a long overdue reunion in the nation’s capital. 34 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 1973 Galen Breningstall (SF) is working as a pediatric neurologist at Gillette Children’s Specialty Healthcare in St. Paul, Minn. Insights into his current state of mind can be obtained at http://childnervoussystem.blogspot.com. The art and design work of Howard Meister (A) were part of a retrospective group exhibit held in December by the Magen Gallery in NYC. The exhibit featured works by the influential Art Et Industrie gallery between 1979 and 1999. Meister and the other prominent Art Et Industrie gallery artists were interviewed for a forthcoming documentary film on the art movement. Frazier O’Leary (SFGI) is still teaching in D.C. Public Schools after 45 years and is a member of the board of the Toni Morrison Society. He is also a member of the board and past president of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation and is active with the foundation’s Writers in Schools program. Nick Patrone (A), above, made the front page of the Rocky Mount Telegram for his 4,300-mile bicycle trek across the United States to raise funds for multiple sclerosis research and treatment. This June 1 to August 1 he is planning a 62-day ride from Yorktown, Va. to San Francisco, covering 3,685 miles as part of the Trans Am ride for Bike the US for MS. Learn more and donate at www.biketheusforms.org/cyclists/ detail.asp?cid=823. 1974 Proud Johnnie parent Jena Morris (SF) writes to say that her son Jeremy Breningstall (AGI01) became a student again in September, having been accepted into a prestigious cross-disciplinary program at the University of California at Berkeley. He is part of a family of Johnnies that also includes his father, Galen Breningstall (SF73); his aunt, Aimee Morris (SF79); and uncles Joe Morris (SF80) and Jack Morris (SF87). Janet O’Flynn (A) writes, “It’s a long way from the Piraeus to Portau-Prince, but a group of Johnnies is trying to make the connection.” She and Donnel O’Flynn (A73), Janis Popowicz Handte (A77), Malcolm Handte (A75), and Aidan O’Flynn (A05) are working together to start a new program in rehabilitation science at the Episcopal University of Haiti. “Several �other Johnnies have also, of their generosity, contributed financially. Estimates of at least one million persons who are disabled in Haiti but not receiving therapy show the problem they are trying to address. The school is one of the first in Haiti to offer academic education in physical therapy, and the only one to offer academic education in occupational therapy, both at the bachelor’s level. Starting an educational program like this in a country with few resources is a daunting challenge. However, this group of people was willing to read Hegel, Homer, and Herodotus, so courage is not lacking.” Read more about the O’Flynns’ daily life in Haiti at haitiotptdegrees. wordpress.com and more on their project at www.haitirehab.org. 1977 ONE HIKE AT A TIME 1976 Last summer Robert Godfrey (A) took a bicycle trip from his home in Oakland, Calif. to Annapolis, where he concluded his journey with a dip in College Creek. Godfrey happily reports that the water was cool, clear, and full of little fish—and did not have a jellyfish in sight. After being nominated by President Barack Obama, William W. Nooter (A) was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in November and sworn in on December 22 to serve as an associate judge on the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. Nooter served on the D.C. Superior Court as a magistrate judge since 2000. Dave Pex (SF) reports that he has successfully completed hiking the entire 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail (PCT). He completed this endeavor over a five-year period, on nine separate trips, hiking the trail in sections. Pex completed his first section in 2010, a trip on the John Muir Trail of just under 250 miles in 16 days. The following year he completed a PCT section from northern Oregon to central Washington. Since then, he had hiked about two sections a year, the longest being from Cajon Pass, in southern California, to Mount Whitney (14,505 feet, the highest point in the contiguous U.S.). On September 5 he hiked north from Mount Rainier and headed to Canada. Two days later he reached Monument 78 at the Canadian border. His wife Jill hiked eight miles south from the Canadian trailhead and met him with celebratory piña coladas. 1977 Jonathan Wells’s (A) second collection of poems, The Man With Many Pens, was published by Four Way Books in October 2015. It includes poems that had been published previously in The New Yorker, AGNI, the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day project, and in other journals. Acting D.C. Superior Court Chief Judge Frederick H. Weisberg swears in William W. Nooter (A76), with his wife Elissa Free beside him. 1978 The Princeton Friends of Opera, led by Anne McMahan (SFGI), helped bring a semi-staged performance of Ludwig van Beethoven’s sole opera Fidelio to audiences there. The performing ensemble was Grand Harmonie, a Boston-based periodinstrument group focused on classical and romantic repertoire. The January 23 performance was the first one with original instruments in the United States. 1979 Lisa Simeone (A) made a splash at the Homewood Museum’s Harvest Ball, which raised money for the Baltimore museum’s programs and collections. Her affection for vintage fashion was noted in the Baltimore Sun. She was also featured in Current’s “The Pub” podcast that addressed the question, Are public media journalists really all liberals? Listen to the podcast (#48) at www.current.org. THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 35 �ALUMNI NOTES After retiring from teaching high school mathematics, Paul Anthony Stevens (A) now spends his time helping family and friends, reading, playing music, going to church, riding his bike, and walking three miles every day. While recently studying to write on Plato’s Meno, Stevens learned that he was born next to the temple of Zeus in Athens. 1978 Great Books on the Go 1986 1980 Lisa Rosenblum (A) made a huge career and life change by moving to Brooklyn, where she is the new director/chief librarian for the Brooklyn Public Library. She is responsible for overseeing the activities and services offered at all the system’s 59 branches as well as the Central Library. “BPL is doing some amazing work in meeting the needs of the community,” she writes. “My experience working not only as a library director but also directing social services in a number of cities in California was one of the reasons Brooklyn recruited me.” James C. White (A) joined the law firm Parry Tyndall White in Chapel Hill, N.C. His practice is evenly divided between bankruptcy and complex litigation, and he handled large lawsuits against banks during the financial crisis. However, he says that some of his most satisfying work involves helping people stay in their homes, particularly after wrongful foreclosures. 1984 John L. Bush (SF) won re-election on November 3 to his third term on the Blacksburg (Virginia) Town Council. In Don Dennis’s (SF) note that appeared on p. 34 in the fall 2015 issue of The College, the text should have read “Bohmian” not Bohemian. St. John’s makes free (wo)men from children by means of books and a balance, but we grow up through experience. There’s not an app for that.” Rita Collins (A) hit the road last summer with her new traveling bookstore, making appearances throughout Montana at festivals, fairs, farmers markets, private parties, and even a galler y opening. She is planning the bookstore’s itinerar y for 2016, to take it to other states and perhaps across the countr y. She hopes to run into Johnnies along the way. “It really is a great way to have a bookstore that meets people’s needs wherever they happen to be,” she writes. “Although compact, it can carr y about 600 volumes, which I keep stocked with a variety from classics to children’s books to, of course, travel.” 1985 Rob Crutchfield (A82) writes, “After several years of hard work, Ruth Johnston (A) has published her fourth book, Re-Modeling the Mind: Personality in Balance (Pannebaker Press, 2015). In it Ruth outlines a new model of human personality, based on brain science, the theories of Carl Jung, and the Jungian typology of the Meyers-Briggs personality test. She uses the model to account for individual differences in innate tendencies of thinking, feeling, and behavior and to explore the difference those differences make in life. Jung’s types have been known and used for many 36 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 years, but this book stands out in articulating the underlying system which gives rise to them. One of the book’s most original and interesting sections deals with which different types of personality tend to get along best in marriage. Ruth’s debilitating illness is still unidentified and untreated. Donations are welcome and can be made at www.gofundme.com/helpruth-johnston.” Maggie Hohle (A) writes, “I moved to Japan after graduation, wrote nonfiction for fifteen years there and fifteen here. My daughter just returned from Europe, now with friends from everywhere. Kristen Baumgardner Caven (SF) kept busy in 2015. In January, she wrote lyrics to Franz Liszt’s Invocation, with pianist Daniel Finnamore. In March, she blogged about her trip to Italy with Jennifer Flynn Israel (A). In September her novel The Souls of Her Feet came out in paperback, and she began hosting “shoe salons.” In September she spoke at Mills College about chronicling the historic 1990 student revolt and began co-producing “The Heart of the Muse,” a salon for creatives. In November, she launched a city-wide reading group of her book The Bullying Antidote for 3,000 Oakland, Calif. readers. (Throughout the year, she gave talks to parents on “Zorgos,” the superpower described in this book.) During the summer, she was fortunate to spend a weekend in Santa Fe and visit the campus for the first time in over a decade, visiting with Will Fischer (SF) and Janette Hradecky Fischer (SF85). Highlights were soaking in mud with Mike Ryan (SF), the molé sauce at Pasquales, and (deep breath!) a 20-minute writing retreat at Abuquiu Lake. Visit www.kristencaven.com for all the details. 1987 Michael R. (Vitakis) Brown (A) is currently living in Austin, Texas and hungering to return to northern California. In late 2014 he was featured in a film on the American feminist proto-Surrealist Mary MacLane (1881-1929), about whom he has written and published several books. Future book projects include a first-ever biography and detailed study of MacLane and a philosophicalspiritual synthesis provisionally entitled Beyond Fragmentation. �PROFILE CLARITY OF MISSION By Robin Weiss Erinn Woodside (AGI) Leads a Life of Service JENNIFER BEHRENS A fter deployments in Iraq, Afghanistan, and a U.N. peacekeeping mission during the peak of the Ebola crisis in Liberia, 30-year-old Captain Erinn Woodside (AGI) finds that civilian life, “sitting at a desk,” makes her antsy. Raised in a Navy family, Woodside and her two siblings were homeschooled by their mother. At age 10, inspired by her grandmother’s work on the Atlas Rocket Program, Woodside savored what she calls “astronaut dreams.” The science curriculum and discipline of a service academy initially drew Woodside to the United States Air Force Academy, where she graduated in 2008. “It was the best and worst time of my adult life,” says Woodside, who found the “very mechanical, lecture-based” teaching methods disappointing. As one of the 15 percent of women among four thousand cadets, she endured teasing and insults. But “living daily with nasty jokes makes you tough,” she says, and the whole program, “designed to keep you stressed, as a constant state,” was excellent preparation for deployments. When cyber warfare was relatively new, her first assignment, as a communications officer in San Antonio, trained her in cyber development. Two years later, Woodside volunteered to serve in Iraq and arrived at Camp Victory Base, a city of fifty thousand within Bagdad, between two campaigns: Iraqi Freedom and Operation New Dawn. As platoon leader, working 12 to 18 hours a day with her soldiers in a signals battalion, she recalls her experience as both wonderful and awful. Woodside made time to engage with 65 Iraqi girls, ages 4 to 15, from on and off base, in a popular scouts-like program. However, two weeks before leaving Iraq, she sustained a percussive brain injury from a rocket bomb. “We call it ‘getting blown up’,” she says. Though tests found no brain bleeding, cognitive problems affecting memory and attention plagued her for years. Firefighter friends took her in and cared for her, until she was flown back to Texas for months of medical hold. During her next assignment in Fort Meade, Maryland, Woodside, dismissing her injury, volunteered for Afghanistan, just nine months after returning from Iraq. She loved what she calls “the clarity of mission.” But despite the rewards of working off base 18 hours a day, seven days a week, she could no longer ignore her symptoms from the blast. Back at Fort Meade in fall 2012, Woodside received intensive medical attention at Walter Reed Hospital. Neurological exams revealed lesions consistent with blast damage; she was diagnosed with a mild traumatic brain injury. Woodside learned that overwhelming guilt and denial are common symptoms following trauma. Without a missing limb or bullet wound, “I felt I was taking resources away from others,” she says. Woodside received a Purple Heart, the military decoration awarded to soldiers wounded or killed while serving. In summer 2014, after hearing an ad on NPR, she applied and jumped into the St. John’s Graduate Institute while still an active duty officer. Three GI segments later, she volunteered to serve in Liberia. “It’s one of the poorest countries in the world, just this side of a failed state,” she says, noting that it has only five paved roads and little to no hydro and electrical infrastructure. Woodside felt welcomed as the only woman in her “truly global” team, representing at least 10 countries and five religions. With “no touching, no physical contact,” they tracked the spread of Ebola, while living alongside, interviewing, and educating locals. In her fourth GI segment, Woodside values “the soft skills” gained from the St. John’s curriculum. “The heart of the program, to suspend pre-conceived notions and look at something from a different perspective, to withhold judgment” creates, for her, “a similar mindset to deployment. The openness of mind that the program fosters produced the very skills I needed in Liberia and elsewhere.” She tolerates no excuses for fear-based ignorance, and loves to shatter stereotypes. “If there is one thing I’ve learned, both in the world and at St. John’s, it’s that there is so much gray.” THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 37 �ALUMNI NOTES around the country, and it has won several awards, including First Prize for the Providence Film Festival Award at the Rhode Island International Film Festival.” More information is available at www. happygramthemovie.com. Joyce Turner (A) moved back to South Carolina last year, though she regularly returns to Iowa, where she still works for the Writers’ Workshop. Last fall she taught composition as an adjunct lecturer in South Carolina and is currently working on a novel and some nonfiction projects. “I miss the St. John’s Coffee Shop, waltz parties, and long walks through the bricked streets of Annapolis,” she writes. “Please feel free to drop me a note if you’re planning to be in the Charlotte, N.C. area.” Max Ochs (AGI) released a collection of 65 poems titled Just Caws. Daniel Reilly (SF) is beginning his 10th year with the National Democratic Institute, a D.C.- based NGO that provides democracy and governance support in challenging environments around the world. He enjoys his work on operational security for National Democratic Institute missions and offices. Now based in Maryland, Reilly and his wife Seheno are celebrating 13 years of marriage and have two daughters, Diamondra (8) and Holisoa (5), and three guinea pigs. 1988 Elaine Pinkerton Coleman (SFGI) has two books scheduled for upcoming release: Santa Fe on Foot (Ocean Tree Books) and All the Wrong Places (Pocol Press), a suspense novel set in the Southwest. Look for her musings on adoption and life on her blog www. elainepinkerton.wordpress.com. Erin Milnes (A) reports that she is now creative director for Catchword Branding, a national naming firm based in Oakland, Calif. “Being a generalist with language skills is key for this work, so naming could be a great fit for Johnnies, particularly if they are into language, symbols, messaging, semantics. I love it!” 1990 Kilian James Garvey (SF) gave a TEDx talk last October on “Geography of Morality.” The talk, a non-data discussion of the empirical research he does analyzing the pathogen prevalent theory of human values, is available on YouTube. Fritz Hinrichs (A) finished two videos on Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, which are both available on YouTube. 1993 Erika Suski (A) welcomes Johnnies to drop her a line at P.O. Box 1133, Dumfries, VA 22026. 1996 1991 Kemmer Anderson (AGI91) made his fourth trip to the Holy Land. 1992 research into what had caused her mammogram to miss her cancer until it had metastasized.” They discovered that mammograms are ineffective for the 40 percent of women with dense breast tissue who account for 70 percent of invasive cancers, missing 50 to 75 percent of cancers in these women. “This is the main reason that breast cancer screening has failed to reduce the rate of metastatic breast cancer in the U.S., and it is the source of neverending controversy surrounding mammography. Happygram is a documentary about this issue that I started before Hallie died. It has been screened at film festivals Kemmer Anderson (AGI) and his wife traveled to Israel and Palestine in October. In Bethlehem he read the poem “Bethlehem 2002” from his new book Songs of Bethlehem: Nativity Poems. His poem “Mary of Nazareth: 2015” was published in Sojourners in January 2016, and he is currently working on a new set of poems. Julie Marron (SF) writes, “Hallie Leighton (SF) was one of my closest friends. In 2010, she was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer after several years of mammograms. She died in 2013 at the age of 42. After she was initially diagnosed, the two of us conducted 38 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 Loreen Keller (AGI) completed her doctoral studies at Northeastern University and was awarded her Ed.D. in September 2015. Her dissertation “Adjunct Faculty Engagement: Connections in Pursuit of Student Success” was published in October. Jake McPherson (SFGI) started a new job as the consumer affairs chief for Hawaii’s Department of Health’s Adult Mental Health Division. 1997 Heidi (Jacot) Hewett’s (A) first story The Curious Case of the Clockwork Doll (18thWall Productions) was published in January as part of a new anthology of Sherlock Holmes mysteries. Read more on her blog http://hjhreader. blogspot.com. �2000 Leo Vladimirsky (A) had two more short stories published: “Dandelion” on Boing Boing and “Squidtown” in the January/February 2016 issue of the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. INSPIRING CHANGE 2002 MAXIMILIAN FRANZ, THE DAILY RECORD James Marshall Crotty’s (SFGI) feature-length documentary Crotty’s Kids has secured global distribution through Passion River Films. Learn more at www.passionriver.com/crottys-kids. 2003 Melanie Santiago-Mosier (A) (center) was named one of 2015’s Leading Women by The Daily Record, Maryland’s premier legal and business newspaper. Leading Women recognizes women age 40 or younger for the tremendous accomplishments they have made so far in their career. They are judged on professional experience, community involvement, and a commitment to inspiring change. An award ceremony was held December 7 in Annapolis; her profile appeared in the December 8, 2015 issue of The Daily Record in its special Leading Women publication, available online at http:// thedailyrecord.com/leading-women/melanie-santiago-mosier. Jane McManus (A), who is still covering the NFL for ESPN and a columnist for espnW, has taken on two new roles. In December she began co-hosting a national radio show on Saturdays for ESPN Radio and is co-teaching the sports journalism class this spring at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. In other news, she finally hung up her skates after seven years of playing roller derby and is on the lookout for another challenge. 1998 Richard Field (SF) published From the Sands of the Arena: Ancient World Trivia for the 21st Century. The book contains trivia from three eras: ancient and classical Greece, Hellenism, and Republican and Imperial Rome. 2001 Jonathan Culp (A) is now an associate professor of politics at the University of Dallas. He and his wife Natalie and their five children live in Irving, Texas. Kagan Coughlin (A) is a trustee at Base Camp Coding Academy, which provides Mississippi’s underadvantaged youth with vocational training in computer programming to support the technology needs of local and regional employers. The charitable, nonprofit organization was recently awarded a grant to help train the state’s next generation of software developers. Wilson Dunlavey (A) had a momentous year. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law last spring and defended his Ph.D. thesis at the Humboldt-Universitaet in Berlin in September, earning him the dubious distinction of receiving two doctoral degrees in the same calendar year. His dissertation examines the history of German public diplomacy, cultural diplomacy, and nation-branding in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is now a civil rights and class action attorney at the firm Lieff, Cabraser, Heimann, and Bernstein in downtown San Francisco. Alexandria Poole (A) joined Elizabethtown College as assistant professor in the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Legal Studies. She teaches introductory courses in ethics and philosophy, as well a course in comparative environmental philosophy: perspectives from the Americas. She also is associate managing editor of Environmental Ethics, a founding journal of the field. Her primary research interests are comparative environmental philosophy, environmental ethics, and sustainability. Lewis Slawsky (A) and Alexander Wall (A) have established a publishing imprint, digest, and online magazine called Political Animal, dedicated to elevating the quality of political discourse in North America. It also addresses the subject of politics in a manner that will be familiar to many Johnnies, with a special concern for philosophy and an eye to the unity of knowledge. Political Animal welcomes article submissions and book manuscripts from SJC alumni. Visit them at www. politicalanimalmagazine.com. Michael Waldock (SFGI) completed a new novel How I Saved the British Empire: Reminiscences of a Bicycling Tour of Great Britain in the Year 1901 (Ailemo Books, 2015). He notes that most of the ancillary characters and events were real, and he immersed himself in the year 1901 using the annual versions of such publications as The Illustrated London News, Tatler, The Sphere, among others, to get timing and content right. THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 39 �ALUMNI NOTES 2004 Suzie (née Vlcek) Lee (SF, EC05) recently earned a second master’s degree in nutrition and functional medicine and is a clinical nutritionist and chiropractic physician in private practice in Alameda, Calif. Angus MacCaull (SF) managed to combine his two passions, food and writing. His new picture book for kids, Lawnteel at the Store, is the story about a young lentil that faces a tough financial question: What to buy with your only leaf? David Penn (SF) and Britt Hofer (SF) announce the release of their first wines, under the label Krater. Inspired by former Santa Fe tutor John Cornell and many notable alumni winemakers, they are thrilled to have wines of their own to offer to the fray—and be part of St. John’s’ rich and long connection with wine. Learn more at kratercellars.com. After working in the industry for five years, Eric Schaefer (SF) seized an opportunity to open up his own sightseeing company in San Francisco. SF Adventure Tours is a one-man operation that offers unique city tours, Marin County and Muir Woods tours, and beer tasting trips. He invites alumni in the area to come by to say hello. 2006 Norman Allen’s (AGI) play The House Halfway was named a finalist for the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center’s prestigious National Playwrights Conference, and his children’s play A Lump of Coal for Christmas opened at Adventure Theatre in Maryland to rave reviews. In addition, his essay “Finding a House that Fits,” which features his time at St. John’s, was published in Yes! Magazine. Constantino Diaz-Duran (A) writes, “I’m getting married in May to David Khalaf, an author based in Portland, Oregon, where I also live these days. We met two years ago through the Gay Christian Network, and I’m grateful to be able to do life with someone who shares my faith. We’ve launched a blog (http://daveandtino.com) discussing the sometimes complicated issues surrounding Christianity, sexuality, and marriage.” 2007 Charles Kitchen (A) is the Nevada deputy operations director for the Bernie Sanders Presidential Campaign. James Wrigley (A) lives in North Conway, N.H. and works for the Appalachian Mountain Club. On New Year’s Eve, he and his wife Courtney celebrated the birth of their baby, Evelyn Jean Wrigley. 2008 After graduation, Jack Brown (A) lived and taught in Lebanon for six months, and then joined the Peace Corps. While serving in Senegal, West Africa, he met Emily, the love of his life. They moved to Seattle in 2013 and were married on August 29, 2015 in a delightful affair, with many Johnnies in attendance. Brown is a software engineer and looks forward to buying a house, acquiring pets, and eventually starting a family. Kayla Gamin (A) got married in 2014. Later this year, she will graduate from the University of Chicago Law School and begin work at a D.C. government agency. 2009 Marcello Kilani (SF) is the current Macricostas Professor of Hellenic Studies at Western Connecticut State University. This one-year visiting professorship, endowed by the Macricostas family, supports courses in ancient Greek philosophy and culture. Kilani delivered a public lecture “Ethics and Identity in a World of Chance” on March 16 at the university. Left: David Penn (SF04) crushes the Cabernet Franc at Krater winery in Sonoma County. BRITT HOFER (SF04) Do you have news to share with The College? Send your note, along with your name, class year, and photo(s), to thecollegemagazine@sjc.edu. 40 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 �2008 Renaissance Woman Terrill Legueri (SFGI) and Kane Turner (SFGI) were married on September 12 in Santa Fe at Church of the Holy Faith, with many Johnnies in attendance. KATHI BAHR From the left: Ross Hunt (A05, SFGI10); Clara Terrell (SFGI10); Ian Dag (SFGI); Terrill Legueri (SFGI); Stacia Denhart (SFGI); Kanishka Marasinghe (SFGI10); tutor Matthew Davis; Lisa Marasinghe (Johnnie by association); Kane Turner (SFGI); Allison Roper (SFGI10); John Hobson (SFGI); and tutor Natalie Elliot. Laura (Waleryszak) Zak (SF) co-wrote, co-produced, and stars in the new six-episode series Her Story. Featuring predominantly LGBTQ women, the first season, which premiered online on January 19, follows two transgender women in Los Angeles who had given up on love until chance encounters suddenly give them hope. Zak plays a reporter with a passion for social change and an endless curiosity for experiences that differ from her own. Watch the series and learn more at http://herstoryshow.com. Kea Wilson’s (SF) first novel is scheduled for release on August 23 from Simon and Schuster/Scribner. We Eat Our Own is about the production of an Italian horror film in the Amazon rain forest in 1979, based loosely on true events. He says Euripedes, Aristotle, Dante, and Rousseau were key touchstones for him as he wrote the book. 2010 Marianna Brotherton (A) and Jake Crabbs (A09) were married in Killington, Vt. on June 20. The couple currently resides in Chicago. JR Johnstone (SF) recently accepted a position as a research coordinator at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. 2011 Brittany (Olson) Johnstone (SF) will graduate in June from the University of Denver with an education specialist degree in child, family and school psychology. 2013 Michael Fogleman (A) writes, “I am currently a resident at the Center for Mindful Learning, where I work, live, and meditate full time. I began practicing meditation while at St. John’s, something that was born out of my relationship to the books I was reading. After graduating, it seemed fruitful to spend even more time dedicating myself to that practice. Moreover, the Center is a very interesting organization. Not only are we what we call a ‘modern monastery,’ but we are also a nonprofit, and one that is run like a start-up organization. I am heavily involved in the process of seeking a new business model and putting the skills I learned at St. John’s to good use.” THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 41 �ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE, GREENFIELD LIBRARY IN MEMORIAM Nancy Lewis (H01) December 7, 2015 Registrar, Annapolis Nancy Rawlings Lewis (1933-2015), who served for 20 years as the registrar at St. John’s, Annapolis, died peacefully at her home, surrounded by family. Born in Washington, D.C. to Nellie Morton Rawlings and Herbert Lee Rawlings, she spent her childhood in Forest Glen Park, Maryland and attended the University of Maryland. There she met and married artist Eric Winter and traveled with him to Juneau, Alaska, where the first of their four children was born. Two years later they moved to St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, where they raised their children in a home they built out of ruins of the Christensen farm in Estate Tutu. In St. Thomas, Lewis managed the A. H. Riise art gallery and the Sheltered Workshop for disabled adults. After the marriage ended, Lewis moved with the children to Barcelona, Spain, where they settled for five years in the seaside town of Sitges. There she became part of a creative international expatriate community. In 1976, she relocated to Annapolis and joined the staff at St. John’s, where she worked until her retirement in 1998. She was on the board of the Friends of St. John’s and a member of the Caritas Society. In 1984 she married an old college friend 42 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 Nancy Lewis (H01) in 1992, working with student Devin Rushing-Schurr (A93) “Nancy conducted all duties of [the Registrar’s Office] with astute attention to detail and calm organization. Her natural grace and her care for others, especially students, permeated every part of her responsibilities.” —Annapolis Dean Pamela Kraus Fred Lewis; the couple remained together for 31 years. At a celebration of life service held in McDowell Hall, Lewis was remembered for her warmth, kindness, humor, and grace. She is survived by her husband, Fred; two daughters Page Winter and Leslie Winter Mills; two sons Eric Winter and Cy Winter; stepson, Freddie Lewis; brother, Herbert Rawlings; eight grandchildren; and four step-grandchildren. �IN MEMORIAM Matthew Frame (A73) July 24, 2015 Known for his sharp wit and gentle nature, Matthew Albritton Frame (1951-2015) passed away peacefully at home in Raleigh, North Carolina. After a rewarding 30-year career as a software engineer and systems architect with IBM, Frame retired in 2008, and began his second career as a full-time bridge professional. His natural ability to understand and process complex information, and his extremely logical mind, fueled his success in both careers; his generosity was evident in his volunteer work and mentorship to aspiring bridge players. Two maxims that Frame lived by throughout his last year were: “It’s never too late to do the right thing” and “Relish every moment left on this earth.” In this spirit, he devoted his abbreviated time to the people and passions he cherished most, including his four children Laura Knox, Mark, Rebecca, and Susannah; his granddaughter, Allie Knox; six surviving siblings David, James, Jr., Margaret Lipton, Martha, Ruth, and Shannah Frame Whitney; and numerous other relatives. Jeremy Tarcher Class of 1953 September 20, 2015 Jeremy Phillip Tarcher (19322015), who founded the publishing house that bears his name, died at his home in Los Angeles. Considered a maverick in the industry, in the early 1960s Tarcher packaged book deals for celebrities, including Phyllis Diller’s Housekeeping Hints and Johnny Carson’s Happiness Is a Dry Martini. Later inspired by New Age thinking about human potential, he brought California’s counterculture to the mainstream with such works as Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards and The Aquarian Conspiracy by Marilyn Ferguson. “I published books I cared about rather than books people thought would sell,” he told Publishers Weekly in 2013. “But it turned out that there were thousands of readers out there like me.” In the early 1970s, Tarcher founded the house, known first as J.P. Tarcher, specializing in nonfiction books on health, psychology, and New Age spirituality. Today it is part of the Tarcher Perigee imprint of Penguin Random House, the company where Tarcher remained until 1996. He published numerous bestsellers, including Women Who Love Too Much by Robin Norwood, The Faith of George W. Bush by Stephen Mansfield, Bikram’s Beginning Yoga Class by Bikram Choudhury, and The United States of Wal-Mart by John Dicker, among others. He married the television puppeteer and children’s author Shari Lewis in 1958 and went on to produce her Saturday morning TV show for several years and publish some of her books, including The Kids-Only Club Book. The couple also collaborated on a script for an episode of Star Trek. Tarcher grew up in a prosperous family of readers, with him as the exception. After he was rejected by nearly every other college he applied to, Tarcher found a home at St. John’s. In a 1982 interview with the Los Angeles Times he recalled, “I would not be what I am now, where I am now, had it not been for St. John’s.” Ernest Heinmuller Class of 1942 December 5, 2015 Ernest Jean Heinmuller (19212015) was a member of the first class to graduate from the New Program at St. John’s College. Born in Baltimore to Ernest Richard and Angeline Magne Heinmuller, he grew up in Easton, Maryland. In 1943, he married Donna Hoyt, his high school sweetheart, and later joined the U.S. Coast Guard. He served in three theaters of WWII as a submarine hunter off the U.S. coast, troop rescue in the English Channel during the invasion of Normandy, and other assignments in the South Pacific. His ship was awarded the Coast Guard Outstanding Service medal with star and the Defense medal with star. At the end of WWII, he and his wife returned to Easton, where he opened an office for Monroe Systems for Business A portrait of Ernest Heinmuller, Class of 1942, as a senior and served as manager and head of sales for the next 28 years. Heinmuller is survived by his son H. Hoyt of Alamo, Texas; his daughter Jodie Peirce of Chapel Hill, North Carolina; four granddaughters Dee, Lynn Heinmuller Fisher, Shayn Peirce Cottler, and Leyf Peirce Starling; eight greatgrandchildren; and two greatgreat-grandchildren. Heinmuller was preceded in death by his wife, and his daughter Frances. Amy Kass August 19, 2015 Tutor, Annapolis Amy Apfel Kass (1940-2015), who taught at St John’s in the early 1970s, died in Washington, D.C. She grew up in New York City and earned degrees at the University of Chicago, Brandeis, and Johns Hopkins, where she wrote a history of the great books movement and founding of the New Program at St. John’s College. In 1976 she returned to the University of Chicago, where she taught humanities and great books classes for 34 years. Classes on works by Homer, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Melville, and G. Eliot were among the most popular. She co-founded the “Human Being and Citizen” course, and taught in the “Fundamentals: Issues and Texts” program. During her teaching career, she organized the “Toqueville Seminars on Civic Leadership,” and “Dialogues on Civic Philanthropy,” and edited anthologies of readings on American autobiography, philanthropy, courtship and marriage, American identity, and American national holidays, all widely used in high school and college classes, workshops THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 43 �and seminars, and by independent readers. She served on the Council on Humanities for the National Endowment for the Humanities, and was a fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington. Kass lectured at St. John’s and was a familiar visitor at Friday Night Lectures and the question periods that follow. Whenever she met students she thought would thrive at St. John’s she urged them to consider attending. Many St. John’s alumni met her in graduate school at Chicago; some of them and others have returned as tutors in Annapolis or Santa Fe. Kass was the living proof of how very important like-minded friends are to St. John’s College as an institution, to its students, and to the faculty that make this their primary home. She is survived by her husband, Leon R. Kass, of Washington; two daughters; four granddaughters; and hundreds of students whose lives she helped to shape. Larry Dutton (SF74) Terry McGuire (H12) July 14, 2015 March 6, 2016 Maria Kwong (SF73) shares the following remembrance about her friend Larry Roscoe Dutton (1950-2015): Larry’s life spanned many realms, from his beginnings in the heart of the Midwest to his years at St. John’s College, where I and many others forged a lifelong bond with him; to his more than 10 years in Los Angeles, where he lived with my family, began his practice in Tibetan Buddhism, and met his life partner and wife, Sharon McMillan. Returning to Santa Fe, they continued to practice Tibetan Buddhism and furthered the teachings of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Those who loved him remember a man of many passions, particularly music, and whose sense of the absurd informed his wit. A spiritual, intelligent, kind, caring, and fiercely loyal friend, he will be deeply missed by those who knew him. Theresia “Terry” J. McGuire (1947-2016), assistant to eight deans on the Annapolis campus, passed away from cancer. Terry joined St. John’s in 1969 as secretary to the assistant dean. Her extraordinary talent was noticed quickly, and she was singled out to be the dean’s assistant, beginning with the deanship of Curtis Wilson, in 1976. She retired in May 2015 after 46 years at the college. Her powers of organization, prodigious memory, and gracious professionalism informed Also Deceased: John R. Garland, Class of 1950 October 23, 2015 Anne M. Ahern, A69 June 26, 2015 Christopher Gillen, A90 August 24, 2015 Gerald (Jerry) Milhollan, Class of 1958 September 26, 2015 William Randall Salisbury, Class of 1962 November 14, 2015 Joseph L. Berkman, Class of 1951 April 8, 2014 George Gilbert Graham, SF73 December 18, 2015 Edward W. Mullinix, Class of 1945 December 9, 2015 Jon Sanford, SFGI79 October 20, 2015 Frederick James Blachly, Class of 1966 November 21, 2015 Jeffrey Frost Burnham, A01 August 2, 2015 William F. Church III, Class of 1967 September 1, 2015 Paul Ringgold Comegys, Sr., Class of 1941 January 13, 2016 Caryl Actis-Grande, SFGI09 November 28, 2015 Ernest C. Hammond, Jr., Class of 1962 September 13, 2015 Amy (Carle) Jobes, Class of 1959 August 23, 2015 Michael C. Jordan, A74 January 24, 2016 Susanne Elizabeth Martin, A68 August 14, 2015 Elisabeth Funnell, Class of 1966 October 24, 2015 44 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 and fortified the deans in their duties, from their initiation in the office to completion of their terms. Her natural good cheer, forgiving nature, courtesy, and uncomplaining fortitude enriched the spirits of all in countless ways. She was a force of benevolent togetherness, for us as members not only of the St. John’s community but that of all living things. Terry McGuire (H12) with various deans with whom she had worked. From left: George Doskow, Eva Brann (H89), Terry McGuire, Michael Dink (A75), Pamela Kraus, Sam Kutler (Class of 1954), and Harvey Flaumenhaft. Jonathon Josiah Orbeton, SF00 November 12, 2015 William Westerman Simmons, Class of 1948 January 18, 2016 Maryrose Vigna Patrone, SFGI80 November 2, 2015 Helen Roelker (Sparrow) Sisk, SF85 October 1, 2015 Royal Parker Pollokoff, Class of 1947 January 8, 2016 Rina Swentzell, SFGI70 October 30, 2015 Robert (Bo) H. Reynolds, Classof 1940 November 27, 2015 Eric Daniel Rosenberg, A01 October 14, 2015 Susan Tixier, SFGI03 October 8, 2015 Suzy Ellin Van Massenhove, Class of 1962 September 7, 2015 Nathan James Walker, A86 January 3, 2014 �PHILANTHROPY A Lasting Tribute Donald Esselborn (A80) (1951-1991) died too young. Twenty-five years after his death on October 30, his classmates, led by Charlotte Murphy (A80) and with help from Steve Edwards (A80), Rebecca Krafft (A80), Kate McCullough (A80), Annapolis Director of Alumni Relations Leo Pickens (A78), and members of the college’s grounds crew, planted a tree in Esselborn’s memory on the front campus in Annapolis. The linden basswood, native to North America, with beautiful, heart-shaped leaves, stands along the brick walkway that stretches from Prince George Street to McDowell Hall. Years previous at a Homecoming celebration in Annapolis, Murphy joined with Dante Beretta (A80) and Josh Kates (A80), and held a wine tasting in honor of Esselborn. There they heard stories, often filled with humor, from fellow classmates and alumni Great Gift Edmond Freeman first set eyes on Santa Fe in the early 1980s, when he and his wife June stopped there on the way to a Southern Newspaper Publishers Association meeting in Colorado Springs. A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Freeman knew that St. John’s had a campus in Santa Fe and made a point to visit. He and June fell in from other class years. “He had made a lot of friends through singing and acting on campus and hanging out at the Coffee Shop,” says Murphy. “Many students found comfort in talking with him and listening to his take on being a Johnnie— he loved it.” During the planting ceremony, the group buried a sugar bowl in the tree roots, filled with ashes of classmates’ written notes about Esselborn, photos, his favorite play titles, and sheet music of beloved songs. Following a rendition of “People Get Ready” by Curtis Mayfield, the intimate ceremony concluded with a moment of silence. “I loved Donald, and the tragedy of his death has not left me,” says Murphy. “I had to plant this tree, and I feel lucky that circumstances conspired so I could. Trees capture the abiding strength of love like few other tributes can.” love with the city—the Spanish-Native influences in the architecture, the jogging and hiking trails, the majestic mountain backdrop. It was the start of a relationship that culminated in 2015, when June gave $25,000 to establish the Edmond Wroe Freeman III Scholarship Fund to honor her husband’s lifelong love of learning and teaching. Graduating from high school in Pine Bluff, Arkansas during WWII, Freeman always straddled two worlds; while serving as an Ensign on an aircraft carrier, he was reading Plato and Hume for a correspondence course in philosophy from the University of Chicago. He left the Navy in 1949 to study philosophy and English at Chicago. After he and June got married the following year, Freeman joined his family’s newspaper, the Pine Bluff Commercial. “At that time I wasn’t sure whether I was going to make that my life’s work,” says Freeman. “But as it turned out, that was.” He served as editor and eventually succeeded his father as publisher, where he was known for his curiosity, thirst for knowledge, and great eye for talent. One of the paper’s editorial page editors, Paul Greenberg, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1969 under Freeman’s editorial direction. “He made people better writers,” says Freeman’s daughter, Gretchen. Edmond recently made a second gift of $25,000 to the fund, and both of their children have also given to the fund. The family says that the scholarship criteria will be set by St. John’s, but Edmond has a clear vision of the kind of student it will encourage: “Curious. Open-minded. Interested in reading. Having a thirst for knowledge.” —Jan Schlain THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 45 �JOHNNIE VOICES MY MOST VALUABLE INVESTMENT: A MASTER’S DEGREE IN GREAT BOOKS By Russell Max Simon (SFGI06) I n April 2015, I made the final payment on my student loan. I borrowed nearly $21,000—about half the amount it costs to get a master’s degree from St. John’s College. Unless you obtain a professional degree in a field such as law or medicine, I believe graduate school to be generally a waste of time and money. Time should be spent learning what is needed to get the job you want by apprenticing or working to gain real-world experience—not to mention money. Yet as I make my final payment eight years into a twenty-year loan for what many consider to be a glorified philosophy degree, I can say without hesitation that my graduate education is the most valuable thing I’ve ever bought. The most obvious value comes from my first, most crucial jobs: rungs on the career ladder given to me by St. John’s alumni or employers who sought St. John’s graduate students. An editor who was sick of hiring journalism school students gave me my first job as a journalist. A St. John’s alumnus gave me my first job as a marketing professional, and continues to recruit from St. John’s. Both employers wanted a St. John’s grad. Perhaps only one out of ten employers appreciates my degree, but they only want someone like me. It made getting those jobs extremely easy. Jobs are just the beginning. Here’s the long answer as to why my St. John’s education is so valuable. Americans collectively hold $1.2 trillion in student loan debt. Most took on that debt because of a misconception about what has value. People think education is mainly about skills transference, yet our education system transfers skills that will soon be out of date, if they aren’t already. Our competitive economy moves too fast for an education based on skills transference. Yet many people take massive time out from building their careers and pay tens of thousands of dollars—or go into debt— to learn skills that will soon be out of date, or were never useful in the first place. Like them, with my undergraduate history degree in hand, I thought that I had the skills that would help me succeed in life. If someone had asked me what those skills were, I couldn’t have identified them. Soon after finishing undergraduate, I read Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind, a scathing critique of what liberal education has become in the past forty years: not a tool to develop great thinkers, but a means of instilling openness, which Bloom calls the great American virtue. At liberal arts institutions across America, Bloom observes, every culture is valid and every idea deserves respect. In classes such as “comparative politics” or “comparative religion,” we compare and contrast republicanism to communism or Islam to Christianity in a non-judgmental manner. That is a mistake. In life, everything requires judgment. Some ideas are less valid than others. Such judgment is what helps people and companies succeed. The most difficult question for most of us in our daily work is what do I do next? That’s judgment. For menial jobs, including those occupied by over-educated graduate interns in the think tanks and nonprofits of Washington, D.C., where I live, judgment is not necessary. But as soon as you achieve a modicum of success in any industry, judgment becomes essential, including the ability to judge which ideas are valid, which are idiotic, and which ones require an honest discussion. 46 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 Nearly every creative pursuit, including starting or managing a business, requires incisive judgment. The typical liberal arts education, which emphasizes non-judgmental cultural understanding and openness to every idea, works against your chances of succeeding. Judgment is the first thing that gets blown up at St. John’s, so that it can be rebuilt from the ground up. Not all ideas are considered equally valid; some are just plain wrong. Not everyone is entitled to their own unique snowflake of an opinion. Each great thinker in history became so in part by calling out some ideas as wrong, arguing for what they considered the correct idea. It started with Aristotle faulting Plato, and continued from there. A great, three-thousand-yearlong conversation about fundamental questions regarding the nature of humans, reality, knowledge, and more, has been ongoing since the time of the Greeks. The higher one rises in any profession, the more one must make judgment calls with which people will disagree. At the highest levels, most people disagree with your judgments. Which brings me to the next skill that St. John’s teaches: an assurance in your ability to learn new things, one of the most valuable skills for succeeding in the economy of the future. No curriculum keeps up with the pace of change in today’s world. The skills you learned in school will be obsolete by the time you leave. All that matters is your capacity to adapt. St. John’s students think they can learn anything, because of the difficulty of the readings and their source. Go ahead— try to read Heidegger. Then try to learn calculus from Newton’s Principia Mathematica, widely understood as the most �difficult textbook ever. St. John’s students learn through the eyes of the first mover, the first discoverer, the first thinker. Renaissance artists’ experiments in color inform a painting class. The replication of experiments by Niels Bohr are among the foundations for learning the principles of physics. Geometry is taught by working through Euclid’s Elements; every St. John’s student can recite the definition of a point from memory: “That which has no part.” It’s no wonder that St. John’s students are perfectly comfortable swinging between abstract philosophy and hardcore math and science. They understand how one discipline relies upon and interweaves with the other. It’s no wonder that we think we can learn anything. We experience the same process as those who first learned the greatest things, from a phenomenology of the spirit to the theory of relativity. We receive road maps to the thinking of the greatest minds in history. We are helped to find our way through to the end, and are then asked to make a major judgment call: is it true? Those with pre-existing bias are told to address the argument. Those who rely on flimsy logic are swiftly taken down by the Socratic method, through withering questioning from wicked-smart professors called “tutors,” none of whom accepts the fallacy that all opinions are equally valid. The confidence I gained by communing, grappling with, and defending (or attacking) the great thinkers led me to launch into careers in which I had no formal training—and succeed. I have embarked on crash-course self-training regimens in evolving industries that advanced my career and earnings potential, inventing new ways of doing things and new processes. In investment-speak, dividends will continue for decades to come. If you require conventional measures of success in order to accept the value I’m describing, consider that I am director of marketing for a $60-plus million “�Perhaps only one out of ten employers appreciates my degree, but they only want someone like me.” company; that I do most of my work from the comfort of my home in Silver Spring, Maryland, which I own with my partner; that we have three amazing kids; that I follow my passions of travel, writing, filmmaking, and adventuring as passionately as I do my career; and that I consider myself rich in material wealth, meaningful relationships with family and friends, and creative fulfillment. My education led me to think in the grandest terms possible, and to expect great things from myself. When you shoot for the stars, every once in a while you are able to reach the moon. I would say you can’t teach that kind of thing. But evidently, you can. THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 47 �JENNIFER BEHRENS S T. J O H N ’ S F O R E V E R THE COLLEGE 1.0 A previous incarnation of The College appeared in the mailboxes of alumni in the 1960s and early 1970s. “Our aim is to indicate . . . why, in our opinion, St. John’s comes closer than any other college in the nation to being what a college should be. If ever well placed beacon lights were needed by American education it is now. By publishing articles about the work of the College, articles reflecting the distinctive life of the mind that is the College, we hope to add a watt or two to the beacon light that is St. John’s”—so went the editorial mission. The College contained news, lectures and talks, and alumni notes. Many of Jacob Klein’s writings first appeared in its pages. 48 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 In 1974 The College was discontinued and The Reporter, a tabloid format newsprint quarterly, launched. It contained St. John’s news and alumni notes, while a few years later the St. John’s Review was conceived to publish lectures, reviews, and thought pieces reflective of the St. John’s Program. The last issue of The Reporter appeared in fall 1999. The St. John’s Review continues to publish twice a year, and it can be found on the college website at www.sjc.edu/blog/st-johns-review. The College 2.0 was born in 2000. Reader, it’s in your hands. —-Barbara Goyette (A73) �EIDOS I have been an art therapist for twenty-five years, beginning at a women’s clinic for survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, and childhood abuse, later developing an arts-in-healthcare program for a cancer hospital, and most recently providing therapy at an eating disorder treatment center and teaching within two art therapy graduate programs. My career requires I tend two identities: psychotherapist/clinician and artist. Because clinical work pays the bills, it is challenging to keep in focus my asessential artist self. With patients, I use a variety of art modalities including visual art, creative writing, movement, storytelling, and music. My primary personal art practices are poetry, Celtic harp playing, and kinesthetic, process-focused drawing/painting/printmaking. I have published three books of poetry and one nonfiction book on environmental stewardship through the arts. that reconciles mind, body, and spirit, and unites the person to the world. I experience poeisis within each art therapy session as an improvised collaboration between three partners: myself; another person who is suffering emotionally, spiritually, and physically; and the universal field of imagination/soul. —-Liza Hyatt (SF85) Learn more about Liza Hyatt (SF85) at lizahyatt.com. Liza Hyatt, Grief Angel, 1995, monotype. One word that best sums up the work of art therapy is the ancient Greek poiesis, meaning “to make.” Poiesis is a creating THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 iii �Non-Profit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Annapolis, MD Permit N0. 120 Communications Office 60 College Avenue Annapolis, MD 21401 JENNIFER BEHRENS Address Service Requested � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The College (2001-2017) Description An account of the resource The St. John's College Communications Office published The College magazine for alumni. It began publication in 2001, continuing the St. John's Reporter, and ceased with the Fall 2017 issue. Click on <a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=56">Items in The College (2001-2017) Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, Md. Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context thecollege2001 Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 48 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Title A name given to the resource The College, Spring 2016 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf 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 Type The nature or genre of the resource text Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context The_College_Magazine_Spring_2016 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Description An account of the resource Volume 41, Issue 1 of the The College Magazine. Published in Spring 2016. The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/05de8c26cd0a229d868fdac1838c59e9.pdf e297c8a9fe15073f87c8b7a536ddfb0e PDF Text Text S T. J O H N ’ S C O L L E G E FA L L 2016 VOLUME 41, ISSUE 2 Penelope The Odyssey’s Creative Thinker �ii THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FA L L 2 016 �OPENING NOTE Everybody needs time for themselves. Time to breathe, to recharge, to contemplate. Time is a gift. But it is also necessary in order to develop big ideas and ponder creative solutions to life’s innumerable problems. Where would we be today if Plato or Einstein were slaves to the daily grind, never making time and space to think? For many of us, the challenge is to allow ourselves this time, not as a mere indulgence but rather a vital ingredient for a life well lived. At St. John’s, we take time to think but also to connect with one another, to address questions and figure out new systems together. With another academic year underway, the college’s two campuses are alive with new and returning faces. Upperclassmen welcome the influx of freshmen, lending guidance and support—from crash courses in waltz to assistance with ancient Greek—to their fellow Johnnies. By now I have witnessed such scenes countless times. Once in a while it makes me recall my own undergraduate years, now decades behind in the rear view, and causes me to smile. After all, St. John’s is a place where we look back in order to move forward. Gregory Shook, editor THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2016 1 �FALL 2016 VOLUME 41, ISSUE 2 “� ime is a weaving and unweaving; T it makes and unmakes beings and relations.” —Michael Grenke, tutor FEATUR E S P A G E 1 8�� P A G E 2 2�� PA G E 2 8 PENELOPE’S CHOICE WONDROUS BREAD MAKERS WEAVING A SOCIAL FABRIC Placed on the clock by her suitors, the Odyssey’s creative problem-solver manipulates time in order to defend her marriage, but what is she defending? With a neighborhood business of their own—making baked goods from scratch—this enterprising Johnnie couple are part of the mom-and-pop revival. To create a self-sustaining community of independent, progressive workers requires a skill set rooted in interaction, innovation, and collaboration. ON THE COVER: Penelope illustration by Thomas Ehretsmann 2 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FA L L 2 016 �D E PAR T ME N T S ��FROM THE BELL TOWERS BIBLIOFILE FOR & ABOUT ALUMNI 4 � Bienvenue en France Study Abroad 32 �athryn Kramer looks back on her K upbringing steeped in the great books in Missing History. 34 �JCAA News S 6 Lasting Legacies 7 � A Spruce for McDowell 8 � Than a Game More Croquet 2016 9 Tutors Mark the Occasion 10 Whimsical Worlds 11 �abor of Love L 12 Johnnie Origins 14 Mark Roosevelt Inauguration 33 �ea Wilson (SF08) blurs the lines K between life and art in We Eat Our Own. 36 �lumni Notes A 40 � rofile: Anika Prather (AGI09) P breaks education traditions. 42 �In Memoriam � Natalie Goldberg (SFGI74) shares her essays on life’s vivid moments in The Great Spring. 44 �hilanthropy: Class of 2016 P sets a new record. � Charles Melson (AGI88) provides new analysis of the Western experience in coping with “small wars” in Kleinkrieg. 46 � Johnnie Voices: Alumni weigh in on an icon. 45 � irst Person: Sawyer Neale (A18) F JOHNNIE TRADITIONS 48 �t. John’s Forever S EIDOS 49 Jennifer Chenoweth (SF95) ABOVE: Spiffy socks at the 34th annual Annapolis Cup THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2016 3 �From the BELL TOWERS AIX-EN-PROVENCE Bienvenue en France New Study Abroad Enriches Our Learning SUSAN STICKNEY This January, as 20 second-semester juniors unpack, they will arrange Moliere and Racine upon shelves in Aix-en-Provence family homes. For 16 weeks, like lodgers, 10 Johnnies from each campus will enjoy breakfasts and dinners prepared by their respective French hosts. The classrooms of their program—The Institute for American Universities, or IAU College—lie along the cobblestone streets of historic downtown Aix, less than an hour north of Marseille, near Avignon and Arles. Lab equipment necessary for duplicating experiments by Faraday and Maxwell is provided. “We’ll do the program in full, the same program the juniors do on both campuses,” says Santa Fe tutor Judith Adam. Since February, she has called herself the Tutor for Study Abroad. As one of four faculty members going to Aix, Adam hoped to be practicing her French this summer. Yet after Santa Fe Dean Matt Davis assigned the task of writing the study abroad proposal, and the board agreed to go ahead in 2017, she found herself in charge with “less than one year to get the program off the ground.” In Aix, Adam looks forward to Annapolis and Santa Fe students “coming together in one place,” mixed in one seminar and two sets of tutorials. According to its website (IAUFrance.org), IAU College, founded in 1957, hosts an array of students from more than 200 colleges and universities across the United States. Throughout the year, thousands of young scholars live with families and study in classrooms in the medieval center of town. A half-hour stroll along a country road leads to the Marchutz School of Fine Arts, part of the IAU program since 1976. Here towers Montagne Sainte-Victoire, a limestone ridge more than 3,000 feet high that sprawls across 11 miles. It inspired 60-plus paintings by Cézanne. Last April, Adam and Annapolis tutor Brendan Boyle introduced the study abroad program. Approximately 50 students attended teleconference information sessions, and then filled out applications that included essays. Due to limited space during this pilot year, students were selected through a lottery. “Judith has the most difficult task,” says Boyle, who was asked by former dean Pamela Kraus to administer from Annapolis. “Creating a community of learning no different from the ones we have thousands of miles away involves logistical, practical challenges that Judith is spending a lot of time negotiating. Her efforts have been Herculean.” Directed by the deans and the Instruction Committee, Adam hammers out the minutiae of program-related issues such as adequate study space, setting up a lab from scratch, and making sure blackboards are in classrooms. “It would be chaos,” Adam says, without the assistance of Amy Weber from Santa Fe’s 4 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FA L L 2 016 admissions office, an international education professional who has guided students from various institutions since 2005. After Weber was named assistant director for off-campus studies, she organized non-academic details including visa applications, insurance, plane tickets, and other items to ensure that students and faculty will be adequately prepared. Although maintaining the integrity of the academic program and ensuring the safety and well-being of participants are top priorities, another focus is financial accessibility. Johnnies in Aix will have the same financial aid they normally receive, although workstudy opportunities will be limited, at best. A freshman who usually supplements income via work-study “could anticipate needing to save a little money for second semester junior year,” suggests Adam. Study abroad is a whole-college program, and Adam is disappointed that faculty recruitment this first year—a casualty of time and scheduling pressures—exclusively represents Santa Fe. St. John’s has always encouraged individual students, often at their own expense, to go abroad for summer or gap-year programs. “We will only do a program that is financially possible for all or most of our students,” Annapolis tutor Patricia Locke explains. Locke stresses that it will be “our exact program, only in France.” She spent nine months in Aix last year, and now, on sabbatical, plans to live there this fall as a Resident Fellow, sponsored by IAU. Although she will help set up the program, she declined the offer to join the first faculty group because she has been in Europe all year. Accompanying Adam will be tutors John Cornell, Patricia Greer, and Jay Smith, none of whom will be teaching full-time. In partnership with IAU student services, they will act together as assistant deans. Both Adam and Locke tell how the longstanding friendship between St. John’s and Marchutz makes IAU a natural fit for this program. Individual St. John’s students and faculty have studied fine arts at Marchutz for many years. Two summers ago, Santa Fe tutor Susan Stickney brought six Santa Fe and two �Annapolis Johnnies to Marchutz’s six-week program; this past summer Annapolis tutor Sarah Stickney did the same with a smaller crew. Decades ago, the late Santa Fe tutor Dean Haggard led a seminar at Marchutz on the Meno. Adam brags that “IAU has been interested in St. John’s because they see how good our students are. They’re stars in Marchutz.” Depending on how the Aix experiment goes, Locke foresees the possibility of a second program in Greece. The original idea, she says, was that Annapolis faculty and staff would organize a program in Greece, while Santa Fe focused in France. “I, with Nick Maistrellis, was investigating the possibility of a sophomore semester in Greece.” Dean Davis, in Aix for several days last January and February, was able to work out many details quickly, and they proceeded in that direction, “starting small, to get the kinks out,” says Locke. If a Greece program was initiated, ideally, “the students could choose between France and Greece,” Locke says. “IAU is very knowledgeable about St. John’s,” Davis explains. “In fact, the Marchutz school is modeled around us. Their biggest class of the week is a five-hour, or longer, seminar on Fridays in which they are looking at paintings and talking about them.” He is confident that at IAU, “They know us. They know what we need. They’re not going to interfere. They’re not going to try to make us take their classes.” Johnnies in Aix will have classes in spoken French available, but not mandatory. “They know our program is very rigorous and OPPOSITE PAGE: Place d’Albertas in Aix. TOP: Students view Delacroix’s painting, Entry of the Crusaders in Constantinople, at the Musée du Louvre on a Marchutz museum field study. BOTTOM: Johnnies enjoy one of the many open-air cafés in Aix. SUSAN STICKNEY —Annapolis Dean Joseph Macfarland CHARLEY UMBARGER “� ur learning is not entirely O nested within words, written and spoken; we are thinking about how we are placed in the world and how we act in it.” takes a lot of time.” Davis praises the homestay aspect because “it will give the students a deeper sense of what it’s like to live abroad.” His decision to put Adam in charge was easy. “Judith seemed like a very good choice. Not only had she been to Aix, but she’s well versed in French, speaking and reading it well.” When it comes to security, both the IAU website and Davis do not mince words. Davis says he will monitor the situation in Europe. Speaking for both deans, he insists, “Our job is the welfare of our students. We would never put students in danger.” Before launching this project, faculty engaged in considerable discussion and debate. One concern, writes Annapolis Dean Joe Macfarland, is that “Many study abroad programs are deeply unserious; they are quasieducational vacations.” He adds, “I have come to think that study abroad is not essential to liberal education, but still a beneficial addition to it.” Macfarland describes how, “In the laboratories, we spend a good deal of time looking at phenomena, trying to see the world before us with fresh eyes, letting what appears shake our preconceptions, and then giving a fresh account to ourselves in words. Our learning is not entirely nested within words, written and spoken; we are thinking about how we are placed in the world and how we act in it.” He concludes, “I think study abroad provides opportunities to supplement and enrich our discursive learning.” —Robin Weiss (SFGI90) THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2016 5 �F R OM T H E B E L L T OW E R S SERVICE TO SJC Lasting Legacies With nearly 50 combined years of service, Barbara Goyette (A73) and Victoria Mora, both of whom retired from the college in summer, left legacies marked by affection for St. John’s. Mora, who served more than two decades as a tutor, dean, vice president for Advancement, and senior vice president for Development and Alumni Relations in Santa Fe, joined United World College-USA as the fifth president of Victoria Mora the school’s U.S. campus, located in Montezuma, New Mexico. At St. John’s, Mora’s talents and passion for academic and institutional leadership, as well as her admiration for the Program, informed all aspects of her work. With vision and skill, she cultivated deep philanthropic relationships and managed a wide range of fundraising efforts, TA L K O F T H E T O W E R S In Annapolis, two new tutors have joined the faculty. Rahul Chaudhri comes to the college from Stanford University, where he received his PhD in philosophy and taught in the university’s Thinking Matters program. Andrew Joseph Romiti (A07) returns to the college from the Catholic University of America where he is expected to receive his PhD in philosophy. In Santa Fe, two new tutors have joined the faculty. Ian Moore comes to the college from DePaul University, where he is working on completing his PhD in philosophy. Nicholas Starr (SF02) returns to St. John’s from Boston College, where he received his PhD in political science. On each campus, there is a new dean, associate dean, and four additions/changes to the including a successful campaign in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Santa Fe campus. “The reason I fell in love with this place was the dynamic nature of the classroom,” Mora noted. “Ideas matter here and learning isn’t just a buzzword. People weren’t just taking classes— they were exploring ideas that mattered to them in a spirit of intellectual friendship.” Goyette, like Mora, may be best described as a dyedin-the-wool Johnnie. After graduating from St. John’s, the Ohio native studied at Catholic University’s School of Philosophy. She returned to her alma mater in 1994 to serve as the college’s Barbara Goyette (A73) new director of Public Relations and Publications in Annapolis. To this position she brought expertise as a writer and editor with various publications; in 2001 “she took a modest little newspaper called The Reporter, founded and edited by this writer, and transformed it into a beautifully edited magazine, The College, a publication worthy of college’s director-level leadership. In Annapolis, Joe MacFarland is the new dean. Emily Langston is the associate dean for Graduate Programs. John Kane is the new director of Major and Planned Gifts. Robert Mueck is the new director of Public Safety. Leo Pickens (A78) now serves as director of Leadership Annual Gifts. James Reische is the collegewide chief communications officer. He comes to St. John’s from Grinnell College, where he served as vice president for Communications. In Santa Fe, Matthew Davis is the new dean. David McDonald the associate dean for Graduate Programs. Sarah Palacios now serves as college-wide director of Alumni Relations. Maureen Small is the new director of Student Health and Wellness. Edward “Ned” Walpin now serves as college-wide executive director of Enrollment Management. Michael Wismer is the new director of Public Safety. 6 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FA L L 2 016 the college’s name,” writes Rebecca M. Wilson (H83) in a letter to The College. For the past 15 years, Goyette served as vice president for Advancement in Annapolis. Goyette’s and Mora’s efforts reflect their shared dedication to the values of St. John’s and their deep-rooted desire to enrich the life of the college. READER SHARES Golly! It’s remarkable how different people are (and thank God they are!), even among St. John’s fund raisers. Consider Jeff Bishop: outgoing, charismatic, beloved—whose death saddened all of us—and then think about Barbara Goyette. I’m stunned when I do. A quiet, behind-the-scenes, wonkish type, never pushing herself forward, with a Type A personality highly capable of handling the wealth of information at her fingertips, Barbara has worked in unsung ways since 1994 for the better good of the college. During her last 15 years, when she was serving as vice-president of the Annapolis campus, she raised no less than $127 million for St. John’s. It’s an extraordinary record. Not only that, among other things, when Barbara headed the publicity office in Annapolis, she took a small, modest little newspaper called The Reporter, founded and edited by this writer for parents, alumni, and friends, and converted it into a beautifully edited magazine, The College, worthy of St. John’s name. Not incidentally, she has accomplished all this by showing the quality most important to any member of the St. John’s family: complete, personal integrity. As Barbara retires on July 1, I’m tired of quietude. The angels in heaven may flap their wings in applause, but I want earthly sounds: for the bells of McDowell Hall to ring out for her, for the Freshman Chorus to compose an anthem in her honor, for the waves of College Creek to lap more noisily in her praise. I imagine Jeff Bishop hiking himself up in his grave to give an admiring shout-out for this 1973 alumna who, in her retiring way, has played a tremendous role in keeping the college going. All hail, Barbara Goyette! Let the word go out: You’ve shone, Barbara! You’ve left a brilliant record! —� ebecca Wilson (H83), St. John’s director R of News and Information, 1973-88 �IN ANNAPOLIS A Spruce for McDowell It’s where waltz parties swing into the night. Where seniors ring the bell upon completing their essays. Where faculty and students convene for a cup of coffee and good conversation. And where alumni and the community meet for lectures, concerts, and Croquet. McDowell Hall is an architectural jewel and the historic heart of St. John’s College. Built in the 1740s and praised by Thomas Jefferson, the building and the surrounding four acres were gifted to St. John’s by the state of Maryland in 1784. The elegant facility, named for the college’s first president, John McDowell, stands as one of the nation’s oldest academic buildings in continuous use. Formerly a dorm, dining hall, classroom building, and faculty building all in one, McDowell Hall still serves as the academic and social hub of the Annapolis campus. In particular, the Great Hall, with its elegant wrapped balcony, is a popular gathering spot for Johnnies to enjoy music, singing, and dancing. McDowell Hall is poised for major repairs. Last renovated in 1989, the building requires structural work as well as other physical upgrades to ensure that it meets proper standards and accommodates the educational needs of today’s and tomorrow’s Johnnies. The Maryland Independent College and University Association (MICUA) has endorsed a $2.9 million grant—nearly half the $6 million the project requires—which the State of Maryland will decide on next spring. An anonymous donor has issued a 2:1 challenge, with an invitation to alumni and the broader St. John’s community to help complete the project. “Alumni and friends can now leverage their gifts as they support this historic preservation project,” notes Annapolis President Chris Nelson. “It’s important to preserve this living landmark for future generations of Johnnies and the entire Annapolis community.” To make a gift and learn more about opportunities to support the McDowell Hall renovation project, please contact Laurie Reinhardt, vice president of Development and Alumni Relations, at 443-482-6575 or laurie.reinhardt@sjc.edu. The College is published by St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD, and Santa Fe, NM. thecollegemagazine@ sjc.edu Known office of publication: Communications Office St. John’s College 60 College Avenue Annapolis, MD 21401 Periodicals postage paid at Annapolis, MD. Postmaster: Send address changes to The College Magazine, Communications Office, St. John’s College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401. Editor Gregory Shook gregory.shook@sjc.edu Contributors Anna Perleberg Andersen (SF02) Rodjinaé Brown (SF16) Michael Grenke Bob Keyes Leslie Linthicum Jonathan Llovet (A17) Sawyer Neale (A18) Bonnie Scott (A17) Robin Weiss (SFGI90) Babak Zarin (A11) Design Skelton Design Contributing Designer Jennifer Behrens THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2016 7 �F R OM T H E B E L L T OW E R S JOHNNIE TRADITIONS More Than a Game For Johnnies, Croquet is a Tie That Binds “Dreams come true!” Stephanie Hurn (A17) proclaimed amid a cheering crowd of Johnnies and other spectators gathered on the front lawn of the Annapolis campus for the 34th annual Annapolis Cup. Hers was the winning shot that clinched a 3-2 victory for St. John’s— its 27th in the historic croquet rivalry with Navy. Throughout the afternoon on April 16, the Johnnies, sporting denim overalls and straw hats, battled nobly against the Midshipmen in what was one of the tighter matches in recent years. “It was a nerve-wracking game,” says team member Joe Gillespie-Hill (A17) of his own battle for victory. “Close until about three-quarters of the way through.” ABOVE: Surrounded by her teammates, Stephanie Hurn (A17) hugs the Annapolis Cup in near disbelief after making the winning shot. LEFT: No contest: Patrick (A01) and Citlali McDowell, and their son, are the best dressed family at Croquet. ABOVE: Jennifer Shumpert (A15) celebrates with her friend and former teammate Stephanie Hurn (A17). RIGHT: William Knight (A08) dons authentic vintage attire. With a dazzling run of consecutive shots on the court, Hurn was a picture of focused determination. At one point during the match she silenced a group of boisterous fans with just a look and a wave of the hand. “I’ve seen 8 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FA L L 2 016 her run the break before,” says St. John’s Imperial Wicket Noe Jimenez (A16), impressed by Hurn’s prowess with a croquet mallet. “She knocked it out of the park. I’m so proud of my teammates. It was an incredible team effort.” Suffice to say, a special bond exists among Johnnie croquet team members. At this year’s match, Imperial Wickets and team members from previous decades returned to campus to support their alma mater and check out the new crop of players—and to take mallet in hand once again for a bit of friendly competition. Long after the picnics were packed up and the spectators cleared the lawn, croquet titans past and present gathered for a round of “SJC 9-wicket,” played not for glory but for love of the game. —Gregory Shook �COMMENCEMENT 2016 Tutors Mark the Occasion Per St. John’s tradition, seniors selected members of the SJC community to provide addresses at this year’s commencement ceremonies. In Santa Fe, tutor Eva Brann (H89) took the opportunity to offer a last-minute language tutorial. Addressing the 78 seniors and 19 Graduate Institute students assembled on the Weigle Placita, she thoughtfully yet playfully took to task a well-meaning sentiment: “I want to make a difference. I want to change the world.” Brann looks to Kant—arguably one of the more challenging Program authors—to analyze these words and get to the heart of their true meaning. “He thinks that doing right is not doing what you want but what you ought, and that, in fact, the only proof of your doing as you ought is that it hurts some, that your mere wanting is thwarted.” A mentor as well as a tutor, Brann is a model for the “examined life” that a St. John’s education encourages. During her address, she reflected on the tutor-student dynamic at the college. “You may often have thought that our, the tutors’, intention was to throw you into a permanent muddle,” said Brann. “But, of course, the opposite was our hope: It was that you would find in your reading the elements of your own firm view of what is good universally and therefore what is better in particular.” Seniors in Annapolis also selected a beloved member of the faculty, Thomas May, to offer words to mark the momentous event. “Mr. May has many of the qualities that I look for in a tutor: generosity, thoughtfulness, knowledge, experience, and a sense of humor,” says Max Dakin (A16). In addition to leading seminars and language tutorials, May has served as director of the Freshman Chorus, skillfully introducing the college’s love of music to its newest members. Addressing the 85 seniors and 15 Graduate Institute graduates gathered on the campus front lawn, May requested a moment of reflection: “Think back to when you first came here. The convocation, then the gathering afterwards, meeting the president, dean, tutors, and community; then off to your first class, assigned book in hand dutifully read, you picked your seat and waited for the opening “� ou may often have thought that our, Y the tutors’, intention was to throw you into a permanent muddle. But, of course, the opposite was our hope: It was that you would find in your reading the elements of your own firm view of what is good universally and therefore what is better in particular.” —Eva Brann (H89) question. Do you still remember what it was? How much can you recall of the discussion that followed?” Befitting the occasion, May concluded with words from a poem by Wendell Berry: “May you always have the hindsight to know where you’ve been, the foresight to know where you’re going, and the insight to realize what you don’t know and when you’ve gone too far! May you never forget the friends you’ve made here and all that has been good in this adventurous endeavor.” THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2016 9 �F R OM T H E B E L L T OW E R S H I D D E N TA L E N T Whimsical Worlds Sarah Benson Brings Paper to Life Annapolis tutor Sarah Benson made what she describes as her “first paper automaton” at age 8. While attending the Strawberry Hill day camp on Nittany Mountain near Centre Hall, Pennsylvania, she created a figure on paper—a strongman with stripy socks—meant to come to life when cut out and played with. Known as Hampelmann in German-speaking countries, or jumping-jack, at the tug of a string his arms and legs begin to move. “He was an automaton to me, though he didn’t move by himself, because he nevertheless seemed to,” says Benson. “The delight comes from our participating in the illusion.” Benson’s creative and whimsical bent only grew with time, taking many different forms. While in her teens, Benson wished to become a clockmaker. Her parents gave her a kit called “Make Your Own Working Paper Clock,” and she again gave life to paper, which now ticked and tocked. When Benson later began to explore philosophy she discovered that “the two paths seemed nearly interchangeable at the time. Either seemed an occasion to explore “� dilemma of the tourist A who knew Rome so well already was to find the topographic city as interesting as the paper one.” Sarah Benson’s first paper automaton moves with the help of a string. 10 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 016 Benson’s “MIDDLEMARCH PAPER THEATER” is modeled on the 18th-century paper theaters of Martin Engelbrecht. In the background is a peep-show birthday card for her husband, with a silhouette of their baby girl inside. questions of what makes a thing alive, what constitutes the mind.” She found the historical narrative of paper worlds just as enchanting as her own experience with them. As an art historian, Benson has had the opportunity to gaze back through time, making whole cities—now only knowable through the trails of artifacts and documents they left behind—folded into the three-dimensional world of her mind, breathe once more. Pop-up paper theaters became common entertainment in the 1700s, a century before George Eliot wrote her novel Middlemarch. There is a scene in the book in which Dorothea, the main character, travels to Rome with her husband. Benson explains that before Dorothea laid foot in Rome, she had probably known it as a paper city—the streets, piazzas, monuments, and ruins all laid out in printed views, which onlookers who had never set foot in the city itself could explore, both with their eyes as well as their imaginations. “A dilemma of the tourist who knew Rome so well already was to find the topographic city as interesting as the paper one,” says Benson, who created her own paper theater with Dorothea in the center of the stage, her second husband-to-be off to the �side, his gaze askew. Benson’s theater allows readers to put Dorothea back into paper Rome and imagine how the character is affected by sites she never visits in the novel. Benson’s interest extends into old optical devices made to enhance the experience of paper worlds by exaggerating them to the eye. One such device is the zograscope, which belongs to the lineage of optical entertainments that seek to immerse the viewer in the scene, along with cinema, 3D photography, and virtual reality. Printed views with exaggerated perspectives called vues d’optiques were sold to be seen through the zograscope. “I knew about zograscopes from my research into printed views of Rome,” says Benson. “But I’d never seen one in person before noticing one among the collections of historical scientific instruments in Mellon Hall. I don’t think anyone knew what it was. Thanks to the Paca House Museum in Annapolis, which lent us two of their vues d’optiques, I got to try it out with the students. It was a lot of fun.” great books. On Saturday mornings, one of them brings a translation of one Stephanus page, which they discuss after they “schmooze, chew the fat and gossip.” (“Stephanus page” refers to the pagination of a 16th-century edition of Plato’s works, used for standard reference.) Moving one page per week maintains a manageable pace, and it also has a greater benefit. Each of them preserves anonymity and the unity of the translation, since no one gets special rights to a section or speech. When I asked about it, Mr. Salem said they have no idea who originally prepared each section. They work as amateurs—lovers—of Plato’s dialogues and of our own. In this spirit, they work as readers, for readers, in dialectic cooperation to produce a translation to engage with. Ms. Brann said, “Some classicists may find it outrageous, but if they spend some time with it, they might even learn something.” That said, the translators had hot feet putting Plato’s dialogue into English. As Mr. Kalkavage explained, when we discuss a play, such as Hamlet, we can juggle various readings of —Bonnie Scott (A17) So, how’s the fruit? Edifying, delicious. Their work fits the dialogue’s theme: the translation fills the reader with Eros, inspiring her to press further in inquiry. Ms. Brann, Mr. Kalkavage, and Mr. Salem showcase the dialogue’s saucy seriousness, tracing shifts in register and style. One hears the poetic eloquence of Agathon, the unwittingly funny formality of Eryximachus, Socrates’s ironical wit. There are benefits to making English more like Greek when writing a translation, but this trio offers a wealth of clever, dynamic English working on its own terms. Sometimes the language is clear and simple; at other times it follows twisting maneuvers of intentionally complex and convoluted speech. Using their translation, Mr. Kalkavage led a GI Preceptorial on Symposium and Phaedrus this summer in Annapolis. One student captured a quality of their translation by asking, “Who is the better guide, the grammarian who produces a reference book, or Shakespeare?” The trio of tutors has found the medium between being informed by the Greek language and by Plato. Where they step away a line at once. An actor on stage, however, has no such luxury. In front of an audience, actors have their feet to the fire and must give a reading to each line they deliver. Like actors, the translators decided in each case on a single delivery.1 What English expression will carry over the colorful threads of flirtation woven into this interaction? How should particles— little words that put theatric gestures on the Greek’s tongue—come across? Their introduction to Symposium says, “Our goal was to devise a translation that was as faithful as possible to the Greek original in vocabulary and syntax, and that captured the playfulness of the interchanges and the varying tone of the formal speeches.” Eva Brann and “the Boys” translate Plato. T U T O R T R A N S L AT I O N S After the students left last spring, Annapolis tutors Eva Brann (H89) and Eric Salem (A77) gathered at fellow tutor Peter Kalkavage’s office, where the trio put finishing touches on their most recent collaboration, a translation of Plato’s dialogue on Love, Symposium or Drinking Party. About 20 years ago, when Ms. Brann was asked by the editor of Focus Press to translate the Sophist, she asked Mr. Kalkavage and Mr. Salem to join her in the project. Since then, these tutors have translated several of Plato’s dialogues: Sophist, Phaedo, Statesman, and now Symposium. With the new translation done, they still had to polish their essays and send drafts to the publisher before summer sessions began. In this in-between time, I spoke with them about the fruit of their labors and the labors themselves. Each member of the trio works on translation projects individually—Italian short stories, French poetry, Greek fragments, works on mathematics, other Plato. But how do they practice, as Mr. Kalkavage called it, the “unart” of translation together? In the same way that everything is practiced at the college: as friends in dialogue with each other and the JENNIFER BEHRENS Labor of Love from a so-called “literal” translation, they step up and are more accurate for it. Symposium or Drinking Party will be published in spring 2017 by Hackett Publishing. The trio of Eva Brann and “the Boys” will begin work shortly on their next translation: Plato’s Philebus. —Jonathan Llovet (A17) 1 To the relief of their feet, they include a glossary that discusses the meanings of important Greek words in Symposium. THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2016 11 �F R OM T H E B E L L T OW E R S ON SOCIAL MEDIA JOHNNIE ORIGINS Facebook was abuzz this summer when Kevin Thomas (A93) posted his story about why he came to St. John’s, inspiring other Johnnies to share their own “origin stories.” Here are just a few excerpts, which have been edited for length and clarity, from the many that were shared: “After my junior year I had an opportunity to go to a summer program [at St. John’s]…I spent one morning in a two-hour seminar with [tutors] John Verdi and Debbie (Renaut) Axelrod, and it felt like the most natural thing in the world. After a few weeks, I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving. I lay awake one night trying to piece it all together. All at once I saw: I could apply early, and not go back to high school! I went to see Eva Brann, who was dean at the time. She looked at me and said, ‘Are you serious?’ Once she saw I was, she sent me to Admissions. I applied in July to come in August. Somehow the financial aid I needed materialized, even so late. Then my parents realized I was serious and made a last ditch attempt to prevent it. But I refused to give in. My dad visited my seminar when I was a freshman and said, ‘You should stay here. I’ve never seen a discussion like that.’ At St. John’s I flourished under the care and attention of my tutors. Among many life-saving things, I learned something crucial for life in general and for intellectual life in particular: how to cope when you don’t understand something.” that I could study exactly the same things at Harvard that I could study at St. John’s, taking Plato, Greek, French, etc., plus I would have the Harvard degree. So I applied and got into Harvard, Yale, and Dartmouth, and attended Harvard. I was in a freshman ‘seminar’ class there where the graduate student teaching the class basically read his dissertation to us. I knew that was not my experience of seminar at St. John’s… I began to realize that my high school counselors had been wrong, and that I could not replicate a SJC experience at Harvard. I found a dorm proctor who had gone to St. John’s College as an undergraduate and asked her what she thought about SJC versus Harvard. I remember her being extremely professional and balanced, explaining, ‘On the one hand Harvard …and on the other hand St. John’s…’ But I could see that every time she spoke about St. John’s her eyes lit up with life and love for the institution. I arranged to visit SJC as a prospective student again just to make sure. After that visit, I knew I had to go to St. John’s [which] I describe as one of the great loves of my life to this day.” MICHAEL STRONG (SF84): JEROME DAUSMAN (AGI11): “I first encountered St. John’s in a pile of college brochures that came in the mail after I took my PSATs. I had scored well and seemed to be getting huge numbers of brochures that all looked the same—smiling students on bright green lawns looking like they were having fun. Then came the St. John’s brochure, with the list of Homer, Plato, etc. It is the only brochure that I read all the way through. I made arrangements to visit at the beginning of my senior year [and] loved it immediately… My high school counselors then began to talk me into applying for the Ivy Leagues, saying “My origin story starts with MIT. I learned how to use the formulas, how to write a paper on the facts, and how to take exams. I also learned how much others had read and was somewhat jealous. I wound up with two degrees and a desire to read anything and everything. Years later when my son was in his first year at St. John’s in Annapolis I decided to do his readings also. Because Herodotus and later Thucydides were so interesting I read them cover to cover, though the freshmen only read half of each. My son finished freshman year in May and I was still ZENA HITZ (A95): 12 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 016 “�..when my son was in his . first year at St. John’s I decided to do his readings also. Because Herodotus and Thucydides were so interesting I read them cover to cover. . .So I followed him to St. John’s, enrolling in the graduate program. Being able to discuss the books with others makes all the difference. My son and I graduated together in 2011.” —Jerome Dausman (AGI11) �“� know that wherever I go I in life and whatever happens to me, I will still have the books in my heart and a cadre of friends pointing the way to the examined life.” —Lauren Cooper (A10) be forever grateful for the college for providing me with such a transformational education. I know that wherever I go in life and whatever happens to me, I will still have the books in my heart and a cadre of friends pointing the way to the examined life.” ELI CASTRO (SF94): reading January assignments! So I followed him to St. John’s, enrolling in the graduate program. Being able to discuss the books with others makes all the difference. My son and I graduated together in 2011.” LAUREN COOPER (A10): “After a bumpy couple of years involving a number of ‘teachable moments,’ I found myself in my dorm at a different school, miserable, bored, and extremely lonely. I was frustrated by the lack of engagement by other students, the lack of support by my professors, and the constraints of having to only take classes in my major (when all I wanted was to learn all kinds of things, not just one thing). I resolved to leave college completely and pursue my life dream of being a goat herder. A few weeks later, I came to my senses, remembered a high school teacher’s recommendations, and started looking at the websites of various small colleges. At that point, SJC struck me as the only place I could go and experience freedom from the constraints of majors…I will “I visited St. John’s in October of my junior year in high school. I’d like to claim more noble motivations, but I was as excited for the chance to skip out on a few days of school, meet college girls, and see Santa Fe as I was to investigate the curriculum. Within a few days, I couldn’t imagine myself anywhere else. The conversations I was part of there—particularly one in the coffee shop, after seminar—changed my entire perspective on what a conversation could be. When I got home, I sat down with my dad over ice cream and explained that there was no way I was waiting through another year of high school to do this. I contacted the Grand Rapids School Board, arranged to take my GED, completed my application, and headed off that fall to Santa Fe. There are very few decisions I’ve made in my life that I’ve been more certain were the right one.” CHRISTOPHER HADLEY (A92): “I went to St. John’s because of close friends of my family who were alumni. They were creative, thoughtful, and integrated in the way I wanted to be. It was a great decision, to go to St. John’s—Santa Fe first, then Annapolis. I’m still relishing ongoing conversations with books and authors from the Program. I have never stopped reading the Great Books. And I still love my living and breathing friends that I met there, too!” Do you have an “origin story” that you would like to share with The College? If so, please send it to thecollegemagazine@sjc.edu. AHHH, REFRESHING! Have you heard the news? St. John’s recently launched a refreshed version of its website, www.sjc.edu. Incorporating extensive input from alumni, faculty, staff, and students, the newly enhanced design is meant to better feature the Program and show the world the St. John’s we know and love. If you haven’t done so already, take a moment to peruse the website—and be sure to follow St. John’s on Facebook and Twitter. THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2016 13 �F R OM T H E B E L L T OW E R S I N A U G U R AT I O N St. John’s Welcomes Santa Fe’s Seventh President “There’s a fear of pomposity,” Mark Roosevelt said in the week leading up to his inauguration as the seventh president of St. John’s College in Santa Fe. Those fears were put to rest September 16 and 17, in an inauguration weekend that included barbecue and beer from the Cowgirl Hall of Fame, a Dixieland jazz band, film showings, and an American Indian hoop dancer who had the crowd on its feet. Roosevelt did his part to reduce pomposity by pairing his academic robes with blue-soled sneakers for the ceremony. As the event was timed to coincide with Santa Fe’s homecoming weekend, these spirited aspects of the program were meshed with more familiar traditions, including the procession of faculty in academic regalia, and attendance by numerous board members, Alumni Association leaders, and alumni. The inauguration also included warm welcomes to Roosevelt from Annapolis President Chris Nelson (SF70) on behalf of the Annapolis campus, Santa Fe Dean Matthew Davis (A82) on behalf of the Santa Fe staff, and from Audrey Morf (SF17) on behalf of students. Greg Avis, Roosevelt’s friend and a former board member at Antioch College, where Roosevelt was previously president, introduced St. [The St. John’s education] “changes people who can go on and change the world. Please know this . . . my commitment to preserving this education and celebrating its impact is unwavering.” —Mark Roosevelt John’s new college-wide leader, praising him for his razor-sharp intelligence. “This is not a ‘job’ for Mark,” Avis said. “It is a calling.” In his own inauguration address, Roosevelt spoke of the importance of the St. John’s education: “It changes people who can go on and change the world,” he said. And he spoke to the challenges faced by our unique small college. “Please know this,” Roosevelt said. “My commitment to preserving this education and CLOCKWISE FROM BOTTOM LEFT: Live jazz fills the air. A hoop dancer delights the crowd. President Roosevelt stresses the value of St. John’s. Bernstein mentors students. Kimmelman and Bernstein tickle the ivories. FOLLOWING PAGE: Dixieland sounds ring in the festivities. celebrating its impact is unwavering.” Nelson affirmed this statement, saying that Roosevelt “treasures the St. John’s Program, the quality of community life on both campuses, and the dedication of the faculty and staff to the preservation and sustenance of the college and its program of study.” Briana Saussy (A03, EC05), a member of the college’s Alumni Association, says she has already seen Roosevelt’s devotion to the St. John’s mission and his ability to work through the tensions and concerns about the consolidation of two campuses under one president. “My personal impression,” she says, “is that Mark is very much the right person to steer the college at this point in time.” —Leslie Linthicum 14 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 016 �WORLD-CLASS MUSICAL ACCOMPANIMENT Pianist, composer and teacher Seymour Bernstein, at 89, is having something of a moment. After retiring from an international performing career at age 50, Bernstein turned to teaching and writing, laboring in partial obscurity until 2014, when actor and director Ethan Hawke met him at a dinner party and made him the subject of his documentary film, Seymour: An Introduction. Since then, Bernstein has found a new audience among piano students, music lovers, and a general audience who recognize him as a mensch and a mentor: a sage, as much as a musician. St. John’s President Mark Roosevelt and his wife, Dorothy, had never heard of Bernstein when they watched Seymour: An Introduction on Netflix earlier this year. It was just as the planning had begun for Roosevelt’s September 2016 inauguration. “We just loved it,” Roosevelt said. “I realized that much of what is represented in the film is central to what St. John’s is about: The willingness to cast aside societal and cultural expectations, the value placed on teaching, and the passing on of things.” Roosevelt invited Bernstein, along with one of his piano students, New York Times art and architecture critic Michael Kimmelman (who has studied with Bernstein since the age of 5) to be featured guests at the inauguration. On the Thursday night before Roosevelt’s installation, the college hosted a free showing of the film at Santa Fe’s Lensic Performing Arts Center, followed by a conversation and Q&A with the star of the film himself. And “star” turns out to be an apt descriptor: Bernstein related to the assembly of alumni, board members, and friends of the college how, on a trip to Korea after the film debuted, he was mobbed and followed by camera crews. “Now,” he said in an interview, “I know what a rock star feels like.” At Friday’s inauguration, held in the Winiarski Student Center on the Santa Fe campus, Bernstein and Kimmelman charmed the audience with a shoulder-to-shoulder performance of Franz Schubert’s Fantasie in F Minor (Bernstein calls it “a symphony for four hands”). After the ceremony they were joined by tutor Sarah Davis for a wideranging and very personal panel discussion about success, ego, and the connection between work and meaning, with Bernstein suggesting that everyone look in the mirror and say, “I love you.” Bernstein also devoted several hours to mentoring student musicians in one of his legendary public master classes before a live audience: St. John’s student Evan A. Quarles (SF17) and two New Mexico high school students, Presley Gao of Los Alamos and Leah Epstein of Taos, selected via a statewide video audition sponsored by St. John’s. Bernstein has compared the profound effects of music to profound aspects of life. Life, he says, has harmonies and dissonances and resolutions, just as music does. “Musicians become philosophers,” he says. “I believe you won’t enjoy that resolution if you don’t have that dissonance. We’re searching for the truth of that B Flat.” —Leslie Linthicum THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2016 15 �16 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 016 �THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2016 17 �PENELOPE’S CHOICE �TUTOR VIEW T by Michael Grenke HE ODYSSEY’S PENELOPE IS A THINKER , a person who is effective in facing her world and its problems by thinking her way out of them. She is, perhaps, even more of a thinker than her much-devising husband, as he is still, occasionally, given to “solving” his problems with brute force. It is in Penelope that Homer more purely explores the possibilities and limitations of Odyssean cleverness. The emblem of Penelope’s cleverness is the device by which she tricks her suitors for three years, her weaving. She uses the weaving to buy herself time, but the weaving is itself an image of time. Time is a weaving and unweaving; it makes and unmakes beings and relations. In her deception, Penelope gives the impression time has no consequence. She knits and knits (and unknits), but nothing seems to change. But it is the changes that accompany or constitute time that make time a matter of consequence for human beings. And understood thus, time poses a great difficulty that attends and deforms the kind of thinking in which Penelope engages. Bourdelle, Emile-Antoine (1861-1929). Penelope, 1909. Cast bronze, dark green patina. 47 ¹ 8 × 17 / × 14 ¾ in. (119.7 × 43.8 × 37.5 cm). AP 1969.03. Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas/Art Resource, NY THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2016 19 �TUTOR VIEW I n the so-called digression of the Theaetetus (172d), Socrates sketches an extreme image of the upbringing of a philosophic human being. There the philosophic human being is brought up in isolated innocence. They are not exposed to or involved in any of the daily concerns of the political or legal system. These human beings, alone, says Socrates, are free. Every other human being, says Socrates, is a slave. More literally they are slaves to time. And expressed in more Greek fashion, they are slaves to the water clock. All of their actions and their thinking, all of their problem solving, is on a timer. To be free one must be able to do what one wants. But in order to be able to do what one wants in the fullest sense, one must know what one is doing. Only those who are not concerned with the matters of the day, the week, the year are free to think about a problem for as long as the problem deserves. Only a thinker who is at leisure thinks about a problem with no limitations other than those that define sound thinking itself. Only such a thinker can delay their con- Although Penelope is not wholly opposed to coming to some kind of arrangement with the suitors, she tries to delay them. She tries to put herself in a situation where there is more time to think more fully and on more sufficient grounds. clusion until the thinking itself merits a conclusion.1 All others are under the pressure of some deadline, the pressing down of the flowing water of time. This pressure distorts their thinking in one way or another. It makes them proclaim a finish to the thinking when more thinking is needed. It makes them proclaim a matter finished when more argument or more evidence is needed. This pressure leads to bad thinking, and according to Socrates it makes human beings “become small and not upright in their souls.” Human beings become slaves to the clock mostly because other human beings put them on the clock. In one of his notebooks from 1882, Nietzsche writes “Madness is rare with individuals – but with groups, parties, peoples, times it is the rule.” The word for madness here is Irrsinn,2 literally erroneous think- 20 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 016 ing, or more loosely bad thinking. What Nietzsche seems to have in mind is that our intercourse with other human beings pressures us to adopt illegitimate modes of thinking. We must agree or, more accurately, pretend to agree about many matters regardless of whether we have the resources and have utilized those resources to come to a well-founded conclusion. Human beings do not feel secure in the proximity of other human beings who do not agree with them. Such agreements are demanded by social life, and they are demanded on a time table determined by the feelings of the human beings, not by the epistemological requirements of the matter under consideration. Who is comfortable with a neighbor who does not respect property rights, or does not endorse the prohibition against cannibalism, or who openly admits that they do not know what justice is? In general, who is comfortable living near human beings who do not hold a massive host of opinions shared in rough outline by the whole group? It is bad thinking to declare a matter resolved before it is resolved. It is a mental defect to think one knows what one does not know. Yet it seems that social life pushes our thinking into this premature and self-deceiving form. Not only that, the matters that society demands we resolve are matters that move our passions deeply. Thus we see exhibitions of great anger and agitation in our efforts to govern ourselves. Governing demands results. Results are not answers. The clearest thing is that strength of the passions is out of proportion with the fullness and soundness of the thinking that backs our claims. We very often do not know, but when another human being disagrees with us, we act as if we do know and as if they ought to know. We would never demand that a human being give a solution to an equation before they had actually worked it out, but in many matters of much greater concern to us we demand something like that from our fellow human beings. We put them on the clock. We impress upon them habits of bad thinking. And we invest the situation with great passion and grave consequences. Her suitors have put Penelope on the clock. They are aggressive and avaricious. They are perhaps reversions to the piratical character of the early Greeks. They are perhaps the result of a generation of young Greek men who have come up, thanks to the war, without the benefit of the guidance of the previous generation. They are perhaps just a flaring up of unfiltered human nature, opportunistic predators that see something desirable (authority in Ithaka, wealth, a beautiful woman) undefended �and are not sufficiently inhibited by conventions that have no force to back them up. It is unsafe not to come to some kind of agreement with such suitors. Although Penelope is not wholly opposed to coming to some kind of arrangement with the suitors, she tries to delay them. She tries to put herself in a situation where there is more time to think more fully and on more sufficient grounds. She tries to defend her marriage, but what is she defending? The fate of her husband is unknown. No contact for nearly 20 years. What have they shared? What have they done together? Nothing. Each has been married to the other separately. Because of their separation their marriage is devoid of change, it is time defying and thus is allied to the leisurely realm of purer thinking. But it is not just their special circumstances that makes this so. Their marriage is meant to be once and for all. Perhaps most marriages are meant to be time defying. Odysseus embraced this thought when he built his immovable bed. However such a marriage is not aiming at the kind of unchanging character that belongs to undying beings. When Odysseus defends his marriage, he does so against the offer of marriage to a goddess. Immortality comes with this offer. But when Homer gives us a glimpse of Odysseus reasoning about Calypso’s offer it is clear he is measuring marriage to the goddess against his existing marriage to the mortal Penelope. This attempt to have something lasting and stable, but still transient and mortal may offer some form of compromise with the pressure that time exerts on our thinking. For it is not just the suitors that put Penelope on the clock. It is her mortality also. Loyalty to a person can lose its substance if that person no longer exists. And her Odysseus may be dead or so changed as to no longer be hers. Even if this is not the case, there is a cost to loyalty. Even when her Odysseus has returned, Penelope laments that the gods did not allow them to enjoy their youth together (XXIII, 211). One sees this cost even more clearly in the touching scene with Odysseus’s dog Argos. The dog was bred by Odysseus, and he is its master; it has clung to life loyally, it has waited 20 years to die only when its master returns. But they have not shared life with one another. How much better off Penelope is may just be a fortunate accident of her span of life. Penelope’s marriage is a thought, and not a thought fully founded upon adequate thinking and evidence. She has chosen to remain loyal to this thought even though aware of its inadequate founding. We can see this in the way that she comes to recognize that her Odysseus has returned. It is unlike the other recognition scenes. A distinctive scar may be enough to mark an individual as singular, or performance of a feat that only he can do may be enough. But this is not how Penelope recognizes that her Odysseus has come back. When she pretends to order that their immovable marriage bed be moved, Odysseus responds with strong anger. It is his emotional response, not his knowledge of the details of a material secret, that convinces Penelope that her Odysseus is back. The marriage of these two, impressive and inspiring as it is, exists primarily in the realm of thought and feeling. And thus it is fragile; if Odysseus had not returned when he did, waiting for his return would not have been the best choice.3 But the fragility of such a marriage does not mean the marriage is not a real thing. We can and do live substantially within our thoughts. Since this is our situation, we should take as much care as we can regarding the quality of our thinking. This is why sabbaticals are so important to those who wish to live the life of a learner. They are not vacations. They are times designed to approximate as much as possible the leisure that allows a thinking being to think according to the criteria of thinking alone. 1� Compare Beyond Good and Evil 156 where Nietzsche makes a similar claim. There he uses the word Wahnsinn. 2� Among other things, it would likely have cost Telemachus his life. 3� ABOVE: Penelope at her loom, miniature, circa 1505, From the manuscipt Lives of Famous Women by Antoine Dufour. Musee Dobree. © DeA Picture Library/Art Resource, NY THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2016 21 �22 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 016 �INDUSTRIOUS ALUMS Young entrepreneurs create an old-school business from scratch BY GREGORY SHOOK With the rise in popularity of glutenfree diets and increased public interest in lowering carbohydrate consumption, bread has taken it on the chin lately. Flying in the face of these culinary trends, Chris Simmons (A97) and Lucy Montgomery (A98) opened a small business making freshbaked bread, cookies, pastries, and other delectable treats from scratch. The shop was a hit from the start. PHOTOGRAPHY: SARAH CULVER (AGI11) THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2016 23 �Previous page: Chris Simmons (A97) and Lucy Montgomery (A98) share a family moment with their two daughters in their shop’s kitchen. Above: Bakers & Co. serves authentic treats with a neighborhood feel. Right: Chris Simmons (A97) starts his day of baking at 3 a.m. T he married couple runs Bakers & Co., a European-style café perched on a bustling corner in the heart of Eastport—Annapolis’ quirky neighbor across Spa Creek. Simmons says the secret to great bread boils down to three simple ingredients: water, flour, salt. What about yeast? “For some crazy reason, I insist on making most of my sourdough bread naturally, so not adding commercial or instant yeast, which adds a whole other layer of planning,” says Simmons. “I have to make decisions two days in advance to have my starter ready to go when I need it.” Simmons and Montgomery are both selftaught, so they’ve had to figure out the art of baking largely on their own. “Sometimes you take the longer way to learn something and, at times, be a little too rigorous. But in the long run you learn it far more profoundly,” says Montgomery. “I’m 24 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 016 constantly on a learning curve,” adds Simmons. “It takes several days to figure out a mistake.” The couple insists on high standards, even if it requires more time and effort. “Taking shortcuts in baking is reflected in the quality of the food,” says Montgomery. “You taste it.” “We’re tough critics,” adds Simmons. “When we try to learn something, we’re not happy with it until we’re really happy with it.” A few years into baking, the couple took a busman’s holiday to Norwich, Vermont, for an intensive week-long class at the King Arthur Flour Company, a veritable mecca for bakers and bread lovers. It wasn’t until later, though, that Simmons realized his classic French breads instructor was “one of the most serious bread makers in the country.” While Simmons and Montgomery are celebrating the shop’s four-year anniversary this Thanksgiving, their story actually begins nearly a decade ago, when Montgomery decided on a whim to try her hand at �“� ometimes you take the longer way to S learn something and, at times, be a little too rigorous. But in the long run you learn it far more profoundly.” —Lucy Montgomery (A98) making bread at home. She found her calling. A few weeks later, Montgomery traveled to England to visit a sick relative. While there, her aunt took her out to dinner at a London restaurant known for its bread. At the time Montgomery and Simmons were at a crossroads: she was exploring business school, and Simmons, who learned about running a small business through his years working at the old Smoke Shop in Annapolis, was considering a shift to architecture. During dinner with her aunt, Montgomery, eager to sample the restaurant’s much-lauded bread, discovered that she actually preferred her own homemade creations. Sensing her niece’s newfound enthusiasm for baking, Montgomery’s aunt urged her to forget about business school and start a business. Her advice paid off. With just their hands and a few basic tools, Simmons and Montgomery began baking bread free-form at their Eastport home, usually two loaves at a time, experimenting with different types and sharing it with friends. The couple then lucked into a spot at a local farmer’s market. “The timing was perfect,” says Simmons. “I don’t know how that happened. There’s a threeyear waiting list.” On their first day at the market, they arrived with a card table, a tablecloth, 17 loaves of bread, and a small basket, not quite sure what to expect. “[The bread] was gone in forty-five minutes,” recalls Simmons, with wide-eyed astonishment. “Then we thought, ‘what have we just done? They’re all going to come back next week.’” THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2016 25 �Fueled by their initial success, the young bakers— who put in many hours of baking and prep time per week on top of their full-time jobs—returned the following week stocked with 22 loaves. Again, they sold it all. With Bakers & Co., Simmons and Montgomery are proud to be part of what she calls “the momand-pop store revival.” Unlike corporate chain stores, Bakers & Co. keeps limited hours and is closed two days a week. However, the work never stops. “I’m busy those two days to get things going, to prepare for the other five days in the week,” says Simmons. “There’s not a day that I’m not there.” The couple is also busy raising their two young daughters. “I’ve got to get home to make supper,” says Montgomery, who also manages the shop’s administrative duties. “That’s what a mom-and-pop is.” Word of mouth helped the business grow and bring in new customers. “Our location is very specifically a neighborhood bake shop, but we get customers from many miles away, from huge distances,” says Montgomery. “It’s kind of a Cheers thing, where you know everyone’s names, and people can talk with one another. People desperately want to belong to a community, and they like the idea of a family bakery. It’s nice to connect with people and have a community. Our shop fits that.” Learn more about the couple’s bakery at www.bakersandco.com. 26 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 016 �The work never stops. “I’m busy those two days to get things going, to prepare for the other five days in the week. There’s not a day that I’m not there.” —Chris Simmons (A97) Lucy Montgomery (A98) sets out an array of freshly baked goods. THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2016 27 �C R E AT I V E T H I N K E R BUILDING COMMUNITY AMONG “BIG-IDEA” THINKERS 28 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 016 BY BOB KEYES �Liz Trice (SF98) says her job involves being a good host. It starts with making sure the coffee is fresh, the bathrooms are clean and the chairs are comfortable. Her greatest skill, she says, is her friendliness. Trice owns and operates PelotonLabs in Portland, Maine, a co-working office space for independent professionals and entrepreneurs. She creates connections among busy people, as well as a comfortable and effective work environment for people whose careers and lifestyles demand independence and flexibility. THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2016 29 �t’s complicated work, highly specialized and intuitive, and involves more than making good coffee and keeping the office clean and comfortable. Trice uses her human relations expertise, strategic planning experience, and problem-solving skills—all rooted in interaction, innovation, and collaboration—to create a self-sustaining community of independent, progressive workers. Her goal is to bring people together to share what they know, help each other grow and “weave a social fabric” that extends beyond the workplace. Her work at PelotonLabs is not unlike the work she does at the nearby community garden that she helps maintain in her neighborhood: she nurtures, nourishes, and encourages. “At Peloton, mostly I just chat with people in the kitchen, introduce people to each other, and connect people with overlapping interests,” says Trice. “My role is community organizer and group facilitator.” Co-working is a relatively new concept, where entrepreneurs, freelancers, consultants, and others who work remotely share work space. There are about a half-million co-workers and more than 7,000 co-working spaces globally, and those numbers are growing. Employment trends suggest that by 2020, up to 40 percent of the U.S. workforce will consist of freelancers, temporary employees, independent contractors, and solo entrepreneurs. At PelotonLabs, members own companies, edit books, and make movies. They are accountants and consultants, marketers and IT experts. Many are telecommuters who want a structured office environment, and about half are self-employed. They’re mostly a young group, mobile and tech-savvy. The average age is 39, and the typical member spends 23 hours in the office each week. Trice opened PelotonLabs six years ago GLENN PICHER – DIRIGO MULTIMEDIA SUCCESS STORY Sofas provide a relaxed atmosphere to share ideas. � E WANT A PLACE W “� WHERE PEOPLE WHO ARE ON THEIR OWN CAN WORK WITH OTHERS, TO GET THE BENEFITS OF BEING IN AN ORGANIZATION WHILE STILL BEING INDEPENDENT.” with a business partner, and has owned the business outright for three years. The name is a cycling term. In races, bicyclists from different teams work together in groups, or pelotons, to move faster. Trice builds community among “big-idea thinkers” so they can progress faster together than alone. “We want a place where people who are on their own can work with others, to get the benefits of being in an organization while still being independent,” she says. PelotonLabs currently has about 80 members, who pay between $100 and $300 30 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 016 a month. The price reflects different levels of membership and service. Trice calls PelotonLabs a clubhouse, where the value of membership involves more than having a comfortable place to work. She arranges professional development gatherings, weekly lunches, happy hours, and “coaching hours,” where members share knowledge of their specialty with others. In other ways, it’s a little like kindergarten. There are daily snack times, where everyone is encouraged to take a break, come together, and share words and food. �ARCHETYPE ARCHITECTS PelotonLabs is the city’s first purpose-built office space. � EXCITING TO BE HAVING IT’S “ THOSE CONVERSATIONS AMONG OTHER PEOPLE HAVING SIMILAR CONVERSATIONS. WE ALL DO INTERESTING THINGS, AND WE CAN ALL HELP EACH OTHER.” There are rooms for napping, and exercise rings hanging from the ceiling, for when people need to stretch their bodies. PelotonLabs consists of two floors in a modern office building, which opens onto Portland’s busiest downtown thoroughfare. The bottom floor is mostly open, with work stations and tables spread across a colorful and airy room. There are conference rooms for meetings and quiet spaces for private phone calls. It’s a bustling place, with multiple conversations happening at once. Some people sit at workstations that face away from the center of the room. Others share tables and sit across from each other on sofas. The space is buzzing with white noise, so recognizable voices are masked. The second floor offers more privacy and quiet spaces—and private rooms for naps. It’s a comfortable space, because it has to be. “I’m competing with people’s homes,” says Trice. Trice doesn’t have an office. She flows throughout the building, and likes conducting meetings on a sofa near the front door, where she can see across the room, into the kitchen and also keep an eye on the conference room. She works with her feet propped on a coffee table, her laptop within reach. Betsy Smith, an independent consultant, works at Peloton one or two days a week, mostly when her kids are home. She likes to spread out her work and encamp for eight or 10 hours with little interruption. But lately, Smith has sought interruptions. She likes to mingle among her co-workers “because I have found it’s a great place to be talking about what we are all doing,” she said. “It’s exciting to be having those conversations among other people having similar conversations. We all do interesting things, and we can all help each other.” She has hired subcontractors through those conversations, and directed co-workers to leads and ideas for new work. Another private consultant, Cristos Lianides-Chin, has been involved with PelotonLabs since fall 2015 when he moved to Maine. He was drawn “because of the community. I really like the mix of people,” he says. “I needed a desk and office space short term, but I was looking for a community and a long-term relationship.” He’s become an integral member, serving as technologist-in-residence. Trice sees her work at PelotonLabs as a logical trajectory of her life and career. At age 6, she created a filing system with an index card for each classmate. That was the first evidence of what she calls her “thoughtful social inclinations.” Those continued at St. John’s, where the college’s communal approach to education suited her mindset. She did her graduate work at the Muskie School of Public Service at the University of Southern Maine in Portland, where she wrote her master’s thesis about the residential needs of single people. Now in business, she serves the needs of remote workers, the self-employed, and emerging entrepreneurs. The thread, she says, is connecting people, providing companionship, and sharing resources to improve their lives. THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2016 31 �BIBLIOFILE KATHRYN KRAMER Missing History K “� t’s hard to say what I the signs are, exactly. A certain diffidence. A shared acknowledgement that the truth is always a little more complicated than what anyone is articulating, including ourselves.” athryn Kramer’s new book, Missing History: The Covert Education of a Child of the Great Books (Threshold Way Publishing, 2015), combines heartfelt memoir with candid family history, as well as an examination of the American educational system. Daughter of Clarence “Corky” Kramer, a 1949 graduate of St. John’s who was a tutor at the Annapolis campus and the first dean at the Santa Fe campus, Kathryn Kramer was an “academic child” at the college during the 1950s. In that era, sweetly scented pipe smoke wafted from inside and outside classrooms, and female students first joined their male counterparts to study the Program. “I recognize other academic children. Children of literature and humanities faculties, especially,” Kramer writes in the book’s prologue. “It’s hard to say what the signs are, exactly. A certain diffidence. A shared acknowledgement that the truth is always a little more complicated than what anyone is articulating, including ourselves.” Kramer’s loving yet complicated relationship with her father, his career, and his relationship with the works of Plato, Aristotle, Shakespeare, and Socrates, is an underlying theme of the book. “My father always spoke of them as if he knew them personally.” When she was a young girl, her father’s study on the top floor of their brick row house represented a world of intrigue and mystery that followed her throughout her life. “In the study I never consciously looked at the books, but it seemed to me that I’d always known them and their titles, so it came as a surprise to me one day to realize that I’d never actually read them—these arbiters of Western thought, these bearers of my philosophical and literary heritage.” 32 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 016 As her father grew on in years, he also grew disillusioned by academia. This inspired teacher and scholar of Western thought became isolated and sought alcohol for solace—a point that Kramer delves into deeply and openly. “He was tired of having to watch people ‘reinventing the wheel,’ when the Greeks, just to start with, had already catalogued all the follies of which human nature was capable.” Kramer, who now lives in Vermont and teaches at Middlebury College, looks back unflinchingly at her own academic experiences—the Key School that her father helped to found, high school at the newly established Santa Fe Preparatory School, and then Marlboro College and Johns Hopkins University where she studied writing—seeking clues to find what was missing from those experiences and to better understand the great books and their bearing on her life. “The impetus to look back over my own school years first arose when I began to participate in the long march of the educational system a second time, as a parent,” she writes. During a visit to a school, “I suddenly found myself near tears, remembering all at once, entirely, as if I’d been transported back to them at that very moment, the classrooms with desks arranged in their neat lines, in which you had to sit no matter what, the teacher in front at the blackboard, dispensing knowledge, revealing from on high.” In a letter to Annapolis tutor Eva Brann (H89) following her “reader response” to Missing History, Kramer recalls her childhood, in the ether of St. John’s, as “a privileged upbringing—in a time and atmosphere that won’t come again.” Since then, Kramer became interested in tracing back certain habits of thought and ways of looking at the world. “And I’ve been gratified to find that what I’ve written has struck a nerve not only for children of academics (though maybe especially for them) but other people.” —Gregory Shook �We Eat Our Own By Kea Wilson (SF08) Scribner, 2016 Kea Wilson’s (SF08) debut novel is packed with enough fright to entice the appetites of most horror fans: murder, mayhem, mutilation—and, as the book’s title suggests, cannibals. It’s also compelling storytelling that weaves clear prose with well-thought commentary on violence and its repercussions. Inspired by the gruesome 1980 Italian film, Cannibal Holocaust by director Ruggero Deodato, We Eat Our Own is a thrilling adventure set in South America in the 1970s. The story begins when an unknown, The Great Spring: Writing, Zen, and This Zigzag Life By Natalie Goldberg (SFGI74) Shambhala, 2016 Natalie Goldberg (SFGI74) has dedicated her life to the practice of writing and Zen, both of which have kept her grounded through myriad inner and outer journeys. A beloved writing teacher and author of the best-selling Writing Down the Bones, her new book, The Great Spring, is a collection of 22 short essays on food, family, writing, painting, meditation, travel, love, loss, death, and enlightenment—vivid moments Kleinkrieg By Charles D. Melson (AGI88) Casemate, 2016 In his latest publication, Kleinkrieg: The German Experience with Guerilla Wars, from Clausewitz to Hitler, Charles D. Melson (AGI88) examines German analysis of the nation’s difficult process, from fighting great confrontational battles for which they once prepared to “small wars,” including insurgencies from French-occupied Spain to recurrent problems in the Balkans. Built around the historical analysis titled Kleinkrieg, originally provided to the German High struggling New York actor receives an irresistible offer to star in an art film set deep in the heart of the Amazon rain forest. However, soon after his arrival to the jungle outpost he discovers that all is not right with the production. Worlds collide as the novel intertwines a cast of characters that includes American entrepreneurs, guerilla rebels, effects artists, and the film’s eccentric director, who leads his crew into a disastrous experiment. The actor who hoped for his big break now only hopes for survival. from the past three decades that have awakened her to new ways of being. From her meanderings through the New Mexico desert to a meditative retreat at a monastery in Japan, Goldberg’s stories are deeply personal and imbued with humor, insight, and honesty. Organized by theme—Searching, Wandering, Zigzaging, Losing, Leaping—the book reveals how Goldberg finds fertile ground by embracing her life and being fully attentive to it. Command by Arthur Earhardt in 1935, Melson, former chief historian for the U.S. Marine Corps, provides new analysis and expands our knowledge of the Western experience—primarily that of the United States and the United Kingdom—in coping with insurgencies in recent years. Without partaking in ideological biases, this edited and annotated work examines the purely military complexities as viewed by professionals. Rediscovered and presented in English, these German thoughts on the issue are now made available to a new generation of military and other readers. THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2016 33 �For & About ALUMNI And the Award Goes to… and volunteerism in the alumni community, is among the many highlights of this three-day event. Last year’s ALFie recipients earned awards for bringing together past and present croquet team members for a friendly on-campus match and for the Reunion Class Chairs’ excellent outreach efforts. Charles and Chris Nelson In recognition of his longstanding engagement with the college, Charles Nelson (Class of 1945) received the Lifetime Service Award at the seventh annual Alumni Leadership Forum (ALF) held at the Annapolis campus in June. The “ALFies” award ceremony, which also included Volunteer Service Awards to alumni in recognition of their leadership Organized by the St. John’s College Alumni Association (SJCAA) and college staff, ALF brings together St. John’s alumni and other members of the college community for a weekend of working groups, special workshops, meals, and other activities designed to support and foster deeper alumni engagement with the college. Recent initiatives include the Adopta-School program, workshops on addressing the role and means of alumni philanthropy in the college community, conversations on empowering alumni chapter leaders to offer a wider range of events for chapter members, and discussions to explore ways to develop mentorship relations with current students and fellow alumni. Inspired by Graduate Institute traditions, ALF also offered opportunities for alumni to reconnect during such events as tutorials drawn from the Master of Liberal Arts program readings, a posttutorial gathering, and an open mic-styled event titled “Komos.” The 2017 Alumni Leadership Forum will be held from June 2-4 at the Santa Fe campus, with workshops centered on St. John’s sophomore year studies. For more information, visit sjc.edu/alumni. —Babak Zarin (A11) ADRIAN TREVISAN (A84) Alumni Association Board President “� ’m happy to welcome new I and returning directors to the Board as we continue our efforts to increase alumni engagement. Our alumni survey showed that while most Johnnies want to have a seminar at their chapter, many also want other types of activities, so we’re working to develop a broad range of activities that chapters can offer their members. We’re always looking for volunteers to participate in our work!” We Have the Votes! In the last issue of The College, the St. John’s College Alumni Association asked alumni to cast their votes to elect the treasurer, secretary, and six at-large members of the Alumni Association Board of Directors, as well as one alumnielected member of the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors. On June 5, the St. John’s College Alumni Association elected the following alumni to serve in these positions: Treasurer: Babak Zarin (A11) Secretary: Susann Bradford (SF89) At-Large Directors: Claiborne Booker (A84) Elihu Dietz (SF06) Briana Henderson Saussy (A03, EC05) Mark Parenti (AGI92) Brenna Strauss (SF04) Heather Upshaw (SF04) Representative to Board of Visitors and Governors: Linda Stabler-Talty (SFGI76) Alumni Association Mission To strive for the continued excellence of our college and fellow alumni by celebrating our distinctive educational experience, connecting our community in efforts toward shared support and benefit, and fostering a culture of intellect, generosity, and service. 34 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 Officers and at-large directors of the association are elected to two-year terms, while representatives to the Board of Visitors and Governors serve three-year terms. Each of the newly elected alumni began their terms on July 1. If you would like to connect or engage with the St. John’s community, or take advantage of the college’s resources for alumni, please visit sjc.edu/alumni to learn more. �Books for All SJCAA kick-starts a new initiative In recent years, the St. John’s College Alumni Association (SJCAA) has sought to increase awareness of itself among current students; many of whom are unaware that the SJCAA even exists—that “you’re a Johnnie when you walk across the stage and sign the book, and you’re a Johnnie for the rest of your life,” as SJCAA Board President Adrian Trevisan (A84) puts it. The Student Engagement Working Group, led by alumnae Briana Saussy (A03) and Martha Acosta (A92), is trying to make sure more students know the SJCAA is there for them. Beginning in fall 2017, they will be doing so in a concrete way, with the presentation of a gift book to all incoming students. The gift-book initiative was inspired by a previous program by the Annapolis Instruction Committee that presented a Greek lexicon to new freshmen. Saussy first came up with a proposal that would purchase lexicons for Santa Fe freshmen as well. But when the board asked their student representatives for thoughts, Trevisan says, “After a moment’s uncomfortable hesitation, they said that most students now use an online lexicon, so they didn’t think it was a good idea. After we stopped laughing we declared the project dead.” Saussy, however, was undaunted. She spoke with the SJCAA student representatives, both deans, and the two GI directors to come up with alternate titles that would still serve as a “beautiful, meaningful gift” to students. “Our GI reps felt that Plato’s Meno was the clear winner since it is the only text that all GI students… will have to read.” For the Eastern Classics program, they settled on the Therigatha, “a collection of poems from the first Buddhist women.” The undergraduate selection is the Green Lion edition of Euclid’s Elements, a text students will refer to all four years. Once the books had been decided upon, the next task was economics. Again, Saussy pushed through to craft an agreement wherein each Dean will cover 25 percent of the initiative’s cost, while a development campaign will tap recent grads to raise the other half. “Alumni are willing to donate to have a meaningful impact on student life,” says SJCAA Board Secretary Sue Bradford (SF89)—and what better impact than a Program book? Both Trevisan and Bradford laud Saussy for her dedication to the project, even when it looked impossible. “I think there is a sense that this was a really difficult thing to push through,” she says, “and I would say it a bit differently. This is an ambitious project…I never took the setbacks personally and that is probably what allowed me to just keep working along. I think that is one of the best things we walk away with from St. John’s, the ability to be truly disinterested in something—to be able to consider a situation from many angles and not to get upset when we hit a snag but continue onward while altering course when needed.” “�Alumni are willing to donate to have a meaningful impact on student life.” -Anna Perleberg Andersen (SF02) THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2016 35 �ALUMNI NOTES 1955 Carolyn Banks-Leeuwenburgh (A) reports that there is a new Alumni Chapter in Princeton, N.J. Starting this fall, the group will meet monthly in the Princeton Public Library. 1960 After teaching full time for the last 44 years, Katherine Hsu Haas (A) is semiretired. She will continue to teach a couple mornings a week at Annapolis’ Key School, where she has the new title, “scientist in residence.” Embracing more free time in her life, Haas has ventured into the realm of Facebook as well as t’ai chi and bridge. She plans to travel with her husband and attend theater performances more often. “Ahhh, the joy of reading and having the leisure to do it! I wonder if I should’ve chosen this life of luxury sooner!” 1969 Beth Kuper (SF) writes, “I have an entirely new career working exclusively for transformational life coaches all over the U.S., helping them build their support teams through recruiting virtual and on-site employees. All my business comes through personal referrals of my clients, and I work virtually from home. Everything I’ve ever learned professionally, as well as the life-long classes I’ve taken on understanding myself and others, has prepared me for this work. I am grateful every day for being able to do what I love: connecting good people with good people.” 1970 1982 You Scream, I Scream… Don Dennis (SF) and his wife have launched an ice cream business, Wee Isle Dairy Ice Cream, on the small island of Gigha, where they live in Scotland. They currently feature six flavors, including a rather intriguing Bramble and Whisky. Learn more about their new venture on Facebook. Ed Macierowski (A), professor of philosophy at Benedictine College, is preparing two upperlevel courses and hosting an extra-curricular reading group to celebrate the 2,400th anniversary of Aristotle’s birth in 2016. “We are reading through Peter Simpson’s translation of Aristotle’s Politics. The philosophy seminar is on the doctrine of being in the Aristotelian Metaphysics, and the Greek reading course will focus on linguistic problems in the Metaphysics.” 1975 G. Kay Bishop’s (A) story “Coyote Year” was published in the first issue of the new online science fiction magazine, Into the Ruins (https://intotheruins.com/issues/ issue-i-spring-2016). Bishop notes that the editor is seeking new works, “so if you have tried your hand at post-industrial age sci-fi, do send it along to him.” More of Bishop’s work is available at http://gkaybishop.weebly.com. 36 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 016 1988 BOOKS FOR THE BLUES Edward Komara’s (A) 2014 book, 100 Books Every Blues Fan Should Own (with Greg Johnson), was conferred the Vincent H. Duckles Award for best book-length music bibliography by the Music Library Association last March. It also received the 2015 award for best history in the category of blues, hip hop, gospel, or rhythm and blues from the Association of Recorded Sound Collections. “I never complained about having to read the 100 blues books, because everyone around me was showing envy, not pity, for the project. Even so, reading the books was a serious endeavor. One large group consisted of histories and biographies, and another was of cultural anthropology and folklore. But running in between was a vein of recent commentary, especially Houston Baker’s Blues, Ideology and Afro-American Literature (1984), that affirmed the blues as a distinct African American means of renewing one’s sense of personal identity.” Since 2001, Komara has been Crane librarian of music at the State University of New York at Potsdam. 1978 After nearly a dozen years in the Big Apple, Victor Austin (SF) is now theologian-in-residence in the Episcopal Diocese of Dallas and at Church of the Incarnation in Dallas, Texas. His memoir, Losing Susan: Brain Disease, the Priest’s Wife, and the God Who Gives and Takes Away, was recently published by Brazos. 1981 Joshua Berlow (SF) is the official movie critic for Perihelion, an online science fiction magazine, available at www.perihelionsf.com. 1983 Peter McClard (SF) is working as a full-time medical app maker in New Jersey, and still making music and art. Among his apps are DrawnIn, Biographer, and Different Drummer. He notes that “with DrawnIn, we can create a communal SJC artsy forum and later produce an eBook or a light show from the results.” 1987 Clare (Fisher) McGrath-Merkle (AGI) writes, “After a long road of working full time as a fundraiser and burning the midnight oil, I just successfully defended a doctoral dissertation in May on the speculative mysticism and applied metaphysics found in the theology of Pierre de Berulle (Descartes’s spiritual director) at the Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences of the University of Augsburg, Germany. (It’s complicated.) Hoping to find a teaching position in the U.S. (Apparently, the EU gives preference to EUers). Since I didn’t watch television for about ten years, my favorite post-dissertation recovery therapy is watching Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives �1988 HISTORY RECORDED Charles D. “Chuck” Melson (AGI) recently retired after more than 40 years of government service. He spent 23 years with the History and Museums Division at Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps in Washington, D.C. and the Marine Corps University at Quantico, Va. He held a variety of positions ranging from historical writer to acting division director, serving for most of his career as chief historian. This was a period of major transition and change for his organization, which saw the completion of the National Museum of the Marine Corps and the Brigadier General Edwin H. Simmons Center for Marine Corps History. Melson wrote, edited, and published official histories in the Vietnam, Gulf War, and Global War on Terrorism series as well as World War II, Korea, and Vietnam commemorative publications. He recorded service operations and intelligence actions and represented the Marine Corps at national and international historical meetings, conferences, and committees. He was also a joint historian with the U.S. Central Command and Special Operations Command during the Gulf War and the Global War on Terrorism. He remains active with the Secretary of the Navy’s subcommittee on naval history, the Vietnam War commemoration, and volunteer work. and the (rented) film, Footnote. (Hint: I identify with the father.)” 1991 Lake Perriguey (SF), a Portland, Ore. civil rights lawyer, obtained for his client the first U.S. courtordered recognition of a person as nonbinary—neither male nor female. Heralded as the first legal order recognizing a third gender in the United States, this binarybusting ruling follows a history of gender and sexuality civil rights work beginning at St. John’s College when Perriguey founded the first LGBT student group in 1989 and petitioned the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors to include “sexual orientation” in its non-discrimination mandate. 1992 Alec Berlin (SF) is performing on guitar in a production of a new musical, Come From Away, at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C. Ben Power (A93) is also in the band; they have been part of the show since May 2015 when it premiered in La Jolla, Calif. Following the run at Ford’s, they will travel with the production to Toronto in November and December 2016 and then to Broadway in early 2017. Come From Away is the story of the town of Gander, Newfoundland, location of the northeastern-most airport in North America. On September 11, 2001, when American airspace was closed, all trans-Atlantic flights were diverted to Gander. Come From Away is the story of how the Canadian town selflessly dealt with these events against the backdrop of chaos and tragedy. After completing a PhD in theology at Marquette University in Milwaukee and a post-doc fellowship at Regis College of the University of Toronto, Chris Hadley (A) joined the faculty of the Jesuit School of Theology (JST) of Santa Clara University as assistant professor of systematic theology and began teaching in September. 1994 Ben Feldman (A) finished a PhD in experimental psychology a year ago, specializing in autism spectrum disorder and developmental disabilities research, at Case Western Reserve University. After spending the last year doing school psychology work, he recently started at the National Institute of Mental Health/ National Institutes of Health in the Office of Autism Research Coordination as a health science policy analyst. 1995 Justin Maddox (A) recently published “How to Start a War: Eight Cases of Strategic Provocation” in the George Mason University journal, Narrative and Conflict. The article focuses on the frequent use of false provocation in preparation for warfare and its usefulness as an indicator of impending warfare. 1996 Jonathan Rowan (SF) was awarded his PhD in comparative literature from University of California, Berkley, where he also lectured. 1997 Kevin Neal Gardner (A) was recently granted tenure as an associate professor at Berea College in Berea, Ky. “I teach studio art, which for me includes teaching all levels of painting, beginning and advanced drawing, a seminar for graduating seniors, and international travel courses, including Italy, Ireland, and Spain. Additionally, I teach a general studies course for freshmen on critical thinking in the liberal arts, which in method I borrow heavily from my time at St. John’s. For a number of reasons, Berea is a unique college, not the least of which is its status as tuition-free. Founded by abolitionists prior to the Civil War, Berea maintains its historic commitments to teaching a diverse group of promising students of limited financial means. And there is some connection to the St. John’s curriculum. Robert Maynard Hutchins’s father and brother were consecutive presidents at Berea.” View recent examples of his paintings and drawings at www.kevinnealgardner.com. 1998 Richard Field (SFGI) was erroneously listed in the spring 2016 issue of The College as an alumnus of the undergraduate program. 2000 After three years of teaching studio art at the New Mexico School for the Arts, Karina Noel Hean (A) is excited to begin the new school year as the visual arts chair. This is a unique charter/nonprofit arts high school, free to N.M. residents, with a dorm in Santa Fe. She invites Johnnies in the area who are interested in a tour to contact her at karinahean@gmail.com or khean@nmschoolforthearts.org. 2001 Lance Brisbois (A) is working at Harvard University. He would love to hear from Johnnies at Harvard or in the Cambridge area, and can be reached at lbrisbois@gmail.com. THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2016 37 �ALUMNI NOTES The Geometric Life Since graduating from St. John’s, Lee Howard Madden-Krall (SFGI) reports that he has architected a geometric life of many skills, talents, and abilities in multiple disciplines—morphing, evolving, and training to meet today’s technological demands. Among his many hats, he became a trained chef, working and teaching at the Culinary Institute of America, and also learning his craft working as a chef in the Napa and Sonoma wine region. After 10 years away, he moved back to his home in New Mexico, where he has enjoyed reconnecting with the Southwest. He also started his own production business (leehowardproductions.org), which helps clients, including artists and writers, maximize their resources for marketing solutions and building out their organization, business, or project. He invites Johnnies who need a personal chef or are interested in learning to cook to contact him at chefleehoward@gmail.com. 2002 Luke Mitcheson (SF01) married Daphne Berwind-Dart on September 5, 2015, in their backyard in Cambridge, Mass. Luke and Daphne went to elementary school together and reconnected 20 years later at a fundraiser. James Marshall Crotty (SFGI) is the politics, culture, and travel columnist for the Huffington Post. A documentary filmmaker (Crotty’s Kids), he is also at work on a Western set in his native Nebraska. To learn more about his columns, books, and films, visit www.jamescrotty.com. John Rogove (A) earned his PhD in philosophy from the Sorbonne and teaches philosophy in Paris. 2004 Kristi (Meador) Durbin (A) welcomed the arrival of her son, Levin Elias, on February 27. He joins his sister, Vesper (2). “I have tutor William Braithwaite to thank for 38 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 016 2005 Abram Trosky (SFGI) is traveling through Italy, Greece, and the Balkans after delivering successful presentations and panels on peace building, public opinion, and international law at this year’s annual joint meeting of the Central and Eastern European and International Studies Associations. 2008 Tammie Kahnhauser (A) has been accepted to the Hackbright Software Engineering Fellowship in San Francisco, Calif. The intensive 12-week fellowship is designed to transition female candidates from non-technical backgrounds into the Silicon Valley community as web and software designers. 2009 After working as a copywriter at two of D.C.’s top ad agencies, Nathan Betz (AGI) has relocated to Oxford, U.K., with wife Crystal and daughter Jaël. He is studying 1995 KALEIDOSCOPE OF SOUNDS Dan Nelson’s (A) band The Pleasure Class released its debut fulllength recording “Sensual Passport.” Featuring three members of the all-women toy instrument group Toychestra, and a member of the analog synth/sound art project Boron, The Pleasure Class uses synthesizers, percussion, toy instruments, and samples to make music in the tradition of The Residents and CAN. His 2008 book, All Known Metal Bands, which contains the names of more than 50,000 metal bands, was called “the best bathroom book ever” by Rolling Stone. CASSIA LEET 1994 including me in an Anna Karenina study group several years ago, the source of inspiration for Levin’s name,” she writes. “Incidentally, I find myself farming now. This spring I became the manager of a two hundred-plus member Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program at the University of Kentucky’s organic farm. I’d enjoy reconnecting with any Johnnies who might travel out this way!” �2013 patristic theology at St Stephen’s House, University of Oxford. When not overwhelmed with research, he’s seeking to buffer his family from abject poverty by contracting as a freelance copywriter and creative lead. Elizabeth Harball (SF) is leaving her post as a reporter for Environment & Energy Publishing in Washington, D.C. and heading up to Anchorage, Alaska to join the Alaska Energy Desk, a collaboration between Alaska Public Media, KTOO and KUCB, where she will cover the state’s rapidly changing oil and gas industry. Her partner in crime, Richard Brian Woodbury (SF11), will join her in Anchorage this December after he completes his current project at the National Academy of Medicine. Sara Luell (A) was appointed director of communications at the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development in April. In this role, she oversees communications and media relations for the agency. She also serves as a member of the department’s continuity of operations planning team and as a state emergency operations center representative. In addition, she serves on the Maryland Responds Medical Reserve Corps Advisory Council as a member of the engagement committee. 2010 Linden Anne Duffee (A) reports that she has successfully defended her dissertation, “On the harmonic and geometric maximal operators,” and received her doctorate in mathematics from the University of Alabama in May. In August she began a visiting assistant professor position at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn. 2012 Christine (Ivory) Leggett (AGI12) started swing dancing in college and continued as a GI Johnnie. She recently started teaching Lindy hop for Gottaswing in Severna Park, Md. and just won her first swing dance contest in Virginia. She competes all over the East Coast and attended her first international dance event in Iceland this summer. Patrick Redmon (AGI) graduated with highest honors from the University of North Carolina School of Law. He and his wife, Tianlu Jia Redmon (AGI), have moved to Oklahoma City, where he will clerk for Judge Jerome Holmes of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. Tianlu will continue to work as a freelance Mandarin translator and interpreter. She recently began working with the Golf Channel to translate and provide voice-over for Mandarin coverage of major PGA Tour events. about sex, sexual assault, and consent. I’m dedicated to being an advocate for sexual assault, sex education, and consent. I’m available to speak at schools and groups and to read from my book.” Learn more on her blog: www. yesnomaybesex.com 2015 Rose (Loofbourrow) Bruce (A) married Charlie Bruce on June 25, 2016. 2014 Olivia N. Broustra (SF) writes, “After a sexual assault interrupted my first year at Vermont Law School, the many differing and confusing responses to my experience inspired me to write Yes No Maybe. This book explores the definition of consent as well as the education or lack thereof Cynthia Grady’s (AGI05) second book, Like a Bird: The Art of the American Slave Song, illustrated by award-winning artist Michele Wood, was recently published by Lerner Books. Grady left her position at Sidwell Friends School and has relocated to Albuquerque where she is writing full time. Do you have news to share with The College? Send your note, along with your name, class year, and photo(s), to thecollegemagazine@sjc.edu THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2016 39 �PROFILE KIDS RULE! By Anna Perleberg Andersen (SF02) Anika Prather (AGI09) Starts a School That Breaks Tradition W hen Anika Prather’s (AGI09) son, Dillon, started kindergarten, she soon realized the traditional school environment was a poor fit for him. “He’s a very nice boy,” she says with a mother’s pride—the kind of kid who watches CNN for fun—but he’s also “very inquisitive, very busy.” These traits got him into trouble in the classroom. His otherwise wonderful teacher responded by giving him time out. “Okay, you’re being too busy,” she said. “Just sit down over here until you learn to control yourself.” “The teacher thought that was a positive way to handle it,” says Prather, who doesn’t blame Dillon’s teacher for using this method. But she also doesn’t believe it was helpful, and searched for a different school for his first-grade year, a place “where his curiosity and his need to move could be appreciated. I thought it would be easy.” No such luck, she discovered: “I could not find a school where [he] could thrive. Nothing, in all of Maryland” within a reasonable distance and price range. At this point, most parents would go for second best, perhaps homeschooling or supplementing academics with after-school activities. Prather, however, approached the problem not only as a parent, but as an educator. In addition to her St. John’s graduate degree, she has a BA from Howard University in elementary education, a master’s in theater education from New York University, another master’s in music education from Howard, and is finishing her PhD in curriculum and instruction at the University of Maryland this fall. After a fruitless search, she told her husband: “Honey, I literally have to start a school.” That’s how the Living Water School, now in its second year, was born. There is no “typical day” for a Living Water School student. Learning is entirely studentdirected, with no formal classes, no grade levels, no letter grades, no standardized tests, and no homework. According to the school’s website (thelivingwaterschool.blogspot.com), “Our goal is to completely take away those elements of traditional school that conjure up feelings of competition, fear, anxiety, insecurity, and inadequacy.” The day begins with an hour of independent work that gives kids a chance to eat a leisurely breakfast or snack and go back to sleep if they need to do so before morning devotions at 10 a.m. (Although Living Water is a Christian school, it does not teach 40 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 016 Anika Prather (AGI09) takes a selfie with her students. Our goal is to completely take away those elements of traditional school that conjure up feelings of competition, fear, anxiety, insecurity, and inadequacy. �Teenage students have an active hand in designing their future academic and career paths, with the staff “committed to getting kids what they need.” theology formally: “We will not force our beliefs on a child or treat any student or family member with unkindness or disrespect.”) Students split into small groups with staff to pursue an academic task. All students study reading, writing, and math, with a wide variety of other subjects to pursue as they wish: from history, science, and Latin to sewing, music, and martial arts. Teenage students have an active hand in designing their future academic and career paths, with the staff “committed to getting kids what they need.” Prather mentions one girl who wants to study business in college and also learn to style hair. Parents sign a general permission slip, allowing field trips to happen spontaneously. A child interested in art, for example, can spend a morning painting and an afternoon at an art museum. A student pursuing a research project could visit a nearby historic site instead of just reading about it in a textbook. With all this freedom, it may seem surprising that Living Water is also a great books school. It makes perfect sense, since the Socratic method gently guides learners to reach their own conclusions, rather than memorize facts and figures. When her teaching career began, Prather was more concerned with how music and drama could be used in the classroom. Her interest in the classics was sparked at the Washington Classical Christian School, where she taught for 10 years. Learning the great books while teaching them, she became passionate about their power. Initially, she looked into St. John’s to take a workshop or two rather than earn a full degree, having just started her doctorate. “But I just could not get it out of my mind,” she says. “It wouldn’t let me go.” She eventually completed her master’s degree at St. John’s over four summers, graduating in 2009. Living Water’s staff and students are almost entirely African American, partially the result of its location in Temple Hills, Maryland, which is 85 percent black. Prather suspects that white students might be uneasy about being a minority, an attitude she laments, since “life is not segregated.” Living Water’s fluid educational approach might be of particular benefit to African American students, however; studies of American public schools show that black children, especially boys, are more likely to be disciplined than their white counterparts, punished for “disruptiveness” that Prather characterizes as a simple need to move. “It’s a part of African culture; it’s why we dance. It’s just who they are.” To 21st-century mainstream educators striving to increase diversity, the great books reading list of “dead white men” elicits horror. Prather, however, sees no conflict between her student body’s racial makeup and that of the traditional Western canon: “I think Americans have been so scarred by history that they get nervous. They don’t realize that the authors of the great books were not from this time. They had a different way of looking at race.” For her, the great books speak to “the human experience, not the racial experience.” While she admits that some kids “give [her] a lot of drama” at first, after they begin reading, their outlook changes drastically. They acknowledge that “everything that goes on in these books relates to other human beings.” Prather brought her love of the classics back to St. John’s in February 2016, when she and five students performed an “impromptu play” called The Table. Described as “a dramatic exploration and representation of the power of dialogue about literary texts,” the performance centered on a Socratic, seminar-style discussion of Voltaire’s essay “Character” and Paul Lawrence Dunbar’s poem “We Wear the Mask.” While each student had scripted monologues, “presented as if they [were] reading from a private journal,” they created the conversation onstage together, as they engaged in dialogue with the texts and each other. Not until the play was over did the participants reveal that their ages ranged from 13 to 24. She and her troupe also performed at the University of Maryland in April, earning kudos from professors, students, and teachers. The response to Living Water has exceeded Prather’s wildest dreams. She expected to be principal and teacher all in one, but 30 families showed up for the school’s first planning meeting, and it has expanded from there. This fall, a second campus will open in Rockville, Maryland, giving more students the chance to find their own personal educational path— whatever that may be. THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2016 41 �IN MEMORIAM Priscilla Bender-Shore Class of 1955 May 20, 2016 One of the first women to attend St. John’s College, Priscilla Bender-Shore (1926-2016) passed away at the age of 90. Born in the Bronx on May 2, 1926, she attended New York City’s Washington Irving High School and explored her gift for art. After graduation, she attended the Cooper Union School of Art and then Yale School of Art on scholarship. She left Yale in 1951 to marry Merle Shore (Class of 1954), a graphic designer and illustrator, and the couple moved to Annapolis. The Program became the couple’s educational cornerstone, reflecting their passion for learning, dialogue, inquiry, and discussion. In 1957, they moved to Santa Barbara, California, and Bender-Shore earned her MFA at UCSB, graduating in 1969. Two years later, she took a position at Santa Barbara City College where she taught art for 25 years. She influenced and mentored hundreds of students, many of whom work and exhibit in the Santa Barbara area today. Throughout her life, she continued to thrive as an artist as well as an art educator, lecturer, juror, and curator. In 1988, she won the Lila Acheson Wallace National Painting Competition, earning her a six-month residency in Giverny, France. Her work has been exhibited in Glenn Yarbrough Class of 1953 August 11, 2016 Glenn Yarbrough (1930-2016), renowned folk singer and a founder of the 1960s folk trio the Limeliters, died in Nashville. Yarbrough spent his early years in Milwaukee, before moving with his parents to New York. At St. John’s he befriended Jac Holzman (Class of 1952), who later founded Elektra Records and early on recorded much of Yarbrough’s music. A Woody Guthrie performance at the college in 1951 proved transformative for the young Yarbrough. “I was just a shy kid, but I walked up to him afterward with tears in my eyes and told him how much I loved what he had done,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 1996. “The very next day I went out and bought a guitar, and that was that.” After serving in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, Yarbrough returned to the U.S. and began performing in clubs and coffeehouses and on local television shows. He eventually became an owner of the Limelite nightclub in Aspen, Colorado, and in 1959, established the Limeliters with Alex Hassilev and Lou Gottlieb. Known for their tight harmonies—particularly Yarbrough’s mellifluous tenor—non-traditional arrange- 42 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 016 Priscilla Bender-Shore’s (Class of 1955) painting, Gridlock #2: The Muses Dancing at the Edge of the World, brightens that hall above the Pendulum Pit, a popular rehearsal space for choirs on the Annapolis campus. Europe and the United States and is represented in many collections, including St. John’s College’s art collection in Annapolis. A strong, patient, and loyal soul, she was a foundation of love and support for her family. She was preceded in death by her husband and is survived by her children, Evan, and Ann Shore Jactel; and her grandchildren, Samuel, Sarah, and Sophia Jactel. ments, and witty onstage banter, the Limeliters were immensely popular; their second album, Tonight: In Person, spent 74 weeks at No. 5 on the Billboard charts. After leaving the band in 1963, Yarbrough forged a successful solo career, scoring his biggest hit with “Baby the Rain Must Fall.” In the late 1960s, Yarbrough sold his most expensive possessions and opened a school for disadvantaged youth in Los Angeles. When the school closed in the 1970s, he traveled the world by sea for the better part of the next three decades. But Yarbrough often returned to music, performing solo and on reunion tours with the Limeliters. In 1997, he released an album with his daughter, Holly, and he continued to record into the early 2000s, before losing his ability to sing in 2010 due to throat surgery. He is survived by his children, Stephany, Sean, and Holly; stepdaughters, Brooke and Heather; a grandson, and a great-grandson. Alexander Scott Kelso (SFGI79) March 29, 2016 Alexander Scott Kelso (19242016), former chair of the Board of Visitors and Governors of St. John’s College, passed away �peacefully at age 91. Born to Clyde Douglas Kelso and Dorothy Geraldine (Scott) Kelso, he and his two brothers were raised in Laurel, Mississippi. After he graduated from high school in 1941, Kelso attended Georgia Tech until 1943, when he was commissioned an Ensign and later rose to Lieutenant J.G. in the U.S. Navy, serving in the European and Pacific theaters during World War II, including the D-Day Normandy Landings. Returning home in 1946, he married Mary Gene Hoffman, with whom he enjoyed 56 beautiful years until her death in 2002. Kelso graduated from Georgia Tech in 1947 and began work with Gulf Oil Corp. in Knoxville, Tennessee. He later worked for IBM and founded two companies, Computer Labs, Inc. and Seismic Computing Corporation. He is survived by his children, Alexander, Jr., Gene K. Caselli, Harry H., and Adelia; and his grandchildren, Caroline, Anthony, and John Caselli, Kathleen, Harry, and Victoria Kelso, and Scott Kelso, III. He was preceded in death by his wife; his parents; and his brothers, C. D. Kelso, Jr. and R. P. Kelso. Also Deceased: John R. Garland, Class of 1950 October 23, 2015 Christopher Michael Abbasse, AGI98 April 25, 2016 Ronald Albert Adinolfi, SFGI94 February 14, 2016 Joan R. Buckmaster, SFGI76 June 18, 2015 Justine Shaver June 26, 2016 Caritas President, Board Member Justine “Joy” Shaver’s (19292016) introduction to St. John’s College came in 1988 when a friend invited her to attend a Caritas Society meeting. She served for a year as historian for the group, whose mission, in part, includes raising financial aid funds for St. John’s students in need, and later served as Caritas president from 1991 to 1994. She was appointed to the Stanley Guild IV, A11 March 16, 2016 Friar John Hilary Hayden, Class of 1949 February 24, 2016 college’s Board of Visitors and Governors in 2004 and served until 2010. Originally from Caldwell, New Jersey, she married Bennett H. Shaver in 1952; the couple made Annapolis their home for more than 30 years. Through her involvement with numerous civic organizations in the Annapolis area, including the St. John’s Friends Board, she will be remembered for her kindness and devotion to St. John’s College. Shaver was preceded in death by her husband, who passed away in 2011. David Wald (SF79) May 27, 2016 Long-time television journalist and producer David Wald’s (1955-2016) impressive resume includes work for CBS News, NBC, ABC, Fox, Court TV, HBO, David Harding Humphreys, A69 May 22, 2016 Charles F. Jones, A79 April 5, 2016 Lewis Steven Kreger, Class of 1961 May 5, 2016 National Geographic, A&E, PBS, and Education Week Video. As supervising producer for the New York Bureau of Education Week Video, he developed television segments for PBS NewsHour. With the nonprofit Learning Matters, Wald spent a decade producing dozens of NewsHour stories on a range of education topics, including the impact of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans’ schools, the common-core standards, and internet access in rural communities. Earlier in his career, he was a senior producer on Michael Moore’s Emmy Award-winning magazine show TV Nation, and he produced a documentary series about Doctors Without Borders. Remembered for his thoughtful, caring nature—and a mentor to many—he enlightened and engaged viewers on important issues through complex and visually stunning stories. William H. Rullman, Class of 1940 May 15, 2016 Terence Sellers, SF74 January 25, 2016 Kathryn Slade, SF77 February 2, 2016 Mildred V. Smotherman, SF71 September 6, 2011 Donald Heider, AGI87 October 22, 2008 Arthur Kungle, Jr., Class of 1967 January 20, 2016 Marshall Henderson, SF07 July 1, 2016 John Paul LeBec, A93 March 7, 2016 Mary Paige Hensley, SF02 February 18, 2016 Eugene Limanovich, SF01 March 21, 2016 O.H. Thompson, Class of 1943 July 13, 2016 William Douglass, SFGI70 March 19, 2016 Gary Allen Hetrick, Class of 1963 May 16, 2016 Arnold Markoxitz, Class of 1954 July 7, 2016 Joyce Kittel Wilson, Class of 1955 July 28, 2016 Matson G. Ewell, Class of 1950 March 8, 2016 Judith Jones Holden, Class of 1961 May 22, 2016 Daniel Mark Roddy, SF75 January 16, 2016 Steven Wren, SF75 May 25, 2016 Paul Ringgold Comegys, Sr., Class of 1941 January 13, 2016 Harry West “Skip” Danner, Class of 1954 March 9, 2016 Kevin Mathew St. John, SF76 July 7, 2016 THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2016 43 �PHILANTHROPY Class of 2016 Hits a Double Home Run 100 Percent Senior Legacy Participation on Both Campuses On the evening of April 29, the Great Hall of the Santa Fe campus was illuminated with colorful strobe lights that bounced off the walls in reds and blues. Above the podium, where a lecturer stood less than an hour before, letters spelled out the word “prom.” An hour later, members of every class filled the room with laughter, dancing, and conversation. This event was not so much a student party, but rather a vehicle to promote interest in the Class of 2016’s Senior Legacy. On both campuses, seniors come together to decide what they will “gift” the college. The gift varies every year from the tangible to the intangible, be it new benches for the quad or a special donation to increase financial aid. In Santa Fe, this year’s legacy finds its home in Meem Library as the Islamic Classics collection. “The Senior Legacy Program is important because it empowers seniors to define their lasting impact and identity as permanent members of the college community,” explains Sarah Palacios, the director of Alumni Relations. To facilitate this tradition, each campus forms a Senior Legacy Committee (SLC), whose senior class members are committed to lead the fundraising effort. The SLC’s work is not limited to simply collecting. Its students are the most knowledgeable regarding what the gifts are; they are expected to motivate their classmates to give. Motivation often manifests itself in gatherings, such as the post-seminar events in Annapolis or the “Senior Prom” in Santa Fe. Beyond these efforts, the most effective motivational method employed by the students is face-toface conversation. Some seniors aren’t willing to give. Others aren’t fully aware of the to participate. The funds they raised aided projects that create greater opportunities for students. In total, the Annapolis gift made a threefold impact: donating to the Pathways Fellowship program, expanding the Music Assistance program to provide piano lessons for students, and installing OneCard readers on the back doors of Pinkney Hall. On the Santa Fe campus, seniors William Palm (SF16), Colleen Mahoney (SF16), Meg Covington (SF16), and Rodjinaé Brown (SF16) led their class to a record of 99 percent participation with $4,821 raised by students, before finishing off with 100 Class of 2016’s gift enhances Meem Library’s collection. percent participation and a total of $5,817.45, including matching gifts. Although Meem Library is still in the process of adding to the collection, the library will complete it, according to Santa Fe tutor Michael Wolfe. “Being asked to work on the committee was an honor,” says Palm. “It was a really beautiful and concrete way to close the chapter of my time at St. John’s. merit of giving. It helps to have discussions And for both campuses to make it to 100 with classmates who have the patience, enpercent was the icing on the cake.” Althusiasm, and insight to inspire their peers though it is not the first time that a senior to contribute to the class’s legacy. class has reached full participation, it is “We’re proud that we can give back to remarkable that both campuses achieved the college in a tangible way and improve 100 percent participation. When student the quality of life for future Johnnies,” participation reaches such a high percentsays Max Dakin (A16), a member of the age, it typically inspires matching gifts committee on the Annapolis campus. Along from faculty, staff, and other alumni. This with classmates David Conway (A16), year’s 100 percent participation garnered Emily Grazier (A16), Sueanna Keim (A16), much enthusiasm from non-student memand Brian Liu (A16), he led their class to bers of the community. 100 percent participation, raising $6,924. Many hope that the remarkable accomAnnapolis committee members set up a plishment of the Class of 2016 will set a donation table outside the Dining Hall at precedent for future graduating classes of least once a week, where they engaged the college. with classmates and other students about the class gift. Occasionally, committee —Rodjinaé Brown (SF16) members must take initiative to seek out members of their class to encourage them “� e’re proud that we can give W back to the college in a tangible way and improve the quality of life for future Johnnies.” 44 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 016 �FIRST PERSON MAKING A DREAM COME TRUE By Sawyer Neale (A18) T his summer was unlike any I have ever had before. For several days in July I had the honor of serving as a delegate to the 2016 Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Philadelphia, representing more than 30,000 Bernie Sanders supporters in Pennsylvania’s 15th Congressional District. I struggle to remember when I first became aware of politics. I don’t come from a political family. In fact, apart from NPR serving as the soundtrack to my childhood, and the occasional rants from family members, my exposure to politics had always been fairly removed. However, in 2008, that all changed with Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. I was a 12-year-old obsessed. I read as many books about American politics as I could, and after his election victory I was hooked. In 2012, my obsession came to a head when I signed on for an internship with my state’s Democratic Party. In the subsequent years, I have worked on campaigns in nearly every election cycle at every level, from municipal to state legislative to senatorial. For me, politics is a way to make an actual substantive difference in this world. We live in a nation that is founded on the principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness but also allows people to lose their homes because they got sick and couldn’t afford to pay costly medical bills, incarcerates more people than any other developed nation, and enables students to take on more than $100,000 in debt to pursue an education. These problems need to be solved; in politics, I find an opportunity to play a role in solving them. As a delegate, I took part in reforming our political process, adopting the most progressive platform in the history of American major parties, and creating a commission which will work to make superdelegates more democratic. Attending the Democratic National Convention was an experience like no other. The energy that filled the Wells Fargo Center, from Sanders and Clinton delegates, was energizing and humbling. I had the opportunity to meet politicos, young and old, from all corners of the country, from Alabama to Alaska. Pennsylvania was seated at the front of the venue, so I was less than 100 feet away from presidents past, current, and, possibly, future. At age 19, I was the youngest delegate from Pennsylvania, which allowed me to fulfil a dream of being a Z-list political celebrity for a week. I had the opportunity to speak on television and radio, which was mind-boggling. At St. John’s, I serve as editor-in-chief of The Epoch Journal, a student-led political science magazine. Over the past year, I’ve written about government reform—detailing policies such as gerrymandering—and joining and profiling a Pennsylvania-based, citizenled government reform movement. I’ve solicited articles from my fellow Johnnies Governor of Virginia Terry McAuliffe and Sawyer Neale (A18) share a moment in Philly. Adrian Shanker, executive director of Pennsylvania’s Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center, and Sawyer Neale (A18) are all smiles at the DNC. “� t age 19, I was the A youngest delegate from Pennsylvania, which allowed me to fulfil a dream of being a Z-list political celebrity for a week.” and built magazines from the ground up. In addition, I serve as archon of the SJC Film Society as well as secretary of the Delegate Council. All of these experiences have allowed me to explore my love of politics and try to make a positive difference in the life of the Polity. While at the DNC, I attempted to do some Epoch-related work by using that aforementioned Z-list status to interview as many reporters and elected officials as possible. I had the opportunity to joke with Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf—a PhD graduate from MIT and secret Greek philosophy buff, particularly Apollonius and Heraclitus. I also spoke with Andrea Mitchell—a journalist, anchor, and commentator for NBC News—about the role of the press in a democratic state. During my week in Philadelphia, I got to meet my heroes. That is an experience I will never forget. THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2016 45 �JOHNNIE VOICES END OF AN ICON? When E. A. Clore Sons, Inc. announced on Facebook in May that it was closing its doors after nearly two centuries in the furniture business, it marked the end of one of the country’s oldest family-owned businesses. It also signaled a dubious fate for the college’s beloved Johnnie Chair. Alumni everywhere came out of the woodwork to lament the news but also to take the opportunity to share their favorite stories and memories, thoughts and recollections, and even a poem. Since the 1950s, the small factory in Madison, Virginia, has churned out the Plain Master Chair, a.k.a the Johnnie Chair, for St. John’s College—one of the company’s best customers—where it, along with the Plain Side Chair and the Ladder Back Dining Side Chair, fills classrooms, dorms, dining halls, and other spots on the two campuses. Today the chair represents far more than the sum of its wooden and fiber-rush parts— it’s a St. John’s icon. And whether or not the torch is carried after Clore is shuttered and gone, our affection for the Johnnie Chair, and gratitude to the family that brought it to us, will remain strong for years to come. 46 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 016 Nareg Seferian (SF11), inspired by the news, offers the following ode to the Johnnie Chair: Based on a True Johnnie Chair Johnnie Chair, O Johnnie Chair – how I loved your presence there, a wickerwork suspension for my Johnnie end: a true support network – bottom’s up, my friend! It only irked me once or twice when the front rung for my feet was absent – not nice. But who could resist trying a round of “Balance the Johnnie Chair(s)” on the coffee shop ground? Perhaps your tone is lighter in Santa Fe than Annapolis but this this shall serve as your legacy, something I miss – fingers intertwined, one elbow over your back, Johnnie Chair as I roll my eyes at some seminar hack, O Johnnie Chair. Not to say no-one ever rolled their eyes at me. But one thing I can guarantee: whenever a brilliant observation or – more probably – a pun I let loose those eyes rolling those heads shaking were gently supported by a caboose feeling confident, firm, well-founded because you, O Johnnie Chair, made sure their basis was well-grounded. �Grace (Logerfo) Bateman (Class of 1965) shares the following account of “a true story in every detail that thus far may have eluded the annals of St. John’s”: The Disappearing Johnnie Chair The Johnnie Chair has special meaning for the Class of 1965. Some classes endow the college with a class gift; our legacy was a class prank involving the disappearance of all the Johnnie Chairs on campus. How did we do it? Early one spring morning, a group of seniors carrying long wooden poles gathered in the McDowell quadrangle. Applying Newtonian principles, we reasoned that the most efficient way to transport a large number of chairs was to string them up on poles. Breaking and entering to gather the chairs wasn’t necessary because in those days the buildings on campus were never locked. Using the pole technique, by dawn we removed the chairs from every classroom and stored them in the basement of Mellon undetected. The seminar table is the locus for learning at St. John’s, but when students and tutors arrived for classes that day, the importance of the Johnnie Chair became clear. Classes were canceled for want of chairs, and the entire student body was pressed into service carrying the chairs back from Mellon to the classrooms. “We were studying the sequence Ptolemy/ Kepler/Copernicus and Galileo, the shift from a geocentric to a heliocentric system, with Jacob Klein. Doing the math was one thing, but from the look on our faces the class was struggling with imagining what it all meant. Now, Mr. Klein was a kind and gentle man, with a whimsical smile, but usually somewhat reserved. He paused, looked around the room, pulled out a chair, and said, ‘Mr. Sherman, please come here and sit in the chair.’ The illustrious Jacob Klein then proceeded to push me around the classroom and asked, ‘Mr. Sherman, what do you see moving? And, class, what do you see moving?’ Of course! We all laughed…” all under six years old, we also could not resist the children’s arm chairs. Today the children’s chairs and our adult chairs hold every shape and size bottom comfortably while reading stories, playing games, and dining. However, I don’t seem to be as good at leaning back and balancing on the back two legs as I used to. Perhaps that is because I am no longer smoking and drinking coffee, though I am still pontificating on subjects about which I know little!” —Edward (Ted) Nelson (A77) “I have two Clore Plain Master’s chairs in cherry at my kitchen table. (For the record, I purchased these directly from Clore. They were not pilfered from the college. They match my Barrett Woodworking cherry table very nicely.) It pains me to imagine a world without a source for more such chairs.” —Bob DiSilverio (SF78) “I had the chance to sit in a Johnnie Chair again a few years after graduating, and it felt like coming home. Since then, I have always wished I had one (or a couple) of my own. Recently, while looking for some chairs in a thrift store for my husband’s, Matt Griffis (SF08), and my new apartment in the Denver area, I found this (pictured above). It’s not big enough to sit in, but it is a nice reminder. And it wobbles a little and is missing the front foot bar just like the real ones! Now we only need to find a chalkboard…” —Trystan Popish (SF08) “For graduation my parents got me two Johnnie Chairs. Over the years, my wife and I have purchased well over a dozen more Clore pieces. E. A. Clore is one of those companies that are the backbone of America. As every Johnnie knows, the chairs are quite comfortable and amazingly sturdy.” —Harold Morgan (SF68) [Editor’s note: Not every Johnnie, as evidenced below.] —Daniel Sherman, Annapolis, Class of 1963 “A few years ago, we replaced our old dining chairs with eight low-back walnut chairs and two other matching chairs with arms. Now our home has great chairs and a pleasant history of the college to remember as our home ages with us. As grandparents of four, “If you sit in the center, which sinks, it kills your back. If you sit on the edge, the bar across the front kills your hamstrings. Never was a chair so devised to cause so much pain to the human body. Now it so happens that I have a Johnnie Chair that I got years ago, and I wouldn’t give it up for the world; for Though not the real thing, Trystan Popish’s (SF08) thrift store find—a miniature wooden chair—is a reminder of the many good conversations she had with friends at the seminar table. there I have sat and studied, there have I sat and learned, and there I have sat and suffered. Suffering seems a mild punishment when I think of what I have gained.” —Christiana Mollin (AGI10) “I have so many memories of [the Johnnie Chair]—of great discussions, thoughtful moments of silence, and good conversations with friends. I loved that they had arms to lean on. Somehow, they framed the edges between the physical ‘me’ and the broader ‘not me,’ and I could venture forth from them into the heart of discussions, or not, at my own volition. They are the most comfortable chairs I have known. Subsequently, all of my adult life, I have had a problem with dining room furniture. My husband and I had left our dining room set in Annapolis when we moved to San Francisco, and once again, I was confronted with my chair problem. We ate on moving boxes for a while, until my husband couldn’t take it anymore. I remembered that wonderful feeling I had always had in the St. John’s chairs. We called [Clore] the next day and ordered six chairs, and before I could change my mind again, we bought a table in the same wood color. Eighteen years have passed, and the chairs are still looking out over San Francisco Bay from our dining room windows. And, as they did at St. John’s, they still ‘sit’ through good discussions, thoughtful moments of silence, and good conversations with friends!” —Juliet Rothman (AGI88) THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2016 47 �ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE GREENFIELD LIBRARY S T. J O H N ’ S F O R E V E R PRESERVING OUR LEGACY The college has taken another giant step toward preserving St. John’s history with the creation of the new SJC Digital Archives. Thanks to dedicated efforts of the St. John’s College Libraries staff in Annapolis and Santa Fe, a virtual trove of hidden gems— catalogs and commencement programs from the 1800s, rare photographs of the college’s first class of women, a vast collection of lectures, speeches, and addresses in audio recording and typescript formats, old issues of The College, and more—are now available online at digitalarchives.sjc.edu. Ever wonder what the basement of McDowell Hall looked like in the 1940s? Or an aerial 48 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 016 view of the Santa Fe campus soon after its founding? The newly launched site contains more than 800 items of historical significance to the college. “Paper deteriorates and photographs fade, but digitization offers a solution that ensures these artifacts are preserved at the height of their quality,” says Liz Kupke, Greenfield Library’s technical services librarian. “Digitization of these special items, and their inclusion on the SJC Digital Archives, ensures that the rich history and legacy of the college are preserved for generations to come.” The SJC Digital Archives is continually updated, so check back from time to time and discover what new treasures await. �EIDOS Situated on the eastern edge of Texas Hill Country, Austin has long been a beacon to artists, musicians, and other creative individuals. Jennifer Chenoweth (SF95) is among those lured to this changing and growing city. A visual artist and entrepreneur, she is intrigued by what connects people to place—a subject she explores in her recent exhibition XYZ Atlas: The Hedonic Map of Austin. For the past three years, as part of her XYZ Atlas project, she documented and visualized the hyperlocal experiences of people living in and visiting Austin. The result is a large-scale exhibition of a multi-media art experience that features a series of immersive and interactive pieces ranging from original maps to sculptures to photography. “XYZ Atlas began as an investigation about why people love and feel so attached to the city of Austin and how emotional experiences affect our experience of belonging in particular places,” says Chenoweth. “Since humans everywhere have emotional experiences that make a place become ‘home,’ I want to take XYZ Atlas to other cities to see how and where people engage uniquely in their towns.” Learn more about XYZ Atlas at xyzatlas.org and Jennifer Chenoweth at fisterrastudio.com. THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2016 iii �Non-Profit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Annapolis, MD Permit N0. 120 Communications Office 60 College Avenue Annapolis, MD 21401 Address Service Requested � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The College (2001-2017) Description An account of the resource The St. John's College Communications Office published The College magazine for alumni. It began publication in 2001, continuing the St. John's Reporter, and ceased with the Fall 2017 issue. Click on <a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=56">Items in The College (2001-2017) Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. 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Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data pdf Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 52 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The College, Fall 2016 Description An account of the resource Volume 41, Issue 2 of The College Magazine. Published in Fall 2016. 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 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016-10 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context The_College_Fall_2016 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Shook, Gregory (editor) Ehretsmann, Thomas Weiss, Robin Wilson, Rebecca Andersen, Anna Perleberg Brown, Rodjinae Grenke, Michael Keyes, Bob Lenthicum, Leslie Llovet, Jonathan Neale, Sawyer Scott, Bonnie Zarin, Babak Behrens, Jennifer Inauguration The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/0bd44156c9f84843eddbc2e136e30cc6.pdf 4dc90856929b9dcb6391ce739c3f9bb1 PDF Text Text S T. J O H N ’ S C O L L E G E S P R IN G 2017 VOLUME 42, ISSUE 1 Lincoln Leading by Teaching �OPENING NOTE A remarkable coincidence occurred when Chris Nelson first announced publicly his plans to retire this spring: it was 25 years to the day that he was named president of the Annapolis campus. Stumbling upon this realization, I immediately swapped my editor’s pen for my detective’s magnifying glass, searching for clues to some deeper, hidden meaning. Alas, to no avail. But the opportunity led me to explore Chris’s influence as president. While the coincidental timing of his announcement may remain a mystery, one thing which can be said with certainty is that the pages dedicated to him within this issue of The College only begin to describe the impact of his legacy and his devotion to the St. John’s Program. In honor of President Nelson, members of the Annapolis community joined tutors for an afternoon of reading and discussing works by some of his favorite authors. Among them was Abraham Lincoln. A fascinating and complicated figure in American history, tutor George Russell describes Lincoln as “a man with a true moral compass.” Lincoln inspires us today through his eloquent speeches, and his gift for the written word. He also inspires by his actions as a leader, revealing that a moral compass is capable of shifting when flawed notions give way to enlightened thought. Gregory Shook, editor ii THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017 THE COL L E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 1 �SPRING 2017 VOLUME 42, ISSUE 1 “� incoln appeared on the earth in the right place at the L right time to preserve and protect a constitution constructed to provide against the fortuity of prudence in human affairs.” —George Russell, tutor FEATUR E S P A G E 1 2�� DEPAR TM ENTS PA G E 1 8 PA G E 2 4 LEADERSHIP IN FACTIOUS TIMES PROTECTOR OF OUR PROGRAM MODERN GLADIATOR In a politically and morally divided United States, Abraham Lincoln, our nation’s 16th president, displays leadership through teaching. After 26 years, Christopher Nelson says goodbye to his role as president of the Annapolis campus—but not to his love for the Program. Ingenuity, empathy, and a passion for learning lead to a technological breakthrough that may save the skulls of athletes everywhere. ��FROM THE BELL TOWERS BIBLIOFILE FOR & ABOUT ALUMNI 4 � Growing the Graduate Institute 28 �obert Wolf (Class of 1967) R envisions a self-reliant rural America in Building the Agricultural City. 30 �JCAA Elections: Cast Your Vote! S 6 Lincoln’s Walk 8 � Tutors Talk Books: Krishnan Venkatesh 9 Open to Inquiry 10 Civility on the World Stage 11 �idden Talent: H Joan Haratani (SF79) 31 Alumni Leadership Forum 32 �hilanthropy: Ron Fielding (A70) P and Warren Spector (A81) pledge their commitment to St. John’s. 29 �elson Lund (A74) aims to revive N the ideas of a major philosophic critic of the Enlightenment era in Rousseau’s Rejuvenation of Political Philosophy. 33 Alumni Notes 38 In Memoriam � Stickey (A04) takes readers Sarah on a poetic journey through life’s big questions about love, death, beauty, and desire in Portico. �Brann (H89), Peter Kalkavage, Eva and Eric Salem (A77) offer a new translation of Plato’s most popular dialogue, Symposium or Drinking Party. ON THE COVER: Lincoln illustration by Sébastien Thibault 43 �rofile: Robert Morris (SF04) P soars above the competition. JOHNNIE VOICES 40 �omer in China H 42 �irst Person: Yosef Trachtenberg (A15) F ST. JOHN’S FOREVER 44 �orward Edge of History F EIDOS 45 Anyi Guo (A15) photographs the world. ABOVE: Chris Nelson with Arcadia, the campus dog 2 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017 THE COL L E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 3 �From the BELL TOWERS “� or adults out of college, F I don’t know of a more vital part of that education in necessary citizenship than that provided by the opportunity to participate in true liberal education as offered by the St. John’s GI.” 50TH ANNIVERSARY Growing the Graduate Institute In the summer of 1967, on the three-year-old St. John’s Santa Fe campus, the Graduate Institute came to life as the Teachers Institute. The GI, as we know it during this 50th anniversary, offers a master of arts in liberal arts on both campuses year-round. In 1994, Santa Fe established a master of arts in Eastern classics, including two semesters of Sanskrit or classical Chinese. “I characterized it this way,” says tutor emeritus Elliott Zuckerman, one of a handful of tutors in the GI pilot year: “Bringing inner city high school teachers” from Baltimore and New Mexico “to the high desert to read Aristotle.” As GI director that second and third year, Zuckerman found that, for at least one student, 7,000 feet wasn’t high enough. “I thought I had prepared for everything that first night. But the next morning, a number of students came to me and said their mattresses were missing.” The mystery was solved when “one young man claimed to need to sleep higher than everyone else.” Zuckerman describes how Richard Weigel, president and founder of the Santa Fe campus, and Robert Goldwin, first-year GI director (from Kenyon College), “invented the institute.” Politics and Society, designed by tutor Laurence Berns, was the only segment offered that first summer, with Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents heading the list for 35 students in two seminars. “We lost money in the early years. We got scholarships for the students” from the Hoffberger and Cafritz foundations, “covering tuition and compensating for their summer salaries. But we forgot to include the overhead. We always planned to have it in Annapolis but,” in the first years, as a summer institute only, “Annapolis wasn’t air conditioned.” Segments were added and the enrollment quickly doubled. By 1969, Literature and Poetry, Philosophy and Theology, and Mathematics and Natural Sciences joined Politics and Society. “The curriculum was pretty much the same as now,” he says. Zuckerman remembers when he and GI student William Yannuzzi (SFGI69)—a high school teacher who became musical director for the Baltimore Opera—criticized the previous night’s opera. “He and I would give an informal and scathing review to an audience at breakfast. It was a favorite event.” “Weigel wanted to start something; he didn’t know it was the GI. From the first day, it was a success,” says Sam Kutler (Class of 1954), retired tutor and dean emeritus. “The Carnegie Foundation paid me six hundred dollars to formulate a math program. I would have paid that much to be able to do it. I think it’s been very successful. It was started for teachers; that was Bob Goldwin’s influence.” After the initial years as a summer-only institute in Santa Fe, “without [tutor] Geoff Comber (H95), I don’t know what would have happened in Annapolis,” Kutler says. “I had been in Santa Fe two or three summers,” says Comber, “and I was so impressed. I thought we were doing important work and we should do it here.” He remembers “quite strong objections,” with some Annapolis faculty saying: Why should we take on the risk? It took two years to get it off the ground, and in 1977 Comber operated as Annapolis GI director from his tutor’s office while he continued to teach full-time. “People were saying, ‘You can’t just do the same thing as Santa Fe,’ so I made up the history segment.” In 1988, the history segment was approved on both campuses as a fifth segment. The vice president, Burch Ault, presented Comber with potential funding contacts around the country. “Everyone was impressed that we grew so fast,” Comber says. In 1980, while Comber was on sabbatical, Ben Milner took 4 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017 —David Carl, past Santa Fe associate dean for Graduate Programs over the directorship and hired Sharon Hensley as full-time GI assistant. Over decades, “she was invaluable. A wonderful person to follow up on things,” says Comber. “It was going so well with the five segments, there was no reason to change anything.” David Carl, who recently completed his term as Santa Fe associate dean for Graduate Programs (the title replacing director), knows well the administrative tasks “constantly going on behind the scenes, so that when tutors and students sit down at a table to talk about a book, it’s as if there’s nothing going on but that one activity.” Carl found it particularly appealing to work with “adults from amazingly diverse backgrounds. From firefighters to retired doctors, school teachers to surgeons, international business men and women to lawyers, bartenders, veterans, and physicists. They are giving For the past 50 years, the GI has provided an integral role in the SJC community. up jobs, moving across the country, asking enormous sacrifices of their families.” Part of the value of the Eastern Classics program, Carl explains, is how it exposes “the influence of Buddhism on Hume, or Hindu philosophy on Hegel, or Eastern thought in general on Nietzsche.” He describes how the EC program, developed with the help of past GI Director Krishnan Venkatesh, keeps the college in touch “with the deep-rooted notion of experimentation, which inspired the founders of the New Program.” Carl stresses the necessity of education in a true democracy. “For adults out of college, I don’t know of a more vital part of that educa- tion in necessary citizenship than that provided by the opportunity to participate in true liberal education as offered by the St. John’s GI.” Tom May, who served his first term as Annapolis GI director in 1986, reflects on the challenges of the early year-round program. May taught half-time, while he and assistant Hensley shouldered recruitment, alumni relations, budgeting, class assignments, and other student matters. They supervised high school visits, the Continuing Education and Fine Arts Program, and various publications. It was “truly prodigious labor, with no down time over the course of the year,” May recalls. By May’s second directorship in 1995, the ancillary programs had “migrated to other offices. The GI was finally fully and solely itself. In the midst of these years of expansion, the program remained essentially the same.” Recalling the GI in the 1970s, tutor David Starr refers to the Barr-Buchanan vision. “The concept of the college as a possible model for educating citizens of all backgrounds was alive and well in what we thought of as The Teachers Institute.” A past Santa Fe GI director, Starr reflects on “the resilience and range of the program” over the years. He writes of “a shift in demographics, from teachers funded to strengthen their competence, toward younger academics seeking to broaden their scope.” He explains that “people who specialized prematurely now come here to look into alternative philosophic, social, and spiritual studies.” The current GI associate dean in Annapolis, Emily Langston, announced plans for a 50th celebration in her Commencement address last year. A number of events throughout this year will culminate at Homecoming on each campus. This anniversary year will highlight “the role of the GI as an integral part of the SJC community,” Langston says. “There’s a hunger for the sort of thing we offer at the GI. Someone who’s eighty and someone who’s twenty-four talk about a text together. I think the GI is the sort of thing that Barr and Buchanan were envisioning when they talked about how these books could speak to anyone.” —Robin Weiss (SFGI90) THE COL L E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 5 �F R OM T H E B E L L T OW E R S IN ANNAPOLIS LEFT: An aerial view of the St. John’s campus, circa 1868. BOTTOM: Lincoln tours the battlefield after the Battle of Antietam in October 1862. Lincoln’s Walk Members of the St. John’s community are aware that dedications have brought two American presidents to the Annapolis campus: William Howard Taft took part in the French Monument ceremony in 1911, while Dwight Eisenhower, after landing in a helicopter on back campus, charmed the faculty in 1959 when the Mellon-Key complex was dedicated. Few are aware that several weeks before his assassination, Abraham Lincoln walked the width of the campus during a 45-minute visit to Annapolis. That occurred on February 2, 1865, when Lincoln was headed for the deep water wharf on the grounds of the Naval Academy. From there he sailed to what became known as the Hampton Roads Peace Conference in Virginia, leading to the end of the Civil War. By then, St. John’s had been transformed into U.S. General Hospital Division 2. Tents for wounded and ill federal forces were pitched on back campus. At the Naval Academy, midshipmen and professors had been moved to Newport, Rhode Island, and that campus was serving as a large supply depot and hospital facility for Division 1. Details of Lincoln’s visit, which also suggest what St. John’s College’s environment was like during those wartime years, are revealed in a history written by Rockford E. Toews and published by the Maryland State Archives: “Lincoln in Annapolis February 1865.” Traveling by train from Washington, Lincoln arrived at 1 p.m. at the Annapolis & Elk Ridge Railroad, located at the corner of Calvert and West streets, from where Lincoln set off by foot for the Naval Academy wharf about half a mile away. Toews noted that the traffic was too heavy for him to go by carriage while the streets were unpaved and almost certainly muddy. He thinks that the most likely route Lincoln followed may have been along the route of the railroad extension laid out in 1861. A map accompanying the article shows the route Lincoln is believed to have taken, based upon research by the Annapolis Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, the group that funded the booklet. Lincoln’s path is shown in a red line. “� o quiet and unobtrusive S was his arrival and departure from the ancient city that scarcely a score knew of it until after the steamboat sailed.” After leaving the rail station, it is thought that Lincoln walked over the Bloomsbury Square area on what was then known as Tabernacle Street—today’s College Avenue. He would have walked down Tabernacle, passing Prince George and King George streets on his right, and into the Naval Academy through a gate at the end of College Avenue. St. John’s would have been at his left. He would have seen the Paca-Carroll House, Humphreys Hall, McDowell Hall, Pinkney, Chase Stone, all built by 1865, and, of course, the then flourishing Liberty Tree. 6 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017 Lincoln’s walk took him close to the State House, where the Maryland Senate was considering ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, ending slavery. No account of his visit from the Annapolis paper survives, but a Baltimore American correspondent, who signed his name “Mac,” wrote: “[H] Excellency, the President of the United States, arrived in Annapolis, entirely unannounced, and without any ostentatious ceremony whatever, but, like the Democratic Republican that he is, he quietly proceeded to the Naval Academy, where he embarked on the steamer Thomas Collyer and proceeded, I suppose, to City Point. He was accompanied only by a servant. So quiet and unobtrusive was his arrival and departure from the ancient city that scarcely a score knew of it until after the steamboat sailed. Had it become known that he was present in the Naval Academy’s Hospital, he would have had a gratifying and pleasing reception from the wounded and sick inmates of the institution. Many of the members of the Legislature expressed great regret at not having the pleasure of seeing the Chief Magistrate.” The red line on the map illustrates the route Lincoln is believed to have taken weeks before his assassination. News accounts differ on the number who accompanied Lincoln. The Crutch, published weekly by Hospital 1, reported: “President Lincoln arrived here on Thursday by special train from Washington. No one was aware of this distinguished arrival until it was heralded by the Hospital Band, playing patriotic airs of welcome as he passed from the wharf to the boat.” After boarding the Thomas Collyer, which Toews described as a “fast side-wheel” steamer, he departed from the mouth of the Severn River into the Chesapeake Bay, leaving Maryland for Virginia. The following day, on February 4, after an overnight trip, he steamed back to Annapolis to catch a 7:30 a.m. train. Back in Washington two hours later, Lincoln was never able to return to Annapolis. —Rebecca Wilson (H83) The College is published by St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD, and Santa Fe, NM. thecollegemagazine@ sjc.edu Known office of publication: Communications Office St. John’s College 60 College Avenue Annapolis, MD 21401 Periodicals postage paid at Annapolis, MD. Postmaster: Send address changes to The College Magazine, Communications Office, St. John’s College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401. Editor Gregory Shook gregory.shook@sjc.edu Contributors Anna Perleberg Andersen (SF02) Samantha Ardoin (SF16) Carol Carpenter Martha Franks (SF78) Jonathan Llovet (A17) Paula Novash Tim Pratt George Russell Aisha Shahbaz (A19) Yosef Trachtenberg (A15) Robin Weiss (SFGI90) Andrew Wice Rebecca Wilson (H83) Design Skelton Design Contributing Designer Jennifer Behrens THE COL L E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 7 �F R OM T H E B E L L T OW E R S TUTORS TALK BOOKS “Tutors Talk Books” is a new series on the St. John’s College website that features interviews with tutors discussing a favorite subject: books. The following is an edited excerpt from the debut interview in which Samantha Ardoin (SF16) chats with longtime Santa Fe tutor Krishnan Venkatesh about his appreciation for early Buddhist texts—and Frodo. Visit sjc.edu to read the complete interview and learn more about Venkatesh. Have you been working on any writing projects? A book of essays on the Discourses of the Buddha, and on Lord of the Rings (LOTR). I think they are fairly unique because I’m trying to approach them as a literate, thoughtful human being first, and not as, say, a Buddhist or a Tolkien scholar—which I’m not anyway. The essays have been posted on my blog (kappatsupatchi.wordpress.com). What inspired you to write on the Discourses of the Buddha? I’ve been thinking about the Discourses for over twenty years, studying them in the [St. John’s Eastern Classics program] as well as by myself—but I’ve never made time to sit down and articulate those thoughts. I have also practiced various forms of meditation, including mindfulness meditation, and have always been struck by the depth of psychological insight in these early Buddhist texts. I’ve learned a lot about myself through studying them, and they have given me some necessary tools for understanding my own experience. Sometime last year I found myself spontaneously writing down reflections on the passages that moved me, and here I am. In what ways have the Discourses affected your life? The Discourses have affected me deeply in many ways. Among them: greater awareness of body and motion as well as of my emotions, the ability to sit still and watch feelings as they change from moment to moment, a greater awareness of change as it happens, and a generally calmer state of mind. I have become better at handling stress, but also more aware Early Buddhist texts and Tolkien novels provide tools for critical thinking. 8 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017 of other people’s feelings than I was before. Being by nature a dreamy person easily given to reverie and getting lost in my own thoughts, I had a lot of work to do in these respects, and the Discourses have been invaluable guides. What prompted you to start writing critically about Lord of the Rings, and what have been some highlights of this process of going deep into such a story? I’m not a big Tolkien fan and also not a big reader of fantasy fiction, but prompted by conversations with (tutor) Richard McCombs I started to reflect more on whether it was a great book or not, and if so, why. Over the course of reading it slowly with a wonderful community seminar, I began to form a genuine admiration for Tolkien’s genius as a writer. He has his weak points, but on the whole the man can write. I found out that [in] all the crucial moments in the book he is laconic and suggestive, and some of the characters are richly enigmatic: Gollum, Sam, Frodo, Eowyn. Best of all was finding out for myself that the Lord of the Rings is not a book meant for children, but speaks deeply to “mature” people who have experienced struggle. Frodo is 50 when he starts his quest. It ends up being about what Jung calls “enantiodromia”—the “turn” halfway in life to seek completion by developing our incomplete halves. Was there a particular book, poem, or film that, in your formative years, inspired a healthy dose of skepticism? In my intellectually formative years, ages 14 to 16, I was a voracious reader. Reading itself tends to loosen up inherited and congealed opinions, because one has to take seriously other worlds than one’s own, and other authorities than the people around us. In school we had a lot of history: lots of detailed study of European wars, the fight for universal suffrage, and the industrial revolution. I didn’t appreciate it at the time, but I think it went in deep—so much so that I am always shocked at how ignorant many Americans are of subjects like labor history. Ancient history was also important for me—and I remember the thrill of learning to read Caesar, Suetonius, and Tacitus critically. I didn’t have much of a social life. I remember reading Sartre and Camus very passionately; I still have a file folder full of notes from that period! And I studied The Discourses have affected me deeply in many ways. Among them: greater awareness of body and motion as well as of my emotions. Ibsen, Strindberg, and Chekhov—the fathers of modern drama—every weekend by myself for two years. All of that changed me. I never felt I belonged to my time and place. The seventies and eighties mostly passed me by… How are you involved in the St. John’s Film Institute? I was one of the founder-developers, along with (tutor) David Carl. I taught both summers with (tutor) David McDonald. I believe strongly that in our period we can’t consider ourselves liberally educated if we don’t have a developed critical relationship to audio-visual media, especially the moving photographic image. Apparently in 1936 Scott Buchanan thought so too, because in the blueprint for this college he called for a four-year great books program like ours and a fifth year called the St. John’s College Institute for Cinematics. What are some essential films that Johnnies should watch and discuss? The Passion of Joan of Arc, Tokyo Story, Early Spring, Bicycle Thieves, Nights of Cabiria, Andrei Rublev, Mirror, Rules of the Game—to give you a few to start with. Venkatesh’s blog, The Old Pearl Bed, layers reflections on Tolkien with Tolstoy, on Chekhov with Buddhism, and many other unexpected connections abound. One of Venkatesh’s essays on the Discourses was recently published in Tricycle, a popular Buddhist magazine. STUDY GROUP Open to Inquiry While the study of great books is central to a St. John’s education, authors outside the Western canon recently got some attention thanks to efforts spurred by junior Emily Krause (A18). Inspired by a preceptorial on Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, led by tutor Rebecca Goldner (AGI02), Krause and her classmate Nathan Dignazio (A18) formed a study group on modern writers and issues surrounding traditionally marginalized communities. Focusing on such authors as Warsan Shire, Audre Lorde, and Sojourner Truth, the study group takes aim at political and social questions that are not usually explored in other classes in the Program. During this spring semester, the group met bi-weekly for lunchtime seminars, focusing on short readings that are taken from literary, historical, and philosophical works. Average attendance was about the same as a tutorial— large enough to have significant momentum, but also small enough that it was intimate and conducive to sincere and productive inquiry. The group’s readings included “Conversations about home (at a deportation centre),” Kenyan-born Somali poet Warsan Shire’s poem about a refugee’s troubled relationship with her home and the alienation that vexes her relationship to herself, her new surroundings, and her origins; “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,” an address by Audre Lorde critiquing the lack of representation of black and lesbian women at conferences on feminist writing; and “Ain’t I a Woman?” a speech by African American abolitionist Sojourner Truth, who brings forward inconsistencies between professed and actual attitudes towards women, and calls for equality of rights, regardless of one’s intellect or race. For the group’s fourth meeting, it returned to its origin by reading the introduction of The Second Sex, in which Beauvoir discusses in Hegelian terms how woman is Other to man and describes the relation between woman and man that arises because of this antithesis. She encapsulates the tension pointedly, saying, “Woman’s drama lies in this conflict between the fundamental claim of every subject, which always posits itself as essential, and the demands of a situation that constitutes her as inessential.” Krause and Dignazio hope that by looking at perspectives of those whose lives and experiences are vastly different than their own, they can better understand the social and political forces that are at work among us in the world now. “Something is lost when we don’t take into account the differences among people,” Krause says. Goldner adds that the study group shows something central to the college, that the conversations that we have in the classroom spill out and continue after class (and from time to time find their way back into class). “And hopefully,” Dignazio says, “[the seminars] provide some wisdom about the human experience.” —Jonathan Llovet (A17) ROSE S. PELHAM (A20) ONLINE SERIES The study group shows something central to the college, that the conversations that we have in the classroom spill out and continue after class (and from time to time find their way back into class). THE COL L E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 9 �F R OM T H E B E L L T OW E R S C O N V E R S AT I O N Civility on the World Stage comfort zones,” Mullen said. Several members of the public asked questions about Trump, immigration, and media coverage of Russia’s purported role in the presidential election. And when a woman asked if Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders, who lost the primary to Hillary Clinton, could have won the general election, Mullen leaned back on a lesson he learned early on when dealing with the press: Don’t comment on hypotheticals. It was a strategy that suited Mullen well in his conversations with Brokaw over the years. The men had a longstanding professional relationship, one that was based largely on trust and respect. “I trusted him, he trusted me, and we could do real business together,” Brokaw said during a gathering before the event. “I needed to know some things, and he knew things that he didn’t want to tell me, and I respected that. But that’s how it’s supposed to be.” —Tim Pratt TOP RIGHT: Michael B. Mukasey, the 81st Attorney General of the United States Judge, opened the 2017 Dean’s Lecture Series. BELOW: TV journalist Tom Brokaw and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen spoke at an event on February 19. NEED FOR FREE SPEECH To a capacity crowd in Santa Fe’s Great Hall, the 81st Attorney General of the United States Judge Michael B. Mukasey argued passionately against forces of political correctness and the “concrete pressures” that these forces can exert on speech. Mukasey’s talk opened the 2017 Dean’s Lecture Series, which hosted Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor last spring. Concerned that America has become a nation whose people live in narratives rather than facts, Mukasey, who was appointed by the George W. Bush administration and served from 2007 to 2009, bemoaned trends in which “personal taste and preference have started to impinge upon how people view reality.” He also touched on human rights, judicial activism, and the threat of radical Islamic terrorism, which he was careful to define as a political ideology and distinct from the religion of Islam. Mukasey concluded his short talk by encouraging attendees to “hold fast,” to uphold high standards of free speech as well as the U.S. Constitution. In the lively question period that followed, audience members pressed Mukasey on a number of issues, including the need for criminal justice reform, anxieties about the current presidency, and threats from the Supreme Court decision commonly known as Citizens United. The Citizens United decision restricted government from limiting the rights of corporations, labor unions, and associations to make unlimited, independent political expenditures. Despite a number of differing opinions from the audience, the discourse remained civil and Mukasey held fast to his beliefs while also retaining a sense of humor. When a student began his question with, “I’m a freshman,” Mukasey laughed and said: “Me too.” TONY J PHOTOGRAPHY “� he thing I love to do T more than anything in life … the thing that gives me the greatest joy is playing the drums.” Mukasey’s lecture is available on the SJC Digital Archives at digitalarchives.sjc.edu. —Joan Haratani (SF79) CAROL CARPENTER The Francis Scott Key Auditorium erupted into applause as veteran TV journalist Tom Brokaw and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen took the stage. Dubbed “A Conversation with Brokaw and Mullen,” the event held on February 19 featured a discussion between the renowned newsman and highranking military official on topics ranging from the 2016 presidential election to America’s relationship with Russia, China, and North Korea to ongoing conflicts in the Middle East. The pair also spoke about the Trump administration and problems with the ways people get their news. Brokaw urged those in the audience to check the veracity of stories found on the internet. Social media has led to the easy sharing of fake news stories, knee-jerk reactions, and heated, polarizing opinions, he said. “You have to put as much effort into where you get your news over a long period of time as you do into buying a flat-screen television,” Brokaw said. “You just can’t take it blindly off the internet because it’s there and it seems to be done in a very sophisticated manner.” Brokaw and Mullen later turned the conversation to issues surrounding immigration, racism, and exposure to different cultures and political beliefs. “We have to get out of our H I D D E N TA L E N T She’s Got the Beat When Joan Haratani (SF79), visited the St. John’s College campus in Annapolis last fall, she made sure to visit the “rock room” in the basement of Mellon Hall. The small, concrete room was filled with amplifiers, guitars, a piano, and drums. But the room had seen better days. Graffiti was splayed on one of the walls; stained, worn out furniture abutted another. Equipment, some of it broken, some of it covered in dust, cluttered the space. So Haratani, who serves on the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors, decided to do something about it: She bought a new Yamaha drum kit for the room and donated it to the college. The donation spurred plans to spruce up the room, an effort now under way. The only stipulation? Haratani gets first dibs on playing the kit when she visits campus. While Haratani has a long and distinguished law career—she now works for the firm Morgan Lewis in San Francisco—she also is an avid drummer. It’s a skill she is continuing to hone. “The thing I love to do more than anything in life … the thing that gives me the greatest joy is playing the drums,” she says. Although Haratani has always been musically inclined, she didn’t begin to play the drums until about three years ago. She was a violinist growing up. At the same time, she had an admiration for musician Karen Carpenter, not only for her “gorgeous voice,” but for her ability to play the drums while she sang. “I wanted to be Karen Carpenter,” Haratani says. When she arrived at the St. John’s Santa Fe campus in the mid-1970s, Haratani enjoyed the two years of music theory classes she took. She also listened to music while she studied, saying it helped her focus on her work. Haratani went on to law school at University of California at Davis. Since then, her law career has spanned more than three decades. Her practice includes state and federal law, including the Alien Tort Statute, California’s Unfair Competition Law, pharmaceutical and medical device liability doctrines, and national mortgage foreclosure issues. In her free time, Haratani enjoys ice climbing and other outdoor activities. But a few years ago, while Haratani was taking voice lessons, she had an opportunity to begin taking drum lessons and jumped at the chance. Haratani quickly realized regular practice was the key to improvement. She took lessons online and in person, and began attending camps with drummers from all over the world. Rudiments. Paradiddles. Stick control. Haratani practices as often as she can. “I’m a lawyer—that’s not easy—but I think drumming is way harder because it’s so slow to get good,” Haratani says. She eventually began playing in a band with her coworkers, many of whom had lengthy musical backgrounds. The band won a competition last summer and will be performing again for a charity in June, raising money for legal aid for domestic violence victims. “I’m a big sucker for helping people,” Haratani says. Performing with a band also has helped Haratani improve her drumming skills. “There is no faster way to get good than to play live as a band,” she says. When Haratani travels she makes efforts to find places to practice. That’s what brought her to the rock room in Mellon Hall last fall. She was in town for the BVG meeting when she learned of the room, saw the condition of the existing drum kit—it had been pieced together—and decided to do something about it. She hopes Johnnies take advantage of the new kit and the practice space. “There’s nothing like playing in a space that’s nice,” Haratani says. “It makes you up your game.” Music is an important part of life as a Johnnie, with classes, singing and instrumental opportunities abound. Those opportunities create a more well-rounded educational experience, Haratani says. “I think music heals the soul, I really do.” —Tim Pratt —Samantha Ardoin (SF16) 10 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017 THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 11 �12 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017 IN FACTIOUS TIMES: LEADERSHIP LEFT: Lincoln's "Gettysburg Portrait" by Alexander Gardner, taken on November 8, 1863, two weeks before the Gettysburg Address, with photo of James Campbell, born in slavery, c.1936-38, Library of Congress TUTOR VIEW: LINCOLN LEADING BY TEACHING by George Russell The paradox of Abraham Lincoln’s appearance in the United States’ sectional conflict becomes manifest if one considers a passage written by James Madison in Federalist No. 10. In that paper, Madison, apologizing for the Constitution that he had authored, cautions his reader to resist the impractical expectation that in the clash of the interests that naturally spring up in the republic, prudent and “enlightened statesmen” will appear to resolve those conflicts. He explains that the Constitution is a contrivance of sorts which will control the effects of factions by blunting the worst tendencies of majorities. In doing so, the Constitution will obviate the need for the prudence of an “enlightened statesman” to solve conflicts of interest as they arise and escalate. THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 13 �TUTOR VIEW M adison, however, lived long enough to see the precursor of the sectional crisis and secession, the nullification crisis of 1832, precipitated by John Calhoun.1 He lived long enough to see that factious men were to arise in the republic who ranked their interests above the good of constitutional rule; factious men who sought a “union” in which the parts, the states, superseded the whole, the union of states. As those men rejected constitutional rule, they undermined the implicit remedies of the Madisonian constitution, at the same time as they speciously obfuscated what it meant to be an American citizen.2 It was into that turmoil that, Providence providing, the enlightened statesman, Abraham Lincoln, entered. Lincoln’s leadership displays itself in that wellknown political scene in which two crises intersect, the moral crisis of possible slavery expansion and the political crisis of secession. In the context of those crises, Lincoln agrees with Madison that Lincoln teaches that government of the people is government by majorities, properly restrained, not government of minorities over majorities. factious men are the great danger to the republic. To counteract those factious men, Lincoln, from the time of his earliest speeches, takes on the role of a teacher. Indeed, leading by teaching, Lincoln, both before he became president and during his presidency, did his utmost to instruct the American citizen on what it means to be an American. 14 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017 Three major tenets emerge as central in Lincoln’s understanding of what it means to be an American. First, one must be devoted to rule by law. This tenet, he sets out in that early and precocious speech, Address to the Young Men’s Lyceum, Springfield, Illinois. Second, according to Lincoln, the true American believes in universal freedom and a basic equality with respect to that freedom. The principles of the founders as they expressed them in the Declaration of Independence were meant to be principles of the nation going forward. Third and last, the true American believes that the United States is a perpetual union of states. Lincoln’s own exemplary submission to the law is most easily discernable in his handling of the two great factions of the sectional crisis, namely, the radical Southern planters who claimed rights to be able to move their property in human beings everywhere in the Union, and the abolitionists, who wanted to abolish the institution immediately. Lincoln maintained against both sides that the law had to be respected against the factious impulses of each. While he was in agreement with the abolitionists that slavery was wrong, Lincoln argued against the abolitionists that the institution enjoyed legal protection in the states in which it existed. As the institution enjoyed the sanction of law, it had to be respected in those states. Against the Southern planters, Lincoln cited as precedent the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, in which the institution was prohibited in those territories. In his view, the same legal spirit that protects the institution of slavery also limits slavery to where it exists. Particularly in the factious times in which he lived, Lincoln believed that adherence and submission to the law was the most needful thing for the health of the republic. In regard to the second tenet, that the true American believes in universal freedom, especially regardless of race, Lincoln’s view was mightily contested by Southerners—and not only radicals. As evidence of that contest, here citations from one speech must suffice, the so-called “Cornerstone Speech” of Alexander H. Stephens, an erstwhile “Union man” from Georgia. In a speech that he delivers on March 21, 1861, Stephens asserts the following regarding the principles of the Declaration of Independence: “The prevailing ideas entertained by Jefferson and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature, and that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically…[T]he general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away…Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races…This was an error… Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition.” In opposing those views and other similar views, Lincoln never seems very interested in such statements as philosophical or abstract statements. Rather he contents himself with pointing out and instructing his hearers in the American way. In teaching that the true American is an egalitarian, he asserts the precise way in which he understands all men to be equal; at the same time, he likens the situation of the enslaved people to that of the revolutionary era Americans. Here I cite from two speeches: First, from the Kansas-Nebraska Act speech, at Peoria, Illinois, we have a statement which repeats in slightly different versions throughout Lincoln’s speeches. “…I hold that…there is not reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge [Stephen] Douglas he is not my equal in many respects…But in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of any living man.” Arguing in favor of universal equality, equality in respect of property-engendering labor, Lincoln rejects Douglas’s “popular sovereignty” doctrine Madison termed Calhoun’s doctrine of nullification, the claim that federal law could be “nullified” within a given state, “preposterous and anarchical.” 1� To be sure, the states in rebellion drew up a constitution. However, they made sure that they explicitly asserted the sovereignty of the individual states as supreme over the central government. In effect, they did not ultimately submit to the constitution and the government set up therein. They rejected that sort of constitutional rule. 2� THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 15 �TUTOR VIEW that slavery in the territories should not be a concern of American citizens outside the territories. Lincoln maintains that the question of slavery was the concern of every citizen. Every American citizen should be concerned to keep slavery, the expropriation of labor and its fruits, on the road to extinction. Second, from his debate with Douglas in Alton, Illinois: “It is the eternal struggle between these two principles—right and wrong—throughout the world. They are the principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever Lincoln was a man with a true moral compass. Whatever he thought about the legality of enslavement and the necessity of upholding the law, he knew and over time persistently maintained that in itself it was wrong. continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same that says, ‘You work and toil and earn bread, and I’ll eat it.’ No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.” Whereas Stephens understands the founders to be misguided in their adherence to the principles of the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln maintains that these are the ideas and principles for the sake of which Americans shed their blood and gave their lives; these principles are the founders’ legacy to the republic for all times. He sets forth the view that the founders “meant to set up a standard 16 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017 maxim for free society, which should be familiar to all, and revered by all; constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere.” The assertion that “‘all men are created equal’ was placed in the Declaration…for future use. Its authors meant it to be…a stumbling block to those who in after times might seek to turn a free people back into the hateful paths of despotism.” The principles, then, were not merely to be held but to be lived by. To repeat, the true American believes in universal freedom: that is what Lincoln taught. The third tenet of Lincoln’s Americanism is the belief in the perpetuity of the union of the states in the United States. What that amounts to, as is known, is that there is no right of secession possessed by the citizens of the states. Lincoln saw the secessionist view of the 19th century as a rejection of the principle of majority rule. Lincoln agreed with Madison that restraints needed to be imposed on majorities in order to protect rights of minorities; however, he also believed that once those restraints were in place, the minority party must follow the lead of the majority or dissolution of popular government ensues on the basis of minority secession. Lincoln teaches that government of the people is government by majorities, properly restrained, not government of minorities over majorities. There are those who might question Lincoln’s qualifications as a teacher of what it means to be an American. Lincoln was a man who had faults, and because of his general candor, visible faults. His views were at times what we would call today “racist” views. For example, he acknowledged the social inferiority of black people as a fact, and said that he was not inclined to raise their status, or change that state of affairs. Again and again, in dealing with black Americans, he catered to the feelings and prejudices of his white constituents rather than treat the blacks equitably. Repeatedly, he maintained that enslavement in the Southern states was legally sanctioned and protected although he believed and taught that the enslavement of human beings is both wrong by nature and un-American. In his speculations about emancipation, Lincoln for a long time favored the deportation of black Americans from the country. Charges such as these continue to be leveled by some who reflect on Lincoln’s career. However, in the face of his faults and defects, Lincoln was a man with a true moral compass. Whatever he thought about the legality of enslavement and the necessity of upholding the law, he knew and over time persistently maintained that in itself it was wrong. Whatever he observed about the social equality of blacks and whites, he knew and repeatedly argued that politically, blacks and whites were all fundamentally equal—that is, that they all had rightful claims on the fruits of their own respective labor. And Lincoln, in accord with that true moral compass, knew that, as he put it once when referring to Douglas, a man “may rightfully change when he finds himself wrong;” Lincoln could and did change his mind. If we come back to the matter of Lincoln’s attitude toward the black American, we can say the following: Twice Lincoln gave personal audiences to Frederick Douglass at the White House, once in the summer of 1863 to hear Douglass’s complaint about his (Lincoln’s) tardy response to the way in which the Confederates were treating captured black soldiers; and again a year later, when Lincoln wanted Douglass’s opinion on the lack of movement by the enslaved people who had been legally freed. Lincoln came to see that these United States were the true home of the latest posterity of those Africans forcibly transported here as long ago as 250 years. However tardily, he came to see that the Americans of African descent deserved to fight for their freedom. And thereafter, he saw, too, that the darker-skinned soldiers fighting to preserve the country founded on freedom and equality did not deserve deportation to some foreign land. Rather, they deserved citizenship in that homeland where through them and in them a new freedom was being born. It was in changing his mind in the ways that he did that Lincoln really indicts those who clung so tenaciously to what they knew to be wrong. At the same time, in doing so, he exhibited, as he so often did in his speeches, the kind of nobility that his most ardent opponents wanted to claim for themselves but could not. In those exemplary ways discussed here, Lincoln did all that he could to preserve Madison’s constitutional rule by trying to teach his fellow citizens what it means to be an American. Paradoxically, he appeared on the earth in the right place at the right time to preserve and protect a constitution constructed to provide against the fortuity of prudence in human affairs. THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 17 �LEADERSHIP Protector of Our Program Annapolis President Chris Nelson (SF70) Leaves a Mighty Legacy By Tim Pratt When Chris Nelson was a child, he often found himself engaged in battle. Tomato plant stakes from the family garden were used as swords. Trashcan lids served as shields. The rug in the living room was the river Skamandros as Nelson and his siblings re-enacted the Trojan War from the Iliad, bouncing on furniture and avoiding the water below. “I slew countless Trojans, over and over,” Nelson says with a smile. “My siblings were very accommodating.” DEMETRIOS FOTOS While as a 12-year-old Nelson immersed himself in the Iliad and Euclid’s Elements, his journey with the great books of Western civilization was just beginning.  18 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017 THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 19 �LEADERSHIP It was a trek that took him to St. John’s College as a student in the 1960s, to Chicago for a lengthy law career, and eventually back to his alma mater to serve as president. During that time, Nelson became a champion for the liberal arts, played a prominent role in higher education at the national level, and oversaw vast improvements at the college. But now, Nelson is preparing to step down as leader of the place that has been a part of his life since childhood. He will retire in June after 26 years as Annapolis president. “Chris is kind of the rock on which the college has operated for over a quarter of a century,” says Mike Peters, who served as president of the St. John’s Santa Fe campus from 2005 through January 2016. “He leaves a pretty amazing legacy.” TONY J PHOTOGRAPHY The Early Years Nelson is an outspoken advocate of the liberal arts. Nelson’s connection to St. John’s came as a “birthright,” tutor and former Dean Michael Dink said during a recent Saturday Seminar event in Annapolis held in Nelson’s honor. Nelson’s father graduated from St. John’s in 1947—a decade after Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan founded the college’s great books curriculum—and was a long-serving member and chair of St. John’s Board of Visitors and Governors. Although Nelson’s father didn’t talk a lot about St. John’s at home, Nelson says his childhood was permeated with elements of the Program, from refighting the Trojan War with his siblings to redrawing the diagrams from Euclid’s Elements, with and without drafting instruments. In high school, Nelson grew tired of the lectures given by his teachers, who would tell students “what the answer was and what to think,” he says. He knew that if he attended St. John’s, he would be able to explore topics for himself. Nelson arrived in Annapolis in 1966. He never applied anywhere else. “I was one of those people who come to St. John’s with the attitude that the opening question only needs to be ‘Ready, set, go.’ The desire to try to make the books we were reading our own, and to take them in and accept or reject the things in them as judgments we were making for ourselves, was just thrilling.” 20 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017 Nelson spent part of his time in Annapolis, where he was an accomplished athlete and active in student government, before transferring to the Santa Fe campus and graduating in 1970. College board chair Ron Fielding (A70)—one of Nelson’s classmates, a fellow intramural sports captain, and officer in student government—says he saw flashes of Nelson’s potential when they were students. “The leadership aspect is without question,” Fielding says. “He was a natural leader of the athletics teams and … of the polity.” Following Nelson’s graduation, it was off to law school at the University of Utah, where he founded and directed the university’s student legal services program. He graduated in 1973. Nelson practiced law for 18 years in Chicago and was chairman of his law firm when he was tapped to become president of St. John’s in 1991. He had served on the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors since 1986. A Natural Leader When Nelson returned to campus as president in the summer of 1991, he faced a budget deficit and aging facilities. Nelson immediately got to work, coming up with a list of projects and working with former Vice President of Development Jeff Bishop and Treasurer Bud Billups to raise funds, make “prudent” cuts and balance the budget, he says. “Those guys saved this college,” says Bishop’s wife, Sue. In the two-plus decades since then, new dormitories and other structures have been erected; every building on campus has been renovated; even the grounds have improved. The four-year graduation rate, which was 36 percent when Nelson arrived, has nearly doubled. Enrollment applications also have increased in recent years following a slight downturn after the economic crisis of 2008—a crisis that affected enrollment at liberal arts colleges all over the country. But some things, like the St. John’s Program, have remained largely the same, with students now reading many of the same works as their predecessors. That is one of the things Nelson takes most pride in as he looks back on his career. “I think it’s protecting as much as I could the community of learning at the college,” Nelson says. “I’d say that has been most important to me.” That’s not to say there haven’t been changes. Nelson is excited about the recent focuses on biology and quantum mechanics in senior lab. A new quantum mechanics lab was recently completed in the basement of Mellon Hall. Nelson says he has tried to give faculty and staff the autonomy they need to be successful. At the same time, he says he was sure to question and discuss the recommendations and decisions being made. “Everybody on the faculty has ideas about how to improve the work of the academic program in the classroom,” Nelson says. “I’ve wanted them to feel that they could continue to work on the Program. I’ve wanted to provide as much freedom from constraint as I could.” Others share a similar view of Nelson’s management style. Dink, who served as dean from 20052010, said in his Saturday Seminar comments that Nelson was friendly and supportive during his term. Deans are drawn from the faculty for five-year terms, which means they often come with no prior administrative experience. “But Chris well understood the virtue, indeed the necessity of this practice, and did everything in his power both to assist with the learning curve and to respect and support the authority of the dean,” says Dink. Leo Pickens (A78), who served for years as athletic director before working as alumni director and now director of Leadership Annual Gifts, describes Nelson as “a great listener.” “His door has always been open,” says Pickens. “He’s very approachable, he’s extremely fair-minded … and I think it became very clear early on that he was dedicated to the college.” “� t was clear when we met and has only I been reinforced during our time working together that Chris’s affection for the college is deep and fierce and abiding. He has been a St. John’s force of nature.” —Santa Fe President Mark Roosevelt The Man Like many others who have known Nelson over the years, Pickens has stories to tell. He attended St. John’s with Nelson’s younger brother, Ted, and recalls hearing about Chris’s intramural sports awards and team championships when he was a student. “I had not met Chris, but had only heard tales of his athletic prowess,” Pickens says with a laugh. Having witnessed Nelson’s skills on the badminton court when he returned as president in 1991, Pickens took note of Nelson’s resilience and coolness under pressure. “Those kinds of qualities he demonstrated as an athlete, even under the most difficult of circumstances … are qualities he also demonstrated as a president here.” Pickens got to see more of that determination on a cross-country bike ride he took with Nelson, Bishop, former Santa Fe Vice President for Development Jeff Morgan, and Bob Gray in 1993. Sue Bishop saw it, too, as she drove the support van. She and Pickens fondly recall Nelson “flying” down steep mountain roads, a smile on his face. And while the group had agreed not to talk about college business on the trip, Nelson would read Gilgamesh out loud during rest stops as his colleagues relaxed in the shade. “He demonstrated on that ride just how strong of a human he is,” says Pickens. Through it all, Nelson has maintained his love of the great books, often quoting passages from works he has read over the years. And he often invites students, faculty, and staff to his home for special occasions. Some who spoke of Nelson recalled lengthy conversations over a glass of wine, or of Nelson’s love for chopping wood, or of the pleasure he gets from working in the garden. There were stories of Nelson, while still a student, presiding over a hearing for fellow Johnnies who were involved in a series of food fights. And there were stories of Nelson going out of his way to help faculty, staff, and students, leading study groups, and teaching classes. Nelson’s dedication to the college stands out, says Peters. “I think Chris bleeds Johnnie black and orange,” says Peters. “He is going to be a hard act to follow, but he has smoothed the path for those folks who are coming after him.” Above: Leo Pickens, Jeff Morgan, Bob Gray, Chris Nelson, and Jeff Bishop wearing bicycling outfits, medals and wreathes, and holding a photo of Albert Einstein on a bicycle, outside of McDowell Hall in 1993. THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 21 �LEADERSHIP “� e want to have people who W can think for themselves rather than being ... useful tools for someone else’s purposes. So that’s asking each individual to take responsibility for the public good. Each of us has a leadership responsibility in that respect.” A National Voice Nelson has served as an ambassador for the college, traveling around the country, giving talks—he estimates he has given more than 1,000 since he took office—on issues like government regulation in higher education. He has met with lawmakers, donors, and others; the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities on February 1 announced Nelson as chairman of its board of directors. And two years ago he received the Association’s highest honor, the Henry Paley Award for his “unfailing service toward the students and faculty of independent colleges and universities.” Nelson is well-known as a proponent of the liberal arts. A liberal arts education creates more thoughtful, well-rounded people, he says. “We want to have people who can think for themselves rather than being driven to, or useful tools for, someone else’s purposes,” he says. “So that’s asking each individual to take responsibility for the public good. Each of us has a leadership responsibility in that respect. To get there, we need to cultivate the arts of intellect and imagination, and that’s exactly what we do at St. John’s College.” Nelson’s 26 years of work toward reaching that goal are commendable, Fielding says. An American Council on Education survey found the average term of a college president is less than 10 years. “There’s 22 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017 something comforting about having a leader who doesn’t aspire to do anything other than making this current institution better,” Fielding says. “That is uncommon, whether it is a politician in a political office or a college president. It’s very special.” Senior Alina Myer, who served as president of the student Delegate Council in 2016, says the college is lucky to have someone as dedicated to the liberal arts as Nelson. “It’s kind of an incredible thing to have such accessibility to someone who has worked tirelessly and on such a large scale to ensure that people understand the value of what we do here at St. John’s,” says Myer. “He is the first person who speaks to us as Johnnies at convocation, and for my class he will be the last, as our commencement speaker. He is emblematic of our St. John’s experience.” The Future After Nelson retires, he plans to travel, visit family, and catch up on some reading. “There’s a book in there somewhere too,” he says. He hopes to relax a bit after a career which included an 18-month stint as president of the Santa Fe campus and often found him working seven days a week. But Nelson won’t be completely absent from campus. He has been appointed a member of the teaching faculty and says he will make himself available to lead seminars, preceptorials, or anything else asked of him. “For the sake of intellectual engagement, it will be good to spend some time with the students,” says Nelson. “I get a great deal of satisfaction out of the study groups I have now when I’m not teaching a regular class, which I used to do, and I can’t imagine not having that intellectual vibrancy in my life going forward.” Left: Nelson on back campus, with College Creek in the background. DEMETRIOS FOTOS DEMETRIOS FOTOS —Chris Nelson A toast from Eva Brann (H89), tutor and former dean, in honor of Chris Nelson, at Homecoming 2016: I’ve heard it said that a proper toast begins by making people laugh. I’m feeling a little more like crying than laughing myself. And moreover, those glorious six years when I worked with Chris to make this college of ours stay itself and be what it was meant to be, weren’t as productive of funny stories as happy solutions. Yet I do remember an incident which, when I told it to my fellow deans at other schools, aroused laughter— incredulous laughter. So I’ll tell it here. Some of you may remember Miss Beate von Oppen, a fellow tutor, my friend, and next-door neighbor. She always collected more books than she had places for. So I persuaded her to get yet another bookcase. We picked up one of those assemble-it-yourself cheapies, and, of course, no picture in the instruction booklet matched reality, and no word in it was in our human vocabulary. I was dean then, and when in major trouble, such as over-budgeting by thousands, I looked for salvation in one direction: to our president. So what did I do? I phoned Chris at home, and within half an hour he and Joyce were at the door, and within another half hour the rickety thing stood erect and ready. This, I’m here to tell you, was not the relation I used to hear about at deanish get-togethers. What was normal was open warfare, uneasy peace, all the way down to cowed submission. The thing about Chris, an unusual thing, is that he knows how to govern. There is not a smidgen of pretentiousness in him, which means that he meets ready respect for his decisions. There isn’t even a ghost of power assertion, which means that authority accrues to him naturally. There is no taste in him at all for cliques, which means he’s everyone’s president. There isn’t even a little bubble of hot air in him, which means that when he says something is so, it’s because he’s costed it out, or remembered it correctly, or really thought about it. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if after dinner he gently lets me know what facts I’ve got wrong. Chris Nelson and Eva Brann overlook the campus, as they did when Chris first became president. When I spoke of the years I was dean as glorious, I meant it. We were known as “the four B’s and the C”: our beloved Jeff Bishop and fondly remembered Bud Billups and me, the eternally amateurish dean. And then Chris, who made it possible for us so-called administrators to live up to the meaning of the word, which is “to minister to” those in our charge. Or better put, to be fulfilled by our offices in Aristotle’s sense of happiness, the soul at work in behalf of a good thing: the Program, the folks busy here in its service, and the students who’ll soon be our “nurslings,” alumni in Latin. I’ll end with a vision I’ve held in my imagination for a long time. Very near the beginning of his presidency, Chris and I were standing on the quad looking down from the top of the stairs onto our irreplaceable bronze steal – the one that promises to make free adults of children by means of books and laboratories – and out across the back campus. Chris heaved a deep sigh and said words to this effect: “Here is where I want to spend my life.” And so he has, and we cannot thank him enough for it. So please raise your glasses in a toast to our incomparable president, our Chris. THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 23 �BY PA UL A NO VA SH GL MO AD D ER IA N TO R LEADERSHIP Michelle Urban (SF08) is convinced there is major value in having to figure things out. “When I was at St. John’s writing a paper, I usually wouldn’t know how to prove what I wanted to,” Urban says. “But then it would come together—and succeeding at something you have struggled with is a great feeling.” It is a philosophy that translates well to Urban’s current situation as an entrepreneur running a tech startup. As CEO of Albuquerque-based Pressure Analysis Company (PAC), which designs and manufactures wireless technology to track head injuries in athletes, Urban says that her biggest challenge is inexperience. “We’re creating an innovative product in an emerging field,” she says. “Every day there’s something new we need to learn how to do.” THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 25 �A mid increasing concerns about sports-related head injuries – particularly those that affect younger players – the company’s idea is timely. According to a 2016 article published on Sports Illustrated’s website, si.com, the rate of youth concussions rose 500 percent between 2010 and 2014. Although high school-age athletes are most likely to suffer concussions and the highest percentage of injuries occur playing football, Urban says the problem spans a wide range of ages and sports. “There are complexities at different levels. Younger players have not been hit over and over yet, so having cumu- lative data can be helpful for parents and physicians,” she says. “And coaches of older players need to be able to see exactly where they’ve been hit and how hard, so they know if someone needs to be pulled out of a game and examined.” Urban and her partners have developed The Duke City Gladiators put Urban’s SmackCap technology to the test. a tool to help. Called the SmackCap, it resembles the slightly slouchy skullcap that is popular with hipsters and other fashionminded individuals. But inside, SmackCap is an array of pressure sensors, connected in a spiderweb pattern, that can track every impact to a player’s head in real time and send the data to a wireless device such as a cellphone or iPad. Besides showing if and how badly a player may be injured over time, SmackCap technology also has potential to change the techniques coaches recommend. “For instance, if a kid is getting hit repeatedly in the same spot, the coach might notice that he’s leading with his head,” says Urban. Urban grew up in Santa Fe and was homeschooled. Although her first job during high school was as part of the St. John’s campus Buildings and Grounds crew, she did not initially consider applying there. But she says she loved the curriculum and skills she learned as a Johnnie—and they were a com- plement to her graduate studies at the University of New Mexico (UNM). “In business school I was the one who was always asking questions and analyzing during group projects and discussions,” she says. “I think some people found it annoying, but I was used to thinking deeply and critically.” It was at UNM that Urban became interested in entrepreneurship. After earning her MBA she did contract work for the New Mexico economic development department, and while creating resources for businesses she realized she had skills she wanted to leverage. “I was writing website content on advice about how to start a business, and I thought, I know all of that,” Urban says. She wanted to do something that contributes good to people’s lives, and became aware of the problem of head injuries in sports. “It’s an issue that for a long time was shoved under a rug,” she says. “It seemed logical that having technology to track even smaller level hits, and provide a history of all hits taken, would be valuable to physicians and researchers as well as parents.” Urban met her partners in PAC at a networking event. Together she and Lori Upham, who handles business activities, and Scott Sibbett, a UNM research professor who created the SmackCap technology, are engaged in a hands-on, collaborative effort. “When we built our first prototypes, Lori handled the fabric, Scott the electronics and laptop software, and I assembled the sensor array,” Urban says. A pilot partnership with the Duke City Gladiators, a professional indoor football team based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, had players wearing SmackCaps during their practices and games and allowed the PAC team to conduct field tests and collect data. At the 2016 South by Southwest (SXSW) technology conference held in Austin, Texas, Urban participated in a gathering of women entrepreneurs who were pitching to investors; with fewer than 3 percent of tech companies run by women, she is one of an elite AY D Y ’S ING ED ER RE TH NE �EV HE E E “ T M W N O.” O W AR D S E E O N OL T T OW H cadre. “It was a great opportunity—the first time we were able to present about the company outside of New Mexico,” she says. SmackCap is available for preorder with the target of making the product available to consumers in 2018; Urban and her partners are excited about the future of the company’s idea. “Things are moving so fast—we’re marketing, talking to investors, dealing with intellectual property issues, and expanding our team. I’m not sure how it’s all going to work, but I’m sure we’ll be able to deal with it.” KEVIN LANGE LEADERSHIP Michelle Urban (SF08) protects athletes’ heads by using hers. 26 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017 THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 27 �BIBLIOFILE ROBERT WOLF (CLASS OF 1967) Building the Agricultural City S ince moving to the small town of Decorah, Iowa, in 1991, former Chicago Tribune columnist Robert Wolf has been concerned with the decline of rural America. The upper Midwest’s Driftless bioregion, of which Decorah is part, once easily fed its inhabitants with its agriculture and ﬁshing; now, despite much of the area’s being farmland, it must import most of its food and other manufactured goods. “I began to think,” writes Wolf, “about how such a region could escape the trauma of another national depression, and realized only a region that was self-reliant and relatively self-sufﬁcient could do this.” How, then, to create such a region? The solution, Wolf believes, lies in the concept of “the agricultural city,” coined by Chicago architect Joe Lambke. In Lambke’s vision, rather than viewing themselves as a series of towns or villages separated by ﬁelds, several rural communities would join together to form one “city” with multiple nodes of population. Cooperating rather than competing would allow the inhabitants of an agricultural city to develop a self-supporting economy less dependent on centralized corporate interests. Wolf ﬁrst put forth these ideas in a six-part editorial for Iowa Public Radio in 1994, “Developing Regional, Rural Economies”; the piece won the Sigma Delta Chi Award and Bronze Medal from the Society of Professional Journalists for Best Radio Editorial, and was reprinted in the Des Moines Register. Now he has expanded this work into a book, Building the Agricultural City (Ruskin Press, 2016), whose publication costs were raised on the crowdfunding website IndieGoGo. Crowdfunding itself is an example of the democratic, grassroots actions that Wolf feels “democratize our economy” and help decentralization. Building the Agricultural City outlines several practical steps towards building a self-sufﬁcient regional economy: “a community development bank, numerous worker-owned cooperatives, and one or two closed-loop agricultural systems to provide fresh [fruit] and vegetables year round. Each municipality would have a publicly owned utility powered by renewable sources.” Each of these tools has been successfully implemented by communities around the world. Writers, artists, and musicians are vital forces to “[foster] a regional consciousness, by offering dying rural towns an alternative to bitterness and passive acceptance of a System that works against them.” 28 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017 Locally sourced food, trendy on upscale urban menus, might seem easy to achieve for the agricultural city; unfortunately, most American farmland is owned by corporations who ship crops out of the region in which they are grown. Wolf believes small farmers can maximize their local impact by turning to “closedloop” agricultural systems, “in which the waste from one part of the system [becomes] the nutrient for another”—e.g., Chicago’s The Plant raises tilapia, and removes their waste from the water to use as fertilizer for edible plants. The clean water is then recirculated into the ﬁsh tanks. Ironically, Wolf ﬁnds examples of such projects only in cities. Another urban innovation that Wolf recommends in a rural context is that of the community development bank. The ﬁrst of these in the U.S. was founded in 1973 by four black friends in the South Shore area of Chicago, which was losing capital as whites moved out of the neighborhood. Its investors included “nonproﬁts, churches, banks, insurance companies, community organizations, and individuals,” and the bank “invested in minority-owned businesses and ﬁnanced apartment renovation that created affordable housing.” Placing community before proﬁt, banks like ShoreBank, Bangladesh’s Grameen Bank, and the Bank of North Dakota, help keep small economies strong. These economies can be further strengthened, Wolf argues, by the creation of worker-owned cooperatives, modeled on European examples. The Emilia Romagna region of Italy, for instance, has approximately 8,100 cooperatives, in which businesses producing the same product collaborate rather than compete—and it is this power of collaboration that allows them to compete at a global level and enjoy a high quality of life. One last piece of the puzzle, Wolf writes in an epilogue, is the necessary re-emergence of regional arts and literature, “almost instinctively understood to be the best means available for developing regionalist sensibility.” Writers, artists, and musicians are vital forces to “[foster] a regional consciousness, by offering dying rural towns an alternative to bitterness and passive acceptance of a System that works against them.” In this way, the humanities can add their persuasive power to advances in science and technology, Wolf hopes, in order to build “a cooperative society in which meaningful, remunerative work is available to all…a culture rooted in the land and created with tools that enable a people to live harmoniously with the land.” —Anna Perleberg Andersen (SF02) Rousseau’s Rejuvenation of Political Philosophy: A New Introduction By Nelson Lund (A74) Palgrave Macmillan, 2016 How does one revive the ideas of a major philosophic critic of the Enlightenment era, a ﬁgure both widely misunderstood and widely influential? Nelson Lund’s new book, Rousseau’s Rejuvenation of Political Philosophy, aims to do just that by introducing readers to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s thoughtful political wisdom. In reading Rousseau authentically, “as Rousseau read Plato,” Lund, a professor at George Portico By Sarah Stickney (A04) Emrys Press, 2016 The 26 poems collected in Sarah Stickney’s new book of poetry, Portico, are inspired, in part, by her love for the Italian city of Bologna. With an artist’s eye and a passionate heart, she observes the beauty and wonder found in life’s everyday moments—young men on Vespas buzzing in the streets, steam rising from a bowl of pasta, cedar trees bending in the breeze— and she takes the reader along for a soulful ride. In “Song” Stickney writes, “From under a carved arch / this morning Bologna brought me a woman / whose Plato Symposium or Drinking Party: Translation with Introduction, Glossary, Essay, and Appendices By Eva Brann (H89), Peter Kalkavage, and Eric Salem (A77) Focus Philosophical Library, 2017 A two-year labor of love, this new edition of Plato’s most popular dialogue, Symposium or Drinking Party, marks the fourth Plato translation by this trio of St. John’s tutors. While grasping the mechanics of the ancient Greek language requires a certain aptitude, the translators delve deeply to explore the tone and nuance of the original text, thus enhancing the Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, helps shed light on what Rousseau can do for mainstream political issues, including feminism, religion in secular society, and the behavior of the American constitutional government. Rousseau meditated on fundamental human issues such as the soul’s nature and the nexus between our more primitive origins and civilization’s achievements. Even so, the political reflections of those meditations have not been taken seriously. Lund endeavors to show readers that Rousseau, like his muse Plato, is a not simply a dogmatist, and that we ought to refrain from hastily attributing substantive conclusions to these great authors. —Aisha Shahbaz (A19) hair-loss and stiff perm met / at the skeleton of a leaf and a branch of dried coral.” The poems, several of which first appeared under different titles in journals, weave in and out of time and echo certain themes: desire and loss, comfort and longing, the familiar and the uncharted. Throughout the book there is a subtle, universal reminder that our own shared human experience is fleeting and meant to be embraced. reading experience. As with the trio’s previous Plato translations, the end result is faithful to the original Greek vocabulary and syntax, and artfully transmits Plato’s humor, drama, and artistry. In addition, the trio pays careful attention when providing English translations of the Greek rhymes, ensuring that the text is pleasing when also read aloud. The volume is sure to satisfy Plato scholars; however, it is friendly to newcomers, too, offering a number of aids—an introduction that sets the scene and introduces the main characters; an interpretive essay; a select bibliography of both classic and contemporary works; and two illustrated appendices—to help readers navigate this translation. THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 29 �For & About ALUMNI PIRAEUS 2017 SAVE THE DATE! Annapolis: September 8-10 Santa Fe: September 15-17 At Homecoming, new memories and deepened friendships emerge, as the past and present come together. Share your love for St. John’s College by celebrating Homecoming 2017 with the special people in your life—family, friends, and the SJC campus community. Registration opens on June 2. Visit sjc.edu/homecoming to register and view the full schedule of events. Highlights from the weekend in both Annapolis and Santa Fe include: Seminars: A wide variety of seminars are offered for all alumni. Reunite with fellow alumni around the seminar table and engage in great conversations. All-College Graduate Institute 50th Anniversary Celebration: In honor of the 50th anniversary of the Graduate Institute, the college community is invited to a reception to celebrate the history of the Graduate Institute and GI alumni. CAST YOUR VOTE in the 2017 Alumni Association Election: May 15-June 2 This June, the SJC Alumni Association will elect a new president, six at-large members of the Alumni Association Board of Directors, and one alumni-elected member of the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors. Alumni will also consider an amendment to the by-laws to address recent changes in the organization of the Alumni Relations Office. Pub Trivia: Form a team with your fellow alumni to test your mettle while enjoying some pub style fare and drinks. In addition to bragging rights, prizes will be conferred to the winners. Alumni and Student Networking Luncheon: Whether you are well into your career or searching for a new one, our networking luncheon has something for everyone. Share your career guidance with curious students and/or network with fellow alumni over lunch. Meet our career counselors, and learn about resources that are available to students and alumni. All SJC alumni are encouraged to participate in these elections. Early voting by fax, mail, or online ballot will open on May 15 and continue through June 2. The election will be held during the 2017 Alumni Leadership Forum (ALF) on June 4 at the Santa Fe campus. (See next page for ALF details.) Accommodations Alumni are encouraged to book their accommodations early. On-campus housing is not available in Annapolis or Santa Fe, though alumni receive special SJC rates at the hotels listed below. Be sure to contact hotels directly for specific rate information; please note that there is a home Navy football game schedule during Homecoming weekend in Annapolis. Annapolis: SJC rates offered at Historic Inns of Annapolis, O’Callaghan Hotel, and the Westin. Santa Fe: SJC rates offered at Sage Inn, Hotel Santa Fe, and Drury Inn on the Plaza. Contact alumni@sjc.edu | 410-972-4518 At Piraeus, St. John’s College welcomes alumni back to the seminar table. Held on both campuses June 8-11, Piraeus’ tutorled seminars provide an opportunity to relive the rigorous classroom experience over the course of a leisurely weekend. Named for the port city that served Athens, Piraeus brings alumni from all career paths and geographical areas back to their educational roots. Said Thucydides of ancient Piraeus, “From all the lands, everything enters.” In that spirit, we invite you to bring your voice back to the seminar table and share in the reflection, discussion, and community that Piraeus offers. Upcoming Piraeus offerings include: In Annapolis: The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, led by Zena Hitz (A95) and Eric Salem (A77) In Santa Fe: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce, led by Grant Franks (A77) and Maggie McGuinness Selected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges, led by Michael Wolfe (SF94) Tuition: $655 (includes five seminars, opening and closing receptions, breakfasts and lunches, and Saturday night social gathering). Recent alumni from the classes of 2007-2016 may receive a discounted rate of $475. On-campus Housing: $180 for three nights, June 8, 9, and 10. Housing available on June 7 and 11 for an additional $60 per night. Dinner in the dining hall is included. • Diversifying regional chapter events and attracting new participants • St. John’s admissions efforts, staffing college fairs, and the Adopt-a-School program Online and paper ballots must be received by June 2, 2017. Online: http:/ /community.stjohnscollege.edu For an online ballot, log in and select the link under Notice of Elections and Annual Meeting. 30 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 Alumni Association Mission To strive for the continued excellence of our college and fellow alumni by celebrating our distinctive educational experience, connecting our community in efforts toward shared support and beneﬁt, and fostering a culture of intellect, generosity, and service. For more information and to register online, visit http://community.stjohns college.edu/piraeus or call 505-984-6114. training will be provided, including sessions on: By Mail or Fax: Request a Paper Ballot Contact Sarah Palacios, director of Alumni Relations, at 505-984-6121 or sarah.palacios@sjc.edu. • An overview of the Career Services strategic plan for the upcoming year HOW TO VOTE In Person: Alumni Leadership Forum 2017 The Association’s Annual Meeting will be held during ALF weekend on Sunday, June 4, from 9 to 10:30 a.m. on the Santa Fe campus. Two offerings in Annapolis—The Aeneid by Virgil, led by Tom May and David Townsend, and Persuasion by Jane Austen, led by Eva Brann (H89) and Erica Beall (A07)—are already fully subscribed. To place your name on the waiting list, please contact the Alumni Office at alumni@sjc.edu or 505-984-6114. This three-day program gives the college’s most active volunteers a forum to come together, share successes and challenges, and learn best practices from one another. It also provides an intimate opportunity to hear from the presidents and college leadership on the evolving strategic plan for St. John’s, and to learn more about ways in which you can be of significant service in these efforts. In-depth • The capital campaign, peer-to-peer giving efforts, and building a culture of philanthropy In appreciation for your service to the college, the Alumni Leadership Forum is offered at no cost. To register and view information, visit sjc.edu/alf. THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 31 �PHILANTHROPY ALUMNI NOTES Gifts to Inspire 1952 Ron Fielding (A70) and Warren Spector (A81) Seed the Ground for a New Century of a Flourishing St. John’s St. John’s experienced history in the making last fall when Ron Fielding (A70) and Warren Spector (A81) each pledged $25 million gifts to the college. The twin gifts are each the largest individual gifts ever donated to St. John’s. “This commitment is our rallying cry to fellow board members, alumni, and friends at the dawn of our capital campaign,” Fielding said. “It’s a signal of confidence in the college’s direction and a call to action. While $50 million is an important foundation for the future of St. John’s College, it is only the beginning. We are calling on fellow supporters of the Program to come forward, and we hope to inspire gifts both large and small.” The gift was announced November 5 at the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors meeting in Annapolis, where Fielding and Spector expressed enthusiasm for the college’s recent progress toward financial sustainability through fiscal prudence, strategic management of the endowment, and attention to student revenues and philanthropy. The two said that the board and alumni must now step forward to protect the institution for generations to come and acknowledged the sacrifices that have been made by staff and tutors. “Belt-tightening has been painful,” Spector said. “But the commitment of staff and faculty has given supporters of the college the confidence that we are dealing with our challenges. Now it’s the job of the board, alumni, and friends to take the next steps in ensuring the integrity of the Program. It’s an exciting moment: for me, this means giving future generations the opportunity to grapple with problems of great complexity, of viewing problems through the long Pierre Grimes (A) published two articles in 2016, “The Philosophy of the Self” and “The Betrayal of Philosophy: Rediscovering the Self in Plato’s Parmenides, in Philosophical Practice: Journal of the APPA (American Philosophical Practitioners Association). 1955 Helge Leeuwenburgh, husband of Carolyn Banks Leeuwenburgh (A), died on January 10 after a long illness. During the 1980s, Carolyn and Helge arranged St. John’s tours to Europe and China. “St. John’s is unlike any other college in the world, and its Program is a precious, singular gem.” —Santa Fe President Mark Roosevelt lens of human history, and of understanding that seemingly new problems are actually part of an ancient continuum. The Program gave me comfort in addressing challenges and finding answers where no research was yet available. What could be more valuable than that?” Santa Fe President Mark Roosevelt thanked Fielding and Spector for their extraordinary leadership, adding, “Our task now is to live up to their faith in the administration and faculty—to continue to make the hard choices that allow us to focus on what is really important here: our students and their success.” True to St. John’s history and values, Fielding’s and Spector’s support will primarily be directed toward strengthening the Program and ensuring that all students with a desire to attend can afford to do so. Both gifts will be made as cash and not estate gifts. The largest share will be designated for the college’s endowment, where it will provide ongoing support 32 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017 Ron Fielding and Warren Spector for academics, financial aid, and career services. A smaller share will go towards the Annual Fund, thereby ensuring that donors’ gifts in the coming years will be protected as long-term investments in the Program. Fielding’s and Spector’s philanthropy has already galvanized additional support. “Others are now working with us to match areas of need with their giving priorities,” Roosevelt said. “It’s so important, and so inspiring to see people stepping forward. St. John’s is unlike any other college in the world, and its Program is a precious, singular gem. It must be preserved for the unique students who come to us, and preserved by those who came before them.” Annapolis President Chris Nelson (SF70) noted that the gifts acknowledge the importance of securing the future of the college for the sake of our country and many generations of students to come. “St. John’s has a long history of alumni and friends stepping forward to safeguard the college’s distinctive and highly regarded program of study,” Nelson said. “These two gifts are extraordinary in their size and in the message they send about our future. I dare say that Spector and Fielding have seeded the ground for a fourth century of a flourishing St. John’s College.” 1968 Mary (Howard) Callaway published “Medieval Reception of the Prophets” in The Oxford Handbook of the Prophets, ed. Carolyn Sharp, pp. 423-441. She still teaches a course in ancient literature to honors students at Fordham, around a big table furnished with Clore chairs. Homer and Virgil, she says, seem more pertinent every year. John Farmer (A) recently closed his family practice after 37 years. He is currently treating patients with heroin addiction. Thomas G. Keens (SF) gave the Margaret Pfrommer Memorial Lecture on long-term mechanical ventilation at the annual meeting of the American College of Chest Physicians, held on October 25 in Los Angeles. This prestigious lectureship is given to a person anywhere in the world who has made pioneering contributions to home mechanical ventilation. Keens and his interdisciplinary team have discharged more than 600 children on mechanical-assisted ventilation in the home, allowing them to live outside the hospital, attend school, and reintegrate with their families. Keens is a professor of pediatrics, physiology, and biophysics at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, and the Division of Pediatric Pul- Emily Langston, associate dean for the graduate program in Annapolis, Dale Mortimer (A75), and Grant Mortimer (A17) take a tour of Oregon’s Columbia River Gorge. monology and Sleep Medicine at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Bart Lee (A) recently published The Long Road from Mount Moriah to Mount Moriah: A Meditation on Kindness, Killing and the Voice of God, available on Amazon. Last summer, while at his cottage on Lake Okoboji, Iowa, Rick Wicks (SF) developed breathing problems after spending time planting prairie flowers and grasses. He returned home to Sweden, where he is thankful for the excellent medical care and universal medical insurance. Fortunately, atrial ablation (plus a daily cocktail of medicines) has his heart now pumping slowly, steadily, and strongly. 1969 Joseph Baratta (A) wrote an editorial to the Italian journal, The Federalist Debate, entitled “The Response of Federalists to the Trump Election.” 1972 Melissa Kaplan Drolet (SF) writes that she and the late Raymond Drolet’s (SF69) daughter Megan Josephine Drolet (SF08) is engaged to be married to Earl Joseph Jordan. Megan received a master’s degree in social service from Bryn Mawr College in 2014 and is working as a social worker at The People’s Emergency Center in Philadelphia. Megan’s aunt Sharon Kaplan Wallis (Class of 1964) and her uncle Bart Kaplan (Class of 1965) are expected to attend the wedding. 1976 Class co-chairs Bridget Houston Hyde (SF), Christopher Graver (SF), and Christian Burks (SF) report that the Santa Fe Class of 1976 came together to celebrate their 40th reunion. Members became reacquainted nine months earlier by e-mail, on a private Facebook group, and by videoconferences. Of the 145 graduates, many reconnections were established, and more than 30 showed up in Santa Fe for ofﬁcial and unofﬁcial, registered and unregistered “reunioning.” 1975 Dale Mortimer (A75) welcomes St. John’s tutors to visit the Mortimer family in Vancouver, Wash., where they can enjoy the magniﬁcence of the Paciﬁc Northwest. THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 33 �ALUMNI NOTES 1984 David Simpson (SF) recently won an Emmy for Editing on Life Itself, the biopic documentary about Roger Ebert. Other recent editing credits include Abacus: Too Small to Jail, which will be in selected theaters in May and will air on Frontline in September, David Simpson (SF84) and a colleague and Maya Angelou: And pose with their Emmys. Still I Rise, which premiered on the PBS series American Masters in February. Last year saw the release of Hard Earned, a series on getting by in America, which Simpson co-directed and edited, and which aired on Al Jazeera America. When he can escape from the edit room, the father of two looks for chances to travel and be in nature. 1977 Marlene Benjamin’s (SF) new book, The Catastrophic Self: Essays in Philosophy, Memoir and Medical Trauma, was published by InterDisciplinary Press in 2016. 1982 Peter Griggs’s (A) novel No Pink Concept is now an ebook. He has also ﬁnished a second, currently unpublished novel, Paisley Jubilee, about a middle-aged man with diabetes and his life in the mental health system. He welcomes suggestions for a publisher. 1984 Elizabeth A. Povinelli’s (SF) new book, Geontologies: A Requiem to Late Liberalism,was published by Duke University Press in 2016. Monika V. Schiavo (A) recently joined The Potomack Company, an auction gallery based in Alexandria, Va., as the director of books and manuscripts and manager of consignor relations and systems. She invites Johnnies to contact her to help determine the value of the company’s rare books, maps, autographs, 34 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017 antiques, and collectibles. Or just call to chat. She is still married to John Schiavo (A82) and still the mother of Hellena (SF11) and Anthony. 1985 Lora Keenan (SF) writes, “After twenty years working as a lawyer for the Oregon appellate courts, I recently launched my own business as a writing consultant and freelance attorney. As the ‘brief doctor,’ I offer writing improvement seminars and coaching, appellate advice, and complex legal drafting in the litigation context. I live in southwest Portland (not the cool Portlandia part), surrounded by ﬁr trees. I recently visited Palm Springs with Maya (Bajema) Butterﬁeld (SF), Judy Houck (SF), Caryn Hunt (SF), Mary-Irene Kinsley (SF), and Terri Luckett (SF). We all still dance like glorious maniacs.” L. Jagi Lamplighter (A) is writing a young adult fantasy series titled The Unexpected Enlightenment of Rachel Griffen, which takes place in a magic school that is based, in part, on St. John’s. The story idea and overarching plot were made up by Mark Whipple (A96); John C. Wright (A84) and Bill Burns (A94) also helped with the project. 1988 Síofra Rucker (SF) moved six years ago from San Diego back to Louisville, Ky., with her two daughters. She is the director of Advancement at St. Francis School, a progressive independent PK-12 school, where she herself attended. Rucker oversees the school’s fundraising, marketing, and communications. Her youngest is now in eighth grade there, and her eldest is an alumnus. 1990 Elaine Reiss Perea (SF) was recently named director of the College and Career Readiness Bureau for New Mexico’s Public Education Department. In this position, she oversees Career Technical Education and Accelerated Learning programs (such as dual credit and advanced placement). “We have several innovative programs to encourage student engagement and are making a push for more student internships. Although a tight ﬁscal environment can make challenging the day-to-day work of managing costs, the policy work is rewarding, and I’m grateful for a dedicated and effective staff.” Julie Rehmeyer (SF) has a book coming out in May, Through the Shadowlands: A Science Writer’s Odyssey into an Illness Science Doesn’t Understand. It chronicles her experience with chronic fatigue syndrome and describes the science, politics, and history of poorly understood diseases. She’s currently living in Santa Fe in a straw bale house that she built herself. 1993 Christopher D. Denny’s (A) new book, A Generous Symphony: Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Literary Revelations, was published by Fortress Press in 2016. Chris Dunlap (A) works in sales and marketing for San Francisco’s Arion Press, whose catalog includes several books on the 1996 1991 After two years of hard work building a free app designed to help homeowners manage their homes and everything in them, Shubber Ali’s (SF) startup company Centriq won the ﬁrstever Platinum “Game Changer” award from the National Association of Home Builders in January. Kemmer Anderson (AGI) published Palamedes: The Lost Muse of Justice, a cycle of poems begun after discovering the rhetoric of Palamedes while reading Phaedrus at Annapolis in 1991. 1992 Thomas Cogdell (SF) and his wife Amy look forward to celebrating the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation on October 31 in Wittenberg, Germany. Alice Mangum Perry (SFGI) misses her fellow Johnnies in Santa Fe. Having returned to the East Coast, she’s been an editor, writer, proofreader, and “word-nerd-forhire” for books, magazines, newsletters, websites, and blogsites. She keeps busy and appreciates having a flexible schedule. St. John’s Program. Arion Press continues the tradition of ﬁne presswork, hand-binding, and artful typesetting rejuvenated by William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement. The company fabricates its own metal type through its on-site sister business, M&H Type—the last remaining commercial type foundry in America. Anthony Bourdain featured Arion Press in his series Raw Craft, available on YouTube. 1996 Stephen Conn (SF) writes, “For Johnnies interested in working as an extra in ﬁlms, the Albuquerque/Santa Fe area is booming. This year alone I’ve been in scenes with Paul Rudd, Jeff Bridges, and Jessica Chastain. Just go to the New Mexico Actors & Extras Forum on Facebook and look for listings that ﬁt your description. It’s a fun way to make some extra money and learn the mechanics of big-time ﬁlmmaking.” be offered through Western State Colorado University’s Honors Program, for which she also serves as director. 2001 Congratulations to Talley Kovacs (A01), an associate with the Baltimore area law ﬁrm PK Law, on being named one of the Daily Record’s Leading Women. Luke Mitcheson (SF) and his wife Daphne are overjoyed to announce the birth of their ﬁrst child Henry Michael. Little Henry arrived on November 14, and he’s been ﬁlling the Mitcheson home with wonder and excitement ever since. 1999 Michael Barth (AGI) and Elizabeth Norwood (AGI10) founded and recently launched the Bhutan Fund. Barth notes that the Bhutan Fund is the ﬁrst private equity fund for the country of Bhutan, and the only one in the world that applies the country’s core principles of Gross National Happiness to its investment criteria and investment monitoring framework. According to Barth, the Bhutan Fund will establish a committed pool of capital for growth equity investments in areas that capitalize on Bhutan’s natural, sustainable competitive advantages which include abundant clean power resources; a well educated, English-speaking workforce; unique culture; pristine environment; stable political climate; and ﬁrm emphasis on strengthening the private sector. The Fund’s pipeline has more than 15 deals covering over $200 million, with opportunities for co-investment and debt ﬁnance. Barth and Norwood believe it has the potential to set an ethical example for other markets. “Hello from Pittsburgh to all Annapolis and Santa Fe former classmates!” writes Maureen Gallagher (SF), who is currently a visiting assistant professor in the English Department at Duquesne University. “Teaching a full course load of composition, literature, and research literacy skills, all while raising two young daughters Molly (4) and Jane (1) with my husband, Laurence Ales, is keeping me busy indeed.” 2000 Kelsey L. Bennett (SF) is the recipient of a two-year National Endowment for the Humanities Enduring Questions grant. The grant supports the development of a new university honors course to investigate several among many questions she ﬁrst confronted during her time at St. John’s. The guiding question of the course is: What is Art For? The course will 2002 James Marshall Crotty (SFGI) is the director of communications for U.S. Congressman Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE). 2003 Johanna Omelia (SFGI) is delighted to report that Come Fly With Us Magazine is celebrating its third anniversary this spring. The publication is now read in 128 countries, across every ocean and across every continent. THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 35 �ALUMNI NOTES 2005 Jared Ortiz (AGI) and Rhonda (Franklin) Ortiz (A04) are awaiting their fourth child in March 2017. Jared teaches Catholic theology at Hope College in Holland, Mich., and recently published his ﬁrst book, You Made Us for Yourself: Creation in St. Augustine’s Confessions (Fortress, 2016). He is also the executive director and co-founder of the Saint Benedict Institute for Catholic Thought, Culture, and Evangelization (www.saintbenedictinstitute.org). Rhonda writes ﬁction and does freelance graphic design work. 2006 Michael Bales (SF) recently started at the Mitre Corporation as a senior data scientist, a nonproﬁt that runs federal research centers. He is also ﬁnishing his master’s in government analytics at Johns Hopkins University. Alumni interested in careers in data and public service may contact him at mike. bales@gmail.com. 2016 was a good year for Jacqueline KennedyDvorak (AGI). She and her husband had a baby in April, he got a new job in November, and she got a new job in December. In January she saw great friends, Melody (AGI07) and Everett Reed (AGI07), and their three children. She looks forward to seeing them again, as well as Camille Stallings (AGI07) in May. Sarah Rera (A) was named to the 2016 New York Super Lawyers Upstate list. She is an attorney, and recently became a shareholder, with the law ﬁrm Gross Shuman Brizdle & Gilﬁllan, P.C. She is admitted to practice in New York State and Federal Courts, as well as before the U.S. Supreme Court and Bankruptcy Court, Western District of New York. Russell Max Simon (SFGI) recently wrote and directed his ﬁrst feature ﬁlm, titled #humbled, about an idealistic young theatre director who leads her vagabond cast and crew through the pitfalls of a fledgling indie theatre production. The “play within the ﬁlm” is a modern-day adaptation of Aristophanes’s The Frogs, which Simon read while at the Graduate Institute in Santa Fe. He writes, “The ﬁlm explores relationships, egos, and competing perspectives on the true meaning of art and mediocrity. You can get updates on the ﬁlm by going to 7kﬁlms.com/ humbled and signing up for the newsletter there, or liking the 7k Films Facebook page: facebook. com/7kﬁlms.” For the past ﬁve years, Susan Swier (AGI) lived in Taiwan and visited more than 80 cat cafes. Her new book, published in Taiwan in both Chinese and English under 2006 Caelan MacTavish Huntress (SF) has returned to Portland, Ore., after living for three years in Costa Rica, where he and his wife Johanna homeschooled their three children— two sons and a daughter. Huntress took his wife’s last name, noting that the Huntress Clan ruled the Isle of Mann as a matriarchy for 300 years, and their male descendants have had mostly daughters for ﬁve generations. The couple’s youngest child Taos was born in Costa Rica in an unassisted water birth. They made their living in the jungle with his website design business, which was recently absorbed into the consulting agency Stellar Platforms. This branding and strategy ﬁrm works with authors, coaches, and teachers on their digital marketing, and packages their teachings into a curriculum that can be sold as a course on their website. He is also active in the local Parkour community, teaching and training in the new sport that has its philosophical underpinnings in Stoic philosophy. This connection is revealed in Ryan Holiday’s book The Obstacle Is the Way, which Huntress suggests every Johnnie should read. You can follow his adventures at http://caelanhuntress.com. notes the timing with the election was only coincidental. the title Come in and See the Cats, introduces 62 of them. The book is available on www.kinokuniya. com and is only searchable by the Chinese title, 這裡有貓, 歡迎光臨. Swier works as a freelance writer and recently moved to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. 2007 Lucas Smith (SF) and his wife Miriam had their ﬁrst baby, Verity Linnéa Sihn-Sze Smith, born May 13. The provenance of their daughter’s middle name is from Linnaeus. In early 2017 he immigrated to Canada, though he 36 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017 Michael Wu (SF) recently completed an appointment in the Obama administration, leading renewable energy and energy resilience efforts for the U.S. Air Force. He is now starting an energy consulting company and beginning work on a book on the history of energy in warfare. 2008 In August, Tammie Kahnhauser (A) accepted a job as a software engineer at Uber. She is currently working on tracing tools that will help other engineers make their code more efﬁcient. Nate Okhuysen (A) has been promoted to the rank of captain in the U.S. Air Force. Okhuysen graduated from his Judge Advocate Staff Ofﬁcer Course in September of 2016 and currently serves as chief of Administrative Investigations for the 86th Airlift Wing’s legal ofﬁce at Ramstein Air Base, Germany. He loves the work but misses the robust seminar schedule of the Boston Alumni Chapter. children, Meir (2) and Adele, (two months). 2014 2011 2009 2012 Kyle Lebell (SF) (pictured right) is completing her ﬁnal year of rabbinical school and will be ordained at the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies in May 2018. She and her husband Sam, who is also studying to be a rabbi, have two Chloé Annick Ginsburg (SF) writes, “When I was studying at St. John’s College never in my wildest dreams did I think that a Great Books Program could ever prepare me for a Hollywood creative life. When I moved back to Los Angeles, I pursued accounting in a law ﬁrm, but I found that Ryan Burnett (AGI) shares the following: “Seminar at St. John’s College has gravity. This comes from the genius of the writer, the skill of the tutor and the openness of the student. What we feel is a spirit of shared urgency to get things right. It is no surprise, then, that my new-found career in water conservation in California reminds me of my alma mater. Both St. John’s and my career share the need to get to the heart of essential things. Clearly, state-wide drought and a set of Great Books are different. However, what they share is a life-giving focus on what matters most. That tenor guides me every day and has helped me focus studies, earn certiﬁcations and Ryan Burnett (AGI14) with his wife gain a footing on a body Kate and son Teddy. of knowledge as big as you can imagine.” Virginia Harness (A) left her corporate gig in Los Angeles for a life in public service as the architectural historian for the South Carolina State Historic Preservation Ofﬁce in April 2016. She is enjoying a return to life with four seasons and a trafﬁc-free commute. In January Brittany French (SF) received her master’s degree in philosophy from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, where she is also a teaching assistant. She plans to study medicine somewhere in the U.S. starting this summer. Nicholas H. Loya (A15) visited the cloisters under renovation at Canterbury Cathedral while touring with Sidharth Shah (A). Presumably, Anselm saw a similar scene. life was not fulﬁlling enough. So I reevaluated and discovered my true passion: costume design. I then enrolled in a Theatre Conservatory last year where I have had opportunities to costume design AFI short ﬁlms and school plays. The biggest news I have is that I was nominated for my costume designs by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for Waiting for Lefty by Clifford Odets. Little did I know that a liberal arts education would be the perfect education to prepare me for such a task. I was able to analyze the script in such detail that I think only a liberal arts major could possibly do. With these tools I was able to translate the author’s intent and words into physical embodiment through the costumes. I have always been interested in history, literature, and fashion, but St. John’s honed my interests and led me to a rewarding profession.” 2014 Micaela MacDougall (A) thanks everyone who donated to her fundraiser to attend the University of St Andrews in Scotland. She graduated in November 2016 with a master’s in theology, imagination, and the arts. Now back in Annapolis, she is planning her next steps. Do you have news to share with The College? Send your note, along with your name, class year, and photo(s), to thecollegemagazine@sjc.edu THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 37 �IN MEMORIAM Leroy Edward Hoffberger Ofﬁce of Personnel Management, and several conservation organizations. Most of Dobert’s clients worked with him for years and often decades. And many of those same clients became dear friends. He won more than 50 CINE Golden Eagle Awards as well as numerous other video and ﬁlm recognitions. Today his ﬁlms are viewed and used in national parks throughout the U.S. and have become part of the nation’s environmental legacy. He is survived by his wife, Claire Guimond Dobert; brother, Peter; daughter, Sabrina; sons, Pascal and Alexander; and numerous grandchildren. Stefan Sebastian Dobert Class of 1962 October 22, 2016 Stefan Sebastian Dobert (1938-2016), photographer, documentary ﬁlm maker, and video producer, died peacefully at his Maryland home. He was 78 years old. Born in Geneva, Switzerland, Dobert spent his formative years in Bethesda, Maryland. After St. The Shining Youth/Shining Walls mosaics at the American Visionary Art Museum bears Hoffberger’s name. John’s, Dobert enlisted in the U.S. Army. While stationed in Germany he discovered his passion for ﬁlming and photography. After completing his military service, he returned to Germany to work for Screen Gems at Studio Hamburg. There, he met his ﬁrst wife, Urte Petersen, the mother of his three children. For a decade Dobert produced and directed more than 50 38 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017 award-winning ﬁlms on a variety of subjects for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and for the Federal Aviation Administration. In 1976, he started his own ﬁlm production company, Stefan Dobert Productions, Inc. He became renowned in the industry for his well-researched and scripted nature ﬁlms, educating and informing the public about numerous environmental issues. Over the years, he traveled the Americas with his second wife and production partner Claire, meeting, interviewing, and ﬁlming such subjects as the Annual Spring Waterfowl Population Survey, the National Wildlife Refuge Systems, the Federal Duck Stamp Program, all for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In addition, he produced numerous stories for the U.S. Information Agency, the U.S. November 24, 2016 August 27, 2016 DAN MEYERS A strong believer in helping his fellow man, Leroy “Roy” Edward Hoffberger (1925-2016), former member of the Board of Visitors and Governors of St. John’s College, may be best known for his philanthropic activities. The Baltimore lawyer and businessman served as president and chairman of the Hoffberger Brothers Fund (renamed the Hoffberger Foundation in 1963 and known today as the Hoffberger Family Philanthropies). The foundation—one of Maryland’s largest philanthropic funds and one of Baltimore’s greatest benefactors— supports hospitals, health care services, Jewish scholarships, artists and various cultural institutions, and medical research, especially in the areas of Alzheimer’s and aging. Hoffberger was also one of the earliest leaders in the effort to create the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. A great supporter of the arts, Hoffberger was an avid art collector and a co-founder of the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore. He also endowed the LeRoy E. Hoffberger Graduate School of Painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art. On the cover of his 2014 memoir Measure of a Life, Hoffberger wrote, “What we leave behind is far more important than how far we get ahead.” He is survived by his wife, Paula; his two sons, Jack and Douglas; his two stepdaughters, Athena Alban Hoffberger and Belina Rafy; his brother, Stanley; and three grandchildren. Annapolis campus for 18 years. “I ﬁrst met her when I came as a newly appointed tutor to St. John’s College, in 1979,” writes Tom May. “… Jan was the soul of graciousness and discretion, dealing routinely with all manner of student and faculty concerns. Her ability to listen, her wonderful smile and genuine laugh, and her readiness to be helpful are all lasting impressions I fondly remember and cherish.” She is survived by her husband of 64 years, Julian Easterday, Jr., her son, Julian “Ralph” Easterday III, and her beloved grandson, Tyler. Janice Easterday August 3, 2016 Board member After a one-year battle with cancer, Curran G. Engel (19632016) died on Thanksgiving Day. Soon after graduating from St. John’s in 1986, Engel began his career in the motion picture industry. He worked on hundreds of productions, including independent and studio ﬁlms, commercials, documentary, corporate image ﬁlms, and music videos. His Janice “Jan” Easterday (19342016) passed away after a short battle with lung cancer at the Hospice of the Chesapeake with her loving husband, Julian, by her side. Many from the St. John’s community will remember Easterday through her work as secretary to the assistant dean on the Curran Engel (SF86) screen credits include The Sculptress, Heartwood, The Net, and James and the Giant Peach, among others. Engel frequently served as a guest lecturer on ﬁlm industry topics and was a member of the faculty at The Academy of Art University in San Francisco, where he taught courses in producing, production management, and creating demo reels. In his ﬁnal months, despite his physical pain, he returned to St. John’s for Homecoming in Santa Fe, where he celebrated a 30-year reunion with friends. He is survived by his wife, Annalisa Chamberlain Engel; his sons; and brother Brandon Engel (SF91). Thomas Rea Class of 1951 February 7, 2016 Thomas Herald Rea’s (19292016) groundbreaking discoveries in the ﬁeld of dermatology led to treatments that allowed patients with Hansen’s disease, better known as leprosy, to live without stigma. Rea and his University of Southern California colleague Robert Modlin identiﬁed the exact role played by the immune system in Hansen’s disease symptoms; their research paved the way for new treatments that rendered the disease non-contagious and allowed patients to live normal lives. Rea served as head of the USC’s dermatology division between 1981 and 1996, and kept working at the Hansen’s disease clinic at Los Angeles CountyUSC Medical Center in Boyle Heights until a few months before he died. The clinic was renamed for Rea in 2015. After St. John’s, Rea attended Oberlin College and medical school at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He completed his dermatology residency at University Hospital in Ann Arbor. Rea worked in the Medical Corps of the U.S. Army in Korea and in the dermatology department at New York University, where he ﬁrst began treating Hansen’s disease patients. He had an appreciation for books, ﬁlm, classical music, and Japanese art. Rea is survived by his wife of 51 years, Mary; his sons, Andrew and Steven; and four grandchildren. Also Deceased: Paul C. Cochran, Class of 1963 October 14, 2016 Virginia A. McConnell, AGI84 August 21, 2016 Jesse Faulkner Sherman, A06 January 27, 2015 Robert Alexander, Class of 1942 August 23, 2016 Christian “CJ” Dallett, SF88 February 23, 2017 Veronica Nicholas, Class of 1963 November 29, 2016 David F. Simpson, A97 August 28, 2016 Burton Armstrong, Class of 1943 January 4, 2017 John S. DesJardins, Class of 1947 November 7, 2016 Jacob C. Perring, SF06 October 29, 2016 George F. Smith, Class of 1947 October 19, 2016 Devin J. Ayers, EC05 January 26, 2017 Donald A. Phillips, Class of 1955 Carol J. Dockham, SF76 August 24, 2016 Margaret J. Bair, AGI13 September 8, 2016 Paul A. Sachs, Class of 1941 September 25, 2016 Margaret Jean Mattson, AGI90 November 18, 2016 June 21, 2016 John W. Burke, A79 Michael A. Smith, A87 August 28, 2016 Mary Storm, Class of 1962 November 29, 2016 February 5, 2017 THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 39 �JOHNNIE VOICES HOMER IN CHINA By Martha Franks (SF78) C hinese high school is a warrior culture. The students in my classes in Beijing were engaged in constant battle, which became clear when I took them slowly through Homer’s Iliad. The Greek society sung by Homer is based on competition for excellence in battle, which was rewarded by glory, honor, and prizes. My Chinese students, ﬁghting their way through the literal and ﬁgurative tests of a competitive high school, understood that down to their bones. Everyone attending Bei Da Fu Zhong, the high school where I taught for two years from 2012-2014, were high achievers, having fought to excel all their lives. They spent enormous time and money on test preparation. I disliked their preoccupation with tests, so I never gave them any, which mystiﬁed them. As far as they knew, doing well on tests was the only point of school. How could they win glory if they did not take tests? My argument—that a person might genuinely be interested in learning—seemed to them a quaint, if charming, frivolity. They could not afford to indulge in it. I pushed the argument anyway; it was part of my job. Dalton Academy was geared toward students who intended to go to the United States for college. It was also an experimental program that tried to get away from a deadening focus on tests, in order to encourage creativity in students. We plunged into both tasks on the ﬁrst day of class. Beginnings are always challenging, and starting a discussion class was especially difﬁcult for these kids. After years in the classroom, their voices had only been raised when they were sure of the answer. “Was Agamemnon, the leader of the Greek armies, a good king?” I asked. Silence. I wrote the question on the whiteboard. “What do you think? Was Agamemnon a good king?” More silence. People looked down and ﬁddled with pens. The silence became so uncomfortable that one student, Janie, restively broke it. “No,” she said with an angry air, as if it made her mad that she had been driven to speak. “He should not have take away prizes from best warrior Achilles and humiliate him. That is stupid. Good king isn’t stupid.” We had started. It took time and lots of encouragement, but discussion has an almost physical momentum, especially among competitive people. Each expressed opinion calls forth an equal and opposite opinion. I asked Janie a few questions: “Why do you think Agamemnon did such a stupid thing? What might worry him about Achilles?” Sam reacted with the opposite opinion to hers: “Good king should control powerful warrior or his authority is attack. Agamemnon is smart. Think Achilles problem.” Anne agreed. “Achilles acting like child weakens. Good king must be strong.” (My students understood English very well, but when it came to speaking it, they often ignored the parts they found strange, unnecessary, or confusing, such as articles, plurals, and tenses.) Seeing Sam’s and Anne’s disagreement as a challenge to her, Janie turned on them combatively, saying with scorn that Agamemnon could have found a less stupid and greedy way to control Achilles if he was afraid of him. Sam swelled a little. Other voices came quickly forward to soothe the waters. Chinese students dislike disharmony in the classroom, and will try to heal it. In the classes that followed, we spent some time with Achilles sitting in his tent, trying to decide which is the best life, short but glorious or long but obscure. I asked my students, “What do you think is the best life?” A pause, and then someone, nearly whispering, ventured: “The best life has lots of money.” There were suppressed giggles. “Okay, good,” I said. “Suppose you have lots of money. What do you do with money?” “Buy things,” someone else said boldly, and got a laugh. “All right. Obviously, you don’t want money itself, you want the things money can buy. What things?” I wanted to know. Lots of ideas poured out at that: “Clothes, jewels, travel, a big house….” “Why do you want these things?” I asked. They thought that was a ridiculous question. There was no why about wanting things. You just wanted them. Tom joked: “I want because my friends don’t have!” “So,” I replied, “you want your friends to envy you, or to be impressed by you?” They looked at me with an “of course!” expression, which was tinged with a little surprised embarrassment—I gathered that people rarely said that aloud. “Why do you want that?” I pressed. “I feel proud,” Tom answered, after a moment. “You want glory and honor, like a Greek warrior?” He agreed, relieved that we were talking about the book again. Yes, he was like a Greek warrior that way. Allen jumped into the silence and announced: “I want to be rock star.” “Why do you want that?” I asked. He grinned, sure he had ﬁgured out the answer: “Glory and honor!” “We spent some time with Achilles sitting in his tent, trying to decide which is the best life, short but glorious or long but obscure.” “Really?” I teased him back. “You don’t actually like music? It’s just a way to get money, glory, and honor?” Allen’s music was a byword around the campus. He played in a band every extra moment he had. He admitted that he loved music for its own sake. I asked: “If you had to choose between money and music, which would you choose?” This question seemed to hit a sore place. Faces turned downwards. Perhaps it named something that many of them hid within. They might like music, or art, or anything, but they had obligations to their families. All of them were only children, their family’s best hope for wealth. “I won’t choose,” said Allen, bravely. “I want both.” The circle lightened, and I thought they would applaud. Class ended and students stood up, chattering excitedly in Chinese. I took this as a good sign. As the book and the semester progressed, there were a variety of reactions to how we were reading and talking. A few wrote the whole thing off as an easy credit because there were no tests and no one was forced to join the conversation. I believe they had spent so much of their lives looking at school as a source of glory, honor, and prizes—separate from the private personal places where their real interests lay—that they did not know how to treat it otherwise. Lots of students, though, loved what went on in our class, even though they still thought it a charming luxury that they could not afford to indulge in very much. If an SAT loomed, work for my class was likely to be the ﬁrst thing shorted. And yet the ﬁgure of Achilles became vivid in their minds. Living in their own warrior educational culture, they felt how angry he was when the glory, honor, and prizes he had worked for were taken from him. They understood, too, why his reaction to that was to wonder whether these things had ever been worth his life. Homer’s answer to that question is not obvious, but perhaps it has to do with the scene at the end, one of the greatest moments in Western literature. King Priam of Troy comes into the Greek camp by night, alone, to beg Achilles to give him his son Hector’s corpse for burial. Achilles and Priam, Greek and Trojan, victor and vanquished, magniﬁcent and broken, have both lost people they loved. And they know they will die soon. Achilles shares this mortal sorrow with the king of the enemy city. As one of my students put it, in a lovely English sentence: “Achilles and Priam weep together, in the dark, in the quiet of Achilles’ tent, with the army sleeping around them.” My Chinese students and I concluded that Achilles’ lasting glory was not won on the battleﬁeld. His greatest glory is that he grew great enough to feel for all human loss and sorrow, even those of his enemy. Possibly Confucius meant something like this when he put the quality of “ren (仁),” or “humaneness,” at the center of his answer to the question of what is the best life. If so—and it will be the job of people like my students, with learning in both traditions, to decide—then the insight is neither Eastern nor Western, but belongs to us all. Martha Franks (second row, fourth from the left) with students from her high school in China. 40 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017 THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 41 �FIRST PERSON ALUMNI PROFILE VIEW FROM THE TOP GUIDED BY INTUITION AND REASON By Andrew Wice By Yosef Trachtenberg (A15) “Every rule has an exception, Mr. Trachtenberg,” Mr. May whispered to me as I mounted the stage to receive my diploma. As my Freshman Language tutor, he argued with patience and humor against my insistence for unequivocal rules of translation. This was my main approach to life—everything had to be logical, definite, and precise. In many ways, that class set the tone for my time at St. John’s. What began concerning translation spread to my ethical beliefs. I wanted there to be definite, logical, and universal ethical rules so I wouldn’t need to rely on my intuitions. I didn’t understand them, so I didn’t trust them. Many philosophers we read attempted to provide a rigorous ethical system, but none were convincing. I concluded I must (for now) base my ethics on the particulars of each situation, guided by my intuition and reason. Even as I was becoming disenchanted with logical rules for life, St. John’s was sharpening my logic. If my ideas weren’t logically sound, they would likely be challenged (they were often challenged even when they were logically sound, but on other grounds). I became skilled at spotting flaws in arguments, and my standards for accepting something as true increased significantly. If anything, I took this too far. I would find a flaw and use it to dismiss the entire argument. But a flaw doesn’t mean the conclusion is false or the argument contains nothing useful, so I learned to find value in arguments despite their flaws. Beyond logical skills, conversations at St. John’s (both in and out of class) improved my ability to communicate. I learned when to interrupt and when to listen, how to deal with lecturing, and how to disagree without alienating. Of course, knowing what I should “I learned to find value in arguments despite their flaws.” do doesn’t mean I always succeed at doing it. This next change seems trivial, but may turn out to be the longest lasting effect of my education. Before St. John’s, I hadn’t sung (outside the shower) for 15 years. Freshman Chorus required me to sing, while giving me a comforting crowd to lose myself in. I came to love singing; I still sing our chorus songs. In addition to the pleasure their beauty brings me, singing these songs recall the community I found at St John’s. I hadn’t expected to experience a sense of community. During high school, I withdrew from people and learned how to be happy alone. I expected to live the rest of my life with only superficial connections. At St. John’s, I met people who shared my interests, who I could have engaging conversations with, and who could inform 42 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017 and challenge my thinking. Moreover, I came to respect their intellectual and moral character. For the first time, I saw potential for friendships based not just on utility or pleasure, but on a shared desire to figure out how the world works, what a good life is, and how to live it. Not everything at St. John’s was new. Sometimes, I found words for ideas I already lived by. In Epictetus’s Discourses, the statements “At first, distance yourself from what is stronger than you” and “It is not the things themselves that disturb people but their judgments about those things” perfectly described my choices during my withdrawal. I found a name for what I had become. Reading and discussing Stoic philosophy also showed me the potential for moving beyond Stoicism. While it helped me approach the world with equanimity, I found Stoicism’s limits. As a Stoic, maintaining my equanimity requires keeping a part of me isolated from people. I still want to act in a level-headed way, but I now think it possible to experience the strong emotions that arise from wholehearted connection with other people without letting them cloud my judgment. I believe such a life is nobler than a Stoic one, and while I’m just beginning to explore its possibilities, I would never have considered it before my time at St. John’s. St. John’s enriched my life beyond measure by helping me break through many barriers I created for myself. It softened my rigid worldview, led me to like people again, and left me with a deep love of singing. Infrared technology provides valuable data for wine growers. Robert Morris (SF04) Soars above the Competition In the world of agribusiness, the use of commercial drones has become increasingly popular among farmers seeking aerial imagery of their land. Robert Morris (SF04), CEO of San Francisco Bay-area company TerrAvion, which produces the highest volume of aerial imagery for agriculture in the nation, is bucking that trend. The company has reached the pinnacle of the industry by using airplanes instead of drones. By applying first principles to the economics of the aerial imagery industry, Morris realized that properly employed airplanes would be far more efficient than drones. Flying at a higher altitude, staying in the air longer, and stringing together multiple flight paths are accumulative advantages which drone-based services cannot match. “Dynamics that favor high volume and customer density in imagery production mean that we can keep offering a better product for less cost per unit—just like computer chips or network links have been doing for decades,” Morris says. “Soon, this will allow us to give tools to farmers for a few bucks that were not even available to the highest generals for billions (of dollars) a decade ago.” TerrAvion uses the latest innovations in information technologies to electronically deliver detailed maps of farmland with overnight data analysis. That analysis can be rapidly used to optimize irrigation, see disease before it spreads, or maximize the return on investment of fertilizers and herbicides. The company allows agribusiness to “farm more land more efficiently, more sustainably, more profitably, and more comfortably,” Morris says, which agricultural companies have been quick to adopt. After graduating from St. John’s, Morris served as an officer in the U.S. Army, leading a drone platoon in Afghanistan. He was properly skeptical of the so-called “disruptive” drone technology, and remained stoic when drone-based aerial imagery companies took an early lead. TerrAvion’s use of planes was first able to gain traction among wine growers on the California coast. “TerrAvion started operating in vineyards because their early adopters were especially receptive to our service,” Morris says. “Vineyards intentionally stress the vines to create flavor and sugar in the grapes—this gives off a really clear signal in the infrared to monitor from the air and also means grape growers are farming a valuable crop at the edge of control—making the stress data especially valuable.” Today, the company’s success has crested the tipping point. The economy of scale means that TerrAvion has been able to expand at an exponential rate into the nation’s agricultural heartland. “The majority of our acreage is now east of the Rockies, mostly in corn and soy,” Morris says. “Growers of traded commodities are really focused on efficiency of production and scale, so they are also growing at the absolute limit of what plant science allows. We actually expect Nebraska to be our best market next year because the irrigation practices and crop mix make it super-receptive to what we’re doing.” In Silicon Valley’s hyperbolic scramble for the next paradigm shift—a concept now often called the next “disruptive technology”— Morris believes that innovators with a foundation in the classics possess a deeper insight and a broader overview. “Is the automobile, or telephone, or internet-based retailer more disruptive than geometry, optics, or Christianity?” says Amariah Fuller (SF11), one of several Johnnies working at TerrAvion. “The type of collaborative inquiry we undertake at St. John’s is the best preparation for vague vagaries of the business world. … Getting to the root of what someone is talking about in a collaborative way is where Johnnies shine,” Fuller says. “The most intimidating business concepts fall to pieces when you ask a few simple questions.” In the coming years, Morris expects to “continue to hire more Johnnies as we grow, since they are so adaptable and can work so effectively across disciplines. …We want the ones that love action.” THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 43 �EIDOS ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE GREENFIELD LIBRARY / COURTESY OF HENRY HIGUERA S T. J O H N ’ S F O R E V E R FORWARD EDGE OF HISTORY The year was 1959. Dwight D. Eisenhower was our country’s president. And St. John’s College was expanding. On May 22, Eisenhower paid a special visit to St. John’s to dedicate three new buildings on campus: Mellon Hall, McKeldin Planetarium, and Francis Scott Key Auditorium. Before a crowd that included 25 descendants of Francis Scott Key, Eisenhower delivered remarks tinged with his trademark humor and wit—and admiration for the Program. “The colleges of civilization remind us that the affairs of the human community are continuous and indivisible,” Eisenhower said in his speech. “Your own Great Books program, organized around the masters of thought for thirty centuries, convincingly demonstrates the interdependence of human activities. President Eisenhower, left, and St. John’s President Richard Weigle stroll past the McKeldin Planetarium. Today is merely the forward edge of history. From Homer to Einstein, through politics to philosophy and physics, the past instructs the present, ever revealing the continuity of the human adventure.” After touching on the U.S.’s position in world affairs, Eisenhower concluded with comments on the importance of “the educated citizen” that a St. John’s education produces. “It cannot be too often repeated that there is urgent need for the citizen to grasp the relationship between his own actions and attitudes and those of the nation of which he is a participating member.” One of Anyi Guo’s (A15) greatest gifts as a photographer is her ability to make an instant connection with her subjects. Whether focusing her lens on St. John’s students and tutors engaged in conversation, hot air balloons drifting across a Turkish sky, or art lovers taking in the British Museum, Guo captures the spirit of her subject with an artist’s eye and a click of her camera. While a student at St. John’s, Guo’s photography skills were in high demand. Using an actual ﬁlm camera (the Olympus mju II and Kodak Portra 400 ﬁlm is her favorite combo), she provided photos for student publications as well as The College magazine, covering everything from Croquet to basketball games to Freshman Chorus to lunchtime reading groups. Guo now works for a ﬁnance ﬁrm in London, where she has embraced European culture and new experiences—and continues to follow her bliss. “I’ve learned a lot about the world since my move,” says Guo. “I’ve learned to have a dry sense of humor from Brits, to speak with gestures from the three Italians that I live with, to greet continental Europeans with cheek kisses, and to make authentic Indian food.” View more of Guo’s photography at anyiguo.com. 44 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017 THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 iii �Non-Proﬁt Org. U.S. Postage PAID Annapolis, MD Permit N0. 120 Communications Ofﬁce 60 College Avenue Annapolis, MD 21401 Address Service Requested � 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/. 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Published in Spring 2017. 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 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-04 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context The College Vol 42, Issue 1 Spring 2017 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Shook, Gregory (editor) Venkatesh, Krishnan Haratani, Joan Wolf, Robert Lund, Nelson Stickey, Sarah Brann, Eva Kalkavage, Peter Salem, Eric Russell, George Franks, Martha The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/4ff9a3d370d1e419335bdb3e846a5087.pdf 28c93757c974557db288c750798d883e PDF Text Text S T. J O H N ’ S C O L L E G E FA L L 2017 VOLUME 42, ISSUE 2 Confucius A Foundation of Eastern Thought �OPENING NOTE During these past 12 months, you may have read articles in The College and on our website highlighting the 50th anniversary celebration of the Graduate Institute—stories about such alumni as Ariel Winnick (SF11, EC12), who is studying medicine at BenGurion University’s Medical School for International Health in Israel; Mary-Charlotte Domandi (SFGI91), an award-winning broadcast journalist; and David Hysong (AGI11), whose success in cancer therapy development landed him in Forbes magazine’s “30 Under 30.” You may have also reconnected with fellow alumni at Homecoming this fall in Annapolis or Santa Fe, where special seminars, dinners, and other events took place to mark the milestone anniversary. In this issue of The College, we continue to recognize GI alumni accomplishments. We also shine light on a key enterprise in the history of the Graduate Institute: the Eastern Classics program. Founded more than 20 years ago on the Santa Fe campus, David McDonald (SF95) describes the EC program as “a way of seeing how the human mind responds to universal problems and universal questions.” Sound familiar? Like Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, and Woolf, the Eastern Classics authors—Confucius, Lao Tzu, Kālidāsa, and Sei Shōnagon, among others—beckon us to examine human nature through a fresh lens that is both timeless and timely, unique and universal. Gregory Shook, editor ii THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FA L L 2 017 THE C OL L E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | FA L L 2 017 1 �FALL 2017 VOLUME 42, ISSUE 2 “� ould there be questions for thinkers W in India, thinkers in China, that we never considered in the West?”— James Carey, tutor FEATUR E S P A G E 1 6�� DEPAR TM ENTS P A G E 2 0�� PA G E 2 6 WHY WE READ THE EASTERN CLASSICS EXPLORING THE JOHNNIE WAY ST. JOHN'S: THE NEXT CHAPTER For more than two decades the Eastern Classics program has explored some of the greatest thinkers in India, China, and Japan. Alumni across the country share stories about life after St. John’s during a two-week road trip from Annapolis to Santa Fe and back. The college’s new president in Annapolis hits the ground running—and dives headfirst into the Program, starting with the Iliad. ��FROM THE BELL TOWERS BIBLIOFILE FOR & ABOUT ALUMNI 4 � Testament to a Legacy Curtis Wilson (1921–2012) 32 �imba Sana’s (AGI13) new memoir S Never Stop is a brutally honest look at a life of struggle, success, and hard-won knowledge. 34 �JCAA News S 6 An Eclipse for the Ages 7 � Greek on Steroids 8 � Experimenting in France 10 Tutors Talk Books 11 Sharing from Experience 12 �I Commencement: G Openness for Other People’s Experiences 13 Friends and Arrows 14 A Man for All Seasons 35 � Message from the Presidents A 36 �rofile: David Diggs (AGI91) P addresses social and educational issues in Haiti. 33 �aura Sook Duncombe (SF08) L excavates history to give real and legendary female swashbucklers their due in Pirate Women. 38 �lumni Notes A 43 �irst Person: Jonathan Barone (A13) F � Tan (SF97) joins the nomads Gillian of Eastern Tibet and details the lifestyle changes facing them in her book In the Circle of White Stones. � Sasse (AGI98) takes aim at Ben our nation’s youth—and offers a prescription—in his new book The Vanishing American Adult. 44 � Memoriam In 46 �hilanthropy P JOHNNIE TRADITIONS 48 �t. John’s Forever S EIDOS 49 Peter McClard (SF83) ON THE COVER: Confucius illustration by Harriet Lee-Merrion ABOVE: The village of Lourmarin in the region of Vaucluse, France, photographed during a semester abroad. PHOTO: ALAIN ANTOINE 2 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FA L L 2 017 THE COL L E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | FA L L 2 017 3 �From the BELL TOWERS A Testament to a Legacy and a Life Well Lived by Louis Petrich He taught me a lot, simply by letting me know him a little in his good last years. I am referring to Curtis Wilson (1921-2012), who taught on both St. John’s campuses and twice served as dean, whose dean’s lectures and other writings for the college have just been published in a single volume of 400 pages.1 The book, Curtis Wilson Selected Writings: Dean’s Lectures and Other Writings for St. John’s College (St. John’s College Press, 2017), is the result of a five-year project led by tutors and the book’s editors Chaninah Maschler (1931-2014) and Nicholas Maistrellis, along with instrumental support provided by tutor Bill Pastille and Robin Dunn, manager of St. John’s Annapolis bookstore. I would say the writings in this book are for anyone who can be taught the unexpected by the reading of a thoughtful, articulate man of science and the arts. The first thing Curtis Wilson taught me was how to carry the years well that carry all things away. I called him on the phone out of the blue one day because I had some questions about Kepler’s long battle with the motions of Mars. Curtis, much esteemed for his work in the history of astronomy, listened quietly to the particulars (on which everything depends with Kepler) before saying that he did not remember enough about his studies long past to address my precise questions properly. He invited us to return to them upon better preparation. Then he asked what my studies had chiefly been. “Literature,” I said. This led to an invitation to join a play reading group that he and his wife, Becky, were hosting that month. Thus Kepler took a seat next to the great playwrights during our conversations about how to give form to irregular motions. “The dramatic art takes on human motions that make the battle with Mars look almost like child’s play.” This he once confided as we imagined how Kepler might answer to certain cosmic questions of hope and despair present everywhere in the plays of Shakespeare. He spoke softly to questions of all kinds, as if not to disturb an equilibrium that he maintained alongside a capacity for surprise to the end. That was one way, too, that he made himself present to people on their own irregular paths of knowing the world, not insisting on any sun-center, least of all his own. And yet he was quick to defend Copernicus from the charges that lesser lights seem frequently to levy against the greater for some deficiency or other. There was tenacity underneath the calm surface, strong currents of affection that carried family and friendship alongside scholarly work and liberal study for many years of goodness to all. Something particular that he taught us about liberal studies: they cross-fertilize each other, as if in imitation of nature, whose inhabitants depend on this process for better fitness to survive in this tough world. We have heard much about this benefit of liberal education for many years, and there is some danger that by over-rehearsal we make even the truths that most matter sound tedious and stale to taste. But even a freshman dull to truth will perceive that Curtis Wilson’s lectures as dean elevate common speech and hearing above the surviving habits of high school and save taste in the high from extinction in the vast technologies of vulgarity and boredom. Curtis probably would not like how I said that sentence—too much assertion by one who cannot know that much about causes and effects. He respected the hard, technical discipline of science, and there- 4 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FA L L 2 017 fore recognized the dangers that accumulate from the proud phrasing of preferred ideas. But shall I attempt to demonstrate, in not many sentences, what I do mean to say here without fondness of prejudice? The first and oldest piece in this book is his dean’s lecture from 1958: “The Archimedean Point and the Liberal Arts.” This lecture asks an ancient question: can we find a standing point of epistemological leverage, analogous to the Archimedean fulcrum, from where we can apply our senses and intellects to know ourselves and the world in unity? This is no idle question, as Curtis points out at once, since wars are fought over its rival answers, and even those who have no answers, only the net of irony to catch modestly and critically at learning them, have been put to death for no more than that. Curtis reviews the attempts of the early modern philosopher-scientists and mathematicians to find this point of leverage. He begins, of course, with Copernicus, who put it in the sun; then considers Giordano Bruno, who shifts attention to the infinitude of the universe and the human mind (he paid for infinity with his life); Einstein next appears, who lets us freely stand wherever we choose in that infinity; Kepler and Galileo invite men and women to calculate their travels through space and time and take the satisfaction that belongs to gods by knowing these things certainly; Pascal insists that the esprit de finesse give subtle voice to spirit to make those infinite spaces of travel not so certainly silent; Descartes stands himself certain on his own reflective mind— until Nietzsche makes obvious that Descartes’s mind is pure reflection, still unsure of each and every thing; but this does not prevent Marx and Freud from standing proudly on theories of man in terms of forces at war with each other. Here, on the verge of dissipation or fanaticism, Curtis gives up the Archimedean point as sought by these philosophers and begins his inquiry anew into who the human being is and may yet become. Homer points him the way with his epithet for men and women as those who articulate their voices. This leads Curtis to introduce a theory of signs, which even birds “� his display of collective T self-understanding and purpose, without any false notes, I have not witnessed here or abroad.” and bees make limited use of, and he proves by their essentially triadic nature (sign, object, interpreter) that no dyadic system of relations (Lucretian atomism, for example) can give us this world. (That proof he entertains in passing, but I think it is pretty indicative of the man.) Now considered as namer of the oneness of things (note how Euclid’s geometry appears essentially linguistic at this point), Curtis reminds us of this wonderful image of the soul in Aristotle: naming things in sentences according to regularities of oneness is like the stopping of a rout in battle: first one man stops to make a stand, then another, and so on, until the formation has been restored. That is what we do in speech when faced with the diversity of things in and outside of us and we try to put proper form to their impending chaos. Naming becomes liberal artistry (here he draws upon Kant) when men and women make signs of signs and thereby become conscious of what they do in speech. This verbal self-reflection causes them to invent grammars to preserve meanings, logic to maintain consistency of truth, and rhetoric to persuade embodied souls to practice the formations of true meanings as moral beings responsible for the world. And that is where his lecture ends, after nearly the entire program of learning at St. John’s College has been tasted and justified in thought and action. This display of collective self-understanding and purpose, without any false notes, I have not witnessed here or abroad. It is given first place in this collection of his writings so that we may remember, with determination and gratitude, who we are, and who we may yet become, as artists of liberal learning. 1 Curtis Wilson Selected Writings: � Dean’s Lectures and Other Writings for St. John’s College, Eds., Chaninah Maschler and Nicholas Maistrellis, St. John’s College Press, 2017. Curtis was dean from 1958-1962 and 1973-1978. THE COL L E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | FA L L 2 017 5 �F R OM T H E B E L L T OW E R S ASTRONOMY An Eclipse for the Ages Greek on Steroids As the moon crossed slowly into the rays of the sun, a crowd congregated in the plaza of St. John’s, Santa Fe. Students. Tutors. Staff. Community members. All gathered to witness history. A similar scene played out a short time later in the observatory at the college’s Annapolis campus, their gazes aimed skyward, their eyes covered by protective glasses. A solar eclipse, the first total eclipse in the contiguous United States in nearly 40 years, was taking place, and dozens gathered on both campuses to view it. While many used protective glasses to peer up at the sun, others looked through makeshift projectors: empty cereal boxes, popcorn boxes and shoe boxes, for example, complete with pinholes, aluminum foil and paper. “It’s nice to get people enthusiastic about it,” said tutor James Beall, who helped organize the event in Annapolis. “As long as people are careful, it’s a great experience.” A total eclipse was visible on a path stretching from Salem, Oregon, to Charleston, South Carolina. Many across the country gathered to view it in cities along that path. In Annapolis, NASA scientists estimated approximately 80 percent of the sun was covered at the peak of the eclipse. The percentage was about the same in northern New Mexico. Santa Fe junior Lauren Max (SF19) said the event made her think of sophomore math and Ptolemy’s first model of the universe. “As I’m watching, I’m thinking of perspective and of Ptolemy: where we are in relation to other [things] and how things happen to line up,” she said. “Perspective affects so much. Perspective matters.” The event in Santa Fe also attracted members of the public, like Jude Redstone, who heard about the viewing and decided to attend. “This is an opportunity to watch Time with a capital T,” Redstone said. “I’m seeing a conjunction of color and of cosmic change.” The last total eclipse in the contiguous United States occurred on February 26, 1979. Among the students who gathered in Annapolis was sophomore Maddie Nell Jane (A20), who peered up at the eclipse through a pair of protective glasses. “It was great,” Jane Santa Fe tutor, Patricia Greer, developed a passion for Sanskrit vocabulary “ages and ages ago,” born of her interest in Indian texts. In the early 1970s, while studying linguistics and literature at the University of Southern California, she thought she would take a year off in India. In Auroville, or the City of Dawn, an experimental township in Southern India (founded in 1968), Greer felt so at home that she stayed for 20 years. In this international town dedicated to human unity, Greer felt like a pioneer. “It was very exciting,” she says, recalling a couple hundred people trying to plant trees in an otherwise ecologically devastated landscape. “We started building this town. By the time I left, I was the administrator of an international high school.” Greer’s family lived in Annapolis where she loved visiting the St. John’s campus. “If I had gone there as an undergraduate, it would have changed my life,” she says. During a one-month visit, she discovered the Graduate Institute (GI) and realized, “This is my next adventure, to study the great books of the West.” She earned a master’s in liberal arts in 1995, then headed to the University of Virginia and began her formal study of Sanskrit. Pursuing a PhD in the history of religion, Greer focused on the great Sanskrit epic, the Mahābārata, which she explains is “ten times the length of the Iliad and Odyssey combined.” Greer was drawn to the GI Eastern Classics (EC) program on the Santa Fe campus where students choose classical Chinese or Sanskrit, with the hope of teaching the latter. “The people here call it ‘Greek on steroids’. It’s really a kind of mother language, and very beautiful.” Like Greek, Sanskrit is a classical language, she explains, but more complicated. “Sanskrit is a highly inflected language. There are more cases, many more tenses, a gigantic vocabulary. Every word permutates as the case, as the verbs change; words come out of each other. There are so many paradigms that you have to memorize or at least know how to navigate.” This past summer, Greer participated in a summer classics study of the Upanishads, with David Townsend, as well as a study of Zen works, with Krishnan Venkatesh. In Sanskrit, Upanishads means “sitting down near”, referring to the spiritual practice of sitting down with the teacher. In the past, Greer has studied Arabic with Ken Wolfe, “our resident expert in Arabic,” she says. “I’m not one of these people who simply inhale languages. It’s something I have to work at,” she insists. During this year’s sabbatical, she and her husband, whom she met in India, will live in Southern France for six months. Along with Sanskrit she would like to learn “a little classical Japanese, my project.” She hopes to write a lecture on The Tale of Genji, a mandatory preceptorial in the summer semester for all EC students, which is considered the first novel ever written. The writer, Murasaki Shikibu, was a noblewoman of the high court around the year one thousand. According to Greer, only a handful of scholars in the world can read the Japanese in which this book is written. “That’s quite a hurdle. I’m trying to screw up my courage to do that.” H I D D E N TA L E N T PHOTO: AARSTUDIO/GETTY IMAGES by Robin Weiss (SFGI90) “� s I’m watching, I’m A thinking of perspective and of Ptolemy: where we are in relation to other [things] and how things happen to line up.” said. “It definitely looked more like the moon than I expected.” The light washing over both campuses dimmed as the eclipse progressed. Temperatures dropped slightly, too. Annapolis astronomy assistants Anna Hubbell (A19) and Xiaotong Jin (A20), who also helped organize the event, held binoculars, the light from the sun shining through, the outline of the sun and moon illuminated below. “It’s really cool,” Hubbell said. “It’s always been something that has captured my imagination.” —Tim Pratt 6 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FA L L 2 017 LEFT: Maddie Nell Jane (A20) watches the eclipse from the Annapolis observatory. BELOW: Tutor emeritus Bill Donahue sets up telescopes in Santa Fe. “� ost scholars think that M two or three thousand years ago, when the great classical texts were being written, probably most folks, who were farmers and normal people, spoke a simplified version of Sanskrit.” The College In the EC program, students who have chosen classical Chinese, which is character driven, are translating short Chinese poems within a few weeks of the first semester. Those immersed in Sanskrit must wait until the second semester to translate anything like literature. According to Greer, that’s quite ambitious, compared to other programs. “We really do it down and dirty,” she says. “The students find it very rewarding.” “The languages of India are Indo-European, influenced by Sanskrit, but nobody speaks it; you have to study it,” she says. “Most scholars think that two or three thousand years ago, when the great classical texts were being written, probably most folks, who were farmers and normal people, spoke a simplified version of Sanskrit. It would only have been the Brahmin and the upper caste scholars who were able to deal with the highly developed language that the texts were written in.” is published by St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD, and Santa Fe, NM. thecollegemagazine@ sjc.edu Known office of publication: Communications Office St. John’s College 60 College Avenue Annapolis, MD 21401 Periodicals postage paid at Annapolis, MD. Postmaster: Send address changes to The College Magazine, Communications Office, St. John’s College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401. Editor Gregory Shook gregory.shook@sjc.edu Contributors Judith Adam Anna Perleberg Andersen (SF02) Samantha Ardoin (SF16) Jonathan Barone (A13) Carol Carpenter Charlotte Jusinski Anne Kniggendorf (SF97) David McDonald (SF95) Louis Petrich Tim Pratt Eve Tolpa Robin Weiss (SFGI90) Andrew Wice Design Skelton Design Contributing Designer Jennifer Behrens THE COL L E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | FA L L 2 017 7 �F R OM T H E B E L L T OW E R S JOHNNIES ABROAD LEARNING TO LISTEN Experimenting in France Many Johnnies have studied at Aix’s Marchutz School of Fine Arts. Others have studied the great books at Aix’s IAU College, the host campus for St. John’s experimental study abroad program. by Judith Adam This spring 18 St. John’s students from Santa Fe and Annapolis, along with myself and three other tutors—John Cornell, Patricia Greer, and Russell Winslow—embarked on an experiment: to complete the second semester of the junior year in Aix-en-Provence, France. This was a first for the college. We took the Program, or part of it, to another continent; our challenge was to see if we could do it justice while opening up the college to a foreign, yet somehow familiar, place and language. While we were not responding to any perceived lack in the Program itself, but to the interest of many of our students to study abroad, the experience helped us to reflect on the college in surprising and revitalizing ways. Classes were held on the campus of the IAU College (Institute for American Universities), in the heart of the city. There was a certain joy for all of us to be found just in the daily experience of inhabiting this strikingly beautiful place, with its Roman and Medieval roots and architecture stretching across the centuries, surrounded by Cézanne’s Provencal landscape on all sides. There, just living appears to be a goal—and an art. The everydayness of Aix is a public life. The people effectively live “outside,” walking everywhere, shopping at the many daily markets (extraordinary for their number and variety even in France), and punctuating their day with coffee at cafes and bars, a habit that we all easily adopted—taking our books with us. The complex, somewhat formal, system of greeting one another that we encountered in France— even between storekeepers and waiters and their customers—struck a contrast with the warmth of American informality. The students lived with French host families in town—an adventure in itself. And for some students who were temporarily adopted by their host “parents” this was perhaps the most important aspect of their immersion experience in France. Once we had settled in, cobbled together some tables and blackboards, combined the students of two campuses, and waited for the college to emerge in this strange place from These intersections can be traced to a number of alumni and tutors, but foremost among them is John Gasparach (SFGI03), who attended IAU as a young man, and who now serves as the codean and co-head instructor at Marchutz. Born in Seattle just after World War II, Gasparach spent his junior year studying abroad at IAU. Unable to speak French, he learned to appreciate the universal language of art. While there, he met German painter Leo Marchutz, a committed scholar of Cézanne and teacher at IAU. Under the tutelage of Marchutz, Gasparach began to draw and paint. Haltingly at first, and then with greater confidence and curiosity, he devoted himself to the pursuit of art at Marchutz’s newly formed Marchutz School of Fine Arts—a place where students have an intensive regimen of drawing and sculpture studio art, art history, and a seminar. T � he everydayness of Aix is a public life. The people effectively live “outside,” shopping at the many daily markets, and punctuating their day with coffee at cafes and bars, a habit that we all easily adopted— taking our books with us. all of its assembled parts, our engagement with the St. John’s curriculum was reassuringly like it is at home: the classes were St. John’s classes, and the Program was the Program. In fact, despite the distracting wonder of the place, our studies seemed even to be enlivened by our new and challenging circumstances. As it turned out, doing lab without a laboratory led to a deeper reading of texts, and 8 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FA L L 2 017 stimulated a new spirit of inventiveness among the students when it came to constructing their own demonstrations and exploring the phenomena from scratch. A language tutorial reading Racine and Molière—playwrights that every French student reads in high school—had its own parallel resonances with the place. And the fact that we were combining students from both campuses seemed to spark interesting exchanges about how we do things at the college. Though we arrived with the curriculum already in hand, our time together in France felt like revisiting the foundations of the college, which was reinvigorating and refreshing. Through IAU there were regular weekend day trips, led in French, to sites and cities around Provence and the Mediterranean coast, including Avignon, Nice, Arles, and the villages of the region. But the highlight was the St. John’s excursion in early March to Paris, where the St. John’s Alumni Association treated us to dinner on our first night. It was a thrill the next day to sit down together quietly in front of Rembrandt’s “Bathsheba” in the Louvre and hold a seminar, led by Marchutz School professor and St. John’s alumnus John Gasparach (SFGI03). PHOTOGRAPHY: ALAIN ANTOINE CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE: Students wander in Lourmarin's streets in search of a food vendor; Clara Rhoades, Leah Mozzer and Noah Leal on a tour of the neighboring villages; Students walking toward Mount Sainte Victoire, immortalized in many of Cézanne's paintings. And we were able to tour the Arts and Métiers museum—where Lavoisier’s workshop, the first Leyden jars and voltaic piles were on display. Based on this experience the tutors began to see the future possibilities for tailoring a number of our own excursions for St. John’s students next spring, both in Aix, and farther afield. This year has been a beginning—an unforgettable beginning, with promising future possibilities. It would be hard to express all of the gratitude that is due to the many members of the college community (and beyond) on both campuses who have contributed to the success of this experiment so far—to just getting it off the ground and landing safely in Marseille. And to the 18 students who took a risk with us, and to the faculty who pioneered in good spirit, we are immensely grateful. Nous nous souviendrons toujours. In 1973, Gail Haggard (SF71) made the initial connection between Marchutz and St. John’s. It was a connection that would change the way Gasparach taught, and change the future of many Johnnies’ lives. Haggard’s ex-husband was the late Dean Haggard, one of the original tutors at the Santa Fe campus of St. John’s, who brought his passion to Aix-en-Provence during a summer session in 1973. Gasparach watched Haggard lead a seminar on Plato’s Symposium—and saw firsthand how art students were transmuted from disinterested to engaged. It was his first encounter with a purely Socratic method of tutelage. “He asked questions and never left a single student out of the conversation, which developed and took on a life of its own,” Gasparach says. “Watching Dean teach, never lecturing or imposing himself—with his vast knowledge—on the conversation, I said to myself, ‘If that can be learned, I want to learn how to teach that way.’ And from that moment on, I wanted to come to study at St. John’s.” It took him almost 30 years to get to St. John’s, as his role at Marchutz was a stabilizing force during periods of change. The school was brought under the aegis of the IAU, and he ascended to full-time teacher and administrator. Students at the Louvre studying Rembrandt’s masterpiece: "Bathsheba at Her Bath." “� n that first seminar, I I realized that the foremost thing I was going to learn was how to listen.” —John Gasparach (SFGI03) In 2000, Gasparach finally made the journey to Santa Fe’s Graduate Institute. Over four summer sessions there, he found that the Socratic method of teaching still distinguished its academic system. “What stunned me was that I thought I had come to St. John’s because I was interested in the texts, in the fact that it was all discussion in seminars,” he says. “But in that first seminar, I realized that the foremost thing I was going to learn was how to listen. I hadn’t considered that. It’s not just one teacher; it’s fundamental to St. John’s College. It’s part of the ethos.” Today, Gasparach’s duties continue to expand with the Marchutz School’s brand-new master of fine arts program—to which Johnnies have received scholarships—and he remains involved with St. John’s initiatives there, such as the study abroad program and Global Pathways fellowships. He is confident about entrusting the school’s future to the next generation when that time comes. They have been patiently learning and listening under his guidance, perpetuating a rare and valuable continuity. “Listening is fundamental to teaching, to learning,” he says. “Listen to the text, listen to the discussion. You’re not imposing yourself on the experience, and the act of painting parallels that. It’s learning how to open yourself to nature; it goes back to Socrates. You’re a midwife, you’re not there to impose.” —Andrew Wice THE COL L E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | FA L L 2 017 9 �F R OM T H E B E L L T OW E R S Was there anything that pushed you in a certain way during your time as an undergraduate, that you now feel totally differently about? In freshman year, there are often Plato people and Aristotle people. The Plato people are really moved by Plato, and are really interested in that style of writing philosophy—I was that person. I loved Plato. When we moved to Aristotle, I just shut down. I did not know what to do with it. I hated it. And now, actually, I don’t know if I like Aristotle better, but Aristotle really interests me. I find him fascinating to read, and work through slowly, and there are ways I prefer reading Aristotle to Plato. That’s one big switch. Q&A: MARSAURA SHUKLA Tutors Talk Books by Samantha Ardoin (SF16) Tutors Talk Books is an online series of interviews with St. John’s College tutors. The following in an excerpt from an interview with Marsaura Shukla (A93), a tutor at St. John’s since 2012. Shukla gave a lecture in Santa Fe, hosted by the Graduate Institute, this summer on Keats’s poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” Read the full interview, as well as others, at sjc.edu. What is your next project? I’m hoping to do a preceptorial on Keats’s odes and letters. I want to follow this idea through with Keats himself. Another part of the project is related to the Emily Dickinson and John Donne preceptorial I did recently. I want to think about Emily Dickinson’s treatment of soul in her poetry; she talks about it a lot, but it feels a little ironic. I want to understand what she’s doing when she talks that way. She seems to be thinking about the body, the soul, the divisions of the self, and how to understand them. Do you think that’s because of the shocking shift in style between Plato and Aristotle? I think it’s partially that Plato is more userfriendly. There’s a narrative there, a smoothness there, that’s deceptive. I don’t think I was a good reader of Plato, but I was a happy reader of Plato. With Aristotle, I couldn’t see where the readings became complicated and interesting. I had begun to see that in Plato—those places that invited thinking. With Aristotle I couldn’t do it, but now I can. Were you teaching anything this summer? I taught a week of Summer Academy, and enjoyed that. We read Shakespeare, Donne, and Dickinson in the language tutorial, and the (high school) students were amazing. It all went really well. In relation to the undergraduate program, the readings are shorter, but apart from that it was like a St. John’s-style tutorial. There were moments of silliness, but it was good. What will you be starting in the fall semester? I’m going to try again this year to carve out some time for my own thinking and writing, but that is one of the challenges to being a tutor: finding the time for your own writing. I’m also going to be teaching senior seminar with John Cornell, and I’m very excited about that. I’ve done one all-college seminar with him, but otherwise I have not taught with him, and I have not taught this (senior seminar book) list, and it looks really great. I think senior year is always good, no matter the list. I’m glad you think so! I think senior year is a really fraught year. People are trying to figure out what they want to do next. They’re afraid of leaving the structure of St. John’s, and I think “� think ... that Plato is more I user-friendly. There’s a narrative there, a smoothness there, that’s deceptive. With Aristotle, I couldn’t see where the readings became complicated and interesting.” 10 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 017 that has an impact on the seminar. The last senior seminar I taught was with Walter Sterling, with whom I graduated from St. John’s. He was wonderful to work with, but our seminar often seemed a little distracted. I think it’s important to impress upon seniors that you’re going to miss this, you’re not going to have this thing again, and I get that you’re tired of it after four years, but you should really savor it. When you were a student, did you ever think you would do become a tutor? No, I thought I would definitely not become a tutor! I mean, I really loved being at St. John’s— but that wasn’t part of how I envisioned the future unfolding. For one thing, I didn’t think I wanted to work as hard as tutors work. It struck me as a student that the tutors were really laboring at something. It was a very ascetic way of life. I knew I wanted to go to grad school, and I thought I really wanted to narrow down the things I wanted to think about. But the transition to grad school was very painful. Only after St. John’s I realized how much I liked our way doing things. I wanted to continue doing that in a specialized field—in theology—but it turned out that that’s not really possible. Academic grad school is very specialized training, and there is this emphasis on productivity which is not ruminative or conversational. I grew to like it, and to think of research as a form of conversation—but thinking of it that way made me research very slowly, which you can’t do as an academic. So, I’m very happy to be back here. I think there are significant ways in which St. John’s is my intellectual home. Krivák leads, and listens to, the conversation. Sharing from Experience literature. After a brief stint at the University of Rhode Island, he came to St. John’s and his love of the great books grew. His abilities as a writer also progressed. Krivák says one of his proudest accomplishments as a Johnnie was winning the Baird Award for a short collection of poems he composed. Andrew Krivák (A86) lends guidance to future writers Andrew Krivák (A86) has led an interesting life since he graduated from St. John’s College. Yacht rigger. Poet. Student. Jesuit. Teacher. These days, he is an award-winning author whose latest novel, The Signal Flame, tells the story of a family awaiting the return of their youngest son from the Vietnam War. Like his previous books, The Signal Flame has received critical acclaim. Krivák, who lives in the Boston area with his wife and children, returned to the Annapolis campus in April to read from and sign copies of his new book. He also met with Johnnies who are interested in careers in writing or publishing to give advice on how to find success in the industry. When a student asked how to overcome writer’s block, Krivák says he often reads other writers’ works, listens to music, or goes fishing. When asked how he knows when a novel is done, Krivák spoke about the “arc of the narrative,” and the importance of completing a story with a strong final sentence. When a student asked about how to handle the rejection of a manuscript, Krivák spoke of the importance of “ego strength.” “The rejection is part of your formation process as a writer,” Krivák says. “If you have a really good novel, a really good story to tell, it will get out there.” Krivák grew up among a family of engineers in rural northeastern Pennsylvania, where he developed an interest in books and “� think one of the biggest I questions a young writer like me has to struggle with is whether the writing life is possible.” —Joshua Colon (A18) Joshua Colon (A18) says he was impressed by Krivák’s experience and the advice he gave. “He seemed very earnest, open, articulate, and enthusiastic about his life and vocation; he seemed to be everything I want to be as a writer and a father,” Colon says. “I think one of the biggest questions a young writer like me has to struggle with is whether the writing life is possible; meeting a Johnnie writer who has found success is a real encouragement.” Stuart Lombard (A19), who has looked into publishing in the past, called Krivák’s experiences “inspiring.” “I haven’t written for a long time, but I yearn to return to that magical time when writing used to consume my life,” Lombard says. “I walked away from the discussion with a refreshed desire to write—and a couple new books to read.” —Tim Pratt THE COL L E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | FA L L 2 017 11 �F R OM T H E B E L L T OW E R S GI COMMENCEMENT S A N TA F E A R C H E RY Openness for Other People’s Experience For William Edelglass (SF93), openness to the experience of others leads to empathy. It’s a worldview that springs from his St. John’s education and one that he shared in an address at the Graduate Institute commencement ceremony held on August 4 at the Santa Fe campus. When Edelglass completed his undergraduate degree at that same campus in 1993, he was “thinking I’d spend a decade living in different places” exploring different jobs. To that end, he worked with St. John’s Search and Rescue team, taught philosophy in a prison in New York, and spent many years as a wilderness guide, among other things. A path in academia wasn’t initially in his plans, but Edelglass found himself increasingly drawn to philosophy and enrolled in Emory University’s doctoral program, which, at that time, “was deeply committed to the history of philosophy, a commitment I shared coming from St. John’s.” His dissertation focused on the self and the suffering of the other, drawing on the work of modern Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas ´ and eighth-century Buddhist scholar Sāntideva, a dual focus that allowed him to situate himself within both Eastern and Western traditions. Now a professor of philosophy and director of environmental studies at Marlboro College in Vermont, as well as a regular faculty member at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, Edelglass co-edits a journal called Environmental Philosophy. He recently received a National Endowment for the Humanities grant for his project Peoples, Places, and the History of the Written Word in Brattleboro, VT. “A lot of my professional career is doing academic work and teaching that go along with my personal values,” Edelglass says. He also encourages students to arrive at their own views, an approach rooted in his experiences at St. John’s. “The practice of reading and exploring through conversation the great books in the Western tradition cultivated a sense of open- Friends and Arrows The thup, thup, thup of arrows punctuates the spring air on the Santa Fe campus. An arrow hits a target, creating a sound similar to a basketball bouncing on a carpeted floor. Another misses the target and a puff of dust rises from the earth behind it. The St. John’s archery team is competing against the Institute of American Indian Arts, a college on the other side of town. With the iconic Monte del Sol standing tall in the distance, the Johnnies go on to sweep the individual and overall team scores. Although the tournament is competitive, Ben Kidderman (SFGI18) says the competition in archery is within one’s self. “And the rest is friendship.” The other students seem to agree. As they move through a series of targets that increase in distance from 20 to 40 to 60 feet away, they discuss each other’s studies, families, cultures, A multiplicity of perspectives, he finds, is crucial to any intellectual endeavor. “One of my favorite Tibetan proverbs, is ‘Where you find agreement, you find fools.’” —William Edelglass (SF93) ness for other people’s experience and other accounts of the world,” he says. As a result, Edelglass integrates race, gender, post-colonial, and environmental theory into his curricula. A multiplicity of perspectives, he finds, is crucial to any intellectual endeavor. “One of my favorite Tibetan proverbs, is ‘Where you find agreement, you find fools.’” He’s currently working on a multi-author book and notes that, from a collaborative writing perspective, “someone else’s critical mind helps me refine my own view of things. This is why Plato says that courage is one of the most important virtues of philosophy. Without being vulnerable and saying what we think, we will not be able to find out where we are making problematic claims.” 12 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 017 In his commencement speech, Edelglass referred to an incident from a period he spent teaching Western philosophy to Tibetan monks at the Institute of Buddhist Dialectics, in Dharamsala, India. An elderly monk had confessed that he viewed the study of Western thought as a distraction at best and harmful at worst. “I think I laughed out loud, because what this monk said was so similar to a view I had heard from some Western philosophers, who believed that philosophy from India and Tibet, for example, should be taught in a religious studies department, or an area studies program. Somehow they believed both in the universality of reason, and also seemed to think that this universal reason only arises, or is only accessible, in particular locations, or by particular people. The Graduate Institute is a welcome alternative to such parochialism.” —Eve Tolpa This year in Santa Fe, the Graduate Institute, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, awarded 17 master’s degrees in Eastern Classics and six in Liberal Arts. In Annapolis, the GI awarded 11 Liberal Arts master’s degrees. To view the college’s coverage of the Graduate Institute’s 50th anniversary, visit sjc.edu/graduate/anniversary. and languages. Abdullah Mirza (SF20), who took first place in the competition, likes that archery is an individual sport that demands intense focus. “It also has a rich tradition in my religious background and throughout the world,” he says. “Ever since the first days of Islam, it’s a traditional practice that you learn archery. The three traditional skills are swimming, horseback riding, and archery. I have done the other two in the past, but I am the most interested in archery.” Other high-scorers, Liam Warren (SF19) and Hao Luo (SF20), were pleased with their performances on the field. “I did a bit of traditional archery when I was younger,” Warren says. “It’s something I wanted to continue.” The team shares his sentiment. After a full day of intense competition, when St. John’s coach Richard Dew asks, “Do you want to do the targets again?” The students respond in unison, “Yes!” They gather their equipment and start again from the beginning. Thup, thup, thup go the arrows. —Charlotte Jusinski RALLY ROUND THE CHAIR, JOHNNIES! When “Johnnie Chair” furniture makers E.A. Clore Sons, Inc. announced last May that it would be closing after nearly 200 years in business, company officials expected a slight surge in last-minute orders. Instead, Clore was swamped with orders, says company president Troy Coppage, with St. John’s alumni putting in dozens of requests for Johnnie Chairs. The chairs—listed on the company’s website as Plain Master Chairs—are a longtime St. John’s tradition and part of the college’s identity. The influx of orders, including those by St. John’s alumni, has caused the company put its closing plans on hold, Coppage says. E.A. Clore Sons has a months-long backlog on orders, and is staying open indefinitely. “Orders are coming in as fast as we can make them,” Coppage says, much to the delight of Johnnies everywhere. St. John’s has been ordering Johnnie Chairs for its Annapolis and Santa Fe campuses for decades. The Annapolis chairs are typically made of walnut and cherry while Santa Fe chairs are typically made of oak. Since the closing announcement in May, Clore reports that alumni from both campuses have been ordering the chairs individually, in pairs, or in sets. The chairs are made in batches and typically take weeks to complete, with the bending of posts and other handcrafted features. The company is still taking orders for them, Coppage says, and will do so for the foreseeable future. “Since we made the announcement last May, the response has been overwhelming,” Coppage says. “It was crazy here for two to three weeks. It’s been a somewhat steady stream ever since.” —Tim Pratt THE COL L E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | FA L L 2 017 13 �F R OM T H E B E L L T OW E R S Follow St. John’s College: A R T I N S A N TA F E A Man for All Seasons Four framed lithographs of Frederick Douglass now grace the first floor of Weigle Hall on the Santa Fe campus. The lithographs, by famed American artist Ben Shahn, are a gift from Santa Fe President Mark Roosevelt, a great admirer of the former slave, abolitionist, author, and orator. “I love Douglass, and I love Shahn,” Roosevelt says. “And I believe that what you put on your walls is important.” During the small ceremony to recognize Roosevelt’s donation, tutor Frank Pagano invited the audience of students, staff, and tutors to consider Shahn’s strikingly different depictions of Douglass. “We see before us what a free man looks like. But to my eye we see four looks, almost four different men.” After considering each image in great detail, Pagano posed the question, “Do the challenges to our freedom and our education require a man for all seasons, a man for all humanity, both the “� e see before us the W images of the liberally educated human being. We see courage, moderation, justice, and wisdom.” oppressed and the oppressor, the educated and the ignorant? We see before us the images of the liberally educated human being. We see courage, moderation, justice, and wisdom.” Roosevelt recalled the story of Douglass’s attempt to gain access to President Lincoln after his second inaugural speech on March 4, 1865. As Douglass stood in a crowd of white men, Lincoln called to him: “Here comes my friend Frederick Douglass.” This simple statement, within the complexities of the time, was a remarkable moment for the abolitionist movement and for America’s expanding definition of justice. But, Roosevelt said, “I hesitate to make Douglass important to me or to anybody because of his relationship to Lincoln, because that minimizes him.” He pointed out that Douglass was frustrated with Lincoln’s slow progress toward allowing African Americans to fight in the war and toward emancipation. “But eventually Douglass’s own incredible capacity for forgiveness made him continue to grow in closeness to and admiration for Lincoln, which I think says something about both of them.” ON SOCIAL MEDIA SUMMER AT ST. JOHN’S... #sjcsummer Instagram.com/sjcannapolis Instagram.com/sjcsantafe facebook.com/stjohnscollege twitter.com/stjohnscollege @stjohnscollege —Charlotte Jusinski MINDFUL MILESTONES With the publication of his sixth book of poetry, A Bird for Buddha: Voices from Afar (2017), Santa Fe tutor Jorge Aigla recently celebrated another important milestone in his life at the college: the 30th anniversary of his Karate Dōjō on the Santa Fe campus. Aigla sees a natural connection between the art of writing poetry and the mental and physical discipline required to master martial arts. “There is no mind versus body. Everything is a practice—presence, mindfulness,” he says. “The Program is a practice, too, not just here [on campus], but after graduation. Physical activities help students become more integrated. It’s a process.” Aigla first discovered Karate as a teenager growing up in Mexico. He continued to practice after he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to study medicine at the University of California. After earning his MD degree from UCSF, he worked as a medical examiner and taught at City College and St. Mary’s College, California, before joining the faculty at St. John’s in 1985. Aigla left medicine to dedicate himself to his favorite things: Karate, reading, writing, and thinking. After his first year as a tutor at St. John’s, Istvan Fehervary (1925-2014), who established the Student Activities Organization on the Santa Fe campus and served as its director for 20 years, urged Aigla to teach Karate. He agreed under two conditions: “It has to be run like a real dōjō, not a club, and I will do so only on a volunteer basis,” said Sensei Aigla—now an 8th Dan and Shihan—who has been the head Karate-Dō instructor ever since. Over the past three decades, Aigla has taught hundreds of students, several of whom have earned their black belts. 14 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 017 But he is quick to point out that “a dōjō is made by spirit, not numbers.” In addition to practicing Karate-Dō and writing poetry, he also teaches in the St. John’s Eastern Classics program. Aigla likens the title and content of his new book—poetic articulations of living and traveling experiences in Asia—to the authors read in the EC curriculum. “They are voices from afar,” he says. “The program is worthy on its own, and also a very good beginning for people to enter Eastern traditions.” —Gregory Shook THE COL L E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | FA L L 2 017 15 �TUTOR VIEW WHY WE READ EASTERN CLASSICS by David McDonald (SF95) T “� ow could we not be H interested in what the human mind does when it has leisure and letters and it’s free from political persecution— what fundamental questions arise for it?” —JAMES CAREY “� ix your mind on truth, F hold firm to virtue, rely on loving kindness, and find your recreation in the Arts.” —CONFUCIUS, THE ANALECTS HE EASTERN CLASSICS MASTER’S PROGRAM of the St. John’s Graduate Institute began in the fall of 1994 on the Santa Fe campus, after several years of preparation. Some of the initial impetus had come from St. John’s alumni who asked the Board of Visitors and Governors that the college make some approach to books of the East. Coinciding with this interest among alumni, the faculty had been engaged in conversation and study of Eastern texts in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Life of Confucius, probably late Qing dynasty (1644–1911), four volumes of woodblock printed books, ink on paper. Metropolitan Museum of Art 16 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 017 THE COL L E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | FA L L 2 017 17 �TUTOR VIEW H “ ow could we not be interested in what the human mind does when it has leisure and letters and it’s free from political persecution—what fundamental questions arise for it ... and what form do they take, particularly if they’ve not been touched by Greece, or by Jerusalem,” says tutor James Carey (Class of 1965), during whose deanship the early development of the Eastern Classics (EC) program occurred. “So the idea of looking at the thought of ancient India and ancient China was immensely appealing....” The new Eastern Classics program, then, was to be not only a study of a set of books for their own sake, but also a way of gaining insight into the human mind. “My thought was, would we find that the same fundamental questions arose in the East that arose in the West,” Carey says. “If so, did they get the same answers as those proposed in the West, or did they get different answers? Or were there important questions for thinkers in India or in China that never arose in the West? Getting clarity about these matters struck a number of us on the faculty as a worthy project, and one very much in the spirit of St. John’s.” Some among the faculty had objected that these Eastern texts were not great books, while others felt that the best way to assay their depth and greatness was to read them. Tutor and former Graduate Institute (GI) director Krishnan Venkatesh explains that we should not expect “that the East starts from the same philosophical starting points as we do.” To read and discuss texts from traditions so much different from those we study in the St. John’s undergraduate program and in the GI Liberal Arts degree program is to philosophize from a significantly different set of presuppositions, but still informed by the same central aspects of the human experience. Doing so therefore presents an opportunity to cultivate deep questioning with regard to first principles. Venkatesh adds that Eastern texts are an important part of the Western philosophic conversation: “The assimilation of Eastern texts into the West, from the 18th century on, is part of modernity.” Philosophers Hume, Leibniz, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Heidegger were acutely aware of Eastern writings and were in conversation with them through their own works. In considering how to take up Eastern texts in the St. John’s classroom, it became clear the Graduate Institute was the appropriate avenue for doing so; the undergraduate program was already very full, and in any case the addition there of a few texts from the East might have seemed mere tokenism. Some among the faculty had objected that these Eastern texts were not 18 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 017 great books, while others felt that the best way to assay their depth and greatness was to read them. So the Eastern Classics curriculum began to take shape. One prominent aspect of the program is the study of either classical Chinese or Sanskrit. In a 1989 faculty seminar on the Bhagavad Gita, the tutors involved discovered that the same Sanskrit word was being rendered as “grace” by one translator, and as “force” by another. From this, it became clear that we had to study the languages of these traditions, so as not to rely entirely on translators. Tutor Bruce Perry joined the faculty in 1990 and brought knowledge of Sanskrit, while tutor Ralph Swentzell had already been studying Chinese—he would go on to teach the very first Chinese class in the new program, and had developed computer software to aid in learning Chinese characters. Soon there were faculty study groups devoted to both of these languages. Venkatesh points out that the addition of Chinese to the EC program was very important in that it gave the college a chance to study a non-Indo-European language. Language tutorials in both the undergraduate program and the EC program understand themselves as not being primarily for the sake of achieving mastery in a particular language, but rather for the sake of gaining insight into language itself, and its relation to thought. On this score, studying classical Chinese is a way of deepening the college’s philosophical inquiry into language as such, by working with a language entirely outside the Indo-European lineage. In the fall of 1992, a pilot program called the “Institute for the Study of Eastern Classics at St. John’s College” began in Santa Fe. It was overseen by Carey, who served as its director, or “archon.” The new institute was hosted at St. John’s, Santa Fe, and operated under the auspices of the Graduate Institute, but was funded by donor gifts and foundation grants, rather than by the college. At that time, Nancy Buchenauer was the director of the Graduate Institute in Santa Fe, and Stephen Van Luchene was dean. John Agresto, the Santa Fe president, was involved in raising money to start the program, as was Carey. After recruiting work by Carey and others, a total of 21 students enrolled in the new program. Of those, 14 received a certificate of completion in the summer of 1993. With the writing of a master’s essay and additional papers, students who had received this certificate were eventually eligible to be granted an MA in Eastern Classics. Four or five students from the pilot year took this option. Among the students in the pilot program was Paul Cooley (SF92, EC96), who recalls, “I was thrilled when the pilot program in Eastern Classics was offered. I believe there was some concern before the pilot program was approved that the Eastern texts would simply be too difficult for discussion, but I never felt that to be the case before the program began, and our discussions proved lively and enjoyable.” In its primary elements, the program was very much as it is now. It required three consecutive terms of study—fall, spring, and summer. In the language tutorial, there was study of either Sanskrit or classical Chinese, and extensive translation work. The seminar covered major works of India, China, and Japan, and there were preceptorials in every term, for close reading of selected texts. At least initially, the summer term was understood as a time for comparative study of Eastern and Western works; as the program developed in practice, the summer was given over entirely to the study of Japanese works. The uniting thread of the program, as Venkatesh describes it, is the encounter of each tradition with philosophical Buddhism, which arises in India amidst the Hindu tradition, then finds its way to China, where it encounters Taoist and Confucian traditions, and then is transmitted, by way of China, to Japan, where it takes new forms. To address this, the summer had to be devoted fully to Japanese readings, and the comparative effort was put aside. Venkatesh points out that our earliest sense of what ought to be read in the Eastern Classic was modified over the years, as our characteristic practice of not just reading, but rereading revealed just how productive particular books might be for us. For example, in the early years of the Eastern Classics, we read Sun Tzu’s Art of War and Musashi’s Book of Five Rings, but found with experience that these books did not have the same depth for our mode of study as other books, for example the writings of Dogen. One way of seeing such changes is that we moved from a popular Western understanding of what was essential in these traditions, to an understanding grounded in our practice of reading and discussion. Other texts have remained more or less constant, because of their foundational importance. The Mahabharata and the Upanishads have this place among the Indian texts, while the Analects of Confucius are indispensable for the Chinese tradition and the Japanese. “Trying to understand China and Japan without Confucius is simply inconceivable—like understanding the Hellenic world without Homer,” says Venkatesh, who emphasizes that the thought of the Confucian tradition is tremendously important intrinsically, even apart from its influence in East Asia. Scott Hannan (EC11) adds that “Confucius fits into the St. John’s method by insisting that asking about the elements and purpose of a ritual is as important as practicing the ritual itself.” After the completion of the pilot program in the 19921993 year, Eastern Classics went on hiatus on account of logistical considerations, but the initial experiment seemed a success. It became clear that for Eastern Classics to become a degree program, a formal instructional proposal would need to be made, and be approved by the faculty. So in the following academic year, in November of 1993, such a proposal was discussed by the faculty on both campuses, and was approved. In the fall of 1994, the first degree students were enrolled in the EC program. Even when the program was at the pilot stage in 1992, the Meem Library had begun to expand its collection to support the new academic effort. Several foundation gifts supported initial purchasing of the needed texts for the pilot year, and once Eastern Classics became a full degree program, additional gifts helped fill out the collection in the ensuing years. Meem Library continues to renew the collection as books wear out through regular use by students. In other ways, the college continues to maintain the strengths needed for the EC program: faculty new to Sanskrit or Chinese audit Eastern Classics language classes in order to be ready to teach them, and study groups help acquaint faculty with Eastern texts they hadn’t previously encountered. The Eastern Classics enterprise is, at least in part, a way of seeing how the human mind responds to universal problems and universal questions. “It’s such a gift to read these books that contain humanity’s struggles to make sense of itself,” says Sara Klingenstein (EC12). “St. John’s allows these texts to be as challenging and interesting as they are. I cannot express how much that’s done for me.” Krishna and Radha with Their Confidantes: Page from a Dispersed Gita Govinda, ca. 1655–60, India (Rajasthan, Mewar), Metropolitan Museum of Art THE COL L E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | FA L L 2 017 19 �Road Trip! ALUMNI STORIES BY TIM PRATT Exploring the Johnnie Way A two-week summer road trip—from Annapolis to Santa Fe and back— brings together stories from seven Johnnies who reside in cozy towns and bustling cities between the two St. John’s campuses— and who share a love for great books, thoughtful conversation, and the college that changed their lives. 20 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 017 THE COL L E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | FA L L 2 017 21 �ALUMNI STORIES “� ohnnies are Johnnies, J no matter where you are.” As Graham Gordon (AGI13) strolls up the sidewalk in front of a new home in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, he smiles widely when a dog begins barking from behind the front door. of front don in m Gor Tennessee. G raha ome in his h Within seconds, Gordon is greeted warmly by Shari Hinton, who moved into the 1,100-squarefoot, single-story structure two days earlier. The house was built by Habitat for Humanity, an organization that constructs homes for the less fortunate with the help of volunteers and the new homeowners themselves. Gordon is a site supervisor for Habitat’s Rutherford County chapter and oversaw construction of this house from start to finish. “It feels great,” he says after a few friendly words with Hinton and a quick look around the property. “It’s fantastic—the physical changes and dealing with the future homeowners.” Gordon is one of more than a half-dozen St. John’s College alumni who shared their stories with St. John’s, gathered over the summer on a road trip between the college’s campuses in Annapolis and Santa Fe. The goal was to highlight what a few St. John’s graduates who live between the two campuses have been doing since they graduated, and see how their St. John’s education has played into their lives. What transpired was an eight-day, 2,544-mile road trip, including discussions with seven Johnnies along the way. Read more alumni stories from the road trip at sjc.edu/road-trip Clockwise from left: Riverboats on the Mississippi; Cadillac Ranch; Grandfather Mountain; Ruby Falls Similar trips between the campuses have been completed by many Johnnies over the years—on two, three, and four wheels. Annapolis admissions counselor David Conway (A16) says when he and some classmates made the trip from Annapolis to Santa Fe over spring break in 2014, it was his first time leaving the East Coast. “It was unfamiliar territory for me, but what was really incredible was that when we arrived on the Santa Fe campus it felt like we had made it home, despite having never been there before,” Conway says. “Part of that was that we had friends there, and another part of it was that St. John’s is St. John’s, and Johnnies are Johnnies, no matter where you are.” Former Annapolis president Chris Nelson (SF70) made the journey from Santa Fe to Annapolis on bicycles with several colleagues in the early 1990s. Santa Fe tutor Grant Franks (A77) completed the trip from Santa Fe to Annapolis over 30 days on a trike in 2003. When asked why he did it, Franks answers simply: “Why wouldn’t I?” Other alums along the way (from top): Jillian Sico, Tianlu and Patrick Redmon, Daryl Breithaupt. Read their stories at sjc.edu/road-trip. 22 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 017 THE COL L E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | FA L L 2 017 23 �ALUMNI STORIES The Journey The trip this summer began on a warm and muggy morning in Maryland. After a quick sojourn into Washington, D.C., the journey continued through the rolling farmland and lush green mountains of Virginia. It then proceeded into western North Carolina, where a stop at Grandfather Mountain and Mile High Bridge showed off the sprawling Appalachian landscape from 5,280 feet above sea level. Then it was on to Asheville and a conversation with Quinn Roberts (SF16), who works as a mentor at a therapeutic boarding school in the area. After Asheville, the journey continued south— including a stop at Black Rock Mountain, the highest state park in Georgia—and a conversation near Atlanta with Jillian Sico (A05). Sico for the last three years has worked with refugees in the United States, but is now back in school to pursue a career in the book arts. 24 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 017 The next stop was Ruby Falls and Lookout Mountain in Tennessee, with a towering underground waterfall and mountaintop view of several surrounding states, before continuing northwest toward Murfreesboro. It was in Murfreesboro where Graham Gordon (AGI13) discussed his work as a site supervisor for Habitat for Humanity. A short trek to Nashville and an impromptu trip to the U.S. men’s national soccer team’s game against Panama followed, complete with raucous crowds, new friends and stifling heat. The trip continued west after the game, with a brief stop in Memphis and a crossing of the Mississippi River, before proceeding northwest through Arkansas. Stops at a natural bridge and Pedestal Rocks Scenic Area showed the beauty of the Ozarks, and a visit to downtown Rogers included a conversation with Daryl Breithaupt (SF13, EC14), who now teaches there in his hometown. With more than half of the trip complete, Oklahoma beckoned. More back-road adventuring continued through the eastern half of the state, including a stop in Okemah, the birthplace of folk music icon Woody Guthrie. Dinner followed with the family of a St. John’s alumna in Oklahoma City, who was following the trip on social media. The next day included stops at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, and Lake Hefner, before meeting Patrick Redmon (AGI13) and wife Tianlu Redmon (AGI13). The couple’s relationship blossomed while translating The Odyssey in the Graduate Institute. Patrick is now a federal law clerk, while Tianlu runs her own translation, interpretation, and teaching service. ILLUSTRATION: ERIC HANSON After a visit to the Oklahoma City National Memorial, which honors the victims of the bombing of a federal building there in 1995, the journey continued into the plains of western Oklahoma. The last stop on the road to Santa Fe was Amarillo, Texas. The visit included a trip to Palo Duro Canyon south of the city—the second largest canyon in the United States— and Cadillac Ranch, a public art installation consisting of old, upright, graffiti-covered Cadillacs. The visit also included a conversation with Liz Bush (SF08), who is preparing for a career helping people with communication disorders. The journey ended in Santa Fe as some of the first rains of monsoon season rolled into town. The trip passed through nine states and Washington, D.C., included an elevation change of more than 7,000 feet and resulted in seven Johnnies sharing their stories. There were good people, tasty food, beautiful sights, and, most importantly, great conversations along the way. THE COL L E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | FA L L 2 017 25 �THE NEW ANNAPOLIS PRESIDENT St. John’s: The Next Chapter BY TIM PRATT As the newest class of St. John’s College students donned their robes and gathered for Convocation in Annapolis, Panayiotis (Peter) Kanelos headed to the back of the line. The new college president wore a smile on his face and a black and orange tie around his neck as the Class of 2021 stretched out ahead of him. Over the next few minutes, the line moved slowly into Francis Scott Key Auditorium, past a crowd of cheering upperclassmen gathered to greet their new schoolmates. At the end of the line walked Kanelos, the first new president to greet the enthusiastic students in more than two decades. The former dean of Christ College, the Honors College of Valparaiso University in Indiana, began his term July 1. He succeeds Chris Nelson (SF70), who retired in June after 26 years in office. “I’m a freshman, too,” Kanelos said to students earlier in the day. “We’re going to go through this together.” Kanelos has a number of goals as he begins his first year at St. John’s: Increase enrollment. Preserve the St. John’s Program. Engage with the community. He even wants to follow along with the student reading list over the next four years. Although Kanelos is new on campus, he says he feels like he has entered a world with which he is already familiar. The Chicago native has been reading the great books of Western civilization since he was a child. “It feels new, but in a sense it feels like I’m returning to a home I haven’t yet lived in,” he says. “The ethos, the types of things people read, this has been my world for a very long time. So, in some ways, St. John’s feels less like a destination and more like a homecoming.” 26 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 017 PHOTOGRAPHY: HOWARD KORN THE COL L E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | FA L L 2 017 27 �THE NEW ANNAPOLIS PRESIDENT “� o walk around campus and see this T storied institution, and know I’ve been asked to play a role in its continued thriving, is really humbling to me.” — Annapolis President Panayiotis (Peter) Kanelos Above: Students and president dive into a conversation. Right: The new president is a regular at the dining hall. Welcome to St. John’s Kanelos began making his rounds on campus well before he officially moved into the president’s office. With the new school year underway, he has a number of goals, including one to attract more students to the college. “I think St. John’s is undisputedly the finest undergraduate institution in America, but not enough people know that,” he says. “How do you increase visibility? How does every person that should be a Johnnie become a Johnnie? In a crowded higher education environment, how do we make our voices heard?” Another goal is to experience the Program in realtime, completing the same readings as students, in sequence, over the next four years. He started with The Iliad this semester, just like the freshman class. “My hope is that will allow me to jump into conversations and participate in the intellectual life of the college,” he says. “I want to feel like I understand the rhythms of the Program. I want to understand the textual encounters the students are having 28 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 017 and be more familiar with the things the faculty is thinking about and feeling.” Kanelos estimates he has read 60-70 percent of the works on the college’s reading list already. One of his favorite books is The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevski, which is on that list. On Liberal Education Looking ahead, Kanelos says he sees “absolutely no changes” coming to the Program or the way St. John’s educates its students. A liberal education is important to “expand the horizons” of those being educated, he says. “The thing to remember about liberal education is its end point is the education of a human being,” he says. “The end point is not what we seem to be drifting toward in higher education as some other instrumental function—a human being as an employee, a human being as this or that. The goal of a liberal education is to develop the human being as fully as possible, intellectually and soulfully. In order to do that you have to expand rather than contract the range of things that human beings encounter in their education.” Kanelos says his time as dean of Christ College, a great books honors college, prepared him for the move to St. John’s. Christ College has an enrollment about the same size as the St. John’s campus in Annapolis. It also has a history with the great books movement. Many of the people involved in its founding were affiliated with the University of Chicago, where the great books movement began in the late 1800s. “Coming to St. John’s was pretty much the only thing that would have made me leave Christ College,” Kanelos says. “It’s a wonderful program with great people and great students. This was just one opportunity I couldn’t pass up.” Kanelos says he is eagerly awaiting the start of the new semester, when students return to the classroom to discuss the works of Homer, Plato and many more of the most influential minds in Western civilization. “Getting ready for the full blast of fall, the first full day of the semester, I’m really excited,” Kanelos says. “To walk around campus and see this storied institution, and know I’ve been asked to play a role in its continued thriving, is really humbling to me.” A Literary Life Joining Kanelos in Annapolis is wife Christina, daughter Emmie, 10, and son Theo, 8. The family has a pet goldendoodle, too. Outside of work, Kanelos enjoys cooking for his family, hosting dinners and dining at restaurants. His love of food, like his affinity for great books, dates back to his childhood. Kanelos was introduced to the “classics” at an early age, he says. His parents were in the restaurant business, first in Chicago, then in Arizona, and Kanelos often spent time in the kitchen with a stack of books to keep himself busy. He recalls reading Homer and developing an early interest in epic poetry. “That’s how I spent my time as a child, growing up in the back of restaurants, reading books,” he says. Nobody in his family had ever gone to college, he says, and he assumed he would stay involved in the restaurant business—or become a singing lumberjack, a goal he laughs about today and attributes to a flannel shirt he once owned. Kanelos eventually enrolled in a Jesuit high school in Arizona. It was there where he decided to go to college. When it came time to pick a school, Kanelos chose Northwestern University in the Chicago area, where he had spent his early years and family members still lived. Kanelos’s interest in writing emerged at Northwestern, specifically poetry and fiction. It also was at Northwestern where Kanelos met his future wife. The Next Chapter Kanelos received his bachelor’s degree in English from Northwestern in 1991. Shortly after he graduated, one of his poems was published in the journal Poetry. “At the time I don’t know if I thought I’d be a writer as a profession, but more as an avocation,” he says. With a bachelor’s degree in hand, Kanelos considered attending graduate school to further pursue his interests in writing and literature. But first he joined Teach for America, a program that sends recent college graduates to low-income schools to teach. THE COL L E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | FA L L 2 017 29 �THE NEW ANNAPOLIS PRESIDENT “� e’s the right man at the right time. H He has the focus and the knowledge and the skills to get to the issues we have to face at St. John’s.” — Santa Fe President Mark Roosevelt Kanelos was a member of the second class of Teach for America, and was sent to the Rio Grande Valley in Texas. Looking back, he calls it a “fascinating” and “intense” experience. Kanelos taught junior high school English to an entirely Latino student population, he says, many of whom were part of migrant farmworker families. He spoke little Spanish and says it was a difficult assignment, not coming from a teaching background. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and it’s made everything I’ve done since then seem easy,” he says. In the years since then, Kanelos has lived all over the United States. He received his master’s degree in literature and political philosophy from Boston University, where a chance encounter with Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Saul Bellow put him on a path to attend the University of Chicago. It was there where he received his PhD in literature and political philosophy. Kanelos also taught, wrote and got married while in Chicago. He then became a fellow at Stanford University, worked as an assistant professor and associate professor at the University of San Diego, and served as an associate professor at Loyola University of Chicago. Among his areas of expertise, he became an authority on Shakespeare. Kanelos’s career as a Shakespearean has been lively and rewarding, he says, from teaching Shakespearean actors in the Old Globe MFA program to founding the Interdisciplinary Shakespeare Studies Program at Loyola. In addition to publishing several books on Shakespeare and editing a book series, Shakespeare and the Stage, he has been called upon to speak or work with many of the most prestigious Shakespeare 30 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 017 theaters and festivals in the world, from the Chicago Shakespeare Theater and the Blackfriars Theare to the Globe Theatre in London. His early love for creative writing has accompanied him on his academic journey, as well. While at the University of San Diego, he founded the Cropper Center for Creative writing. He continued to publish poetry and recently completed a novel. In 2013, Kanelos joined the faculty at Christ College, where he remained until he was tapped earlier this year to lead St. John’s into the future. “We’ve gotten off to a very good start,” says Annapolis Dean Joe Macfarland. “He’s eager to meet with and hear from many people; he listens well; he keeps calm while appraising what he hears; and he has the energy to make good things happen. I’m encouraged by our conversations and our work together.” Over the past few months, Kanelos has stayed busy running the college, but he’s also made time for his other interests. He has tried some of the city’s many restaurants; visited Greenfield Library, where he held an original copy of Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, on which he wrote his master’s thesis; and even brushed up on his swing-dancing, another St. John’s tradition. Santa Fe President Mark Roosevelt is optimistic about the future. “He’s the right man at the right time,” Roosevelt says. “He has the focus and the knowledge and the skills to get to the issues we have to face at St. John’s. He’s both willing and eager to do so.” THE COL L E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | FA L L 2 017 31 �BIBLIOFILE SIMBA SANA (AGI13) Never Stop S imba Sana (AGI13) has been many things over the course of his life: a diligent student, an amateur boxer, a passionate activist, a successful businessman, a husband and father. But then he lost it all, and was left fumbling for meaning. Following years of struggle, he set out to chronicle his life and hard-won knowledge in Never Stop, a thoughtful, brutally honest memoir published in September 2017 by Chicago’s Bolden Books. Born Bernard Sutton in 1968, Sana’s early life in Washington, D.C., was marked by poverty and upheaval; after reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in his elementary school library, he found a muchneeded escape in fantasy novels. Sana’s love of books and his academic talent provided stability in his youth as he grew up on the streets of rough-and-tumble D.C. neighborhoods, seeing too many of his friends consumed by gang violence and drug dealing. When Sana was applying to colleges, his Jesuit mentor suggested he study philosophy, given his interest in life’s big questions. At the time, he scoffed. “Philosophy? Socrates, Plato and the other philosophers we studied at Gonzaga [a Catholic high school] were well off, or at least had access to resources. They had leisure time! I’m too poor to do that,” Sana writes in his book. Instead, he majored in business at Maryland’s Mount St. Mary’s University, graduating magna cum laude. While attending “the Mount,” Sana encountered the works of Eldridge Cleaver and Malcolm X. Inspired, he became an advocate for black liberation, earning a master’s degree in African Studies from Howard University and taking a Kiswahili name. Later, he became disillusioned with radical black nationalism, saying he’d used race as “a barrier or as a false sense of connection. We have so many things that we use to divide ourselves from other human beings.” He realized that the tools he’d always used in life— “reason, logic, planning, and determination”— weren’t enough to bring him inner fulfillment. 32 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 017 Hired out of college by global accounting firm Ernst & Young, by the early 1990s Sana fled the corporate life to start a book distribution business with a friend. The company, named Karibu from the Kiswahili for “welcome,” would eventually open several stores in the D.C. area, hosting authors such as Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou, and become one of the most successful black-owned bookselling ventures ever. During this time, Sana also married and had two children. He had made it to the top of the heap, able to purchase a $3,000 watch on a whim. It didn’t last. By 2008, Sana’s relationship with his business partner had deteriorated, and his marriage was shaky—both would fail in a short period of time. At 40 years old, he realized that the tools he’d always used in life—“reason, logic, planning, and determination”—weren’t enough to bring him inner fulfillment. His second wife encouraged him to study philosophy, but he didn’t want to just debate about technicalities, he wanted to discover a new way of life. A professor at George Washington University suggested he might be a good fit for St. John’s. Impressed by what he learned of the curriculum, Sana enrolled at the Graduate Institute in Annapolis in summer 2012, finishing the following year. “Beyond a doubt, St. John’s was my most rewarding formal educational experience,” writes Sana, whose favorite authors included Hume, Cervantes, Rousseau, and Nietzsche. Already at work on the manuscript that would become Never Stop, he feels the school “gave me the space I needed to really finish my book,” reminding him of his boxing days. “I had to go to training camp to get ready for the big bout.” The resulting book, as much philosophy as memoir, brings to mind Augustine’s Confessions: it’s candid, raw, and vulnerable to a degree unusual in men’s writing. By sharing his journey and reckoning with his flaws, Sana wants to demonstrate that self-knowledge, though difficult, is the most worthwhile knowledge of all. “My chief concern in telling this story is to focus on my behavior, my actions: the things that were within my realm of control. This, I feel, is the only way that looking at these experiences can provide some benefit to me and, I hope, others.” —Anna Perleberg Andersen (SF02) Pirate Women: The Princesses, Prostitutes, and Privateers Who Ruled the Seven Seas By Laura Sook Duncombe (SF08) Chicago Review Press, 2017 Female swashbucklers finally get their due in Laura Sook Duncombe’s new book Pirate Women: The Princesses, Prostitutes, and Privateers Who Ruled the Seven Seas. This first-ever comprehensive survey shares the stories of women, both real and legendary, that history has largely ignored. Utilizing her law background, Duncombe conducted exhaustive research on the subject, including court transcripts In the Circle of White Stones: Moving through Seasons with Nomads of Eastern Tibet By Gillian Tan (SF97) University of Washington Press, 2016 By virtue of living nomadically, it is fitting that the nomads of Eastern Tibet are facing rapid lifestyle changes—as if they are temporally nomadic as well as geographically. Gillian Tan captures nomad life and its changes over a seven-year period; her first person account is very much at ground level. Tan, a fourth generation Peranakan Chinese, grew up The Vanishing American Adult: Our Coming-of-Age Crisis—and How to Rebuild a Culture of Self-Reliance By Ben Sasse (AGI98) St. Martin’s Press, 2017 Ben Sasse seems to be everywhere these days, from national television talk shows to newspaper articles to radio interviews. Widely known for his role in politics, the U.S. senator from Nebraska, former president of Midland University, and St. John’s Graduate Institute alumnus has recently garnered attention for his new book, The Vanishing American Adult, in which he offers a personal look from cases in which pirates were being tried for their crimes. From the ancient Norse princess Alfhild and warrior Rusla to Sayyida al-Hurra of the Barbary corsairs; from Grace O’Malley, who terrorized shipping operations around the British Isles during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, to Cheng I Sao, who commanded a fleet of 400 ships off China in the early 19th century, the book explores not only the lives these women lived as pirates, but also the lives they left behind at home. Duncombe looks beyond the stories to the storytellers and mythmakers, to explore why and how these stories are told and passed down—and how history changes depending on who is recording it. in Malaysia and was educated in the United States and Australia. She says in the preface to her book that she had always felt “simultaneously familiar and strange” in the country of her birth. She was well-versed in simultaneously observing the “other” and being the “other.” In order to write about the nomads, she lived with a family in Dora Karmo— which translates to “the circle of white stones”—for 13 months. As she worked to become a part of the household by milking yaks, shouldering heavy loads of vegetation, and playing with the children, she also continued to process what it was to be an outsider, and what it meant to have a place in a community. at America’s young generation and the profound changes he has seen in today’s college students. In his book, he argues that well-intentioned but overprotective parenting, flawed government programs, and an emphasis on the consumption of goods have spurred a generation that is illequipped to thrive in our highly-competitive global economy—and play an active role required of citizens in our democracy. As a remedy, Sasse, a father of three, identifies core formative experiences he feels that all young people ought to pursue: hard work to appreciate the benefits of labor, travel to understand deprivation and want, the importance of nurturing one’s body, and the power of reading. THE COL L E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | FA L L 2 017 33 �For & About ALUMNI On June 4, the SJCAA elected the following alumni to serve in these positions: A full slate of workshops, social events, volunteer opportunities and seminars were on offer at the eighth annual Alumni Leadership Forum (ALF), held in June in Santa Fe. Alumni Association Board President Elect: Briana Saussy (A03) Organized by the St. John’s College Alumni Association with support from college staff, ALF draws alumni from across the country for a weekend of activities designed to inspire deep and meaningful alumni engagement with the college. A regular feature at ALF is training for alumni who want to give back to the college. One of these sessions was led by the Admissions Advisory Group, which taught attendees how to effectively recruit prospective students for St. John’s at college fairs and through adopta-school programs. Another session, by the Career Services Advisory Group, provided a forum for conversation on how the Office of Career Services can help alumni—and how alumni can help the office. “Our alumni volunteers are an important ‘force multiplier’ for the association as we work together with college staff to advance the mission of the college,” says Tia Pausic (A86), former Alumni Association Board president. “Our workshops help our volunteers be more effective.” ALF also serves as a hub for alumni leaders to strategize for the year ahead. Alumni chapter volunteers plan for upcoming regional events and share best practices for engaging alumni while the Alumni Association Board holds an all-day board meeting. Graduate Institute alumni use the weekend to plan as well; this year, they met to discuss the GI 50th anniversary, including involvement in Homecoming 2017 on both campuses. Over the last year, the Office of Alumni Relations has supported ALF organizers in turning the event into a volunteer-led effort, with appropriate involvement from staff. During the Alumni Association board meeting, Director of Annual Giving Mark Piekarski listened to alumni ideas about starting donor recognition societies and shared efforts to The Votes Are In! “� lumni involvement helps us A understand some of the college’s most salient needs, and how best to respond to them.” –Santa Fe President Mark Roosevelt raise alumni giving rates. “We need to plan the work and work the plan if we hope to raise our giving participation, now less than nineteen percent,” Piekarski says. “Annual giving should be a year-round effort and alumni can help by encouraging their peers to make a gift each year to support the Program.” In addition, the Office of Communications led a capital campaign identity focus group, where campaign themes were both solicited and tested. The focus group was the eighth one undertaken since February, and is part of the college’s growing efforts to involve alumni in its messaging and identity development. The weekend culminated in the annual All-Alumni Meeting, which was attended by Santa Fe President Mark Roosevelt, who led a lively discussion about the state of the college, growing alumni involvement, receptivity to alumni concerns, and upcoming initiatives. “Alumni are essential to the future of St. John’s College,” Roosevelt says. “Alumni involvement helps us understand some of the college’s most salient needs, and how best to respond to them. Together, we are laying a foundation for a new and robust era at St. John’s.” At-Large Directors: Josephine Escalante (A92) Elisabeth Long (A86) Merry Peckham (SF07) Sabina Sulat (A87) Sheila Virgil (A88) Katarina Wong (A88) Representative to Board of Visitors and Governors: Leslie Kay (SF83) Alumni also voted to approve an amendment to the bylaws. Officers and at-large directors of the association are elected to two-year terms, while representatives to the Board of Visitors and Governors serve three-year terms. Each of the newly elected alumni began their terms on July 1, 2017. Alumni Association Mission To strive for the continued excellence of our college and fellow alumni by celebrating our distinctive educational experience, connecting our community in efforts toward shared support and beneﬁt, and fostering a culture of intellect, generosity, and service. A MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENTS College Leaders Open the Lines of Communication We prize discourse at St. John’s. In fact, we pride ourselves on “doing” discourse like no other college. Given all the intellectual simmer and boil that happens on our campuses and in our alumni community—and given the current state of national and international discourse— the college’s ability to foster reasoned and civil discussion is nothing short of remarkable. And we, as presidents, appreciate the good fortune of our association with such a place, a college that remains fiercely authentic and true to itself. We owe you the same candor and forthrightness that illuminated your lives as students. And we are trying to deliver. Soon after Mark’s presidency in Santa Fe began, he instituted a series of regular communications with alumni and friends of the college, including e-mail messages about the college’s financial challenges, “JohnnieCasts” (town hall-style meetings conducted by telephone), postJohnnieCast surveys to determine which issues were of most importance to the majority of alumni, and post-Board of Visitors and Governors meeting summaries. Pano, whose presidency began in July, embraces the importance of keeping the college’s key constituencies informed (and of listening) and will be putting his own stamp on these efforts. In short, we are deeply committed to keeping the lines of communication open. Sometimes, the news from our end is going to be terrifically cheering: the combined $50-million gifts from BVG © 2017 INSIGHTFOTO.COM Alumni Take the Lead at ALF Chair Ron Fielding (A70) and Campaign Chair Warren Spector (A81); the work to create an innovative Center for Personal and Professional Development (we are fully aware that career services is an area of tremendous concern to alumni). Sometimes, that message from St. John’s will carry with it a call to action: please tell us what you think of campus culture; please reply to a survey on alumni attitudes; and, of course, please donate to the college as a vote for the value of the Program you love. St. John’s needs your support, both moral and financial, to move beyond a challenging operating deficit, to invest in activities that promote the college to prospective students and their families, and to give current students the best possible St. John’s experience, in and outside of the classroom. The presidents are charged, broadly, with earning that support. Our transparency as leaders is one way we discharge that responsibility, and we hope that as our communications continue, you will feel better connected to the college and increasingly motivated to help St. John’s thrive. Is it discordant to both celebrate the wide variety of points of view in the community (that famous impulse to discourse) and to ask that we all pull the same oar? We hope not. There is a great deal of work yet to be done to put the college on a firm and lasting foundation, and as we do that work—perhaps moving in directions that cause some unease—we will count on your good faith as well as your counsel. We will ask what you think, and we know we will hear from you, just as we have heard you say that we must envision career services anew, honor the Program, and create a vibrant and respectful campus culture for all students and employees. And when we choose a direction, informed by you and others, we will ask you to grasp the oar with us. For St. John’s. — Mark Roosevelt and Panayiotis Kanelos —Carol Carpenter 34 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 017 THE COL L E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | FA L L 2 017 35 �ALUMNI PROFILE A MERITORIOUS LIFE By Tim Pratt I n Haiti, thousands of poor, rural families each year send their children off to live with people in distant cities. The goal is for those children to attend school and live better lives, says David Diggs (AGI91), co-founder and director of the nonprofit organization Beyond Borders in Haiti. However, many of those children end up in some form of servitude or slavery. Over the last 24 years, Diggs has made it his mission to end child slavery in Haiti and empower Haitians to fix other social and educational issues in the impoverished Caribbean nation. “What we do is invest a lot in tools and in people, and in doing so build their capacity to lead these social movements that will produce lasting change,” Diggs says. For his efforts, the St. John’s College Alumni Association honored Diggs with an Award of Merit at Homecoming this fall in Annapolis. He is one of four St. John’s graduates who received awards this year, along with Huffington Post Editor-in-Chief Lydia Polgreen (A97) for outstanding service in the field of journalism; U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse (AGI98) for distinguished and meritorious service to the United States and to the state of Nebraska; and Jason Viseltear (SFGI96) for outstanding achievement in the field of lutherie. For Diggs, St. John’s still holds a special place in his heart. “It was the best educational experience I’ve ever had,” he says. “It’s had a big influence on the life we’ve had here in Haiti.” Originally from a small farm town in southwest Missouri, Diggs completed his undergraduate work at Colorado Christian University. He also lived and studied in Europe before heading off to Haiti in the late 1980s to work with the Evangelical Association for the Promotion of Education. Diggs’s time in Haiti was eye-opening, he says, as he saw classrooms that were “violent and authoritarian,” with many teachers who didn’t speak the students’ native language. After a couple years, Diggs decided to return to the United States—and visit the St. John’s campus in Annapolis, where he considered attending “�We gave teachers a chance to reinterpret their role in the classroom from authorities who were tasked with cramming facts in the heads of kids to mentors who were helping students learn from one another and from the texts, and to think critically.” years earlier when he was looking at colleges to complete his undergraduate work. “I was attracted to the idea of being in an environment where you have the freedom to explore and follow your own curiosity and questions.” Diggs enrolled in the Graduate Institute in the summer of 1990 and began working again for the Evangelical Association before he completed his master’s, taking trips for a few days at a time to Haiti during breaks between classes. After he graduated from St. John’s in 1991, he returned to Haiti to continue his work. 36 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 017 Within a few months of Diggs’s return to the island nation, he witnessed a violent coup. The country’s democratically-elected government, in power for less than a year, was overthrown. “We were traumatized by that, so we decided to engage in advocacy work,” Diggs says. “That pulled us into the struggle for a return to democracy and human rights.” Diggs and colleague John Engle formed Beyond Borders in 1993 with a focus on education reform, though its mission would grow quickly. At the time, there was no room in classrooms for students to ask questions or be curious, so outcomes were “very poor,” he says. The educational approach Diggs wanted to spread was similar to the style he experienced at St. John’s—lots of reading, discussion, reflection, and critical thinking. Diggs invited one of his old St. John’s tutors to Haiti to introduce the Touchstones program, which was adapted and used to promote educational reform among teachers. “We gave teachers a chance to reinterpret their role in the classroom from authorities who were tasked with cramming facts in the heads of kids to mentors who were helping students learn from one another and from the texts, and to think critically,” Diggs says. “That’s another thing that’s very rewarding: to see how this experience at St. John’s and what we all value from that education has taken root in Haiti. Now all over Haiti there are groups that use this approach and methodology.” Along with the new style of teaching, Diggs and his colleagues at Beyond Borders helped start a movement for native language instruction, where Creole was used in the classroom; they promoted non-violent classroom management; and students began to take responsibility for their own education and “learned how to learn,” Diggs says. In addition, the group wanted to promote a kind of education that was inclusive of everyone in the community, from children to adults. In largely rural areas, they began promoting education based in “local reality,” Diggs says, teaching, but also getting positive change in the country, Diggs says. While other programs or projects introduced to Haitian communities over the years had some short-term effects, Beyond Borders is looking for long-term solutions in Haiti—getting at the complex roots of the country’s problems. “Haitians have tremendous capacity and a lot of strength,” Diggs says. “We see ourselves as allies of social movements there and focus on social movements that see sustainable change.” In the communities where Beyond Borders has worked, there have been “huge” reductions in child slavery, Diggs says. Many children also have been reunited with their parents and returned to school. A network of child slavery survivors now works together to share their experiences and free other children. Still, child slavery and gender-based violence remain major issues in Haiti, Diggs says, and more work needs to be done. He travels to the country four or five times a year, and regularly communicates via telephone or Skype. “I’m always hearing very powerful stories of lives that are transformed through our work,” Diggs says. “That’s very meaningful to me.” 50 CELEBRATING YEARS students curious about their environment and how to farm their land sustainably and grow more food. Their efforts led them to the work they continue to focus on to this day—attempting to end child slavery. About one-quarter of Haitian children under the age of 18 live apart from their parents, Diggs says. About half of those children end up in some form of exploitive relationship, including about one in six Haitian girls and one in 10 Haitian boys, he says. Beyond Borders began working on children’s rights issues and genderbased violence. The organization provided training and funding, and set up the largest network of groups in the country to end child slavery. An initiative to end violence against women and girls also took root. Beyond Borders continues to work with community and child rights activists, civic leaders and others. The tools and models the organization provides can be “scaled up” and used by the government and other agencies to make a The Graduate Institute ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE In celebration of the Graduate Institute’s 50th anniversary, the college is featuring a series of stories to highlight the history, students— past and present—and other contributors who have made it what it is today. Read more at sjc.edu/ graduate/anniversary. THE COL L E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | FA L L 2 017 37 �ALUMNI NOTES 1946 Peter Weiss (A) was honored on June 8 by the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York for his half century as board member, vice president, and cooperating attorney. 1949 With his family, Peter J. Davies (A) celebrated his 90th birthday on June 10 at a luncheon in Chappaqua, N.Y. He and his wife Phyllis continue to lead active and, most fortunately, healthy lives. The couple got married 68 years ago under the Liberty Tree on the Annapolis campus, just two weeks after he graduated from St. John’s. 1952 Pierre Grimes (A) published two articles in 2016, “The Philosophy of the Self” and “The Betrayal of Philosophy: Rediscovering the Self in Plato’s Parmenides,” in Philosophical Practice: Journal of the APPA (American Philosophical Practitioners Association). 1955 After a 50-year career that included conducting symphonies and opera, serving as music director of six orchestras, and guest conducting in the US and Europe, Harold Bauer (A) has retired from the field. He now devotes his time to painting and serves on the board of the Evanston Art Center, where he is also a student. Bauer’s work will be on view in a one-man show at the Rainbow Gallery in Evanston, Ill. on November 3. John M. Gordon (A) announces the publication of the first Penny Summers mystery novel, Katelyn’s Killer. Set in presentday Annapolis, the book’s 30-something amateur sleuth, Penny Summers, is partly inspired by Gordon’s experiences as a St. John’s student, Navy air intelligence officer, landscape designer, and garden pond builder. 1964 1971 gist and neonatologist at the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA). “Over the past 40 years, our program (at CHLA) has established an international reputation in areas of clinical care and respiratory physiology, especially in respiratory control disorders,” Keens says. “We are consulted from around the world about the management of children requiring home mechanical ventilation, diaphragm pacing, children with congenital central hypoventilation syndrome, and other disorders.” He is grateful to everyone who taught him, and who helped him to succeed and help others. After 20 years, Jeffrey Escoffier (A) retired two years ago from the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, where he coordinated the production and placement of the department’s mass media campaigns on smoking, obesity, HIV, infant mortality, Ebola, and West Nile disease, among others. He’s now a full-time writer working on a couple of books about health policy in New York City and about the history of sexuality. He is also the co-editor of Q Public, a new series of books on LGBTQ issues from Rutgers University Press. 1966 Judy (Millspaugh) Anderson (A) enjoyed seeing old friends at Homecoming last September, for the Class of 1966 50th reunion. She is sad to report, though, that her sister Susan, who lived with her during her junior and senior years, passed away on Easter Sunday this year. Constance (Bell) Lindgreen (A) shares news about her family of Johnnies. Her mother Mary Jean Bell (SFGI73) published her first volume of her poems, Tangerine: Poems at 94. Her sister Alice, a composer and musician, wrote a requiem mass, Crux, in memory of their sister Sarah (Bell) Kitchin (Class of 1967), and her brother Sam Bell (A71) has won awards for 38 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 017 Rita Collins (A) continues to run her traveling bookstore, which went across country to the Brooklyn Book Festival last summer. Plans for next year include stops in Illinois, North Carolina, Alabama, and Florida. 1977 1979 Michael St. James (A) enjoyed a miniature class reunion at Summer Classics in Santa Fe, with Susan Ferron (SF) and tutor Grant Franks (A), who co-led the seminar—one of the best St. James has attended—on two of Alan Turing’s seminal papers. 1978 1965 Jessica (Hoffman) (A) and Will Davis (Class of 1964) will celebrate their 53rd wedding anniversary this fall. Both are retired (Will from the investment business and Jessica from academics), and they divide their time unequally between Squam Lake and Boston. Will follows the markets and savors the opportunity to read and reflect while Jessica has redirected her writing from books on the arts in education to plays that she puts on locally. U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Her current plans include completing a book about raising her son and traveling with her husband, Chuck, as he performs jazz music around the country and the world. After their first engagement ended 36 years ago, Elizabeth (Betty) Burch (A) and Rick Allen Stephan (A) reconnected and were married in September 2016 on the front porch of McDowell Hall. Rick received his PhD in neuropsychology in February 2015 from the For the past decade, Peter Macdonald Blachly (A) and his wife, Johannah Harkness, have been living in Maine, near two summer vacation homes that have been in his family for generations. Peter and Johannah premiered their rock opera, “One Way Trip to Mars,” at Waterville Opera House, in August. They hired cast and crew from New York; the show attracted the attention of NASA and the space exploration community, as well as a lot of media coverage in Maine. his books on car maintenance. As for her, she been writing short stories; two of which, “A Restaurant in Venice” and “Case in Point,” have won local prizes in France, where she lives. Later this autumn three more stories will appear in the Blue Fountain: Crossroads Writers Anthology. Rebecca Tendler (A) has been practicing as a psychologist in Philadelphia for more than 30 years. She is happy to say that she is in training, again, in a mind-body psychotherapy devised by Ron Kurtz that incorporates the work of Perls, Reich, and Feldenkreis and taps into Eastern philosophies of Buddhism and Taoism. We are never too old to learn. 1968 Thomas G. Keens (SFGI) celebrates 40 years since he began as an assistant professor of pediatrics at the School of Medicine of the University of Southern California; and as a pediatric pulmonolo- Rick Wicks (SF) and his family live in Sweden. His daughter Linnéa recently graduated from medical school and now works on the psychiatric ward of a hospital near Göteborg, Sweden. 1973 Frazier L. O’Leary Jr (SFGI), an English teacher at Washington, D.C.’s Cardozo High School, was the subject of a Washington Post article that appeared online on June 9. Michael Aaron (SF) recently published an Expert Insights white paper through the IBM Institute of Business Value on “central banks and digital ledger technology governance.” 1976 With a warm send-off from her colleagues, Gail Webber Redd (A) retired after 34 years with the Baltimore Johnnies Lisa Simeone (A), Bill Tripp (A), and Kim Schraf (A), enjoyed an Annapolis Class of 1979 get-together this summer with Bruce Babij (A) at his home. 1981 California School of Professional Psychology. Betty, now Liz, has a JD from George Mason University. Together they founded MindWealth in Boca Raton, Fla., offering comprehensive, innovative, and efficacious treatment protocols for substance abuse facilities. William A. (Gus) Steadman II (SF79) received his doctor of public health degree from New York Medical College on May 24 at Carnegie Hall. He received the “Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation” award for his work entitled “Practice Characteristics of New York Medical College School of Medicine: Predicting Primary Care Specialty Choice and Likelihood of a Practice in a Rural or Economically Disadvantaged Area from Medical School Applications.” Gus is the nephew of Santa Fe tutor, Jack Steadman, and the father of alumna Margaret Steadman (SF16). Robbyn Jackson (A) recently moved to Hancock, N.H. after retiring from a 30-year career as a historical architect for the National Park Service. She spent the last 25 years in San Francisco, most recently as the chief of cultural resources and museum management at San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park. She and her husband, Timothy Przygocki, purchased the house in Hancock to retire to several years ago, though he passed away in 2014. She welcomes those in the area to look her up. After retiring from teaching in California, Marilynn R. Smith (SFGI) moved to Spring, Texas, in 2005 to live near her daughter and family. Her children were 12, 9, and 4 then, and she has enjoyed her role as babysitter and homework-monitor while both their parents worked. Twelve years later, she says, “this ride has just been amazing.” 1985 Terri Luckett (SF) and Harry Hamilton (A86) married on July 15 in Afton, Va. The couple dated when she took her “junior year abroad” in Annapolis. They then went their separate ways in life, but through the miracle of social media they reconnected and the magic reignited. They live in Seattle, Wash., where Terri is an executive with Amazon.com. Harry is retired from a career of care as a therapist and social worker. THE COL L E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | FA L L 2 017 39 �ALUMNI NOTES ALUMNI NOTES 1984 1988 GLOBAL CALL FOR CLIMATE ACTION/GREG MCNEVIN Katarina Wong (A) joined Columbia University this year as the program manager of the arts administration graduate program. Her own artwork will also be included in the Getty-sponsored Pacific Standard Time exhibition, “Circles & Circuits I: History & Art of the Chinese Caribbean Diaspora,” on view in Los Angeles through February 25, 2018. More info at www.pacificstandardtime. org. In addition, her cross-cultural curatorial project, “Hecho en Tránsito / Made in Transit,” (www. madeintransit.com) involving Cuban and American artists will be exhibited at Columbia University’s Macy Gallery from February 5 to March 1, 2018. Jeni Miller (A84) heads the Global Climate and Health Alliance, an international alliance of health organizations working together to address climate change and its impacts on health. This spring the group launched a health sector-led initiative to tackle urban air pollution, Unmask My City, in 11 cities around the world. “The cutting-edge visuals for the campaign use personal air quality monitors connected to innovative light mask technology, and helped draw significant media and social media attention to viable, city- and country-level solutions to air pollution,” Miller writes. With three million premature deaths annually due to outdoor air pollution, more than 80 percent of city dwellers globally breathe air that breaches World Health Organization guidelines, and with fossil fuels driving both air pollution and climate change, Miller sees the push for clean air as a major global opportunity to improve both health and climate. 1986 Keith Rosen (AGI) never married or had children, but he’s been busy over the past 35 years. He retired from teaching and keeps active as a tour guide around Houston, Texas, and Louisiana. In 2000 he started his own company, Houston Historical Tours. With his mortgage paid off early, he enjoys collecting a pension and taking annual vacations. Alumni visiting Houston are invited to drop him a line. Elaine Pinkerton Coleman (SFGI) announces two new publications: A revision of Santa Fe on Foot: Exploring the City Different (Ocean Tree Books, 2016) and the debut of All the Wrong Places (Pocol Press, 2017), a suspense novel set in the Southwest. Her website www. elainepinkerton.wordpress.com recently won an award for Best Adoption Blog. She is currently at work on a sequel to her latest novel, set in southern India. 40 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 017 1991 Joan Crist (A) still teaches at Calumet College of St. Joseph in Indiana, where she shares her love of rowing that she gained while at St. John’s with students there. She also assists interfaith community partners with their urban farming and revitalization efforts. She has a child in college and is encouraging her other two to choose St. John’s. Ramona (Denk) Webb (A) currently lives in Townsville, NE Australia, with her Aussie husband, Thomas. She is studying for a MS in midwifery through a distance program from the Midwives College of Utah, and managing the guest rooms that the couple rents out through Airbnb. The couple recently celebrated the birth of a granddaughter in England, and plan to fly halfway across the world to see her. Julia Goldberg’s (SF) book Inside Story: Everyone’s Guide to Writing and Reporting Creative Nonfiction was published by Leaf Storm Press. Her book tackles the myriad approaches to the burgeoning genre of creative nonfiction—from memoir to criticism to literary journalism—by deeply exploring each stage of the generation, reportage, writing, and editing of stories. Drawing on and integrating examples and advice from diverse practitioners in the field, Inside Story extends beyond idea and inspiration with practical advice, examples and exercises geared toward everyone, from writing students and teachers, citizen journalists, bloggers, and to working writers. 1997 1990 John Obenauer (A) works as a bioinformatics scientist, spending most of his time looking for gene mutations or changes in activity that contribute to diseases. He lives near Memphis, Tenn., with his wife Michelle and 12-year-old daughter Lily. They had fun visiting Stonehenge last year. Brian Brock (SF) is making music in Laveen, Arizona. Heidi Jacot Hewett (A) released a new book, The Adulteries of Rachel, a philosophical novel about love and marriage with lots of Plato references. Melanie Margarita Kirby (SF) is taking a sabbatical from her own queen bee farming to serve as the bee lab manager at Washington State University (WSU) and to work on international bee breeding research. She will be pursuing a graduate degree at one of the nation’s leading bee research labs at WSU with esteemed bee researcher Steve Sheppard, and bee geneticist Susan Cobey. She recently completed research on medicinal herb and pollinator health trials of Monarda fistulosa (var menthifolia), also known as wild mountain bergamot (oregano de la sierra) with New Mexico State University. Check out www.herbs4bees.com for more info. She can be reached at melanie.kirby@wsu.edu. 1992 Johann A. Klaassen (SF) and Angela Kelly Klaassen (SF) celebrated 25 years of marriage in December 2016. Johann is nearing five years as a principal of Horizons Sustainable Financial Services, Inc., which is headquartered in Santa Fe. He and his business partner specialize in sustainable, responsible, impact investing, and serve clients across the country. The family remains, for the moment, headquartered in Colorado. Daughter Gretta Klaassen (SF18) is a senior at St. John’s, Santa Fe, and twin sons Bram and Ben are sophomores in high school. 1993 In July, Pamela Stark (A) began a new position as director of The Rockefeller University Child and Family Center. 1994 Dan Farley (A) and Elizabeth (Rhodes) Farley (A) recently celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary. Their daughter Hannah finished her first year of college at Juniata College in Pa., studying biology in their pre-med program, and their son Dylan is a senior in high school and currently looking at colleges. Their youngest son, Samuel, started third grade. The family keeps busy with travel, reading, sports, and outdoor activities. Dan also defended his dissertation and finally got his PhD in quantitative research methods from the University of Oregon. The Farley’s pace of life is slowly returning to manageable levels, so they welcome anyone visiting the Pacific Northwest to drop by. Dan can be reached at dfarley@uoregon.edu. Jill Nienhiser (SFGI) married Dane Petersen on June 17. Jill is a strategist at Mind & Media, Inc. in Alexandria, Va., and Dane is a marketing and events manager at The Theatre Lab in D.C. 2004 Conor Heaton (AGI) completed law school at Loyola University Chicago School of Law in 2007, and was a practicing trial attorney in Chicago until recently when he made a significant professional pivot and became the director of school growth for the Cristo Rey Network. Lisa Hedley (AGI) started a personal development business. Her website, lisahedley.com, has a platform for online seminars. 2006 Russell Max Simon’s (SFGI) first feature film, which he wrote and directed, will be released on Amazon in November. 2008 Adam Braus (SF) now runs a small college called the Product College at Make School, which focuses on teaching 18- to 28-year-olds how to be software engineers. He also started a turmeric latte mix company called Copper Cup (drinkcoppercup.com). “Turmeric is a spice that helps your body regulate stress and gives you energy and helps you regulate your sleep and digestion,” says Brau. “I’m also engaged to Katherine Koh, and we will be married October 14 in Oakland.” The couple lives in the Mission in San Francisco. 2009 Zach Alarcon (SFGI) was named a Diamond Teacher of the Year by the Colorado Springs International Rotary Club. “Without my solicitation, students wrote brief essays to nominate me, and I’ve been pretty humbled by the 1999 Tobin Shulman (SF) was recently promoted at Siemasko + Verbridge, where he will help lead the firm’s residential, commercial, institutional, and academic design practice. THE COL L E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | FA L L 2 017 41 �FIRST PERSON ALUMNI NOTES 2015 serves as senior learner experience designer in the Education Research and Development Department, inventing new ways to do education, setting up campuses around the world, and doing empirical research on learning. In his free time, he goes rock climbing and kayaking and reads with a good cup of coffee at his side. 2010 Ina Dixon (A) is entering a PhD program in American Studies at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill this fall. She will be exploring how history and the humanities revitalize Southern communities in the United States. 2011 Bingsheng Chen (SFGI) spent this year as a visiting professor of philosophy and ethics at Universidad Francisco Marroquín in Guatemala City for one semester, and then started a journey around South America for six months, including visits to Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil. award,” writes Alarcon. “It has inspired me to continue striving to transcend my previous best. I have recently been doing an in-depth study about how to develop critical consciousness and cultural relevancy in my pedagogy. The study has centered around the authors Paulo Freire, Maxine Greene, L.S. Vygotsky, and Maria Montessori, amongst others. Needless to say, my experiences at St. John’s have provided me with many of the skills I now use to continue transcending my previous best.” Aaron Dukette (AGI) is living on the northwest slope of Pike’s Peak in Divide, Colo., with his wife Michelle and daughter Elizabeth. He is teaching and serving as a dean of Boys with several other Johnnies at Thomas MacLaren School in Colorado Springs. On the side he teaches college philosophy courses online for Ashford University. Over the past year he has volunteered heavily for the Convention of States Project for which he served as Colorado state director and now serves as a regional captain and state media liaison. As time permits, he writes for Lanterns Media on politics and culture, and plans to start a podcast for Lanterns in the fall. Matthew Robertson (SFGI) recently completed a PhD through the Religious Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and will begin a post-doctoral research position at Florida State University in the fall. With the exception of about a year, Austin Volz (SF) has spent his time since graduating living overseas in Germany and China. Last year he moved back to the US to work in New York City with Avenues: The World School. At Avenues he 42 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 017 Kaura (Mackey) Lavery (A) and Darren Lavery celebrated the birth of their daughter Moira Quinn Lavery on February 5. 2012 Barbara Scott (SF) lives in Taos, N.M., and has been interviewed about St. John’s Graduate Institute on Asheville, N.C.’s WPVM radio station. 2014 While attending the Graduate Institute, Aileen Sawabi Coccia (AGI) began work to open Sedes Sapientiae School. Her school was incorporated in 2013 and opened in fall 2015 with 12 students and four full-time tutors. The school begins its third year at a new location in Boonton, N.J. Last year the school graduated one student who attends Thomas Aquinas College, and two seniors this year both attend Christendom College. In 2018 five seniors are expected to graduate. Nineteen students are enrolled for the fall. 2016 Bineet Ojha (SF) started his MA in ancient philosophy at Western University, Ontario. 2017 Since 2009, Kenneth Robert Baumann (SF) has run a small, nonprofit publishing company called Sator Press, which recently published its ninth title, A Guide For the Perplexed, which he describes as “an epistemological exercise for the end times.” 2013 Anthony Cole (A) and his wife welcomed their son Aiden Patrick Cole into the world on June 30. “Mom and baby are healthy, and 2-year-old Felix is thrilled about having a little brother,” Cole says. “We’ll be encouraging him to be whatever he wants to be as he grows up, but joining the Annapolis Class of 2039 will certainly be suggested.” Susan LaRocca (AGI) writes that she and 14 other alumni really enjoyed the Piraeus seminar on Jane Austen’s Persuasion with tutors Eva Brann and Erica Beall in June. “So much fun getting lost in Austen at St. John’s!” Do you have news to share with The College? Send your note, along with your name, class year, and photo(s), to: thecollegemagazine@sjc.edu GREENWAVE THROUGH AND THROUGH By Jonathan Barone (A13) A s the years have passed by, I have found myself reminiscing with my classmates about our time at St. John’s. This is nothing out of the ordinary; waxing nostalgic on your college years is a nationally time-honored tradition. But St. John’s is a unique place with a singular community, and what makes this place special often varies from person to person. For some, it’s singing Sicut Cervus in a packed McDowell Hall. For others, it’s the intimacy of a cohesive seminar. Personally, I always found the greatest sense of community in the intramural program. When I arrived, I hardly knew the rules to most of the sports we played (though to be fair, no one knew the rules to our Calvinballinspired version of flag football). Despite that, I still felt like I belonged on the field. There was always a teammate to look up to or an opponent to joke around with. At that time, winning or losing didn’t hold great concern for me. Of course, the victories tasted sweeter, but I found more joy playing sports with my friends within this storied intramural league. I was enthralled by the history and tradition, and I would sometimes while away spare moments walking the track in the Temple, wondering at the names on the plaques of years gone by. But here’s the problem with nostalgia: the lenses through which you view the past are rose-colored. Even though intramurals were where I found my closest community, they were also the place where I felt the deepest isolation. When you’re in class, it is very difficult to fail at something outright. While you might screw up a proposition or say something inaccurate, you aren’t disappointing others. Not so on the intramural field. When you make a mistake, it has a direct and immediate effect on the game. Failure is palpable and inescapable, and it doesn’t affect just you. It affects your entire team. It was in those moments of failure that I faced my darkest moments at St. John’s. I distinctly remember walking back from a soccer Barone (front row, second from right) and his Greenwaves clench the 2016 intramural basketball championship. “� ven though intramurals E were where I found my closest community, they were also the place where I felt the deepest isolation.” match, filled with self-loathing. I had made a mistake that cost my team the game, and I felt it viscerally. I had betrayed the trust of my teammates. As I walked, those feelings of guilt turned to shame. It wasn’t that I had failed—I was a failure. Instead of making a mistake, I was the mistake. I continued to repeat and internalize the pernicious lie: “I’m not good enough.” But if I’m being honest, it wasn’t intramurals that created that cycle of shame and self-hatred. My insecurities were with me long before I came to St. John’s. Rather, it was those moments of failure that exposed what I truly believed about myself. I was forced to confront unpleasant truths. I realized that I was trying to build my self-worth through my performance. My purpose was coming from comparing my success with the success of everyone around me. I had to face my ugly self-image and the belief that I was a burden on others. Though I am by no means rid of all my insecurities, I’m at a much healthier place now than I was in sophomore year. And strangely enough, as I healed, I started to gain perspective. I saw that I wasn’t the only one dealing with the same fears and doubts. Even though I knew I was not the paragon of emotional wellbeing, I knew that I could help others with the same struggles that I faced. Even though I couldn’t find the words then, it was the intramural program that sparked my passion for leadership. As I reflected on the need for affirmation and belonging that I sought as a freshman, I realized that I now had the ability to provide that for others. Since graduating, I’ve found that it was my experience on the field, not in the classroom, that led me to where I am today. The Program will always serve as the foundation between myself and other Johnnies, but it was the intramural program that helped me discover who I am. THE COL L E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | FA L L 2 017 43 �IN MEMORIAM and kindness she exemplified, her willingness to help anyone, to work actively with the Caritas Society, for which she served as president. We remember the joy she took in her artwork, all the fun she had bouncing around a basketball in the gym with students, her devotion as mother, wife, and friend.” Michael Musgrove (A94) March 20, 2017 Malcolm Wyatt (H03) April 22, 2017 Tutor and assistant dean, Annapolis In 1958, after he received undergraduate and graduate degrees in mathematics from the University of Virginia, Edward Malcolm Wyatt (1932-2017) came to Annapolis, where he was a beloved and dedicated member of the St. John’s faculty until his retirement in 2002. At St. John’s he served as assistant dean from 1984 to 1988 and as director of the Graduate Institute from 1989 to 1992. He also served as head of the campus’ continuing education program. Wyatt was an accomplished flute player and spent his last sabbatical studying chamber music in Vienna, Austria. He was predeceased by his first wife, Martha (Class of 1961). Wyatt is survived by his wife of 25 years, Cecelia; daughters, Rachel and Ruth; son Mark; stepchildren, Michelle, Medea, and Bee Elvy; and numerous grandchildren. Lydia Sparrow April 8, 2017 Caritas Society president “It is with regret that we learn of the death of one of St. John’s great ladies,” Becky Wilson (H83) shares. “When we think of Lydia Sparrow (1932-2017), we remember her graciousness, the open hearted hospitality she extended to hundreds of students and faculty members while her first husband, the late Edward Sparrow (1929-2015), served as St. John’s dean and tutor. One recalls the combination of elegance 44 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 017 Michael Musgrove (1971-2017) is remembered for his gift for words, wry sense of humor, and fierce determination. After he graduated from St. John’s, he took a job in the mailroom for the Washington Post and worked his way to staff writer and columnist. On occasion, he wrote articles on happenings at the college. He traveled extensively, wrote a novel, and, in 2013, completed an Ironman Triathlon. He also loved spending time with his friends and listening to loud, live music. But most of all, he loved his daughter Zoe and his stepson Jackson. Fatherhood was, by far, his greatest joy. Musgrove was the son of Patricia (Burton) and the late William Musgrove; the husband of Kimberly Baer; the father of Zoe Musgrove and Jackson Baer; and the brother of Skip Musgrove and Cindy Deacon. Irwin Hoffman (H85) May 26, 2017 Board member Irwin Hoffman (1925-2017), who served as a member of the St. John’s College Board of Visitors and Governors for 12 years, passed away in Santa Fe at the age of 92. Born in New York City, Hoffman showed immense promise and aptitude as a child. He skipped many grades in school and received his high school diploma at age 14. He received a degree from Harvard in three years and subsequently completed medical school at New York University. After serving as a military doctor during the Korean War and attaining the rank of captain, Hoffman married Maya Bravy, a concert pianist. He then established what was then the largest cardiology practice on Long Island. After 30 years, the couple relocated to Santa Fe, where Hoffman continued to treat complicated cardiology cases in New Mexico. He wrote a number of books and scholarly articles about cardiology; his 1974 book, XYZ is the ABC of the EKG, is still used in medical schools. He also served as the clinical professor of cardiology at the University of New Mexico’s School of Medicine for many years. In addition to his accomplishments in the medical field, Hoffman was a renaissance man. He taught himself ancient Greek and regularly met with other Greek language scholars in Santa Fe. Irwin and Maya Hoffman supported many nonprofits, including a number of organizations for the arts, through the Hoffman-Bravy Charitable Foundation. He made deep and lasting impressions on the hundreds of friends, students, and colleagues he left behind. Santa Fe was enriched by his life, passions, and commitment to the community. He is survived by his wife, Maya; son, John; daughter, Annabelle; brother, Allan (Class of 1949); and four grandchildren. Errol Pomerance (AGI72) April 15, 2017 Tutor, Annapolis Errol J. Pomerance (1942-2017) had a passion for intellectual pursuits, and for beauty, which led him toward a transcendent view of life. An avid learner and teacher, after receiving his bachelor’s from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn in 1962, he joined the faculty at St. John’s in Annapolis, where he taught for five years and attended the Graduate Institute. After St. John’s, he went on to earn additional master’s degrees from Harvard and West Chester State University, and then his doctorate from the Polytechnic Institute of New York. A lover of literature, classical music, and astronomy, Pomerance’s experience at St. John’s instilled in him a sense of wonder and inquiry, and a compassion and respect for his fellow man, which he always retained. John Oosterhout After his discharge at the end of the war, Oosterhout used the GI Bill to attend St. John’s. He graduated in 1951 and remained connected to the college—he was a frequent attendee at lectures and community seminars in Santa Fe—until his death. In 1991, Oosterhout received an Alumni Award of Merit in gratitude for this service on the Board of Visitors and Governors from 1968 to 1974 as well as in admiration for his professional achievements at NASA, where he had served at various times as a branch head, systems analyst, and electronics engineer. Oosterhout’s daughter, Amy, graduated from the Annapolis campus in 1982. Oosterhout was well-loved by his family and many friends and is deeply missed by them. A memorial contribution can be made to St. John’s College either online at sjc.edu/giving or by check to: St. John’s College, P.O. Box 75905, Baltimore, MD 21275-5905. John D. Oosterhout (19272017), an alumnus, a former board member, and a longtime resident of Santa Fe, passed away peacefully in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Oosterhout was born and raised in Port Arthur, Texas. After high school, he was drafted by the U.S. Army for service in WWII, and after basic training, was deployed to northern Italy. Also Deceased: Natalie R. Chambliss, Class of 1964 June 1, 2017 Deborah Moll, A69 Sarah B. Fisher, A68 June 8, 2017 May 2, 2017 Mark M. Ainsworth, A78 June 5, 2017 Robert G. Cozzolino, Class of 1963 July 1, 2017 Jewell Hall, AGI85 June 1, 2017 Alvin Aronson, Class of 1952 May 2, 2017 Miranda S. Cully, SF97 July 24, 2017 David W. Herman, A72 Matt Rarey, AGI06 April 3, 2017 June 22, 2017 Donald K. Bandler, SFGI98 February 24, 2017 Christian J. Dallett, SF88 February 23, 2017 Leroy W. Brooks, Class of 1939 May 19, 2017 Phillip L. Dionne, SF72 June 1, 2017 Class of 1951 May 9, 2017 Robert S. Hill, Class of 1954 March 8, 2017 Patricia G. Loring, Class of 1958 August 21, 2016 William Brown, SF11 Judith Dome, SFGI88 Lee M. Mace, Class of 1942 December 10, 2016 July 14, 2015 March 16, 2017 George J. Bunting, Class of 1954 Paul D. Finney, AGI82 June 20, 2017 June 1, 2017 Barbara L. Murray, Class of 1963 May 31, 2017 Albert Robertson, AGI91 March 7, 2017 John Sitzmann, A14 September 20, 2017 John C. Wallace, III, Class of 1949 March 22, 2017 THE COL L E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | FA L L 2 017 45 �PHILANTHROPY I N TR O D U C I N G : A New and Improved Annual Fund A TRIFECTA OF GIVING Chris Olson (A78) shows that there are many ways to make a difference for St. John’s Giving to St. John’s College is personal for Chris Olson (A78). He has given to the college for years, mostly modest amounts. He points out that it is the number of alumni who consistently make annual gifts that matters, not the amount they choose to give. But recently Olson has gone well beyond the occasional gift. In fact, he has created what classmate Leo Pickens (A78)—also the college’s director of Leadership Annual Giving—calls a “trifecta” of giving. Olson has set up a monthly auto-recurring gift of cash to support the Fund for St. John’s; he has established a planned gift, also known as a deferred gift annuity, to support the college. In addition, he made a “stretch gift” to strengthen the endowment and to join those who are bolstering the college’s fundraising efforts as it gears up for the public launch of a major campaign. His endowed gift has gone to the Klein Tutorship Endowment Fund. Jacob Klein was a scholar who came to the Program as a tutor in 1938, and whom Olson met years ago. He is also author of Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra, which many tutors have excerpted over the decades. “That’s cool to be linked— to be helping—something named after Jacob Klein,” Olson says. “I like that a lot.” What makes giving personal for Olson is, in part, his continued closeness to the college throughout the years via his friendship with Pickens and the college’s long-time vice president of Advancement, the late Jeff Bishop. Olson says that the power of such personal relationships should not be underestimated. “If I’m going to give money, which I don’t have a great deal of, I’m going to give it to St. John’s as a priority over anybody else.” “� f I’m going to give I money, which I don’t have a great deal of, I’m going to give it to St. John’s . . .” Although Olson earned a master’s in international relations from the University of Pennsylvania, and an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, he says the specialized knowledge he gained there was not transformative in the way his education at St. John’s was. In fact, St. John’s continues to both transform and inform his thoughts. On a recent visit to Annapolis he chatted with Pickens and other 46 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 017 Johnnies about the current political climate— and fake news. He believes that separating fact from fiction is more important than ever, and more difficult to do with so much information invading our “knowledge space,” as he puts it. “Education is so important, and the St. John’s education is by far the best, I believe, in order to help you sort out a very, very complicated world.” Referencing the school’s logo, which reads ‘Facio liberos ex liberis libris libraque’ and translates to ‘I make free adults from children by means of books and a balance,’ Olson views the relationship between freedom and knowledge as fundamental to living. “You always return to yourself as an individual and your own capacity to understand and adapt to the world. And that’s what you can get from St. John’s more than from anywhere. That first year at St. John’s is absolutely tremendous. If you have that in your education at any point in your life, it’s worth gold.” Today, Olson is an independent financial consultant for the World Bank and is completing a 10-year program that will license him as an analytical psychologist in the Jungian tradition. To write his psychology thesis, he is rereading many of his Program books—in some cases he’s even translating from the Greek again. He considers himself to have come full-circle. “It’s a very exciting world at the moment for me,” he says by phone from London. “I’m 62 years old and it’s shaped up into an interesting situation. I’m very happy about it, and very grateful to St. John’s for the education and the other opportunities it gave me over the years.” And so he gives back. -Anne Kniggendorf (SF97) WE’VE HEARD YOU! Based on your requests for choices, we’ve re-designed our Annual Fund. The Annual Fund represents current-use dollars that address core college needs. Gifts to the Annual Fund keep the Program strong and impact every aspect of the Johnnie experience. Any gift, any size, supports the ongoing work of the college, enabling St. John’s to maintain its place at the vanguard of liberal learning. FUND FOR ST. JOHN’S Historically our most popular fund, the Fund for St. John’s keeps the Program strong and enables the college to address priority needs in any given year. The transformative power of the Program lasts a lifetime. Gifts to the Johnnie Scholarship Fund alleviate undergraduate students’ financial burden, enabling them to immerse themselves in this powerful educational experience. TUTOR FUND GRADUATE INSTITUTE FUND Tutors are the beating heart of the St. John’s experience. Gifts to the Tutor Fund ensure that our beloved tutors receive respectable compensation as well as opportunities for professional development to keep the Program strong. The Graduate Institute Fund provides graduate students access to financial aid, assistantships, academic enrichment opportunities, and on-campus housing. It also funds teacher scholarships, lecture series, and student-run publications. STUDENT SUCCESS FUND STUDENT LIFE FUND Through internships and fellowships, Johnnies take their Program insights into the world and explore career and postgraduate interests. Gifts to this fund enable St. John’s to keep internship and fellowship programs vital and strong. The Student Life Fund enables Johnnies to explore extracurricular and athletic interests and engage in activities that enrich their personal health and happiness. LIBRARY FUND STAFF EXCELLENCE FUND Libraries are sacred spaces. Gifts to the Library Fund help to address ongoing needs and fund special projects including acquisitions, renovations, and technology upgrades. GIVE ONLINE Select and donate to your preferred fund online at sjc.edu/giving. JOHNNIE SCHOLARSHIP FUND St. John’s staff strive to ensure that students and tutors have the resources they need to experience the power of the Program. Gifts to this fund enable the college to address staff professional development needs. GIVE VIA MAIL Please remember to write the name of your chosen fund in the “memo” line of your check, made out to St. John’s College. Gifts for either or both campuses can be mailed to: St. John’s College P.O. Box 75905 Baltimore, MD 21275-5905 QUESTIONS? Please contact Mark Piekarski, director of Annual Giving, at 505-984-6104 or mapiekarski@sjc.edu. THE COL L E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | FA L L 2 017 47 �EIDOS ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE GREENFIELD LIBRARY S T. J O H N ’ S F O R E V E R VINTAGE VICTORY While the St. John’s football team closed 1902 with a modest 3-6 record, the 1903 yearbook, the Rat Tat, highlights a special victory that season: “The week following was one of excitement and was trying on the nerves, for Saturday brought on the game with our old rival, Western Maryland. The day dawned clear and cool and at twelve o’clock, amid the cheers of the rooters and the waving of flags, the two teams trotted upon the field. After the usual preliminaries the teams lined up and Beatty (D. H. Beatty, Class of 1903), kicked off to Western Maryland. The contest had begun and for St. John’s it was do or die.” “In the first half St. John’s scored twelve points to Western Maryland’s five. At the A group portrait of the St. John’s College 1903 football team on the steps of McDowell Hall beginning of the second half Western Maryland soon scored six more points, but DuVall (E. P. DuVall, Class of 1905), our star full-back, soon raised them six by his magnificent run of ninety yards. He received Robert’s punt on our twenty-yard line and with the ball tucked neatly under his arm, he wriggled, dodged, blocked off tackles and soon planted the ball behind the goal posts. Never has there been exhibited in the football history of St. John’s, brighter examples of noble daring, grit, courage, and determination than was shown by our team on that day.” “Since the 1980s, I have been working on a proprietary art system I refer to as the Art Fountain, comprised of a large set of mathematical paint brushes. The subjects and compositions I choose vary extensively from photographs or existing artworks to original compositions, but I tend to like simple subjects that explore the beauty or facets of ordinary things which I then abstract. I have little interest in standard computer graphics or filter effects but am more about the colors and interesting textures created from geometrical primitives that subtly reflect the subject in a unique way. Because its roots are mathematical, the size of my art is independent of the final form it takes. I seek to combine the power and infinitude of mathematics with the aesthetics of color, composition and texture in an organic, ‘non-computery’ way. My art is conceptual and not so much about creating beautiful things as it is about beautiful ideas for things. My main medium is not pigment suspended in oil, but ‘artful algorithms,’ liberally redirected by chance. I create by exploring a realm that lies beyond my imagination and my physical skills, using random numbers, mathematics, and computers as tools. Each subject I explore produces dozens of variations coaxed out of fiddling with many parameters. The works are best viewed quite large because of the small details that get lost on reduction.” View more of McClard’s work at vectorartlabs.com. Peter McClard (SF83) 48 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 017 THE COL L E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | FA L L 2 017 iii �Non-Proﬁt Org. U.S. Postage PAID Annapolis, MD Permit N0. 120 Communications Ofﬁce 60 College Avenue Annapolis, MD 21401 Address Service Requested � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The College (2001-2017) Description An account of the resource The St. John's College Communications Office published The College magazine for alumni. It began publication in 2001, continuing the St. John's Reporter, and ceased with the Fall 2017 issue. Click on <a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=56">Items in The College (2001-2017) Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, Md. Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context thecollege2001 Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 50 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The College, Fall 2017 Description An account of the resource Volume 42, Issue 2 of the The College Magazine. Published in Fall 2017. 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 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-10 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context The College Vol. 42, Issue 2 Fall 2017 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Shook, Gregory (editor) Lee-Merrion, Harriet Petrich, Louise Pratt, Tim Weiss, Robin Adam, Judith Perleberg Anderson, Anna Ardoin, Samantha Barone, Jonathan Carpenter, Carol Jusinski, Charlotte Kniggendorf, Anne McDonald, David Tolpa, Eve Wice, Andrew Behrens, Jennifer (contributing designer) The College